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College scholarships available to Minnesota studentsMinnesota students who have completed challenging high school courses may be able to take advantage of new scholarship funds from the state of Minnesota, said state Senator Bill Ingebrigtsen (R-Alexandria).
Minnesota students who have completed challenging high school courses may be able to take advantage of new scholarship funds from the state of Minnesota, said state Senator Bill Ingebrigtsen (R-Alexandria).
The ACHIEVE program was passed in 2007 as part of a $3.16 billion state funding infusion to higher education, technology infrastructure and related programs. The funding increase was designed to help students face tuition increases at public or private colleges and reward them for taking challenging classes in high school, Ingebrigtsen said.
“We have high expectations for Minnesota students and want to help them reach their full potential,” Ingebrigtsen said. “ACHIEVE gives our high school students incentives to do well, and rewards them based on achievement, rather than solely on family income.”
The program awards scholarships to low- and middle-income high school students who complete college-preparatory courses, such as four years of English, three years of math, science and social studies, and at least one year of a foreign language. Or, as an alternative, students can demonstrate that they earned college credit for courses in the Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs.
The scholarships award up to $1,200 to be used at a public or private college in Minnesota, and are available to Minnesota residents who graduate from high school after January 1, 2008. Students have 60 days after beginning a post-secondary school to apply for the scholarship, and high school students signing up for courses should keep it in mind so they are eligible later on, Ingebrigtsen said.
“I strongly encourage Minnesota students to reach for their maximum potential, and to look at programs like ACHIEVE to help them continue their quest for academic excellence,” Ingebrigtsen added.
More information on the program and application materials can be found online at www.getreadyforcollege.org.
State Senator Bill Ingebrigtsen encourages and appreciates constituent input, and can be reached at (651) 297-8063, by mail at 132D State Office Building, 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., St. Paul MN 55155, or via e-mail at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:a9e72498-777b-4464-a4d6-bd8ea690d6ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.echopress.com/event/article/id/59116/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946879 | 532 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Our evaluation of the proper balance that has to be struck in this type of case leads us to conclude that there must be a narrowly drawn authority to permit a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime. The officer need not be absolutely certain that the individual is armed; the issue is whether a reasonably prudent man, in the circumstances, would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger. Cf. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964); Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 174-176 (1949); Stacey v. Emery, 97 U.S. 642, 645 (1878). [n23] And in determining whether the officer acted reasonably in such circumstances, due weight must be given not to his inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or "hunch," but to the specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience.
Terry v Ohio, 392 US 1, (1967). | <urn:uuid:aa57a8f8-8cf7-4578-ae35-dae63021eb3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/stop_and_frisk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964316 | 251 | 1.609375 | 2 |
MONTGOMERY, Alabama — Two Republican legislators are proposing the state sell up to $100 million in bonds to buy electronic tablets or similar devices for Alabama students in grades nine through 12.
Sen. Gerald Dial of Lineville and Rep. Jim McClendon of Springville said that would allow the students to get digital textbooks, which are cheaper than printed textbooks. Dial said the savings on textbooks should be sufficient to pay off the bonds.
The two legislators said the pen-enabled tablets will hold all the textbooks a student needs. The tablets could also be used by the students to do their homework and to take tests, which will reduce the amount that schools spend on paper. | <urn:uuid:a6a24563-eb60-4376-a014-0797ebbab6ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.al.com/wire/2011/12/alabama_legislators_propose_ta.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956946 | 136 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Product Design 2010
An industrial designer and Art Center alumnus, Christopher Wu is strongly focused on innovation and sustainability. He has collaborated with a number of companies— including Nike, Nestle and Avery-Dennison—to create engaging and sustainable products and experiences.
SPORTS / APPAREL / MOBILITY
Ciclo Scooter Jacket
Art Center Student Gallery
Ciclo merges a protective scooter-riding jacket with a backpack. Targeted to students and casual scooter riders, it makes wearing protective apparel easier by integrating it into their existing habits during times when they are most vulnerable—errand running and short trips. The sleeves contain impact protection and are attached to the pack. They can be packed away into a dedicated pocket upon arrival, leaving the user with a low-profile backpack. The jacket can be easily returned for recycling for a sustainable, closed-loop lifecycle. Finally, Ciclo can be subsidized by insurance providers, ensuring access for more riders.
Sustainable Goals & Strategies
By utilizing only one recyclable material—nylon—throughout the entire product, new raw material extraction was reduced (even more so as nylon recycling becomes more efficient). This reduces the amount of petroleum refining and other related processes.
Texture and material differences come from the way the material was sewn rather than hybridization.
To encourage recycling, each bag can be inverted and dropped in the mail. The bags have pre-paid shipping to a nylon recycling center. Bags can also be taken to retailers to be refurbished or recycled. Ciclo integrates a jacket with a backpack, which users usually have with them when riding to run errands. Therefore, the protective apparel is constantly with the user, making it easier to remember to put it on. In order to encourage use, partnerships with insurance providers are used to subsidize the Ciclo for all riders. Those riding with it can receive discounts on their policy and other incentives. | <urn:uuid:0a4a93c8-9443-4a61-a02b-ff08ed702c00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.artcenter.edu/summit/exhibit/ciclo.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934829 | 397 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Chrysler Group is developing a supercharged Hemi V8 with power approaching the 640 hp of...
Project Car Hell, Wankel Beta Test Edition: NSU Ro80 or Mazda REPU?
We pitted Chuck D's Olds 98 against Sir Mix-a-Lot's Buick Deuce in the Hell Garage last week, which had the Hell Garage Demons putting Public Enemy's You're Gonna Get Yours on infinite repeat in the Hell Garage Jukebox (which only plays the same song over and over and over, because that's how jukeboxes work in the underworld).
Those cars present the combination of high effort and low finished-project value that we look for in these parts, but let's face it: Pistons are too easy! What you need to struggle with now is a vehicle with Wankel aka rotary engine power from the early days of the technology, and we're not talking about a nice, easy RX-7 here.
Rotary engine inventor Felix Wankel was a card-carrying Nazi Party member and ObersturmbannfŁhrer in the SS, which will allow you to curse "that evil war criminal who thought up this stupid engine idea" as you're struggling with apex seals for the 29th consecutive hour.
So, let's take a look at your choices for this week's Project Car Hell.
In the 1950s, the Wankel engine was going to be The Next Big Thing in automotive power—such simplicity! Such smoothness! Such compactness! In reality, the path from engineering concept to production-car engine turned out to be nightmarishly difficult. Mazda and German automaker NSU persevered, and NSU was able to bring the Wankel-in-the-back Spider to market in 1964. The Spider wasn't exactly reliable, but NSU felt confident enough to follow it up in 1967 with a Wankelized luxury sedan, the Ro 80.
From a business standpoint, the Ro 80 (with its failure-prone apex seals and eccentric shaft bearings) was a disaster for NSU, enabling Audi to gobble up the tattered remnants of the company, and most examples got crushed long before the 1970s ended. That's a shame, because the combination of futuristic good looks and importance in automotive history makes the NSU Ro 80 a must-have for
demented serious automotive aficionados.
Such a perfect Hell Garage candidate, but you're probably safe from the impossible-to-find Ro 80. Oh, hold on—not so impossible, it turns out, because we've found this 1967 Ro 80 in Pennsylvania. It's
astoundingly a little bit rough, no getting around that, but the asking price is only $1,450.
According to the seller, this car "was used by the Curtis-Wright Co. to evaluate the rotary engine for use in Air Craft" and is "rough but appears complete." The engine is in a million tiny incomprehensible orphaned pieces and "will need a full rebuild," so you'll be guaranteed some world-traveling adventures tracking down NOS NSU rotary rebuild components. The car is "quite rusty" and the paint is "beyond buffing," so you'll need to hire a master body-and-paint man to fabricate all the unobtainium Ro 80 stuff that exists only as distant memories for elderly European junkyard proprietors. The good news: The crazy Sportomatic crypto-automatic transaxle is still there!
NSU was first to bring a fuel-chugging, unreliable Wankel-powered car to market, but Mazda was the company that never gave up on the rotary concept, no matter how many "devil's claw marks" appeared inside the rotor housings.
The impossibly beautiful Cosmo 110S hit the streets in 1967 . . . and started right away with the litany of Wankel problems that most Ro 80 owners could recite.
Still, Mazda persevered, and Wankel-powered Toyo Cork Kogyos eventually became quite reliable, if somewhat thirsty, machines.
We tried to find a project Cosmo in the United States for a proper matchup with the Ro, but no dice (better still would have been a CitroŽn M35). The good news (for the Hell Garage Demons, not you) is that we were able to find a weird Wankel-motivated Mazda from the era before all the bugs were worked out of the engine: the Mazda REPU.
Why, you may ask, did only one company build a Wankel-powered pickup truck? We can't say, because other than the fact that pickups need big torque (which Wankels cannot produce) and owners of small pickups prize reliability (which the early Mazda Wankel didn't have) and fuel economy (the REPU sucked gas at about the same rate as the Chrysler Imperial), the REPU made perfect sense. Such a fine PCH candidate, and we've got this '74 Mazda REPU in Los Angeles (go here if the listing disappears) for just 50 bucks more than the Ro 80.
Naturally, such an amazing truck will need a complete and detail-obsessed restoration, which means ditching the shell and replacing the cut-out rear cab wall. The good news is that these trucks share a lot of components with easy-to-find Ford Couriers, and maybe sheet metal sliced from a Courier cab will work. It comes with a "5 speed cosmo trans" (which probably means an RX-5 transmission in this case), and you'll need to find the correct four-speed transmission; sure, you could just put a four-speed shift knob on it, but you'll know it's wrong. Rust? Probably not too bad, this truck is coming from SoCal. The wiring harness is guaranteed to have been thoroughly butchered over its lifetime, so you'll need to find an NOS factory harness (ho, ho!) or re-create your own at great expense. Totally worth it, we say! | <urn:uuid:ec591cd4-e0ba-4022-b268-50c5085e6d88> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.autoweek.com/article/20121005/CARNEWS01/121009910/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952835 | 1,248 | 1.515625 | 2 |
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2011 PAYE update
From 2011, many significant changes will be made to the operation of the PAYE system. There are also changes from 2012 that you should be considering now.
From 6 April 2011, 'small employers' may reclaim 103% of statutory maternity pay. The rate had been 104.5% since 2002. A small employer is broadly one whose total national insurance payable in a year does not exceed £45,000. Other employers may only reclaim 92%, which remains unchanged.
At present, there are some circumstances where an employee can be liable for a BR tax code. These include:
• payments made after an employment has finished and a P45 issued
• a new employee starts and cannot provide a P45 and cannot tick box A or B on the P46.
From 6 April 2011, tax code 0T must be used instead, and be applied on a week 1/month 1 basis.
The affect is that the employee may now pay tax at the higher rates. Previously only tax at the basic rate was collected, meaning that some employees could find that they still owe tax.
Even with the new system, it is possible that the whole amount will not be collected as the 0T code can allow for a slice of income to be taxed at 20% when that band has already been fully used elsewhere. However, the new tax code system will reduce the difference between the amount of tax payable and the amount collected at source under PAYE.
A completely new tax code is introduced from 6 April 2011, this is the D1 code. It means that a person must pay tax at the 50% on all their income. It matches the existing D0 code that collects tax at the 40% rate
The D1 code only applies where someone has a second income that is very high.
As the 50% band was introduced in 2010 without the D1 code, it is possible that some employees could find themselves paying two years' worth of additional tax at higher rates in one year.
Next year, there is a radical change being made to the PAYE system. This is known as real time information (RTI). It means that every time you make a payment to HMRC, you must provide a full breakdown of each payment to each person on the payroll.
This system is being trialled in 2011, and will be progressively introduced during 2012.
This is a radical change for which you must make plans now. We can advise you on making sure that your systems and software are ready so you don't get caught out.
