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Letter writer Frankie Seaberry is wrong about the outsourcing of jobs; that was all President Obama's fault. Mitt Romney was only governor of one state. Outsourcing was done in most states, but Massachusetts was not one of them. The president is the only one who can do things in every state.
On Obamacare, according to a CBO report, more people in the future are going to be uninsured and many companies will be letting employees go because if they have more than 50 full-time workers, they may have to pay a penalty. They won't want that, of course, so they will let people go.
There are also the taxes that will be involved with Obamacare. Certain groups don't have to worry about taxes, like the disabled, seniors and some ethnic groups, but millions of others will have to pay more taxes.
People need to stop blaming Republicans for all the trouble we are in now. If Obama had done his job the first four years and worked harder with Republicans, things would probably be different. Maybe other presidents had trouble working with the other side, but he is the first one who never had a budget his whole term, debt so out of control and such high unemployment. | <urn:uuid:9673e1d0-32a7-4287-9783-cc390435289b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bnd.com/2012/12/12/2426336/obama-gets-all-the-blame.html | 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 | 0.989135 | 243 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Fiber optic cabling and copper options for data storage prosDate: Aug 29, 2012
How long do you keep a data storage system? If you're like most storage pros, six years is typical while the average shelf life for servers may be four years. But what about the cabling found in your data center? Cabling -- the pipeline for data and power -- is likely to last approximately 15 years, meaning it can have a powerful, long-term impact on your storage environment.
"You have to think ahead," said Dennis Martin, founder and president of Arvada, Colo.-based Demartek LLC, during his Storage Decisions 2012 presentation titled "Next-Generation Data Center Storage Networking." Storage administrators need to be aware of current cable and connector options because as speeds increase, requirements change. For distances of more than 50 meters, the older, orange-colored fiber optic cables are no longer adequate for higher-speed connections such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) and 16 Gb Fibre Channel (FC), especially the 62.5 micron OM1 cables. The industry is moving to aqua-colored 50-micron OM3 and OM4 fiber optic cables for long-distance connections. OM4 is now the preferred cable type for horizontal, or data center-wide, cabling for both Ethernet and FC.
"The bottom line is that if you're running multimode fiber, you should be buying OM4," Martin said. "The recommendation is that you go to OM4 because [it] will also run 40-gig Ethernet and 100-gig Ethernet, and it will run the higher-end speed to Fibre Channel as well."
In addition, some of the higher speeds are achieved by bundling four or more lanes together, which requires different connectors, such as the Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP+) connector. There are similar considerations for copper cables and connectors.
"As we move forward in speed, you're going to see more interest in fiber optic cabling and less in copper because copper can't push the signal very far," Martin said. But copper cabling can work when "it's on the same rack, on top of a rack or the next rack over -- up to seven or eight meters,” he explained. To hear all of Martin's remarks and view helpful charts outlining cable considerations and recommendations, view this SearchStorage.com video. | <urn:uuid:3aa5f54d-9177-4d9f-95a6-59f8a85c8b51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/video/Fiber-optic-cabling-and-copper-options-for-data-storage-pros | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937089 | 501 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Syrian government forces have launched an all-out offensive on rebel positions in Damascus, as the UN Security Council extended for 30 days the mandate of its observer mission.
Rebels also clashed with troops in several neighborhoods of Syria's second-largest city, Aleppo, on July 20, a day after rebels seized a number of crossings on the Iraq and Turkey borders.
Thousands of civilians meanwhile continued to flee to Lebanon and Iraq to escape the violence.
The UN refugee agency said between 8,500 and 30,000 Syrians had entered Lebanon in the past 48 hours, and thousands of Iraqis have also returned home, after having fled to Syria from their own country's violence.
Activists put the two-day death toll at more than 470 people, one of the highest of the 16-month uprising.
The Security Council meanwhile voted unanimously to give a "final" 30-day extension to its observer mission.
The monitors had been charged with overseeing a ceasefire that never took hold, but suspended their mission on June 16 in the face of escalating violence.
The July 20 vote left the door open for a further but unlikely extension of the mission.
Vitali Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, said after the vote, "I was somewhat surprised to hear [U.S.] Ambassador [Susan] Rice's definition, or description, of the resolution as something which provides for an orderly withdrawal of the mission."
Churkin added, "This is not a resolution about withdrawal, it's a resolution about a continuation of the activity of the mission. If a decision were to be taken not to extend the mission, then of course it can withdraw very quickly and I hope safely, but this is not about withdrawal and I think we should not disorient the mission and the international community by describing it as a withdrawal resolution."
The vote followed emergency consultations just hours before the expiry of the 300-strong mission's mandate, after Russia threatened to use its veto powers as a council permanent member for the second time in as many days.
In Damascus, forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad recaptured the neighborhood of Medan, while fierce fighting continued in at least three other parts of the capital.
Clashes were under way in Aleppo as well, according to opposition activists.
Rights group Amnesty International has said rebel forces too could be blamed for the deaths of civilians as they extended the fighting into large cities.
Assad's national security chief, General Hisham Ikhtiyar, died on July 20 from wounds sustained in a July 18 bombing that killed three other key aides to Assad, including the defense minister and Assad's brother-in-law.
Assad has only appeared publicly in one soundless video on state TV since the bombing, and his whereabouts remain unknown.
The revolt against Assad's regime began in March 2011 and has killed more than 17,000 people. | <urn:uuid:4d0cdb62-af9f-4d9c-be63-fbad7f02bba4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.turkishweekly.net/print.asp?type=1&id=138944 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97977 | 589 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Writing on Location
This NAWE project brought together writers, educators and teachers to re-invigorate their practice, as part of the British Library’s larger Literature in Context
project. The aim for NAWE was to provide a creative writing element within the project’s professional development events for teachers, in turn providing a clear means of engaging school pupils with museum collections through creative writing. A residential Arvon week
complemented the individual interventions.
The project took shape as a series of ten commissions for writers at literary houses, museums or libraries with literary archives throughout the UK. The commissions involved a day to visit the venue, get inspired and meet staff, a day of delivery of workshops for teachers and educators, and a day to write the articles and resources that would create a legacy for the work. Not all of these elements went according to plan but NAWE was delighted with the quality and range of work that did take place as part of the project.
‘Fascinating – every visit here makes me want to go back into the classroom and teach! Inspiring, thank you. So many wonderful ideas’. Teacher at the Shandy Hall event
We should like to thank Alex Whitfield and Abi Barber of the British Library and Jan Kofi-Tsekpo from MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives) for their support and excellent partnership with NAWE.
A special edition of the NAWE Magazine, Writing in Education has been produced with input from each of the ten writers and the museum colleagues. This provides a reflective summary of the work undertaken, itself pitched as a resource for other writers, museum professionals and teachers. The publication has been sent to all NAWE members, with copies also provided for the British Library and the participating museums. Further copies are available to purchase.
The ten participating museums/literary houses were:
For details of other literary houses and museums, and their annual conference, visit the Lithouses website | <urn:uuid:367d58c8-f1f8-4ce2-b4ee-acfad5fa0191> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nawe.co.uk/writing-in-education/writing-and-community/writing-on-location.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963455 | 401 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Indianapolis has got one: Cologne, Germany.
So does Goshen, Ind.: Bexbach, Germany.
Heck, Chicago’s got 28 of them.
They’re sister cities, and the International Baccalaureate Class of 2013 at
Chesterton High School thinks it’s high time for the Town of Chesterton to
get one too.
At the Town Council’s meeting Monday night, three members of that class gave
a presentation on the benefits of sister-cityhood, which tend to begin—they
said—with less tangibly valuable cultural and educational exchanges but can
often lead to brass-tacks economic benefits: including tourism, business
contacts, and product-line exposure.
The first step: the creation of a sister-city committee, with
representatives from the International Baccalaureate class, the town itself,
the business community, and local service organization. The next step:
membership in Sister Cities International, an organization which pairs
municipalities with an eye toward size and compatibility. Cost of
membership: a buck a day, $365 per year.
The students did say that some sizable expenditures would be needed to
ensure a meaningful sister-city experience. They estimated $300,000 over
four years, or $75,000 per year, which they were hopeful could be raised
through donations from interested residents and businesses.
Those funds would be used to defray the cost of committee activity, travel
expenses, and events to promote sister-cityhood.
Members voted 4-0 to take the proposal under advisement. Member Sharon
Darnell, D-4th, was not in attendance. | <urn:uuid:d34c5fd7-2874-4a78-a88c-7828f3ca59fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chestertontribune.com/Town%20of%20Chesterton/chesterton_town_council_to_mull.htm | 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 | 0.943077 | 360 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Cold in the Southwest, Warm in the SoutheastJanuary 15th, 2013 at 5:36 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
Click the picture and the map to enlarge. The picture is what the S. Pole looked like today at 1:25 PM. It’s the middle of summer and the temperature is a relatively warm -14F. This is the high temperature map from Monday. You can see quite a contrast between the East and the Southwest. Los Angeles had their coolest temperature in 22 years with a morning low of 34. Santa Barbara dropped to 27, the coldest temperature in six years. The high temperature reached only 38 in Los Vegas NV. Tucson had both a record low (21) and a record low maximum (42)…the same for Douglas AZ with a high/low of 41/11 (on Sunday Douglas dropped to +7, breaking the record low by 8 degrees. The Arizona freeze will cause the price of lettuce to go up. Other record lows included -31 at Big Piney WY, -17 at Alliance NE and -18 at Alpine AZ. On the East Coast, record highs were set at Portland ME (59), Savannah GA (81) and Valdosta GA (83). Our weather stays cool with light snow Weds. PM into Thursdaqy and again over the weekend as a strong Arctic front comes thru, giving us our coldest 3-day shot of air in 2 years. Daytime temperatures are forecast to be only in the teens early next week. From Saturday night to Monday night, the European model gives G.R. 0.32″ of precipitation. If that’s right, that would be 6″ of snow. Muskegon gets 0.43″ of precipitation in 48-hours during that period. GFS shows ROCKIN’ cold air and what should be a decent snow dump for areas that get NW flow lake effect (SW Corner of the State (buryin’ Berrien) and Oceana Co. to the north). Time to get the plows back on the trucks. We also get 1-3″ of snow Weds. PM – Thurs. AM. Next week could be the coldest week of the winter. ALSO: 900 people injured as major snowstorm hits Japan and there’s a Yellow Warning for the U.K. for snow and ice. Schools were closed and dozens of traffic accidents were reported. There was a lot of snow in SE Alaska. Finally, WOW, talk about the Biggest Loser! AND – Jimmy Kimmel and L.A. weathercaster’s talk about the cold in California. | <urn:uuid:08d7fe5a-f362-400e-9c50-000a770e7731> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.woodtv.com/2013/01/15/cold-in-the-southwest-warm-in-the-southeast/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953709 | 540 | 1.71875 | 2 |
SAN ANTONIO (AP) New drug combinations are helping women with early breast cancer. Using two drugs that more precisely target tumors doubled the number of women whose cancer disappeared compared to those who had only one of the drugs, doctors reported Friday.
It was the first test of Herceptin and Tykerb together for early-stage disease. They aim at a protein called HER-2 that is overproduced in about one-fourth of all breast cancers. Herceptin blocks the protein on the cell's surface; Tykerb does it inside the cell.
RESOURCE: Complete breast cancer coverage
Dr. Jose Baselga, associate director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, led a study when he previously worked in Barcelona, Spain, that tested these drugs alone and in combination in 455 patients who also were given the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel.
The patients were treated for about four months before surgery to remove their tumors and for nine months afterward. Doctors have been testing drugs in advance of surgery to shrink tumors and make the operation less drastic, and to get an idea quickly if these drugs will help a patient.
Just over half of the women who received Herceptin and Tykerb were discovered to have no signs of invasive cancer when their surgeries were done, versus only 25 to 30% of those given just one of these drugs.
Tykerb had more side effects, mostly diarrhea. But the main side effect of combo treatment is to the wallet: Tykerb pills cost $5,000 to $6,000 per month. Herceptin costs more than $4,000 a month plus whatever doctors charge to infuse it.
"The possibility that we have here is to enhance the number of patients that are cured" and avoid more treatment down the line that might cost more, Baselga said.
However, Dr. Neil Spector of the Duke Cancer Institute said cost "is a real consideration."
Yet he called the results "really exciting" and said the future of cancer care is approaches like this that use targeted drugs well matched to patients' tumor profiles.
A second study in Germany pitted the two drugs against each other in 600 women with early breast cancer also getting standard chemotherapy for six months before surgery. Herceptin won: 31% saw their tumors disappear versus 22% on Tykerb.
The studies were reported Friday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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:6d6a145d-e2bd-4a4b-b7f5-683960a67077> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/breastcancer/2010-12-10-herceptin-combo_N.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962587 | 565 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The advent of high-throughput screening (HTS) and robotic automation also saw an evolution in compound-management tools.
New technologies, as well as steady increases in available compounds, have made organizing and managing the libraries of chemicals, compounds, and other reagents used by research labs a major challenge. More than ever before, labs are incorporating automated solutions for liquid handling, compound retrieval, and sample barcoding, for example.
“Whether it is preparing millions of compounds for screening, or a few for lead optimization, compound management is now heavily reliant on automation that is directly connected to inventory management software for quick and accurate delivery of requested compounds,” said Dan Hascall, senior scientific manager at Genentech.
What are the effects of new, automated, and faster technologies on compound management? Do labs need them, and are they helping? Last month in Boston, several experts spoke about innovative compound-management practices at the IQPC conference on “Compound Management and Integrity”. Their insights hold promise for those trying to understand the issues and possible solutions in compound management today.
Software Holds It All Together
Recently, a group from the University of Michigan developed a new, secure, web-based open-source application called MScreen, that is designed to organize and run HTS and compound management. Described in an application note in this month’s issue of the Journal of Biomolecular Screening, MScreen is free to academic and nonprofit institutions, and available by license for industry.
Though its main focus is HTS, it also facilitates compound management, governing standard tasks such as debiting volumes while loading screening plates, for example. But MScreen can also accomplish other jobs, such as making and handling mixture plates for screening multiple compounds simultaneously. It shows you views of each well and the compounds contained within the well, with thumbnails of each compound’s structure, to which is linked the complete information on the individual compounds.
An MScreen author Richard Neubig, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pharmacology, and co-director of the Center for Chemical Genomics at the University of Michigan, says that MScreen also has a unique ability to handle compounds and extracts.
“[This is useful] if you have an unknown mixture,” said Dr. Neubig. “MScreen has a large collection of natural extracts. We can also link those to the constituents [of your mixture] once you’ve identified what the chemical constituents are. So we’ve got substances and compounds, and you can link a compound well, or a compound structure, to a particular substance so that you can see how those fit.”
Mscreen also helps you keep track of chemicals’ sources, using different sets of daughter plates made with different concentrations, or made at different times.
“If you order in a new stock of something, we can keep good track of which lot it was, and we also can keep track of the different daughter plates,” said Dr. Neubig. “We make sure that when we do a screen, we know exactly which daughter plate the compound came from. So if we see discrepancies between two assays on a single compound, we can track those easily to make sure there wasn’t a difference in the two daughter plates that were used.”
MScreen also features a specially designed infrastructure for managing nucleic acid reagents. “We have a very specific structure set up for the siRNAs, where we have links to sequences of the siRNAs in the collection, and links to the genes that are targeted by the siRNAs,” continued Dr. Neubig.
This framework within MScreen is also easily adaptable to work for shRNAs or micro RNAs as well, he added.
Errors and Quality Control
Though automation is meant to prevent human error, it can also inadvertently result in more errors—which could have potentially profound effects on compound management. For example, even increases in sample throughput and plate densities in HTS can increase the frequency of errors.
“[In addition to error frequency,] these technologies also introduce opportunities for [entirely] new types of errors, some of which may not be obvious until the technology is used routinely,” said Pierre Baillargeon, compound manager at Scripps Florida.
“At the same time, new technologies often allow tighter integration between software and hardware automation, leading to reduced potential for human error.”
He recommended that tools for quality control and quality assurance be in place to check for errors that might originate from new technologies. “This means identifying bottlenecks and weaknesses in existing laboratory practices, and finding ways to mitigate error without negating the efficiency gains from the technology being used,” said Baillargeon.
For example, his group uses an automated volume checking device to verify that the amount of solubilized sample in a container matches the electronic record of that sample. This eliminates the potential error that might result from discrepancies between actual sample amounts, and those recorded in the management system.
To help prevent further errors, Baillargeon’s group also developed a novel machine vision based instrument called the Plate Auditor, which automatically inspects plates for insufficient volume, precipitate, and sample color.
“By integrating this new instrument into our existing workflows, we have enabled errors to be detected and corrected much earlier in the sample lifecycle,” said Baillargeon. “Detecting problems earlier in the sample lifecycle simultaneously reduces the cost of errors and increases the quality of data produced downstream.” The Plate Auditor was recently licensed by Brooks Life Science Systems. | <urn:uuid:fce9a7e2-d890-4f7f-804c-1e279acd77a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://genengnews.com/gen-articles/automation-redefines-compound-management/4522/?kwrd=Compound%20Profiling | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952014 | 1,187 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Recently I have been thinking about different lies and their D-Plane and seeing what we can figure out from them.
BALL ABOVE FEET
What do we know about shots where the ball is above our feet?
The ball usually goes left and it's usually a hook.
My feeling is that the face will turn left on the golfer at impact (usually). I also believe that the path almost naturally goes out to the right. I'd also guess that the attack angle is usually a tad steeper which helps that path go out to the right even more.
While living in North Georgia, an area with very hilly terrain, I started to understand how to hit shots better off of different lies.
I think there are two things that need to happen to straighten out those ball above your feet lies. For one, the clubface either has to stop closing on the golfer OR the golfer has to play for the closing clubface. The other is the golfer has to figure out a way to prevent the path from going so far out to the right.
Either that or the golfer has to learn how to play for the draw.
IF you want to hit it STRAIGHT, my suggestion would be to do something I started to do. I would aim the clubface well right of the target at ADDRESS. Then I would open my STANCE at address and swing along the lines of my body. In other words, if I wanted to hit this lie straight I would almost play for a slice. But what would happen is that the face would return close to square to the target at impact and the path would be more square since I was swinging the club left in order to counter its naturally tendency to go out to the right from this type of lie.
Now, if you just want to play the draw/hook from this lie, I would suggest aiming the clubface well out to the right and aim your BODY more like you normally would to the target. This would create an impact where the face would either be square or slightly open and a path out to the right. Most golfers aim everything out to the right and I think that creates a square/slightly open face and a path well, well out to the right...creating a hook that is too tough to control.
BALL BELOW YOUR FEET
The ball here will do the opposite of the above lie...it will go to the right, usually with fade/slice spin and usually goes low. I'd be curious to see what the attack angle on this lie would be since I've never hit either the above the feet or below the feet lies that high of a trajectory. With the ball below the feet lie, my big problem being 6'4" tall is that it's hard for me to not catch the irons off the bottom grooves.
So I think it's safe to say the face naturally opens up at impact and the path naturally goes out to the left.
Thus, if you want to hit it STRAIGHT, I would suggest a clubface pointing to the left at address and aiming out to the right with the body so the path can go out there.
Personally, I play this shot for a fade/slice because I'm more concerned with getting good contact as if I try to get that path more out to the right, I usually don't make very good contact.
From this lie, the ball usually goes high and push hooks on the golfer.
The general rule of thumb here is to move the ball position. They say 'move the ball more towards the higher foot.' On the uphill lie, the lead foot is the 'higher foot', so you want to move it more towards the higher foot.
I find this works quite well. A couple of weeks ago I had an uphill lie with a 3-hybrid and thought about stopping myself before I hit the ball because I had the ball position in my normal, flat lie position. I decided to hit it anyway, hit it well, but it hooked left on me. Why? Because playing it from my normal ball position from an uphill lie made the attack angle steeper, which moves the path slightly out to the right.
Now, one could keep their normal position and 'swing left', but the ball will likely go lower than normal because of the steeper attack angle. This may be a good way to play this shot from a steeper uphill lie if you don't want the ball to go too high and lose distance.
But for normal uphill lies, the golfer may want to have a clubface pointing slightly left and aim their body left in order to move the path out to the left.
I like this picture because it shows the golfer aligning their shoulders parallel to the ground. For me, I don't worry too much about this on uphill lies because my shoulders are pretty much in that position to begin with.
The downhill lie usually goes really low and often a flare out to the right.
The attack angle here is steep. I believe that because the ball goes so low. The other day I hit a shot from an extremely steep downhill lie with a 3-iron and caught it flush, yet the ball probably went about 5 feet off the ground.
I think the flare out to the right means the clubface is open and the steeper attack angle shifts the path out to the right, so the push happens.
I do agree with moving your shoulders parallel with the ground. That will help with your contact and low point. Also, move the ball towards the 'higher foot' which would be the rear foot in this case.
Of course, the best way to learn to play these shots is lots of practice. If you can, create these shots on your driving range and you'll learn a lot from it. | <urn:uuid:64895c34-1baa-45f1-a98f-edfb7eb7a9fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://3jack.blogspot.com/2010/04/d-plane-and-sidehill-and-downhilluphill.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964735 | 1,195 | 1.65625 | 2 |
England-based Chevalier’s first US appearance is another novel based on a painting of Vermeer (see Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 998). The tale this time is told—alluringly indeed—by the housemaid who sat as model for the painting in question. Griet is only 16, in 1664, when she’s hired as a maid in the grand Delft household of Johannes Vermeer, who practices the Catholic faith and has a family consisting of wife, mother-in-law, cook, and 5 children (by story’s end there will be 11). Griet’s own faith is Protestant, and her humble family has been made even poorer since her father, a tile-painter, had an accident that left him blind. Hard-working and sweet-tempered Griet is taken on, then, partly as an act of charity, but the austere and famous painter is struck by her sensitive eye for color and balance, and after a time he asks her to grind paints for him in his attic studio—and perhaps begins falling in love with her, as she certainly does with him. Let there be no question, however, of anything remotely akin to declared romance, the maid’s station being far, far below the eminent painter’s, not to mention that his bitterly jealous wife Catharine remains sharply resentful of any least privilege extended to Griet—a complication that Vermeer resolves simply through intensified secrecy. There’s a limit, though, to how much hiding can be done in a single house however large, and when Griet begins sitting for Vermeer (his patron, the lecherous Ruijven, who has eyes—and hands—for Griet, brings it about), suspicions rise. That’s as nothing, though, to the storm that sweeps the house and all but brings about Griet’s very ruin when Catharine discovers that the base-born maid has committed the thieving travesty of wearing her pearl earrings. Courageous Griet, though, proves herself a survivor in this tenderhearted and sharp-eyed ramble through daily life—and high art—in 17th-century Delft. Another small and Vermeer-inspired treasure. | <urn:uuid:b9d9c845-bc6c-486d-9e39-8a49a8fb9a11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/tracy-chevalier/girl-with-a-pearl-earring/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973716 | 480 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The Finance Ministry has asked public sector general insurance companies to bring down their expense ratio and management expenses to improve profit. The ministry has assessed the performance of four public sector insurance companies recently. Health and motor insurance remain the concern area. Expenses ratio has to be more competitive. Besides, these companies have also been advised to bring down management expenses. Expense ratio, in insurance parlance is the proportion of premium used to pay all the costs of acquiring, writing and servicing insurance and reinsurance. It is to be noted that the Kolkata-based National Insurance Company witnessed a 67% decline in net profit in 2010-11 even when premium income rose by 32%. At the same time, Chennai-based United India Insurance registered a 81% fall in net profit despite a 22% rise in premium. The company registered an 83% fall in operating income. | <urn:uuid:f104ba06-0d50-4d52-97b8-96ec49c6c6b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moneymantra.co.in/detailsPage.php?id=2844&title=News%20Tracks&wrt= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957841 | 172 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Most people here know G.T. Smith simply as "Buck," a grandfatherly figure who strolls around the wooded campus of Davis & Elkins College picking up bits of litter and chatting up students, professors, and groundskeepers by name.
But in higher education, Mr. Smith is known as a turnaround artist, a man with the talent and disposition to take a failing college and transform it into a winner. Here, at 74 years old, taking no salary, he is trying to save a tiny, debt-ridden college in one of the poorest states in the country. His strategy is so simple and earnest, it may sound naïve to the jaded.
"The underlying thing for me is relationships—hardly anything important happens that doesn't have to do with relationships," he says quietly one afternoon in his office. He is not talking just about cozying up to a wealthy donor or board chairman. He is talking about building connections to needy students, the lowliest employees, the local community. "It's getting to know people, being interested in them. … Life is built on genuine relationships, where trust and integrity are without question. When that is there, there are no limits."
He must be onto something. After years of stagnant enrollment at Davis & Elkins—which had developed a dismal local reputation, according to some local high-school counselors—the freshman class was up 50 percent this fall. As of November, the number of applications was more than seven times higher than at this time in 2007, and eight students had already put down deposits. Consider that those numbers came after the college had canceled its advertising campaign and done away with mass mailings in favor of a highly personal approach to recruiting students: getting to know their names, their parents' names, their dogs' names, and conveying the message that at this college of 700 students, you're part of a family.
As many small, liberal-arts colleges look to an uncertain future, they may see something of themselves here—and perhaps a path forward. Davis & Elkins has what might seem like disadvantages in today's higher-education environment: It is underfinanced, fairly traditional, and remote, deep in the mountains of West Virginia.
Mr. Smith, with an unwavering loyalty to the small-college ideal, is trying to turn those into advantages.
"Buck has done a remarkable job," says Richard H. Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges, who has observed Davis & Elkins's resurgence. "Taking the rhetoric of a small, liberal-arts college that cares about individual students and carrying it to the nth degree in the admissions process—it's a very smart strategy." And not nearly as common as it could be.
For Mr. Smith, it's about getting back to a fundamental strength of the small college. "We can't in a Pollyannaish way say, 'The liberal-arts college will always survive.' We are all under threat or under siege," he says. "It comes down to whether you are going to look at your future based entirely upon your past or what others are doing, or whether you are going to look at the fundamentals, the principles, the basics, and have the discipline to stay with those."
A Humble Start
Davis & Elkins College is on the edge of the Monongahela National Forest, in the hills overlooking the city of Elkins, a quaint community known for its Appalachian-culture festivals. It is located about two hours from Morgantown and Charleston, just off a winding road that takes drivers through towns of fewer than 200 people. Many of the places and institutions around here bear the names of Henry Gassaway Davis and his son-in-law, Stephen Benton Elkins, the coal barons and statesmen who built up this part of the state.
From its beginnings, in 1904, the Presbyterian Church-affiliated college has struggled with money. Mr. Davis, whose fortune amounted to $40-million, donated just $50,000 (along with some land) to establish the campus, even though people told him the college would need $2-million for a proper foundation.
D&E, as it is locally known, has had booming years, such as in the late 1960s and the 70s. But in recent years, it has come up short. Before Mr. Smith's arrival, in June 2008, Davis & Elkins was running deficits of up to $2-million a year on a $14-million annual budget, had maxed out its lines of credit, and was borrowing from and repaying its endowment each semester. Its total operating debt was close to $6-million—small by the standards of major research universities, but crippling for an institution of this size.
Campus buildings showed signs of disrepair, and the financial problems led to a feeling of hopelessness. Peter T. Okun, a professor of English, says he felt the college was in a "death spiral."
"Students were starting to leave because students were starting to leave," he says. "You were getting that rats-off-a-sinking-ship feeling. Worry was part of the ethos here."
In their desperation to keep enrollment up, college administrators looked the other way when students got drunk and trashed their rooms, or were caught growing marijuana under a bed.
At one point, the financial situation was so dire that staff members were sent to pull some students out of class and demand that they either pay what they owed the college or leave.
Gloria M. Payne, an 87-year-old professor of business who has taught at the college for 65 years, says one of her students showed up at her office in tears to say goodbye because she had no money to pay her debt. Ms. Payne called the college's administration and told them to dock her paycheck to pay the student's bill. (Ms. Payne says the student graduated and paid her back.)
G. Thomas Mann, the college's president from 1998 to 2008, who is now interim provost at Cabrini College, near Philadelphia, maintains that Davis & Elkins was not in danger of closing. He lists some of the things he did to attract and retain students, like creating a major in criminology and starting teams in skiing and women's soccer and volleyball. He was burdened with some painful cutbacks as well, though, eliminating the departments of fine arts and communications.
But professors and others say Mr. Mann's administration was isolated from the campus, short on fund-raising contacts, and running out of ideas. He announced his retirement in January 2008.
By contrast, people here say Mr. Smith is highly visible—they see him everywhere. The president's desk is now merely a place to stack papers—he never sits there.
Mr. Smith had been a consultant to Davis & Elkins from 1988 to 1991. He was president of Bethany College, in the state's northern panhandle, and had announced his retirement when the Davis & Elkins board contacted him and asked him to right the ship. Mr. Smith agreed to come, bringing with him Kevin Wilson, a longtime friend, to run recruitment and admissions and serve as chief operating officer.
Realizing that the college was millions of dollars in the hole, the incoming president turned down an offered salary of $130,000; working for no pay gave him clarity of purpose, he says.
"In a way, this posse rode into town," Mr. Okun says. "And now it's different."
A farm boy from Virginia, Mr. Smith graduated in a high-school class of 16. After trying the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary, where he felt overwhelmed, he fled to Ohio, to the College of Wooster.
There he thrived, forming the start of a lifelong friendship with Howard Lowry, the college's seventh president and a staunch advocate for liberal-arts colleges. Mr. Lowry's portrait was the only item Mr. Smith brought to the president's office at Davis & Elkins.
"Other than Joni"—his wife of more than 50 years—"he was the greatest influence on my life," Mr. Smith says.
After college, Mr. Smith went off to Cornell University to get a master's degree in health-care administration, but Mr. Lowry lured him back in 1962 to be Wooster's director of development, early training for a career that would be spent helping colleges.
While working for Wooster, he was also a college consultant. In 1976 the trustees of Chapman College, in California, called him. News reports in the Los Angeles Times said the college, with a $900,000 endowment and buildings in disrepair, was going to close. Mr. Smith met with George L. Argyros, a real-estate baron who was chairman of the Board of Trustees, and learned that Chapman had a $1.6-million athletics facility in its strategic plan.
To counter the pessimistic reports and convey a sense of vitality, he told Mr. Argyros, the college had to raise that money and break ground on the building. "And I don't know a thing about you," he said to the chairman, "but I hope you're prepared to give 10 percent personally." Chapman broke ground four months later. The following year, the trustees lured Mr. Smith back to Chapman as president.
He met with faculty members, including James L. Doti, then an assistant professor of economics, and simply listened to them. "I'll never forget that after meeting him, I knew that Chapman would not only survive but prosper," says Mr. Doti, now himself president of Chapman University. His description of Mr. Smith 30 years ago could be Mr. Smith at Davis & Elkins today: "He knew just about every student's name on campus. You would see him walking around campus, picking up litter, talking to people. He was interested in everybody—it didn't matter what position a person was in or how much money a person made. Everyone had intrinsic value."
Over the years, Mr. Doti kept track of Mr. Smith as he went around raising money for Chapman. "I don't recall him ever asking for a gift." He would just tell the story of Chapman, and "the donors would volunteer themselves."
Mr. Smith seems to maintain a belief that if you're honest and you believe in people, good things will rain down.
Consider the Elkins Tire Company. For about $800,000, June Myles, a former Davis & Elkins trustee, recently bought the store, the only thing between the campus and better frontage on the city's main drag. Mr. Smith says he never asked for the property; he just once mentioned to Ms. Myles that the tire shop was an unworthy welcome mat.
This fall a wrecking crew removed the eyesore to make way for a new entrance to the campus, the latest transformation at Davis & Elkins. Not far away, up a steep hill, stands Halliehurst, an 1880 mansion that serves as the administration building. It has just gotten a new paint job and refurbished porches. Residence halls, once mothballed, have been cleaned up and reopened.
Soon after arriving at Davis & Elkins last year, Mr. Smith called a meeting at the college chapel. About 200 people, half of them from off the campus, showed up. He told them that there wasn't time for a yearlong strategic-planning process. The college, he said, had to get to work on six R's: reduce expenses, recruit students, retain students, raise funds, renew programs, and reach for new possibilities. A student told him that the college needed three things: accountability, communication, and technology. "I said, 'The first two won't cost anything," Mr. Smith says.
He and Mr. Wilson, who would become vice president for enrollment management and chief operating officer, started cleaning up. The new administration put an end to the practice of shaking down students for money, telling employees that they should "reach out to our students with our hearts as well as our heads." But some underperforming students were asked to leave, and Mr. Smith has established rigorous codes of conduct. In what he calls one of his "homely analogies" from a rural upbringing, he says: "If you don't have good fences, the cows will wander off into the woods."
To improve communication, the two leaders instituted a policy allowing faculty and staff members to eat lunch free at the dining hall, in the hope that they would spend more time talking with each other and with students. The college also put $700,000 into improving campus computing.
But the biggest changes came in student recruiting, Mr. Wilson's specialty. His job history is mostly in college and professional basketball, not admissions. He played for Bill Musselman at Ashland University in the 1960s, then followed the coach to the University of Minnesota as an assistant coach and recruiter. Mr. Smith hired Mr. Wilson as head men's basketball coach at Chapman in the 1980s; later he was an assistant coach for two NBA teams. He also hired and trained salespeople for the Hyatt and Marriott hotel chains.
Mr. Wilson says he went into admissions after he tired of dealing with aloof, multimillionaire basketball stars. The college-admissions game isn't so different from recruiting basketball players or salespeople, he says.
At Davis & Elkins, he has opted for a highly personal approach. No more mass mailings of recruiting materials, no more $100,000 advertising campaign. Instead, Davis & Elkins recruiters now go to more than 300 college fairs rather than the 80 they attended in the past. They visit high schools in the surrounding seven counties, plugging their Highland Scholars Program, which gives Appalachian-region students with grade-point averages of 2.5 or above a chance to attend Davis & Elkins for the same price as West Virginia University—a $14,000 discount off its $20,000 tuition. Students who make inquiries get personal responses within 24 hours, sometimes from Mr. Smith himself. (Recruiters pass out Mr. Smith's card, with his cellphone number and e-mail address, and encourage students to contact him. Occasionally, after they arrive, they call him for help with everyday problems like unclogging toilets.)
Mr. Wilson and other recruiters get to know the names and interests of prospective students while determining what strengths they might bring to the college.
"They meet with Buck and they meet with me," he says, "and you can tell within five minutes if that person has any guts." In 2007, 42 percent of the freshmen had high-school grade-point averages of 3.0 or better. This year, it's 63 percent.
Susan Krakoff is one of them. A straight-A student from Southern California, she got an e-mail message about Davis & Elkins in her senior year and put in an application. Soon she got personal phone calls and letters from Mr. Smith and Mr. Wilson. She was charmed.
"I thought, Whoa, they're serious about me," she says.
When Ms. Krakoff scheduled a visit with her mother, Mr. Wilson arranged to have them picked up from the airport and driven to the campus. "The whole time I was here, they had a personalized schedule printed out," she says. "They knew that I had been in contact with an English professor, and they let me sit in on his class. I didn't have to ask, Can I do this or see that? They already knew what I wanted to do or see."
The personal touch was key. She chose Davis & Elkins over Cal Poly at Pomona and at San Luis Obispo, and the University of California at Riverside, all of which had accepted her.
Beth Belcher is a top student from Pinch, W.Va., a town of about 2,800 near Charleston. During a tour of the campus with her parents, she, too, was impressed by the people at the college and comforted by its small size, which resembled her own small town.
"After the tour, we were just sitting around looking at the view, and President Buck came over and talked with us," she says. "It was the first time that a college president had taken time to speak with me." They struck up a conversation about favorite books, and he left them with a recommendation: Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, a novel that one reviewer said is about "the role of community in the shaping of character."
A week later, Ms. Belcher got the book in the mail, courtesy of Mr. Smith.
Small Is Good
Mr. Smith's strategies go back more than 50 years, to his experiences at the College of Wooster and the influence of his mentor there, Howard Lowry. In 1966, Mr. Lowry was invited to write an essay for The Atlantic Monthly defending the liberal-arts college. The essay was a response to an article written the year before by W. Allen Wallis, at the time president of the University of Rochester, who had argued that small colleges would become increasingly irrelevant, attracting only second- and third-rate students, unless they followed Rochester's lead, expanded their programs, their campus footprints, their professional schools, and became like universities.
Mr. Lowry responded that the small liberal-arts college was "never preoccupied with the highly gifted alone" and has been "willing to wait for the steady pluggers and late bloomers whom they do not brag about till after these people have become some of their most respected alumni and the best citizens of their community." In a passage that could have been published in the 21st century, he wrote that small colleges give students "the capacity to survive change" during "a time when colleges are trying to prepare students for careers 10 years away that do not now exist."
And what is the key to the small college's power and appeal? In part, its very size. "The small college has a superb asset, one that is subtle and not easily measured or explained," Mr. Lowry wrote. "It answers to one of the deepest human needs, the need for belonging. And the only way to do justice to the sense of community that a college can confer is to make an almost preposterous claim for it—namely, that this is something no larger institution, however excellent and richly blessed, can confer in the same measure."
Today, the small college—particularly the rural small college—is held up by some as the quintessential model for American higher education, but dismissed by others as a high-priced dinosaur. Mr. Ekman, from the Council of Independent Colleges, says leaders of small liberal-arts colleges are increasingly under pressure to grow, adopt more professional programs, and start offering distance education.
"I am increasingly concerned that because this rhetoric is in the air, of growing in size and going online, we are going to sacrifice" the small-college ideal, he says. "I am particularly concerned that we not oversell some of these things being done right now in the name of economizing, or making college more affordable, and pretend that those efforts provide the same sort of education."
John C. Nelson, an analyst with Moody's Investors Service who oversees its coverage of the higher-education sector, says that while small colleges have always been pressured, they usually do not disappear, because wealthy board members or alumni find ways to sustain them.
"Whether the economy now changes that is an unknown," he says. If the stock market does not improve, if unemployment continues at 10 percent, "I think you will see some of these very small colleges closing."
Those that survive, both he and Mr. Ekman say, will have a clear sense of purpose, a marketable niche, a reputation for high quality, and at the foundation, a good leader.
Although enrollment growth appears to be on track, Mr. Smith's work at Davis & Elkins is not done. He hopes to strengthen the board, pay off the college's debt, and shore up the endowment. At Chapman, in ritzy Orange, Calif., that was relatively easy. "Here, the potential isn't all around you," he says.
He may also need to help the college look for a successor. He told the trustees that he would work as long as he and his wife, who has chronic respiratory problems, were healthy enough. He starts his day at 4 a.m. and is often up until midnight—judging a student hamburger-cooking contest, attending a student-government meeting, responding to a constantly buzzing BlackBerry; he calls it his "pacemaker."
Late one September night in Halliehurst, one of the campus mansions, he and Joni attended a small concert put on by local musicians, including a faculty member. Ms. Belcher and Ms. Krakoff were there, along with a dozen other new students the college worked hard to attract. Soon Mr. Smith was up and walking around the room with a tray full of soda cans, serving drinks.
"Joni and I are spending our years together doing this, and we'd love it if we can make a difference in the lives of these kids, this institution, and this community," he says. "It's not a job, it's a mission. I wouldn't do it if it was a job." | <urn:uuid:b177492f-086e-4f14-aea2-a969768c88af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chronicle.com/article/Turnaround-President-Makes-the/49138/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983837 | 4,440 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The Cape Cod Commission approved a proposed set of land-based wind turbine regulations Feb. 17, which will be presented to the county commissioners next week.
Among other things, the regulations include a 65-foot height threshold for review. The proposal includes a provision to create an exemption for the height restriction with a certified local bylaw. Municipal projects of 250 kilowatts or less on a single parcel would also be exempt from impact studies for noise and shadow flicker as well as the proposed decommissioning requirements.
The amended proposal will be submitted to the county commissioners at their March 9 meeting. At the Feb. 23 meeting, chairman Bill Doherty said that there were some provisions in the initial draft that he did not support, but would wait for the final version before passing judgment.
The Cape and Vineyard Electric Cooperative, formed as a partnership with the county, opposes the commission’s draft, arguing that municipalities and CVEC projects should be exempt from review.
During the Assembly meeting, Speaker Ron Bergstrom said the potential existed for the county to effectively be fighting itself on wind regulations.
Bergstrom pointed out that “many of the staff of the county sit on the CVEC and Cape Light Compact,” which he thought could set up potential conflicts.
“We should make people aware that we are aware … that there may be a conflict,” Bergstrom said.
Not all of his colleagues on the Assembly agreed that a conflict would exist.
Cape Cod Commission Executive Director Paul Niedzwiecki suggested that the Assembly take a different approach to its hearing, perhaps convening as a committee of the whole on the regulations to allow as complete a conversation as possible.
The Assembly rejected an earlier draft of wind regulations in November, looking for something stiffer and detailed.
“Any way that we can give the assembly a more full presentation, would be helpful,” Niedzwiecki told delegates this week.
The final draft of the wind regulations are available at capecodcommission.org/RPP. | <urn:uuid:fd2fdf7d-2c25-4ba2-bf67-a8a0dfa8876e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23956&Itemid=40 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956045 | 423 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Group Personal Pension
Group Personal Pension (GPP) - These are a half-way house between personal pensions and occupational pension schemes. They are money purchase schemes with several differences. A GPP is essentially a cluster of individual personal pensions, not a common fund.
The scheme will be administered by a life insurer, and in theory at least, the running costs ought to be lower than taking out a personal pension plan because of economies of scale. | <urn:uuid:96b2c1e2-34b1-45be-895c-1b3559f93104> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bba.org.uk/customer/glossary-entry/Group-Personal-Pension | 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 | 0.941234 | 90 | 1.703125 | 2 |
"I just started running, running, hoping that the driver could see my flash," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
"In that moment, I just wanted to warn the train -- to try and save a life," the Post quoted him as saying.
Some critics, however, questioned Abbasi's motives.
One Twitter user questioned why someone's first instinct would be not to help the man, but instead to "snap a photo of him about to die and sell it to the NY Post."
Reached by CNN, Abbasi was adamant that he would talk to the network only for pay.
The Post declined to comment.
Media observers wondered Tuesday if the newspaper had gone too far this time.
"Even if you accept that that photographer and other bystanders did everything they could to try to save the man, it's a separate question of what the Post should have done with that photo," Jeff Sonderman, a fellow at journalism think tank the Poynter Institute, wrote on the organization's website. "All journalists we've seen talking about it online concluded the Post was wrong to use the photo, especially on its front page."
Kenny Irby, Poynter's senior faculty member for visual journalism and diversity programs, said what the paper did wasn't necessarily wrong.
"It was not illegal or unethical given that ethical guidelines and recommendations are not absolute," he said in an e-mail. But he also thought the Post could have used another photo because this one crossed the line of dignity. | <urn:uuid:f179c7d2-30ea-4615-be65-52952fbb7594> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kcra.com/news/national/NY-Post-takes-heat-over-haunting-subway-pic/-/11797450/17652654/-/item/1/-/uk4i4v/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98812 | 312 | 1.539063 | 2 |
By Mike Clements posted Apr 17th 2013 at 05:42 PM
When we originally introduced the Corsair Notebook Upgrade kit, we were really impressed with the Apricorn software. In fact, we used the term "chimple" to describe just how easy the kit was to use. It was so simple, a chimp could use it.
Customers related to us that they wanted a software cloning kit like this without having to buy the entire SSD based kit. So, we've created the new Corsair SSD & Hard Disk Drive Cloning Kit which utilizes the same great software but also has an improved USB 3.0 connector.
The kit includes a USB 3.0 to SATA connector and the Corsair Data Migration software CD. The original connector was USB 2.0 but the new connector shown here is USB 3.0. The new connector is much faster than the original allowing up to 180MB/s read and write speeds. | <urn:uuid:f5cdc523-bdb2-48be-82ed-3e8f48f1c2b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.corsair.com/blog/cat/tech/?___store=en&___from_store=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967096 | 191 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The president’s bold support shifted the mainstream. Andrew Sullivan on why it shouldn't be surprising—Obama’s life as a biracial man has deep ties to the gay experience.
Ranchers, farmers and other conservative customers filed into the Coffee Trader in Montrose, Colo., this week for their regular cups, but also to apologize to its 44-year-old owner, Dee Coram. Not only had Colorado legislators killed a bill Monday that would have allowed civil unions, but Republican Rep. Don Coram, Dee’s father, cast the deciding vote.
“He told me, ‘I will be a no,’” said Coram, whose father called himself “the proud father of a gay son” on the state house floor before making his vote. “I can’t get inside his head. I don’t know why he did it. I can’t speak for why he brought me into it. The fact of the matter is he did.” The 5-4 vote, the younger Coram added, has taken “more of an emotional toll on him than myself.”
About 62 percent of Coloradoans favored the civil unions bill, and 53 percent support same-sex marriage, according to a recent poll. Stakeholders on both sides thought the bill had partisan support after Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper called a special session.
Hickenlooper himself was such a loud proponent that he had vowed to pass such legislation in his State of the State address in January. The timing seemed optimal, after President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage the week before. But Rep. Coram, vice chairman of the Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, doubled down on what he had told his son.
Colorado Democrats blamed Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty for kicking the bill to the Veterans and Military Affairs Committee rather than bringing it to the floor for a House vote, calling his actions “bizarre,” “shenanigans,” and an “abuse of power.”
Hickenlooper voiced his displeasure about the nontraditional procedure in a statement on his website: “With the exception of civil unions, each of the bills we put on the special session call received an open debate and a final vote just like they deserved.”
McNulty stood by the move, telling a crowd outside the Capitol: “Go back to your communities, neighborhoods, churches and let them know that the fight continues, and that we will continue it today, through the next legislative session and every time that marriage is attacked.”
“It was really disappointing. The worst thing was that we had the votes,” said state Assembly minority leader Mark Ferrandino, a Democrat whose partner, Greg Wertsch, is listed as his “husband” on his Colorado General Assembly bio.
Ferrandino said he is not sure how that information got onto the website, adding that it caused a “big controversy” at the time. He laughed at the irony of it: his state constitution forbids same-sex marriages, civil unions were again rejected after an earlier attempt in 2011, and a state government website lists that he is married to a man, for Colorado and all the world to see.
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis is another Democrat frustrated by the highly visible and political failure of the civil unions bill. As the first “out” freshman elected to Congress and one of the four co-chairs of the LGBT caucus—along with Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin, and David Cicilline—he has written and sponsored a range of gay-rights legislation during his four years in national office. He is a large part of the effort to throw out the Defense of Marriage Act, which he calls a critical step in setting an example for the states.
Polis said he is sure the Colorado bill’s defeat will galvanize the state electorate, particularly voters who identify as gay and lesbian, to voice their displeasure at the polls. “The way this issue was handled turned off not only gay and lesbian voters but their friends and families. They will all engage more,” he said.