The thresholds at which national insurance becomes payable increase significantly from April 2011. For 2010/11, class 1 national insurance becomes payable once earnings exceed £110 a week. This rate applies for both employer and employee.
From 6 April 2011, the threshold increases significantly to £139 a week for the employee and £136 for the employer.
The rates also increase from 11.0% for employees and 12.8% for employers by 1%, to 12.0% and 13.8% respectively.
On earnings above the upper earnings limit, the employee's rate doubles from 1% to 2%. The upper earnings limit reduces from £844 a week to £817.
These changes, with the reduction in the threshold for higher rate income tax, mean that 750,000 people will become liable to pay higher rate income tax and more national insurance. We can explain the implications, and advise on any changes that can mitigate their effect.
The lower earnings limit increases from £97 to £102 a week. This can mean that some low-paid and part-time workers lose their entitlements to statutory sick pay and similar, and are no longer earning entitlement to the state retirement pension.
Sometimes payroll departments may not know about a payment of expenses or benefits until some time later.
Strictly speaking, the payroll for that person should be recalculated for that pay period. In practice this can be time-consuming, particularly for national insurance. From 6 April 2011, it is acceptable to calculate tax and national insurance in a later period when payroll learns of the payment, provided this is not done deliberately for tax avoidance.
We can advise on whether you come within the scope of this new concession.
If an employer reimburses an employee for using their own car on business, the employer may reimburse the employee at (usually) 40p a mile tax-free. This includes an element of standing costs (insurance, maintenance, road tax etc) in addition to running costs (petrol). At present, the running costs are unlikely to exceed 15p a mile, so there can be an incentive for employees to make unnecessary business journeys.
Some employees therefore instead may pay perhaps £100 a month to an employee for having a private car available and then reimburse at perhaps just 15p a mile. This is quite legal.
HMRC argues that the £100 is subject to tax and national insurance whereas employers have tended to regard it as tax-free to the extent that it does not exceed 40p a mile. There has been a case (Total People v HMRC Ltd ) which HMRC lost. HMRC has refused to accept the court ruling and is appealing. If you use such a scheme, check with us that you are operating the system properly, remembering that HMRC's guidance is still being challenged in the courts.
There is a separate advisory rate when reimbursement is made by an employee for private use of a company car. These rates normally change each year on 1 June and 1 December, to reflect current fuel prices. Because of the large increases since 1 December 2010, new rates have been published from 1 March 2011.
There is a change for employees who:
• start work for you after 5 April 2011; and
• receive childcare vouchers from you.
For such workers you must make an estimate of the highest rate of tax they are likely to pay during the tax year. The tax-free and NI-free limit of childcare vouchers depends on the highest tax rate, thus:
Highest tax rate
If you pay more than this, the excess is subject to PAYE and national insurance. For existing employees, you may continue to provide vouchers up to £55 a week tax-free, regardless of their tax rates.
If, exceptionally, you start paying a pension directly to an employee who is still working for you, do not complete a P45. Instead you must complete form P46(Pen).
Some employers have sought to avoid PAYE and national insurance by using an employment benefit trust (EBT) or similar scheme. There have been several recent cases where HMRC has successfully challenged such schemes
It has also been announced that steps are being taken to deal with 'disguised remuneration' such as when payments are artificially deferred or paid by a third party.
There are many changes being made to pension laws in the next few years.
The annual allowance for tax-free contributions to pension funds is being reduced by more than three-quarters to £50,000 a year. If more than that is contributed to a pension scheme (including the employer's contributions), the employee can be liable to pay an additional tax charge. We can explain the implications for any high earners so affected.
Employers should also note that, from 6 April 2012, it will no longer be possible to 'contract out' using money purchase or defined contribution schemes. All employees in such an occupational pension scheme will pay the full rates of national insurance and earn an entitlement under the State Second Pension (previously called SERPS).
For defined benefit or final salary schemes, employees may still be contracted out but the NI rebates are being reduced from 6 April 2012. The total reduction is currently 5.3% but will reduce to 4.8%. And remember that the state-backed NEST pensions start in 2012.
The state retirement age (which is also relevant for national insurance) is being increased to 66 by April 2020. This affects all men and women born after 5 April 1953.
The tax position for non-resident workers is set out in leaflet HMRC 6. This replaces leaflet IR20. Leaflet HMRC 6 was revised on 29 December 2010 with effect from 6 April 2011. The changes mostly relate to employees who become non-resident but continue to visit the UK.
If such employees wish to gain non-resident status, we can check that their plan of visits allow this under the new rules.
From 1 January 2011, it is not possible to include travelling and subsistence expenses in determining whether an employee has been paid the national minimum wage.
It will be possible to claim additional paternity leave and Additional Statutory Sick Pay (ASSP) for up to 26 weeks in addition to the existing two weeks. This applies for children expected to be born after 2 April 2011 (even if born earlier). These paternity rights may be claimed by a man or woman whose partner is claiming statutory maternity pay or statutory adoption pay for the same child. The new rules allow paternity leave and ASSP to be claimed for up to 26 weeks in a 32-week window. This is the period from 20 weeks after the actual birth to 52 weeks after, provided that payments of related maternity pay or adoption pay have ceased.
The government has announced that this new scheme will itself be replaced in 2015.
From 6 April 2011, you may issue P60 end-of-year certificates electronically.
The publication Employer Bulletin and most tax tables and documents are now only available by downloading from HMRC website.
Employers must collect repayments of student loans through the payroll. At present, the sum collected is 9% of any amount above £15,000 a year.
The £15,000 threshold has remained unchanged since 2005. From 6 April 2012, it will be uprated each year by inflation. In September 2016, it will be increased to £21,000 to reflect increased tuition fees.
We can advise on all these changes to make sure that you continue to comply with the law, and use opportunities for legal tax planning. | <urn:uuid:d83f0b01-0800-40e0-8509-557352449071> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.p-d-w.co.uk/tax/paye-and-ni/2011-paye-update | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96629 | 2,074 | 1.507813 | 2 |
It’s not every day that a white candidate for the U.S. Senate demands to debate a Latino candidate in Spanish. But that’s what has happened in Texas, where Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has issued such a challenge to rival Ted Cruz.
Debates were supposed to play to Cruz’s strength in the runoff for the GOP Senate nomination. After all, Cruz was a winner at the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championships, which were in English. Recently, Cruz has been attacking Dewhurst for dodging one-on-one debates, but he was more circumspect when challenged to debate in Spanish.
“I would welcome a debate with Dewhurst in any form, but I think we would have a better debate if we did the debate in English,” Cruz, who is a second-generation Cuban-American, said in an interview with Univision. “I grew up here speaking Spanglish.”
Dewhurst picked up Spanish while living in Bolivia in the 1970s, while working for the Central Intelligence Agency.
“When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English,” Dewhurst told the Houston Chronicle. “I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm.” | <urn:uuid:248936e3-8cf3-42dd-adfa-d000feb31ea0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationaljournal.com/thenextamerica/culture/texas-senate-seat-on-the-line-let-s-debate-in-spanish-20120604 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983194 | 302 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Caring for Children Foundation of Texas Care Van® Program Gives One Million Free Immunizations to Uninsured Kids
Richardson, TX — The Caring for Children Foundation of Texas celebrated a milestone in its Care Van® Program last week, recognizing its one millionth immunization has been administered through the Care Van since the program began in 1997.
"Our program targets children in medically under-served areas, so it's especially exciting to know that one million vaccines have been provided to kids who may not have otherwise received immunizations," said Craig Jeffery, executive director of the Caring for Children Foundation.
Jeffery says the program is designed to help Texas children receive the immunizations they need to stay healthy.
The ten Care Vans are mobile units equipped with medical supplies and registered nurses who administer immunizations to children at no cost at schools, fire stations, shopping centers, community events and neighborhoods where the need is greatest.
"The program's purpose is to fill in the gaps in preventive health care, such as immunizations, by eliminating barriers like transportation and cost," Jeffery said.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas is the statewide sponsor of the Caring for Children Foundation, donating 100 percent of the foundation's administrative expenses, which allows all donations and sponsorships to go directly to support the Care Van Program.
To learn more about the Caring for Children Foundation and its Care Van Program, visit www.carevan.org . | <urn:uuid:5a69b466-86f0-4c9c-909a-38359edb4a6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bcbstx.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2012/2012_11_14.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952773 | 295 | 1.84375 | 2 |
An emergency could cut off your
food supply for two weeks or months, consider maintaining a supply that will
last that long.
As you stock food, take into account your family’s unique needs. Try to include foods that they
will enjoy and that are also high in calories and nutrition. Foods
that require no refrigeration, special preparation, or cooking
Make sure you have a manual can opener and disposable utensils. Don’t forget nonperishable foods for your pets.
We offer long term, long life food you can store for a minimum of 5 years and some up to 25 years. None require cooking, some requires no water, while some do need water added. | <urn:uuid:1a9f815f-9dd5-4bed-8589-bef6c220c7ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.survival-goods.com/Emergency_Food_s/1781.htm | 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 | 0.935487 | 144 | 1.601563 | 2 |
ETC Economic Trends and Conditions: October 2011 Edition
The March earthquake and tsunami in Japan disrupted U.S. production in the auto and a few other manufacturing industries, which reduced second-quarter growth but probably increased growth in the third quarter, as idled production started coming back on line and extra shifts were added to bring inventories back to normal levels. Meanwhile, conditions continue to fare moderately worse in the Twelfth Federal Reserve District than in the nation as a whole, with unemployment rates in many District states remaining well above the national unemployment rate. We expect continued sluggish growth for the next several quarters, gradually picking up to a more normal recovery pace in 2013 and beyond. We also see inflation moderating over coming quarters as the weak labor market keeps wages low and the decline in oil prices puts downward pressure on energy and transportation costs.
Download PDF (pdf, 107.21 kb) | <urn:uuid:18ef55ed-4875-424d-8deb-83a76e697c70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.frbsf.org/banking-supervision/publications/etc-economic-trends-conditions/2011/october/2011-october-etc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96519 | 178 | 1.53125 | 2 |
From the Toronto Star:
In Chantal Petitclerc's first trip to the Commonwealth Games, officials chased her and other wheelchair athletes off the track, complaining their tires would damage the racing surface.Also in the Star, the great Canadian athlete Rick Hansen says it's high time for complete equality between the Olympics and the Paralympics.
But that was 16 years ago. Since then, Petitclerc has won 11 Paralympic gold medals and smashed many world records and social barriers.
These days Petitclerc, now the most accomplished wheelchair racer in the sport, isn't merely welcome at the Commonwealth Games. She's an equal.
Petitclerc, 36, carried Canada's flag at today's opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia. She is the first athlete with a disability to serve as Canada's flag-bearer in an Olympic, Pan American or Commonwealth Games, and symbolizes the progress disabled athletes have made since her career started.
"It has a special connotation for me because the recognition is there from the Games and now it's there from the team as well," Petitclerc said in a phone interview before leading the Canadian team into the opening ceremony. "It's very unique and special. It tells how far we have come."
At Petitclerc's first trip to the Commonwealth Games, 1990 in Auckland, New Zealand, wheelchair athletes weren't even included in the opening ceremony. "It was a frustrating experience, both as an athlete and a human being," she said.
Dr. Ross Outerbridge, Canada's chef de mission for the Games, said several athletes were nominated for the honour but only one really had a chance.
"It was really a straightforward and easy choice for us because of her accomplishments in sport."
More than two decades have passed since I wheeled on to the track and heard the cheers of the crowd at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.Read Hansen's essay here.
It was 1984 and eight of us were participating in what was the first-ever wheelchair sport demonstration.
My dream back then was that one day our athletes with a disability would have equal recognition. Today, as Canada's best competes at the ninth Paralympic Winter Games that dream remains unfulfilled. My challenge to Canadians is to see our team and indeed all the participants recognized as athletes first.