Purple Colorado is certainly in play for the presidential election, and Polis said he thinks Obama will prevail by a small margin, his new stance on marriage notwithstanding. Ferrandino said Coloradoans hardly noticed Obama’s change of heart because the state was so focused on the civil unions bill. He saw the president in a state visit the week before his same-sex marriage endorsement, he said, and “thanked him for his work on LGBT issues, not knowing he would come out [for marriage] a few weeks later.”
Polis, Ferrandino, and others say they expect a civil unions bill, which would have extended domestic partner benefits, medical decision-making, and inheritance rights to same-sex couples, to win in Colorado next session.
“The way this issue was handled turned off not only gay and lesbian voters but their friends and families. They will all engage more.”
Plenty of Republicans in the state had predicted that the bill would pass, including Alex Hornaday, vice president of the Colorado Log Cabin Republicans. “I’m nervous that in Colorado, Republicans are setting themselves to be little more than the anti-gay, anti-abortion party,” he said before the vote.
Dee Coram said his conservative java shop customers and friends all feel that “it’s time to move on and get this over with. Let civil unions happen.”
His father called the proposal a “bad bill,” he said, with language that uncomfortably invoked marriage with the repetition of the word “spouse.” But his father also told him the civil unions bill needed a House floor vote, rather than being dissolved in committee. Rep. Coram “could have sent it to the floor to have his colleagues vote on it,” Dee Coram said. “I believe he was given an opportunity to take charge and take a leadership role and that he cowered to the Republican leadership.”
The president said in 1996 that he would support legalizing gay marriage, and 16 years later became the first Oval Office holder to do just that, writes Michelle Goldberg.
In a major policy shift Wednesday, President Obama told ABC News’s Robin Roberts that ‘same-sex couples should be able to get married.’ The move marked the first time a sitting president has thrown his support behind gay marriage and the end of Obama's self-described 'evolution' on the issue.
As the debate over gay marriage rages, what marriages and weddings really mean. By David Jefferson.
As same-sex couples march down the aisle in N.Y., Andrew Sullivan reflects on his own pursuit of happiness.
From Canada to Portugal, 10 countries that allow same-sex couples to legally tie the knot. | <urn:uuid:a535c1e6-3855-4053-b4af-8b51ccd38085> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/19/gay-politicians-colorado-civil-unions-debacle-will-galvanize-voters.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977482 | 1,458 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Before going in for business incorporation, you have to decide the type of corporation you need for your business. There are many different types of incorporation for your business. Ideally, filing a ‘C’ corporation can deliver all benefits of business incorporation. Additionally, an ‘S’ subchapter corporation can help you receive your earnings from business into the bracket of your personal income. You however have to meet reasonable compensation standards.
Alternatively, choose limited liability company type of business incorporation. You can enjoy the elasticity and tax relief of a partnership with benefits of a limited company. The only drawback in limited liability company incorporation is the elaborate process of forming and setting up of your business. You have to file necessary documents for incorporating of your business after finalizing the type of business.
With so many people leaving the corporate world to go out on their own, many of them ask “why should I incorporate my business?” The costs associated with incorporation or LLC might make it seem like you need to be highly successful before considering taking this important step. Sometimes learning from other’s experience can be important when making these types of decisions.
One important consideration is the cash flow of the business. Once a business is netting greater than $60,000, incorporation makes a great deal of sense. One benefit of incorporation is tax savings. The tax savings are significant and some business owners will see a 50% reduction in their tax liability. Some of the savings are in self-employment taxes that business owners pay. Imagine being able to reinvest thousands of dollars each year back into the business. That is every small business owner’s dream! | <urn:uuid:2ce03d62-c306-482e-a7fb-d73df03eb7c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jdjungle.com/category/business/ | 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 | 0.966262 | 333 | 1.65625 | 2 |
“Who are you voting for?” is a question Arkansans often ask each other every couple of years. A better question in 2012 might be, “What are you voting for?”
That’s because the action this year won’t be in the races involving candidates. Oh, there will be plenty of sound and fury in the presidential race, but it will signify nothing as Mitt Romney is certain to win Arkansas’ six electoral votes. Meanwhile, there are no statewide races, the congressional races don’t seem particularly competitive, and state legislative races, though important, don’t typically excite many voters.
On the other hand, Arkansans will be asked to approve five ballot proposals, four of which will inspire passion (and donors) because they involve taxes, casino gambling and legalizing medical marijuana.
I should clarify. There currently are five proposals. We’ll have to wait and see if one or more is found to have too many invalid petition signatures (already happened with another casino amendment) or doesn’t survive a court challenge (always seems to happen).
Let’s start with the tax increases. One, a constitutional amendment proposed by the Legislature, would raise the state sales tax by .5 percent over 10 years to build $1.3 billion worth of new four-lanes across the state. Supporters say Arkansas needs the roads and the economic activity they would produce. The counterargument is that the state doesn’t need the taxes and doesn’t need more miles to maintain.
Then there’s The Natural Gas Severance Tax Act of 2012, which would raise the tax on natural gas extracted from the ground to 7 percent from its current rate of 1.25 to 5 percent. The money would pay for highways and roads.
Arkansas is in the midst of a natural gas boom that has created thousands of jobs while producing a relatively clean-burning fuel that is reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil. Opponents of the proposal say that begs the question: Why raise taxes and discourage the growth of this new industry?
Supporters say that most of the taxes would be paid by big out-of-state companies that currently are making a killing while damaging roads that were not designed to carry drilling rigs and big trucks. According to the state Highway Department, $450 million in highway repairs already are needed in the Fayetteville shale area, where drilling has occurred.
The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act would establish a system for legally distributing marijuana to certain medical patients. Some say smoking marijuana eases the suffering associated with certain diseases. Who am I to argue with a cancer patient who swears he’s found relief using a drug he currently must obtain illegally?
On the other hand, the Food and Drug Administration does argue, saying that smoking marijuana isn’t beneficial. Opponents also say the system would be abused and would lead to further marijuana legalization. Even if this proposal were to pass, smoking marijuana for any reason, including a medical one, still would be a violation of federal law. Legal in Arkansas, illegal in America – how’s that going to work?
A group known as Nancy Todd’s Poker Palace and Entertainment Venues has offered an amendment that would allow itself – and only itself – to operate one casino in each of four counties. That means voters would be enshrining a monopoly into the Arkansas Constitution. That’s nice work if you can get it. The amendment states its operations could not be regulated by the Legislature or any other political subdivision of the state.
I don’t have a point-counterpoint on this one. The words “unregulated casino monopoly” don’t inspire confidence in me. Folks who want to gamble already can go to the horse track in Hot Springs or the dog track in West Memphis, both of which operate their own casinos – perhaps temporarily if this amendment passes. Some friends and I are trying to get in the habit of meeting every three months to play very low-stakes poker, and we’ll welcome others. But Arkansas doesn’t need more casinos or the problems they create.
Finally, voters will be asked to allow cities and counties to create development and redevelopment districts. That would enable certain areas – poor ones, for example – to receive special tax incentives in hopes of boosting economic activity. Currently, cities and counties can’t be divided that way.
Good idea or bad, that one’s going to have a tough time getting attention this year.
Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. His blog — Independent Arkansas — is linked at Arkansasnews.com. His e-mail address is [email protected] | <urn:uuid:1eadf15a-9668-43dd-8b4c-3a6f66be75bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vanburencountydem.com/opinion/columns/isn%e2%80%99t-who-what-you%e2%80%99re-voting.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962136 | 977 | 1.539063 | 2 |
- (Photo: Nebraska City News-Press)
Officials of a Nebraska county have agreed to allow the observance of a prayer service on the steps of a courthouse in May.
The Commissioners of Otoe County agreed to grant Pastor Norman Anderson of Calvary Community Church of Nebraska City permission on Tuesday to conduct a prayer service on the steps of the county courthouse as part of the National Day of Prayer.
This is not the first time that Anderson has come to the Commissioners and been given permission to hold such a ceremony. In the April 25, 2006, meeting of Otoe County Commissioners, Anderson proposed a similar measure in honor of that year's National Day of Prayer. As with this year, the request was granted.
For last year's observance, which occurred on May 5, members of several local congregations, including Anderson's Calvary Community, Cornerstone Church of Nebraska City, Bethel United Church of Christ, and Douglas United Methodist Church, prayed at the courthouse.
John Bornschein, vice chairman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force, told The Christian Post that there are numerous observances for the NDP occurring across the country.
"In fact, this year we are already seeing a 30 percent increase in posted events indicating that the 61st annual National Day of Prayer will be the largest observance on record with millions gathered coast to coast," said Bornschein.
"With such numbers it is not uncommon to see a variety in creative expressions of prayer. This includes gatherings at locations of great influence and decision, such as courthouses."
Since signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, the National Day of Prayer is observed annually on the first Thursday of May.
"Prayer has played an important role in the American story and in shaping our nation's leaders," said President Barack Obama in the 2011 proclamation for the observance.
"I invite all citizens of our nation, as their own faith or conscience directs them, to join me in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy, and I ask all people of faith to join me in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our nation."
In April 2010, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb declared the prayer day unconstitutional, based on a lawsuit filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. However, last April a three-judge panel of the Seventh U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the decision, arguing that FFRF lacked legal standing to challenge it.
Bornschein told CP that rather than being a church-state violation, calls to prayer have been pervasive in America's history.
"Throughout our history there have been 137 national calls to prayer and fasting; 34 of the 44 U.S. Presidents have signed proclamations for a National Day of Prayer," said Bornschein.
"In total more than 965 state and federal calls to prayer have occurred since 1775 and counting. Our accountability and recognition of a higher authority is the very practice that has preserved our republic."
The 2012 observance of the National Day of Prayer will be observed on Thursday, May 3. The Otoe County Board of Commissioners did not return comment by press time | <urn:uuid:eecc5f3e-bcb0-42f3-bdf0-e2866bfea147> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/nebraska-county-approves-natl-day-of-prayer-event-on-courthouse-steps-73067/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955495 | 649 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The Living Circle Production Information
The companion to "Bananas? Si, Señor!" (1956), "The Living Circle" was reportedly seen by more than 17 million viewers during its first eight months of release. Both films were distributed with Spanish sound tracks for Latin American audiences.
If you know of more people who worked on this cartoon, or want to submit additional production information about The Living Circle, please submit your information here.
Return To The Living Circle...
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This page has been viewed 53 times this month, and 156 times total. | <urn:uuid:28371228-2354-4e62-a837-15da111ef7d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bcdb.com/cartoon_info/128956-Living_Circle.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956436 | 131 | 1.546875 | 2 |
What is Real Reason Behind Current Middle East Anti-American Sentiment?
Was violence sparked by a movie allegedly insulting to the religion of Islam, or is that just a pretext?
Al-Qaida affliates as well as Taliban members have laid claim to some of the anti-American violence currently spreading across the globe. In a recent Huffington Post story, it is suggested that it is an attempt by these organizations to co-opt the violence. It does, however, refer to attempts by U.S. and Libyan officials to see if the protests were used as a cover for planned and coordinated terrorists attacks. Many reports also find that the murders at the Libyan Consulate on the anniversary of 9/11 just too much of a coincidence. This also was not the first attack on that location and other attacks took place before reports of the movie surfaced.
The YouTube video in itself appears to be a bit of mystery, with not much yet known about those behind the movie, except that a person being questioned is an Egyptian who lives in California. A CBS news report claims that they were told the movie was made with the financial backing of a group of Christians, Jews and Muslims with ties to the Middle East. It was filmed outside of Los Angeles and the trailer is what is reported to have fueled the outbreak of violence.
So what do you think is behind all the current anti-American sentiment in the Middle East? Do you think it is in response to an inflamatory anit-islamic movie or is that just the pretext? | <urn:uuid:c1ddfa62-e647-4d9a-8e34-f739a83e71cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://loganville.patch.com/articles/what-is-real-reason-behind-current-middle-east-anti-american-sentiment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987123 | 311 | 1.5625 | 2 |
A Choice Between Thick Walled Foam Ice Chests Vs Thin Wall Foam Coolers
We Invented The Thick Walled Foam Ice Chest To Replace Thin Walled Breakable Coolers For Good Reason…
In 1967, the founder of our company had endured enough frustration from having cheap ‘styrofoam’ coolers break or leak when he went out fishing off the coast of Destin, Florida. In those days, many fishermen would load their catches into such coolers to take back to the dock, with a high likelihood of suffering a ‘foam cooler disaster’ because they simply were not well made enough to handle that kind of a pounding.
So, Charles Watkins decided to do something revolutionary and create a foam cooler that could be packed full of ice along with fish and seafood or drinks and still handle the rugged workload of charter fleet fishermen without punishing their wallets.
In his own garage, Mr. Watkins built what’s considered to be the first thick walled foam ice chest for his own successful use, and this created instant demand from associates who were similarly frustrated. Soon, he was making so many that he would load them up in his pick-up truck and sell them out of the local grocery store he owned right across the street from the beach in Destin. Demand grew so quickly that a manufacturing plant was opened and the foam cooler industry took note and began falling into line.
This most recent article launched by the LoBoy Team discusses why thick walled foam ice chests are a better choice than weaker thin walled varieties (keeping in mind of course that there are some quality thinner walled types)…Read Read Three Reasons Why Thick Wall Foam Ice Chests Are Better Than Cheap Ones | <urn:uuid:07feda91-2867-4986-8c4d-281f1f484a67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://loboy.com/the-bear-facts-blog/a-choice-between-thick-walled-foam-ice-chests-vs-thin-wall-foam-coolers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971892 | 353 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Perhaps more than any other specialty, radiology has been dramatically affected by the disruption and radical change that has replaced the relative stasis of the healthcare industry. But the imaging interoperability made possible by a vendor-neutral archive (VNA) can help deal with the tumultuous new reality.
Radiology has always been in the vanguard in the early adoption of technology. Long before e-prescribing, enterprise electronic medical records (EMRs), or longitudinal digital patient jackets, radiologists had largely converted from film-based practice to digital imaging. As an early adopter, there is a price of innovation across technology, process, and organization components, but it can be weighed against the long-term benefits gained via maturity, superior patient care, and competitiveness as the healthcare industry changes.
This axiom failed diagnostic imaging and radiologists, however, due primarily to the design, workflow, and short-sightedness of the systems that support their practice: RIS, PACS, and archival systems. The healthcare environment is rapidly changing, but radiology systems still follow a specific chronological flow for creating, storing, and distributing data, as demonstrated in the following figure.
Single-enterprise solution. Image courtesy of Jonathan Shoemaker and Jef Williams.
In a single-enterprise environment, or even within a radiology image-centric system, this approach works well. This type of environment is much less optimal, though, as the healthcare paradigm shifts and single systems are replaced with complexity, disparity, and increased interoperability requirements.
The task of simply pushing images from one site (system) to another is no longer sufficient. But the majority of receiving systems do not have the ability to accept images without an order, assign the images to the correct patient with different or missing medical record numbers, and create a report for these images that can be sent correctly back to the originating facility.
An additional factor is the tremendous risk that images could be associated with the incorrect patient. This has left many departments perceiving as the only option the utilization of full-time employees to manually manage and manipulate the data assets to support the deficient departmental systems. This solution is suboptimal, and resulting inefficiencies run counter to cost-containment measures that every healthcare organization is trying to implement to simply remain profitable.
PACS vendors have countered with patches and interim solutions to help reduce the manual process, including algorithms such as the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) Patient Identifier Cross-Referencing (PIX) integration profile for managing image data. But this does nothing to solve the bigger problem of providing a longitudinal patient jacket or integration back to the originating system.
Healthcare executives are continuously seeking the best practices and solutions to manage image acquisition and data sharing or mergers internally between disparate systems without hiring an army of staff to manage manual processes or retire expensive legacy technology. One of the most common solutions is to consolidate information systems and create a standard platform. This creates standardization but is also expensive and extremely time-consuming. It also does nothing to solve the problem of sharing image data across healthcare systems.
As proclaimed in a recent KLAS report, a fair number of organizations are exploring the emerging technologies available in the market that are being touted as vendor-neutral archives (VNAs).
What is a VNA? There are many different flavors of VNAs, and strong business cases can be made for the value of each. What we're referring to here are the approaches that focus not on providing a single static archive for all of an organization's image data, but rather those providing an architecture or interoperability platform that assists the departmental systems in interoperability outside of the department and health system.
PACS are designed to address departmental workflow and are great at accomplishing that task. Asking a PACS to be all things is ludicrous, however, and never really meets all of the required needs while producing a complicated meshwork of rigged solutions.
The insertion of an interoperability platform to create a common archive for all associated clinical systems will help manage storage space but also addresses the significant issue at hand: moving exams and images between disparate systems while supporting the informatics dependencies of the departmental imaging systems (RIS, PACS, dictation) and providing an integration point to enterprise and regional systems (EMR, health information exchange [HIE]).
Breaking out of the borders of the department allows health systems to develop data flow in which information is created first in the subsystem and the results and image links are then populated to the superior systems. This interoperability platform can manage the creation of supporting orders to drive workflow within the department systems regardless of where the originating image was created.
The platform can also act as or integrate into a registry or IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) repository to pull, modify, and insert image information into the departmental system while managing and maintaining the storage of those objects based off of rules the departmental system may not be capable of producing or implementing.
An interoperability platform is the key component for rapidly absorbing disparate clinical systems from acquisitions, system replacements, and external HIE sources while supporting the current clinical systems and meeting their needs. The VNA becomes part interoperability content management, part archive, part teleradiology solution, and part results dissemination.
This empowers organizations to manage the tsunami of disparate data they are being asked to manage, store, and move without replacing their clinical systems, which were historically chosen as best-of-breed applications. Many PACS vendors will contest the importance of VNAs, but a VNA provides the client with independence to manage the data outside of the vendor's product limitations.
And, come to think of it, weren't those limitations what created this bitter irony in the first place?
Jef Williams and Jonathan Shoemaker are frequent speakers and writers on healthcare technology topics and enterprise imaging solutions. Jef is a vice president and Jon is a senior consultant at Ascendian Healthcare Consulting. | <urn:uuid:8091ab11-00d3-4e77-a61e-b74ba0c31670> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=log&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.auntminnie.com%2findex.aspx%3fsec%3dsup%26sub%3dpac%26pag%3ddis%26ItemID%3d100488 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937129 | 1,219 | 1.757813 | 2 |
A method for quantifying user experience
Back in January, 2009, I published my definition of user experience
. UX, as user experience is popularly called, is a difficult subject to discuss with business clients. To them, “UX” is just more expensive hot air from the folks who brought us the dot bomb.
The basic problem is that discussing an experience – any experience – is highly subjective. And although others have attempted to set up metrics (notably Robert Rubinoff’s User Experience Audit
, and Livia Labate's User Experience Health Check
), we don’t always end up with particularly useful data. Here at FatDUX, we were looking for a simple tool that could help us turn observations and subjective conclusions into useful dialog with our clients.
Our UX quantification model will undoubtedly be criticized by the scientific hardliners. But it does help us uncover many problems and communicate these to the client. And it works better than beating them over the head with statistics.
Please note, we take a very broad view of “user experience,” incorporating both online and offline interactions of three types:
Please refer to the original user-experience blogpost
for details regarding these types of encounter.
Avoiding complicated algorithms
There are lots of complicated ways to work numbers, particularly when dealing with the subjective data that invariably lies at the heart of any discussion of user experience. But rather than putting together confusing formulae to present our research, we work directly with our clients to quantify empirical observations in a very simple model.
The model in brief
We start by consolidating our research findings in a single first-person narrative – an X-log (experience log). This is somewhat related to phenomenology
. Once we’ve assembled this story, we work together with the client to:
1. mark each individual interaction – we call these “snapshots”
2. assign a value from 1 to 3 to each snapshot in relation to its contribution to the overall experience
3. grade the experience on a scale from -3 to +3
4. multiply the value by the grade to get a score (this is the really useful number)
5. note any events that are recurring, unique, or may be influenced by chronology (cause and effect relationships).
Plugging in the numbers
We mark each interaction, but some may later be thrown out if they are sufficiently trivial or so unique in character that they are deemed irrelevant in the broader, generic sense of the project. Although no individual snapshot can be assigned a value of 0, if you really think it deserves a value of 0, this is probably an interaction you'll want to ignore.
When we grade
the individual snapshots, we use the following scale:
+3 = fantastic
+2 = good
+1 = better than expected
0 = no effect on the ultimate user experience
-1 = poor
-2 = awful
-3 = mission critical
Unique or chronological events won’t always influence the score, but in the case of repeating events, the interaction clearly needs to be looked at carefully.
A sample narrative
Here’s a simple story based on a trip to the movies. It represents an amalgam of several user interviews, onsite research, review of user-satisfaction surveys, etc.
My family (my wife, myself, and our two kids) decided to go to the movies. We checked the internet and found the website for our local cinema complex after a quick search on Google. But we had to click three times to get to the program page and wait through a silly animated ad for a movie that hadn’t even been released yet. Worse still, we were forced to download a pdf to find out the specific movie names and playing times. And after all that, we couldn’t even order tickets online, much less purchase them, so we couldn’t avoid waiting in line when we arrived. You’d think a big four-screen complex would have a more sophisticated website. But we did find out what was showing, decided to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and piled into the car.
Finding a parking place was easy. The theater has a big lot, which is important since driving to this particular theater is really our only option. Just as we were leaving the car, it really started to rain, but happily, the entrance wasn’t far away.
There were three ticket windows open, so the lines were short. The girl behind the counter was noisily chewing gum and barely looked up during the entire transaction. In fact, she didn’t say a single word to me except to ask for the money. Wow, prices have really increased this past year. I was surprised at how expensive it was.
The lobby was inviting and quite clean. We bought popcorn and soda at the concession and found our way to our particular auditorium. It was easy to spot the signs pointing the way. As we approached, we noticed overflowing trashcans with popcorn and other garbage from previous audiences.
The seats were well-marked and easy to find. The seating was comfortable but there was old popcorn underfoot. The temperature in the room was pleasant, although all of the wet people made it get a little steamy. The sound was great and really enhanced the special effects, so we really enjoyed the movie. When we left, there was a nice usher, who opened the exits and wished us a pleasant evening as we went out. And it had stopped raining. A nice end to a nice family outing.
Defining the interactions
Reading through the narrative, we mark the individual interactive events – the snapshots. This gives us the following list:
1. Find website on internet
2. Click three times to find relevant page on site
3. Reaction to irrelevant animation
4. Find schedule (download PDF)
5. Reaction to lack of purchasing options
5a. Opinion of website
6. Park car
7. Reaction to parking lot
8. Reaction to rain
9. Reaction to proximity of parking to entrance
10. Reaction to short line
11. Reaction to rude ticketseller
12. Buy tickets
13. Reaction to ticket prices
14. Reaction to lobby
15. Buy popcorn and soda
16. Find auditorium
17. React to overfilled trashcans
18. Find seats
19. Reaction to seats
20. Reaction to popcorn on floor
21. Reaction to temperature
22. Reaction to steaminess
23. Reaction to sound
24. Reaction to movie
25. Reaction to nice usher
26. Reaction to dry weather
26a. Opinion of evening
Note that opinions are not really interactions, hence we have 5a and 26a.
Assigning values and grades
Ask your clients to help you fill out the values and grades. This is a great way to get clients emotionally involved in the design project without having to show them pretty layouts.
Having made this chart, there are several things that become painfully apparent. First, the lack of purchasing options is really a major problem. The need to watch irrelevant animations and resort to PDFs for information was also pretty bad. Snapshots 11, 15, and 25 suggest that additional emphasis should be placed on customer-service training for front-line personnel. Snapshots 17 and 20 illustrate that cleaning is a problem. Snapshot 22 revealed that the climate-control system was out of whack, which proved to be an easy repair.
The most important point of the exercise, though, was that the client suddenly understood how all of these events ultimately contributed to the total perception of the movie-going experience. The X-log narrative started a productive dialog about user experience and not about the color of the links.
We hope you’ll find it useful. | <urn:uuid:614330b2-3298-48fc-911f-1e58ecf48db2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fatdux.com/ru/Blog/2009/10/05/a-method-for-quantifying-user-experience | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955612 | 1,615 | 1.84375 | 2 |
For several years now, a variety of high public officials have openly declared that the federal income tax laws are incredibly complex and need to be either substantially revised or scrapped. But after making such statements, these officials invariably fail to identify what specific parts of the tax laws suffer from this condition, choosing instead to conceal them. Are the objectionable parts of the federal tax code secretly and quietly discussed behind closed Congressional committee doors? If they are, why doesn't someone inform the American public of these deficiencies so that they may likewise participate in this debate? Is it possible that it is the major and not various minor features of the tax laws which are complex, even uncertain? Is it possible that these major features are so fundamentally flawed that they simply cannot be repaired? If so, what is the legal consequence of this complexity?
It is alleged that the legal duties arising from the tax laws are clearly known to all, but there are a few exceptions to this rule. For example, in United States v. Critzer, 498 F.2d 1160 (4th Cir. 1974), at issue was the validity of the conviction of an Indian for tax evasion. Here, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had informed Mrs. Critzer that the money she derived from real property located within a reservation was not taxable; Mrs. Critzer relied upon this advice and failed to report such income. But, the IRS maintained a contrary position and indicted and convicted her for tax evasion. This conviction was reversed on the grounds that the unsettled nature of this field of law precluded any conviction:
"While the record amply supports the conclusion that the underreporting was intentional, the record also reflects that, concededly, whether defendant's unreported income was taxable is problematical and the government is in dispute with itself as to whether the omitted income was taxable," Id., at 1160.
"We hold that defendant must be exonerated from the charges lodged against her. As a matter of law, defendant cannot be guilty of willfully evading and defeating income taxes on income, the taxability of which is so uncertain that even co-ordinate branches of the United States Government plausibly reach directly opposing conclusions. As a matter of law, the requisite intent to evade and defeat income taxes is missing. The obligation to pay is so problematical that defendant's actual intent is irrelevant. Even if she had consulted the law and sought to guide herself accordingly, she could have had no certainty as to what the law required.
"It is settled that when the law is vague or highly debatable, a defendant -- actually or imputedly -- lacks the requisite intent to violate it," Id., at 1162.
This single case is an adequate demonstration that there is at least one part of the tax code which is unclear and that lack of clarity caused the reversal of Mrs. Critzer's criminal conviction. But there are others; see United States v. Mallas, 762 F.2d 361 (4th Cir. 1985) (a prosecution for violating an unclear legal duty abridges principles of due process); United States v. Garber, 607 F.2d 92, 97-98 (5th Cir. 1979); United States v. Dahlstrom, 713 F.2d 1423, 1429 (9th Cir. 1983); United States v. Heller, 830 F.2d 150 (11th Cir. 1987); and United States v. Harris, 942 F.2d 1125 (7th Cir. 1991). Unclear legal duties in other fields of law besides tax likewise prevent criminal convictions on due process grounds; see United States v. Insco, 496 F.2d 204 (5th Cir. 1974); People v. Dempster, 396 Mich. 700, 242 N.W.2d 381 (1976); United States v. Anzalone, 766 F.2d 676, 681-82 (1st Cir. 1985); United States v. Denemark, 779 F.2d 1559 (11th Cir. 1986); United States v. Varbel, 780 F.2d 758, 762 (9th Cir. 1986); United States v. Dela Espriella, 781 F.2d 1432 (9th Cir. 1986); and United States v. Larson, 796 F.2d 244 (8th Cir. 1986).
Under the U.S. Constitution, the Congress is authorized to impose two different types of taxes, direct and indirect. Via Art. 1, Sect. 8, cl. 1, of the Constitution, indirect taxes (excises, duties and imposts) must be uniformly imposed throughout the country. Direct taxes are required via Art. 1, Sect. 2, cl. 3, and Art. 1, Sect. 9, cl. 4, to be imposed pursuant to the regulation of apportionment. These tax categories are mutually exclusive and any given tax must squarely fit within one category or the other. To which constitutional category does the federal income tax belong? Is it a direct tax, or is it an indirect tax? Do American courts speak with unanimity about this simple question of what is the nature of this tax?
To determine whether and to what extent there is any uncertainty or conflict of authority regarding the nature of the federal income tax requires at least a short review of the fundamental decisions concerning it. In 1894, Congress adopted an income tax act which was declared unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429, 15 S.Ct. 673, aff. reh., 158 U.S. 601, 15 S.Ct. 912 (1895). The Pollock Court found that the income tax was a direct tax which could only be imposed if the tax was apportioned; since this tax was not apportioned, it was found unconstitutional. In an effort to circumvent this decision, the 16th Amendment was proposed by Congress in 1909 and allegedly ratified by the states in 1913. As a result, various opinions arose regarding the legal effect of the amendment. Some factions contended that the 16th Amendment simply eliminated the apportionment requirement for one specific direct tax known as the income tax, while others asserted that the amendment simply withdrew it from the direct tax category and placed the income tax in the indirect, excise tax class. These competing contentions and interpretations were apparently resolved in Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1, 36 S.Ct. 236 (1916). 1 Rather than attempt a determination of what the Court held in this case, it is more important to learn what various courts have subsequently declared Brushaber to mean.
A little more than a week after the opinion in Brushaber, similar issues were present for decision in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103, 112-13, 36 S.Ct. 278 (1916), which involved the question of whether an inadequate depletion allowance for a mining company constituted a direct tax on the company's property. As to Baltic's contention that "the 16th Amendment authorized only an exceptional direct income tax without apportionment," the Court rejected it by stating that this contention:
"... manifestly disregards the fact that by the previous ruling it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation, but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of indirect taxation to which it inherently belonged, and being placed in the category of direct taxation."
The Court clearly held that income taxes inherently belonged to the indirect/excise tax class, but had been converted by Pollock to direct taxes by considering the source of the income; the 16th Amendment merely banished the rule in Pollock. See also Tyee Realty Co. v. Anderson, 240 U.S. 115, 36 S.Ct. 281 (1916), decided the same day.
However, the victory of defining what the 16th Amendment meant was short lived and later decisions commenced a course which appears to have changed the meaning of Brushaber, or at least provided fertile grounds for an entirely different and opposite construction of it. In William E. Peck and Co. v. Lowe, 247 U.S. 165, 172-73, 38 S.Ct. 432, 433 (1918), which involved a tax imposed on export earnings, the Court seemed to indicate that what was accomplished by the amendment was the elimination of the apportionment requirement for the direct tax known as the income tax, an argument rejected in Baltic:
"The Sixteenth Amendment, although referred to in argument, has no real bearing and may be put out of view. As pointed out in recent decisions, it does not extend the taxing power to new or excepted subjects, but merely removed all occasion, which otherwise might exist, for an apportionment among the states of taxes laid on income, whether it be derived from one source or another."
The drift away from the position of the Court that the income tax via the 16th Amendment fell within the excise tax category became more pronounced with the decision in Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189, 206, 40 S.Ct. 189 (1920), which involved the application of this tax to a stock dividend. Here, the Court plainly stated what many lawyers and some judges today think was accomplished by means of this amendment, the elimination of the apportionment requirement for the direct tax known as the income tax. In deciding this case, the Court quoted the amendment and then redeclared its meaning:
"As repeatedly held, this did not extend the taxing power to new subjects, but merely removed the necessity which otherwise might exist for an apportionment among the states of taxes laid on income. Brushaber....," 252 U.S., at 206.
"A proper regard for its genesis, as well as its very clear language, requires also that this amendment shall not be extended by loose construction, so as to repeal or modify, except as applied to income, those provisions of the Constitution that require an apportionment according to population for direct taxes upon property, real and personal."
Is this the resurfacing of the argument that "the 16th Amendment authorized only an exceptional direct income tax without apportionment" condemned in Baltic?
From a study of Brushaber, it is thus possible for someone to rely upon those portions of the two phrases at the beginning and ending of 240 U.S. 19 to believe that "the 16th Amendment authorized only an exceptional direct income tax without apportionment." If one fell into that error, this belief would be magnified by the above highlighted portions of Eisner. Confusion abounds as to the correct interpretation of Brushaber, and this is obvious because various courts of this nation have relied upon this line of authority to reach diametrically opposing results.
The state courts have been particularly split over the nature of an income tax and whether it constitutes a direct property tax or an indirect/excise, which is not imposed on property. A small number of them hold that an income tax is a direct property tax; see Eliasberg Bros. Mercantile Co. v. Grimes, 204 Ala. 492, 86 So. 56, 58 (1920); State v. Pinder, 108 A. 43, 45 (Del. 1919); Bachrach v. Nelson, 349 Ill. 579, 182 N.E. 909 (1932); Opinion of the Justices, 220 Mass. 613, 108 N.E. 570 (1915); Trefry v. Putnam, 227 Mass. 522, 116 N.E. 904 (1917); Maguire v. Tax Comm. of Commonwealth, 230 Mass. 503, 120 N.E. 162, 166 (1918); Hart v. Tax Comm., 240 Mass. 37, 132 N.E. 621 (1921); In re Ponzi, 6 F.2d 324 (D.Mass. 1925); Kennedy v. Comm. of Corps. & Taxation, 256 Mass. 426, 152 N.E. 747 (1926); In re Opinion of the Justices, 266 Mass. 583, 165 N.E. 900, 902 (1929); Hutchins v. Comm. of Corps. & Taxation, 272 Mass. 422, 172 N.E. 605, 608 (1930); Bryant v. Comm. of Corps. & Tax'n., 291 Mass. 498, 197 N.E. 509 (1935); Culliton v. Chase, 174 Wash. 363, 25 P.2d 81, 82 (1933); 2 Jensen v. Henneford, 185 Wash. 209, 53 P.2d 607 (1936); State ex rel Manitowoc Gas Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Comm., 161 Wis. 111, 152 N.W. 848, 850 (1915); and State ex rel Sallie F. Moon Co. v. Wisconsin Tax Comm., 166 Wis. 287, 163 N.W. 639, 640 (1917). A far larger number of state courts disagree with the cases noted above and have held that an income tax is not a property tax but an excise; see Purnell v. Page, 133 N.C. 125, 45 S.E. 534, 535 (1903); State v. Frear, 148 Wis. 456, 134 N.W. 673, 692 (1912); Opinion of Justices, 77 N.H. 611, 93 A. 311, 313 (1915); Ludlow-Saylor Wire Co. v. Wollbrinck, 275 Mo. 339, 205 S.W. 196 (1918); Hattiesburg Grocery Co. v. Robertson, 126 Miss. 34, 88 So. 4 (1921); Stanley v. Gates, 179 Ark. 886, 19 S.W.2d 1000, 1001 (1929); Featherstone v. Norman, 170 Ga. 370, 153 S.E. 58 (1930); Diefendorf v. Gallet, 51 Idaho 619, 10 P.2d 307, 313 (1932); O'Connell v. State Board, 95 Mont. 91, 25 P.2d 114, 119 (1933); Maxwell v. Kent-Coffey Mfg. Co., 204 N.C. 365, 168 S.E. 397, 400 (1933); Reed v. Bjornson, 191 Minn. 254, 253 N.W. 102, 109 (1934); Opinion of the Justices, 133 Me. 525, 178 A. 621, 623 (1935); Miles v. Dept. of Treasury, 209 Ind. 172, 199 N.E. 372, 377 (1935) (citing Brushaber); Marshall v. South Carolina Tax Comm., 178 S.C. 57, 182 S.E. 96, 97 (1935); Hunton v. Commonwealth, 166 Va. 229, 183 S.E. 873, 876 (1936); Reynolds Metal Co. v. Martin, 269 Ky. 378, 107 S.W.2d 251, 259 (1937); Vilas v. Iowa State Bd. of Assess. & Review, 223 Iowa 604, 273 N.W. 338, 342 (1937); Oursler v. Tawes, 178 Md. 471, 13 A.2d 763, 768 (1940); California Co. v. State, 141 Colo. 288, 348 P.2d 382 (1959); and Burns v. State Bureau of Revenue, 79 N.M. 53, 439 P.2d 702, 706 (1968).
This split of authority evident within the state cases also manifests itself in the federal appellate courts. For example, in the First Circuit it is difficult to determine the meaning of the 16th Amendment because in United States v. Turano, 802 F.2d 10, 12 (1st Cir. 1986), that court held that the "16th Amendment eliminated the indirect/direct distinction as applied to taxes on income." Next door in the Second Circuit, there is uncertainty revealed by three completely inconsistent cases. In Jandorf's Estate v. Commissioner, 171 F.2d 464, 465 (2nd Cir. 1948), that court declared, "It should be noted that estate or inheritance taxes are excises ... while surtaxes, excess profits and war-profits taxes are direct property taxes." Surtaxes are the graduated taxes of the income tax, so this court holds that the personal income tax is a direct tax. But in Ficalora v. Commissioner, 751 F.2d 85, 87 (2nd Cir. 1984), that court stated that the personal income tax was an indirect tax: "[T]he Supreme Court explicitly stated that taxes on income from one's employment are not direct taxes and are not subject to the necessity of apportionment." But compare United States v. Sitka, 845 F.2d 43, 46 (2nd Cir. 1988) (citing Parker, infra, for the proposition that the tax is direct). In the Third Circuit, it has been held in one case that all income taxes are direct, but in another that only some are direct; see Keasbey & Mattison Co. v. Rothensies, 133 F.2d 894, 897 (3rd Cir. 1943) ("[A]n income tax is a direct tax upon income therein defined"); and Penn Mutual Indemnity Co. v. Commissioner, 277 F.2d 16, 19 (3rd Cir. 1960) ("Pollock .... only held that a tax on the income derived from real or personal property was so close to a tax on that property that it could not be imposed without apportionment. The Sixteenth Amendment removed that barrier").
In the remainder of the Circuits, the difference of opinion as to whether the federal income tax is a direct or indirect tax is likewise as profound and confusing. In the Fourth and Sixth Circuits, the income tax has been held to be an excise tax; see White Packing Co. v. Robertson, 89 F.2d 775, 779 (4th Cir. 1937) ("The tax is, of course, an excise tax, as are all taxes on income..."); and United States v. Gaumer, 972 F.2d 723, 725 (6th Cir. 1992) ("Brushaber and the Congressional Record excerpt do indeed state that for constitutional purposes, the income tax is an excise tax"). However, in the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth and Tenth Circuits, arguments that this tax is an excise have been squarely rejected and determined to be frivolous. For example, in Parker v. Commissioner, 724 F.2d 469, 471 (5th Cir. 1984), the court clearly rejected the contention that this tax is an excise:
"The Supreme Court promptly determined in Brushaber... that the sixteenth amendment provided the needed constitutional basis for the imposition of a direct non-apportioned income tax.
"The sixteenth amendment merely eliminates the requirement that the direct income tax be apportioned among the states.
"The sixteenth amendment was enacted for the express purpose of providing for a direct income tax."
In Coleman v. Commissioner, 791 F.2d 68, 70 (7th Cir. 1986), the court held that an argument that this tax was an excise was frivolous on its face ("The power thus long predates the Sixteenth Amendment, which did no more than remove the apportionment requirement..."). A similar conclusion was reached in United States v. Francisco, 614 F.2d 617, 619 (8th Cir. 1980), that court declaring that Brushaber held this tax to be a direct one:
"The cases cited by Francisco clearly establish that the income tax is a direct tax, thus refuting the argument based upon his first theory. See Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1, 19, 36 S.Ct. 236, 242, 60 L.Ed. 493 (1916) (the purpose of the Sixteenth Amendment was to take the income tax 'out of the class of excises, duties and imposts and place it in the class of direct taxes')". 3
Finally, in United States v. Lawson, 670 F.2d 923, 927 (10th Cir. 1982), that court expressed in the following fashion its contempt for the contention that the federal income tax was an excise:
"Lawson's 'jurisdictional' claim, more accurately a constitutional claim, is based on an argument that the Sixteenth Amendment only authorizes excise-type taxes on income derived from activities that are government-licensed or otherwise specially protected... The contention is totally without merit... The Sixteenth Amendment removed any need to apportion income taxes among the states that otherwise would have been required by Article I, Section 9, clause 4."
Therefore, while the Supreme Court rejected in Baltic the argument that "the 16th Amendment authorized only an exceptional direct income tax without apportionment," this position now prevails in the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth and Tenth Circuits. In the Second Circuit, the existing authority illogically claims that the tax is both.
A direct tax applies to and taxes property while an indirect, excise tax is never imposed on property but usually an event such as sales; see Bromley v. McCaughn, 280 U.S. 124, 50 S.Ct. 46, 47 (1929). 4 Those courts which hold that an income tax is a direct property tax believe that income is property, yet those which hold that this tax is an excise declare that income is not property. If the courts of this nation cannot identify what is the nature of this ephemeral item known as income, 5 then how can the American people? While in Critzer the difference of opinion existed between two government agencies, here the difference of opinion is among many different courts, a situation far more serious than that presented in Heller. Aren't we being subjected to a monumental due process problem far bigger than that to which Mrs. Critzer was subjected?
The question of what constitutes property is an issue governed by state law; see Aquilino v. United States, 363 U.S. 509, 512-13, 80 S.Ct. 1277, 1280 (1960), and United States v. Baldwin, 575 F.2d 1097, 1098 (4th Cir. 1978). The definition of the term, "property," is very broad; see Samet v. Farmers' & Merchants' Nat. Bank, 247 F. 669, 671 (4th Cir. 1917) ("Property is .... everything that has exchangeable value or goes to make up a man's wealth"). It includes money, credits, evidences of debt, and choses in action; see State v. Ward, 222 N.C. 316, 22 S.E.2d 922, 925 (1942). Income is property according to St. Louis Union Trust Co. v. United States, 617 F.2d 1293, 1301 (8th Cir. 1980). Accrued wages and salaries are likewise property; see Sims v. United States, 252 F.2d 434, 437 (4th Cir. 1958), aff'd., 359 U.S. 108, 79 S.Ct. 641 (1959); and Kolb v. Berlin, 356 F.2d 269, 271 (5th Cir. 1966). Accounts receivable are property; see In re Ralar Distributors, Inc., 4 F.3d 62, 67 (1st Cir. 1993). Even private employment and a profession are considered property; see United States v. Briggs, 514 F.2d 794, 798 (5th Cir. 1975).
There appears to be no dispute about the plain requirements of the Constitution that direct taxes must be apportioned and that indirect taxes must be uniform. Likewise as shown above, there is a line of decisional authority regarding the generally accepted proposition that income is property, although there are courts which deny this. In James v. United States, 970 F.2d 750, 755, 756 n. 11 (10th Cir. 1992), the 10th Circuit made it clear that income is property. Pursuant to United States v. Lawson, supra, the 10th Circuit declares that the property known as income is subject to tax under the view that the 16th Amendment eliminated the apportionment requirement for a specific class of property known as income. However, there is ample contrary judicial authority which demonstrates that this construction of the 16th Amendment is erroneous and that the purpose, intent and meaning of the amendment was the opposite construction and that the amendment did not free this one type of property tax from the regulation of apportionment. An error in a logical argument involving a single premise affects the ultimate conclusion. If the 10th Circuit accepted the proposition that the meaning of the 16th Amendment was contrary to that asserted in Lawson, but adhered to its decision in James, a valid legal argument would logically follow that property known as income could not be taxed because the current income tax is not apportioned.
This same problem, but from an opposite perspective, is evident within the Fourth Circuit where the existing authority of Sims v. United States, supra, declares that income is property. Since that Circuit holds that the federal income tax is an excise via White Packing Co. v. Robertson, supra, and since the definition of an excise tax appearing in that Court's opinion in New Neighborhoods, Inc. v. West Virginia Workers' Comp. Fund, 886 F.2d 714, 719 (4th Cir. 1989), excludes a tax on property, does it not logically follow that there is a tremendous gap in the decisional authority within the Fourth Circuit which presents a view of the law that the property known as income might not be taxed? Based on these cases, is this tax clearly imposed?
Review of the above noted authority in other circuits and states only demonstrates how profound this problem is. In the 6th Circuit, United States v. Gaumer, supra, declares the income tax to be an excise; via Jack Cole Co. v. MacFarland, 337 S.W.2d 453, 455-56 (Tenn. 1960), the Tennessee Supreme Court has held that an excise tax cannot be used to tax the right to earn a living. Which authority do the people living in Tennessee follow? If they follow the word of their own state court, they might be charged with a tax crime, yet they have a right to rely upon the word of the courts, even when erroneous; see United States v. Albertini, 830 F.2d 985, 989 (9th Cir. 1987). A different problem emerges in the 8th Circuit where United States v. Francisco, supra, holds that an income tax is a direct property tax. Missouri is within the 8th Circuit, but the Missouri Supreme Court held in Ludlow-Saylor Wire Co. v. Wollbrinck, supra, that an income tax is an excise; if income is not property under Missouri state law, 6 then how does this federal property tax operate as to this "non-property"? Iowa is also in the 8th Circuit, but in Hale v. Iowa State Board of Assessment and Review, 223 Iowa 321, 271 N.W. 168, 172 (1937), that court held that "income is not property within the law of taxation." If state law holds that income is not property yet the federal appellate court for the same state holds the exact opposite, is not a serious uncertainty of the law, due process problem clearly evident?
The decisional authority within the 5th Circuit, Parker v. Commissioner, supra, holds that this tax is a direct property tax, but a contrary view prevails in Mississippi where its citizens are told that an income tax is an excise; see Hattiesburg Grocery Co. v. Robertson, supra. The courts in Wisconsin and Indiana, via State v. Frear, supra, and Miles v. Dept. of Treasury, supra, have found this tax to be an excise, yet the federal appellate court which encompasses these two states has an entirely different view of the object of the tax; see Coleman v. Commissioner, supra. The 10th Circuit, which sits in Denver, held in Lawson, supra, that the income tax is a property tax, yet a state court in the same city has declared that such a tax is an excise; see California Co. v. State, supra.
In Alabama, income is property via Eliasberg Bros. Mercantile Co. v. Grimes, supra; but next door in Georgia via Featherstone v. Norman, 7 it is not. While the 11th Circuit appears not as yet to have passed upon the question of what type of tax the federal income tax is, consultation of Supreme Court decisions still doesn't resolve the question. By following the rationale of Brushaber and Bromley, supra, which declare the federal income tax to be an excise tax which is not imposed on property, are the people of Alabama exempt from this tax while those in Georgia are not? But by reversing the choice of Supreme Court decisions to follow in an effort to resolve this controversy merely changes the results but not the problem. By following Eisner which seems to hold that the tax is imposed on property, do the people of Alabama owe the tax while those in Georgia do not? These differing conclusions plainly reveal a serious uncertainty about what is taxed, and I do not attempt herein to offer any explanation for all of this inconsistency; the fact of the matter is that I cannot other than to allege that this is uncertainty of the law creates a serious due process problem.
The problems created by the failure of American courts to determine what is the nature of an income tax are very broad. Any particular federal tax must fit within one of the two constitutional tax categories and once the category is known, it may be determined whether the tax in question complies with the constitutional regulation for imposition of that type of tax. A direct tax which is uniformly imposed would still be unconstitutional as one imposed in the absence of apportionment. An indirect tax imposed via apportionment would likewise be unconstitutional since it would not be uniform. But if it is impossible to determine which class any given tax falls within, then it is likewise impossible to determine which constitutional regulation, if any, applies to that tax. If the courts of this nation hold that an income tax is both an excise tax and a direct one, it cannot with any degree of certainty be determined what constitutional restrictions might or might not apply to this tax or what is even the meaning of the 16th Amendment. What's more, it cannot be determine what is income, whether property or non-property.
But this is not the only fundamental problem for the federal income tax. Additionally, the question of which statute controls the duty to file income tax returns is subject to judicial dispute. In Commissioner v. Lane-Wells Co., 321 U.S. 219, 222, 64 S.Ct. 511, 513 (1944), the Court noted that Sect. 54 of the 1939 Internal Revenue Code, the predecessor for Internal Revenue Code Sect. 6001, related to the filing requirement; see also Updike v. United States, 8 F.2d 913, 915 (8th Cir. 1925). In True v. United States, 354 F.2d 323, 324 (Ct.Cl. 1965), United States v. Carlson, 260 F.Supp. 423, 425 (E.D.N.Y. 1966), White v. Commissioner, 72 U.S.T.C. 1126, 1129 (1979), McCaskill v. Commissioner, 77 U.S.T.C. 689, 698 (1981), Counts v. Commissioner, 774 F.2d 426, 427 (11th Cir. 1985), Blount v. Commissioner, 86 U.S.T.C. 383, 386 (1986), and Beard v. Commissioner, 793 F.2d 139 (6th Cir. 1986), these courts held that Internal Revenue Code Sect. 6011 related to the filing requirement. In United States v. Moore, 627 F.2d 830, 834 (7th Cir. 1980), United States v. Dawes, 951 F.2d 1189, 1192, n. 3 (10th Cir. 1991), and United States v. Hicks, 947 F.2d 1356, 1360 (9th Cir. 1991), those courts held that Internal Revenue Code Sect. Sect. 6011 and 6012 governed this duty. In contrast, the cases of Steinbrecher v. Commissioner, 712 F.2d 195, 198 (5th Cir. 1983), United States v. Bowers, 920 F.2d 220, 222 (4th Cir. 1990), and United States v. Neff, 954 F.2d 698, 699 (11th Cir. 1992), held that only Sect. 6012 governed this duty. But in United States v. Pilcher, 672 F.2d 875, 877 (11th Cir. 1982), none of the above sections were mentioned and it was held that Sect. 7203 required returns to be filed. It is very apparent that there is even a diversity of opinion among judges regarding which sections of the Internal Revenue Code govern the requirement to file income tax returns.
The observation of the dissenting judge in Culliton v. Chase, 25 P.2d at 89-90, that this "disagreement of the courts and judges on identical problems seems to afford the highest proof that 'reasonable doubt' does exist," is particularly appropriate here. If American courts cannot decide such fundamental questions as what is the nature of the income tax and which section of the Internal Revenue Code requires the filing of an income tax return, then it is obvious that a serious due process problem exists within the federal income tax laws.
If American courts cannot decide such fundamental questions as what is the nature of the income tax and which section of the Internal Revenue Code requires the filing of an income tax return, then it is obvious that the problem with this tax involves these basic questions. Since even the courts are split over these questions, shouldn't we just scrap the whole thing since the condition which exists is incapable of repair?
In 1913 during the debate on the first income tax act under the 16th Amendment, Senator Elihu Root commented about the complexity of that first law:
"I guess you will have to go to jail. If that is the result of not understanding the Income Tax Law I shall meet you there. We shall have a merry, merry time, for all of our friends will be there. It will be an intellectual center, for no one understands the Income Tax Law except persons who have not sufficient intelligence to understand the questions that arise under it." 8
Apparently, nothing has changed.
1. In this decision, there is a very lengthy sentence which contains the following phrase: "... by which alone such taxes were removed from the great class of excises, duties and imposts subject to the rule of uniformity, and were placed under the other or direct class," 240 U.S., at 19. This phrase and the one at the very end of this paragraph are almost identical. This language was used to describe the contention the Court was rejecting, not approving.
2. The dissent in this case noted the wide divergence of the authority as to whether the tax is a direct property tax or an excise. It commented: "The disagreement of the courts and judges on identical problems seems to afford the highest proof that 'reasonable doubt' does exist," 25 P.2d, at 89-90.
3. It is interesting to note that this court relied upon those portions of the Brushaber decision quoted previously where the Court noted the argument it was precisely rejecting. If the judges who are legal scholars are capable of completely miusunderstanding this opinion, is it not also probable that the American people and even lawyers can make the same mistake?
4. The Court defined these two types of taxes in the following manner: "While taxes levied upon or collected from persons because of their general ownership of property may be taken to be direct.... a tax imposed upon a particular use of property or the exercise of a single power over property incidental to ownership, is an excise which need not be apportioned..."
5. At least one court has declared that the term "income" is not defined in the Internal Revenue Code; see United States v. Ballard, 535 F.2d 400, 404 (8th Cir. 1976).
6. The Court in Ludlow, 205 S.W. at 198, declared that income is not property: "It is apparent therefore, that when the Constitution of 1875 was adopted, the word 'property' as the basis for taxation, proportioned to value, had acquired a fixed and definite meaning preclusive of personal incomes, occupations, privileges and similar sources of revenue."
7. See 153 S.E. at 65: "Hence a man's income is not 'property' within the meaning of a constitutional requirement that taxes shall be laid equally and uniformly upon all property within the State."
8. See The United States Tax Court: An Historical Analysis, page 12, by Harold Dubroff. Published by CCH.
Constitution Society Home Page | <urn:uuid:be03f2d3-b9df-42d5-9909-90d622a6fc62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/uncertain.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951064 | 7,806 | 1.804688 | 2 |
|Leibbrandt family receives 2012 Omaha World Herald Master Conservationist Award|
|Written by Wauneta Breeze|
|Thursday, 04 October 2012 16:38|
By Carolyn Lee
The Imperial Republican
During the annual Nebraska Association of Resource Districts convention in Kearney last Monday night, Deb and Steve Leibbrandt and Tim Leibbrandt were honored as 2012 Omaha World Herald Master Conservationists for their technical approach to saving water while farming.
They were nominated by the Upper Republican NRD which said, “The hallmark of the family’s conservation practices is early and persistent adoption of new, water-saving technologies.”
The nomination states “The Leibbrandt family of rural Chase County has a diversified farming operation that has been at the forefront of water and soil conservation...for more than 40 years. Their efforts to conserve water have been driven by a desire to aide future generations of farmers in the area, and the need to operate within water-use limitations and regulations that have been in place in the Upper Republican NRD for about 32 years.”
The URNRD was the first in the state, and may have been the first in the U.S., to restrict and measure groundwater use for agricultural purposes.
According to the Omaha World Herald, “This summer was brutal,” Steve Leibbrandt said.
“We’re in an area where there is nothing more important than water,” he continued. He said he aims for reasonable yields, not bumper crops.
“We have to learn how to get the most out of every acre with the water that’s available,” he was quoted.
Soon after converting flood-irrigated land to center pivot systems in the 1980s, the Leibbrandts adapted changes to the pivot systems.
High pressure nozzles were replaced with more efficient drip and low-pressure nozzles. Motors were upgraded, with energy efficient electric motors replacing diesel ones.
Low pressure, more efficient pumps replaced the original ones.
The conversions were made to facilitate more technological advances planned by the Leibbrandts, such as computerized, programmable system panels that allowed for more scheduling and control of irrigation systems and helped limit unnecessary irrigation.
Most recently, radio-controlled computer monitoring systems have been installed that allow total control of irrigation systems through the use of computers and smart phones.
Besides the changes to the irrigation systems, the Leibbrandts have utilized soil-moisture probes and blocks that monitor the impact of precipitation on soil moisture.
They use rain shutoffs that stop irrigation systems when it is raining. Wind speed indicators have been installed for the same purpose.
Leibbrandt says, “Pivots are never started and just let run, regardless of weather conditions,” according to the NRD nomination.
Pivot end guns have been eliminated to conserve water. Soil mapping and testing are used.
Rotation of soybeans, edible beans, wheat and potatoes have helped the Leibbrandts avoid over-pumping of groundwater, as well as breaking up the cycles of insects and weeds.
The Leibbrandts use minimum tillage, and, in many cases depending on soil types, no-till. More recently, strip tillage has begun to be used on a majority of the acres.
The family uses GPS guidance equipment to precisely plant crops and apply fertilizer, with little or no disturbing of the residue that holds the soil.
Eco and chemical fallow practices on non-irrigated cropland have been used for 15 years to reduce soil erosion from rain and wind.
Leibbrandt says that good stewardship of land and water resources is the most important part of his operation. “I am in this business for the long term and hopefully there will be generations to follow. Leaving the land in better shape than it was for me is the only option.”
He describes himself as a “guinea pig” for new technology. The NRD says, “Others in the region have used Steve as a source of information about new technology, and he has willingly explained the benefits of its use.”
“This has helped spread the use of new technology in the region,” the NRD added. | <urn:uuid:7760863a-130c-4981-95f9-acea84575e15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.waunetanebraska.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4369:leibbrandt-family-receives-2012-omaha-world-herald-master-conservationist-award&catid=29:agbusiness&Itemid=53 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958169 | 896 | 1.601563 | 2 |
There's no evidence of foul play in the death today of Mexico's Interior Minister José Francisco Blake, but amid the country's raging drug war, there's plenty of suspicion. The helicopter carrying the country's top domestic security official and seven others crashed in the southern part of Mexico City en route to a meeting of prosecutors in nearby Morelos state. The cause of the crash is unknown.
Blake's death is seen as a symbolic blow to the government's military-directed assault on organized crime. 40,000 Mexicans have died in the drug war over the last five years.
The accident occurred almost exactly three years to the day after Mexico’s previous interior minister Juan Camilo Mouriño was killed in the crash of a small plane, also near Mexico City.
Another mysterious detail: Blake's last tweet before the crash was a nod to the anniversary of his predecessor's death.
Reports circulated early today that Mexican president Felipe Calderon had been scheduled to travel in the very same helicopter that crashed, but the administration later issued a statement denying. (via Andrés Monroy H.)
Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:d68b71fd-fc83-423b-8aab-94d3c2a041b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boingboing.net/2011/11/11/mexico-interior-minister-kill.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948475 | 294 | 1.640625 | 2 |
There are many dog owners, vets, and members of animal welfare groups that continue to lobby for improvements in dog welfare.
Boring political stuff that can seem to be of little importance to the ordinary dog owner but this is the only way that lasting changes will eventually be achieved.
A Select Committee of MPs have just issued a report.......
"Among its list of recommendations was that anyone breeding two or more litters a year should be licensed and face welfare checks; that the KC should refuse to register puppies from breeders who are not ‘Assured Breeder Scheme (ABS) compliant’ and conduct an annual review of breed Standards; high-profile veterinary checks should be extended to other breeds and ‘additional’ checks made on other dogs before their show entry is accepted.
The committee was outspoken in its criticism of DEFRA Minister Lord de Mauley, who gave evidence to the enquiry, saying he appeared ‘poorly briefed and ill prepared’ to provide information on DEFRA’s views on a range of dog issues.
"His evidence has done nothing to reassure us about the priority DEFRA gives to the number of dog attacks,” said the committee in its recent report.
It was also disappointed, the report said, that DEFRA had done little to improve dog welfare linked to dog breeding"..................................
"Currently, breeders producing five or more litters a year must be licensed, but the committee wants this number reduced.
"We consider this threshold too high,” the report said, adding that this could mean licensed breeders could produce ‘some 40 to 50 dogs’ a year.
The proposed annual review of breed Standards should be led by vets, the committee said, and the KC should do far more to use its influence on the pedigree dog community, including refusing to register puppies from breeders not compliant with the ABS.
The committee said the KC had told its members that ‘significant and effective steps’ had been taken both before and since Professor Sir Patrick Bateson’s report into breeding. But, the committee said, the KC was in a ‘strong position to influence, help and work with relevant parties, as its registered breeders were ‘obliged to follow its rules’.
However, the report said, there remained irresponsible breeders who operated outside the club’s sphere of control.
"The KC has a general code of ethics by which all breeders who register their puppies or dogs must abide,” the report said. "This includes a statement that a breeder should agree not to breed from a dog or bitch which could in ‘any way be harmful to the dog or to the breed’. But the KC does not appear to collate data on compliance with this requirement.”
Requirements under the ABS for breeders to health screen their dogs should be made mandatory to all breeders, it said.
"Nevertheless, the KC continues to accept registration of dogs not bred under this scheme. Furthermore, as Professor Bateson’s report notes, there is no requirement under the ABS to apply the results of health tests to breeding decisions.” | <urn:uuid:82b5b9e9-5f8f-4dbb-87aa-b0c045e77139> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cavaliertalk.com/forums/showthread.php?42894-Stricter-measures-on-dog-welfare-needed-says-EFRA-committee&p=428693 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969948 | 654 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Case closed. Lethal injection is not unconstitutional. So the U.S. Supreme Court ruled with a 7-2 decision Wednesday. After years of bad lawyering and bogus medical research on lethal injection, common sense has prevailed.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by two justices, wrote the main Baze vs. Rees case opinion. There were three concurring opinions, and one dissent, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and joined by Justice David Souter.
"In essence, seven judges agreed with the core ruling, that the Kentucky process was not unconstitutional," noted Michael Rushford of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. In that Kentucky's lethal-injection protocol is similar to California's three-drug protocol, this 7-2 decision should spell an end to the pricey, frivolous and utterly disingenuous lawsuits filed in California and other states to stall the execution of guilty killers.
Ralph Baze killed two cops serving warrants against him in 1992, and does not regret doing so. Fellow plaintiff Thomas Bowling shot and killed a young couple and wounded their 2-year-old son in 1990.
They're stone-cold killers, so it should be no surprise that their attorneys presented a patently dishonest argument -- that they do not oppose capital punishment per se, but want the court to order lethal injection by a massive dose of barbiturate. You see, the plaintiffs conceivably might feel pain under the three-drug injection process that starts with barbiturates, is followed by a paralytic agent and finishes with a drug that causes cardiac arrest. Unlike their victims, these killers argue they should not face the possibility of pain.
Of course, if the Big Bench ever were to grant that disingenuous request, attorneys could appeal anew on the grounds that no state had ever used a one-drug protocol.
It is hard to respect the plaintiffs' argument when it plays off of lawmakers' good intentions. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, "It is not a little ironic -- and telling -- that lethal injection, hailed just a few years ago as the humane alternative in light of which every other method of execution was deemed an unconstitutional relic of the past, is subject to today's challenge." Having failed to persuade courts to overrule capital punishment as unconstitutional "in an exercise of raw judicial power," death-penalty foes turn to "the next best option" -- that is, "never-ending litigation."
This bad lawyering would have gotten nowhere were it not for bad science. In 2005, the British medical journal The Lancet reported that blood samples taken from executed prisoners showed concentrations of barbiturate that "were lower than that required for surgery in 43 of 49 executed inmates." To their credit, the justices were aware that the so-called study was stacked. Blood samples were taken several hours to days after execution.
Where does Roberts' ruling leave California? In 2006, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel stayed executions in California after entertaining an appeal against the three-drug protocol filed for convicted murderer/rapist Michael Morales.
Dane Gillette, a senior assistant attorney general, expects the ruling to "resolve the Morales federal litigation." (It's too bad a Marin County judge ruled in October that the new protocol proposed to meet Fogel's concerns must be stalled to accommodate public comment.)
While the ACLU is unhappy with the ruling, ACLU donors should rejoice. Now the civil-rights group can save its money for appeals representing innocent clients -- instead of on laughable briefs that bring credit to no one. Not even the likes of Baze and Bowling.
Must Watch: Senator Explains Why He Changed From Being a Democrat to Being a Republican | Katie Pavlich | <urn:uuid:0f7ee272-690e-4436-9063-16fad5eb4fe9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/columnists/debrajsaunders/2008/04/17/justice_ends_the_holiday/page/full/ | 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 | 0.960841 | 752 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Video Online Workshp is founded and run by Masami Kikuchi, an independent Japanese developer/producer of cultural exchange programmes for distance education and community empowerment, using ISDN-based videoconferencing systems, based in Chiba, Japan.
Masami has been developing and producing a number of ICT-based live and fully interactive cultural programmes many of which are archived on the website at: <http://www.onlineworkshop.net/archives/>.
He has been partnering and associating himself with a number of
transnational/global organizations for the said arena, namely ICTs and
Among a number of projects and programmes, here is an idea of dream of the early 21st Century from Japan, by Masami Kikuchi (as of March 2002):
21st Century Odyssey over the Silk Roads
As part of private and independent projects to revitalize and enrich the Eurasian people out of the tragedy, I am trying to organize a project of "Odyssey on the Silk Roads: exploring the routes/roots of Gagaku" with one of my partners, Gagaku Master Mita Noriaki (http://www.miduho.gr.jp/).
"Gagaku" is very old traditional court/ritual performing arts of Japan with the history of over 1300 years.
Many music and dancing of Japan have been derived from Gagaku. "Gagaku" has been evidentally transformed from ancient Persia (Iran), many Eurasian nations including Azelbaijan and Afganistan, China, Koreas, and even Vietnam, finally reached the archipilago of Japan.
My idea and plan of this odyssey is primarily focused on the cultural diversity with the historical exploration, over the Eurasian nations and people, in conjunction with possible "Beijing Arts and Cultural Olympiad" programmes, if they would start it.
However, this plan is more important for the people in the regions, in that we seek for peace towards the Beijing Olympics 2008 starting over the Athens 2004, the first Olympics in the 21st century; it is also to establish a solar power generator (in possible cooperation of Greenstar) and a communications satellite studio (in possible cooperation of NASDA or NASA) at the respective sites along the odyssey over the Silk Roads, for four years starting 2004 from Greece; possibly to add an idea of "project green" to plant grasses and trees to green the passing regions of Eurasia.
We explore the local and regional music and dancing along the Silk Road in comparative studies with the Gagaku inherited music notations and dancing styles, over the comm-sat videoconferencing.
Maybe one month stay would suffice the respective studies at one location, meaning we can set up almost 30 - 40 facilities of solar power and comm-sat sites along the old Silk Roads.
The finale of this project will be in Beijing just before the Olympics "from Athens to Beijing", to get together online and on the same ground, thus we can celebrate and appreciate the first Eurasian Olympics with ICT and cultural exchange programmes.
Like everybody else in the world, I have also been one of the people who was wounded mentally and sentimentally from the massacre in NYC and DC as well as PENN. I also felt very sorry for the people in Afganistan. I felt very powerless in helping the people in the world, particularly in the targeted regions.
I don't have money to help them. But, I have technology to possibly empower them. Why wouldn't we use the technology! for the future, for the children, and for all of us to enhance the peace.
Video: +81-43-206-8747 (twice) | <urn:uuid:c0b3e910-744e-45bd-83c5-971cdc3a10bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.onlineworkshop.net/contact.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938502 | 766 | 1.632813 | 2 |
USA Basketball expands youth focus with iHoops
NEW YORK (AP) USA Basketball is expanding its reach into youth basketball by partnering with iHoops, the joint initiative formed by the NBA and NCAA to improve programs for young players.
USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said Friday the move is ``an opportunity to make a big impact'' on the development of young players and will help his organization find elite players who could eventually play for U.S. national teams.
``We are very, very much interested in the development of youth basketball,'' Colangelo said. ``This can be really impactful.''
iHoops was formed in 2009 and Colangelo said he always believed it would be a part of USA Basketball because his organization has the leadership and business components in place to make it successful.
Colangelo said specific plans will be announced in early 2013. He envisions USA Basketball being able to make sure all coaches are sanctioned, improve the camps for elite players and just ``help clean up the system.''
``That's the way to run a program,'' Colangelo said. ``And so by reaching out and bringing people together, I think that's good and ultimately when you start with youth development, it will eventually funnel into the kind of athlete and quality of athlete, basketball player when they start to play'' for various national teams.
The NBA and NCAA will continue to promote iHoops at events such as the NBA Finals and the Final Four, and provide financial support for USA Basketball's new youth division.
iHoops will transition from its Indianapolis office to USA Basketball's headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., after the new year.
``I think all the people involved are looking forward to the future,'' Colangelo said. ``I think it's an opportunity to make a big impact.'' | <urn:uuid:8fa8880c-7a8b-4cb9-8d9f-2f15d28ae114> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thescore.com/home/articles/395156-usa-basketball-expands-youth-focus-with-ihoops | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972394 | 365 | 1.523438 | 2 |
At first glance, the current state of Bangladesh appears to be a paradox : a country under a state of emergency, but where the general public seem quite content.
By Sabir Mustafa
Editor, BBC Bengali service
Rallies like this are now banned
The military-backed caretaker government has slapped a ban on all political activities, and the security forces have been busy picking up political leaders in the middle of the night and throwing them into jail.
But there is little outward sense of repression, and Dhaka's social elite, usually most vocal against human rights violations, appear most pleased.
The reason for this apparent sense of satisfaction is not difficult to see.
The treatment meted out to politicians is not being seen as repression. People across the board see them as retribution for the corruption and abuse of power of the past fifteen years.
By the time the state of emergency was declared in January, the public had also become fed up with the constant bickering and street-fighting between the two main political parties.
At second glance, it becomes clear that the country has reached a crossroads.
Go one way, and the road leads to cleaner politics with free elections and restoration of representative democracy.
There is a broad acceptance of the military-backed government
But go the other way, and the country risks sliding back into the kind of military-led dictatorship which so blighted Bangladesh's politics and economy in the 1980s.
Officials say the tough campaign against 'corrupt' politicians and 'crime godfathers' is needed to clean-up politics once and for all. To achieve this, they need to dish out exemplary punishment to some ''big fish''.
The biggest fish of them all is Tarique Rahman, son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia and leader of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Rahman's arrest and subsequent charges against him reassured a lot of people that the government meant business.
"There is no alternative to healthy politics , and politicians who are clean and qualified," said Kamal Hossain, a former law minister and a keen backer of the government.
Everyone agrees with Mr Hossain's goal; but not everyone is so convinced that the current method is the right way to achieve it.
With civil liberties on hold, the drive to arrest politicians shows all the finesse of a 1970s South American dictatorship.
"The army should not point fingers at politicians," said Farida Akhter who heads a radical NGO in Dhaka. "Why aren't we talking about corruption in the army?"
Ex-PMs, Khaleda Zia (l) and arch-rival Sheikh Hasina - their leaderships are under threat
Ms Akhter is concerned that the state of emergency has curtailed some basic civil rights and there is no end in sight. "I am a little scared. If I have a grievance then I can't go out to protest or demonstrate in the street," she said during a discussion organised by the BBC.
The constitution allows the state of emergency to run for four months, before being renewed by parliament. But with no parliament in place and elections unlikely at least until the end of 2008, the state of emergency appears set to drag on.
The Election Commission says elections cannot be held until all electoral reforms, including drawing up of a new voters' list with photo ID, have been carried out.
This gives the government nearly two more years in office. Two years is a long time in politics, and questions about its mandate and accountability are likely to rise.
The debate over how much power and life-span an unelected government should have, particularly with no mechanism for accountability to the public, is likely to begin in earnest.
Leave the country
In the meantime, the government is likely to press ahead with its programme to bring about major changes in the political landscape.
Many people in Dhaka think the caretaker government wants to pressure the major political parties to jettison their existing leaderships. In that sense, they think the anti-corruption drive may be aimed at disqualifying senior and middle-ranking leaders from standing for public office.
Bangladesh has seen long periods of military rule
There is also talk in Dhaka that some politicians may be given immunity from prosecution if they agree to leave politics forever. Some leaders may be allowed to leave the country rather than face jail.
"Politics will undergo fundamental changes. Those leaders who can adapt to the new ways of doing politics will stay, and those who can't, won't", says Mainul Hossein, who is in charge of the law and justice ministry.
New style of democracy?
But there is another group which may wish to have the final word: the military, which is showing increasing signs of political ambition.
This impression was strengthened by army chief Lieutenant General Moin U Ahmed's recent public speech which indicated that he believes he knows more about democracy than the politicians.
"Bangladesh will have to construct its own brand of democracy," the General told an appreciative audience of political pundits, retired bureaucrats and foreign diplomats in Dhaka. "This needs rethinking so that we can re-invent a system of governance with new leadership at all levels."
Rethink, re-invent, new leadership, new brand of democracy.
These are loaded words, particularly at a time when political parties and leaders are being vilified from every corner.
The targeting of political leaders by the interim government and the media has made corruption virtually synonymous with politics.
Some observers in Dhaka are concerned that this vilification of politics risks creating a situation where the public accept a military-led dictatorship as the lesser of two evils.
But few in Dhaka feel the army is interested in taking power in the same way it did in the 1970s and 1980s.
"This is a much more sophisticated army, exposed to the world through UN peacekeeping operations," said one observer in Dhaka unwilling to be identified. "They are working through civil society groups, keeping its relations with the international community sweet".
Earlier speculation had suggested that the army would sponsor Nobel Peace prize winner Dr Muhammad Yunus as a new leader. But his first attempt at floating a new political party has already failed.
"Dr Yunus is still viewed as a credible candidate by elements in the army," said the observer. "Whether he has the stomach for a long stint in politics is another matter."
Limits to authority
Military watchers in Dhaka think cohesion within the army and unity of purpose among senior officers is the key to ensuring a smooth transition from the current caretaker to an elected government.
"Lack of such unity and cohesion, particularly on the question of anti-corruption drive and political parties, could lead to tension in the cantonments," said the observer.
Much debate now centres on whether the army is looking for a longer-term, formal role in determining the future political direction of the country.
One idea currently being debated is to set up an all-powerful National Security Council, to be dominated by the military and intelligence agencies.
The big question is, how much authority an elected, political government will be able to exert over such a body. | <urn:uuid:3edbd22b-6e45-440b-883a-a892381e3c82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6530781.stm | 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 | 0.970098 | 1,479 | 1.65625 | 2 |
We’ve known for some time that longer life spans and a lack of savings will greatly affect the quality of life for baby boomers in retirement. But when it begins to affect officiating in professional football—well, it’s time to do something about it.
The real sticking point between referees and league officials was the National Football League’s desire to begin transferring the officiating personal from defined benefit to defined contribution plans.
Referees objected, and pointed to the amount of revenue generated each year by the gridiron industry in their fight to keep the defined benefit plans. Team owners countered that a very small percentage of part-time employees in the United States are offered any employer–sponsored plans at all—whether a pension or 401(k). The NFL also noted that its office workers had already been moved to the 401(k) model. The debacle with poor officiating by replacement refs ensued.
The New York Times reported late Wednesday night that the NFL reached agreement on an eight-year labor deal with its game officials.
According to the paper, under the terms of the deal, “pensions will remain in place for current officials through the 2016 season. New officials will get a 401(k) instead. The average official’s salary will rise to $173,000 in 2013 from 149,000 in 2011.”
Beginning in 2013, the NFL will have the option of hiring a number of full-time officials.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds only about one in three part-time employees gets offered a 401(k)-type plan, and less than one in 10 still get a pension like those currently given referees.
Commissioner Roger Goodell came under intense pressure to settle the contract dispute in the wake of a blown call in Monday night’s match-up between the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers which handed the Seahawks the win. | <urn:uuid:b66764b9-bb4c-456a-94e6-f5f1906892ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.advisorone.com/2012/09/27/nfl-refs-get-what-most-workers-want-pensions-untou | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955501 | 390 | 1.5 | 2 |
Our Top Stories
Hurricane Irene: President Obama on Response and Recovery Efforts
08:35 PM EDT
With Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate at his side, President Obama today gave the American people a brief update on the ongoing response efforts to Hurricane Irene, the deadly storm that devastated swaths of the East Coast this weekend. The President also expressed concern for those who were impacted:
Our thoughts and prayers are with those who’ve lost loved ones and those whose lives have been affected by the storm. You need to know that America will be with you in your hour of need.
While the storm has weakened as it moves north, it remains a dangerous storm that continues to produce heavy rains. One of our chief concerns before Irene made landfall was the possibility of significant flooding and widespread power outages. And we’ve been getting reports of just that from our state and local partners. Many Americans are still at serious risk of power outages and flooding, which could get worse in the coming days as rivers swell past their banks.
So I want people to understand that this is not over. Response and recovery efforts will be an ongoing operation, and I urge Americans in affected areas to continue to listen for the guidance and direction of their state and local officials.
The President thanked the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, state and local officials and the many volunteer organizations who worked tirelessly over the past several days, noting that the advance planning has saved lives and property. Moving forward, he said that FEMA will be working with state and local responders to assess damage and assist in the recovery. | <urn:uuid:b847c9a2-a600-44b7-99d2-0a1c06aca7b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/08/28/hurricane-irene-president-obama-response-and-recovery-efforts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972622 | 334 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Last year I fell in love with blood sausage. Maybe that sounds strange. So let me explain.
In Estonia, around Christmastime, they begin to fill up the meat counters, black and smooth. Just piles of them. When Christmas comes, everyone roasts pork and potatoes, makes sauerkraut, and serves them with blood sausages. And it wasn't until I had them as apart of this ritual that I began to understand.
Blood sausages are a celebration of the pig's life and the bounty it brings. When the animal's life is ended, nothing should be wasted. In Estonian, they are known as verivorstid, which literally means "blood sausages." (The Estonians are straightforward people: they're not like the English or French, who sidestep the issue by calling it "black pudding.") This year, I wanted to recreate them for Christmas at my wife's parent's house in Indiana.
The making of blood sausage in her family is nothing new, and has a certain lore. Early on, I was regaled with a story of my father-in-law answering the doorbell in 1983 with blood up to his elbows--opening the door to a couple of surprised members of the International Police. With shocked faces, the Interpol agents were able to regain their composure long enough to state their business (following up on someone who had rented the house and evaded taxes on an RV). The measured response--"let me just get this blood off my hands"--was about the perfect, and only, way to respond.
My problem was finding pig's blood. It's illegal to sell it these days, at least to the public. I called butchers all over Chicago and between here and Bloomington, Indiana, who all gave me the same answer. I even got close with a pig farmer in Southern Indiana who ended up backing out at the last moment for fear of retribution. What was I, buying illegal arms?
Have you ever read Stuart Dybek? He's a wonderful Chicago writer who writes magical stories about urban life. Looking for this blood, I thought back to his story called "Blood Soup" about a couple young kinds looking all over Chicago for duck's blood to make a traditional Polish soup for their dying grandmother, as she believes it will cure her. There's something very strange and dangerous about calling around asking for animal blood. There's an understanding between parties that something serious is at stake.
I know you're expecting all the gory details, or for me to go on about the gross-out factor. But blood sausage is actually really natural and wonderful when you think about it. While I admit that the concept might be frightening, this is one of those foods that will really surprise you once you taste it. Meaty without the texture, not at all metallic like you might imagine if you've ever sucked on your cut finger, deep and rich. Similar preparations exist all over Europe--black pudding in England and Ireland, boudin noir in France, morcilla in Spain--each made of blood mixed with grain to hold the sausage together.
Eventually, I had to settle for beef blood, which is legal to buy and sell. Why beef blood is okay but pork blood isn't, I couldn't say. But I was assured that it would behave just about the same way, and Paulina Meat Market, who sold me a gallon of the stuff, said it's what they use for their own blood sausages.
I picked it up on the day we left town--it was frozen--along with a tub of hog casings for making the sausages themselves. The next day, armed with a funnel, we spent the day boiling barley, sauteing salt pork with onions, stuffing the casings, and poaching them in water. A couple days later, we crisped up the sausages in the rendered fat from a gorgeous leg roast until they were hot and steaming and crisp all over.
This is the story of how we got there. | <urn:uuid:2bd0e161-6911-4cfd-a63c-039e9466f0d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thepauperedchef.com/topichub-detail/most-viewed?page=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974241 | 832 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Good article on why men don't get help - due to conditioning from society...
From the deer head hanging on the wall in his virtual study to the fresh-caught trout he may produce from an icebox and clean with his pocket knife if you fail to click a link soon enough, Dr. Rich Mahogany is a guy’s guy.
Paunchy, with a rusty mustache and a comforting timbre to his voice, Dr. Mahogany is a fictional therapist, a focus-group creation who packs every good-ol’-boy stereotype into one website – making your all-knowing but profanity-prone uncle the spokesman for why a man needs to talk about his emotions.
“Here we won’t be complaining, whining and moping about,” he says, closing his chainsaw manual. “We’ll be getting off our keisters and form-tackling feelings like anger, stress and sadness.”
Dr. Mahogany is the comic face of Mantherapy.org, an online mental-health-awareness campaign produced in Colorado after two years of research and released this week. It is definitely an innovative alternative to more traditional campaigns featuring fierce-looking firemen and optimistic slogans. Instead, Dr. Mahogany demonstrates man-yoga in shiny blue athletic shorts from a cringe-worthy camera angle; at opportune moments, he points to the red phone in the corner that, with one click, produces a suicide-hotline number.
Humour and mental health is a tricky combination, but studies show that many men soon forget why the fireman was on the bus poster, if they noticed him at all. And men are far less likely than women to tackle problems by getting off their keisters and seeking a real doctor for help.
The cultural bias is that strong men keep it together and don’t lie on couches and spill their guts, unless they are HBO television characters. Meanwhile, experts are predicting that male joblessness and fragile work environments will increase depression and anxiety among men, and make them even less likely to tell their bosses if they’re in trouble. Middle-aged men already have the highest rates of suicide in the Western world, and there is evidence that those numbers are rising.
Dr. Mahogany represents an increasing awareness that there’s a gender element to mental health – and health in general – that has been overlooked when it comes to providing services, and ignored in research that has clumped the sexes together.
It’s not only that men and women tend to have different attitudes about mental health. Their symptoms are often not the same, and the forms of therapy that succeed with them, as well their responses to medication, may be different.
The shortage of male therapists hasn’t helped – all but a small fraction of graduates in psychology and social work are women. Even trivial design decisions, such as the pastel walls and women’s magazines that are the mainstay of many doctor’s offices, send a message, as one researcher put it, that “this is not a man’s space.”
But gender bias ripples throughout the entire health-care system, from cardiac care to cancer treatment, influencing how quickly patients get help and how seriously their symptoms are interpreted. Women having heart attacks have been sent home because their chest pain was interpreted as anxiety; men have died from suicide after their depression was misread as mere stress.
This week, President Barack Obama signed a law that requires the Food and Drug Administration to report gender differences in clinical trials – a move long advocated by women’s groups. A similar directive, requiring gender to be a consideration in studies, was issued by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in December, 2010.
“We have a gender blindness when it comes to thinking about treatment and outcomes,” says Joy Johnson, the scientific director for the CIHR’s Institute of Gender and Health.
“How we began thinking about depression really came out of studying women. … Sometimes there are no differences, and that’s fine, but we are not paying attention. There are a lot of unanswered questions.”
Fifteen years ago, feeling overwhelmed and anxious at work, Robert, a Toronto-area lawyer, found himself in a therapist’s office. “It was the kind of therapy where you go in, and they sit there and wait for you to speak,” the 45-year-old recalls.
He continued off and on for about 10 years, treating therapy, he says, like a gym workout for his mind. It was helpful, to a point. “There was this whole idea that an epiphany was going to happen, and all of a sudden whatever was lurking in the back of my mind that was making me anxious would be released and then I would be cured.” That never really happened.
More recently, he decided to try cognitive behavioural therapy, in which a therapist guides a patient through strategies to deal with his problem; he went for several months, and found he preferred it. He learned to see his physiological responses to anxiety as temporary, and understood more clearly why alcohol or tranquillizers only masked the symptoms, without alleviating them.
“I felt like there were techniques being taught that I could use to cope, in a practical way,” he says.
Robert is not alone. Men who attend therapy report satisfaction levels similar to women, but studies have found that they may respond better to certain approaches. John Ogrodniczuk, director of the psychotherapy program at the University of British Columbia, says his research has found that men-only groups are popular and effective; when men are put in mixed groups, where they are often outnumbered by women, their active participation drops significantly.
The men in Dr. Ogrodniczuk’s studies responded best to short-term, individual therapy that focused on practical solutions as opposed to supportive therapy that reassures or sympathizes with the patients. The opposite was true for women.
As well, interviews with men dealing with mental-health issues have found that they valued therapy well above medication. They reported that taking drugs made them feel powerless to help themselves, whereas therapy was a form of self-management, says John Oliffe, an associate professor at the School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia who specializes in men’s health.
Other research has found that men appreciate the reciprocal nature of a group – the sense that they are actively helping others, a strategy employed in Alcoholic Anonymous, which gets more male participants than women.
Australia has responded to this pattern by developing a network of neighbourhood “sheds” (garages) that serve as physical spaces for men to meet. In Britain, public awareness campaigns have targeted players and spectators at soccer games.
But even the messaging in those campaigns, Dr. Oliffe suggests, has inadvertently fostered stereotypes. While men do visit the doctor less often than women, he says, emphasizing this statistic may make men less likely to change this habit.
Men tend to seek medical attention in emergency rooms, which are not designed for long-term evaluation and care, especially for mental-health issues.
Some gender patterns in mental health are well known – for instance, males are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. But there is currently a debate over whether to recognize a disorder of “male depressive syndrome.” And Dr. Johnson, among others, proposes that all diagnostic categories should be studied for gender differences.
Women are diagnosed for depression and anxiety at far greater rates than men. Researchers are not sure how much this is due to biology, gender expectations or overlooking male cases.
But the male suicide rate, which is four times higher than the female, clearly suggests something is wrong, Dr. Oliffe said. “We are missing them, and then the point we pick them up is in the judicial system, or in addictions treatment.”
Many people seeking help for mental-health issues have difficulty getting proper diagnoses, and the men in Dr. Oliffe’s studies reported being turned away about three times before help is offered – a major deterrent for already-ambivalent patients.
Because men tend to report feeling “stressed” more than “sad,” family physicians prescribe rest instead of therapy. Even nationwide surveys on mental health pose questions in a way that might leave male depression underreported – Dr. Johnson points to one that asks people if they cry frequently.
Women are more likely to fall into the stereotypical profile: internalizing their emotions, self-criticizing. Men are more likely to be aggressive or irritable, and turn to alcohol and drug abuse. Instead of sleeping more, as in the classic depression profile, they may spend more time at work.
In a study published in June, Dr. Oliffe interviewed male university students diagnosed with depression. He found they masked symptoms with anger, drinking too much at parties, or brooding in solitary – actions that could be considered “regular guy” behaviour (though Dr. Oliffe quickly points out that not every life of the party is depressed).
Other patterns might be useful in guiding education and public awareness: While girls more often first reveal depression or anxiety to a friend, boys are more likely to tell a family member.
According to Statistics Canada, divorced or separated men are six times more likely to experience depression than men who are married, and twice as likely as women who’ve had a marriage breakdown, a pattern for doctors and family members to note.
Women and men often differ in their knowledge of mental health, or in recognition of their symptoms. A high-profile New Zealand television campaign involved rugby star John Kirwan discussing his experience with depression; in surveys afterward, only 26 per cent of men recalled that his point was that mental illness was nothing to be ashamed of; women were twice as likely to remember it. (On the other hand, targeting women makes some sense, since wives and girlfriends are often the strongest influence behind men seeking help.)
If misconceptions about therapy are deterring men, says Boadie Dunlop, director of the Mood and Anxiety Program at Emory University in Atlanta, then public education has to go beyond vague notions of seeking “help” to more specifics about what happens behind the doors of a psychologist’s office.
“We can do all sorts of ad campaigns,” Dr. Dunlop says. “But it needs to be incorporated into a man’s psyche that you can still be tough and strong and get depressed, and treatment will help you.”
These were the reasons that Brett Zachman, 41, a financial consultant in Denver who was an adviser on the Mantherapy campaign, resisted getting help when he began to feel lonely and overwhelmed following his divorce.
“My initial approach was the machismo route,” he says. “I didn’t need anything. I didn’t need anyone. I could be a lone wolf and solve it on my own.”
Finally, a severe panic attack led him to a group divorce seminar, and eventually individual therapy. Talking to other men helped the most, he says. “It normalized the emotional response to divorce.”
Ultimately, this is the aim of the Dr. Mahogany campaign (Mr. Zachman likens it to a beer commercial, as opposed to a public-service message) – to promote mental-health problems as a common experience of everyday guys, which might not be like the gals’ version.
As for whether those variations are biological or cultural, Dr. Dunlop points out that a natural experiment on the issue may be under way. In a recent editorial in the British Journal of Psychiatry, he predicted rising depression rates over the next decade for men who have seen their family roles shift or their jobs downgraded or lost.
He compares it to the experience of 1950s and 1960s women who were university-educated, only to be confined to the kitchen. “That thwarted sense of development in the work force, or feeling trapped at home – if that’s a force for women, why shouldn’t it be a force for men?”
If Dr. Dunlop’s warning is right, it’s all the more vital that something like Dr. Mahogany’s message of “gentlemental” health reaches all those displaced males: “Being open and honest – that is one of the least unmanly things a man can do,” he barks. “So share away, gentlemen.”
Erin Anderssen is a feature writer for The Globe and Mail. | <urn:uuid:e77b060c-4935-49cf-89bb-8b8d08921252> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.malesurvivor.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=421545 | 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 | 0.970676 | 2,648 | 1.75 | 2 |
The Arizona Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the CityNorth case Wednesday, with justices questioning whether Phoenix will get enough in return for its $97.4 million commitment to the project.
"We're struggling with where the line is," Chief Justice Rebecca Berch said, referring to benefits to the city and benefits to the developer.
The courtroom was packed with lawyers, developers and other interested parties who could be affected by the outcome.
Timothy Berg, who argued on behalf of the city and the developer, the Klutznick Co., said the justices need to take into consideration not just the quantifiable benefits of increased sales tax and parking garage revenue, but also the intangible benefits of reduced traffic, decreased air pollution and additional jobs.
Berg also argued that such decisions should rest with the City Council, not with the courts - unless the city's judgment clearly is flawed.
Under the agreement, approved in March 2007, Phoenix agreed to pay back to the developer half the sales taxes collected for 11 years, 3 months, or until the total reaches $97.4 million.
The developer agreed to erect 1.2 million square feet of tax-generating retail space and parking garages that would hold more than 3,000 vehicles, setting aside several hundred for city use as a park-and-ride lot. No money has been exchanged yet.
CityNorth, on the north side of Loop 101 at 56th Street, has opened one phase, but additional work has been delayed because of the economy.
"The court was trying to determine whether there was a genuine quid pro quo," said Clint Bolick of the Goldwater Institute, which sued to block the agreement on behalf of six small businesses.
Berg said that besides the parking garages, which are scheduled to be built in Phase 2 of the project, and the sales taxes, Klutznick agreed to build CityNorth in a way that would maximize return to the city.
Bolick said the developer is committed to the project, even without the agreement. The parking-garage argument, he said, "is a sham" because the city and the anchor tenants already required parking.
He said the money for CityNorth clearly is for private purpose, benefiting a profit-making developer, despite the tax benefits for the city.
Grady Gammage, whose law firm is retained by CityNorth, said that if the agreement is upheld, the project will move forward as soon as financially feasible.
He added: "This case will determine if the project proceeds as originally envisioned."
If the agreement is deemed unconstitutional, he said, the project would have to be revised and likely delayed.
"It will be more like a standard mall," he said.
John Klutznick of the Klutznick Co. did not take questions. But in a statement e-mailed to reporters later, he said a loss in the case would "threaten economic development throughout Arizona."
A decision could come before the end of year, court spokeswoman Cari Gerchick said. | <urn:uuid:53bef954-c717-46e8-a1e2-455a8acac34e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/citynorth-investment-questioned | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96592 | 621 | 1.5 | 2 |
[Atoms in Japan, 5 March] Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL) has announced that the scheduled completion of its Rokkasho reprocessing plant has been put back from February to May. In September 2007, the company postponed completion from November to February due to erroneous seismic designs in some equipment. However, in November it was decided that additional data and inspections of the melting furnace at the vitrification facility were necessary. The inspection of the furnace interior and the removal of residual substances will continue until mid-March. Trial operation of the glass-melting furnace is expected to resume by the end of March. As a result of those changes, JNFL has filed an application with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) to change the work plan for the plant. The amount of fuel reprocessed in the financial year to 31 March 2008 has been reduced from 315 tonnes to 210 tonnes. Plans now call for the plant to reprocess 395 tonnes, 480 tonnes and 640 tonnes, respectively, over the following years (compared with previous plans for 330, 493 and 653 tonnes, respectively). The plant is now planned to receive 444 tonnes of spent fuel in the year to end of March 2009, compared with 551 tonnes previously planned. Starting in financial year 2011, both spent fuel and reprocessing will proceed at an annual rate of 800 tonnes. | <urn:uuid:c57d8656-dab0-4774-9dba-a962cc2eb2fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://world-nuclear-news.org/IT/Completion_of_Rokkasho_reprocessing_plant_delayed_050308.html | 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 | 0.970666 | 280 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Specialist financial advice
There are many specialist areas of financial planning that an IFA can advise on either directly or by working with other professionals such as accountants and solicitors.
The various specialist areas include:-
Inheritance Tax planning
Inheritance Tax planning to ensure you are minimising the amount of any possible Inheritance Tax that may be liable on your estate. Let’s dispel a myth right here and now. You don’t have to be super rich for your estate to be subject to Inheritance Tax (IHT) after you die. An IFA might, for example, advise you to make gifts now to intended beneficiaries as these will be free of IHT (providing you live for 7 years or more following the gifts). There are several other tax-efficient ways of making annual gifts, both to individuals and organisations such as charities.
You could then leave a further £325,000 free of IHT to your beneficiaries in your will. Gifts between married couples incidentally are not subject to any Inheritance Tax. You might also like to think about setting up a trust. If you put part of your estate into a trust for your grandchildren, it could be decades before your cash is again under the eye of the taxman. Trusts can be complicated and an IFA may work in conjunction with a solicitor.
Another option you might like to consider is an insurance policy to pay the tax bill after you die. An IFA can compare all insurers to help find the right policy for you.
Ethical investment is often known as Socially Responsible Investment but it can be confusing as there are so many shades of “green” funds available through unit trusts, open ended investment companies and investment trusts. Some funds are more environmentally friendly than others.
Companies also have different approaches to defining ethical. For example, British American Tobacco would not be classed as ethical by organisations such as Cancer Research. However, BAT has gone a long way to improve working conditions, with fairer wages and improving human rights issues in its overseas operations.
If you want to invest ethically, you should speak to an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) about what sort of investment would work for you and best suit your own principles.
Overseas mortgages as a product description is reasonably self-explanatory and you may need to look into this option if you are thinking of purchasing a property abroad, be it as a main residence or as a holiday home. Factors worth considering include exchange rates, regulatory/legal/jurisdictional issues.