. . . .
We will have an unprecedented opportunity to burst through these remaining barriers once and for all in 2010. The whole world will be watching Canada when we host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Let's use the opportunity to create a model unique to Canada; one that bridges the Olympics and the Paralympics and reflects a society that is inclusive of all its citizens. We can demonstrate our commitment to people with spinal cord injury and related disabilities to include them in society fully, as equals. . . .
I would urge all Canadians that as our Paralympic athletes capture medals in Turin, their achievements are celebrated with the same kind of enthusiasm afforded to Cindy Klassen and others.
Then, let's begin building a truly Canadian model of inclusiveness for 2010 which ensures that the Games and the benefits of hosting them are applied equally to all our athletes. | <urn:uuid:09b7d9cd-d54d-49c2-95c0-77291a068216> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmtc.ca/2006/03/first.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972767 | 665 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Calling Hurricane Sandy "the largest threat to human life that our state has experienced in anyone's lifetime," Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said late Sunday that he has asked President Barack Obama for a declaration of disaster before the storm hits Connecticut.
In his mostly strongly worded warning to date on the storm, Malloy Sunday evening again urged all coastal residents to heed local evacuation warnings and orders and get out of their homes to higher ground before it's too late.
"This is a real warning of possible death of drowning," Malloy said during a storm update at the State Armory. "I know it's hard to leave your home. But I can't be any clearer. Anyone on the waterfront must take this seriously."
He said the biggest threat would come tomorrow night during one of four high tide cycles Long Island Sound will experience during the 36-hour time frame of the storm.
"I can't be any clearer. Anyone on the waterfront must take this seriously. We can't get people out tomorrow night. That's an impossibility."
He also had blunt advice to any thrill seekers who go out into the storm: "Don't be stupid." Last year two people were killed when they went out during the storm.
An early declaration of disaster by the federal government, Malloy said, would get federal money flowing faster once restoration efforts are underway.
The latest forecasts call for sustained high winds that will force more water into Long Island Sound than the sound can handle. That will create a storm surge now estimated between seven and 10 feet, Malloy said.
"That would lead to unprecedented flooding. The last time we saw anything like this was never."
By comparison, he said, Tropical Storm Irene last year saw a four-feet storm surge in the sound, which was enough to destroy some homes along the coastline.
That surge, in turn, will force water up tidal rivers in the state, including the Connecticut River. The surge in that river, Malloy said, could reach Middletown and beyond.
Malloy urged those who live near tidal rivers and streams to also be aware of water levels and to get out if they feel the water level is becoming a danger.
He said he is worried that too many residents still don't comprehend the power and danger of Hurricane Sandy because they are used to intense storms of short duration, like Irene.
Sandy will last for up to 36 hours, with some forecasters saying the storm could essentially stall out once it makes landfall. Hurricanes, nor'easters and other storms in southern New England have typically lasted for 12 hours or less, Malloy said.
"This is a very difficult concept for people to wrap their heads around," he said.
The governor has ordered all non-essential state employees to stay home tomorrow and the state's Judicial Department has also decided to close all offices and courthouses on Monday.
Malloy also issued an executive order to extend the deadline for voter registration from Tuesday, Oct. 29 to Thursday, Nov.1.
Utility officials said they are continuing efforts to bring as many crews into the state as possible ahead of Sandy. William Quinlan, vice president of emergency planning for CL&P, said there are currently 1,060 linemen in the state that are being dispatched tonight out to the towns. That's three and a half times as many linemen than the utility had during Hurricane Irene restoration efforts, he said. In addition, the utility has 550 tree workers.
Still, widespread and prolonged outages are expected from the storm, officials said. Quinlan said CL&P is particularly concerned about two underground substations, one each in Norwalk and Stamford, that could go underwater if flooding occurs.
United Illuminating vice president John Prete said his company has 290 linemen at the ready and 200 tree workers and has hired another 600 linemen and tree workers have been hired from outside the company to help with restoration efforts.
As reporters pressed both utility officials for information on how long they think the restoration effort will take, Prete issued the heartfelt request: "Say a prayer that no resident of Connecticut has serious harm and that workers who have to get out in the storm get back safe to their families." | <urn:uuid:fbc52b9d-0447-4e3d-a60e-47b2e3a0e00a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bethwood.patch.com/groups/editors-picks/p/hurricane-sandy-storm-surge-could-double-irenes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978626 | 862 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Dr Yvonne Mackenzie will provide private orthodontic treatment to children over 10 years old and adults of any age. Treatment can usually start immediately, with a wide range of options and extra benefits.
She can also offer treatment under the NHS for children under 18 who meet the criteria and require braces for dental health reasons. However, they may have to wait several months before treatment can start.
A variety of different appliances (braces) may be used:
Fixed brace (train-track). The preferred option for children because it allows the orthodontist to be very precise about the position of the teeth, leading to excellent results and a lovely smile. Fixed braces in fun and funky colours are popular with children and teenagers who find them a fashion accessory that is rather cool to wear.
Removable brace. For minor corrections or for treating jaw discrepancies in children.
Functional brace. A removable brace that works on the upper and lower teeth at the same time.
Retaining brace. You will usually be asked to wear a removable retaining brace for at least six months to prevent the teeth from drifting back to their old positions.
Cosmetic brace. This works exactly like a train-track brace but is tooth-coloured to blend naturally with your own teeth. These braces are very popular with adults wanting a more subtle way to improve their smile.
Modern techniques and technology can gently straighten both children’s and adults’ teeth. Tooth-coloured attachments make fixed braces almost invisible
What will happen at your first appointment?
Should you decide to go ahead, we will take x-rays and impressions (moulds) of your mouth. These help us to plan appropriate treatment and provide a useful before-and-after comparison once treatment is completed.
A second appointment will then be arranged to discuss the diagnosis, agree a treatment plan and give you a clear idea of how long the treatment will take (up to 24 months, depending on the work that needs to be done) and how much it will cost.
Further appointments will then be arranged to start you on the road to a better and more beautiful smile!
Treatment on the NHS: NHS Orthodontic treatment can be provided for children under 18 who, following certain assessment tests, meet the prescribed criteria and require braces for dental health reasons. Patients who wish to be treated under the NHS will be placed on a waiting list and will be offered an appointment at some time in the future. An indication of the waiting list will be given with the acknowledgement of the referral for treatment. NHS appointments are generally only available in the mornings. To be elegible for NHS treatment, patients must meet certain criteria. | <urn:uuid:9dd3c8c7-239a-486b-8266-1d390ae9d7cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.solent-dental.co.uk/orthodontic_treatment.htm | 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 | 0.932481 | 547 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The following article is by Jarmo Niinisalo.
A long time ago—in the summer of 2001 if I recall correctly—I ran into an intriguing page (Chaosmachine’s more recent page can be found here). The original page, which sadly resides only in the web archives nowadays, was all about this hidden “demon face” in one of Aphex Twin’s tracks, “#2” (the long formula) on Windowlicker.
This face was supposed to be viewable with a spectrograph program, so I decided to try it myself. A spectrograph basically visualizes the sound spectrum.
First I needed to extract the track from the Windowlicker CD, which was easy with CDex. The extraction of the whole track was not really necessary because the “face” is situated at the very end of the track, starting from the 5:27 mark and lasting for about 10 seconds. There are other “audio images” on this particular track as well (and one at the end of the first track), but the face is certainly the most exciting of them all.
After I had the wav-file, I used a program called Spectrogram to visualize the file. To my amazement, it worked, and I was soon staring at the “demon” face:
I was, however, not content with this. Why would the good ol’ Twin have added a “demon” face into one of his tracks? I mean, the man does have a weird sense of humor, but I always thought demons were more up BoC‘s alley…
While examining the image, I came to the conclusion that something was not right. So I started messing around with the settings of the spectrograph program, and after a bit of knob twiddling the mystery revealed itself: the face was supposed to be watched with a logarithmic frequency scale, not with a linear scale.
A linear scale provided the “demon face”, but with a logarithmic scale the end results were quite different:
Why, it was none other than the Twin himself all the time, complete with his patented grin!
The settings which I used to get the above image were roughly the same as in the picture below (they aren’t the exact same settings since I’ve lost them somewhere, but if you try them yourself you’ll find that they are more than close enough):
After this “amazing” discovery, I contacted the guy at chaos.yerbox.org and informed him of the results. He seemed interested to add this new-found info to his pages, but I suppose he never got around to actually do it.
Next, I decided to inform the good folks on the IDM mailinglist about The Face. It turned out that this “picture to audio” -thing was really not hard to do at all and there was a Windows program called Coagula that could transform any picture into soundwaves with minimum effort. Aphex Twin himself had used a Mac program called Metasynth to do his images.
I tested Coagula and found it easy enough to use. Now this new discovery raised a new question: Were there more examples of this audio imaging available?
Luckily the soundscapes that Coagula spits out are quite easy to notice in their aural form, so I didn’t have to look for long before I found another example: On Plaid‘s “Rest Proof Clockwork”, the track “3recurring” contains a continuous stream of “threes” (as seen on the cover art of their previous album, Not For Threes).
Besides the Plaid discovery I couldn’t find any more examples of audio imaging on any of the CDs I own, but I didn’t bother to look that hard either. However it is clear that this audio/image stuff was “hip” at 1999, since both of the aforementioned records were released around that time.
As a nice finish, here are is a small gallery of some audio images from Aphex Twin and other artists:
The “hand” found on “My Violent Heart” from Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero | <urn:uuid:6f1d2781-1348-451d-a938-7b1eb620ca6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.magneticmag.com/2012/08/the-aphex-face-visualizing-the-sound-spectrum/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974726 | 899 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The invasion of Judea. (1-8) The justice of God's proceedings. (9-17) All methods used to amend them had been without success. (18-30)
Verses 1-8 Whatever methods are used, it is vain to contend with God's judgments. The more we indulge in the pleasures of this life, the more we unfit ourselves for the troubles of this life. The Chaldean army shall break in upon the land of Judah, and in a little time devour all. The day is coming, when those careless and secure in sinful ways will be visited. It is folly to trifle when we have eternal salvation to work out, and the enemies of that salvation to fight against. But they were thus eager, not that they might fulfil God's counsels, but that they might fill their own treasures; yet God thereby served his own purposes. The corrupt heart of man, in its natural state, casts out evil thoughts, just as a fountain casts out her waters. It is always flowing, yet always full. The God of mercy is loth to depart even from a provoking people, and is earnest with them, that by repentance and reformation, they may prevent things from coming to extremity.
Verses 9-17 When the Lord arises to take vengeance, no sinners of any age or rank, or of either sex escape. They were set upon the world, and wholly carried away by the love of it. If we judge of this sin by God's word, we find multitudes in every station and rank given up to it. Those are to be reckoned our worst and most dangerous enemies, who flatter us in a sinful way. Oh that men would be wise for their souls! Ask for the old paths; the way of godliness and righteousness has always been the way God has owned and blessed. Ask for the old paths set forth by the written word of God. When you have found the good way, go on in it, you will find abundant recompence at your journey's end. But if men will not obey the voice of God and flee to his appointed Refuge, it will plainly appear at the day of judgment, that they are ruined because they reject God's word.
Verses 18-30 God rejects their outward services, as worthless to atone for their sins. Sacrifice and incense were to direct them to a Mediator; but when offered to purchase a license to go on in sin, they provoke God. The sins of God's professing people make them an easy prey to their enemies. They dare not show themselves. Saints may rejoice in hope of God's mercies, though they see them only in the promise: sinners must mourn for fear of God's judgments, though they see them only in the threatenings. They are the worst of revolters, and are all corrupters. Sinners soon become tempters. They are compared to ore supposed to have good metal in it, but which proves all dross. Nothing will prevail to part between them and their sins. Reprobate silver shall they be called, useless and worthless. When warnings, corrections, rebukes, and all means of grace, leave men unrenewed, they will be left, as rejected of God, to everlasting misery. Let us pray, then, that we may be refined by the Lord, as silver is refined.