Optimum Independent Financial Advisers can advise on all these and other specialist areas of financial planning. Please use our online contact form or other contact details if you would like to discuss any of these areas with an adviser. | <urn:uuid:2173528b-3431-4601-b54d-e981904ce2ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.optimum-ifa.co.uk/specialist-financial-advice/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960966 | 565 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Jun 16, 2000, 6:55 PM
Post #2 of 3
You don't say what command, but you should check to see if it has a batch mode, and run it in with whatever args are required to make it run as such.
On some systems, you could also pipe a Y into the command before hand ( system("echo y | command").
And, finally, you can use a comibination of pipe and exec to read from/write to an external command.
IIRC, IPC::Open2 and IPC::Open3 try to simplify the last, but can still deadlock (ie, both you and the command trying waiting for the other to say something). | <urn:uuid:d56b3472-f828-44fa-b851-710b0ac7a453> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://perlguru.com/gforum.cgi?post=4326;sb=post_subject;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_expandable;guest=7811706 | 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 | 0.951682 | 145 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Editor’s note: Amy Slothower is executive director of Get Smart Schools, a charter school development and management non-profit.
I’ve been working in education reform for 10 years now, and I’ve come to accept that this business is full of frustrations and battles over divergent interests and an achingly slow pace of change. However, the A-Plus Denver committee meeting I attended this morning has me so aggravated that I am moved to do something I’ve never done before: blog about it!
A-Plus Denver is a group of concerned citizens working to push Denver Public Schools to pursue school reform that benefits all students. The topic of this morning’s meeting was the Educator Performance Assessment System that is being collaboratively developed by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association and DPS.
Basically, they are trying to come up with a system of evaluating teachers that everyone will sign-off on. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded this project and apparently work has been underway for at least 10 months now. I say apparently because there is little evidence that any progress at all has been made during that time.
And, as A-Plus committee member Bennie Milliner, a former DPS board member who now works for U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, pointed out, this work has actually been under way in one form or another for more than 12 years with no measurable results.
Add to that Pro Comp, which passed five years ago and is costing Denver taxpayers $25 million, also with no clear impact, and the new CDE Colorado Educator Effectiveness Project, which is going to cost $1 million, and its hard to even fathom the energy and money that has gone into circling around and around this critical issue.
The presenter this morning was Henry Roman, president of the DCTA. He was asked to speak about the progress that the joint DCTA/DPS committee has made to date, but instead he essentially talked for the full 90 minutes about all the “challenges” of creating an effective teacher evaluation system. I’m sure a lot of those challenges are real, and I personally have no expertise in teacher evaluations, so my exasperation is not about the details of the work that is or is not happening.
I am annoyed with the attitude! I was reminded of a favorite African proverb: “A leopard is chasing us, and you are asking me, is it a male or a female?”
The bureaucratic headwinds that are bogging down this particular process are just one example of why I am such an ardent believer in autonomous schools. While 900 Grant Street is spending years upon years and millions upon millions of dollars trying to decide on minutiae like, “do classroom assignments have to be randomized for evaluations to be legitimate?” autonomous schools are actually getting the work done.
Granted, some are having much better success than others, but at least they are trying. They are using multiple measures for teacher evaluations, they are giving teachers more meaningful ratings than “satisfactory or unsatisfactory,” and they provide teachers with regular feedback from multiple sources – all of the things that the DCTA/DPS committee says it wants to achieve. Perhaps even more importantly, they are actually using this information to decide who gets to keep their job.
When I posed the question this morning, “has anyone on the Educator Performance Assessment System committee looked at what is happening around teacher evaluation at, say, West Denver Prep,” the answer I got was yet another list of “challenges” in comparing what a highly effectively school like WDP is doing to what happens in traditional schools. Well, isn’t that the point? Wouldn’t we like to take some of the lessons learned in great schools and apply them in the rest of our schools? Apparently, that is just too “challenging!”
I would rather see 100 creative new approaches to teacher evaluation being tested, even if some of them fail, than sit through one more meeting listening to what cannot be done. I have the privilege of working day-in and day-out with talented, passionate educational entrepreneurs who are starting new autonomous schools. These are people who dream big and who act boldly. And yes, they sometimes fail.
I have had some epic failures in my own efforts to start new schools including the far-from-successful Denver Venture School. But at least I, and others like me, take action. We understand that doing nothing is a guarantee that nothing will change.
I predict that if the DCTA and DPS don’t start to act more nimbly and don’t understand the urgency that the community feels about the sorry state of our public schools, two things will happen. First, autonomous schools will continue to gain momentum and the most talented teachers and leaders will flock to these environments where they have the freedom to take whatever aggressive action is needed to meet the needs of their students.
And second, the state will create more and more mandates like SB10-191 that will dictate how things get done rather than allowing local districts to languish for years mired in academic debates about how to move forward. Either way, the union and the district will have lost out on the chance to set their own direction.
And at least I won’t have to sit through any more meetings like the one this morning.
Popularity: 7% [?] | <urn:uuid:650d4459-b3ad-4c58-95b2-eaa248ae75e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.ednewscolorado.org/author/amy-slothower | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973113 | 1,130 | 1.625 | 2 |
Should City Council allow traveling circus animal acts?Wednesday, October 24, 2012 by: Darren Taylor
City Council will soon discuss the question of whether or not to permit traveling animal shows, such as circuses, to perform in Sault Ste. Marie.
Possible passing of a by-law prohibiting local performances by traveling shows which use wild, exotic animals such as elephants, lions, tigers and bears, will be discussed at Council’s next meeting in November.
A report on the issue was accepted by Council as an information item at its last meeting on Monday.
The report includes a great deal of online information highlighting cruelty to circus animals.
There was also a listing of many incidents in which public safety was an issue, such as a 1999 Timmins incident when a circus employee was killed after being struck by an elephant, another 1999 incident in which two trainers suffered minor injuries when they were bitten by a lion, and a 2007 Newmarket incident in which three elephants escaped from a circus and wandered into a residential area before being successfully rounded up.
In May of this year, Council passed a resolution forwarded by Ward Two Councillor Terry Sheehan requesting the City Solicitor draw up a report on how the City could pass a by-law that would keep traveling animal acts such as circuses from performing in Sault Ste. Marie.
Sheehan pointed out in the May resolution that many shows, such as Cirque du Soleil's Quidam, which performed at the Sault’s Essar Centre this past spring, provide a high level of quality entertainment without using wild animals, and that 29 municipalities across Canada have moved to prohibit circuses that use animal acts.
Monday’s item also contains information related to Bill 50 (the Provincial Animal Welfare Act).
Nevertheless, the information item accepted by Council at this Monday’s meeting includes a recommendation from City Solicitor Nuala Kenny to take no action on the matter.
Kenny explained to SooToday.com this recommendation comes for two reasons.
"The City of Windsor passed a by-law that would prohibit circuses coming to Windsor. An Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck that by-law down in 2004. The City of Windsor did not appeal, so it is law in Ontario. We followed that lead. So Windsor’s not appealing was very significant.”
“What the Court said at the time was ‘cruelty to animals ’ was covered by both the provincial and federal governments, and not by municipalities,” Kenny said.
However, Kenny says Sheehan is correct in that the Ontario cruelty to animals legislation has been amended by Bill 50 subsequent to the Windsor by-law, and specifically authorizes municipalities to pass by-laws to protect animals.
“That definitely tweaks what happened with Windsor, but the Court also stated that under freedom of expression in the Charter, if you have an act that uses animals as a form of entertainment or theatrical use, that it is a type of ‘expression’ permitted under the Charter,” Kenny continued.
The second reason Kenny recommended that no action be taken by Sault Ste. Marie on the matter is “we have been advised by our Community Services Division that we just don’t get those acts, they don’t come here. They used to, but not anymore.”
Regardless, Sheehan put forward a Notice of Motion on Monday, stating he still wants the matter debated at Council’s first meeting in November, feeling that the changes in Bill 50 changes the picture, and wants everyone on the same page when it comes to animal shows in Sault Ste. Marie.
Correspondence from the Kiwanis Club, addressed to Council, states the local chapter of the Club has been tentatively selected as a host for the famous Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride for its 2013 tour, with final approval to come hopefully in January.
Club President Brad Frechette points out that the local club hosted the 2009 RCMP Ride and the event raised over $20,000 for children’s programs in Sault Ste. Marie.
Frechette urges Council to consider any wild animal by-law thoughtfully so that the Kiwanis Club would be able to host the RCMP Musical Ride in 2013 or any other future year, stating that “the RCMP is a model organization for the treatment and care of their animals.”
Sheehan has responded to the Kiwanis Club by writing he would support an exception to any by-law that would allow the RCMP musical ride to perform in Sault Ste. Marie.
However, Kenny told us: “Any such by-law may be open to challenge because of the Charter’s freedom of expression provisions, and also, if you’re saying we’re not going to allow these shows and you list lions and tigers and bears and you don’t list ponies and dogs, that to me seems like an arbitrary cut. So, I think it’s a little dicey, in my view, to arbitrarily split which animals come under the care of the municipality and which should not.”
MR40 10/24/2012 4:54:22 PM Report
wow- you councilers have way to much time on your hands..
Sam C 10/24/2012 5:08:17 PM Report
Sheehan wants a by-law prohibiting performance that use "wild or exotic animals," but thinks they can make an exception for horses.
I stand to be corrected, but I don't believe the RCMP goes out and captures a dozen wild mustangs before each show.
wallyhunter 10/24/2012 5:24:00 PM Report
I would like to know where they get this stuff. And we elected them.
~~BrOwN EyEz~~~ 10/24/2012 5:26:26 PM Report
the city has taken away bellview park animals so the families and little kids could see and enjoy .. so ya city take away the circus that kids enjoy every year going to see at the gardens!!! thats kool of yous.. what will be left here for the lil ones to enjoy?? NOTHING
moosehunter2 10/24/2012 5:52:18 PM Report
The traveling circus is the city council!!! lmao if the people don,t want the circus they would not be going when it comes to town!!! go figure!!!
chief1 10/24/2012 5:53:13 PM Report
when i was a child growing up in wawa i remember the true circus comming to town with the tents set up at the end of town - it was great-i also remember the circus in the early days here in the soo.it was great i would watch the tigers an elephants do there acts and even the dog acts were great.last year i attended the cicus just to watch a acrobat show - how boreing and sad and a waste of my money - what happen to the clowns-r they at city hall - i hope not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
cityhallguy 10/24/2012 6:12:30 PM Report
Sounds like a complete waste of time to me! If the province and the Feds are already dealing with it, why pass a useless bylaw! Reminds me of the no-smoking bylaw. Did we really have to pass one when it was already being addressed and on its way?
jenndefran 10/24/2012 6:22:13 PM Report
I agree with city council, and believe that the traveling circus animal acts should not be able to come to Sault Ste Marie. Those poor animals suffer from extreme abuse, and it continues because so many people still attend these horrible events. There is enough information regarding these issues, so why would anyone want to bring their child or family to such an event? Why not educate the children on how inhumane these acts truly are. There are many things families can do in Sault Ste Marie then make a huge fuss over not allowing a circus come once a year because our city doesn't support animal abuse. There are many other events that come to the Essar for children and families, we don't need the circus..they are a bunch of low lives. And if cities refuse to allow such events with these animals in it, then the need to import these animals for animal abuse..will stop. People who support such events need to give their head a shake, and get in touch with reality. We have alot more knowledge of this stuff now..compared to many years ago.
Christina216 10/24/2012 6:33:06 PM Report
What other events happen at the essar besides hockey and over priced wiggles concert? just curious.
bus 10/24/2012 6:40:06 PM Report
hilary duff, brian adams, kiss, sienfeld, barenaked ladies, scotties tournament of hearts, capital one series, subway super series, ohl all star game. must i go on, be reminded that this is a 5000 seat facility.
bus 10/24/2012 6:44:49 PM Report
and in reference to the story, animals shouldnt be made to do trick for profit. the money these shows make wouldnt even cover the cost of treating the animals fairly. so really, shame on thecustomer who pays dismal amounts to watch animals being abused. if the circus was charging top dollar, and the animals were getting treated fairly, it would be a whole different ball game, but how fair is it to really carry animals around the country in trailers. overall circuses are bad ideas. on the other side of things council shouldnt be wasting this much time on it. propose the by law, take a vote, and pass the bylaw. we know its not a good thing, who cares what other cities do. everytime we need to do something, we look at other cities. for example, the essar centre (Sarnia) more recently the sign bylaw (toronto, north bay, etc) and now the ciricus. just get it done fast and without comparing our small city to these big centres such as toronto
jenndefran 10/24/2012 6:52:38 PM Report
There are many things you can do with your children that doesn't even cost money to spend quality time with them. And the events that are held at the Essar are priced no different then any other city that offer those same venues, you could save and put money aside to attend such things. And I haven't been to a circus since I was little, but I'm sure there tickets aren't very cheap also, I'm sure there prices went up just like everything or everywhere else has. Its just very sad that families still attend these events after knowing how the animals are treated. It is all over the internet with regards to the abuse. The animals don't like entertaining families, traveling city to city, chained up, and performing like clowns. They are beaten 24hrs/day to "entertain" families, and fear the trainers. All so those low life circus owners..make money to continue this cycle..and as long as families continue to pay for their tickets, and support it..then it will never end.
geterdun 10/24/2012 7:05:27 PM Report
What a joke!!!!!!!!!LOL.....no more monkeys or donkeys?????......so now were should we go to see the circus????? any ideas people???? LOL!!!!!!!This is your tax money at work folks......OMG!!!! im going to pee my pants LOL!!!!!!!What a joke !!!!!!!!!Sheehan for Mayor.......LOL!!!!!!way to much time on their hands ......
lizard79 10/24/2012 7:16:08 PM Report
I don't see why a by-law needs to be passed on this. It is just common decency that we shouldn't allow these acts to perform here. How about when they ask to come or apply for a permit, we just say no. Simple. The end.
chief1 10/24/2012 7:21:26 PM Report
i think if you people really cared about animal cruiety you would stop building windmills and solar fields full of pannals for the profit in your pockets the big wigs only see.i personally have seen the animals scare into our personal liveing areas becouse there habitat is totally-now ruined - right!!!!!!!!
DutchTouch 10/24/2012 7:27:47 PM Report
jenndefran you are very brave to be the "lone voice in the wilderness" and submit your opinion to a lot of folks who either don't care or are oblivious to the way circus animals are treated.
I agree with you and haven't attended an
animal featured circus since I became aware of what was going on and wouldn't take my kids.
It sounds like fun to watch on the surface but just how much fun is it for those animals? Especially the large ones. I'm glad that council is having second thoughts on this issue and hope they turn it down. The animals need a voice to speak up for them so I'm adding mine.
BlackHelix 10/24/2012 7:31:58 PM Report
To your first post - Yes, please go on. No one cares about Bryan Adams or Jerry Seinfeld. My 15 year old niece can't stop going on about how she wishes Elton John or Kiss would come back to town.
To your second post - Why would we compare ourselves to larger cities? Do you mean the cities that have culture, entertainment (and no - Hillary Duff is not entertainment), access to international travel, shopping, jobs, housing, diversity, education? Why would we want to be like that! Not to mention the Supreme Court of Canada. Of course we don't have to listen to them - We're the Sault!
Lastly, everyone is assuming that these animals are being treated unfairly. It's entirely possible (even likely) that they are, but where is the data or facts to support this? If it is true, what do you think the owners will do when their income source dries up? Release them into the wild with a backpack full of food? I don't think so...
BlackHelix 10/24/2012 7:34:49 PM Report
Good point. Let's keep burning fossil fuels for the next 50 years and see what happens to their habitat. Because that's working out so well right now...
Bobby Nerves 10/24/2012 7:37:23 PM Report
I guess everybody is afraid of the competition.
Once, this city was known for the Hurleyville Taxi.
Let the people enjoy a good day with their families in the way it fit them best and stop interfering with the creativity and initiative of all the people with good will.
If you have to research the Hurleyville Taxi, I'll save you the time, watch this:
the coach 10/24/2012 7:47:08 PM Report
Sheehan, your not getting my vote this time. You need a real job. And as the circus deal, give me a break. Cruelty to animals. When I was a kid it was great to go to the circus. Bleeding heart no minds.
Mike99 10/25/2012 12:05:14 AM Report
What a Joke, I agree these high paid morons have way to much time on their hands. They should stop wasting so much time on minor topics and try worrying about what really matters. How many dumb by laws can we possibly pass in this city.. Maybe try spending some of that valuable time on creating jobs and stimulating the economy rather then trying to save the world one by law at a time. It's know wonder everyone heads into michigan to spend a ton of money on recreation and family outings...way to go Sault Canada city council keep up the good work scaring business away from our city......
Bad Dawg 10/25/2012 12:53:33 AM Report
this what we pay them to do.... sit around and talk about banning circuses be cause of alledged mis-treatment of animals.... does that mean the studio is closing??
tcowen 10/25/2012 12:53:54 AM Report
No more monkey business.. sounds like a great campaign slogan for next election.
Of every, any & all things this council should have on their minds.. you'd think circus animals would be more like a placeholder at the bottom of the page.
With over 500 people statistically listed as homeless, 1500 if you include couch surfers & those currently holding a 30 day notice.
Approximately 300 families will be notified that their final EI payment will be two weeks into the coldest part of December & a declining vacancy rate of .5%
Our elected officials seem to be more concerned for the emotional well being of a traveling chimp.?
jackie17 10/25/2012 1:34:30 AM Report
No, I'm a 69 year old italian that still has plastic on my couch.
thomas 10/25/2012 5:59:55 AM Report
ABSOLUTELY NO circuses! Good for city counsel for considering boycotting the TOTALLY INHUMANE exploitation of wild animals in circuses.
The GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH? Ringlings, Barnam and Bailey?
Take a look at this video, and tell me you want your kids to see those elephants after seeing what they go through before performances.
Wild animals should be just that, wild. Not forced to live in captivity performing silly tricks for human enjoyment.
pedwards1978 10/25/2012 6:35:43 AM Report
~IT IS WHAT IT IS,,,BY BOYCOTTING IT HERE DOESN'T ME IT'S GOING TO GO AWAY, THEY ARE JUST GOING TO GO AND PLEASE A WHOLE BUNCH OF DIFFERENT KIDS...I REALLY WISH THE CIRCUS WAS FULL OF ANIMALS LIKE IT USED TO BE "REALLY WHO WANTS TO WATCH A BUNCH OF DOGS DRESSED LIKE LIONS" TELL ME THATS NOT CRUELTY!! AND YOU CAN'T SAY THAT THE ANIMALS ARE BEING TREATED BADLY (EXCEPT THOSE POOR DOGS THAT ARE DRESSED LIKE LIONS) BECAUSE YOU JUST DON'T KNOW....IT'S LIKE SAYING EVERY AFRICAN AMERICAN IS A GANG BANGER, EVERY NATIVE AMERICAN IS AN ALCOHOLIC, EVERY WHITE PERSON IS A RACIST!!!! MAYBE THE ANIMALS LOVE WHAT THEY DO,,,THEY LOVE HAVING A GOOD MEAL, TREATS, AND ATTENTION PAID TO THEM DAILY!!! "BRING BACK THE LIONS TIGERS AND BEARS"
artimus4378 10/25/2012 7:20:50 AM Report
R they trying to make the Soo the lamest place on earth?
bird_2 10/25/2012 7:29:59 AM Report
We haven't had a travelling circus into town for years now. I was under the assumption that this by-law was already passed. The Shiners put on an amazing circus complete with elephants, lions, tiger and horses across the river. Cheap tickets and the animals don't show any sign of neglect or harm.
jenndefran 10/25/2012 7:33:05 AM Report
To the people that say these animals are not abused. This is pure miseducation and plain ignorance on your part, or maybe you just have no heart. All you have to do, since you obviously have access to the internet is google or youtube (which has undercover people videotaping the cruelty which these animals endure during the training.) Shame on you, I can't believe there are so many ignorant people still that turn a blind eye to this kind of stuff. Why not teach the children how to treat animals, and teach them about animal cruelty. And to one of the above comments..I understand that if circus's stopped, these animals wouldn't be release back into the wild, however they would go to a sanctuary(which they have done when other circus's have closed) however if there was NO demand for this type of entertainment then the demand for these animals would stop. You have to start somewhere, and stop this cycle.
jenndefran 10/25/2012 7:38:23 AM Report
Do you honestly believe the trainers want the elephants to look abused or sick? When everyone, well guess not everyone, most people are aware that they are abused? They train using a bullhook..its the wand with a sharp edge at the top, they hit them with it in training, so they fear it, in their most sensitive areas. Which includes under there arms, joints, etc..their skin is very thin, so when they see it in the circus when they have to entertain, they remember the beatings they had with it, and are gently nudged at the circus with it to stay inline, but after the performance, if they acted out, then they will pay for it. Just google the information, alot of it, is videos from ex trainers of the circus. Knowledge is power.
Old Man Winter 10/25/2012 7:47:51 AM Report
Way too much time to waste at city hall. Too many clowns, wish my taxes were invest in better way....lol
sameboat000 10/25/2012 8:06:20 AM Report
I wasn`t going to comment when I seen the headlines but the main point is unless there`s proven animal cruelty charges,city fathers should find more important things to do, FIND WAYS TO LOWER THE CRIME RATE,but that would be to important,or someone elses job.
Stevie-E 10/25/2012 8:35:08 AM Report
I am all for this.
If the people wanting animals to do tricks for them saw how these animals are treated, in which they are OUTSIDE their natural habitat to begin with, you might just change your tune. Animals should not be kept in captivity.
We can still have carnivals and circuses, but with only humans for the entertainment. If you wish to see animals, save some money, quit the bad smoking/drinking/gambling habit and you will have enough in 6 months to take your family to a zoo!
Watch "Water for Elephants" and you will see what I mean.
jenndefran 10/25/2012 8:38:37 AM Report
thanks for the above comment:)
clara 10/25/2012 8:52:10 AM Report
I am so proud of city council for coming out of the dark ages. Live animal acts should be completely banned - period. If you disagree with me, do some research on line and find out what their lives are like. Check out the PETA site and educate yourself. Training methods are cruel, they are constantly confined and for what - our short term enjoyment. For just a moment, think about what their lives must be like. People wonder why elephants suddenly go beserk and stampede through a town. They can't take it anymore! I will never support a circus with live animals. Cirque du Soleil's philosophy is no live animals! Someone mentioned Bellevue Park and that the animals were taken away. Of course they were, they were living in archaic, out-dated conditions.
It broke my heart to see how some of them lived. Open your minds and your hearts. Think about those who cannot speak for themselves.
bello 10/25/2012 8:59:50 AM Report
As a Saultite, I am never ceased to be amazed at the drivel on the these posts on Sootoday. You are really proving the the term "small town mentality, steel town mentality" here
Having animals do stupid pet tricks for your entertainment, is assinine. Do you really think these animals are treated fairly? Living in small cages, being taught idiotic tricks for amusement, and now you want to decide whether or not to allow these travelling shows should be allowed in SSM? Please dont show how ignorant you are SSM.This should be a no brainer, even for this city.
iLash 10/25/2012 9:03:07 AM Report
These animals belong in the wild! YES rehabilitated and introduced back in! Those that can't belong in a sanctuary that mimics their natural habitat! Instead of raising children that have no value or morals of wildlife try educating them on the importance and the animals roll in nature! This is very important! All of you saying it isn't is "Sault" mentality at it's best! There is life beyond Sault Ste. Marie! Not only that many of these animals are endangered! How do you think circuses come to buy them????? I have not ever brought my daughter to any circus and won't unless it is animal free. If you want something done about the "crime" go to one of these meetings and voice your concerns or give a call to your ward and do something about it!
Kevin5069 10/25/2012 9:32:40 AM Report
How do these fools get elected in the first place?
saultresident 10/25/2012 9:59:32 AM Report
I am opposed to any company using animals as attractions. Marine Land, the circus, the zoo... If an animal is rescued, that is wonderful, but don't raise generations of animals that will be used for a person or companies financial gain and put these animals in harms way.
bml69 10/25/2012 9:59:53 AM Report
All I can say is- growing up, I never went to the circus here, and I was proud of it. My mother explained the torment these animals go through when I was very young and I never looked back. You are complaining saying your taxes are being wasted on animal rights? You are an imbecile. Animals deserve the same rights we do, if not BETTER. Today's humans are disease of the earth, our people have destroyed countless habitats, and don't think twice about it. What happened to giving thanks to the animal who life has been sacrificed so you could eat? The supermarket take the fun out of it for ya? I realize I am a person living in today's day and age, but I refuse to be such a moron who would protest intelligent, compassionate thoughts to ban cruelty to our fellow creatures on this earth. Wouldn't be so fun if it was you getting shuttled around, starved, abused, and put on display would it?
Wisenheimer 10/25/2012 10:00:12 AM Report
We elect them ... Therein lies the crime.
sumosah 10/25/2012 10:22:16 AM Report
well the "circus' that has been coming here for the last few years doesnt really have any animals 2 years ago I think it had an elephant for kiddie rides but have stopped that too ... mostly performers and a couple of dogs in a lion costume which was very entertaining so this bylaw would prohibit this and probably buskerfest think about it .... do you need a bylaw to NOT go to something...remember when it is done in writing it opens a whole lot of room for interpretation to let this city conservatively close our doors to alot of other things....
Kubrick 10/25/2012 10:26:05 AM Report
Its funny, u guys see a video of animal abuse on YOUTUBE of all places, and think its the same for every circus in the world. Some people in this world are sick, not everybody is like that. I do think there should be some random inspections though to verify the animals treatment and well being. People these days, I guess next they should shut down all the Zoo's everywhere, Dog Shows, Horse Racing whatever....... Welcome to Nazi Germany, I mean America, sry I mean Canada. You're complaining about animal abuse but I bet you don't complain when you eat your Big Mac.
Meow 10/25/2012 11:02:35 AM Report
I am so proud of City Council. This is the right thing to do. We live in such a progressive City!
I went to Cirque de Soleil (non animal circus) at the Essar Centre with my daughter and it was wonderful. The show was sold out and there were people beside us that traveled from Sudbury to watch the show.
We don't need Circuses that abuse animals and if you don’t believe that these animals are abused the USDA just fined Shrine Circus 270,000 dollars for 27 separate incidents of cruelty.
sea shell 10/25/2012 11:08:36 AM Report
Then don't go!!!
clara 10/25/2012 11:30:25 AM Report
Why do you think so many cities in so many countries are banning animal circuses? Because people have become educated. There are plenty of other ways in which we can be entertained that doesn't cause suffering. Like any other topic, do some research and then form an opionion.
JustMe1234567 10/25/2012 11:52:14 AM Report
I think kids can live without ever seeing animals being forced to perform in these travelling animal prisons. Buskerfest and events like that are a better idea. And not cruel.
Just my opinion.
ackw 10/25/2012 11:55:30 AM Report
Make city hall mobile 'Then you have a travelling circus/pet friendly.
frauleinbroomhilda 10/25/2012 1:10:19 PM Report
Sault Ste. Marie...We really don't need a travelling circus to come to our city. We have our own right here at the CITY HALL. Jackasses!!!!
vipersmum 10/25/2012 5:51:58 PM Report
Good for you Terry Sheehan for bringing this up. It is definitely something that needs to be addressed. So many communities have come to realize how terrible these shows are and are banning them. If enough communities ban them then they will have to go out of business and release the animals into a sanctuary.
There is no doubt and it is absolutely proven that the animals are abused and do not live anything like a normal life whatsoever. No animal trainer with any conscience at all would ever subject their animals to this lifestyle or use any of the training methods or anything the circus does!!!
They really are a disaster waiting to happen, search for elephant rampages - you will find alot more than you thought possible - they dont really make the national news so we dont hear about all of them.
Most of the animals show signs of mental illness from no stimulation or natural lifestyle. Is that what you want to teach your children? This is time for a positive change - for the animals involved and for us as a society to evolve out of the stone ages and gladiator days.
Dead End Kid 10/25/2012 6:19:21 PM Report
Never mind the circus, City Hall should get rid of their donkeys and hire more chimps to run the show. They can't be any worse than the clowns they have in there now. That's what I call entertainment.
Dead End Kid 10/25/2012 6:28:09 PM Report
Id love to understand why most people who care about the welfare of animals have no trouble sitting down to a steak or chicken dinner at the end of the day. Seems a little bit hypocritical to me.(enough said).
vipersmum 10/25/2012 6:40:36 PM Report
you want to open up the whole can of worms? this is one issue we are discussing. dont bring in other issues and try to take the importance away of the main one.
frauleinbroomhilda 10/25/2012 8:44:46 PM Report
Stop the animal circus from coming to our city and then what? Close Spruce Haven Zoo? How about doing something good for the citizens of this city...like lower our taxes, create more jobs and stop taking enjoyment out of our city. Let people decide whether they want to attend these shows or not! Why should you pencil pushing people decide how we spend our time. Put some of the tax payers money towards helping the poor animals at the humane society... Maybe by expanding the building! Start worrying about the citizens in the Soo people! I vote you ALL out. Idiots!
geterdun 10/26/2012 12:53:26 AM Report
I think we should privitize it!!!
city hall that is.....
sisii 11/3/2012 9:33:41 AM Report
Beware, farmers, hunters & anglers and pet owners are also on their hit list. Don't ya think the elephants in Newmarket had some help in escaping? How many people have been bitten by a pet, and yet they drag up incidents from 13 years ago? Peta cannot be given any power, please don't waste any time on this matter. At this rate you will need a college degree just for the priviledge of owning a pet, and a yearly tax fee to boot. | <urn:uuid:74ace48b-851b-41bf-ad0d-ae043627b166> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/details.asp?c=48941 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953354 | 6,940 | 1.617188 | 2 |
A Star Trek fan quibbled (Tribbled?) with our piece last week, noting that the character James T. Kirk was actually an admiral, not a captain, during the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Our response is that Kirk, in a later film, was demoted to captain, and most Trekkies/Trekkers refer to the character as "Captain Kirk." So our referring to him as such was correct, "from a certain point of view" (to borrow a line from another famous sci-fi universe).
Anyway, we digress.
After applying Star Trek's "red alert" designation to several Senate seats last week, we're now looking at the most competitive gubernatorial races. Unlike the Senate races - where at least the seven most competitive seats are all currently held by Democrats - the competitive gubernatorial picture offers a mixed set of races, with a number of Democrats and Republicans listed among the hottest races.
As a reminder, we're dividing these competitive races into three categories: red alert seats are ones in which the incumbent party is, at best, a tiny favorite to hold the seat; orange alert seats are ones that are very competitive but the incumbent party holds a clear edge at this early point of the cycle; and yellow alert seats are ones where the incumbent party should be ready but serious challenges have yet to emerge.
Gubernatorial races don't track as clearly with national politics as Senate races do, and so there are some races listed here that might be surprising at first blush. Could deep Blue Connecticut throw out a Democratic governor? Arkansas has a Democratic governor, and that governor won by 30 points in 2010 – could the state swing so wildly in four years? Maine recently elected its first Republican governor since Jock McKernan left office in 1995; will the state swing back to the Democrats this quickly? And South Carolina - could the bright Red Palmetto State actually defeat an incumbent GOP governor?
The politics of statehouses aren't as clear-cut as the politics of Congress. In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) is taking heat on the right and the left for his budget proposals; the same is true of Gov. John Kasich (R) in Ohio. In some states, the crises and belt-tightening that defined budgets in 2011 are yielding to the politics of surpluses today. But figuring out how to spend money can be as difficult as figuring out what to cut - especially since lobbyists and special interest groups will make a grab for any extra dollars like mice scampering for a block of cheese left out overnight. Navigating these interests can be tricky, and state-level politics can produce odd alliances.
Republicans currently hold 30 of 50 governorships, with Democrats holding 19 and an independent - very vulnerable Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island - holding the final seat. The ex-Republican, President Obama-supporting Chafee doesn't fit anywhere on our chart above, but he's certainly in quite a bit of political trouble (as described later).
Unlike the House and Senate, the overall partisan makeup of the nation's 50 gubernatorial offices isn't particularly significant - holding a majority of the governorships doesn't allow the Republicans to elect a speaker of the statehouses. And even if there was such a speaker, he or she would envy House Speaker John Boehner (R) in at least one way: Unlike Congress, where both parties have mainly ideologically cohesive caucuses, governors from the same party make vastly different policy decisions on many issues. For instance, the Affordable Care Act empowered the states to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income residents. The enticement of federal money is appealing not only to Democrats, but also to many conservative Republicans.
Most readers will find their state on this list, because 38 of the 50 states hold gubernatorial races this cycle. Obviously, we are including the two 2013 races in New Jersey and Virginia. A couple of other states - New Hampshire and Vermont - still hold gubernatorial elections every two years.
Note: Bolded candidate names indicate the likely frontrunner for a nomination, if there is one.
Alabama: Gov. Robert Bentley (R) and other top Yellowhammer State Republicans were dealt a somewhat embarrassing defeat a couple weeks back when their preferred candidate was defeated for the state party chairmanship by the incumbent chairman, who was backed by the state's recently resuscitated Supreme Court chief justice, Roy Moore (R). There could be some drama on the GOP side but chances are that Bentley wins reelection - that is, if he wants a second term. Democrats shouldn't be much of a factor. SAFE REPUBLICAN
Alaska: All indications are that Gov. Sean Parnell (R) will seek reelection as opposed to challenging Sen. Mark Begich (D). Call us crazy, but we don't see a ton of upside in trading an easy run for another four years in the governor's mansion for a toss-up race against Begich that, in victory, would give him the "privilege" of frequent, 8,500-mile roundtrip flights to Washington, perhaps in the company of longtime Rep. Don Young (R), who dubbed Parnell "Captain Zero" while defeating him in a narrow 2008 primary. SAFE REPUBLICAN
Arizona: It turns out that Gov. Jan Brewer (R) might not be so Tea Party after all - she recently announced her support for expanding Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. She's hardly the only one, though: Govs. Rick Scott (R-FL), Rick Snyder (R-MI) and John Kasich (R-OH), among others, also support the expansion, which is funded in a way to be enticing to governors of both parties. Brewer, given her office thanks to President Obama's appointment of former Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) as secretary of Homeland Security, won't be able to run for a second full term due to Arizona's term limits. (Brewer is questioning her ineligibility, but nobody we've talked to thinks she has a case.) The Republican side, led by Secretary of State Ken Bennett, is likely to feature a competitive primary; there are a number of Democrats mulling runs, too, but a field-clearer might be former Surgeon General Richard Carmona (D), who lost a competitive contest to Sen. Jeff Flake (R) last year. Carmona showed some crossover appeal by running about a point and a half ahead of Obama, although the Grand Canyon State remains considerably more Republican than some of its neighbors, such as Colorado and New Mexico, mostly because its white voters are much more Republican than the whites in those states. LEANS REPUBLICAN
Arkansas: The Democrats' chances of holding one of their last redoubts in Dixie suffered a blow when Attorney General Dustin McDaniel (D) left the race thanks to an affair. (McDaniel is hardly the first statewide Razorback to make a mockery of his marital vows.) Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R), who lost the 2006 gubernatorial race to the term-limited Gov. Mike Beebe (D), is consolidating support on the Republican side, and it appears that the state's all-Republican congressional delegation is taking a pass on the contest. There are rumors that ex-Rep. Mike Ross (D) is once again thinking about a run; when he retired before the 2012 election it was assumed he would be a candidate, but then he withdrew before reportedly reconsidering after McDaniel's implosion. Ross would make this a real race; another Democrat, such as liberal ex-Lt. Gov. Bill Halter (D), probably wouldn't. While we wait for Ross to make up his mind, Arkansas LEANS REPUBLICAN for now.
California: Democrats should waltz to another victory here, even if Gov. Jerry Brown (D) retires (he looks like he's running for another term). Republicans fret that a too-conservative, no-name challenger - such as Assemblyman Tim Donnelly - would not only lose big to Brown, but also would decimate their down-ballot prospects. That doomsday scenario could have implications for the state's U.S. House delegation, where Democrats made big advances last cycle and continue to have a handful of ripe targets. Democrats already have a super-majority in both houses of the state legislature. The decline-into-irrelevance of the once-dominant California GOP is a modern parable for Republicans. The party's hard-right positions on social issues and its lack of backing from minorities have condemned it to Whig-like status in the Golden State. SAFE DEMOCRATIC
Colorado: Boasting mile high - get it? - approval ratings, Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) appears well on his way to a second term and a possible outsider run at the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Any credible Republican challenger would probably prefer to mount a slightly less uphill battle against Sen. Mark Udall (D) as opposed to Hickenlooper. SAFE DEMOCRATIC
Connecticut: The Nutmeg State's largest newspaper, The Hartford Courant, gave a qualified thumbs-up to Gov. Dannel Malloy's (D) recently proposed budget, which boosts state aid to some educational priorities while forcing belt-tightening for the state's municipalities, hospitals and services for the poor. Republicans in the legislature, such as State House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero and State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, unsurprisingly poked holes in the plan; both are considering challenges to Malloy, and 2010 nominee Tom Foley (R) is already seeking to avenge his narrow loss to Malloy. Malloy, who is not an effective public speaker, has seen an uptick in his generally poor approval ratings in recent months, perhaps owing to a rally-round-the-flag effect from two disasters, one natural (Hurricane Sandy) and one man-made (the Sandy Hook mass shooting). We'll call this race LEANS DEMOCRATIC for now, owing to the power of incumbency and Connecticut's Democratic leanings, but Malloy should have a real race.
Florida: If he can find a winning message, Gov. Rick Scott (R) will have no problem spreading it; the wealthy health care executive-turned-governor of the nation's fourth-most populous state is reportedly planning a $100 million campaign; that's after he invested $73 million of his own money into his 2010 victory. The trouble is that finding a winning message is a big "if;" polls have repeatedly found Scott to be among the most unpopular governors in the country, which helps explain why he hardly played any role in the Sunshine State's competitive Republican presidential primary and general election contest last year. Obama's surprising victory in Florida might be seen by some as a reflection of Scott's unpopularity, although political science research has not found a compelling link between presidential results and the popularity of down-ballot officeholders. Another major "if" is whether ex-Gov. Charlie Crist (officially a "D" since December) actually decides to run for his old office, which he was elected to as a Republican in 2006. Crist recently denied rumors that he was also weighing whether to take a federal appointment from President Obama. 2010 Democratic nominee and former state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink (D) is weighing a run, although she's leaning against it at the moment as she copes with the unexpected death of her husband and political partner in December. The only significant declared challenger is ex-state Senate Minority Leader Nan Rich (D), and others, such as former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz (D), are also considering candidacies. The bottom line is this: Crist or Sink would likely get plenty of support from national Democrats, but other potential nominees might be less compelling. Depending on the opponent, this is probably the top gubernatorial race in the country, given Florida's size and swing-state status. It's worth noting that Florida's electorate was 67% white in the 2012 election, but 74% white in the 2010 midterm (when Scott beat Sink by just a point). A slightly less-white electorate probably would have elected Sink, although Scott actually won Hispanics - by two points - in 2010. (Scott won whites by 15 points.) Obama captured Hispanics by 21 points in 2012. Scott probably won't repeat his 2010 Latino feat, which ensures that this is a TOSS-UP, at best, for the disliked incumbent.
Georgia: The retirement of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) is good news for Gov. Nathan Deal (R) because it likely confines the major action - both in the primary and general election - to the Senate race in this cycle. SAFE REPUBLICAN
Hawaii: After Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) passed her over for the appointment to the late Daniel Inouye's (D) open Senate seat, Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D) is reportedly considering a primary against Abercrombie. She might be able to get some traction; despite being a Democrat in a Democratic state, Abercrombie's approval has been very weak; the Honolulu Star-Advertiser found a few days before the 2012 election that only 41% of voters approved of his performance to 48% who disapproved. His approval with voters who usually vote Democratic was only 51%. Could Republicans capitalize? Perhaps; as mentioned in our Senate update last week, ex-Rep. Charles Djou (R) is a potentially good candidate for either the gubernatorial or Senate race, and ex-Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona (R) is also sometimes mentioned, although Abercrombie drubbed Aiona by 17 points in 2010's gubernatorial race. There's a lot of uncertainty here, which is why we're calling the race LEANS DEMOCRATIC for now. In the age of Hawaiian Obama, even weak Democrats can be tough to wave bye-aloha to.
Idaho: Rep. Raúl Labrador (R) invited charges of meddling a few weeks ago when he met with some members of the Idaho legislature to voice his displeasure with Gov. Butch Otter's (R) plan to set up a state-based health insurance exchange as provided by the Affordable Care Act. Otter and his allies say that they oppose "Obamacare," but they want to set up the exchange in order to preserve local control. Labrador argues that the state should not cooperate with the act by setting up the exchange. The unusual spectacle of a sitting member of the U.S. House involving himself in state legislative matters only fueled rumors that Labrador is planning to primary Otter in 2014. Whatever happens, Democrats won't be a factor.
Illinois: Were she to become governor, the prospect of Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) and her father, long-time state House Speaker Michael Madigan (D), holding arguably the top two positions in state government is unappealing to many, although ethical concerns have stopped few from advancing in Illinois politics. (Voters don't seem to care all that much, although juries sometimes do.) In any event, we're still waiting for the gubernatorial campaign to take shape in the Land of Lincoln. Gov. Pat Quinn (D) remains deeply unpopular, and Madigan would be favored to defeat him in a primary. Ex-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, brother and son of the former Chicago mayors, is also potentially in the picture. On the Republican side, Treasurer Dan Rutherford is clearing the way to run, and Rep. Aaron Schock might not be too far behind. If Sen. Dick Durbin (D) retires, his decision could affect the lineup of candidates in the gubernatorial contest. Quinn nearly lost in 2010 to a Republican, but that was a product of an unusually Republican year and his particular weaknesses. If Quinn somehow becomes the party nominee again, he'd be vulnerable in November. Another Democrat would be favored, given the strong party leanings of the once-Republican Land of Lincoln. LIKELY DEMOCRATIC
Iowa: The Hawkeye State is another place where a competitive Senate race might take the luster off the gubernatorial contest. With his top potential challenger now running for the Senate - Rep. Bruce Braley (D) - Gov. Terry Branstad (R) is a favorite to add to his record as the nation's longest-serving governor. How much of a favorite depends on who his opponent is. Former governor and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (D) looks unlikely to return, although his wife, unsuccessful congressional candidate Christie Vilsack (D), could potentially mount a strong run statewide (she previously ruled out a Senate bid, an aide said, "because she is looking into another exciting opportunity," whatever that means). Ex-Gov. Chet Culver (D) remains unpopular, and Branstad lapped him and other potential candidates in a recent Public Policy Polling survey. LIKELY REPUBLICAN
Kansas: Gov. Sam Brownback (R) and the Kansas legislature have moved hard to the right after winning a battle with party moderates in last year's primary season, and they are now seeking to phase out the state's income tax. Democrats oppose Brownback's policies, but barring the emergence of a strong challenger or a dramatic turn in public opinion, they'll have little power to stop him. This isn't the state of Bob Dole anymore. SAFE REPUBLICAN
Maine: Gov. Paul LePage (R) is running for reelection, and independent Eliot Cutler is taking another crack at the governor's office after falling just short in a three-way race in 2010. So what do the Democrats do? Should one of their top contenders, such as Reps. Chellie Pingree or Mike Michaud or ex-Gov. John Baldacci, jump in the race? Or should they essentially just step aside for Cutler and nominate a token challenger, much like they did in the 2012 Senate race, when independent, now-Sen. Angus King was the de facto Democratic nominee? For what it's worth, Cutler did cut his teeth in politics as an aide to former Sen. Ed Muskie (D). A jumbled field is nothing new in a Maine gubernatorial race: Remarkably, a third-party candidate has won at least 9.3% of the vote in every gubernatorial election dating back to 1986. TOSS-UP
Maryland: As Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) looks ahead to a 2016 presidential run, he wouldn't want the embarrassment of seeing his office fall into Republican hands (even though the only ones likely to care are political hacks and flacks). Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown (D) is his chosen successor, although it's interesting that none of the Old Line State's lieutenant governors have ever been elected governor. OK, it's a relatively new position, and only seven people have held it since its modern creation in 1970. Attorney General Doug Gansler (D) will be a formidable foe for Brown, and state Delegate Heather Mizeur (D) and Howard County Executive Ken Ulman (D) are also possibilities; state Comptroller Peter Franchot (D) decided against a run. A Republican upset is "doable, but difficult," in the words of outgoing party Chairman Alex Mooney, and there are several potential candidates eying the race. LEANS DEMOCRATIC
Massachusetts: Republicans disappointed by ex-Sen. Scott Brown's (R) decision not to run in a special Senate election are holding out hope that Brown might instead run for governor; if he did, he would be a solid contender, as he retains strong personal favorability numbers in the Democratic Bay State, which actually has been governed by Republicans more often than Democrats over the past half-century; Republicans have held the governor's office for 26 of those 50 years. Charlie Baker, the 2010 GOP nominee, is also considering another run. On the Democratic side, Lt. Gov. Tim Murray's (D) decision not to run probably makes state Treasurer Steve Grossman (D) the favorite, but Rep. Mike Capuano (D) has floated the idea of a candidacy, as has Donald Berwick, a former Obama administration health care official. This is a TOSS-UP, but the race would probably favor a Democrat in the event that Brown - who recently signed on to Fox News as a contributor - decides not to enter the contest. Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is allowed to run for a third term, but he says he will leave office after two.
Michigan: Gov. Rick Snyder (R) - whose Twitter handle is @onetoughnerd - has worked hard to exude a wonky, post-partisan image, but he threw all that out the window after signing a bill making Michigan a right to work state after the Republican-run legislature forced the bill through in last year's lame duck session. The idea of Michigan, the one state probably most associated with unions, as a right to work state is jarring, no matter what one thinks of the merits of the policy, and the move really poisoned the well with Democrats, even if Snyder later extended an olive branch by coming out in support of Medicaid expansion in Michigan and by vetoing a concealed carry expansion that reached his desk in the wake of the Newtown shooting. That said, Democrats don't seem to have a top-tier challenger; Rep. Gary Peters (D) seems likelier to run for Senate if Sen. Carl Levin (D) retires, and state Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D) decided against running. Still, the fireworks over right to work ensures that the eventual Democratic nominee will have strong labor support, both locally and nationally. Whether that makes a difference is anyone's guess. One positive for Snyder from the right to work battle is that he probably won't face a primary challenge. LEANS REPUBLICAN
Minnesota: A dangerous opponent for Gov. Mark Dayton (D) has not yet emerged, which puts him and Sen. Al Franken (D) in the same boat: potentially vulnerable but looking good. Ex-Sen. Norm Coleman (R), while ruling out a bid to reclaim his old Senate seat, could still challenge Dayton, although Dayton leads him in some early trial heats and sports a robust 53% approval rating. If Coleman doesn't run, Dayton will probably have a pretty easy go of it. LIKELY DEMOCRATIC
Nebraska: For a state that is so one-sided politically, Cornhusker Country sure has seen a lot of political turmoil lately. Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy (R) was term-limited Gov. Dave Heineman's (R) hand-picked successor, until Sheehy was forced from the race and from his office after the revelation that he made thousands of phone calls to women on his state-issued phone. That was after another possible gubernatorial contender, Speaker of the Legislature Mike Flood (R), pulled out of the race after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. Heineman appointed University of Nebraska Regent Lavon Heidemann as his new LG, and he has pledged not to run for governor. State Sen. Charlie Janssen (R) announced a run on Monday, and we suspect others will follow, including possibly state Treasurer Don Stenberg (R), who readers might remember from several failed Senate bids. Complicating matters further was the bombshell retirement announcement from Sen. Mike Johanns (R) earlier this week, which also opens that race up to potential Republican candidates. We'll have to wait and see how this all shakes out, but the Republicans went from having a deep bench of candidates and officeholders to having a bench full of questions. However, there's not any indication at this point that the Democrats have much of a shot to capture either the Senate seat or the governor's office. For now, we're calling this race LIKELY REPUBLICAN, and in the wake of Johanns' retirement we're applying the same rating to the Senate race.