Jeremiah 6:1-30 . ZION'S FOES PREPARE WAR AGAINST HER: HER SINS ARE THE CAUSE.
1. Benjamin--Jerusalem was situated in the tribe of Benjamin, which was here separated from that of Judah by the valley of Hinnom. Though it was inhabited partly by Benjamites, partly by men of Judah, he addresses the former as being his own countrymen.
blow . . . trumpet . . . Tekoa--Tikehu, Tekoa form a play on sounds. The birthplace of Amos.
Beth-haccerem--meaning in Hebrew, "vineyard-house." It and Tekoa were a few miles south of Jerusalem. As the enemy came from the north, the inhabitants of the surrounding country would naturally flee southwards. The fire-signal on the hills gave warning of danger approaching.
2. likened--rather, "I lay waste." Literally, "O comely and delicate one, I lay waste the daughter of Zion," that is, "thee." So Zechariah 3:9 , "before Joshua," that is, "before thee" [MAURER].
3. shepherds--hostile leaders with their armies ( Jeremiah 1:15 , 4:17 , 49:20 , 50:45 ).
feed--They shall consume each one all that is near him; literally, "his hand," that is, the place which he occupies ( Numbers 2:17 ;
4, 5. The invading soldiers encourage one another to the attack on Jerusalem.
Prepare--literally, "Sanctify" war, that is, Proclaim it formally with solemn rites; the invasion was solemnly ordered by God (compare Isaiah 13:3 ).
at noon--the hottest part of the day when attacks were rarely made ( Jeremiah 15:8 , 20:16 ). Even at this time they wished to attack, such is their eagerness.
Woe unto us--The words of the invaders, mourning the approach of night which would suspend their hostile operations; still, even in spite of the darkness, at night they renew the attack ( Jeremiah 6:5 ).
6. cast--Hebrew, "pour out"; referring to the emptying of the baskets of earth to make the mound, formed of "trees" and earthwork, to overtop the city walls. The "trees" were also used to make warlike engines.
this--pointing the invaders to Jerusalem.
visited--that is, punished.
wholly oppression--or join "wholly" with "visited," that is, she is altogether (in her whole extent) to be punished [MAURER].
7. fountain--rather, a well dug, from which water springs; distinct from a natural spring or fountain.
casteth out--causeth to flow; literally, "causeth to dig," the cause being put for the effect ( 2 Kings 21:16 2 Kings 21:24 , Isaiah 57:20 ).
8. Tender appeal in the midst of threats.
depart--Hebrew, "be torn away"; Jehovah's affection making Him unwilling to depart; His attachment to Jerusalem was such that an effort was needed to tear Himself from it ( Ezekiel 23:18;,Hos 9:12 Ezekiel 23:18;,Hos 9:12 , 11:8 ).
9. The Jews are the grapes, their enemies the unsparing gleaners.
turn back . . . hand--again and again bring freshly gathered handfuls to the baskets; referring to the repeated carrying away of captives to Babylon ( Jeremiah 52:28-30 , 2 Kings 24:14 , 25:11 ).
10. ear is uncircumcised--closed against the precepts of God by the foreskin of carnality ( Leviticus 26:41 , Ezekiel 44:7 , Acts 7:51 ).
word . . . reproach--( Jeremiah 20:8 ).
11. fury of . . . Lord--His denunciations against Judah communicated to the prophet.
weary with holding in--( Jeremiah 20:9 ).
I will pour--or else imperative: the command of God (see Jeremiah 6:12 ), "Pour it out" [MAURER].
aged . . . full of days--The former means one becoming old; the latter a decrepit old man [MAURER] ( Job 5:26 , Isaiah 65:20 ).
12. The very punishments threatened by Moses in the event of disobedience to God ( Deuteronomy 28:30 ).
13. ( Jeremiah 8:10 , Isaiah 56:11 , Micah 3:11 ).
14. hurt--the spiritual wound.
slightly--as if it were but a slight wound; or, in a slight manner, pronouncing all sound where there is no soundness.
saying--namely, the prophets and priests ( Jeremiah 6:13 ). Whereas they ought to warn the people of impending judgments and the need of repentance, they say there is nothing to fear.
peace--including soundness. All is sound in the nation's moral state, so all will be peace as to its political state ( Jeremiah 4:10 , 8:11 , 14:13 , 23:17 , Ezekiel 13:5 Ezekiel 13:10 , 22:28 ).
15. ROSENMULLER translates, "They ought to have been ashamed, because . . . but," &c.; the Hebrew verb often expressing, not the action, but the duty to perform it ( Genesis 20:9 , Malachi 2:7 ). MAURER translates, "They shall be put to shame, for they commit abomination; nay (the prophet correcting himself), there is no shame in them" ( Jeremiah 3:3 , 8:12 , Ezekiel 3:7 , Zephaniah 3:5 ).
them that fall--They shall fall with the rest of their people who are doomed to fall, that is, I will now cease from words; I will execute vengeance [CALVIN].
16. Image from travellers who have lost their road, stopping and inquiring which is the right way on which they once had been, but from which they have wandered.
old paths--Idolatry and apostasy are the modern way; the worship of God the old way. Evil is not coeval with good, but a modern degeneracy from good. The forsaking of God is not, in a true sense, a "way cast up" at all ( Jeremiah 18:15 , Psalms 139:24 , Malachi 4:4 ).
rest--( Isaiah 28:12 , Matthew 11:29 ).
17. watchmen--prophets, whose duty it was to announce impending calamities, so as to lead the people to repentance ( Isaiah 21:11 , 58:1 , Ezekiel 3:17 , Habakkuk 2:1 ).
18. congregation--parallel to "nations"; it therefore means the gathered peoples who are invited to be witnesses as to how great is the perversity of the Israelites ( Jeremiah 6:16 Jeremiah 6:17 ), and that they deserve the severe punishment about to be inflicted on them ( Jeremiah 6:19 ).
what is among them--what deeds are committed by the Israelites ( Jeremiah 6:16 Jeremiah 6:17 ) [MAURER]. Or, "what punishments are about to be inflicted on them" [CALVIN].
19. ( Isaiah 1:2 ).
fruit of . . . thoughts--( Proverbs 1:31 ).
nor to my law, but rejected it--literally, "and (as to) My law they have rejected it." The same construction occurs in Genesis 22:24 . Literally, "To what purpose is this to Me, that incense cometh to Me?"
incense . . . cane--( Isaiah 43:24 , 60:6 ). No external services are accepted by God without obedience of the heart and life ( Jeremiah 7:21 , Psalms 50:7-9 , Isaiah 1:11 , Micah 6:6 , &c.).
sweet . . . sweet--antithesis. Your sweet cane is not sweet to Me. The calamus.
21. stumbling-blocks--instruments of the Jews' ruin (compare Matthew 21:44 , Isaiah 8:14 , 1 Peter 2:8 ). God Himself ("I") lays them before the reprobate ( Psalms 69:22 , Romans 1:28 , 11:9 ).
fathers . . . sons . . . neighbour . . . friend--indiscriminate ruin.
22. north . . . sides of the earth--The ancients were little acquainted with the north; therefore it is called the remotest regions (as the Hebrew for "sides" ought to be translated, of the earth. The Chaldees are meant ( Jeremiah 1:15 , 5:15 ). It is striking that the very same calamities which the Chaldeans had inflicted on Zion are threatened as the retribution to be dealt in turn to themselves by Jehovah ( Jeremiah 50:41-43 ).
23. like the sea--( Isaiah 5:30 ).
as men for war--not that they were like warriors, for they were warriors; but "arrayed most perfectly as warriors" [MAURER].
24. fame thereof--the report of them.
25. He addresses "the daughter of Zion" ( Jeremiah 6:23 ); caution to the citizens of Jerusalem not to expose themselves to the enemy by going outside of the city walls,
sword of the enemy--literally "there is a sword to the enemy"; the enemy hath a sword.
26. wallow . . . in ashes--( Jeremiah 25:34 , Micah 1:10 ). As they usually in mourning only "cast ashes on the head," wallowing in them means something more, namely, so entirely to cover one's self with ashes as to be like one who had rolled in them ( Ezekiel 27:30 ).
as for an only son--( Amos 8:10 , Zechariah 12:10 ).
lamentation--literally, "lamentation expressed by beating the breast."
27. tower . . . fortress--( Jeremiah 1:18 ), rather, "an assayer (and) explorer." By a metaphor from metallurgy in Jeremiah 6:27-30 , Jehovah, in conclusion, confirms the prophet in his office, and the latter sums up the description of the reprobate people on whom he had to work. The Hebrew for "assayer" (English Version, "tower") is from a root "to try" metals. "Explorer" (English Version, "fortress") is from an Arabic root, "keen-sighted"; or a Hebrew root, "cutting," that is, separating the metal from the dross [EWALD]. GESENIUS translates as English Version, "fortress," which does not accord with the previous "assayer."
28. grievous revolters--literally "contumacious of the contumacious," that is, most contumacious, the Hebrew mode of expressing a superlative. So "the strong among the mighty," that is, the strongest ( Ezekiel 32:21 ). See Jeremiah 5:23 , Hosea 4:16 .
walking with slanders--( Jeremiah 9:4 ). "Going about for the purpose of slandering" [MAURER].
brass, &c.--that is, copper. It and "iron" being the baser and harder metals express the debased and obdurate character of the Jews ( Isaiah 48:4 , 60:17 ).
29. bellows . . . burned--So intense a heat is made that the very bellows are almost set on fire. ROSENMULLER translates not so well from a Hebrew root, "pant" or "snort," referring to the sound of the bellows blown hard.
lead--employed to separate the baser metal from the silver, as quicksilver is now used. In other words, the utmost pains have been used to purify Israel in the furnace of affliction, but in vain ( Jeremiah 5:3 , 1 Peter 1:7 ).
consumed of the fire--In the Chetib, or Hebrew text, the "consumed" is supplied out of the previous "burned." Translating as ROSENMULLER, "pant," this will be inadmissible; and the Keri (Hebrew Margin) division of the Hebrew words will have to be read, to get "is consumed of the fire." This is an argument for the translation, "are burned."
wicked . . . not plucked away--answering to the dross which has no good metal to be separated, the mass being all dross.
30. Reprobate--silver so full of alloy as to be utterly worthless ( Isaiah 1:22 ). The Jews were fit only for rejection. | <urn:uuid:3def8442-3121-4ccf-9b20-521fbefcdbe1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biblestudytools.com/jeremiah/6-7-compare.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941564 | 3,418 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The Clothing Exchange is a well-established consignment thrift shop, staffed entirely by WCL volunteers. It was started in the 1940's as a way to help with the clothing shortage during the war, especially clothing for children. Originally housed at Weston Town Hall, it is the Town's oldest service agency. People from more than thirty surrounding towns come to the Exchange to shop. Today, approximately thirty women give their time to this endeavor, providing a major source of funds for the league's Service and Scholarship Fund. The proceeds continue to be a major source of funds for the league's Service and Scholarship Fund.
While only Weston residents may open an account to sell articles, everyone is welcome to shop. Articles are accepted on a donated or consigned basis with The Exchange retaining fifty percent of the selling price of consigned goods. Periodic markdowns and special sales stimulate turnover. The well-stocked clothing rooms for men, women and children offer an outstanding selection ranging from leisurewear to formal attire. The Boutique offers small collectibles, antiques and jewelry.
Hours of Operation
If you are interested in supplying clothing for the Clothing Exchange, please read the following files:
Rules and Regulations
There is always a need for volunteers, even for a few hours once or twice a month. Members are urged to become involved in this worthwhile project of the league.
For further information, contact:
Orry Costello: (781) 642-1230 or [email protected]
Sally Utiger: (781) 431-8454 or [email protected]
Sue McKearney: (781) 235-6441
Clothing Exchange Café
The Café offers delicious light luncheon foods and beverages from 11:30 am - 2:00 pm at the Barn. Sample menu items include homemade soups and sandwiches. | <urn:uuid:cbeb6a58-9d40-4799-8550-96637342f1b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wclweston.org/clothing_exchange.html | 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 | 0.935153 | 383 | 1.507813 | 2 |
In honor of Patriots' Day and the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, State Rep. Scott Bruun released the following statement:
"Today marks the anniversary of a day that forever changed the course of our nation's history and the lives of every American. We honor the innocent lives lost on September 11, 2001. I commend the dedicated service of our first responders today and their sacrifice on September 11. We owe a debt of gratitude to our men and women in the armed forces who have given much so much for us and for our country. As has been said, 'never has so much been given to so many by so few'. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who continue to be affected by the tragedy that struck our nation nine years ago."
"But on this day, we are reminded not only of how our nation has suffered, but ultimately how we have prevailed. Nine years ago, our nation came together as we supported friends and strangers alike during our autumn of war. We did not ask for the war, but the war came. And we have shown strength and resolve in our fight for freedom, both at home and abroad. It hasn't been easy--freedom is not free. But I am confident in America's future, and I am proud to stand in support of our troops who protect us each day along with our families and small businesses who will continue to fight for American prosperity and renewal." | <urn:uuid:e09796a9-bb5d-45cf-83e6-a0a058754b2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://votesmart.org/public-statement/551737/bruun-releases-patriots-day-statement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962202 | 291 | 1.539063 | 2 |
First same-sex marriage licenses
Credit: Getty Images
Just after 3:00 a.m., Corrinalyn and Jennifer Guyette apply for a marriage license at the King County Recorder's Office on December 6, 2012 in Seattle, Washington. "It was so great," said Corrinalyn. The two have been together for six years. The office opened at 12:01 a.m. to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples for the first time after Washington voters chose to legalize gay marriage in November's election. | <urn:uuid:72e40b7c-26b1-4d25-96de-ed4973a4ff62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.king5.com/news/local/First-same-sex-marriage-licenses-given-out-overnight-182357601.html?gallery=y&img=7&c=y&c=y | 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 | 0.952678 | 111 | 1.742188 | 2 |
There's an interesting piece by Emma Townshend, daughter of Pete, in today's Times, worrying that - because pop memorabilia collections tend to dissipated, the future might not be great for future archivists:
Landfill, mostly, we guess.
Townshend was inspired by a visit to France:
Hmm. The daughter of Pete Townshend suggesting the model to follow might be a daughter of a rock star carving a niche for herself as her father's archivist.
The introduction to the story makes a quite alarming claim:
although, it turns out, this isn't quite true:
“Yet we have infinitely more documented evidence for Handel, who lived in this house from 1723 to 1759, than we do for Jimi Hendrix,” Bardwell explains.
That would seem to be suggesting not that there's less documentary evidence about Hendrix life than that of Handel, just less at that particular house. Which might be sad, but is less alarming.
Townshend pere explains that a lot of the problem is that rock didn't seek to leave any traces:
We're not so sure that things are quite as grim as Emma paints it - she's quite disdainful about the Hard Rock style of collecting, but the desire to fill awful burger bars with old guitars and stage costumes has given a value to a lot of material which would otherwise, in all likelihood, have disappeared; there are more collections and holdings than you might expect.
The real problem is knowing what we should be preserving. It's impossible to retain everything - you only have to visit those dingy flats full of piles of newspapers to know where that madness lays. Pete Townshend does:
So what do you keep? How do you know if, fifty years hence, a ticket to a Hoosiers gig is going to have more value than a Kate Nash set list?
Preserving the music might be seen as being the first priority: Townshend visits the Sound Archive:
A collection of NMEs which dates back 26 years before the first issue is quite impressive. But you've got to love a man whose job involves gathering Fierce Panda records.
Emma suggests that, perhaps, we need a proper national collection on the model of the Lottery funded writer's archives. It's not a bad idea. If only we weren't pissing away all the lottery money on the Olympics. | <urn:uuid:346bf466-e2f0-43da-87fd-8c72a4cfcce8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://xrrf.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/pop-museum.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962432 | 499 | 1.585938 | 2 |
CHICAGO (AP) — Three members of Illinois' congressional delegation have reintroduced legislation that would waive visas for visitors to the U.S. from countries like Poland.
U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk and congressmen Mike Quigley and Aaron Schock reintroduced the Visa Waiver Program Enhanced Security and Reform Act on Monday. The program allows foreign citizens of participating countries to travel without a visa in the U.S. for up to 90 days.
While Poland is a key U.S. ally, the country isn't included at least partly out of concern Polish visitors will stay as illegal immigrants. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and congressmen Luis Gutierrez, Adam Kinzinger, Dan Lipinski, Jan Schakowsky, Brad Schneider and John Shimkus also support the program.
The metropolitan Chicago area is home to nearly 1 million residents of Polish ancestry. | <urn:uuid:22e91e6a-3896-41f9-a77f-6f3cd283f4d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/illinois-lawmakers-back-visas-for-polish-citizens/article/feed/2069362 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936961 | 184 | 1.664063 | 2 |
With the population growth in the 1840′s, both public and private institutions were formed to meet the needs of all its citizens. The former title of Baruch College was the Free Academy because it was created from bills passed in 1847 to promote free education to all men. Bernard M. Baruch, a 1889 graduate, was a financier and economic adviser to American Presidents for over forty years and he maintained a close relationship to the school as well as contributed substantial gifts to the college. The School of Business and Civic Administration of the College of the City of New York was renamed the Bernard M. Baruch School of Business and Public Administration in 1953. In 1968 the college was re-organized and re-named Bernard M. Baruch College.
Located in the heart of Manhattan on 23rd street between Lexington Avenue and 3rd Avenue, Baruch College is ranked among the region’s and nation’s top colleges by U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Princeton Review, and others. Baruch offers a variety of exciting graduate and undergraduate programs that lead to successful careers in business and public service. Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business is the largest accredited collegiate school of business in the United States, offering nationally-ranked undergraduate and graduate programs along with the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, which offers more than 40 areas of study. Baruch also has a School of Public Affairs which is widely recognized in the areas of municipal government, nonprofit and educational administration, and policy analysis and evaluation. The College also has highly regarded facilities like the Sidney Mishkin Gallery and its library.
26 rue du Faubourg St. Jacques
T. +33 (0)1 40 51 76 96
F. +33 (0)1 44 07 18 10 | <urn:uuid:69bd766b-aaac-46d5-99d3-8c400819f6a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://micefa.org/?portfolio=cuny-baruch-college | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96868 | 366 | 1.734375 | 2 |
State Rep. Don Parsons (R-Marietta), one author of the bill, said the goal was to increase cellular coverage for public safety and economic development.
Recent changes to the bill stated that cellular providers who apply to install towers couldn’t require bonding on the equipment. The original draft didn’t have the requirement, causing some concern, Mayor Mark Mathews said.
For example, if a company built a tower and then years later decide it wanted to move it, the bill would make it so the local government could not require the company to take down the tower as a condition of relocation.
Kennesaw officials remained opposed to that aspect of the controversial bill, Mathews said. Some — including Parsons — say the bill didn’t have anything to do with local governments being able to consider the location for a cell tower, Mathews said.
But the Georgia Municipal Association claims local governments wouldn’t have the right to deny an application under those grounds.
“We saw nothing positive in the bill,” said Amy Henderson, spokesperson for the Georgia Municipal Association. “The bill didn’t allow a city or county to ask a company to consider other sites for a tower.”
Parsons said the bill wouldn’t have taken authority from local governments, but rather would have increased their power. It didn’t change what local governments could do regarding placement of towers, he said.
Mathews said he believes Kennesaw and all other municipalities would have had the right to deny requests, and because of that and other concessions in the bill giving the local governments that ability, Kennesaw pulled back on its strong recommendation of denial of the bill just prior to the bill’s stalling in the House.
Kennesaw requires an engineering study to determine how towers would affect service in the area, Mathews said. The study could have determined outcomes of application requests.
The legislation also included a shot clock in which local governments must approve or deny an application for a tower within 150 days or the application will automatically be approved.
“I didn’t have a problem with the shot clock,” Mathews said. “The least you can do is be responsive in a reasonable period of time, whether you’re in favor or against the tower.”
Kennesaw has zoning regulations with time limits in place, Mathews said, which are fairly cooperative when it comes to issues like cell towers.
“The real issue comes in when you get into a location where our zoning doesn’t allow it and you have companies asking to rezone the property,” he said. “Those will create quite a bit of controversy, but the legislation as it’s proposed with changes doesn’t take the denial power from us.” | <urn:uuid:cca562e2-2cda-4e09-80d2-ec6609376e91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/21926976/article-Lawmakers-drop-cellular-tower-bill?instance=secondary_story_left_column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959898 | 587 | 1.726563 | 2 |
How do I join the network as a volunteer observer? Click on the "Join Us" section and fill out the registration form. You will be assigned a station number and will be contacted by our station administrator with some welcome information.
Are there other things I can do to help the network? Yes, volunteers are a most treasured resouce and we have many ways that you can help. Please check out our Help Us page for more details.
What process happens when I sign up to be an observer? After you submit the application, a Station Number will automatically be assigned. You will receive an automatically generated email with your Station Number and Login information. The Station Administrator will then calculate the longitude and latitude for your station if you have not provided that information. Your station will be assigned a Station Name . You will then receive our Welcome Email that includes your Station Information and Coordinator information along with training information. You should attend a CoCoRaHS training before entering data into our system (You may either train on line or sit in on a local volunteer training if one is available in your area).
Why do you need longitude and latitude? We use that information to map your data. Please let us know if your data appears to be mapped in the wrong location.
Why do I need to attend a training session? We are trying to get the most consistent data possible using volunteer observers. We hope that you will be able to attend a training session, or at least read all of the on-line training information before entering data. We care about the accuracy of our data and hope that you will too.
When can I begin entering data? You may begin entering data as soon as you have been assigned a station name and station number and have attended a training session. Your data will appear on the Web immediately in both report and map form.
What does the station number mean? The station number is generally the abbreviation of the state that you llive in, followed by your county followed by two or three number. Example: CO-LR-284. This would be Colorado-Larimer County-Station 284.
What does the station name mean? The station name is generally the town name followed by a distance in decimal miles and a direction. For Example: 'Fort Collins 4.5 SW' means that you are approximately 4.5 miles Southwest of the geographical center of Fort Collins. The names are based on the direction and distance from an arbitrary point in a town or city based on coordinates provided by the National Weather Service.
Who is my Local Coordinator? You may find your local coodinator by clicking on the following link: http://www.cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=coord. If you don't see one for your county, please contact your state coordinator.
Do I have to check my rain gauge at 7am? No, but we would prefer it if you did. If you check your gauge at other times, your data may not be directly comparable to other data. If you check your gauge at night, your data will be in our reports but won't show up on our maps. We only map data that is collected within two hours of 7am.
Who will answer any questions I have about the CoCoRaHS network? You should first try contacting the Local or State Coordinator for your area. You may also contact CoCoRaHS Headquarters during normal business hours at: (970) 491-8545 or (970) 491-1196. Learn more at our Contact Us page.
Who do I e-mail with any questions or comments about the web site? Any questions regarding the Web site should be directed to our general e-mail [email protected] , which will be forwarded to our Web masters.
Where is CoCoRaHS Headquarters located? We are located on the Foothills Campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. Please stop by the next time you are in the Fort Collins area.
Why does CoCoRaHS not use automated rain gauges?