Nevada: Despite Nevada's recent lean toward Democrats at the federal level, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) is well-positioned to win reelection. PPP's first look at 2014 governor's races in November 2012 found Sandoval leading a generic Democrat 55-32, underscoring his strength in the Silver State. Sandoval is also popular with the national Republican establishment: Party officials have turned to Sandoval and his fellow Hispanic colleague Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico to improve the GOP's minority candidate recruitment as heads of the Future Majority Caucus. It remains to be seen what Nevada Democrat opts to take on Sandoval. Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto (D) is term-limited in 2014, which might push her into taking a shot at Sandoval. Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller (D) could be enticed by a gubernatorial run but it's also possible he wants to take over for Masto as AG. Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak (D) has also been mentioned as a possibility; one of Sisolak's fellow commissioners, Tom Collins (D), is running for lieutenant governor, and part of his argument is that if he were lieutenant governor, a reelected Sandoval couldn't run for Senate against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) in 2016 because a Democrat would take over the governorship if Sandoval were successful. There's one Democrat who doesn't think Sandoval will lose! LIKELY REPUBLICAN
New Hampshire: Republicans don't seem likely to make a major challenge in the Granite State, as it's historically difficult to unseat a governor after just one, two-year term. About the only plausible second-tier challenger to Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) at this point is Kevin Smith (R), a conservative activist who lost the gubernatorial primary last cycle. LIKELY DEMOCRATIC
New Jersey (2013): Gov. Chris Christie's (R) sky-high approval ratings have dissuaded all of his potential top challengers: Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) is running for the Senate, and ex-Gov. Richard Codey (D) and the leaders of the state House and Senate have all taken a pass. The challenge of staring down Christie has apparently fallen to state Sen. Barbara Buono (D), who some activists fear will be beaten so badly that her loss will harm down-ticket Democrats. As the campaign gets going, though, New Jersey's Democratic character will probably establish a decent floor for Buono, and despite sporting approval ratings in the 70s, it's highly unlikely that Christie's share of the vote will match them. LIKELY REPUBLICAN
New Mexico: Like Sandoval in Nevada, Gov. Susana Martinez (R) of New Mexico is a Hispanic Republican governor in a state that Barack Obama won in both 2008 and 2012. But over the last few years, the Land of Enchantment has moved more sharply in a Democratic direction (though it did elect Martinez in the 2010 national Republican wave), making it less safe for a Republican incumbent at the statewide level than swingier Nevada. Perhaps in recognition of this fact, Martinez recently came out in favor of a Democrat-sponsored bill that requires background checks at gun shows in New Mexico, winning plaudits from progressives in the state. It appears that Attorney General Gary King (D), the son of former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King (D), will probably challenge Martinez in 2014. He may or may not get a clear shot at the Democratic nomination. While New Mexico has become bluer, Martinez is still a relatively popular incumbent, so this race is LIKELY REPUBLICAN.
New York: We'll save a dissection of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D) time in office for 2016 presidential analysis. He's secure for a second term. SAFE DEMOCRATIC
Ohio: In proposing massive changes to the way Ohio taxes its citizens, Gov. John Kasich (R) showed his willingness to go big on policy, proving once again why his 2010 election showdown with former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) was truly a study in contrasts. Kasich proposes cuts to the state's income tax, and a lowering but broadening of the state's sales tax - extending it to apply to many services that have not previously been taxed. He's managed to upset both parties, not to mention the lobbyists of many powerful industries, whose services would also be subject to sales taxes for the first time. Democrats argue that the tax cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthy, while some Republicans bristle not only at new taxes on energy companies seeking to exploit Ohio's natural resources but also at Kasich's support of Medicaid expansion. Youthful state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R), whom readers will remember from his disastrous 2012 Senate candidacy, is among the Medicaid critics, a betrayal that Kasich's veteran political operation will long keep in mind. It's unclear what will be the fate of Kasich's far-reaching proposals. Republicans control supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, but Democrats might have a role to play in the negotiations as Kasich tries to cobble together majorities to pass his plans. With Strickland ruling out a run, the Democratic primary race probably comes down to two candidates. One is Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Executive Ed FitzGerald (D), who has hired a member of Strickland's old campaign team; and the other is Richard Cordray*, a former state treasurer and attorney general who now serves as director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray's recess appointment runs out at the end of the year, and Republicans are blocking his confirmation for a full term, at least at the moment. At this point, FitzGerald is the likelier nominee, but Cordray remains an X-factor who has made no public pronouncements about his intentions; ex-Rep. Betty Sutton (D) is also a possibility, but don't expect her to run against FitzGerald or Cordray in a primary. We seriously doubt that another name often mentioned, Rep. Tim Ryan (D), will ultimately take the plunge. Call this race LEANS REPUBLICAN at the moment. Historically, Republicans have held the Ohio governor's mansion for 34 of the past 50 years. As of a month ago, the Democratic nomination didn't look like it was worth having; it still might not be, but the budget battle could give the eventual nominee some ammunition against Kasich, who has generally been on his best behavior since a rocky 2011 but is always just one reporter's question away from a self-inflicted
Oklahoma: Gov. Mary Fallin (R) appears to be a lock for reelection in the deeply Red Sooner State. SAFE REPUBLICAN
Oregon: Should Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) choose to run again, he would be heavily favored to win a fourth term in office (he first served from 1995 to 2003 before running again in 2010). The man Kitzhaber narrowly beat in 2010, former NBA player Chris Dudley (R), has moved to California and ruled out another run. As is also the case in the state's U.S. Senate race, the lack of depth on the Republican bench may make it hard to challenge a sitting Democrat in the Beaver State. The entire West Coast (save Alaska) has become a GOP wasteland. SAFE DEMOCRATIC
Pennsylvania: A recent Franklin & Marshall College poll summed up Gov. Tom Corbett's (R) troubles in the Keystone State: With only 26% of voters saying that Corbett is doing an "excellent" or "good" job, "Corbett's job performance ratings are the lowest for a sitting governor in the [18-year] history" of the poll. Piling on, Quinnipiac recently found that only 49% of Republicans in Pennsylvania thought Corbett deserved to be reelected. Corbett's troubles may open the door for Montgomery County Commissioner Bruce Castor (R) to take on the incumbent in the GOP primary. As for the Democratic side of the aisle, numerous names have been bandied about but so far the biggest ones have yet to get into the contest. However, it looks like at least one of those major names, Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D), will soon announce a run. Other Democratic possibilities include state Treasurer Rob McCord and ex-Reps. Joe Sestak and Kathy Dahlkemper. Interestingly, since the 1940s the two major parties have consistently switched control of the governorship every eight years. While Corbett has major problems, history may be on his side since he was just elected in 2010. But these "rules" of politics get broken sooner or later, and Corbett is sorely testing this rule. TOSS-UP.
Rhode Island: The nation's lone independent governor, Lincoln Chafee, is in a precarious position due to a poor approval rating. While it appears that he will run for reelection, Chafee may have to hope for another three-way race where he ekes out a plurality like in 2010. It's becoming apparent that the name to watch in the Ocean State is state Treasurer Gina Raimondo (D). So far, Raimondo has proven herself an able fundraiser, having outdistanced possible Democratic primary opponents Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and former state Auditor General Ernest Almonte. On the Republican side, Cranston Mayor Alan Fund and Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian may both throw their hats in the ring, and 2012 RI-1 nominee Brendan Doherty hasn't ruled out a run either. With another possible three-way race (not to mention a credible fourth candidate, Moderate Party founder Ken Block, possibly running again), there's far too much uncertainty for this contest to be anything but a TOSS-UP. One other wrinkle here is that the state's entire, all-Democratic congressional delegation is hosting a fundraiser for Chafee. Might he be the de facto Democratic nominee or even run for the Democratic nomination this time around?
South Carolina: Despite the strong Republican lean of the Palmetto State, Democrats may actually have a shot of picking off a Republican incumbent here in 2014. Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has an approval rating stuck in the high 30s/low 40s, leaving her vulnerable; polling shows her 2010 opponent, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen (D), could potentially defeat her in a rematch. While it doesn't appear that she'll be challenged in the Republican primary, part of Haley's trouble lies in divisions among state Republicans, many of whom dislike the incumbent intensely. Moreover, her public record as governor hasn't been sterling. Most notably, she had to take the blame for a cyber-attack that stole the private data of millions of South Carolinians. Given Haley's troubles, but in light of the state's GOP cast, this race is rated LEANS REPUBLICAN.
South Dakota: Unlike the Senate clash in the Mount Rushmore State, the gubernatorial race should be no contest: freshman Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) is in good shape. SAFE REPUBLICAN
Tennessee: Potential Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh (D) said that he doesn't think Gov. Bill Haslam (R) "is going to lose any sleep over me." He's right. SAFE REPUBLICAN
Texas: Remarkably, Rick Perry (R) has governed Texas since late 2000, when he was promoted from lieutenant governor to replace then-President-elect George W. Bush. The longest-serving governor in Texas history, Perry might forgo the 2014 race to hold onto the mansion in order to focus on yet another presidential bid - having remembered that third thing he wanted to tell us. Yet some Austin insiders have a hard time seeing Perry give up voluntarily the job he plainly relishes, so he may well run in his fourth gubernatorial election. However, recent polling shows that a majority of Texas voters disapprove of Perry's performance, which may open the door to another Republican. That man would probably be Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), who has an enormous war chest saved up and, according to some reports, has already decided to run. Meanwhile, the incumbent recently said that Abbott agreed not to run against him, but that might just be wishful thinking on Perry's part. Should Perry and Abbott face off in a Republican primary, early polling indicates that the race would be very tight. Given how the Ted Cruz-David Dewhurst Republican Senate primary worked out in 2012, one might rather be Abbott than Perry. But however things shake out, the race is still going to be SAFE REPUBLICAN, even if the Republican primary is a TOSS-UP.
Vermont: Like neighboring New Hampshire, Vermont elects its governor every two years. Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) narrowly triumphed in 2010 (he actually had to be appointed by the state legislature because he failed to win 50%+1 of the vote) but won by more than 20 percentage points in 2012. Among the most Democratic states in the country in recent times, it's hard to see Shumlin losing barring some kind of scandal or major governmental foul-up between now and November 2014. SAFE DEMOCRATIC
Virginia (2013): The marquee gubernatorial race of the 2013 cycle is in the Old Dominion. But there won't be any primary drama here: Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) will be unopposed at the GOP state convention and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe (D) has no opponent in the Democratic primary. The real drama in this race at the moment concerns Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R). When the state GOP decided to determine the 2013 ballot slate at a convention rather than through a primary (essentially handing Cuccinelli the nomination), Bolling ended his bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. However, dissatisfaction among business Republicans and political moderates with candidates who can be easily pigeonholed as the "ideologue" (Cuccinelli) and the "party hack" (McAuliffe) has opened the door to a possible third-party run by Bolling. With Virginia's loose campaign finance rules (no contribution limits), it might only take a few financial "angels" to commit the kind of dough Bolling will need to make a credible run. Bolling is expected to announce his intentions on March 14. Historically, Virginia has not been especially kind to third-party candidates, with some notable exceptions 40 years ago, such as Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr., who was elected twice as an independent in 1970 and 1976. The last time a pure third-party candidate won more than 10% of the vote in a Virginia gubernatorial election was in 1965, when Conservative Party candidate William Story received 13%, finishing third behind Linwood Holton (R) and winner Mills Godwin (D). An independent, liberal Henry Howell, came close to being governor in 1973 as the de facto Democratic nominee, losing by just 15,000 votes out of over a million cast - but that was a very strange election held in the midst of Watergate and party realignment. More recently, the 1994 U.S. Senate race in the Old Dominion saw independent ex-Republican J. Marshall Coleman win 11% of the vote, helping incumbent Sen. Charles Robb (D) survive a challenge from controversial fire-breather Oliver North (R). Could a Bolling candidacy track more closely to Byrd and Howell than Story and Coleman? That remains to be seen. In early January, PPP found Bolling at 15% while the latest Quinnipiac poll has him at only 13%. Neither of these figures bodes well for Bolling - at least initially. But Cuccinelli and McAuliffe may be sufficiently unpalatable to large segments of the Virginia electorate to give Bolling a fighting chance. It's also unclear which party nominee Bolling's candidacy would hurt more. At first blush, one would expect a long-time Republican elected official like Bolling to damage Cuccinelli, but it's also possible that Bolling - who has been taking very moderate stands on major controversies - would siphon off lots of suburban swing voters from McAuliffe. Particularly if Bolling runs, this contest will have something for everybody, but at the moment the only rational rating is TOSS-UP.
Wisconsin: Could all be quiet on the Wisconsin front? From 2010 to 2012, the Badger State was in a constant state of political warfare - protests that occupied the state capitol, multiple state legislative recall elections, a gubernatorial recall attempt, a closely fought Senate contest and, of course, the presidential election. First elected in 2010, Gov. Scott Walker (R) survived the 2012 recall and appears to be well-positioned to win a second term in 2014. Back in November 2012, PPP found Walker leading a generic Democrat 50%-43%, and the Democrats do not yet have a candidate. A big name like former Sen. Russ Feingold (D) is unlikely to run, leaving Democrats grasping for a field marshal to lead the troops. All in all, Walker has to feel good about his chances at this point. LIKELY REPUBLICAN
Wyoming: The Republican primary in the Cowboy State will be contested because of a grudge. On Jan. 29, Gov. Matt Mead (R) signed legislation stripping the elected Superintendent of Public Instruction, Cindy Hill (R), of her powers as the state's chief education executive. A Tea Party favorite, Hill almost immediately turned around and announced a gubernatorial run to challenge Mead while also suing to regain her place. The early view is that Mead is not in any political danger but we're still a long way from 2014. SAFE REPUBLICAN | <urn:uuid:89a715f2-89f6-40d4-9ae9-dcfa9889da10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/red-alert-part-2-the-governors-90478/print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965821 | 8,571 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Dealing with Cost of Cancer Treatment for Pets
This treatment must be expensive. Does pet medical insurance cover cancer treatments? What if I don't have insurance for my pet- how do people afford this?
Christina Bach, Oncology Social Worker at Penn Medicine, responds:
Pet insurance is a fairly new and rapidly developing and changing business. There are many plans available, and almost all of them base their pricing on the age of the pet (when you purchase the plan) and pre-existing conditions. Many plans will cover the cost of chemotherapy and radiation treatments for exiting policy holders, but if your animal has already been diagnosed with cancer, likely those treatments would be excluded (for a period of time as determined by the company). The key with pet insurance is to read the policy carefully, ask questions when receiving the quote about what is excluded and be on top of claims that you do make to the company. The cost of veterinary oncology treatments can be high, so planning ahead by purchasing pet insurance when your pet is young can be beneficial, cost effective and can help ease the stress of decision making should you animal be diagnosed with cancer.
If you don't have insurance for your pet, you can apply for Care Credit (offered by many veterinary practices) or even try fundraising. There are not a lot of assistance agencies out there for veterinary cost assistance; so it's important to think outside of the box when trying to budget for care.
This question and answer was part of the OncoLink Brown Bag Chat Series. View the entire transcript from When a Beloved Pet has Cancer. | <urn:uuid:0336aa02-4f6f-46d2-9991-295b67951569> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oncolink.org/includes/print_article.cfm?Page=2&id=3171&Section=Ask_The_Experts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965147 | 324 | 1.515625 | 2 |
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — IOC leaders are meeting this week to decide which sport to drop from the Olympic program and how to deal with the fallout from the Lance Armstrong doping scandal.
At a two-day IOC executive board meeting opening Tuesday, the IOC will also review preparations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi — less than a year away — and the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, as well as select a short list of finalists for the 2018 Youth Olympics.
Modern pentathlon, a tradition-steeped contest invented by the founder of the modern Olympics, is expected to face close scrutiny when the board considers which of the current 26 summer Olympic sports to remove from the program of the 2020 Games. Taking out one sport will make way for a new sport to be added to the program later this year.
The executive board will review a report from the IOC program commission assessing each of the sports contested at last summer's London Olympics.
The report analyzes more than three dozen criteria, including television ratings, ticket sales, anti-doping policy and global participation and popularity. With no official rankings or recommendations contained in the report, the final decision by the 15-member executive board will likely be influenced by political, emotional and sentimental factors.
Among the sports considered the most vulnerable is modern pentathlon, which was created for the Olympics by French baron Pierre de Coubertin. It has been on the program since the 1912 Stockholm Games, where George S. Patton — the future U.S. Army general — finished fifth.
Modern pentathlon combines fencing, horse riding, swimming, running and shooting — the five skills required of a 19th century cavalry officer. The sport's governing body, the UIPM, has been lobbying hard to protect its Olympic status.
UIPM President Klaus Schormann said his sport has broadened its appeal with a one-day format while also upholding the traditions of the past and the legacy of De Coubertin.
"The Olympic movement always needs history," he told The Associated Press. "You cannot just say we look only at the future. You can have a future when you are stable on the basic part of history. We are continuing to develop, to renovate, to be innovative and creative. We are very proud of what we achieved so far and want to deliver this as well for the next generations in 2020."
Taekwondo, the Korean martial art that has been in the Olympics since 2000, has also been mentioned as being among the sports in potential danger. The sport introduced a new scoring system in London to eliminate judging controversies and the gold medals, previously dominated by South Koreans, were spread among eight different nations.
The future of wrestling, badminton and table tennis have also been the subject of speculation.
The last sports removed from the Olympics were baseball and softball, voted out by the IOC in 2005 and off the program since the 2008 Beijing Games. Joining the program at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro will be golf and rugby.
Baseball and softball have combined forces to seek inclusion in 2020, competing against karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu. Whichever sport is dropped Tuesday will join those seven vying for the single opening in 2020.
The IOC executive board will meet in May in St. Petersburg, Russia, to decide which sport or sports to propose for 2020 inclusion. The final vote will be made at the IOC general assembly in September in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
This week, the IOC will also discuss the crisis in cycling following the doping revelations that led to Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life from elite sports. Armstrong was also stripped by the IOC of his bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Games, though the medal has not yet been returned.
The international cycling federation, the UCI, has been in open conflict with the World Anti-Doping Agency over the terms of any "truth and reconciliation" process offering amnesties to those who come forward with information. UCI President Pat McQuaid has written all IOC members seeking their support. He also is reportedly seeking help to fund the process.
The IOC appears unlikely to get directly involved, seeking instead to encourage the UCI and WADA to work together.
"The IOC could maybe play a role as a kind of facilitator," IOC vice president Thomas Bach told the AP.
On another matter, the IOC will reduce the field of candidates for the 2018 Summer Youth Games. The five bidders are Buenos Aires; Glasgow, Scotland; Guadalajara, Mexico; Medellin, Colombia; and Rotterdam, Netherlands.
At least two are expected to make the list of finalists, with the winner to be announced in June. The first Youth Olympics were held in 2010 in Singapore, with the 2014 edition taking place in Nanjing, China. | <urn:uuid:4cd3d2b2-c8af-4a4a-86f1-ba3b2b4d2901> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/stories/IOC-set-to-cut-1-sport-from-program-of-2020-Games-,85704?category_id=57&list_type=most_commented&sub_type=stories,maps | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96637 | 1,000 | 1.609375 | 2 |
by Michael Sweeney, Professor; Associate Director for Graduate Studies
Graduate students enrolled in Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism boast an astounding 19 academic papers accepted to the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication.
Papers are double-blind reviewed, with submissions by students and professors judged without author identification.
The grad students had 14 AEJMC papers last year — and that was considered a lot at the time.
A paper by PhD student Ashley Furrow, “A Balancing Act: The Rhetorical Vision of Champion Magazine,” was named second-place student paper by the Magazine Division.
Students wrote the papers for classes or as independent study projects conducted with Scripps faculty. They will present their findings Aug. 9-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown. The Scripps School provides grants to help defray the costs of travel to the convention.
The papers accepted for presentation are:
Sagar Atre, “Pre-9/11 Stains on Pakistan’s Character: American and British Newspaper Coverage of the Kargil War of 1999.” This is a qualitative study, a textual analysis of two U.S. and two British newspapers and their coverage of the India-Pakistan War of 1999, the two countries’ first battle after acquisition of nuclear weapons. The study specifically studied the coverage of Pakistan as a representative of the Muslim world, the religion with which the West has had a turbulent relationship.
Sagar Atre, “Press Censorship of the Indian Emergency of 1975-1977: The Response of the Underground Movement.” This is a historical, qualitative study of the Indian Emergency of 1975-77, when Indira Gandhi, India’s erstwhile Prime Minister imposed an authoritarian rule with “press censorship to “maintain internal security.” The study specifically looks at the underground press and bulletins, established clandestinely all over the country by various political and social organizations, opposition leaders and social workers.
P. Vijayalakshmi, Sagar Atre, and Yusuf Kalyango, “Online Social Networking Profiles and Self-presentation of Indian Youths.” This is a quantitative study of social media profiles of Indian youths between the ages of 13 and 20. It studied aspects such as self-presentation, privacy settings and sharing activities done on these social media websites by young Indian boys and girls. Atre contributed to this paper as a research assistant to Dr. Kalyango.
Clay Carey, “Who Are Journalists? Presentation of Self on the Microblog ‘We Are Journalists.’” This textual analysis explores the presentations of self that emerge in the writings of journalists who blog at the Tumblr microblog “We Are Journalists.”
Clay Carey, “Creating Conversation: Interactivity on Community Press-Supported Facebook Pages.” This paper explores interactivity among readers who visited the Facebook pages of 10 community newspapers. it found correlations between interactivity and certain post topics as well as other aspects of Facebook posts, such as the inclusion of links.
Lena Chapin,, “Fighting to be Heard: The Homeless Grapevine’s Battle to Provide and Protect the Freedom of Speech for Cleveland’s Homeless Citizens.” In 1993, the first issue of The New Homeless Grapevine hit the streets, a place where its writers, editors and contributors felt at home. The Grapevine was the first modern street paper in Ohio. Focusing on the plight of the homeless of Cleveland, The Grapevine helped spread awareness and change throughout Cleveland and much of Ohio for more than fifteen years. One of the main goals of The Grapevine was to provide a voice for the homeless, an often marginalized and forgotten group of society. The Grapevine not only succeeded in this mission by providing an outlet for homeless individuals to voice their opinions but by defending that voice through legal battles and amplifying it to a state and national level until the end of publication in 2009.
Sally Ann Cruikshank, “A Slogan of Mockery:” Never Again and the Unnamed Genocide in Southern Sudan, 1989-2005.” This study examines how eight U.S. media outlets framed the conflict in southern Sudan. A textual analysis revealed that, contrary to previous studies concerning U.S. media coverage of Africa, southern Sudan received steady coverage. Three dominant themes emerged in the coverage: famine, slavery, and oil. Despite the details of the civil war being a veritable checklist for genocide, the media failed to realize it.
Sally Ann Cruikshank, “The Victim and the Trickster in the Other World: Myth in CNN’s Coverage of the Rwandan Genocide.” This study examined coverage of the Rwandan genocide on CNN from the start of the genocide, April 6, 1994, through the next six months. It analyzed CNN’s coverage from the perspective of myth, using three master myths, the Other World, the Victim, and the Trickster. Evidence of all three myths was found in CNN’s coverage. Rwanda was routinely depicted as a dark and forbidding place, while Rwandans themselves were portrayed as both Victims and animals, or the Trickster. The author argues that the adherence to these myths by journalists created a narrative that failed to depict the true nature of the genocide.
Sally Ann Cruikshank and Joachim Hechinger, University of Leipzig, “Covering the Veil: France 24.com and CNN.com’s Framing of the French Burqa Ban.” This study examines how France24.com and the U.S. edition of CNN.com framed France’s burqa ban, which went into effect on April 11, 2011. Results showed that both websites primarily framed the ban as a human rights issue. France 24 covered the ban in a negative tone in two-thirds of its stories, while CNN’s coverage of the issue was mainly neutral. The findings contradict the propaganda model, which suggests media coverage often reflects the policies of their government.
Jim DeBrosse, “Taking Back the Streets: A Reporter Strategy for Challenging Access Barriers at Shopping Malls.” This paper instructs journalists in ways that they can push back against restrictions on customer interviews at large regional malls and suggests how media lawyers might frame a legal challenge to access barriers by citing civil rights precedents and the growing use of public funds by private mall developers.
Jim DeBrosse, “Are Wikimedia Less Susceptible to Censorship than Mainstream Media? A Case Study Comparison of the Top 10 Censored Stories of 2010-2011.” This paper finds that, while Wikipedia and Wikinews escape the commercial pressures of private ownership, their reliance on “reliable, published sources” and their lesser valuation of alternative evidence condemn them to an unquestioning repetition of what the mainstream media and government officials have already supplied them.
Ashley Furrow, “Mary Garber: A Woman in a Man’s World.” Mary Garber was one of the first full-time sportswriters at a daily newspaper in the country and became the oldest living female sportswriter. This is the story of a female pioneer who through courage, persistence, and most importantly, a fundamental love of journalism and sports, became a trailblazer for women in her field.
Ashley Furrow, “A Balancing Act: The Rhetorical Vision of Champion Magazine.” This paper examines the rhetorical strategies employed by Champion magazine, the membership publication of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), in its quest to accomplish its mission and goals. Utilizing the critical method of fantasy theme analysis and symbolic convergence theory in the study of the text and photographs, it will explore whether a shared rhetorical community has been established within Champion magazine as well as identify four fantasy types found in the magazine’s pages.
Kerry Kubilius, “Out of the Mists of Time: Newspaper Coverage of Travel to Lithuania 1988-1993.” The paper looks at how travel to Lithuania was covered in American newspapers prior to, during, and after the struggle for independence from the Soviet Union.
Young Joon Lim and Michael S. Sweeney, “Lasting Scars of the JFK Assassination: The Tragedy and PTSD-like Trauma of Merriman Smith.” This paper uses a wealth of primary documents to argue that Merriman Smith, who witnessed the assassination of President Kennedy and saw his body at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, suffered from symptoms that match those of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Charlie Martinez, “More Diverse Images of Women Found in Smaller Niche Magazine: Diverse Feminine Images Presented in Christian Teen Magazines.” Martinez conducted a content analysis of images within Christian magazines for teenage girls and found a wider understanding of feminine beauty than is portrayed in consumer magazines for teenage girls.
Jeremy Saks, “Changes in Content Characteristics of Nontraditional Media after Partnering with Traditional News Providers.” The study is a content analysis of the website FiveThirtyEight.com examining how its content changed after it converged with The New York Times. The study found that the website changed in multiple ways after the partnership, including a smaller variety of topics, fewer authors, longer articles, and more hyperlinks and multimedia per article.
Molly Yanity, “Fine and Punishment: James Harrison, NFL fines and USA Today’s construction of black masculinity.” This is a textual analysis of USA Today’s coverage of the NFL’s fines levied to Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison for tackles deemed impermissible. The coverage appeared to construct Harrison as what the theoretical literature describes as a “bad Black man” and his tackling in criminal/racial terms.
Molly Yanity and Ashley Furrow, “Local or National?: An Examination of Fans’ Perceptions of College Football Scandal Coverage.” Two and a half years ago, the authors surveyed college football fans to learn where they go for college sports scandal coverage and what factors they consider in making the decision to turn to local or national sources. Given the onslaught of college football scandals that have shaken the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its fans in the last two and a half years, we revisited the survey. The fans’ perceptions of scandal coverage from local and national media outlets – and the difference two and a half years make – are the subject of this study.
A 20th paper co-authored by Quan Xie, a master’s student in the School of Media Arts and Studies, was written in a Scripps School graduate-level content analysis class. The paper, “Not Just a Pretty Face: Changing K-pop Idol Imagery from 2005 to 2012,” was written with PhD student Mark Walters of The University of Southern Illinois-Carbondale. Their study explored the shifting media images that Korean pop music (K-pop) idol groups. The researchers conducted a content analysis of the universe of album covers of 20 representative K-pop groups during this period of time. Five hypotheses were proposed to answer how groups’ dominant images changed from the mid-2000s to convey attractiveness to a transnational audience. The results shine a light on Westernization, Asianization, and gender presentations. | <urn:uuid:88d2852a-a4e1-4c58-a2e8-d6c60c741bbb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scrippsjschool.org/blog/post.php?postID=406&blogID= | 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 | 0.940486 | 2,375 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Slow Progress on Small Business Hiring
Small business hiring, which expanded slowly by growing 0.2 percent in May, for an annualized rate of 2.5 percent, and revenue reports are improving slightly in the United States, but more work is needed before numbers are up to pre-recession levels, according to the monthly Intuit Small Business Employment and Revenue Indexes. Revenue growth was most pronounced in retail, professional services and other services, while construction and real estate industries saw marginal growth.
On the employment side, that 0.2 percent growth translates into approximately 40,000 jobs created, although Intuit noted an impending recalibration of the Index could cause the final count to change. There was a decrease in hours worked among hourly small business employees, to an average of 106.4 hours in May, a decrease of 0.6 percent from April. Average monthly pay for all small business employees also fell, to $2,688 in May, representing a decrease of 0.13 percent, or $4, from the April revised figure of $2,692 per month.
"The employment and revenue indexes tell a consistent story," Susan Woodward, the economist who worked with Intuit to create the Intuit Small Business Indexes, said in a prepared statement. "Both indicate there is a recovery under way. We need growth at this level for two more years for small business employment to return to the level we saw in early 2007."
Revenues were flat among the health care and social services sector, along with the accommodation and food service industry. Employment grew in small businesses across the U.S., with an emphasis on the Mountain and East South Central Regions, where hiring was strongest. The top three states for small business hiring were Arizona, Colorado and Virginia, according to the report.
"The industry breakouts of the revenue indexes help us understand why the recovery is slow--construction is still far below normal," Woodward continued. "We know from other federal data as well that construction is still very depressed. Single-family construction is running about 600,000 units per year, compared to 1.5 million units per year in normal times."
The indexes provide information each month on the activity of the smallest businesses in the U.S. in terms of revenue, hiring and compensation trends. The revenue index is culled from anonymous, aggregated data from 170,000 small businesses, while the employment index aggregates data from 78,000 small business employers, a subset of users that use Intuit Online Payroll. | <urn:uuid:bdc80463-42e5-4aa7-ba5c-770729b2b7fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.baselinemag.com/print/small-and-medium-business-it/Slow-Progress-on-Small-Business-Hiring/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955656 | 514 | 1.53125 | 2 |
By Rita Henley Jensen
WeNews editor in chief
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
More than 30 organizations filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday asking it to approve a court hearing for the historically large class action by Wal-Mart employees charging company-wide sex bias.
(WOMENSENEWS)--Major women's rights groups and unions that represent many female employees joined together Tuesday, the first day of Women's History Month, to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to approve a court hearing for a group of Wal-Mart employees' claims of company-wide sex bias.
The High Court's decision could permit allegations of gender discrimination on behalf of more than one million current and former Wal-Mart female employees to go to a public trial.
A High Court ruling could also provide guidelines for other groups of employees on what is necessary for them to claim gender bias, rather than limiting the litigation and its outcomes to individuals with specific claims.
One so-called friend of the court brief filed Tuesday was written by the National Women's Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. The second was filed by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, AFL-CIO and Change to Win.
In a joint statement, the unions said, "We ask the court to uphold the fundamental pillar of the Civil Rights Act and to ensure that the class action process remains open to workers in all industries."
They were joined by 32 other organizations, including 9to5, National Association of Working Women in Milwaukee; A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center in New York; the California Women's Law Center in Los Angeles; and the Coalition of Labor Union Women in Washington, D.C.
The women's organizations brief argues that the court should approve the hearing because doing otherwise would drastically limit the ability of employees who believe they experienced sex discrimination to rely on the courts to challenge job discrimination.
It describes sex discrimination in the workplace as a "serious national problem" that can best be addressed through class actions rather than individual claims. It adds that expert evaluations indicate that across the board female Wal-Mart employees were paid as much as 15 percent less than men doing the same job.
In addition, the brief asserts that Wal-Mart relied on individual managers to make decisions about salary increases and promotions, allowing decisions influenced by "biases and stereotypes to stand without meaningful assessment or correction."
The brief quotes one Wal-Mart senior vice president saying that one female employee "should raise a family and stay in the kitchen" rather than push for career advancement.
When she complained to her supervisor, the brief says, she was told to "shrug it off."
The Supreme Court, now with a total of three female members, is likely to ask both sides to present their cases in person and then make a decision sometime before its summer recess.
This is the largest civil rights class action--as such large lawsuits are called--in U.S. history.
By Susan V. Stromberg
By Liza Featherstone | <urn:uuid:c25a0487-2ec1-44dc-9c57-77095668b416> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://womensenews.org/story/in-the-courts/110301/high-court-urged-give-wal-mart-women-hearing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958244 | 621 | 1.507813 | 2 |
How scary! Felix plunged down to Earth in a 25 mile free fall on Oct. 14, breaking the sound barrier! But before he landed, he was in a DANGEROUS ‘death spin.’
Felix Baumgartner hit mach 1.24 as he plummeted to Earth from 128,000 feet, a feat he had been planning for five years! One tiny error could have made his blood boil and his brain explode. Almost ending in tragedy, Felix was sickeningly spinning head-over-heels for minutes before regaining control of the fall — so scary.
For more than four minutes, Felix was a white speck falling through a dark sky plunging from 24.5 miles above the Earth at up to 834mph!
“In that situation, when you spin around, it’s like hell and you don’t know if you can get out of that spin or not,” Felix said about his fall.
Then, Felix’s parachute opened and five minutes later he successfully landed on the ground having made the highest and fastest skydive in history!
After the fall he said, “Trust me, when you stand up there on top of the world, you become so humble. It’s not about breaking records any more. It’s not about getting scientific data. The only thing you want is to come back alive.”
We’re so happy Felix made it out alive — and broke records in the process!
Are you surprised he succeeded, HollywoodLifers? | <urn:uuid:f622c3a2-d664-4852-b618-e9217d58eee2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/10/15/skydive-from-space-felix-baumgartner-death-spin/ | 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 | 0.94245 | 325 | 1.6875 | 2 |
TV and Twitter in Tandem
For a decade, fans of the CBS reality show Survivor were forced to rely on glossy magazines and online extras for inside information on their favorite players. That is until 2011, when the show's host, Jeff Probst, began using Twitter to provide real-time commentary as each episode aired.
Fans watching Survivor with a laptop or tablet in hand can now get an insider's view of life on the island — and pose their most burning questions directly to Probst. (Do the girls ever get to shave? No.) Through Twitter, fans are even influencing the show's format and direction. In one off-the-cuff tweet, Probst asked followers which departed contestant they'd like to see return. Response was so enthusiastic that producers invited the clear favorite, Ozzy Lusth, back for the next season.
Twitter has also made the viewing experience more immediate and interactive. Survivor fans no longer have to wait until morning to rehash each episode around the water cooler. Through Twitter, they can discuss the show's most memorable moments as they happen and with thousands of fellow viewers. They've become part of one of media's biggest movements — social television.
The Rise of Tweet TV
To the uninitiated, chatting online while trying to follow a TV program may sound like a recipe for migraines. However, if you've ever texted your commentary to a friend during the Academy Awards or Super Bowl, you've already engaged in a bit of social TV. Twitter takes this interaction a step further by allowing you to weigh in, not just to your friends, but to a global audience.
Because tweets are limited to 140 characters, the service lends itself to rapid-fire, real-time chatting about programs in progress. As of December 2011, Twitter users were generating about seven million television-related tweets per day.
The TV-Twitter marriage shows every sign of lasting bliss. To date, all five of the busiest moments in Twitter history correlate with great moments in television. When the anime film Castle in the Sky screened on Japanese TV last December, it set a new record by garnering 25,088 Twitter mentions per second. At a distant second sits Super Bowl XLVI, subject of 10,245 tweets per second during its final moments. Rounding out the top five list are Madonna at the Super Bowl, Tim Tebow's Win, and Beyonce at the VMAs.
Technology gurus agree that tweet-able TV is a phenomenon to watch. MIT Technology Review recently ranked social television among the 10 most important emerging technologies, while Wired editor, David Rowan, listed it among the top six tech trends of 2011.
Networks Take Note
Savvy media executives know that today's TV viewers expect to interact with the programs they love. There is also emerging evidence that social media buzz draws in new viewers. Research by NM Incite found that in the weeks leading up to a show's premiere, a 9 percent increase in social media chatter correlated with a 1 percent increase in ratings. Advertisers are also drawn to oft-tweeted programs because fans enjoy watching them in real time — commercials and all. TV networks encourage tweeting through a variety of methods:
Onscreen hashtags - Many programs adopt a dedicated Twitter handle (#Oscars, #Glee, #Bones) and display it in the bottom corner of the screen. By plugging the hashtag into Twitter's search feature, fans can connect with others who are chatting about the program.
Live tweeting - Fans aren't the only ones tweeting about their favorite shows. TV personalities like Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) and Masi Oka (Hawaii 5-0) have used Twitter to provide live, behind-the-scenes commentary as their programs air. The reality show, The Voice, takes this concept a step further by displaying the judges' tweets onscreen in real time.
Interactive reporting - Turn on any talk or news program these days, and you'll hear not only the story of the day but what viewers have to say about it. During the 2011 wedding of Prince Charles and Kate Middleton, for example, ABC encouraged viewers to weigh in using the Twitter hashtags #RoyalSuccess and #RoyalMess. The most popular tweets were shared on air.
Social TV websites - Some networks have created companion websites to encourage tweeting. Visitors to HBO Connect and Bravo Tweet Tracker can access live Twitter feeds for every show in the lineup as well as real-time visualizers that show what fans are buzzing about. The companion site for the 2011 Video Music Awards included an interactive seating chart that showed which stars in the audience were tweeting and what they were saying.
Social TV is a relatively new phenomenon, and the networks are eager to push its limits. Fan feedback on Twitter is now used to judge reality shows, gauge the effectiveness of ads, and source questions for the presidential primary debates. In the near future, Twitter feedback may shape the story lines and outcomes of our favorite shows. While not everyone may be thrilled with tweet-able TV, the idea seems here to stay. And as multitasking in front of the TV goes, it sure beats folding socks.
Ready, Set, Tweet!
Ready to join the Twitter conversation about your favorite show? Here are four simple ways to get started:
1. Follow the stars. Many actors, show hosts, and news anchors are regular tweeters. To add them to your feed, log into your Twitter account, type a name into the search box, and click "follow" next to the appropriate account.
2. Surf show sites. Many program sites list their usernames (@TrueBloodHBO) and popular hashtags (#TrueBloodQuotes, #TBWithdrawal) to encourage conversation. Some sites will also announce live chats and other Twitter-related promotions.
3. Ask around. In deciding whom to follow, 69 percent of Twitter users say friends are a major influence. Ask your pals which shows spark lively Twitter conversations and which stars are most engaging online.
4. Check the screen. During a program, networks often display relevant usernames and hashtags onscreen. Commercials may also plug the show's Twitter presence. | <urn:uuid:1952555e-6ede-475a-ac70-415226308b0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://websitecompass.com/07t-ndtc/index.php?body=magazine/1203ic.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940261 | 1,262 | 1.78125 | 2 |
“Where does the city without gates begin? Perhaps inside that fugitive anxiety, that shudder that seizes the minds of those who, just returning from a long vacation, contemplate the imminent encounter with mounds of unwanted mail or with a house that’s been broken into and emptied of its contents. It begins with the urge to flee and escape for a second from an oppressive technological environment, to regain one’s senses and one’s sense of self.”
--from Lost Dimension
Originally written in French in 1983, Lost Dimension remains a cornerstone book in the work of Paul Virilio: the one most closely tied to his background as an urban planner and architect, and the one that most clearly anticipates the technologically wired urban space we live in today: a city of permanent transit and internalized borders, where time has overtaken space, and where telecommunications has replaced both our living and our working environments. We are living in the realm of the lost dimension, where the three-dimensional public square of our urban past has collapsed into the two-dimensional interface of the various screens that function as gateways to home, office, and public spaces, be they the flat-screen televisions on our walls, the computer screens on our desktops, or the smartphones in our pockets.
In this multidisciplinary tapestry of contemporary physics, architecture, aesthetic theory, and sociology, Virilio describes the effects of today’s hyperreality on our understanding of space. Having long since passed the opposition of city and country, and city and suburb, the speed-ridden city and space of today are an opposition between the nomadic and the sedentary: a web of interactive, informational networks that turn our world into a prison-house of illusory transcendence.
About the Author
Paul Virilio was born in 1932 and has published a wide range of books, essays, and interviews grappling with the question of speed and technology, including Speed and Politics, The Aesthetics of Disappearance, and The Accident of Art, all published by Semiotext(e). | <urn:uuid:a33249c6-de83-498f-8053-20b977e6b4ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mitpress.mit.edu/books/lost-dimension-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937925 | 427 | 1.734375 | 2 |
LYING BY OMISSION: Mark Twain once said: “Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.” Today’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer (aka Los Angeles Times) pays tribute to Twain’s wisdom in its stories about yesterday’s Miranda decision.
The decision held that police did not deprive Oliverio Martinez of a constitutional right when they interrogated him without first reading him his Miranda rights. Martinez was riding a bike and was stopped by Oxnard police officers conducting a drug investigation. They frisked him and found a knife. Then there was an altercation, which ended up with Martinez getting shot multiple times. A supervising officer thought Martinez might die, and wanted to get his side of the story. So he followed Martinez to the hospital, and asked Martinez questions about what had happened while Martinez writhed in pain. Martinez was never charged with a crime, but he sued the police department for the shooting — and for asking him questions without first reading him his Miranda rights.
The parties disputed why Martinez was shot. Police claim Martinez pulled an officer’s gun from its holster and pointed it at them, so they shot him. Martinez says he never touched the gun. The police have one fairly major thing favoring their version: in a tape-recorded interview, Martinez admitted he pulled the gun on the officers. As you can learn from reading the opinion itself here, Martinez “admitted that he took the gun from the officer’s holster and pointed it at police.” (Page 2 of the opinion.)
But you will search our local Dog Trainer in vain for any mention that Martinez admitted pulling the gun on officers. In the main story covering the case, David Savage describes the interrogation — but never once mentions Martinez’ admission.
This omission, which seems merely surprising in Savage’s story, becomes shockingly dishonest in the context of the companion piece — a slavishly favorable portrait of Martinez titled It’s ‘Just Wrong,’ Says the Plaintiff. The sub-head reads: “Oliverio Martinez is blind and paralyzed, and lives in a cramped trailer. He attributes his problems to his shooting by Oxnard police.” You can get the flavor of this puff piece from the following quotes:
“Oliverio Martinez hadn’t yet heard the news about his case, but that was no surprise. . . . He lives a world away from the marble chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court. He doesn’t have a phone, or even a bathroom. With his father, Oliverio Sr., he resides in a dark, cramped trailer about the size of a suburban walk-in closet, a dilapidated tin box outside Camarillo beside the strawberry fields he had worked for the better part of 20 years. . . . Martinez, 35, is blind and paralyzed. His prospects shrank dramatically one November night in 1997 when he was shot five times by Oxnard police. . . . Celebrating his father’s birthday, Martinez planned to go out with [his girlfriend] tonight, perhaps for seafood. . . . She will give Martinez’s father a shirt and a pair of pants. Martinez will give him the only gift he said he could afford — a hug.”
What a great guy, huh? The story makes Martinez sound almost like a saint — by carefully omitting any hint that maybe he brought this on himself by grabbing a policeman’s gun and pointing it at him. This is a fact that the Dog Trainer editors don’t want you to know. So, they just don’t tell you. The deception is breathtaking.
UPDATE: I thought I’d plumbed the depths of the Times‘s lies on this issue, but that’s because I hadn’t read their editorial titled Justice Takes a Beating, which contains the following bald-faced lie: “In the end, the officers got nothing useful from Martinez and never charged him with a crime.” Nothing useful — other than what the Supreme Court described as an admission that he had pulled the officer’s gun and pointed it at police! | <urn:uuid:d8687399-b7ff-4b24-86f0-eedc7fba6e57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://patterico.com/2003/05/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972393 | 864 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Princeton's phone app provides mobile resource
Posted December 1, 2010; 01:07 p.m.
Students and visitors to Princeton's campus looking for everything from course schedules to University news and events can finally say there's an app for that.
Princeton's Office of Information Technology (OIT) has launched iPrinceton, a free smartphone mobile application that comprises a diverse suite of 10 interactive features. These include a complete faculty and student directory, information and news about Princeton athletics, a University events calendar, a course catalog and descriptions, a detailed campus map, University videos, news, and images, as well as a full library catalogue and a link to Princeton's social media pages.
The University's free smartphone mobile application, iPrinceton, offers a diverse suite of 10 interactive features to meet the needs of students, alumni, prospective students and their families and visitors to campus.
Images courtesy of Office of Information Technology
"We felt this app was very important for the University, and we worked with offices across campus to create it," said Serge Goldstein, associate chief information officer and director of academic services at OIT, adding that the app will be a useful resource not only for Princeton students, but also alumni, prospective students and their families. "This is becoming a very common trend in higher education, and schools that have already done this have received great feedback."
Each of the app's 10 features, or modules, offer a diverse range of functions to meet the needs of visitors to campus, and individuals with a general interest in the University.
The course catalogue provides a full listing of every course from the University registrar's website, sorted by category -- engineering, freshman seminars, humanities, interdisciplinary programs, natural sciences, social sciences and writing seminars -- all of which are then subdivided into course topics. Within each category, users can view every course offered for the most current semester, along with a detailed course description, the days on which it is held, the number of sections (if applicable), the name of the instructors and its location on campus.
The athletics module is organized by each of the University's varsity sports teams, with subdivisions for men's and women's where applicable. Within each sport tab, users can access a regularly updated news feed about that particular team, as well as the current season's schedule and scores.
The videos module brings users to Princeton's YouTube page, where users can watch a wide variety of content, including student- and faculty-produced videos, as well as features showcasing University events such as Reunions and Commencement. Moreover, the still photography feature enables potential students and visitors to take a virtual tour of the campus' most attractive buildings and grounds, as well as browse for photos of activities and events held on campus.