We are often asked why CoCoRaHS does not encourage the use of automatic rain gauges to report 24 hour precipitation totals. After all, many weather enthusiasts already have electronic home weather stations with automatic rain gauges to record precipitation - why should they also purchase a separate CoCoRaHS gauge?
Unfortunately, it turns out that rain gauges are not all created equal and do not all report the same. The Colorado Climate Center has been involved in rain gauge studies for many years and have had dozens of volunteers like you test their automated gauges against either the CoCoRaHS 4" diameter gauge or the National Weather Service (NWS) 8" diameter Standard Rain Gauge. We have also tested National Weather Service Automated Surface Observing System tipping bucket rain gauges (not unlike the tipping bucket gauges that come with most home weather stations, but sturdier and a lot more expensive).
While the NWS and CoCoRaHS gauges compare quite well with each other (our tests indicate that the CoCoRHS gauge has a collection efficiency of 101-105% compared to the standard NWS gauge), the majority of automated rain gauges, when summed over several months or years, report less precipition than actually fell by a significant amount -- sometimes 25% or more. Moreover, none of the automated gauges work well in areas that receive snow. This is not acceptable for our project because we are interested in observing and understanding natural precipitation variability, as accurately as possible. If we're all using different kinds of gauges with different abilities to catch precipitation, it's too hard to determine if differences in rain or snowfall are "real" or due to the kind of instrument that was used to report the measurement.
Because of these test results, we have asked our observers to please set up a CoCoRaHS 4" gauge along with their automated gauge and see for themselves. Many observers have converted to using the 4" gauge as their daily measurement when they see the results, and then use their automated gauge as a backup when they are gone. It is very good to use the two in combination. But whenever people do use their automated gauge as their measurement, we request that they mention that in the daily "observation notes".
For those of you who decide it's too much trouble to purchase a CoCoRaHS gauge in addition to your automatic system, you may still be able to share your data with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA - the organization that oversees the NWS) via their Citizen Weather Observation Program (CWOP). This program makes home weather station data available to the NWS for certain real time applications. WeatherUnderground is another system for web-based data sharing.
For climate data and research applications, as well as supporting the "NowCasting" goals of NOAA, we encourage you to use the 4" diameter high capacity manual rain gauge and join CoCoRaHS. | <urn:uuid:8cc30a3c-3d79-489f-86f9-b9198830fb53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cocorahs.org/Content.aspx?page=faqgeneral | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939448 | 1,431 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Sure I have been poor. Most people would say I am poor right now though my life should be the stuff of dreams, I don't work much and live very well. Again, there is nothing capitalistic about the current global economic system. For starters, the dollar is a fascist currency, not a capitalist money. This means one half of ALL transactions using the dollar or based on the dollar as a world reserve standard are fascist, are subject to centralized price fixing by a fascist banking cartel. And corporations are inherently fascist entities, not capitalist, once given limited liability, subsidies, licenses [to prevent competition] and regulations [to prevent competition]. Fascism is also properly called corporatism. Capitalism only exists under anarchy and it is fascism which is creating all the evils of the world. People who lived under absolutist monarchies also thought the coming age of absolute mob rule [democracy] we live under now was a dream. People thought landing on the moon was a dream. Anarchy is always among us. When you pick out clothes in the morning, you have clothing anarchy. No one, I hope, is sticking a gun to your head to make you dress as the rulers demand, yet. And stable, peaceful anarchistic systems have existed numerous times in history, despite government propaganda to the contrary. In fact as society gets ever more complex, government is getting more and more unstable. It is destined for collapse. Anarchy is the only possible system compatible with human nature or an industrial society in the long run. Anarchy is inevitable. No rulers. Equality under the law. No one may initiate aggression, coercion or fraud against another, no matter how many jerks they get to vote for it. Moral law will rule, eventually.
Everyone has a different standpoint. Even anarcho-capitalists disagree about an issue here and there. That is exactly why anarchy is necessary and inevitable. People will never agree on how public property should be used and those who disagree with the majority will have violence done to them to force their submission. Private property is the right to disagree. When all property is private, all interaction can be voluntary and if you do not agree with someone then you can simply avoid doing business with them.
In a free market, prices are determined by the consumer preferences of the population, by economic democracy. No one can control prices.
But isn't this the exact kind of model that allowed for my income to be slashed overnight by literally half without me having any control of it?
A free market only benefits the moneyed elites. As a poor fellow, it takes years to save up to by a couple rai of land to plant rubber trees on. Then it takes several more years before the rubber trees are grown enough to produce any rubber, and 3 more years before they really start producing decent amounts. And what if in that time the price of rubber falls dramatically and I fail to make the income I expected and must needs change plans? It will take years more before I am ready to have another occupation, and what if that falls through too?
The model you suggest provides absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever.
I know that prices must rise and fall even in communist countries, but the control does help. At least the changes are gradual and warned of. At least you won't just wake up oneday and realize you're focked.
You are presenting an entirely elitist idea that is usually more common amongst facsits themselves, I think, who care little for the poor and don't want restrictions placed on the economy they have come to dominate.
I do acknowledge the heart of your ideal is utter freedom, and I appreciate that and wish it could be so, but I do not think it is possible. Not without making some people so angry against it that they just rebel and destroy it, anyway.
I already knew you cannot convince someone of something they did not already believe already to begin with, so...
Quote I already knew you cannot convince someone of something they did not already believe already to begin with, so...Actually, this is exactly how I became an anarcho-capitalist, by arguing with anarcho-capitalists until they convinced me they were correct. It DOES take a great deal of study. If you are interested in full answers to your question and learning about how true freedom is in your self-interest, then send me a PM. I will send you some articles, videos and books.
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Petrel, with Curlew moored outside on the left and the whale catcher stores on the right.
Looking over Petrel and Curlew to the plater's shop, machine shop and fuel tanks.
Petrel in Winter. Built in Oslo in 1928
- A steam driven whale catcher of 245 tons and 115 feet in length, she was
converted to a sealer in 1957 by removing the open walkway from the bridge and
the harpoon gun. (This was replaced later) | <urn:uuid:f2b4d7ca-fa75-483c-8570-1a9b95876baa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mclaren.gs/petrel.htm | 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 | 0.94289 | 104 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Frequently the NCDOT Rail Division receives requests for used railroad ties. People often think these crossties can easily be recycled and used for landscaping purposes.
Unfortunately the ties are coated in creosote, which the Environmental Protection Agency has declared a restricted use pesticide. While safe for railroad use, they are actually listed as a hazardous material.
In short, the NCDOT does not sell or give away these materials. The railroad or contractor is responsible for the proper disposal of crossties in North Carolina. | <urn:uuid:a1368187-a2b3-42db-8d3c-769c758b8889> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bytrain.org/redbarinfo/feedback/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952947 | 108 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The Economics Department is dedicated to promoting personal and professional development and to preparing students to enter professional life or pursue advanced studies at the graduate level. Economics courses provide insight into how the world works, training in rigorous qualitative and quantitative analysis, and a valuable perspective on today's pressing social issues.
Students pursuing a major in Economics have three options: a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Economics, or a Bachelor of Science degree in Economic Theory and Methods. Students are also eligible for three scholarships. For additional information you should contact the Department's chairperson or stop by the office in Chafee 807.
Meet some of our students, past and present...
Visit our Student & Alumni Profiles page and get to know some of our students, and see what our graduates are doing out in the real world. | <urn:uuid:d472e552-86ff-4bb8-b226-d71b3d3b3f39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uri.edu/artsci/ecn/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936496 | 169 | 1.585938 | 2 |
View an excerpt of the Humor in Craft book: This crafthaus online exhibition features 12 +1 images of humorous craft artwork
from around the world and the artists' commentary about the role humor
plays in their work. Enjoy.
Humor in Craft
(July 20, 2012—October 27, 2012)
Curated by artist and author Brigitte
Martin and organized by the Society for Contemporary Craft, Humor in
Craft presents 33 highly ironic, political, sarcastic, and just plain
amusing works by 32 makers from across the US and abroad—and
highlighting a diverse range of materials, techniques and artists that
might not otherwise be seen—the show challenges viewers to move beyond
their own frames of reference when considering
approaches to contemporary art. The concept of “funny” can vary widely
based on a variety of factors such as social background, personal experiences and values, knowledge of popular culture events, education,
national origin, etc. There are overlaps but also differences in humor
perception. For the artists in this exhibition, hardly any topic is
off-limits, apparently everything can be made fun
of. And why not laugh at the human foibles, the banana-peel jokes, and,
yes, the politicians?
How else could we stand especially the latter?
This exhibition is available to travel to other venues. Email the author for further information. | <urn:uuid:f57f2a0b-3843-4c3f-9002-b750134b886c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.humorincraft.com/Exhibitions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932207 | 294 | 1.617188 | 2 |
brvheart, on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011, 10:22 PM, said:
That's not what I was talking about. I know farmers that have purchased Monsanto seed and then used seed from that for the next season, but that's not what I'm talking about.There are plenty of farmers that use their own seed and don't get sued. They just have to be careful.
That's not what I'm talking about, either. I'm not talking about using their crop from one season to the next. I'm talking about, making your own crop, year after year, going back generations, and then getting sued by monsanto because your corn gets cross pollinated with a neighboring farm. For example, Monsanto has a copywrite for the "Round up ready" gene. Round up is a herbicide made by Monsanto. It kills basically every plant that doesn't have the round up ready gene. Monsanto leases the right to use this gene to seed companies. However, they also make it so when a farmer buys the seed, they are licensing the right to use that gene for 1 year, 1 crop. This insures that private farmers can't buy a Round up ready gene seed one year, and then use that crop to make their own seed year after year. IF they do, Monsanto sues them. But, they don't just sue farmers who bought Monsanto genes and then " stole" the right to use them. They sue farmers who's crops have these genes, who have never purchased a Monsanto product. THe gene's presence in their crop, in even one plant in their field, is a product of cross pollination. And since Monsanto gene crops overwhelmingly dominate the market, it's highly likely your farm will be surrounded on all 4 sides by Monsanto farms, making cross pollination inevitable. It's not a matter of "Being careful". You can't just like, put up a fence and wear gloves. You can't block the wind. You can't block pollinatatory insects. These farmers haven't stolen anything, they haven't broke any contracts. They just do what they've been doing for generations, farming. And they get sued by Monsanto. And Monsanto wins, in basically every country, because of WTO trade agreements. These independent farmers end up losing their farms due to legal costs/rulings against them, or agree to stop producing their own seed and plant official monsanto licensed seed. Other independant farmers see what happens to the guy down the road, see the example that gets made out of a neighbor, who did absolutely nothing wrong. And they switch over to Monsanto Seed out of fear. That shit ain't right. I'll grant you, Round up Ready is a great product, it's made farming incredibly productive. We use it on the farms I own. But it's basically true that you have no choice but to use a Monsanto product, and Monsanto has actively tried to establish a monopoly by bullying farmers. And it's worked. The round up ready copywrite runs out soon, I think in 2014. Round up is already phasing it out infavor of "round up ready 2" (which is essentially the same gene, in a different spot on the genome) so farmers don't just start making their own seed after the copywrite expires. | <urn:uuid:4651c9c2-67d5-4ae7-94e7-82a1ee0ce4e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-forum/index.php?showtopic=78904&st=80 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976085 | 673 | 1.84375 | 2 |
AAUP Seeks to Limit Transparency Over Climate Science
Posted by iusbvision on September 19, 2011
I have to ask. Is anyone shocked or even surprised by AAUP’s action? AAUP (American Association of University Professors) has demonstrated itself to be just slightly less ideologically corrupt than MSNBC. Politics trumps science, academic freedom, and transparency as a matter of course at AAUP. Such behavior is anti-education and anti-science.
Via our friends at Campus Reform:
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is again demonstrating an aversion toward transparency in academia.