For those looking to keep up with current Princeton news and events, the news module will provide users with updated content from the University's home page. This will include top news, feature stories and featured events. Users also can search within the news module for keywords or topics.
The course catalog on iPrinceton (pictured at left) provides a full listing of every course from the University registrar's website, sorted by category, while a news feed from the University's home page provides top news and featured stories and events (at center). The app also includes a complete directory.
The evolution of iPrinceton was a cooperative venture between OIT and Blackboard Mobile Central, a San Francisco-based technology design firm that previously has helped develop smartphone applications for universities that include Duke, Stanford and MIT.
Also instrumental in the app's development was Ryan Irwin, a member of the class of 2010. According to Goldstein, Irwin grew up with the group of young men who eventually went on to form Blackboard Mobile, and this summer Irwin worked with the Blackboard team in California to help facilitate the execution of iPrinceton.
"He was able to show us test builds of several different apps and to let us know what we could expect from iPrinceton," Goldstein said of Irwin's contributions.
A full library catalog is included among the features of iPrinceton.
Several University departments also played an integral role in providing OIT with much of the app's content. For example, all course data was supplied by the registrar's office, while the University's Office of Communications provides the app's videos, campus images and news feed.
Goldstein said this is just the first phase of iPrinceton's development, adding that the app eventually will include logistical information about Reunions and Commencement while also expanding with features such as real-time campus bus locations, library book reservations and health services information.
During a "soft launch" testing phase begun in early September, more than 2,000 users downloaded the app. Currently, iPrinceton is available for the iPhone via the iTunes App Store and for the BlackBerry through the BlackBerry App World store, and soon will be made available for additional devices -- such as the Android and iPad.
A detailed campus map with street and building names (pictured at left) helps visitors navigate the campus using their mobile device. The separate athletics module (center) is organized by each of the University's varsity sports teams and allows users to access a regularly updated news feed, as well as schedules and scores. In addition, the app's University events calendar feature is a resource for keeping up with events on campus (at right). | <urn:uuid:3b5822b6-41db-46f0-9c00-c4cf5c67634b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S29/12/15A85/index.xml?from=2004-08-01&to=2004-09-01 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951853 | 1,107 | 1.710938 | 2 |
At a recent networking day for Facilitators, we discussed a perpetual topic – innovation. This is an area that can often be confusing and lacks tangible meaning to groups. The main questions we asked each other were:
What is innovation?
How does innovation differ between groups?
Where are the different areas for innovation in the project lifecycle?
Innovation is the introduction of new ways of doings things, something different, something unconventional, something exciting!
We have already seen good examples of innovation in Community Spaces projects, but we want to know things that you have done or seen that deserve recognition and should be shared. Your examples could be from any part of the project process: how you tendered; use of social media; a specific consultation event; the sustainability grant; the launch event; and, of course, the project itself.
Some examples that have already featured on our blog are:
We want to share your experiences to help ensure all project offer something different and promote innovation throughout Community Spaces. Let us know your innovative examples. | <urn:uuid:fbe4b71f-0fd5-4c2d-9baa-0b654805a7be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.community-spaces.org.uk/2010/09/02/what-is-innovation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934154 | 213 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Mitt Romney has been trying so hard to say things that Israelis agree with that he’s been saying things not all Israelis agree with.
Take Iran. Mr. Romney pretty much said that an air strike is the first option to keep the Iranians from building a nuclear bomb. But Shaul Mofaz, the former defense minister and leader of the conservative Kadima Party, has cautioned against an attack at this time.
So has former Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
Then Mr. Romney ventured into economics, supposedly firmer ground for him. Comparing Israel to the Palestinian territories, Mr. Romney said the vast economic difference is due largely to ‘culture,’ clearly implying that Arabs – or Muslims, take your pick – aren’t capable of, or interested in developing a modern economy.
As Palestinians and others quickly pointed out, Israel itself is a main reason why outside groups believe that the Palestinian economy isn’t ready to support an independent state.
Since the Six Day War of 1967, Israel has controlled access to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied for these 45 years since seizing it from Jordan and where most Palestinians live. Israel withdrew completely from Gaza seven years ago, but still controls access to that Palestinian territory.
Certainly, the Palestinian leadership has used Israel as a way to shift attention from its own failures. But both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have called Israel’s blockade the main cause of the Palestinians’ frail economy.
Israel argues that it must maintain some control for security reasons until establishment of a Palestinian state.
What do you think? Is Mitt Romney correct that ‘culture’ explains the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians? Take our poll and/or leave a comment. | <urn:uuid:5627b1d4-bb70-47e1-90b0-1b8dbba6b958> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.palmbeachpost.com/opinionzone/tag/palestinians/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954043 | 357 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Wabaskang Lake is fifteen miles long, and is like four small lakes in one. (see lake
map) Each is separated by a small narrows. At the north end of the lake is a short portage will
take you into Wine Lake (Walleye & Lake Trout) or to the Seven Foot falls on the English River Chain.
Here you can stand on shore and cast into the fast moving water below the falls for some excellent
Walleye fishing. Going to the South end of the lake takes you to the Keynote Lake. (Walleye,
Northern Pike & Perch) There is no portage here, a narrow winding river takes you from Wabaskang
into Keynote Lake. Just the boat ride down is well worth it, with the rock walls and winding river.
Wabaskang Lake is made up of many islands, sand bars, rock shelves and weed beds, which make for
For the adventurous we also have boats on out lakes that you can drive to, or we can arrange for a
one day fly in trip to a remote lake. | <urn:uuid:35988f22-b7f5-427d-b8f3-b80fdc9b4d38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gawleysparkviewcamp.com/lake.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943132 | 230 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Microsoft Corp chief executive Steve Ballmer has signalled a new direction for the world’s largest software company, pointing to hardware and online services as its future, taking a page from long-time rival Apple Inc.
Ballmer’s comments in his annual letter to shareholders published
on Tuesday suggested that Microsoft may eventually make its own phones to build on its forthcoming own-brand Surface tablet PC and market-leading Xbox gaming console.
“There will be times when we build specific devices for specific purposes, as we have chosen to do with Xbox and the recently announced Microsoft Surface,” wrote Ballmer.
The new approach mimics Apple Inc, whose massively successful iPhone and iPad demonstrated tight integration of high-quality software and hardware and made Windows devices feel clunky in comparison.
Alongside the shareholders’ letter, Microsoft’s annual proxy filing, showed that Ballmer, got a lower bonus than he did last year, partly for flat sales of Windows and his failure to ensure that the company provided a choice of browser to some European customers.
He earned a bonus of $620,000 for Microsoft’s 2012 fiscal year, which ended in June, down 9% from the year before.
His salary, which is low by US standards for chief executives, remained essentially flat at $685,000. | <urn:uuid:aac1fbf8-aee2-470b-b3b2-23a01c39df00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology/Technology-IndustryTrends/Microsoft-strategy-now-mimics-Apple-Ballmer-memo-reveals/SP-Article1-942723.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959062 | 272 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.
SOURCE Tribeca Flashpoint Academy
First Lady Michelle Obama awards students from Tribeca Flashpoint Academy and Northwestern University, developers of groundbreaking new smartphone game, Jungo.
CHICAGO, March 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- This weekend, the student game developers of Chicago-based tech start-up JiveHealth are returning from an amazing spring break. But instead of sun burns as souvenirs, they're bringing home $10,000, a ton of expert business advice, and the First Lady's blessing of their new smartphone game aimed at fighting childhood obesity.
This week, Tribeca Flashpoint Academy students Nathan Wangler and Hailey Schmidt and Northwestern University student Dennis Ai attended the Building a Healthier Future Summit in Washington D.C., where they treated a panel of judges and Mrs. Obama to a demonstration of their new game, Jungo.
"The game is all about augmentation, and it's all about changing childhood [eating] behaviors in small ways," said game designer Wangler. "Some items, like apples, only exist in the real world. To get this upgrade, your child will have to go to the supermarket or refrigerator, find an apple, and take a picture of it. Our game's algorithm digitalizes their photo into a virtual apple which she then is able to upgrade her character with."
Jungo took home first prize, winning business advice from marketing expert Mark Hass (Edelman US), business strategist Vivian Riefberg (McKinsey & Company), and entrepreneur Steve Krein (StartUp Health); plus $10,000 to help them get their new business off the ground.
"To have this opportunity is more than I could have ever asked for," said Schmidt, the game's artist. "To work on something that I actually really wanted to work on from the start of even considering to be a game artist is absolutely incredible."
About Tribeca Flashpoint Academy
A venture with Robert De Niro's Tribeca Enterprises, Tribeca Flashpoint Academy is one of the nation's most well-respected digital and media arts colleges-offering a progressive training model that erases the boundaries between education and the professional world by exposing students to real-world, industry experiences and state-of-the-art software and equipment beginning their first semester on campus.
JiveHealth is designing games (for iOS, Android, and Windows) to engage kids and help them build healthy eating habits through experiential learning. Their first game will be released in summer 2013.
©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:fdec7bcb-b96b-4762-aa2c-067a47584d6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.knoe.com/story/21653227/chicago-student-game-developers-win-top-prize-at-washington-dc-summit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949418 | 575 | 1.578125 | 2 |
May 26, 2006
The Lost House
Poem: "The Lost House," by David Mason, from Arrivals. © Story Line Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
The Lost House
A neighbor girl went with me near the creek,
entered the new house they were building there
with studs half-covered. Alone in summer dark,
we sat together on the plywood floor.
The shy way I contrived it, my right hand
slipped insinuatingly beneath her blouse
in new maneuvers, further than I planned.
I thought we floated in the almost-house.
Afraid of what might happen, or just afraid,
I stopped. She stood and brushed the sawdust off.
Fifteen that summer, we knew we could have strayed.
Now, if I saw it in a photograph,
I couldn't tell you where that new house stood.
One night the timbered hillside thundered down
like a dozen freight trains, crashing in a flood
that splintered walls and made the owners run.
By then I had been married and divorced.
The girl I reached for in unfinished walls
had moved away as if by nature's course.
The house was gone. Under quiet hills
the creek had cut new banks, left silt in bars
that sprouted alder scrub. No one would know,
cruising the dead-end road beneath the stars,
how we had trespassed there so long ago.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of poet and novelist Maxwell Bodenheim, born in Hermanville, Mississippi (1892). His family was among the only Jews in rural Mississippi, and after his father's store went bankrupt his family moved to Chicago. He became friends with the poet Carl Sandburg and published his first poems in Poetry magazine. He published many books of poetry in the 1920s, including Against This Age (1923), and he wrote several best-selling erotic novels, including Replenishing Jessica (1925) and Naked on Roller Skates (1930).
It's the birthday of Robert W. Chambers, (books by this author), born in Brooklyn, New York (1865). He was one of the most popular writers of the early twentieth century. He's best known as the author of supernatural tales like those in his book of short stories The King in Yellow (1895).
It was on this day in 1521 that Martin Luther was declared an outlaw by the Edict of Worms, (books by this author). The edict made Luther more of a hero than he already was, and it's a big reason that Protestantism caught on so quickly.
Luther decided to become a priest after getting caught out in a thunderstorm one night. He swore to God that if he survived he would enter the religious life. He did survive, and he went on to study theology, become ordained, and get a job as a professor in Wittenberg. As he became more and more involved in the Church he began to grow disgusted with some of its practices. He was especially angry about the Church's sales of indulgences, which were said to decrease the time a person had to spend in purgatory.
On the eve of All Saints' Day in 1517, Luther nailed to the door of his church ninety-five theses attacking the sale of indulgences and other excesses of the church. They were originally written in Latin, but they became so popular that people demanded they be translated into German, and so they were. Hundreds of copies were printed up on a printing press, which was still a fairly recent invention, and Luther's message spread throughout Germany and Europe.
Religious leaders and politicians began to realize how dangerous he was becoming to the traditional church, and in April of 1521, a group of Roman princes pressured Emperor Charles V into forming an assembly in the city of Worms to try to get Luther to reject his writings.
On his trip to Worms, Luther was celebrated as a hero at most of the towns he passed through. He refused to recant and went back to Wittenberg to start the reformation.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | <urn:uuid:ceb2b894-e1ee-4f83-893e-8751f3014bb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2006/05/26 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986707 | 883 | 1.828125 | 2 |
All the scarecrows I know are good at singing and dancing — and eventually — math equations. And like a good English noun, their name explains their function. They scare crows. Songs, math, and directions back to Kansas are frills.
But Brooklyn always has a different take on the usual. Recently, from the windows of a friend’s house in Williamsburg, I enjoyed seeing what we’ve come to call The Urban Scarecrow. Or shall we say, The Scarepige?
These are two beautiful urban backyards where the owners have been planting for decades. The plastic bags are used to scare away pigeons. I’m told the birds go after the tomato plants, but as you’ll see in the photo below, the spooky bags have them dining elsewhere.
Happy Monday in another lovely week of summer! | <urn:uuid:59da32b3-5766-4d11-96d0-9831e09838e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://groundswellblog.wordpress.com/tag/williamsburg/ | 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 | 0.948947 | 177 | 1.679688 | 2 |
20th Century Paintings
Landscape, still life, figurative, and portrait paintings by over 40 listed artists sample the best in American and European impressionism and post-impressionism. All pieces are signed, framed, and ready to hang.
O‘Dunn Fine Art represents select mid-career and established painters in oil, pastel, acrylic, and watercolor. Each piece is hand-picked to showcase the style and virtuosity of the artist. California landscapes, as well as portraits, seascapes, and florals, have been beautifully rendered by these artists.
STANISLAUS J. SOWINSKI known as "Stan" to friends and family, was born in Milwaukee in 1927, and died at his home in Rancho Bernardo in January, 2010.
Stan studied art in Milwaukee before joining the Navy in 1945 and painted during his entire 26-year military career. Retiring in 1971, Stan painted, taught art courses, exhibited and completed many special commissions in the San Diego area. Recent installations include a 6' X 18' oil diptych for UCSD, and altar design plus five large oil paintings, for Saint Mary's Church in Escondido, CA.
Stan Sowinski was an accomplished painter, iconographer, illustrator and teacher. He is listed in AskArt, and Davenport's Guide, and is included in the International Who's Who, Who's Who in the West, Who's Who in American Art, and Falk's Who Was Who in American Art.
WADE CLINE specializes in moody urban scenes of San Diego, with mid-century architecture, rainy streets, eateries, and that low energy time right at dusk. Influenced by Wayne Thiebaud and Edward Hopper, he has exhibited at the Crocker and Barrios art galleries in Sacramento, the Pratt and La Jolla Artists' galleries in San Diego, and in "Art Alive" at the San Diego Museum of Art.
"Painting the environment that we're inured to sharpens our confusion, for better or worse. Cline's diffusing fog and obscure streets, his private no traffic time of day, his candor on how difficult it is to get any scene onto canvas- all replicate the doubt that artists (certainly the best ones) face in the fire of creation".
Thomas Larson, "Last Light", in the The San Diego Reader, August 26th, 1999.
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ "mixes memory, reality and imagination in his paintings to create something extraordinary" (Artworks Magazine, Spring 2011). In his younger years, he worked in pen and ink at a mapmaker's. His watercolors and acrylic pieces, strong on line, narrative, and saturated color, are built on the bones of extraordinary draftsmanship. Miguel has had covers on Artist's Magazine, SouthwestArt, and American Artist Watercolor Magazine. O'Dunn Fine Art is proud to be the only gallery in Southern California representing Miguel Dominguez.
RICHARD MCDANIEL is a visual arts virtuoso. He paints in oils and pastels, and has published four “how-to” art books, including On Location: Plein Air Painting in Pastel and Landscape: A Comprehensive Guide to Drawing and Painting Nature. Richard is a signature member of the Pastel Society of America and an elected member of Oil Painters of America. He holds the MFA from Notre Dame, and taught at Woodstock School of Art for 17 years. O‘Dunn Fine Art has several of Richard‘s iconic images of his beloved wine country, in both pastels and oils.
You may have already met plein air painter PAUL STRAHM, working at his easel in some scenic local spot. Paul's vivid, internationally collected oil paintings thoughtfully capture the mood, landscape, lifestyle and people of California, in Europe, and wherever he paints. Owning one of these wonderful images will pull you into the scene again and again, as Paul's evocative visual sense of place translates to an actual experience of the site.
Paul holds the BFA in painting from Youngstown State University, Ohio, and is affiliated with Oil Painters of America and several other arts organizations.
John Titus Krempel is a painter, photographer and digital artist. Influenced by the 20th century San Francisco abstract expressionist movement, Mr. Krempel incorporates the beauty of natural and manmade landscapes into his work. John has been featured in dozens of bay area shows, and is the founder of the Temporary Artists Group, which brings new artists to the community. With degrees in both the arts and psychology, his paintings dance at the interface of the physical and psychological worlds.
Native San Diegan S. C. Mummert spent decades helping to build his family business, while painting nights and weekends, and occasionally doing a stint as a courtroom artist for NBC. He now paints full time, focusing on plein air landscapes and figurative work.
Teri Gortmaker, a signature member of the Pastel Society of America, has exhibited with the Salmagundi Art Club, Knickerbocker Artists and the International Association of Pastel Societies. She's an associate member of Women Artists of the West and the American Impressionist Society. For more on Teri, see this article in the February 2011 issue of The Pastel Journal.
W. Jason Situ was born in 1949 in Guang Dong, China. He began painting during China's "Cultural Revolution" and completed his art education at the Guangzhou Fine Arts Institute, one of Chinas's most prestigious and competitive art academies. In 1989, Situ emigrated to the United States. Fascinated by the California landscape, he soon focused on plein air painting. A full time artist since 1997, Jason is a Signature Member of the California Art Club, Oil Painters of America, Laguna Beach Plein Air Painters, and Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters.
W. Jason Situ's work "A Quiet Evening" is a featured piece in the
California Art Club Exhibit SAVING PARADISE
Joe Bonomo's paintings come from the eyes of a lifetime immersed in the lives of people and the impact they leave. Bonomo paints the figure and portrait with a strong, balanced palette, and his energetic brush and palette work speak to the passion he brings to figure painting. Joe lives and paints in Colorado Springs. | <urn:uuid:614f58e0-f0ae-4b7a-8924-323f6c40933b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.odunnfineart.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960626 | 1,342 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Pick Up The Pace And Gamble!
Gambling is a fast paced gaming lifestyle! Nowhere in the world can one find any sport that could be as addictive and as challenging yet exciting than gambling. The world of gambling is indeed a very open world or society that virtually embraces anyone from any country, race, sex or color. To a casino, these things dont matter as long as the gamblers play by two main rules : play hard and play fast!
By playing hard, it means that the person gambling puts their whole being into the game and loses themselves into the game spirit. Players who play hard demand the mostof the game, what the game entails but more importantly, how the game can challenge them into playing their best. Some people think playing hard is having only a very limited budget but loosely it can imply how the player participates and interacts with the game.
Gambling is an interactive thing. It is not like a movie wherein the person is a passive player or a watcher. In gambling, there is a give and take with the game itself and the player. Gambling demands the participation and energy of the person to fuel the game and this keeps the "dance" going on for a longer time.
While that may be playing hard, playing fast means making quick choices or decisons in the game. Most games rely on the basic gut instinct of the player and often relies on the gut instinct of the player to make the choice. Sometimes tha choices made are not educated ones thats why it is seen as a "gut feel". In the gut feel, the player has a tugging or an inclination on the direction one has to make.
Often, many winning players attribute their wins to something into this effect. They claim that something makes them stay for the extra hand or to make sudden calls or draws in the game or even shift games or tables every how many hours or minutes. Clearly, normal scientific means may not reveal the source of these "tuggings" but many people swear by it.
It is very interesting to note that despite the speed andintensity of gambling, people simply love it and this love for the game or the mere thrill is what keeps thwe casinos over flowing with people all the time. So the next time that a feling comes over you or another player in a game, one shouldnt ignore it but follow its beat! | <urn:uuid:b3037870-9839-4663-852d-74c71e7805cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thgamblingsource.com/pick-up-the.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969168 | 481 | 1.6875 | 2 |
For those of you who like musicals, you’ll appreciate the clip above. A Tale of Two Cities had a brief stint on Broadway.
On to the homework….Compare and contrast the conditions in London and Paris in the novel with the current American economy. Are there many similarities? What is the attitude of the rich vs. the poor?
Have a good weekend!Filed under Senior Blog | Comments (22) | <urn:uuid:a3887d0c-2f12-485b-9fb4-54ab29d295b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tcbush.edublogs.org/2008/12/12/monseigneur-in-detroit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946605 | 87 | 1.53125 | 2 |
View Full Version : Room (Lighting study)
06-29-2006, 10:22 AM
This is a lighting study im doing.
Done in XSI and Mental Ray, comped in Fusion. No GI/FG.
Still needs more work. Needs more high frequency details. Lighting wise im quite happy.
Its based on the fantastic concept work of Gary Tonge.
Heres a link to his concept:
06-29-2006, 10:51 AM
Yep, very nice lighting (esp. for not using GI/FG). Maybe the blur (in post?) is a bit too much?
06-29-2006, 11:54 AM
Hey Dan -
That looks great! (That scene would actually make a good lighting challenge. ;) )
It sure doesn't look like it needs much work, I'd think just a few tweaks. I agree with gent_k that maybe the post glow could be reduced. If you want a glare to emphasize how bright the windows are, maybe the wall paint could be made a bit glossy instead?
I wonder if there's motivation to make the lighting a bit less symmetrical, with a window visible on one side of the hallway and the other side being under a stairwell? I mean, look at the end of the hall, back right corner, the way the back wall under the stairs is bright and the side wall next to it is dark, maybe that could be reversed so the wall facing the bright window went brighter?
For the lightbulb, I could imagine it being back-lit with light only at the edges, or more reflective or translucent, but going bright along the top where it screws into the cord and dark in the center doesn't entirely make sense.
The way that thin vertical board casts such a dense shadow all the way along the hallway is surprising for a room with several big windows. I'd focus on that, because that vertical shadow lines up so perfectly with one plank of the floor, and then the plank next to it does something Escher-like and goes from being a part of the floor to sitting on top of it, so that becomes the area that most traps the eye.
06-29-2006, 04:47 PM
Thanx for the crit guys. Will look into those changes.
Hay jeremy,I was actualy thinking of adding the room to lighting challenge list while i was modeling it. Its there if you want it, want to just ask the guy i used the concept of to make sure that would be ok. Congrats on the new book by the way, got mine a few weeks back. I didnt know our fruit bowl would be on the front though!
It's a good idea!
The image looks very nice, too.
I would suggest add some bright specular on floor, walls, arc to make it more interesting.
06-30-2006, 05:04 PM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.
vBulletin v3.0.5, Copyright ©2000-2013, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. | <urn:uuid:7fc4bb41-5344-4e41-a0c4-bd3b53d2d90f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-375497.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944259 | 661 | 1.578125 | 2 |
I prefer the copper foil technique, the method made popular by L.C. Tiffany at the turn of the century. It involves wrapping the pieces of glass with copper foil and soldering them together along the length of the seams. This method can be used as an alternative to lead to make it lighter for hanging. It is much stronger than lead when soldered, needs no putty, is waterproof, and allows me to make intricately detailed projects where the bulky look and weight of lead would detract from the aesthetics of a delicate design.
Sharon, is a northwest artist living in Blaine, a small coastal town in Washington state. | <urn:uuid:ac0c6e1f-ccda-4108-8462-a0e14ab91bbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stainedglass-design.com/windows.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962868 | 129 | 1.59375 | 2 |
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Stomp the Yard
By Jill Walker Robinson
Sylvain White '98 is committed to bringing
positive movies about Black men to the screen
The week Stomp the Yard exploded at the box office, an e-mail from a
colleague hit at the heart of the college-educated Black moviegoer.
The precision dance moves known as stepping, rooted in the tradition of
Black fraternities and sororities, were new to the big screen, but it
was the positive message of the movie that stomped out some age-old
"Not since School Daze (nearly 20 years ago) have I seen so many Black
characters on screen in college.
None were on athletic scholarships or aspiring to be athletes.
None were rappers or aspiring to be rappers.
All spoke English, not Ebonics.
There was an underlying theme of supporting each other's efforts,
particularly men supporting men.
They used words like "archetype" and discussed SAT scores and
The story was not told from the perspective of a white professor who
saves them; a white student who joins them; a white girlfriend who
understands them; or any other of those usual Hollywood perspectives.
The cast was 99 percent Black, and I think two-thirds were male. That's
right-a whole movie full of positive Black men."
"There hasn't been a positive movie about Black college life in I don't
know how long, except for Drumline," says Sylvain White '98, director of
Stomp the Yard. "I felt there was a strong demand for that. I'm
really an advocate for the positive portrayal of African-American males,
particularly when you're targeting a youthful audience. I wanted to be a
part of that."
White cut out the sex scene that was written into the original
screenplay. The PG-13 rating held true-it was a family movie without
sex. (Save the Last Dance and Flashdance, other dance
movies from different generations, didn't rely on sex to tell the story,
notes White.) "I wanted an old grandmother to be able to go see it with
her eight-year-old granddaughter and have that experience together,"
Opening on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Stomp the Yard
remained at No. 1 for two consecutive weekends this year and eventually
grossed more than $60 million domestically. Considering the film's
budget was estimated at $14 million, that was quite a profit for Sony's
Screen Gems and quite a hit for White, whose prior success was in music
videos and commercials.
"Hollywood has always underestimated the African-American audience,"
White told Variety. "We started with grassroots advertising and were
endorsed by the NAACP. The best thing we did, marketing-wise, was
defining urban-young, hip-hop-listening kids-and to tap into that, we
leaked trailers and scenes onto YouTube, where we had a half-million
hits in the first three days."
After losing his brother following a street dance-off in Los Angeles, DJ
Williams heads off to a fictional historically Black college in Atlanta.
"I don't stomp; I battle." Unfamiliar with "stomping the yard" and the
age-old stepping tradition, DJ is eventually swayed and learns to
combine his street, hip-hop moves with the old-school, drill-like
DJ finally gets it. Being a part of "the line"-the rhythm, the
precision, the timing of each move-forces every brother to become one.
"It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about the whole team."
Whether stomping the yard in sync or competing at the national step
championship, the focus is not on the individual but the group.
"Instead of doing another dance movie, you have a brand new art form
rooted in American culture that's been around for like 100 years," says
White. "That's exciting for people who already know it and haven't seen
it on screen. And for people who don't know what it is, it's discovery-a
new dance form that's right here in the U.S. That's a really good edge."
The movie drew some criticism early on from a small group of Black
fraternities and sororities, disappointed that the movie didn't focus on
the service side of the National Pan-Hellenic Council. "You're making a
movie about the experience of a young man in college," says White. "You
could make it about a million things. We had to specifically focus on
the step competition. We only had about two hours. You can only focus on
that. Hopefully it will open the door, and people will make other movies
about the African-American experience in college."
Born in France, White had an American father who was a pro basketball
player and a French mother who was a flight attendant. He considered
himself an "artsy head" but was attending law school in France. "I
didn't know what else to do," says White. "The education system there
was not fitted for me. It was too specialized."
White decided to get a liberal arts education. "While at Pomona, I
quickly caught the film bug," says White, who founded Studio 47,
securing funding to buy video equipment and creating news and variety
shows to air on the cable access channel at The Claremont Colleges.
Remembers K. Forrest Beanum '97, White's publicist: "He always had a
camera in hand."
"It was always kind of a hobby of mine," says White, who spotted Beanum-one
of a few other Black men on campus-walking across the Quad. The two
became friends. "I was always told it was an unrealistic or unsafe
career." With faculty advisers like Brian Stonehill practicing "tough
love" and pushing him to find his artistic vision, and faculty mentors
like Sidney Lemelle, Phyllis Jackson and Sheila Pinkel, White says he
was nurtured at Pomona. Combined with that were three internships
through the Career Development Office-at New Line Cinema, Propaganda
Films and a magazine. Ever since Professor Richard Barnes
introduced him to the History of Silent Film in his first film class,
White 't put the camera down.
White advises young filmmakers to take advantage of the resources while
in school: "When you come out, you don't have crews. You can't create
content as easily."
After double-majoring in media studies and film and video production and
graduating from Pomona with honors, White quickly earned recognition for
his work at the 2001 MTV Music Video Awards and 2001 Music Video
Production Association Awards. His 2002 short film Quiet was a finalist
at the HBO Short Film Awards. When Sony's Screen Gems called in need of
a director for a last-minute project, I Still Know What You Did Last
Summer, White jumped in and finished it up in two weeks instead of
the usual 10.
"I earned the trust of the studio," says White, who next landed Stomp
Though it makes his publicist nervous when he answers questions with
quips like "Because I'm a genius," White's confidence is backed by his
work. He turned the studio's first project around quickly, and Stomp's
low budget meant high profits when the movie topped box office charts.
Instead of hiring 10,000 extras for the final step competition, 400
extras appeared in the scene, with White instead relying on the camera
positioning to create the illusion of a filled stadium.
What he did with the movie itself was spotlight a dance form.
"All dance movies in the past have appealed to female audiences, not
necessarily male audiences," says White. "Why is this?
"This form of dance-it's something that guys and girls do. It's very
testosterone-driven, very masculine when guys do it. These kids take it
very seriously. They're up on the bus. They're going to step shows. The
stakes are really high. This doesn't really feel like dancing. It is
dancing but it feels like a sport-the infrastructure, the competition."
So White shot the film as he would a sports or martial arts film,
bringing the audience into the action rather than having them watch from
their seats. In dance films such as Chicago, West Side Story
and Save the Last Dance, the dance moves are shot from the
audience's perspective. In Stomp the Yard, White studied films
like Hoosiers and Any Given Sunday, shooting as if the
audience were on the court or field.
"This is how we're going to get the guys," says White. "That gave the
film a different feeling."
The audience literally feels as if they are looking up at the dance
moves at times; they're in the middle of the action; they're part of it.
White has two careers these days-one as director of Columbia Pictures'
futuristic thriller Static and Warner Brothers' live-action
feature Ronin-and a second as a producer and co-owner of Media 3
Films, an independent production company that launched this year.
"Media 3 is an opportunity to create a slate of films that are diverse
and multicultural, that appeal to a worldwide audience that we haven't
seen in films except for maybe in a film like Crash," says White. "The
industry isn't going in that direction, but it's my personal agenda to
try to steer it in that direction to have that kind of impact on the
industry." What project is on his personal agenda?
"A French epic graphic novel, a sci-fi adventure, that I grew up reading
as a kid," begins White.
His publicist shakes his head to cut him off. He doesn't want him to
give it away and have someone else buy the rights. "It will be my
Lord of the Rings," says White. | <urn:uuid:1b6c7f8c-e898-46ad-9688-044838802659> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pomona.edu/Magazine/PCMsp07/FSstomptheyard.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968462 | 2,287 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The role of the ABA Representative is to serve, along with the SBA President, as one of the school’s two official voting delegates to the ABA Law Student Division Assembly—the policy‐making body of the Division. The Assembly convenes annually at the ABA Annual Meeting to review and to vote on policy issues affecting law students, legal education, and the legal profession. The Assembly delegates also elect the Division’s three delegates to the ABA House of Delegates, and the SBA Presidents also elect the Division’s Vice Chair‐SBA.
As an official delegate, the ABA Representative advocates on behalf of the ABA Law Student Division members at the school and serve as the school’s point person to the ABA Law Student Division, including when issues relating to legal education and legal education standards are up for review and comment. The ABA Representatives also promotes the ABA at their school and communicates the benefits and value of ABA membership in an effort to actively recruit and enroll new members.
2012-2013 ABA Representative | <urn:uuid:b70e0fc4-3403-42fc-b5f1-113f1dd99306> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://email:[email protected]/aba-representative | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956645 | 218 | 1.609375 | 2 |
AMT, using ground breaking technology, eliminates the risk of rejection, by harvesting adult stem cells from the patients own body fat, (no embryonic stem cells are used in any AMT process). The only drugs used are a local anesthesia during the harvesting process, done by mini liposuction, therefore there are no side effects. The stem cells are then separated from the body fat, isolated, activated and infused back into the patients body as required. There is nothing intrusive during this procedure, and the majority of patients can be treated in clinics and within a day.
How do stem cells work? They are the bodies building blocks, which rebuild damaged tissue, blood vessels, etc, depending on the condition. They are attracted to inflammation, and allow your body to naturally regenerate.
Adult Stem Cell News
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry has ground breaking adult stem cell therapy to speed up recovery after a back operation.
New York Yankees star, Bartolo Colon, has adult stem cell treatments on his shoulder. | <urn:uuid:b130fbce-e83d-4a68-814c-881d4e000ab2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amt-stemcells.com/stemcell/home/en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938606 | 203 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Thursday, May 21, 2009
For the Older Sibling: Higher! Higher!
YAY! *running around the room* Leslie Patricelli has a new picture book! Higher! Higher! is spot on perfect for the older sibling of your readertotz and your totz themselves!
A little girl and her father go to the park to swing. "Higher! Higher!" she calls as the father faithfully pushes her. She soars higher than the giraffe in the zoo, buildings, mountains, planes, into outer space where she waves at a passing monkey in a rocket ship and greets an alien on a swing. "Hi!" Then it's back, back down to earth and the arms of her father, so she can shout, "Again!"
True to a child's experience and imagination, this work will resonate with your readers. Leslie's colors and shapes are in keeping with her well-loved board books. It's such a treat to sink into the textures with the larger format. The canvas shows through beautifully. What a great effect for the glow of the earth, the stars, and even the little girl's face. Be sure to spot Baby in the plane. And take a moment to appreciate and enjoy the hand lettering.
Pick up Higher! Higher! and then hit the swings!
by Leslie Paricelli
Candlewick Press, 2009 | <urn:uuid:077fb4d9-97d2-4c8d-a337-66cd804a8389> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://readertotz.blogspot.com/2009/05/for-older-sibling-higher-higher.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 | 0.948187 | 282 | 1.625 | 2 |
Reproduction permitted for personal use only. For reprints and reprint permission, contact [email protected].
As I sit writing this article, we are 42 days away from the Olympics of Biotechnology happening in Chicago! For those of you used to thinking, "But wait, isn't this meeting normally in June?", you would traditionally be right. The annual BIO meeting has been always held in June, but not this year.
organization made a strategic decision this year to hold the meeting about 2 months earlier than normal for a couple of key reasons:
1. Avoid coinciding with the American Society for Clinical Oncology
, or ASCO (www.asco.org
) meeting normally held early in June (this year it will be June 2-6 in Atlanta). The ASCO meeting gets bigger and bigger every year and generally attracts more than 25,000 oncologists from all over the world as well as much of the pharmaceutical and biotech industry working in this field. This meeting has gotten so big, it is increasingly known as Onco-Disney, as so many things happen here.
Wall Street typically is present and monitoring this meeting vigilantly, and you will see streams of press releases in the weeks preceding, during and after ASCO in which drug companies make everyone aware of what new information on their cancer therapy was presented at the ASCO meeting. Stock prices for these companies also get pretty volatile at this time. All told, it makes it very difficult for BIO to compete with this meeting.
2. Access to a very large convention center, given the growing scope of the annual BIO meeting itself. As 18,000 people attended last year in Philadelphia, the convention center was severely taxed; it also meant that as this event continues to grow by leaps and bounds every year meaning that ever larger convention centers will be needed to house the event, limiting where it can logistically be held. Chicago fits the bill very well in this regard, but perhaps not in June.
Earlier you heard me call this event the "Olympics of Biotechnology"; as we have just witnessed the end of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, and the Olympics are held every four years, why is Rosen comparing this annual biotech event to the Olympics?
Like the real Olympics this event is about bringing together the global community, and biotech is now a global business and industry, with about 4500 biotech companies around the world (of which about 1,500, or one-third, of them are in the U.S., and two-thirds are outside of the U.S.), not counting all of the pharmaceutical companies around the world.
Last year in Philadelphia, 56 countries participated in the annual BIO meeting, and more are expected this year. Although there are no medals handed out and no direct head-to-dead competitions, down on the exhibit floor you can feel the competition from all the international and country pavilions.
This international participation has grown so much that the first official day of BIO, April 9, a Sunday, (note that some of the BIO events actually start on Saturday, April 8) has an international program running from 10am - 6:30pm, beginning with a ministerial seminar with key ministers from various countries. There are already 24 country delegations registered, and there will be 3 tracks of country delegation presentations. At 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. that day, there is an international marketplace reception.
Putting together an event of this magnitude is no small feat, and doing it with less time than is normally allotted (10 months versus 12 months) and in a city and part of the country where the event has never been held before creates additional logistical difficulties. Add to it, that early April in Chicago is not exactly the best time to visit the city (who knows we might even have snow).
Also add to this that this year's BIO falls on two important religious days if you are either Catholic or Jewish. The first day of BIO is April 9, which is Palm Sunday, and the last day of BIO, April 12, is Passover, meaning that anyone who is Jewish and traveling from around the world and needing/wanting to get back in time to be with family would need to leave on the 11th, Tuesday, and hence miss two days of BIO.
Never fear, external groups are helping to come to the rescue: the America-Israeli Chamber of Commerce of Chicago and the Israel Life Science Industry and IBIO are hosting an event at the Illinois Science & Technology Park on April 6 and 7 for Israeli biotech, medical device and venture capital companies to attract them to Chicago (disclosure: the author is a member of the board of IBIO and the America-Israeli Chamber of Commerce).
All of this is great but can Chicago and the Midwest, an untested biotech cluster for this kind of super event, deliver the goods and beat the record attendance and other parameters of a successful meeting that Philadelphia achieved in 2005?
Well, it's too early to tell, but if organizational activities and early results are predictive, it seems like a good bet! IBIO and BIO together have organized a number of working committees going back to last summer. These committees have met on a regular and frequent basis and have drawn a wide spectrum of people from the Chicago and Midwest community, which is what is supposed to happen.
Additionally, a number of public forums have been held to provide updates on the event in Chicago, as well as bring in past geographic chairs of the event from San Diego, Toronto, Philadelphia, etc., to share experiences and recommendations for preparation.
Afterall, BIO is a galvanizing meeting. When the BIO meeting was held in San Diego several years ago, San Diego afterward emerged as a major biotech cluster.
This year's represents a number of departures from the norm for this meeting. With a recognition of the life science activity in the Midwest, it is no longer just an East-West Coast phenomena. We have already discussed that it will happen 10 months from the last meeting, but next year's meeting in Boston will also not be held in June, but in May.
The range of topics will broaden much further than the traditional focus on drugs portraying the wide diversity of life science activity in the Midwest including:
Medical devices (surgical, orthopedic, cardiovascular, etc.)
Agriculture and Food Science
Industrial and Environmental (including biofuels)
And of course, Drugs
Another differentiating component about BIO 2006 is the involvement of key Midwest and Chicago universities in the event.
So the logical question is, with 42 days to go before the event, how are we doing? Ultimately this event is measured with many parameters, including:
Number of countries
Number of sponsors and exhibitors (and total $$ brought in from these two activities)
Calibre of content
Number of companies presenting
Total financial success
Presence of key politicians and heads of state
Buzz!! (and more!)
IBIO and BIO have both been good at keeping everyone current about progress on the above, and it appears that we are ahead of all of the key parameters, and tracking well, with one exception.
Before I mention what the exception is, it is important to note that one parameter of attendance is the availability of hotel rooms, and at this point hotels seem to be sold out. One the face of it, this news is a good sign.
Now this doesn't mean that one can't get a hotel room in Chicago, it only means that the group of hotels for which BIO has negotiated a special rate for the conference is sold out. Even in those hotels, rooms can still be accessed with probably the exception of the Hyatt at McCormick Center. Thank goodness that as conventions go, this one is hardly the biggest to hit Chicago, so we still have plenty of hotels to go around.
So I mentioned earlier, there is one exception where we are a bit behind the key parameters. Usually the region or place where the BIO event is held has a strong local attendance at the event, as much as 25-30 percent of total attendance. So far, registered attendance from the Midwest has been light, and we are all hoping that this will kick-in to a great extent over the next 42 days.
So fellow Midwesterners, now is the time to show your support for this major event which will have a transforming effect on our industry in this region. Register now!
Michael S. Rosen is president of Rosen Bioscience Management, a company that provides CEO services including financing, business and corporate development to start-up and early stage life science companies such as Renovar, a Wisconsin-based in-vitro diagnostics company. Rosen is also a founder and board member of the Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization
. He can be reached at [email protected]
This article has been syndicated on the Wisconsin Technology Network courtesy of ePrairie
, a user-driven business and technology news community distributed via the Web, the wireless Web and free daily e-mail newsletters.
The opinions expressed herein or statements made in the above column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Wisconsin Technology Network, LLC. (WTN). WTN, LLC, accepts no legal liability or responsibility for any claims made or opinions expressed herein. | <urn:uuid:b3e0e62b-33f2-410f-927a-f91a974b6df8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtnnews.com/articles/2727/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96146 | 1,940 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Here's what politicians and people in political media have to say about March Madness.
The critic often offered his opinions and criticisms.
Hackers apparently broke into at least two of North Korea's government-run online sites Thursday, as tensions rose on the Korean Peninsula.
Diplomats' tweet linking to Jon Stewart monologue drew protest from Egypt's government
He says the Twitter critiques are unfounded.
A group of White House alumni on Twitter are helping to shape the debate by not holding back.
“The thrust of it was right, the thing that went too far was the MoFo,” the D.C. council member says.
The senator sees a young woman “successfully” scale a fence on the Arizona-Mexico border.
An estimated tens of millions of social media users who have posted and tweeted a symbol in support of gay marriage.
They parse Prop 8 arguments.
Twitter has been hit with a $50 million lawsuit over claims it failed to comply with a French court order to reveal details about users who posted racist and anti-Semitic messages on the site.
On the seventh anniversary of Twitter's invention, company founder and CEO Jack Dorsey offered praise for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who he described as "a guiding light" for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
Rep. Steve Stockman has never shied away from controversy, and his Twitter feed is no exception.
Politicos dig into his immigration statements.
A federal grand jury had indicted Britton in September on charges that he knowingly threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict bodily harm on the president.
Many wonder what it will mean if the former secretary of state decides to run for president.
There may be another billionaire interested in New York City's top job.
Politicos and media personalities on Twitter hailed Rob Portman for supporting same-sex marriage.
The senator is scratching his head about a proposed change aimed at reducing player injuries.
Politicians offer congratulations to the new pontiff. | <urn:uuid:ed7577d5-1c39-4ad5-bf87-428205f66bb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dyn.politico.com/tag/?tag=twitter¤tPage=2 | 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 | 0.957165 | 409 | 1.703125 | 2 |
I'm something of an electric skateboard veteran. Last year at CES I rode the Board of Awesomeness, an electric skateboard that uses a Kinect and a Windows 8 tablet to function. This year at CES I had the opportunity to ride the ZBoard; an electric skateboard that works like a Segway — leaning forward makes you accelerate, and leaning back slows you down. The ZBoard is yet another Kickstarter success we've seen here at CES 2013, and it blew my mind.
The ZBoard deck is made from high-quality maple wood and has clear griptape. The pro model (version I rode) costs $950, weighs 27 lbs. and has a range of 10 miles thanks to its Lithium Iron Phosphate battery that will charge in five hours. In terms of design and hardware, the ZBoard includes solid rubber wheels, which work best on concrete, soft bushings for easy carving, and headlights and taillights.
they may have struck gold with their idea
But perhaps even more interesting than the board itself is the story of its origin. During their senior year at USC, engineering students Jeff Larson and Ben Forman decided to design an electric skateboard for a class project because getting around campus simply sucked. Lugging around and locking up bikes wasn't ideal, and finding a place to park a car was always an issue. They created a prototype design that served as a viable means of transportation and was portable enough to take with them to class. Jeff and Ben got an A on the project and started to realize that they may have struck gold with their idea.
After three years of tweaking and iterating on the original design, they launched a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising a modest $10,000 to deliver 25 boards to backers. A little over a month later, Jeff and Ben's project amassed nearly $300,000 in funding, amounting to some 400 boards. What began as an electric skateboard for fringe enthusiasts had very obviously turned into something much bigger.
Neither of your feet ever have to leave the board
I've been skateboarding for nearly a decade, so naturally I thought I'd be able to hop on the board and ride away. That wasn't the case. There's definitely a learning curve, even for an experienced skater like myself, because unlike riding a regular skateboard that requires you to push with one foot, the ZBoard works by shifting your weight. Neither of your feet ever have to leave the board, which is strange — it actually feels very akin to surfing once you're in motion.
After about 10 minutes of tweaking my stance and balance I was cruising at 17 mph around the parking lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center with ease. In order to turn, I had to shift my weight back to slow the board down, and then lean in whichever direction I wanted to go. Slowing down is done by shifting your weight toward the back, and the ZBoard features regenerative breaking so I didn't fly off the board when I applied the brake. The biggest difference between the ZBoard and a traditional skateboard (besides the fact that you don't have to pump) is that I put most of my weight toward the front of the ZBoard.
I felt like I was from the future
Ever since I saw Back to the Future II I've been waiting for a hoverboard to come into existence. It may sound insane and crazy, but I think the ZBoard is one step closer to that reality. As I cruised around the parking lot effortlessly, I attracted a lot of attention. People didn't seem to understand the physics of it. I felt like I was from the future.
The ZBoard isn't as clunky as most electric bikes and scooters since it was designed by skateboarders for skateboarders. It's not only the most well-designed motorized skateboard I've seen but it's portable and can substitute for a bike without question. Whereas you might feel like a fool riding around campus on a Segway, you'll feel like a badass on the ZBoard — trust me. | <urn:uuid:4c0216cc-8ac4-4a0b-bc1e-9b582bc8780a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/11/3867410/zboard-electric-skateboard-riding-ces-2013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980596 | 834 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Binghamton, NY (WBNG Binghamton) A former furniture manufacturer, whose 24-foot chair once graced the Binghamton skyline in the late 1970s, went up like kindling Wednesday, filling the same landscape decades later with an orange glow and thick, hazy smoke.
The fire's intensity had diminished by late morning, but it continued to burn as of 11 a.m., more than 12 hours after it was called in. Small flames licked the outside of what was left standing and throughout the pile of rubble at 115 Montgomery St.
Onlookers, who slowed and stopped along Interstate 81 and the Brandywine Highway during the height of the fire to witness the remains of the old Pa's Woodshed have moved on. Surrounding streets that had been closed early Thursday were open as of 11 a.m.
Fire officials say power had been cut off to the building for some time. They're trying to determine if the blaze was sparked by squatters or another source. Investigators are still trying to determine in which building the fire began.
The property and building is owned by LCP Group LLC, of Anderson Road in Vestal, according to Broome County records.
A man who claimed to be the owner declined to provide his name or speak on camera, but he said he was happy no one was hurt. He also said he intended to redevelop the property before the fire broke out. He did not elaborate.
Drivers passing by got out to stop and stare throughout the night.
"It lit up the sky, it did, it truly did," said Cody Botts. "When I first saw it, it was pretty bright."
Crews from Vestal, Port Dickinson and the city of Binghamton were called at approximately 10:30 p.m. Wednesday to Montgomery Street.
Within minutes after crews arrived, the fire spread throughout the warehouse and adjacent buildings, and required additional help from Vestal and Port Dickinson, according to Binghamton Fire Chief Daniel Thomas.
"Just with the large volume of fire and really no exposures, it reached the point of just the safety of the firefighters and keeping them and the equipment back," said Thomas.
Thomas said crews were forced to take a defensive approach to fighting the fire, meaning they'll allow it to burn itself out, while ensuring it doesn't spread to other buildings. Thomas said the fire could burn well into Thursday morning.
It was the only approach, Thomas said, because of the fire's intensity and the building's location. Just one road leads to the warehouse.
Thomas also said the nearest hydrant wasn't working, which forced crews to use more than a dozen hoses to access the closest water source blocks away.
The warehouse and surrounding buildings once housed an entry in the 1979 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, according to a search on Google Books.
That entry: The world's largest chair that stood 24 feet, 9 inches tall, with a 12-foot by 11-foot seat made out of red ceder by Douglas Whitaker. The iconic symbol has been gone for decades and the building shuttered for years; a massive fire took care of the rest.
There were no injuries reported.
Thomas said there were reports of people squatting inside the building, although he said he didn't know whether there was anyone inside at the time of the fire. That could change as the investigation rolls on.
The cause of the blaze remains under investigation. | <urn:uuid:8d934b6f-74fc-4421-99a0-104528c58818> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbng.com/home/Montgomery-St-Fire--185498122.html?vid=a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985599 | 711 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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SASEBO NAVAL BASE, Japan -- Eight sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan are suing Japan’s nationalized Tokyo Electric Power Co., claiming it lied about dangers from a radiation leak when they helped out after last year’s nuclear plant disaster and that they will almost certainly die prematurely as a result.
Their complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, seeks a jury trial and damages of $40 million each for being “rendered infirm” and their bodies being “poisoned” by radiation. It was filed on behalf of Lindsay Cooper, James Sutton, Kim Gieseking, Charles Yarris, Robert Miller, Christopher Bittner, Eric Membrila and Judy Goodwin.
Within days of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, tsunami and subsequent radiation leak from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, the USS Ronald Reagan was aiding in the search for survivors and bodies from just off Japan’s devastated east coast.
Six of the eight sailors worked on the flight deck during the operation and two worked in the air contamination department. Gieseking is also suing on behalf of her daughter, Autumn, who was born shortly after the deployment.
The sailors allege a host of medical conditions, from headaches and difficulty concentrating to rectal bleeding and thyroid problems, as a result of the exposure and say they will have to undergo more medical tests and expensive treatments in the future, their lawyer Paul Garner said Thursday. The sailors also want TEPCO, which has an office in Washington, D.C., to establish a $100 million fund to pay for any of their future medical expenses.
While the utility has settled with the families of Japanese citizens who died during evacuations from the affected region, and the Japanese government has guaranteed payments, this appears to be the first lawsuit involving American servicemembers, Garner said. The suit’s allegations include negligence and being a public nuisance.
“TEPCO and the government of Japan conspired and acted in concert, among other things, to create an illusory impression that the extent of the radiation that had leaked from the site of the FNPP was at levels that would not pose a threat to the plaintiffs, in order to promote its interests and those of the government of Japan, knowing that the information it disseminated was defective, incomplete and untrue, while omitting to disclose the extraordinary risks posed to the plaintiffs who were carrying out their assigned duties aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan,” according to the complaint.
It said data available to TEPCO indicated that radiation levels already had surpassed what “those living the same distance from Chernobyl experienced who subsequently developed cancer.”
Garner said internal TEPCO memos, experts, news articles and other documents substantiate their case that the utility lied, covered up the scope of the problem and distributed skewed data.
There were about 70,000 U.S. servicemembers, family members and civilians on or near the mainland during the 60 days following the disaster. The Defense Department has acknowledged that some servicemembers experienced elevated levels of radiation but says they weren’t high enough to make people sick.
Garner said he was originally approached by Cooper, who was reluctant to follow through with a suit. He then talked to others from the Reagan and found many suffered problems, including one sailor who already has cancer. Garner has linked up with an environmental toxicologist for a study to see how widespread the issues are.
“We just want the facts,” Garner said. “Their approach since the beginning has been to deny ... the truth will come out.”
Spokespersons for U.S. Forces Japan, Commander Naval Forces Japan, and TEPCO had not heard about the lawsuit, filed on Dec. 21, when contacted Thursday. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment.
About half of the sailors involved in the suit are active duty, while the others have separated, Garner said. He said they are not just looking for money.
“No amount of money would compensate me if I’m 23 years old and I’m bleeding from my [behind] or have thyroid problems,” he said. He added it was about getting justice for people who rushed to aid Japan in its time of need.
The USS Ronald Reagan, which is home-ported in San Diego, the guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville and destroyer USS Preble began supporting search-and-rescue efforts along the destroyed coastline on March 13. The Reagan’s approximate 5,500 sailors remained in the area until the beginning of April.
-- Stars and Stripes reporter Chiyomi Sumida contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:c351b4a7-d6c1-439b-ae44-d5c72c2b07d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/12/28/us-sailors-sue-japan-utility-in-radiation-exposure.html?comp=700001075741&rank=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971153 | 1,142 | 1.726563 | 2 |
He answers twin callings as priest and painter
POMONA, Calif. - There’s no steeple out front, no rows of pews inside, not even so much as a crucifix on display.
Still, this cramped little art studio in the middle of what, until not very long ago, was a street with as many broken dreams as it has potholes, is the closest thing to paradise Father Bill Moore has found. It’s the place where the 60-year-old Catholic priest serves God by creating abstract paintings that he sells by the hundreds.
No ordinary preacher, Father Bill, as he’s known throughout Pomona’s fledgling arts district, long ago discarded his clerical collar in favor of a painter’s smock. Only on Sundays does he trade it for holy vestments to deliver Mass at a local church or one of several detention facilities for youthful offenders.
All other times Moore is head of the Ministry of the Arts for the West Coast branch of his religious order, the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. His job is to serve God by painting whatever comes to mind.
“That’s Bill’s gift, his talent, and we have to support that,’’ says Father Donal McCarthy, who is the order’s West Coast provincial and Moore’s superior. “When you’ve got a creative person, you shouldn’t stifle that creativity.’’
Leaders of the order, founded more than 200 years ago in France, know of no other member whose only mission has been to paint. But then Moore, a child of the ’60s who can quote the words of Jim Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, and Jesus Christ with equal facility, has been a barrier-breaker since he ignored his provincial’s order during his freshman year of college to study either philosophy or theology. He majored in art instead.
“The next year, a letter came from the provincial saying all the students are now encouraged to major in subjects of their choice. I thought that was very cool,’’ Moore recalls with a smile as he sits in the lobby of his modest studio sipping coffee. A copy of underground comic-book artist R. Crumb’s “The Book of Genesis’’ sits on the coffee table and works by Japanese artist Kazumi Tanaka (a personal favorite) are displayed here and there.
Since early childhood, Moore says, he knew he had the calling - to be a painter. The call to be a priest came later.
“I was doing little abstract paintings when I was a little boy, like around 8, 9 years old,’’ Moore recalls.
“My grandmother would just think they were the greatest things,’’ he continues with a laugh. “The rest of the members of my family, they were, ahh, kind of more like art critics.’’
Not that the art world has been all that harsh on him. Moore’s works, which are often compared to those of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, sell for more than $5,000 apiece, and he has been the subject of frequent shows at galleries throughout the Southwest, including one up now at the Galerie Zuger in Santa Fe. Any profits he makes from those shows go directly to his order.
Although he once worked in a realistic style, doing figures and landscapes, Moore decided a dozen years ago that abstract expressionism would be his language.
That has caused some consternation among his order, like the time he was commissioned to do the stained-glass windows for St. Anne’s Church in Kaneohe, Hawaii, and proposed a series of abstract works.
“The pastor there said, ‘That’s not going to happen,’ ’’ Moore recalled with a laugh. So he reverted to a traditional style for that work, as he did for a recent commissioned painting of Father Damien, patron saint of Hawaii, who was a member of Moore’s order when he went to live among lepers on Hawaii’s Molokai island in the 1800s.
But when he works in his studio, Moore approaches each new project with no specific plan. Working with acrylic paints, he lets his ideas flow spontaneously onto canvas, then adds bits of metal, glass or other discarded, seemingly worthless materials to each painting. They represent redemption, a central theme in his order’s belief that God’s love is unconditional. | <urn:uuid:bd67770f-2767-4673-8069-d5ee9cb48120> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2010/01/07/father_bill_moore_answers_twin_callings_as_priest_and_painter/?camp=pm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974353 | 955 | 1.53125 | 2 |
There are up to 10 Tempests out frequently at ullswater making it one of the best classes to sail for competitive class racing.
The Tempest is a keelboat designed by Ian Proctor. The Tempest has an unusual aspect in that it is a keelboat but also has a trapeze, a rigging element usually only found on certain dinghies. As a result the Tempest is just as exciting to sail as fast dinghies, but is much more forgiving and is unable to be capsized. Due to the planing hull shape and large sailplan, the Tempest is remarkably fast when sailing on a reach, and speeds in excess of 15 kts are not uncommon in moderate winds.
Tempests are sailed actively throughout the world with fleets in Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, United Kingdom, North America and Australia. | <urn:uuid:4cc19aa4-f72a-4aa9-86af-ce45e794f5bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ullswateryachtclub.org/Home/Fleets/Tempest/tabid/138/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969329 | 172 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Lydia Crowe is pursuing a master's degree in foreign language education at The University of Iowa. As an undergraduate at the UI, Crowe majored in Spanish. She has studied over six languages.
"I am focusing on Spanish because of that language's importance to our own culture," said Crowe, who teaches Spanish with the hope that by studying a language students will gain new insights about their own language and culture. "I hope I will be doing my small part to make it easier for our nation to cooperate and solve its problems without the hysteria and violence that come with the perceived threat of a 'foreign invader.'"
Crowe has embraced the many opportunities the UI has afforded her. She has a love of learning that can only be satiated with the broad interdisciplinary education offered at the UI.
In addition to her foreign language work, Crowe is helping out at the UI Press, where she does office work, reads manuscripts under consideration, sends out mailings, and does data entry. "I'm also learning a few new skills—I've done a little bit of editing, and soon I will be leading a book launch, which is a presentation of a new book to the rest of the staff," Crowe said. | <urn:uuid:4c3605d9-e899-40cc-80dd-8bf3dee6b2ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.grad.uiowa.edu/annual-report/2009-2010/research/the-university-of-iowa-press/lydia-crowe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979764 | 252 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Energy minister Greg Barker has called for gas and electricity prices to be made clearer so people are aware of exactly what they are paying for.
Speaking to consumer group Which? at this week's conservative party conference in Manchester, Mr Barker stated the government is strongly encouraging the energy regulator to tackle any barriers to competition and ensure consumers have access to the best energy deals.
He said: "The Ofgem proposals aimed at reducing tariff complexity and improving comparability should make it easier for consumers to navigate the market and find the best deal."
The minister added it is important the Big Six suppliers face healthy competition in order to keep gas and electricity prices under control and said that radical reforms are needed to allow for greater use of energy sources such as renewables and nuclear power.
This could be essential if gas and electricity prices are to be kept at a sustainable level for the years to come, he added.
Make sure you're not paying too much for your energy - compare gas and electricity prices now at energyhelpline.com or call 0800 074 0745 | <urn:uuid:002b3912-ee45-4d8f-9c8b-ac81dc38b7ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.energyhelpline.com/fri/fri/domesticenergy/news/video/40003750 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953483 | 213 | 1.671875 | 2 |
African land grab is a myth, says China expert
BERLIN: Concerns about Chinese investment in Africa are borne out of western world prejudices, says Professor Deborah Brautigam.
by Chris Sloley on Nov 09, 2012 at 11:19
BERLIN: Chinese land grabs in Africa are a media myth, the country's involvement across the continent is nowhere near as dominant as reports suggest, according to regional expert Professor Deborah Brautigam.
Speaking at Citywire Berlin 2012 Professor Brautigam, director of the international development programme at John Hopkins University/SAIS and author of 'The Dragon's Gift:The Real Story of China in Africa', said there is a belief that China's investment in Africa is purely to procure land and natural resources for its' own ends.
'I think these myths persist because people are not looking very closely at the evidence and, in fact, they are not interested in looking closely at the evidence,' she said.
'There is so much data out there now about what China is really doing in Africa and it is not hard to put it all together. In the west, we are comforted by thinking that China is a threat, this behemoth, this big bad investor, and that is a comfortable place for the west to be.'
'If you look at the evidence it is much more nuanced.'
Fundamentally there is a difference between what western investors and Chinese investors look for from the African continent, Brautigam said.
'In the west, the belief is our aid is about altruism,' she said. 'We want to save Africa and doing what is right for them by controlling them through governance. The Chinese views it very differently, they believe it is about mutual benefit, diplomacy and soft power.'
Brautigam said this land hungry view permeated western media but was also being propagated by leading economists and advisors. However, she said evidence is strongly to the contrary.
'We took the top 25 main reports of Chinese agricultural investment in Africa and looked at each one of these and whether they were actually significant. Out of all these reports there were four that were direct investments and only two of these were of any significant size.'
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- Barings’ mining manager undeterred by Chinese data | <urn:uuid:7cab7242-e64b-4378-9013-c4235f278d2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://citywire.co.uk/global/african-land-grab-is-a-myth-says-china-expert/a633041 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969498 | 514 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Idealism or realism?
Sure we all want to believe we can all change for the better and that everyone can have a heart and help each other out. But the realism is that we haven't changed the way we act since the dawn of man. We are all in college not for the benefit of society but so we can work jobs we are interested in, make enough money to live comfortably. None of us want to work at McD's the rest of our lives. Our actions are determined by self interest. Man by nature is greedy, if it were possible to change than maybe communism would have worked but as we can see, it didn't do so hot. If we want people to change there has to be something in it for them, and for most people that something has to be have real value, not emotional value. We need to appeal to self-interest to breed motivation. Instill morality behind the movement so that it sustains itself into the future. To think we can get the world to change on morals than we are just hurting our own progress, people living paycheck to paycheck in an old beaten down apartment in a nowhere end of town don't care about the beauty of the woods and what might happen if we cut them down, they care about their next meal and if they can live through a medical bill. Appeal to man's innate being and plant a seed to grow into the morality of our minds. | <urn:uuid:9d923dad-785e-41ae-8c6e-c797745010b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.lib.umn.edu/froe0110/evincement/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980857 | 287 | 1.796875 | 2 |
DHAKA - Agence France-Presse
In this photograph taken on March 2, 2009, a Bangladeshi Army officer breaks down in tears as he carries the coffin of a comrade, killed during a mutiny, during a funeral ceremony in Dhaka. AFP Photo
A Bangladesh court jailed 611 border guards for their role in a bloody 2009 military mutiny, bringing the total number of soldiers imprisoned for the unrest to more than 4,000, a prosecutor said.
Scores of senior army officers were killed during an uprising that began when soldiers at the Bangladeshi Rifles (BDR) headquarters in the capital Dhaka went on a killing spree, later dumping the bodies in sewers and shallow graves.
A special military court in Dhaka on Saturday found 611 border guards from the force's 13th battalion guilty of joining the mutiny, state prosecutor Manjur Alam said.
"Of the 621 soldiers charged, 10 were acquitted and 611 were handed out prison terms starting from four months to seven years. At least 55 soldiers were sentenced to maximum seven years in jail," Alam told AFP. The mutiny spread from Dhaka to BDR posts across the country, with thousands of guards taking up arms against their commanding officers in the worst military rebellion in Bangladesh's history.
Dozens of special courts -- run by the military using a mix of martial and civilian law -- were set up to prosecute mutineers, with the first verdict, convicting 29 soldiers, being handed down in April 2010.
More than 4,000 BDR soldiers have now been convicted, Alam said, in what prosecutors say is the biggest case in the country's history.
The courts headed by military officers do not allow defendants to have lawyers and there is no right of appeal. Seven years in jail is the maximum penalty they can impose.
The BDR has since changed its name to the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) in an effort to distance itself from the mutiny.
Soldiers accused of more serious offences -- including murder -- are being tried separately in civilian courts and could face the death penalty if convicted.
"Of the 611 soldiers convicted on Saturday, 135 soldiers face murder charges and are being tried separately," said Alam. | <urn:uuid:6aaf542e-c837-43d2-b5af-75cfbdedf8ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/bangladesh-jails-611-soldiers-for-2009-mutiny-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=23343&NewsCatID=356 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972182 | 458 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The Toronto author is selling a T-shirt with two things on it: Mayor Rob Ford's middle finger, and her autograph.
There’s no use sugarcoating it: Rob Ford has done a lot of offensive and embarrassing things that make many Torontonians sorry to call him mayor. The least we can do is harness his blunders for our own purposes. And who better to do that than Margaret Atwood?
Late yesterday afternoon, a one-of-a-kind T-shirt printed with an image of a charming Mayor Ford flipping the bird under the slogan “Welcome to Toronto,” signed by the legendary Canadian author Margaret Atwood, went up for auction on eBay. The proceeds will go to Fanado, a new online venture that Atwood founded.
Drawn in the style of a political cartoon, with emphasis on the mayor’s chin, the shirt references that time last year when he allegedly gave the middle finger to a woman and her young daughter, after the woman had scolded him for driving while talking on his cellphone.
The shirt was given to Atwood during a visit to Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone, where she met with young entrepreneurs, offered feedback on their projects, and looked for possible fits between them and Fanado—an online portal for connecting fans with artists. Atwood, of course, has been a Rob rival ever since the Ford brothers dared to mess with Toronto libraries. Doug even once boasted that if he saw her on the street, he “wouldn’t have a clue” who she was.
Spying an opportunity, Atwood decided to sign the shirt and auction it off to help Fanado raise $85,000 on the crowd-funding site IndieGogo (the fundraising campaign continues until July 28). This isn’t Atwood’s first attempt at eBay success. Curtis White, a school teacher in Edmonton, Alberta, just closed an auction of a signed portrait of Atwood by his artist wife, Oksana Zhelisko, for $1,000 on behalf of Fanado. Atwood reached out to him again to post the Rob Ford T-shirt, available for bids until next Thursday.
Even though he’s in Edmonton, White has heard all about Ford’s finger, not to mention his “hug-a-thug” comments yesterday.
“This is a tongue-in-cheek situation that Rob Ford created himself, and people are having fun with it. This is why we have writers and artists,” he said during a phone interview. “Margaret Atwood is a literary icon getting people involved and thinking ‘How does an elected official do something like this?’ When you choose to be in the public eye, there are responsibilities that go with it. I’m a school teacher, and there are no pictures of me giving the finger.”
Since the T-shirt went up for sale yesterday, there have already been 21 bids. The price now stands at $86. | <urn:uuid:b06cb8e9-126f-4b25-8a2f-b332b9892692> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://torontoist.com/2012/07/margaret-atwood-uses-one-of-mayor-fords-gaffes-as-a-business-opportunity/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970965 | 636 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Tax Dollars and (Common) Sense
It's high time we ended a system rigged against the middle class
April 16, 2012
Middle-class Americans are struggling daily to find jobs, pay their mortgages, send their kids to college and keep food on the table. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich are reaping benefits unavailable to the rest of us. No wonder middle-class taxpayers have long felt that our tax system is rigged against them. Frankly, it is.
Even billionaire Warren Buffett expressed dismay that his secretary paid a higher effective tax rate than he did. In 2010, Debbie Bosanek, Buffett's secretary in Omaha, Neb., paid a tax rate of nearly 36 percent while her boss, who earned $62 million that year, paid a rate roughly half that—17.4 percent.
Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, our current tax code has been bought and sold by powerful special interests. Millionaires and billionaires hired armies of lobbyists to write tax laws that benefit only themselves. They pushed for loopholes and special provisions that allow approximately a quarter of all millionaires in this country to pay lower effective tax rates than millions of middle-class families.
President Ronald Reagan sought to change these inequities in our tax system. Three decades ago, he said it was "crazy" that a bus driver could pay more in taxes than a millionaire and spoke of closing "the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share."
I agree with President Reagan and President Obama that hardworking, middle-class Americans deserve a fair shake. That is why I have introduced legislation in the House that would put into law what we've come to call the "Buffett rule."
The Paying a Fair Share Act would ensure that middle-class workers do not pay a higher tax rate than those earning more than $1 million a year. This common sense solution would address the disparity that Warren Buffett decried, and it would reduce the deficit by billions of dollars over the next decade.
It's high time we leveled the playing field between middle-class taxpayers and millionaires and billionaires. The Paying a Fair Share Act will help restore people's faith that if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have a chance to get ahead.
I am asking all of my colleagues to join me in taking this first step to strengthen our middle class and rebuild our economy with a commitment to shared responsibility and shared sacrifice.
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- Check out U.S. News Weekly: an insider's guide to politics and policy. | <urn:uuid:fae8dc56-59dd-4265-ad62-4647f1b8a4f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-the-buffett-rule-become-law/tax-dollars-and-common-sense | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966905 | 537 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Governor Otter Proposes State Control for Public Land
(BOISE, ID) – Idaho Gov. Butch Otter says transferring control of some federal lands to the state would make forests healthier and reduce the risk of wildfires. Otter testified before Congress on Tuesday, urging the House to adopt a pilot program giving the state control of 2 million acres out of 20 million acres of national forest statewide. The land would be managed by a trust board, which would focus on increasing revenue and improving management. | <urn:uuid:fba9ba5d-6cd8-41bb-903c-eba7f532df7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eastidahonews.com/2013/02/governor-otter-proposes-state-control-for-public-land/ | 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 | 0.9477 | 101 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Placement Testing Information
What is the Placement Test?
FCC’s Testing Center follows Maryland guidelines for skill assessment prior to registration. (See FCC catalogue.) Proficiency in reading comprehension, sentence skills (grammar), study skills, math, and essay writing is measured by taking the placement tests. Developmental skill-building courses will be required when scores do not meet state-mandated cutoffs.
The college utilizes an adaptive, untimed ACCUPLACER test, which means that each answer to a question determines the next test question. This provides a more accurate measure of an individual student’s skills.
Why do students need to take the Placement Test?Placement testing provides information about the best courses for students to begin their college career at FCC.
Who needs to take the Placement Test?
Unless otherwise exempted, all students will be required to take a reading, sentence skills, and math placement test. A writing placement test may also be required.
Students may be exempt from taking some of the placement tests under the following circumstances:
- Scores over 550 on the critical reading and/or mathematics portion of the SAT (If scores are older than five years, you must take the placement test.)
- Score of 21 or higher on the English, reading, and/or mathematics portion of the ACT (If scores are older than five years, you must take the placement test.)
- Students with eligible AP test scores of 3 or better in English Language & Comp, English Literature & Comp and/or Calculus or Statistics
- Students who have earned an A or B in Algebra II or higher in a FCPS high school during their junior or senior year and within the last two academic years
- Eligible transfer credits from another college
Where and when can I take the Placement Test?
Placement testing is done on a walk-in basis in the FCC Testing Center, Library Building, Room L104. Placement Testing Hours are:
Monday through Thursday, 8:30am-7:30pm
Fridays 8:30am-4:30pm (Closed on Fridays May 25 through July 27)
Saturdays 9:00am to noon
Please allow enough time to complete testing, as the Testing Center does close at the above times.
What should I bring to the test?
Students are required to have a picture ID to take a placement test and should also have FCC student ID # with them.
Valid Identification includes:
- Driver’s License
- Employee ID
- Student Photo ID
- MVA temporary photo ID
- Original birth certificate or court change of name in addition to TWO proofs of residence which can be from a long list of things such as property tax bill, rent contract, canceled check with name and address imprint, utility and cable bills, etc.
For their own safety and out of consideration for other testers, under no circumstances are children permitted in the Testing Center or to be left unattended during testing.
How do I get my Placement Test results?With the exception of the writing sample, your score report will be explained to you immediately following testing. You cannot "pass" or "fail" the placement test. Results are used by advisors to help determine course selection.
Students with disabilities
The Testing Center works closely with The Office of Services for Students with Disabilities to provide services for students with ADA accommodations. Students needing special testing accommodations should contact the Services for Students with Disabilities Office at 301-846-2408. | <urn:uuid:5d84394c-9152-4a73-8528-3fa58cdcbb0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.frederick.edu/register_now/placementtest.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931127 | 725 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Community centre, Ghetari
GHETARI (RO) - ABRUPTARHITECTURA reinterprets local typologies and materials to produce a model public building in a sensitive rural area.
The competition for a Community Centre in Ghetari village (part of the Girda commune) is part of a wider cultural and social programme launched by a grouping of NGOs, the Transylvania Branch of the Chamber of Architects and local authorities. The programme is focused on a well-defined natural and cultural zone in the Western Carpathians, currently subject to hectic tourist development. A study of traditional dwelling types and architecture was combined with an effort to promote this heritage and to define the major features (typologies, shapes, materials, etc.) that any new buildings should observe. The competition brief therefore required not only a solution for a specific building, but also a 'model' public building that would reinterpret the spirit of the place. The winning team rejected any sort of stylistic borrowing; instead it concentrated on the essential typologies and the questions posed by the insertion of a large building mass into an outstanding and sparsely built landscape.
Typical villages in this mountain area consist of scattered homesteads. Both the climate and the available roofing materials (clapboard, hay and even fir foliage) resulted in characteristic structures in the form of small rectangular prisms with pitched hipped roofs (the ratio between the house itself and the roof reaches 1:2 or greater).
The easy solution of building a 'big house' – keeping the proportions but inflating the size – would have led to an over-scaled volume, visually overwhelming and somewhat ludicrous. Instead, the architects developed a kind of abstract 'homestead', an assemblage of four wooden roofs rising above a base that is partially dug into the slope. Both the slope and the openings in the base, which is reminiscent of a stone wall, turn the ensemble from a conventional building into an architectural landscape, which you can access and cross without difficulty. The four roofs do not finish in the traditional linear ridge but in a skylight that draws in natural light. Two of the four roofs cover various ateliers and services, while the other two cover the largest space of the building, a multi-functional hall. A system of staircases and mezzanine floors inside this space provide easy communication with the raised courtyard and provide some additional space without diminishing the impressive void.
Wood and stone (and partially plaster on the inside) are the only finishing materials; the uniform treatment of the exterior offers an image of a homogeneous skin. Now, as the project enters the detailed planning stage, we are anxious to see whether its initial integrity will be preserved. For example, the architects wanted wood, not metal or concrete, for the roof structure; let's hope they can achieve this while also preserving the unity of the interior space.
May | 2009 | Romania | Ştefan Ghenciulescu | <urn:uuid:22cad279-f7cc-4c49-a3b5-df7aa449d06f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.a10.eu/magazine/issues/27/community_centre_ghetari.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931458 | 611 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Whether Pinellas County voters want amendments to the county charter as laid out by the review commission's two years of work most of them are paying for both sides of the legal contest that has been waged.
Indian Rocks Beach, Redington Beach and Dunedin were the only cities that did not join the other municipalities in the county to fight the amendments being included on the November 7 ballot, taxpayers are financially supporting the amendments, even though, if they ever became law, they would work against the best interests of their cities.
What the other 21 cities are in an uproar about - as well as many citizens in the county - is that the amendments rob the cities of powers they now enjoy and give them to the county.
The fear among many opponents of the amendments is that Pinellas County would become like Miami-Dade County, where the county reigns supreme in all matters.
Battling the amendments has been a team of lawyers - most of them city lawyers from the various cities - under the aegis of Pinellas Cities for Home Rule Committee which has a post office box in Clearwater.
Individual cities have kicked in funds to support the battle, indicating that the cities are very emphatic in not wanting their powers diminished.
One key element that has worried the cities and was in the front line of concern was the elimination of "dual referendum," adopted in 1999 but never utilized.
In the dual referendum, an individual city could opt out of a law that otherwise would be imposed countywide.
Other questions would make it more difficult for cities to annex land.
One big issue in a county where fire departments often take place of pride for sentimental reasons, fire chiefs have pointed out that with changes through the amendments communities could lose autonomy and power to control their own fire departments.
John Hubbard, well known municipal lawyer, has pointed out that the changes would determine all kinds of business regulations imposed by the county and municipal voters would be eliminated in the decision process.
With the amendments fundamentally changing the balance of power in the county, cities would become of less importance, and thus their residents would become more "county controlled" residents than controlling their own destinies within their cities.
Although the Charter Review Committee was independent and supposedly not a creature of the county, in August the County Commission, with only Karen Seel and Bob Stewart opposed, voted funds to support the amendments.
At the time, Stewart said, "it would only inflame tensions between the county and cities."
Some observers think that Steve Spratt, the county administrator, was brought here form Miami-Dade to accomplish the goal of making the county supreme and the final word in governance in Pinellas.
A strong battle has been waged by a coalition of citizens, home owners associations, chambers of commerce and civic organizations as well as the city government against the amendments.
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Return to Current Edition | <urn:uuid:d18dac0c-f68a-41db-b8fa-f758ded47bdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://clearwatergazette.com/20061026/charter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982031 | 593 | 1.53125 | 2 |
This being Christmas weekend, let’s give thanks for some encouraging developments in Canada in 2011.
First off, women in politics. Three women became premiers – Kathy Dunderdale in Newfoundland and Labrador, Alison Redford in Alberta and Christy Clark in British Columbia.
Ms. Dunderdale won an election; the other two have yet to face the voters, so their long-term fate as premiers remains unclear. But it’s a refreshing change to have three women running provinces. To those who think women tilt leftward politically whereas men tilt right, recall that the new female premiers are conservatives, although Ms. Clark leads something called the Liberal Party.
More women are prominent in federal politics, too. Again, many of them are Conservatives. None have broken into the tight ministerial circle around Prime Minister Stephen Harper, but women are in the second tier, as it were. Further, the Conservatives elected some very impressive new female MPs.
So did the NDP, which chose Nicole Turmel as interim leader after Jack Layton’s death. Two NDP women are making a good showing in the leadership race, Peggy Nash and Niki Ashton.
Anyone who witnessed Margaret Thatcher up close, or followed from afar the careers of Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, or who watched Hillary Clinton’s nomination campaign, must know that women in politics can be as rough and tough as men, even tougher. But women often have a nose for issues that men miss, or they see the same things through a different prism, and that difference is useful and important. Political life is better with more women running or helping to run the show.
Then there was the excellent showing of Canadian students in the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) on proficiency in reading, math and science. A few critics bemoaned that Canada was beaten by South Korea and Japan (and students from one Chinese city, Shanghai). But Canadian students were beaten by only one Western country, Finland.
Canadian students outdistanced those from Britain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, France, Israel and, of course, the United States. Of course, because U.S. education in elite private schools is arguably the best in the world (or certainly very close to the best). But the nation’s school system, taken as a whole, leaves much to be desired, as the PISA and other test results have shown. Canada’s best educational results were in Ontario and Alberta.
A very genuine outpouring of emotion followed Mr. Layton’s death. The NDP hierarchy, of course, tried to make him into a secular saint and to elevate him to heroic status. Leaving such evident efforts aside, a lot of Canadians who wouldn’t consider themselves New Democrats were saddened by his death at the relatively young age of 61 and at the moment of his greatest triumph. His last testament, especially its last lines, was for everyone: “Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.”
About a quarter of a million immigrants landed in Canada. Undoubtedly many struggled to get a footing in their new country. Nonetheless, Canada remains the only Western country where large-scale immigration remains perceived by the general population as a public good.
In most other Western countries, from the U.S. to Sweden, from Spain to Germany, immigration is contentious, divisive and, in some places (the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, France and Finland, among others), has given rise to anti-ethnic political movements and parties. In Canada, by contrast, no political party opposes immigration; in fact, they fight to be perceived as the most pro-immigration party.
Raise a glass to Newfoundland and Labrador, whose people have spread across Canada searching for better jobs. Back home, however, economic prospects have risen such that the province has left equalization behind, the Avalon Peninsula is booming (try getting a carpenter or painter there), resources are opening in Labrador, shrimp and crab catches are holding up and – wait for it – there might be oil between Labrador and Greenland. Very soon, Ontarians might be migrating to the Rock. | <urn:uuid:48118d07-ff75-45c6-87d6-14e09d35df8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/give-thanks-to-political-women-smart-kids-and-the-rock/article4181945/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971168 | 856 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Advocates: More tour bus safety is needed
Authorities investigating two West Coast bus crashes
A long-haul bus plying the nation's highways can carry as many passengers as a domestic airline flight and a crash could be equally catastrophic.
But key safety regulations and oversight for buses, especially for drivers behind the wheel of a coach with up to 80 people aboard, lag behind those for airlines and their pilots, according to a leading safety advocate and a trade group calling for action.
The issue has crystallized in recent weeks around different incidents involving the grounding of the vaunted 787 Dreamliner produced by the world's largest aircraft maker and deadly crashes involving buses owned by obscure private companies.
Although a battery fire aboard a Boeing Dreamliner in Boston and a related incident over the skies of Japan resulted in one minor injury, the case has received enormous public attention and robust investigative scrutiny over two continents.
Over roughly the same timeframe, 17 people were killed and more than 80 others hurt in West Coast crashes of two tour buses. Those generated a few headlines and little, if any, public outcry. Federal and state authorities are investigating both incidents.
The most recent crash east of Los Angeles last weekend killed eight people and attention has focused on the vehicle's brakes.
A December 30 accident in Oregon that killed nine people has raised questions about tired drivers.
The driver of that ill-fated bus had worked 92 hours in the seven days leading up to the crash -- far exceeding the allowable 70 hours, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the government agency that regulates bus safety.
In both cases, regulators previously cited the private bus companies for violations and put them under increased surveillance. But the government let them continue operations.
Deborah Hersman, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, highlighted gaps in bus safety with a comparison to more rigorous rules for airlines.
"You would never see hours-of-service violations in aviation," she said in reference to the potential fatigue issue in the Oregon bus accident. "Pilots would not bust their hours, but (we) see it routinely on the highways."
Hersman said drivers are "asked to carry loads to places that they can't possibly get to within their hours of service" and "people driving longer" than they should and winding up tired behind the wheel.
"And so these are the same issues. We see them over and over again," Hersman said. "We've got to have regulations with teeth and the penalties have got to be a deterrent."
Commercial aviation has remained remarkably safe over the past decade following a push to improve safety.
The crash of a commuter jet near Buffalo that killed 50 people has been the lone major airline accident in the past four years.
The rapidly growing motor coach industry, which carries about as many passengers as domestic airlines annually -- 700 million -- has experienced several fatal accidents in recent years, including notable crashes in New York and Virginia.
The most recent federal government figures, in 2009, show roughly 300 people are killed annually in bus crashes, but the figures do not distinguish between mass transit and private motor coach accidents.
The head of a motorcoach industry association concurs that the government needs to focus on industry standards, and crack down on companies that don't measure up. Private bus lines have grown rapidly in recent years.
"At the end of the day we think the regulators need to focus as much attention on motorcoach travel as they do on the airlines and they should focus more attention on motorcoaches than on a truck," said Peter Pantuso, president and chief executive of the American Bus Association. "We want a safe industry, plain and simple. There's nothing that can or should trump safety in our opinion," the trade group chief said.
ABA officials say responsible bus companies that uphold industry standards are being hurt by fly-by-night companies that violate those rules.
Hersman said truck and bus inspections show rampant violation of federal safety rules.
Approximately 20 percent of trucks and buses that are inspected are pulled out of service for mechanical issues, and 7 percent of drivers are pulled off the road because of hours-of-service, record-keeping or other issues, Hersman said.
"In the end we see companies that are not put out of service until after they have a fatal accident," she said.
The motor carrier safety agency prohibited the Canada-based bus company, Mi Joo Tour & Travel, from operating in the United States following the Oregon accident.
The agency, part of the Transportation Department, defended its practices. It said federal and state inspectors conduct more than 3.5 million truck and bus inspections across the United States each year.
"In any instance where the driver or the vehicle or both are found to be in serious violation of any federal safety regulation and thus pose an imminent hazard to public safety, the driver, the vehicle or both are immediately placed out-of-service by the inspector," the agency said in a statement.
"Even if a violation is not severe enough to place a company out of service immediately, companies are required to correct all violations for which they are cited, and minor violations can result in increased frequency of roadside inspections by state and local law enforcement," the statement added. | <urn:uuid:c8871061-6d10-4294-9f18-c30af4b27597> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmur.com/news/money/travel/Advocates-More-tour-bus-safety-is-needed/-/9857590/18441878/-/view/print/-/12qp27r/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970685 | 1,078 | 1.773438 | 2 |
’Lincoln’ a reminder that political films walk a fine line
Still, it can’t hurt that "Zero Dark Thirty" will be appearing on screens after this year’s political rancor has dissipated. Studios rarely leave such things to chance: Marketing campaigns for big-studio films routinely engage focus groups and other research strategies to predict whether and how a film will resonate with viewers.
Even if filmgoers make present-day comparisons through a partisan lens while watching "Lincoln," for example, the filmmakers are banking on patriotism’s transcending politics, as viewers encounter one of the country’s most beloved historical figures at the height of his powers and personal charisma.
In fact, "Lincoln" contains all the elements that spell success for a political-themed movie, according to director Rod Lurie, who has made a career-long study of what makes such films succeed. "It has to be about a president, not someone in the legislature or the Supreme Court, because anything other than the president is petty," Lurie said. "It has to be aspirational. We don’t want to go see movies about bad presidents who are dark and evil ... And usually it has to be non-partisan."
For films currently in the pipeline, it’s an open question what impact this week’s election will have on their resonance with audiences.
Director Lee Daniels is watching the election results with more anxiety. His film "The Butler," which dramatizes the story of longtime White House butler Eugene Allen, comes out next year. The film — based on an article by Washington Post staff writer Wil Haygood — ends with the main character, an African-American who has served eight presidents, seeing Obama in the White House.
If Obama wins, Daniels says simply, "We’ll feel the butler’s journey was worth it." If Obama loses, Daniels predicts, "the movie will land completely differently. There will be a bittersweetness and a sadness about his journey. And I think the audience will feel it." | <urn:uuid:ace82876-e869-4086-aabd-46166829766b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/movies/177418811__Lincoln__a_reminder_that_political_films_walk_a_fine_line.html?c=y&page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959035 | 430 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Media's focus misses target
While our troops are making tactical gains against the Taliban in Afghanistan, our politicians are failing them at the strategic level.
The young officer allowed his frustration to show at the end of the pre-deployment course, just before travelling into Afghanistan. ''What can you do'', he asked, ''if the media reports something that's just plain wrong?''
It's an understandable frustration for the diggers. They're about to put their lives on the line as part of our effort to reconstruct the fragile country, doing the job our governments ask them to do. They're frustrated, for example, with a recent media report suggesting that even their boss reckons the task of rebuilding the country might be doomed to failure. It's not that any of the particular quotes appearing in that story were incorrect; but over here, in the Middle East, people argue the overall impression created was incorrect.
At a local level soldiers can see the difference they're making. In Oruzgan, the province where the bulk of the Australian forces are deployed, there's been real progress. The Chora road is open and the last fortnight has seen a dramatic drop-off of insurgent activity. This lull always comes as the cold of winter begins to envelop the bare, rocky, countryside in its grip. This year it's happening about a month earlier than previously. The Taliban don't want to continue the fight.
The policy of targeted killing is succeeding in taking out insurgent leaders, one after another. Intelligence suggests the Taliban are now finding they are having difficulty motivating locals to fight. Their network is under assault; off-balance; more concerned about defence and pressing attacks on the government forces.
And yet, and yet ...
The media focus inevitably on the fact that the main provincial base takes a rocket every day. These are fired from different locations and the insurgents don't stay to fight. But journalists passing through quite accurately trump this up into the obvious story. More than a decade after the World Trade Centre attacks; almost half a decade after our troops deployed in force to this part of the country; the insurgents' reach is still strong enough to pose a direct threat. How can this be regarded as progress?
It's the difference between focusing on the tactical gains that are measurable and distinct and the strategic progress that appears fragile and blurry. One story shows the advances, the other demonstrates how far there is to go. And it's in the telling of this story where the friction between the military and the media is at its worst.
Of course it's nothing like the 1970s, when the country was torn by division over the Vietnam war. Nevertheless, every poll asking whether Australians support the conflict their soldiers are currently in comes back with an emphatic answer. ''No''. Unsurprisingly, those on the ground feel as if someone is undermining them. The difficulty is pinning down exactly who.
The past four months have witnessed a big change in the way our forces are engaging with the media. They are opening up. For the first time one journalist, Chris Masters, has been permitted to film (with a military team) the Special Operations Task Group. Until now the activities of the SAS and commandos have been kept under wraps. This silence has permitted conspiracy theories to flourish. Stories have emerged about hits gone wrong and the killing of innocent people. The lack of transparency inevitably means that the media seizes on any unsubstantiated rumour. The difficulty of finding out the truth, often for good operational security reasons, increases the tendency for journalists to put the worst possible interpretation on events.
The military has still been unable to convert tactical success on the ground into strategic support for the war. But that doesn't mean this is necessarily the soldiers' fault. One officer says more journalists have been deployed with the forces in the past four months than in the preceding four years. No one is certain whether this was a political directive (from Stephen Smith) or a military one (following the departure of Angus Houston). The result has been, however, dramatic.
The Nine Network recently screened an extended, four-minute news report sympathetically portraying the operations of a unit clearing a valley. This sort of publicity is gold for the military, because it shows it's achieving the mission. What's difficult to explain to the soldiers is they are being badly let-down by the politicians. The failure is not at a tactical level: it's the strategic level that failure emerges. The politicians aren't making the case for our deployment.
After the death of (yet another) Australian soldier, Julia Gillard insisted ''it's in Australia's national interest to be there, full stop''. And so it is. But the full stop abruptly truncates a necessary and vital debate. A simple assertion doesn't carry the weight of persuasive power. It can't, because it doesn't explain. And when the Prime Minister is under assault on every front, it's no wonder that her claim is being increasingly challenged.
This is a strategic issue. It's not up to the soldiers to explain why we are in Afghanistan. Nor should they be expected to come up with proof that strategic objectives are being achieved. Many of these are simply out of their control. Our forces have no choice, for example, with the local officials they are forced to work with. The military is finding itself sandwiched between the media's insatiable demand for stories on the one hand, and vague generalisations proffered by politicians at the strategic level. There are two ways of explaining this. One asserts that the objectives of journalists and soldiers are fundamentally divergent. This assumes the military (like any good bureaucracy) doesn't want to be challenged as it goes about its business. This is the Vietnam paradigm, which suggests the tension will never be resolved.
It doesn't have to be like this. In a paper almost a decade ago (then) academic Rod Lyon warned that treating information as part of the ''battle space'' risked confusing operational success with strategic victory. This can't and won't, be decided by media manipulation. | <urn:uuid:5f04face-9c69-4d70-8ffb-e4758eb7a53e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/editorial/medias-focus-misses-target-20111017-1v6ii.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969439 | 1,233 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Requirements of a Standard Java Module System
Yesterday, Mark Reinhold posted the first public draft of the future of modularity in Java. Unlike the previous iterations of JSR294, the discussions of modularity in Java have taken place outside of Sun/Oracle's closed doors and involved others with a stake in OpenJDK, such as IBM and other members of the Java SE and Java EE communities, as explained in Mark's blog post on the subject.
As it is a draft there are a handful of issues that still need to be agreed on but it represents the consensus of what modularity in Java should look like. And with IBM being involved, there's more emphasis on interoperability with OSGi than there has been in the past.
What's interesting with the requirements is that the intention is to build upon the ServiceLoader and ResourceBundle that currently are not well behaved in the face of modularity, so that those who want to use a standardised pattern can still take advantage of the modularity without having to be concerned with the details. Currently, ServiceLoader has problems with multiple classloaders.
One of the key goals of enabling modularity in the JVM is to enable the splitting of the JVM libraries itself, which have grown to tens of megabytes in size over the years. (Scala, which doesn't deal with the concept of modularity, has almost reached 10Mb in size as well.) However, all classes in the JVM's libraries expect to be in the same
ClassLoader; and since OSGi has one per bundle, this wouldn't be a direct map. (OSGi does have the concept of fragments which insert themselves into the parent's classloader.) Being able to support a module system with a single classloader (and therefore, no dynamics) as well as one with a multiple classloader approach is part of the document's requirements.
Some statements are vague. For example, versions are required to be totally ordered, but there doesn't appear to be a consistent versioning scheme such as Semantic Versioning. And whilst it requires that the metadata be strictly defined (of which the version number is part), the contents of the version are left open to interpretation.
Another open issue is whether the module information should be available as compiled Java code, or a declarative external library. Whilst OSGi uses the existing
MANIFEST.MF file for encoding dependencies, the previous Jigsaw implementation compiled a Java class file to permit introspection through libraries. One downside to the Java variant is that it will make using the module system for non-Java languages harder (such as Mirah or JRuby).
This requirement looks to be contentious. Whilst noting that he hasn’t yet had time to read the full spec, JRuby lead Charles Nutter has already commented on Reinhold's blog
By requiring that there be a .class file, probably with annotations in it, the jigsaw modularity system unnecessarily restricts participation to languages that:
- Compile to JVM bytecode always before shipping
- Support the full complement of Java language constructs, like annotations at the source level
Going slightly further than just modularity, the proposal also talks about generic packaging systems (like
easy_install) as a means of transporting Java runtimes to other systems, as well as web publication of the artifacts.
The proposal, whilst still a work in progress with unsolved issues, has attracted some positive reactions:
There are many, many good requirements in this document and Java will certainly gain from having these realized - if this is done in an open and inclusive manner.
Another good thing is that once modularization is part of Java SE 8, moving to OSGi will be easier than it is today. The biggest stumbling block for migrating an existing system to OSGi today is often the modularization of a system that wasn't created in a modular way in the first place. It's not an issue with OSGi per se, but with modularity as a concept. If you have existing code that is non-modular, it can be difficult to modularize it. With JavaSE 8 this problem will appear earlier in the development cycle which should help people design their systems in a modular way from early on. If you need more than the basic JVM module system then you can move to OSGi taking your existing JavaSE 8 modules and they will just work as-is - so migration will be a breeze. Then you can enhance the modules to take advantage of the OSGi benefits (see below).
It may be that the modularisation in Java enables the OSGi-lite pattern whilst encouraging Java library developers to annotate their runtimes with module metadata, which can then be consumed by OSGi runtimes. In any case, whilst there are some known disagreements, moving it forward in a compatible and sensible manner will benefit all Java (and JVM-based) developers in the future.
What do you think of the proposed modularity requirements?