In a letter to University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan, the AAUP requested that the administration scale back an open-records agreement with a conservative organization seeking documents from UVa climate researchers. They were joined by 3 other climate science advocacy organizations: theAmerican Geophysical Union, Climate Science Watch, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Mann, a current professor at Pennsylvania State University, was widely criticized in 2009 when his global warming research was debunked in the heavily publicized “ClimateGate” scandal.
The AAUP cites academic freedom and the necessity of protecting professors from public scrutiny as reasons for scaling back the agreement. “The university should seek to improve the agreement to better protect scientists from harassment and intimidation,” the letter says.
David Schnare, Director of ATI’s Environmental Law Center, refuted the AAUP’s claim. “There is no adequate means to inspect the ethical standards and behaviors of the faculty of the university without public access to these records,” he said.
Schnare also points out the ATI is under a gag order regarding documents that are exempt from public disclosure according to Virginia open records law. He asserts that ATI and UVa are, “cooperating in a professional manner to insure that the faculty and the scientists are properly protected while meeting the needs of the public.”
This is not the first time that the AAUP has sought to limit transparency in the name of “academic freedom.” In 2009, the organization opposed the public posting of course syllabi and faculty curriculum vita in public universities in Texas.
University professors across the country are given free license to espouse their left-wing ideology while under the guise of academic freedom. Are faculty at your university using the classroom to promote a liberal worldview?
Expose them by telling us your story. Contact your Regional Field Coordinator for more information. | <urn:uuid:6e3a7878-44fa-45c4-a45c-203a685a134f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://iusbvision.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/aaup-seeks-to-limit-transparency-over-climate-science/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937554 | 512 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Just like the object that the Fan Table was named after, it unfolds to expand into a larger surface that sports similar pleats. Granted, the Fan Table is too large to use as an actual fan. Instead, it simply resembles one. The true beauty of the Fan Table is that is does not look like it can convert into any other shape other than its original rectangular one.
The Fan Table was designed by Mauricio Affonso. It explores the idea of tables as an infrastructure for social interaction. Made up of 400 slats, the Fan Table can take on any shape, not just that of a circle. It was recently exhibited at Royal College of Art's PARADISE exhibition during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Venture Lambrate, Milan 2012.
Unfolding Circular Furniture
14,885 clicks in 54 w
More Stats +/- | <urn:uuid:e89d0f74-cfb9-4f29-a321-63615310da69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/fan-table | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945936 | 176 | 1.828125 | 2 |
The following procedure will determine the Big 12 Conference representative to the Bowl Championship Series in the event of a first-place tie:
- If two teams are tied, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative.
- If three or more teams are tied, steps 1 through 4 will be followed until a determination is made. Once a team has been eliminated from a multi-team comparison, it is dropped from further comparisons. If only two teams remain tied after any step, the winner of the game between the two tied teams shall be the representative.
- The records of the three teams will be compared against each other
- The records of the three teams will be compared against the next highest placed teams in the conference
- The highest ranked team in the first Bowl Championship Series Poll following the completion of Big 12 regular season conference play shall be the representative, unless the two highest ranked tied teams are ranked within one spot of the other in the BCS poll. In this case, the head-to-head results of the top two highest ranked tied teams shall determine the representative in the Bowl Championship Series.
- The representative will be chosen by draw. | <urn:uuid:5cd9afc6-4b41-48bd-8bb4-458847e1cf0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.big12sports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?CONTENT_ID=6501&DB_OEM_ID=10410&ATCLID=1546006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94018 | 238 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Stock exchanges expected to reopen Wednesday
Published: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 4:42 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 4:42 p.m.
NEW YORK – Wall Street is preparing to open for business as New York City slowly recovers from the wreckage of Hurricane Sandy.
The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq both plan to resume trading Wednesday following the unprecedented storm that flooded many parts of Manhattan and prompted widespread power outages. The market closed for two days as Hurricane Sandy battered the East Coast, forcing thousands of people to evacuate and causing millions of dollars in damage.
“It’s incredibly important to open these markets,” said Miranda Mizen, director of equities research at TABB Group. “It says New York is open for business.”
The New York Stock Exchange is one of the world’s most identifiable symbols of capitalism, and its inability to operate is often viewed as a larger statemen on stability of U.S. stock markets and the economy.
It is rare for the stock markets to close operations for two days. The last time the New York Stock Exchange did so for weather-related reasons was 1888.
After terrorists attacked various U.S. landmarks including the World Trade Center in 2001, the NYSE closed for four days. The re-opening was heralded around the world as a sign of the strength of the United States.
“Barring any unforeseen circumstances we will be open,” said Larry Leibowitz, the chief operating officer of the NYSE Euronext, the parent of the Big Board. “We all see the need to get the exchange working as quickly as we can.”
On Monday, the New York Stock Exchange battled rumors that the floor was under 3 feet of water. Leibowitz, who lives not far from the NYSE, walked through flooded streets this morning to get to work, but he said the water stopped about two blocks away.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:64979625-5297-4598-bfcb-ccd55bfed7a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20121030/WIRE/121039970/1213/news18?Title=Stock-exchanges-expected-to-reopen-Wednesday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9634 | 448 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The Middleton Place National Historic Landmark in Charleston, S.C., showcases 18th- and 19th-century plantation life, with costumed interpreters doing the work once performed by enslaved African-Americans.
During the Plantation Days weekend of Nov. 10-11, the interpreters will harvest and press the plantation's small sugar cane crop.
While visitors can't help with the sugar cane because of safety issues, there are other hands-on activities, including processing Carolina Gold rice and working with Sea Island Cotton.
Visitors who stay at the Inn at Middleton Place will receive tickets to Middleton Place included in the price of their stay.
Visit Middleton Place's website for specifics on activities and demos.
Picnic on the Appalachian Trail
The Grand Bohemian Hotel Asheville's "Picnics on the Parkway" package makes it easy to enjoy the seasonal offerings of North Carolina farms while picnicking on one of the country's most famous trails.
Picnics on the Parkway, starting at $394/night, includes the room, breakfast for two, a pocket guide of North Carolina birds, a 3-D topography map to the Blue Ridge Parkway and a picnic basket filled with food from southern farms and the local farmer's market.
To sample all that Asheville's local and seasonal restaurant scene has to offer, head to this North Carolina independent food mecca for "Taste of Asheville" on Nov. 14.
For a more traditional fall experience, head to the Historic Orchard at Altapass, an 104-year-old apple orchard located on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The orchard also offers fresh fudge, honey from its hives, hayrides and a Butterfly Conservation Center to keep the kids busy. | <urn:uuid:5149d09b-fca8-4cc6-878b-e2733737e68b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmtw.com/news/money/travel/5-fun-ways-to-get-a-taste-of-the-harvest/-/8791718/16963244/-/item/1/-/vc0ypa/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934818 | 359 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Friday, January 23, 2009
The University of West Georgia has been named as one of the Peace Corps’ Top 10 colleges in Georgia that contribute to the number of Peace Corps volunteers. With 38 UWG alumni listed as volunteers in the Peace Corps, the university is ranked 10th out of 76 Georgia colleges and universities who have produced volunteers since the Peace Corps’ inception in 1961. Two UWG alumni are currently serving overseas.
David Leavitt, a former Peace Corps volunteer and a representative at the Atlanta Regional Office, and Kyle Jessop, Peace Corps regional recruiter, will visit the campus on Wednesday, Jan. 28, to give a presentation on “The Toughest Job You Will Ever Love.” They will also attend several classes as guest speakers.
Jessop served as a Peace Corps volunteer in two different assignments: the Kingdom of Lesotho and the Republic of Zambia from 2002 through 2006.
“I think Peace Corps has opened up doors for me that I am still waiting to approach,” said Jessop. “My heart is with the people in the developing world and I find it hard at times when I look at the vast differences in different societies. It simply amazes me. I hope to do my part in helping to bridge the gaps.”
The presentation will include the Peace Corps application process, a description of what it is like to live and work overseas, and the long-term career advantages of service. The event is scheduled at the Technology-enhanced Learning Center (TLC), Room 1203, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Students and community members are encouraged to attend.
Peace Corps volunteers must be U.S. citizens and be at least 18 years of age. Joining the Peace Corps usually requires a degree and a 27-month commitment. This event will mark the second visit to the UWG campus by Peace Corps representatives this academic year.
The Peace Corps organization is especially attracted to UWG because many of its undergraduates fill assignments in scarce skill areas where it is traditionally difficult to find qualified applicants. These skill areas include education, business, foreign languages and global studies.
As the Peace Corps approaches its 50th anniversary, its service legacy continues to promote peace and friendship around the world. Historically, more than 195,000 Americans have volunteered and have helped to promote a better understanding between Americans and the citizens of the 139 countries in which they have served.
Applications to serve in the Peace Corps have increased by 16 percent this past year, which is the largest boost in the last five years. Currently, 7,876 Peace Corps Volunteers are serving in 76 countries. To learn more about the Peace Corps, go to http://www.peacecorps.gov/, or call 404-562-3472. | <urn:uuid:b8b7a64e-0ce2-4ae6-b8c9-2799beef5928> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westga.edu/ucmassets/news/2234.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966056 | 572 | 1.523438 | 2 |
As the daughter of one of the five Fendi sisters of the famed Italian brand, Ilaria Venturini Fendi found herself designing in the family firm but not feeling fulfilled. After leaving haute fashion for a life on an organic, sustainable farm near Rome, she felt the pull back to fashion design after a couple of years — but with an unconventional twist. She still has the farm, and in fashion she now specializes in upcycling — the repurposing of old or discarded objects into new, higher-valued items.
Her Carmina Campus ("chants of the field" in Latin) line of handbags and accessories, started in 2006, has used airplane cushions, marine rope, Venetian blinds, PVC flooring, bottle caps, garden umbrellas, truck tarpaulins, safari tents, shower curtains and more to create beautiful, exquisitely crafted bags that go for 195 to 890 euros (or about $254 to $1,151 at current exchange rates). The bags are sold at her Re(f)use boutique in Rome, which also carries green and upcycled work from designers and artisans, as well as in select boutiques around the world and on websites yoox.com, farfetch.com and voguevert.com.
Besides the bags made by Italian artisans, a small collection within the line is made in Kenya and Uganda by rural women — a project of which Fendi says she is particularly proud (and about which she recently spoke at the Rio+20 Conference on sustainability). It's a joint collaboration with the United Nations' International Trade Center and its Ethical Fashion Program, which develops work projects for women in marginalized African countries. She also has plans to procure the same collaborative business model in Haiti.
Image talked with her about the eco movement in fashion.
How would you describe the term "upcycling" in relation to fashion?
I like to think of it as an opportunity for something new in creativity. It is one of the possible new approaches to fashion, more in line with the changes now urgently needed in our economy. My way consists of employing already existing materials that for some reason are out of the production and consumption cycles: end-of-lines, defective goods or items which failed quality control standards, scraps of a size that no longer fits their intended use, vintage or out-of-production fabrics and so on — all kinds of materials no longer appropriate for their original utilization, or simply forgotten but still good to be used in a bag.
Would you say your company's mission is to change the way people purchase fashion or view fashion — or both?
I think it will become ever more common for people to require more information about materials, design and production. Designers will be responsible from the idea at the base of an object's creation all the way through its end. These are concepts that I take into consideration making Carmina Campus.
Is it possible to talk about "eco" fashion without the sacrifice of chic and style?
It's a pity we still have to talk about "eco" fashion. If the whole industry took up different standards, such a distinction would not be needed. Today's chic and style may be different tomorrow. If we take into consideration only precious materials, then a bag made out of reused stuff is not a luxury item and does not fit in traditional style standards. But if you also consider the research, high-quality manufacturing, the design and concept of that object and its uniqueness — my bags are one-of-a-kind — then you can have a new, still high and very personal style. It's just a matter of looking differently at things. We should accept the idea that more ethics does not necessarily mean less aesthetics.