If OSGi Fits All Requirements ...
And I do believe OSGi matches virtually all requirements.
Re: If OSGi Fits All Requirements ...
- Maybe it is a bit too early in this "Java modularity" cycle, in other words: lets forget about previous Jigsaw cycles, and start over. Asking the question: what are the modularity requirements for the Java platform, and see where the answer would lead to. Which could lead to OSGi being the solution that satisfies all these requirements, or maybe there are some gaps, and thus working together to see how to best address these issue would lead to a happy scenario for everyone avoiding any fragmentation and inconsistencies
- OSGi is already an established and mature specification, with a number of mature implementations, but one though might be: OSGi has a specification body of it's own and is not under the control of the "JCP", and thus there needs to be a JSR that is managed within the JCP that specifies everything about modularity in the Java platform, keeping compatibility with OSGi in mind, but of course on the long run these two specs may diverge even further. Regardless of my personal opinion about this, I think: if this is a valid concern, there needs to be a good answer for it | <urn:uuid:0e93338f-950c-4109-a9a7-3b116abc6a18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/05/jigsaw-reboot | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940899 | 1,276 | 1.6875 | 2 |
The rain created a dreary backdrop, but it couldn't rinse joy from the faces of those who gathered Tuesday Morning to see Leg Up Farm's new koi pond.
"We figure, if the fish can get wet, so can we," said Tom O'Connor, development director at the Mount Wolf-based farm, which operates as an outpatient therapy center for children with special needs.
Some of those children smiled and giggled as they helped release the slippery koi into cold water.
"That joy is what it's all about," said CEO Louie Castriota Jr., wiping tears from his eyes. "We've created another space the kids can enjoy and find happiness."
In 2010, Castriota opened Leg Up Farm, which has served more than 700 children and manages more than 1,100 therapy
Holding 450,000 gallons of water and spanning 1/3 of an acre, the new addition is the largest therapeutic koi pond in the country, he said.
Professional landscaping, a steady waterfall, and the fluttering of butterflies and dragonflies offer both a peaceful refuge for families who attend the center and a teaching tool in Leg Up Farm's therapy programs.
The handicapped-accessible pond will help physical therapists teach patients how to navigate different surfaces, such as walking on rocks.
Patients will also feed the koi, helping them master the pincer grip.
Speech therapists will be able to use the pond to motivate patients to pronounce a new word and make a new sound.
Frogs have already made their way to the new space, and more than 100 koi were released into the pond Tuesday by patients and their siblings.
"This place is really about the whole family," Castriota said.
Siblings of children with special needs rarely have anywhere to go or anything to do during therapy appointments, so Leg Up Farm creates spaces the entire family can enjoy, he said.
The farm's offerings are largely inspired by his teenage daughter Brooke, who has mitochondrial disease - a metabolic disorder that causes cognitive and motor function delays.
Castriota and his wife, Laurie, have three other children, who don't need specialized care, and know first-hand what it's like to manage multiple therapy appointments with multiple children.
"That's why we really want to enhance the life of the whole family," he said.
To help achieve that, the center is in the middle of a $1.5 million construction project that is adding therapy gardens throughout the 18-acre property, including a tranquility garden, sensory garden, the koi pond, organic garden, music garden and outdoor classrooms.
Leg Up Farm's next project is a $3.5 million development that will add classroom space, a therapy pool, a gym, and training areas for staff and medical providers, he said.
- Reach Candy Woodall at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:94e83c6b-d698-4b7a-ab3e-ef3d97ffca6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yorkdispatch.com/ci_21682701/leg-up-farm-adds-koi-pond-therapy-offerings?source=most_viewed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964535 | 600 | 1.523438 | 2 |
By Kate Whitehead
In 2011, Jane Heyn, wife of the British ambassador to Myanmar, had tea with one of the city’s best-known residents, Aung San Suu Kyi, and brought up the idea of a literary festival.
Ms. Suu Kyi, who had only been released from political imprisonment a year earlier, was immediately interested, but both women knew it would be impossible to invite an international roster of writers under the military regime.
The government’s lifting of visa restrictions, and further opening up of the country, have changed that, enabling the duo to launch the Irrawaddy Literary Festival on Friday in Yangon, with authors such as Jung Chang, William Dalrymple and Vikram Seth in attendance along with dozens of Burmese writers and well-known former dissidents such as Ma Thida and the comedian known as Zarganar.
The festival, says Ms. Heyn, who has lived in Yangon since 2009, “reflects the extraordinary vibrancy of a country in the midst of immense change.” Ms. Suu Kyi, the festival’s patron, says in a statement that “literature has always been a big part of my life, and I hope everybody will profit greatly from this event.”
Ms. Suu Kyi, whose books include “Letters From Burma” and “Freedom From Fear,” is attending the three-day festival and participating in two events on Saturday, the highlight of which will be a conversation with U Thaw Kaung, a retired librarian and member of the Myanmar Historical Commission. Other events will range from literary discussions and talks on censorship and freedom to poetry and the Mandalay Theatre puppeteers, with some in English, others in Burmese and a few simultaneously translated. Nearly 100 Burmese writers have signed up to participate.
“We’ve been very pleased with the level of enthusiasm and interest from Burmese writers who are eager to interact with writers from overseas,” says Joseph Fisher, a member of the Irrawaddy organizing committee. “It’s very important that the festival is accessible to everyone, the local Burmese community as well as the expat community.”
Tight controls over literature during the military regime mean some of the most famous writers in attendance will be unknown to the local audience. That is changing — Ms. Chang’s “Wild Swans,” a 20th-century look at China through three generations of women, was recently translated into Burmese — but it underscores Myanmar’s long isolation, says Thant Myint-U, author of “The River of Lost Footsteps,” a personal history of Burma.
“I hope this festival will both better expose readers and writers inside Myanmar to the world of books outside,” he says, “as well as put Myanmar on the world literary map.”
Pandora, a poet who goes by only one name, says the global attention is a big draw for local writers, as well as the festival’s format, which includes question-and-answer sessions and debates.
“The style of discussion will be very different from the literary talks we’re used to,” she says. “Usually the writer just gives a lecture to the audience — it’s a one-way thing. But this festival is going to be much more interactive.” | <urn:uuid:0132ee7b-3858-41ca-8f9a-0397030dcf73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2013/02/01/myanmars-reforms-lead-to-its-first-literary-festival/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964452 | 729 | 1.609375 | 2 |
On July 8th 2011 the Bundesrat, the German upper house of parliament, denied approval of the changes adopted of the federal tax regulations already approved by the Bundestag (the lower house of Parliament) and the federal government. This decision directly
impacts the modified legislation E-Invoicing.
What’s the fuzz all about?
The original plan was that as from July 1st 2011 electronic invoices without signatures and EDI procedures fiscally compliant. However, because the Bundesrat did not consent to the law, it is pretty safe to say that the new rules on electronic invoicing in
Germany will only come into force with a law consented by the Bundesrat. Even when a change of the existing scheme is expected by the end of 2012 due to the new EU Directive.
What does this mean for German organisations, German adoption rates and EU adoption tactics?
- German organisations must apply EDI and/or electronic signatures to be compliant
- German adoption growth-rate will remain lower than countries that have liberalised e-invoicing regulation
- As Germany is the Powerhouse of the EU, this situation will seriously affect EU e-invoicing adoption rates and tactics
Merkel to the rescue?
Perhaps Angela Merkel can speed up the process a bit. She is considered the most powerful women in the world for a reason, right? | <urn:uuid:fbc2fda8-ff8d-46ec-aa72-6cf775878027> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.finextra.com/community/FullBlog.aspx?blogid=5699 | 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 | 0.949578 | 283 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Madhya Pradesh High Court has taken cognizance of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board's objection. In a temporary relief to Nagpur residents, the Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, on December 21, turned down the Centre’s plea for a trial run of burning toxic waste from the defunct Union Carbide factory at the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) incineration facility in the city.
The waste has been lying in the plant premises in Bhopal for the past 27 years. Maharashtra has been resisting Madhya Pradesh’s attempt to dispose of the waste in Nagpur. The Union of India and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) had sought authorization to DRDO facility at Borkhedi in Nagpur for storing 2.5 million tonnes of the hazardous waste, a legacy of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, for the trial run of the incinerator.
Taking cognizance of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB)’s objections, citing non-compliance of inter-state hazardous waste transport rules and non-functional incinerator, the court has directed the Centre to instead carry out the incineration test at any of the country’s select laboratories. It asked it to analyse fumes, residue and its possible environmental impact and submit a report within three weeks.
The court has also clarified that the Union of India can file replies on the MPCB’s objections on behalf of the DRDO and the Union environment ministry. The next hearing of the case has been slated for January 17.
Union Carbide refuses more compensation to gas leak victims
The Indian government's endeavors to get more compensation for the Bhopal gas disaster victims received a setback with the US-based Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) calling India's attempt an “affront to the rule of law”.
The government had filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court in December 2010, seeking enhanced compensation calculated on the basis of higher number of victims than the number considered earlier. The company had made a settlement of US $470 million (Rs750 crore) for all the victims. The Indian government was instead demanding Rs 7413 crore.
The settlement of Rs 750 crore was based on the earlier figure of 3,000 deaths and 70,000 injury cases; the curative petition put the death numbers at 5,295 and injury figure at 527,894. The victims of the tragedy, on the basis of a report of Indian Council of Medical Research, say the actual death figure is five times higher than the figure quoted in the curative petition and that most of the injuries were of permanent nature and not temporary as stated by the government in the petition.
In the affidavit, which was filed in the court secretly (no copies were circulated to the parties to the case), UCC, which is now owned by Dow Chemicals, said compensation was given more than four years after the accident, and that this period provided the government sufficient time to assess the damages.
The affidavit stated that the Government of India should return the settlement funds to UCC with interest if it wants curative action. For this, the government would have to prove UCC’s liability during trial and establish the actual damages sustained by each individual claimant. This, the company says, would result in compensation becoming less than the amounts awarded from the settlement.
In the affidavit, it also pointed out that the issue of compensation has been raised twice before and the court had ruled in favour of the company. “Nothing has changed since the last time the court rejected the allegations in 2007—except the position of the Union of India, which previously opposed attempts by others to reopen the settlement on the very same grounds it is arguing today,” it said.
The government has indeed changed its tune after victims' groups demanded more payment and as per earlier court orders, the Central government was responsible for further compensation. Legal experts say this might be to pacify the victims who are demanding higher compensation. If for example, UCC refuses to pay up, the Indian government could use this as an excuse not to pay higher compensation.
Sanjay Parikh, the lawyer representing the victims in the compensation case against the Union of India, says, “the compensation that was given was meagre and there are a lot of people who have not been paid. They should be paid whether it is from the money given by UCC or the Government of India.”
The refusal to acknowledge the liability is an indication that India needs to put in place a better legislation to ensure safety of people working and living near hazardous factories. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Rules of 2011 were notified just ahead of the prime minister’s scheduled meeting with the US president in Bali in Indonesia on November 18, the same day UCC filed its affidavit.
ToxicWatch Alliance (TWA), an NGO against corporate crimes, suggests that a high powered parliamentary committee be set up to examine how to ensure transnational corporations like UCC can be made liable. The Union government should desist from introducing the Companies Bill of 2011, under which the independent directors are not liable for accidents. This should be introduced only after introducing a liability regime for national and transnational corporations, says Gopal Krishna of TWA. | <urn:uuid:579a1bad-3959-4628-9cec-f7a6271e2299> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cseindia.org/content/bhopals-dilemma | 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 | 0.967061 | 1,089 | 1.726563 | 2 |
- Highway Investment Analysis Methodology
- Highway Economic Requirements System
- Allocating HERS and NBIAS Results Among Improvement Types
- Highway Investment Backlog
- Travel Demand Elasticity
- Operation Strategies and ITS Deployment
- Current Operations Deployments
- Future Operations Deployments
- Operations Investment Costs
- Impacts of Operations Deployments
- HERS Revenue and Pricing Analysis
- Revenue Analysis
- Congestion Pricing
- HERS Improvement Costs
- HERS Technical Reviews
- Highway Economic Requirements System
Highway Investment Analysis Methodology
Investments in highway resurfacing and reconstruction and highway and bridge capacity expansion are modeled by the Highway Economic Requirements System (HERS), which has been used since the 1995 C&P report. This appendix describes the basic HERS methodology and approach in slightly more detail than is presented in Part II, including the treatment of ITS deployment and operations strategies, the allocation of investment across improvement types, and the calculation of the highway backlog. It also explores some of the improvements that have been made to the model since the 2004 C&P report. These include two new procedures, one that links investment levels to revenues and another that simulates the effects of universal congestion pricing, as well as updates to the improvement costs matrix.
Highway Economic Requirements System
The HERS model initiates the investment analysis by evaluating the current state of the highway system using information on pavements, geometry, traffic volumes, vehicle mix, and other characteristics from the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) sample dataset. Using section-specific traffic growth projections, HERS forecasts future conditions and performance across several funding periods. As used in this report, the future analysis covers four consecutive 5 year periods. At the end of each period, the model checks for deficiencies in eight highway section characteristics: pavement condition, surface type, volume/service flow (V/SF) ratio, lane width, right shoulder width, shoulder type, horizontal alignment (curves), and vertical alignment (grades).
Where can I find more detailed technical information concerning the HERS model?
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has previously developed a Technical Report for the Highway Economic Requirements System. The most recent printed edition, dated December 2000, is based on HERS version 3.26, which was utilized in the development of the 1999 edition of the C&P report.
The FHWA also has developed a modified version of HERS for use by states. This model, HERS-ST, builds on the primary HERS analytical engine, but adds a number of customized features to facilitate analysis on a section-by-section basis. The recently released HERS-ST version 4.0 is largely based on HERS version 4.097, which was utilized in developing the 2004 edition of the C&P report. The Highway Economic Requirements System–State Version: Technical Report is available online at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/asstmgmt/hersdoc.htm. Any updates to the HERS-ST model, including those designed to incorporate new features developed for HERS, will be reflected in future editions of the Technical Report.
Once HERS determines a section’s pavement or capacity is deficient, it will identify potential improvements to correct some or all of the section's deficient characteristics. The HERS model evaluates seven kinds of improvements: resurfacing, resurfacing with shoulder improvements, resurfacing with widened lanes (aka minor widening), resurfacing with added lanes (aka major widening), reconstruction, reconstruction with widened lanes, and reconstruction with added lanes. For improvements that add travel lanes, HERS further distinguishes between those that can be made at "normal cost" and those on sections with limited widening feasibility that could only be made at "high cost." HERS may also evaluate alignment improvements to improve curves, grades, or both.
When evaluating which potential improvement, if any, should be implemented on a particular highway section, HERS employs incremental benefit-cost analysis. The HERS model defines benefits as reductions in direct highway user costs, agency costs, and societal costs. Highway user benefits are defined as reductions in travel time costs, crash costs, and vehicle operating costs. Agency benefits include reduced maintenance costs (plus the residual value of projects with longer expected service lives than the alternative). Societal benefits include reduced vehicle emissions. Increases in any of these costs resulting from a highway improvement (such as higher emissions rates at high speeds or the increased delay associated with a work zone) would be factored into the analysis as a "disbenefit."
These benefits are divided by the costs of implementing the improvement to arrive at a benefit-cost ratio (BCR) that is used to rank potential projects on different sections. The HERS model implements improvements with the highest BCR first. Thus, as each additional project is implemented, the marginal BCR and the average BCR of all projects implemented decline. However, until the point where the marginal BCR falls below 1.0 (i.e., costs exceed benefits), total net benefits will continue to increase as additional projects are implemented. Investment beyond this point would not be economically justified, since it would result in a decline in total net benefits.
What are the average and marginal benefit cost ratios associated with the HERS scenarios presented in this report?
The HERS analysis presented in this report was performed by imposing a funding constraint on the model. Under this type of analysis, HERS ranks potential improvements in order by their benefit-cost ratios, then implements them until the funding constraint is reached (see the Introduction to Part II). Higher funding levels will thus include projects with lower benefit-cost ratios, both at the margin (when the constraint is met) and on average.
For the "Maintain User Costs" scenario, the average benefit-cost ratio was 5.69. The marginal benefit-cost ratios in each of the four funding periods ranged from 2.43 to 3.08. For the "Maximum Economic Investment" scenario, the average BCR was 3.14, and the marginal BCRs ranged from 1.00 to 1.84.
Because the HERS model analyzes each highway segment independently, rather than the entire transportation system, it cannot fully evaluate the network effects of individual highway improvements. While efforts have been made to indirectly account for some network effects, HERS is fundamentally rooted to its primary data source, the national sample of independent highway sections contained in the HPMS. To fully recognize all network effects, it would be necessary to develop significant new data sources and analytical techniques. The Part IV Afterword includes more discussion of this issue.
Allocating HERS and NBIAS Results Among Improvement Types
Highway capital expenditures can be divided among three types of improvements: system rehabilitation, system expansion, and system enhancements (see Chapters 6 and 7 for definitions and discussion). All improvements selected by HERS that did not add lanes to a facility were classified as part of system preservation. For improvements that added lanes, the total cost of the improvement was split between preservation and expansion, since widening projects typically improve the existing lanes of a facility to some degree. Also, adding new lanes to a facility tends to reduce the amount of traffic carried by each of the old lanes, which may extend their pavement life. The allocation of widening costs between preservation and capacity expansion was based on the improvement cost inputs and implementation procedures within the HERS model.
All investment scenarios projected by the National Bridge Investment Analysis System (NBIAS) are classified as rehabilitation only, since new bridge and bridge capacity expansion investments are implicitly modeled by HERS. The HERS model does not currently analyze investments in those types of improvements classified as system enhancements.
Highway Investment Backlog
To calculate this value, HERS evaluates the current state of each highway section before projecting the effects of future travel growth on congestion and pavement deterioration. Any potential improvement that would correct an existing pavement or capacity deficiency, and that has a BCR greater than or equal to 1.0, is considered to be part of the current highway investment backlog.
As noted in Chapter 7, the backlog estimate produced by HERS does not include either rural minor collectors or rural and urban local roads and streets (since HPMS does not contain sample section data for these functional systems), nor does it contain any estimate for system enhancements.
Travel Demand Elasticity
The States furnish projected travel for each sample highway section in the HPMS dataset. As described in Chapters 7 and 9, HERS assumes that the HPMS forecasts are constant-price forecasts, meaning that the generalized price facing highway users in the forecast year is the same as in the base year. The HERS model uses these projections as an initial baseline, but alters them in response to changes in highway user costs on each section over time. The travel demand elasticity procedures in HERS recognize that as a highway becomes more congested, some potential travel on the facility may be deterred and, that when lanes are added to a facility, the volume of travel may increase.
The basic principle behind demand elasticity is that, as the price of a product increases relative to the price of other products or services, consumers will be inclined to consume less of it. Conversely, if the price of a product decreases, consumers will be inclined to consume more of it, either in place of some other product or in addition to their current overall consumption.
What are some examples of the types of behavior that the travel demand elasticity features in the HERS represent?
If highway congestion worsens in an area, this increases travel time costs on the road network. In response, some highway users might shift their trips to mass transit or perhaps forgo some personal trips they might ordinarily make. For example, they might be more likely to combine multiple errands into a single trip because the time spent in traffic on every trip discourages them from making a trip unless it is absolutely necessary.
In the longer term, people might make additional adjustments to their lifestyles in response to changes in user costs that would impact their travel demand. For example, if travel time in an area is reduced substantially for an extended period of time, some people may make different choices about where to purchase a home. If congestion is reduced, purchasing a home far out in the suburbs might become more attractive, since commuters would be able to travel farther in a shorter period of time.
The travel demand elasticity procedures in HERS treat the cost of traveling a facility as its price. As a highway becomes more congested, the cost of traveling the facility (i.e., travel time cost) increases, which tends to constrain the volume of traffic growth. Conversely, when lanes are added and highway user costs decrease, the volume of travel tends to increase.
As a result of travel demand elasticity, the overall level of highway investment has an impact on projected travel growth. For any highway investment scenario that results in a decline in average highway user costs, the effective vehicle miles traveled (VMT) growth rate tends to be higher than the baseline rate. For scenarios in which highway user costs increase, the effective VMT growth rate tends to be lower than the baseline rate. However, this effect has been tempered to some degree by the new HERS revenue procedures described below, which increase user fees at higher levels of investment and thus dampen the effect of highway performance improvements on travel demand.
Demand elasticity is measured as the percentage change in travel relative to the percentage change in costs faced by users of the facility. Thus, an elasticity value of –0.8 would mean that a 10 percent decrease in user costs would result in an 8 percent increase in travel.
Operation Strategies and ITS Deployment
One of the key modifications to HERS featured in the previous report was the ability to consider the impact of highway operations strategies and intelligent transportation system (ITS) deployments on highway system performance. This feature is continued in this report with only minor modifications. Current and future investments in operations are modeled outside of HERS, but the impacts of these deployments were allowed to affect the internal calculations made by the model, and thus also affect the capital improvements considered and implemented in HERS. As discussed in Part IV, a longer-term goal would be to analyze operations as alternative investment strategies directly in HERS.
While numerous operations strategies are available to highway authorities (see Chapter 15), a limited number are now considered in HERS (based on the availability of suitable data and empirical impact relationships). The types of strategies analyzed can be grouped into three categories: arterial management, freeway management, and incident management as follows:
- Arterial Management
- Signal Control
- Electronic Roadway Monitoring
- Variable Message Signs (VMS)
- Freeway Management
- Ramp Metering (preset and traffic actuated)
- Electronic Roadway Monitoring
- Incident Management
- Incident Detection (free cell phone call number and detection algorithms)
- Incident Verification (surveillance cameras)
- Incident Response (on-call service patrols).
Creating the operations improvements input files for use in HERS involved four steps: determine current operations deployment, determine future operations deployments, determine the cost of future operations investments, and determine the impacts of operations deployments.
Current Operations Deployments
To determine current operations deployments on the HPMS sample segments, data were used from three sources: HPMS universe data, HPMS sample data, and the ITS Deployment Tracking System. The data assignments that were made reflected the fact that operations deployments occur over corridors (or even over entire urban areas, as with traffic management centers).
Future Operations Deployments
For future ITS and operations deployments, three scenarios were developed. For the "Continuation of Existing Deployment Trends" scenario, an examination of current congestion levels compared with existing deployments was made to set the congestion level by urban area size for each type of deployment. For the "Aggressive Deployment" scenario, an accelerated pace of deployment above existing trends was assumed. The hypothetical "Full Deployment" scenario illustrates the maximum potential impact of the strategies and technologies modeled in HERS on highway operational performance.
Operations Investment Costs
The unit costs for each deployment item were taken from the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT's) ITS Benefits Database and Unit Costs Database and supplemented with costs based on the ITS Deployment Analysis System (IDAS) model. Costs were broken down into initial capital costs and annual operating and maintenance costs. Also, costs were determined for building the basic infrastructure to support the equipment, as well as for the incremental costs per piece of equipment that is deployed. A major addition to operations deployment costs in this report is the inclusion of traffic signal replacement costs, which were not previously considered in the estimated capital costs.
Impacts of Operations Deployments
Exhibit A-1 shows the estimated impacts of the different operations strategies considered in HERS. These effects include the following:
- Incident Management: Incident duration is reduced as well as the number of crash fatalities. Incident duration is used as a predictor variable in estimating incident delay in the HERS model.
- Signal Control: The effects of the different levels of signal control are directly considered in the HERS delay equations.
- Ramp Meters and VMS: Delay adjustments are applied to the basic delay equations in HERS.
Based on the current and future deployments and the impact relationships, an operations improvements input file was created for each of the two deployment scenarios. The file contains section identifiers, plus current and future values (for each of the four funding periods in the HERS analysis) for the following five fields:
- Incident Duration Factor
- Delay Reduction Factor
- Fatality Reduction Factor
- Signal Type Override
- Ramp Metering.
|Operations Strategy||Impact Category||Impact|
||Signal Density Factor = n(nx+2)/(n+2)
n = # of signals per mile
x = 1 for fixed time control
2/3 for traffic actuated control
1/3 for closed loop control
0 for real-time adaptive control/SCOOT/SCATS
Signal Density Factor is used to compute zero-volume delay due to traffic signals
|Electronic Roadway Monitoring
||Supporting deployment for corridor signal control (2 highest levels)
|EM Vehicle Signal Preemption
||-0.5% incident delay
||New delay = 0.16 hrs per 1000 VMT – 0.13(original delay)
| Traffic Actuated
|New delay = 0.16 hrs per 1000 VMT – 0.13(original delay)
-3% number of injuries and PDO accidents
|Electronic Roadway Monitoring
||Supporting deployment for ramp metering and Traveler Info
||-0.5% incident delay
|Detection Algorithm/ Free Cell|| Incident Characteristics
| -4.5% incident duration|
|Surveillance Cameras|| Incident Characteristics|
| -4.5% incident duration|
|On-Call Service Patrols|| Incident Characteristics|
|-25% incident duration|
|All Combined|| Incident Characteristics |
HERS Revenue and Pricing Analysis
The most important revisions to the HERS analytical procedures for this report involve highway revenue and pricing analysis. The conceptual basis for these changes and their impacts on the C&P investment analysis are highlighted throughout the report. While these two procedures address related issues, they are implemented distinctly from one another within the model.
The HERS revenue analysis procedures provide the option of imposing a "balanced budget" constraint on the results. This was done by creating a mechanism to link the HERS levels of investment to the additional revenue that would be required to fund that investment.
The first step in the procedure is to determine the amount of revenue that is required to be raised. This calculation is based on the difference between the funding constraint specified for the run and base year HERS-related expenditures, which were calculated from 2004 highway capital expenditure data. A multiplier is then applied to this difference to ensure that revenues would be sufficient to cover other capital expenditure types (including bridge rehabilitation and replacement and system enhancement) that are not modeled in HERS.
The model assumes that any additional revenues needed to support the scenario being analyzed are raised through user surcharges in a manner consistent with the current financing structure. The surcharge tax rate is calculated by simply estimating total VMT and fuel consumption, then dividing this into the amount of required revenue.
The revenue and surcharge calculations are repeated sequentially for each funding period. However, during the benefit-cost analysis in each period (which typically extends over multiple periods), HERS assumes that the surcharge tax rates in that period are carried forward into future periods.
Preliminary results from the new HERS congestion pricing feature are presented in Chapter 10. This procedure has been newly developed for this edition of the C&P report and has not yet been subject to extensive testing. When invoked in the model, it estimates and applies a user fee based on the level of congestion on each section.
The congestion pricing feature was constructed using the existing HERS procedures for calculating delay and travel demand. HERS first calculates average user costs in its usual fashion, then derives the marginal congestion cost from the delay equations (coupled with value of time inputs). The difference between average costs and marginal costs represents the estimated congestion externality that each additional vehicle imposes on other users. The model then applies a toll equal to this cost differential, forcing users to "internalize" the externality (and improving efficiency) and determines a new equilibrium volume and price. The congestion pricing procedure is applied to peak period traffic on all roads with a volume/capacity ratio of 0.80 or greater. This is the threshhold used in Chapters 4 and 9 to identify roads as being congested.
It is important to understand that the congestion pricing feature does not operate in conjunction with any of the revenue analysis features described above. As a result, the HERS considers the "revenues" raised by the congestion tolls to be in addition to existing user fees, rather than as a replacement for them.
HERS Improvement Costs
For the 2004 C&P report, significant changes were made to the structure of the HERS improvement cost matrix, the assumed unit costs in that matrix, and the manner in which those values were applied. This updating process was continued for this report, though the incremental changes were less extensive than in the prior report.
The improvement cost updates reflected in the 2004 report were based on highway project data from six states (see Appendix A of that report for more information). Though adequate in most respects, that dataset was relatively thin in certain key areas. For the purposes of this update, additional data were collected focusing on three of these areas: mountainous regions, large urbanized areas, and high-cost capacity improvements.
The 2004 update had disaggregated the improvement cost values in urban areas by functional class and by urbanized area size. Three population groupings were used: small urban (5,000 to 49,999), small urbanized (50,000 to 200,000), and large urbanized (over 200,000). However, the data used to create values for the latter group did not include a significant number of projects in very large urbanized areas, and concerns had been raised about the degree of construction cost comparability between medium-sized cities and much larger ones. For the update in this report, more project cost data were collected, specifically focusing on major urbanized areas over 1 million in population, and a new category for these areas was added to the cost table.
For rural areas, separate cost values are applied by terrain type and functional class. Because projects in mountainous areas were not well represented in the data used in the previous update, additional information was collected from such areas, and the cost items for this terrain type were revised.
Unit values for high-cost transportation capacity improvements ("high cost lanes" in HERS) were modified for the 2004 report. However, these values were again based on a limited number of data sources. To improve these estimates, FHWA collected data on a larger number of projects of the type that these HERS improvements are intended to represent, including parallel routes, double-decking, tunneling, or purchasing extremely expensive right of way.
HERS Technical Reviews
Peer reviews by panels of outside experts are an effective way to ensure that the methodologies and analytical tools used in the C&P report continue to meet acceptable standards of technical merit. Under the Office of Management and Budget’s Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review, such reviews are also required for any "highly influential scientific disseminations," a category that has been deemed to include the C&P analytical tools, including HERS and NBIAS.
In its early development, the HERS model received extensive scrutiny from various technical panels that looked at all aspects of the modeling procedure in depth. More recent reviews focused on specific aspects of the model. The last such review was conducted in 1999 and focused on the travel demand elasticity procedures and emissions procedures.
The FHWA has recently completed a new round of technical evaluations of HERS, concentrating on major features added to the model that would be especially well suited for outside review. The chosen focus areas were the HERS ITS/operations analytical procedures, and recent modifications to the HERS elasticity procedures (see Appendix A in the 2004 and 2002 C&P reports for more information on these model enhancements). To conduct the reviews, FHWA hired a contractor to assemble two panels, consisting of three members each, to examine different aspects of the model. A third panel was created to examine the NBIAS model (see Appendix B). The final reports from each of the panels are available at http://www.dot.gov/peerreview/.
The HERS Elasticity panel consisted of university researchers with extensive experience in the modeling of travel demand. The panel reviewed the documentation on the HERS elasticity procedures. While the panelists individual reviews focused on refinements made to the procedures to account for vehicle occupancy, section length, and diversion, they considered other aspects of the HERS elasticity approach as well. They noted the difficulties involved in attempting to apply travel demand concepts on a segment-based model, and questioned the assertion that diversionary impacts on other roadways could be ignored both theoretically and practically. They noted the conceptual differences between network-level elasticities and link-level elasticities, and the challenge in navigating between the two for the HERS analysis. One review also raised issues with the manner in which short-run and long-run elasticity effects are operationalized in HERS.
One modification that has been made for this report based on the panel's review was to reduce the elasticity parameter values used in HERS. The concern was that the older values might be too high given the nature of the data used in HERS, which are sample segments intended to represent larger portions or corridors on different functional classes. The lower values used in this report (–0.4 for short-run elasticity and –0.8 for long-run elasticity) are believed to be better representations of corridor-level effects. Chapter 10 includes an analysis of the effect that this parameter change has on the investment scenario estimates.
The peer reviewers of the HERS Operations procedures included experts in highway congestion modeling and ITS development and deployment. The reviewers concluded that the basic approach used to estimate current and future ITS deployment was sound, but that it was limited by the quality of the data sources. They also determined that the impacts of ITS and operations strategies on highway operational performance that are assumed in HERS were reasonable, but that they should continue to be updated as new research on these impacts becomes available. They also made several suggestions about changes to existing data sources that would improve the quality of the analysis. These suggestions are being considered as part of FHWA's current reassessment of the HPMS data process (see the Afterword in Part IV). | <urn:uuid:3394ed06-d34a-41cf-8b35-b526c4f6ddf1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2006cpr/appa.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94562 | 5,314 | 1.632813 | 2 |
There is a wide diversity among Dungeons & Dragons campaigns; I have often marveled at how the same rule set can produce games that convincingly immerse players in worlds like Tolkein’s Middle Earth, Ancient Rome, Howard’s Hyborian Age, the reign of Loius XIV and all points between.
Regardless of the specific flavor of campaign, it is the dungeon master’s responsibility to do all in his power to maintain player interest “in the moment” during the game. One way to complete this task involves adding elements external to the rules that enhance players’ overall experience; a primary element I add is music.
Any music can be helpful to a game, as it tends to drown out noises from adjacent rooms, thereby limiting a frequent source of distraction. I have known gamers who have played classical music in the background, heavy metal rock music during combat encounters, and quieter music, such as Pink Floyd, during exploration periods. There are also groups, such as Midnight Syndicate, who specialize in ambient music.
My preference has always been the use of orchestral film scores and, of late, video game scores. A score is the background music you hear during a film or game; the very best scores suit their media so well that viewers may not specifically notice them, although emotions depticted in the media can be amplified by a good score without a viewer’s conscious knowledge.
In many ways, a score composer’s task is much like a novelist: she must be “invisible” to the reader or listener, and any out-of-place word, phrase or note that would remind readers or listeners that they are listening to music or reading a story detracts from suspension of disbelief. Dungeon masters seek that suspension of disbelief as well, and the highly heroic and emotional symphonic scores that accompany fantasy films are filled with dramatic tension that can help players stay focused on the game.
Adding music to your Dungeons & Dragons game is a relatively simple process. It is of course possible to purchase scores from online CD merchants, although brick-and-mortar retail record stores sometimes have scores in their “bargain bins,” as these recordings present something of a niche market and don’t sell quickly. Chances are that many D&D players own numerous fantasy-themed computer games, and obtaining the music files from those games is only a matter of copying and pasting from the appropriate files on their own computers. Local public libraries may also have appropriate musical selections that can be borrowed for gaming purposes.
Keep in mind that some very poor films have outstanding scores; Graeme Revell’s music for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie is outstanding for a D&D game, although it wouldn’t appear so at a glance.
Regardless of how the music is obtained, preparing it for play is similarly easy. Nearly all computers have some form of media player with the capacity to create playlists; many dungeon masters listen to scores, placing musical tracks on playlists for combat, exploration, chases, or anything else the game requires. These playlists can then be burned to audio CDs, or, for dungeon masters who keep a computer at or near the game table, the lists can be played directly from the computer.
Dungeon masters who want to take game music to the next level can purchase the RPG Sound Mixer, a simple sound mixing program that combines media playlisting with the ability to assign sound efffects to keystrokes at pivotal points in the game. I presently use an old version of the product, but plan to upgrade soon.
Those seeking sound effects for their games could again mine their compter game files, which are filled with a surprising number of game-appropriate effects. There are also Web sites, such as soundsnap, where sound effects can be downloaded for free.
Another option for dungeon masters who have Internet access at the gaming table is to register for free at Radio Rivendell, a Web site that continuously streams fantasy music. Although a game master cannot control what Radio Rivendell plays, it works well in the absence of prepared playlists. A similar approach involves using Pandora Radio, another free service that plays music in the same genre as artists a site visitor types in; creating a personal Pandora station using well-known composers such as John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith accomplishes a similar effect.
Apart from adding to the atmosphere at the gaming table, these playlists can be used by dungeon masters as background music for game preparation. We’ve all been at a point where we must prepare a game for the near future, and don’t particularly feel like doing so. By definition, film score music must be highly emotional – it is designed to provoke emotion in viewers, after all – and hearing a few rousing battle themes has often been enough to alter my mood and stimulate my creativity.
While music won’t turn a poorly-prepared game into a good one, it does have the potential to turn a good session into a great one; it is for this reason that I suggest dungeon masters explore the potential of music in their games. | <urn:uuid:65ffc294-de6a-4e6b-847d-c55219b64b0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/new-category-rpg-music/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95621 | 1,061 | 1.773438 | 2 |
This version: 22 September 2000
Defence policy: One clear objective
Australian Research Council Senior Fellow
Department of Economics
Faculty of Economics and Commerce
Australian National University
Submission to Defence Review 2000
FAX + 61 2 62495124
Phone + 61 2 82494602 (bh)
+ 61 2 62578992(ah)
Defence policy: One clear objective
The crucial problem in Australian defence policy is a lack of clarity regarding objectives. The Defence Review 2000 sets out a number of possible objectives which are implicitly given roughly comparable weight. These are:
_Defeating attacks on Australia
_International coalition operations
_Military operations other than war
It should be evident that among these objectives, the defence of Australia against foreign invasion is overwhelmingly more significant than any of the others. It would be perfectly reasonable for Australia to abstain entirely from any military activity other than self-defence and many countries in fact do so. By contrast, defence of the national territory is a core function of government.
Hence, the appropriate starting point for analysis is the explicit recognition that the defence of Australia is the core function of the defence forces. The purpose of this submission is to argue that defence policy issues can and should be clarified by the explicit adoption of a single core objective, that of national self-defence, with other possible uses of defence forces being regarded as peripheral
The paper is organised as follows. The first section is a discussion of relative importance of the defence and other objectives, aimed at justifying the claim that the defence of Australia against foreign invasion is overwhelmingly more significant than other possible defence objectives. Hence, it is argued, the appropriate approach to defence planning is based on a distinction between core and peripheral objectives. mplications for defence expenditure are then discussed.
The relative importance of the defence and other objectives
The argument for a single clear objective in defence policy is based on the claim that our interest in self-defence completely dominates any strategic interest we might have in influencing developments outside Australia, except insofar as the latter interests indirectly affect the likelihood of a future armed attack on Australia.
It would be absurd to place a dollar value on the defence of Australia against future invasion. Nevertheless, it is clear that should such an invasion be attempted, we would be compelled to resist it even it the cost of great loss of life and economic deprivation. While the phrase to the last man and the last shilling is no doubt a rhetorical exaggeration, it would be reasonable to say that a successful armed invasion would be worse than the permanent loss of 80 per cent of our national wealth. Hence, even protection against invasion events of quite low probability (say, less than 1 per cent over the next thirty years) justifies substantial expenditure, such as the current 1.9 per cent of GDP.
By contrast, it is difficult to see how any of the indirect strategic interests discussed in the White Paper would justify the annual expenditure of even one per cent of GDP. it is worth considering a number of such interests separately, including
(i) Australia's interest in international security against aggression
(ii) Australia's interest in regional security and stability
(iii) Protection of Australian citizens and property overseas
(iv) Participation in coalition operations
(v) Domestic objectives including industry policy, disaster relief and youth training and employment
Undoubtedly, Australia has an interest in the peace and prosperity of the world as a whole, and should therefore contribute to international efforts in this direction, such as United Nations peacelkeeping operations. But there is no reason to suppose that our contribution to our international obligations should be primarily military. Since our total commitment to civilian foreign aid, including our special obligations to PNG is less than 0.4 per cent of GDP, no substantial portion of our defence expenditure can be justified by such considerations.
Very similar comments apply to contributions to regional security and stability. Regional security in the present and foreseeable future must be distinguished from the situation during World War II and the Cold War when regional security referred to collective defensive against an actual or potential aggressor seeking to conquer the entire region. In the present context, disruptions such as those currently taking place in Indonesia and Fiji affect our interests as a trading partner and raise humitarian concerns, but raise no threat of a region-wide military conflict, let alone an invasion of Australia. Hence, military assistance in the maintenance of stability must be tested for cost-effectivness against civilian aid.
It is clearly desirable, where possible, to protect Australian citizens and property overseas from civil disturbances, terrorism, crime and other threats. However, by far the greatest threats of this kind to Australian citizens come from the actions of criminals and others operating in Australia. Moreover, our primary responsibility is to ensure that people in Australia, whether or not they are Australian citizens, are safe from such threats, rather than intervening to ensure that foreign jurisdictions fulfil their corresponding obligations.
The term coalition operations applies in essence to participation in operations, possibly undertaken to enforce resolutions of the United Nations, but under the direct military command of the United States. Examples of coalition operations in which Australia has previously participated include the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars. Possible future contingencies include a renewed Korean conflict, a military confrontation between China and Taiwan, or action against a state of concern which might arise following the rise of a dictatorial and potentially aggressive government somewhere in the region.
It is important to observe that the primary importance of Australian contributions to recent coalition operations has been as a symbolic gesture of support for the United States. In military terms, the Australian commitment made little or no difference to the outcome of, for example, the Gulf War. It follows that, where participation in coalition operations is in our national interest, it is the fact of a commitment rather than the particular forces committed that will be of most importance. Hence, the appropriate policy is to structure our forces for the core objective of national defence and then to make whatever commitment is feasible in the circumstances of a particular operation.
While most US-led coalition operations in the recent past have merited at least symbolic support, it is important to maintain independence to decline to participate in operations where US and Australian strategic interests differ or where US policy is driven by domestic policy concerns rather than a correct perception of strategic interests. An example of the former case would be armed US intervention in a conflict between China and Taiwan. Although it would be necessary to make an assessment at the time, it would seem unlikely that intervention in such a conflict, other than to encourage a peaceful resolution, would be in Australias interests. An example of the latter case is the proposed Nuclear Missile Defence system. Expert opinion is almost unanimous that the system will be technically unworkable and will provoke a hostile response from China, but US policy on the topic is driven by the unwillingness of political leaders to state the facts to the US public. Australia should follow the example of the United States European allies and decline to provide any support to the system.
Finally, while the activities defence forces may yield domestic spinoffs of various kinds, it would be a serious mistake to distort defence policy in the pursuit of such objectives. The way in which such spinoff benefits can be addressed is discussed below.
Defence planning - core and peripheral objectives
A good deal of recent literature on public administration has dealt with the problems that arise when public sector organisations operate with ill-defined and diffuse objectives. Although it is not always feasible, the most appropriate response in many cases is to define a core objective for the organisation, then to deal with peripheral objectives on a primarily commercial basis.
The core objective
The detailed design of a defence against an armed attack on Australia is appropriately left to experts. Nevertheless, some observations may be made with respect to the threats against which it is appropriate to prepare, and the force structure that is implied.
The Defence White Paper discusses both developments in South-East Asia and developments in continental Asia (notably China and India) with the implication that Australian defence policy should respond to both. It is clear that developments in South-East Asia could pose a military threat to Australia over the next thirty years. The most obvious possibility is the accession of a hostile government in Indonesia or a breakup of the present Indonesian state resulting in some hostile successor state.
On the other hand, there is little justification for a military response to developments in continental Asia. While defence policy must deal in low-probability contingencies, the prospect that China or India would seek to attack Australia (except as a response to Australian involvement in an Asian war) seems exceptionally remote. Neither China and India has ever made any territorial claim which could affect Australia and both have pressing concerns close to home. Although both countries are building up military capacities, and are likely to have increased economic capacity to finance military spending, neither shows any sign of developing the kind of long-range capacity that would be needed to mount an attack on Australia. Moreover, since both India and China are nuclear powers, it is even more implausible that hostile action on their part would take the form of a conventional attack to which Australian defence forces could respond. To the extent that any defence response to developments in China and India is merited it should take the form of civil defence preparations against nuclear attack.
Turning to the implications of a core defence mission for the structure of the defence force, there appears to be general agreement that the highest priority must be placed on the maintenance of air superiority and that the lowest priority should be allocated to the surface navy. In the absence of air superiority naval forces are largely useless for defensive purposes, while in the presence of air superiority they are largely redundant. The traditional role of naval forces has been to project power in aggressive or forward defensive operations. Such operations should play no role in Australian defence policy.
As far as the army is concerned it is necessary to maintain a force sufficient to respond to any successful landing of hostile forces in Australia and also to operate against hostile forces in the immediate region. Given the low probability that such attackers would deploy armoured forces the current force structure designed to respond to lightly and moderately armed adversaries seems appropriate.
Finally, it is worth considering the balance between current and future capabilities. The White Paper indicates a balance in which about two-thirds of resources are allocated to current capabilities and one-third to future capabilities. However, it also indicates that there is no foreseeable prospect of an armed attack on Australia in the near future, and that our armed forces are substantially superior to those of any other country in the region. This suggests that it would be appropriate to shift the balance of expenditure towards future capabilities.
Given a force structure designed to provide the most cost-effective possible defence against armed invasion or attack, the allocation of resources to peripheral objectives should be assessed through a comparison of benefits and avoidable costs. Avoidable cost is the cost associated with meeting the peripheral objective that would not be incurred as part of the core objective.
The concept of avoidable cost may be illustrated by considering the case of international peacekeeping operations. The avoidable cost of such operations includes the cost of maintaining forces in the field rather than in barracks, and additional payments to troops on active service, but it does not include the basic wages of the troops or the cost of equipment that would have been used in any case. Any benefits accruing to the core defence objective, such as training benefits, should be offset against avoidable cost.
The balance between benefits and avoidable costs may be achieved by requiring external funding for peripheral objectives. For example, if increased costs of domestic defence procurement are justified on industry policy grounds, the defence budget should be based on least-cost procurement with the avoidable costs of domestic procuremen being funded by subsidies from an industry department. Similarly, the use of defence forces to achieve foreign policy objectives should be funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which would have an incentive to ensure that the same objectives could not be met at lower cost, for example through civilian aid.
Although similar arrangements have been applied to other government agencies, it seems doubtful that such a radical reform would be applied to the defence forces. Hence, it will be necessary to design internal budgeting procedures to implement an appropriate distinction between core and peripheral objectives.
The approach recommended here would entail a gradual reduction in the capacity to pursue peripheral objectives. Nevertheless, the need to maintain significant armed forces even during periods like the present, when there is no threat of invasion in the near future, implies that there will be frequently be a capacity to allocate defence force resources to peripheral objectives at low avoidable cost. Thus, for example, it should be possible to make contributions to international peacekeeping forces on appropriate occasions.
Implications for Defence Expenditure
As Defence Review 2000 makes clear, the maintenance of a multi-objective defence force would require a substantial increase in expenditure. On the other hand, current expenditure is more than sufficient to achieve the core objective of defending Australia for the immediate future. Even if, as projected, the costs of defence technology rise over time, it should be possible to reorient expenditure to the core defence objective at the expense of a gradual diminution of capacity to pursue peripheral objectives. The observation that:
If it was decided that Defence should take a narrower focus on maintaining the capabilities needed only to defeat credible attacks on our territory, then it is possible that these limited goals could be achieved from within the current level of funding (Defence Review 2000)
should form the basis of defence planning.
The core defence budget should be maintained as a constant proportion of GDP, while peripheral objectives should be funded from appropriate non-defence sources.
There is a chronic gap between the objectives governments wish to pursue and the revenue resources available to pursue those objectives. If growing needs in new areas are to be met, it will frequently necessary to sacrifice lower-priority objectives that may have been affordable in the past. In all areas of public expenditure, it is necessary to distinguish between core and peripheral objectives and to set expenditure priorities accordingly.
Australia is in no position to undertake greatly increased defence expenditure in order to pursue objectives unrelated to the core function of defending Australia against armed attack. Future defence policy should be based on this single clear objective. | <urn:uuid:496d27ec-a4de-49ae-adef-982d3e7581f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/Submissions/Defence00.HTML | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953505 | 2,873 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Subsets and Splits