How have retailers and customers taken to the Carmina Campus concept?
We started as a niche company and are still small because big productions would be nonsense in such a project. But from the start we have been in the best international stores and boutiques, and we have [earned the loyalty of] our customers.
Of course, there are markets that are less ready to accept this change of attitude. But others have been very [receptive] from the beginning. In Japan, for example, we started working some years ago, and since then we have really gone very far.
Some people see luxury fashion as inherently wasteful — spending large sums of money on items that go out of season very quickly and are soon cast aside and replaced, in a seemingly unending cycle. How do you hope to alter this equation?
What is really different about Carmina Campus is that my bags are not necessarily seasonal. Before, I used to look for inspiration and then for the materials that could interpret my ideas. Now it's the materials that inspire me to create collections. I work on styles and shapes that ... can [go] over several seasons. This is the approach that reflects the change I went through when I decided to leave for some time fashion, buy a piece of land and return to the slower rhythms of nature.
Even if my bags, at least those made in Italy, are not low-priced, I like to think that who buys them understands the concept and appreciates the research, design and manufacturing involved for an item that is not intended to last just one season. If you feel a piece is only yours, it should not become old in six months.
How would you describe "ethical" or "eco" shopping? Do you see this movement in fashion growing in scope or eventually trending out?
Of course, the actual modification of consumer behavior can be a committing task, especially now that we are experiencing a tough crisis. Habit can be the most [resistant] factor to change, and this can be true also about upcycling. But economic experts and those who study these phenomena think that fashion consumers are gradually modifying their buying attitudes. Consequently I believe fashion will increase its offerings, and there will be more space for new trends. | <urn:uuid:ad9e514a-f9d0-4fde-b4e1-ad4d701a4626> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.latimes.com/features/image/la-ig-fendi-20121014,0,1276083.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967657 | 1,226 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s a Kirigami Turkey—one you won’t find elsewhere. If you enjoy making this turkey, please explore Hiroshi Hayakawa’s Kirigami Menagerie where you will find many other delightful creatures (and limericks). While working on the photography for this book I was able to get to know Mr. Hayakawa. He is a talented artist whose work goes far beyond his kirigami creatures. I wanted to share with you what an interesting and creative artist he is.
KP: Would you explain the difference between kirigami and origami?
HH: Kirigami literally means “cutting paper,” and origami means “folding paper.”
Traditionally kirigami is a two-dimensional project: You cut a shape out of a piece of paper with scissors.
Origami is a three-dimensional project made out of a piece of paper. Cutting is not a major component for origami.
In fact, some origami practitioners strive for producing intricate details without using any cutting at all. That’s the area where the ingenuity of the design and the skills of the artist are oftentimes appreciated.
KP: How did you become interested in kirigami? When did you start creating your own designs?
HH: I was always interested in paper craft, and especially in origami, ever since when I was young. My parents bought me a number of origami how-to books. I would make various animals and insects out of paper and displayed them in my room.
I came to the United States to study art at a college. The school’s head librarian, who was originally from China, asked me to make a small paper animal from the Chinese zodiac each year to decorate the dinner tables at her New Year’s party.
I designed animals—tigers, sheep, snakes, etc.—and made their templates so she could make multiple copies. I could have done these in origami, but that would have been more time-consuming. Instead, I decided to combine both techniques.
People at her dinner parties liked them, so I kept making more animals. Eventually they expanded into a larger project including other animals not found in the zodiac.
KP: For your book, Kirigami Menagerie, all the projects are animals. Are there also geometric forms of kirigami? And what is it you find so appealing in animal forms?
HH: I know there are some geometric kirigami forms. You can create snowflake patterns by folding a piece of paper, cutting it, and unfolding it. That’s a typical geometric form in traditional kirigami.
Three-dimensional geometric kirigami works also. For example, we see beautiful lamp shades made out of a flat sheet of paper.
The appeal of animal forms to me is that they are universally recognizable forms and can be enjoyed by anybody. They allow endless possibilities of design variations. No matter how simple or abstract your design of an animal may be, as long as it retains the most essential features of the animal, anyone can recognize it without mistake.
KP: Are there contemporary and traditional styles of kirigami? What do you consider yours to be?
HH: I am not really an expert on this subject, but my impression is the majority of traditional kirigami is two-dimensional, and three-dimensional kirigami like mine seems to be one of the variations.
But I am not sure if three-dimensional kirigami is considered more contemporary.
KP: When you make your own kirigami pieces, do you keep them or give them away? When you keep a piece, how do you display it? How does it feel to give a work away that is a labor of love?
HH: I keep some pieces for myself, but I usually give them away when someone asks me if they can have them. It is true they are a labor of love, but I also hope they are appreciated by other people besides me.
I really don’t have any strong emotional attachment to the end products, and I don’t have any special display of them in my house for that reason. I basically consider them reproducible art like photographic prints.
To me the most exciting part of the whole process is the designing stage. I would be happy to know that people take my kirigami animals home to their children or display them in their living rooms.
KP: Hiroshi, I’m familiar with your photographic work, and I’d like to introduce people to it. You are known for your figurative photography on metal. Can you describe the process and how you developed it?
HH: I use liquid photo emulsion to sensitize the surface of oxidized sheet metal. The development of my images is a traditional darkroom process with film negatives, enlargers, and photochemistry.
When my images are printed on sheet metal, the color and texture of rusted metal come up to the surface and become fused with the printed images. Because of this process, all my prints are one-of-a-kind—it is impossible to replicate the exact results.
I use female figures as my photographic subjects. They seem to maximize the emotional impact on the audience when combined with rust marks, because of the way we view female forms traditionally.
I think my photographic work expresses the appreciation of the beauty enhanced by the transient nature of the subject matters.
KP: What other kinds of photography have you explored?
HH: I love the hands-on aspect of traditional darkroom work. Sometimes I extend this out of the darkroom and turn my photographic work into sculptures. You could call it photographic mixed media.
Besides photographic pieces, I make kinetic sculptures. They are still in the development stage, and I am hoping to show them in a commercial gallery in the near future.
You can see my art at http://hiroshihykw.blogspot.com.
KP: What got you interested in photography?
HH: I majored in photography in both my undergraduate and graduate studies. What I love about this medium is not just its ability to capture a slice of reality in a way that is very different from any other artistic medium, but also its paradoxical inability to communicate the truth. The majority of my photographic work comes from this awareness.
I couldn’t see myself working in commercial photography, simply because that was not really my interest. The transition from my graduate study to teaching at the college was a natural one.
KP: What do you find artistically satisfying about your photographic process and kirigami work?
HH: What is most satisfying about my photographic work is when I see my pieces affect people intellectually and emotionally.
For my kirigami pieces, I find it rewarding to see children’s faces light up when they see my animals and hear them say they want to make their own. I know how important it is for young children to be exposed to something that will inspire them and encourage them to use their imagination. | <urn:uuid:50f5dd87-887a-4be9-aa97-b74d099c62cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.larkcrafts.com/craft-your-life/free-project-kirigami-turkey/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96058 | 1,489 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Press contact: Audrey Fischer (202)707-0022
Public contact: Chris Murphy (202) 707-5676
May 15, 2012
Arab Novelist Jurji Zaydan Subject of June 5 Symposium
A symposium titled "Jurji Zaydan: His Contribution to Modern Arab Thought and Literature" will bring together scholars from the Arab world, Europe and North America to present papers and discuss the life and work of the noted Arab novelist, journalist and publisher. The conference will be held at the Library of Congress from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, June 5, 2012 in Room LJ-119 in the Thomas Jefferson Building, located at 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.
The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division, the John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress and the Zaidan Foundation. Tickets are not required.
Jurji Zaydan was born in Beirut, Lebanon on Dec. 14, 1861, into a Greek Orthodox family. A prolific writer, Zaydan was the author of 22 historical novels covering the entirety of Arab/Islamic history. Many of his works focused on the Arab Awakening, a cultural renaissance that began in the late 19th and early 20th century in Egypt, later moving to Ottoman-ruled Arabic-speaking regions including Lebanon, Syria and others. It is often regarded as a period of intellectual modernization and reform.
Zaydan also founded the journal al-Hilal, which is still published today. His writings have been translated from Arabic into Persian, Turkish and Urdu as well as French and German. Housed in the Library’s collection, some of these works will be on display in Room LJ-113 during the symposium. Selected works by Zaydan that have recently been translated into English by leading scholars can be ordered at the symposium. (A limited number may be available for purchase at the event).
Zaydan died in Cairo on July 21, 1914, at the age of 53. During the last two decades of his life, he developed a reputation as one of the most influential thinkers and writers in the Arab world.
The symposium will feature the following speakers and topics:
Jens Hanssen, University of Toronto, the historical roots of Zaydan’s work
Marwa El Shakry, Columbia University, Zaydan’s views on Arab history and language
Anne-Laure Dupont, the impact of European orientalism on Zaydan
Roger Allen, University of Pennsylvania, Zaydan’s impact on genre development in Arabic literature
Zainab Ben Lagha, the image and role of women in Zaydan’s novels
William Granara, Harvard University, the role of history in Zaydan’s novels
Michael Cooperson, University of California/Los Angeles, Zaydan and modern history
Thomas Philipp, Erlangen University, Germany, Zaydan and the Young Turk Revolution
George Zaidan, founder of The Zaidan Foundation (zaidanfoundation.org(external link)) will discuss his grandfather’s personal qualities and values.
Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs, publications and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov.
Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources and to interact with policymakers in Washington. For further information on the Kluge Center, visit www.loc.gov/kluge/.
The African and Middle Eastern Division was established in 1978 as part of a reorganization that combined the Near East Section, the African Section and the Hebraic Section. Together they cover some 78 countries and regions from Southern Africa to the Maghreb and from the Middle East to Central Asia. For more information on the division and its holdings, visit the African and Middle Eastern Division at www.loc.gov/rr/amed.
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WPI Expands Global Footprint, Opens Five New Project Centers
New sites added in Russia, India, New Zealand, Albania, and Maine;
In WPI’s pioneering undergraduate curriculum, projects are the lifeblood of the student experience
Worcester, Mass. (PRWEB) September 04, 2012
Building on a pioneering project-based curriculum and adding to a legacy of experiential learning that has transformed the lives of thousands of students over the course of more than 40 years, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has added five new destinations to its expansive network of global project centers.
Located in Wellington, New Zealand; Moscow, Russia; Mandi, India; Tirana, Albania; and Bar Harbor, Maine, the new centers bring to more than 35 the number of WPI project sites worldwide. The announcement of the new centers comes as students prepare to attend the Global Opportunities Fair on Sept. 4 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the WPI Campus Center to gain firsthand insight into the unique interdisciplinary project-based curriculum that has been the core of WPI’s undergraduate program since the early 1970s.
Unlike many colleges that offer classroom-style study-abroad programs, WPI gives students and faculty advisers the chance to get out of the classroom and tackle open-ended problems as part of their degree requirements.
The first project, typically undertaken in a student’s junior year, is a team-based effort that lies at the intersection of science, technology, social issues and human need. In that setting, WPI students work to meet pressing local needs, whether it’s establishing the first laundry facility in a rural community outside of Cape Town, South Africa, or improving community relations between a coal-burning power plant company and villagers in Mae Moh, Thailand. Such projects are the hallmark of WPI and truly distinctive among colleges in America. In the second project, usually taken on in the senior year, students work on professional-level challenges in their specific fields of study.
“The expansion of WPI’s project centers will undoubtedly light the fire of enthusiasm in our students,” said Richard F. Vaz, dean of WPI’s Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division, who also serves as director of the university’s Bangkok Project Center. “We want to create excitement not just for the chance to work in another part of the world but for the opportunity to engage in interesting and useful projects.”
The new project centers offer countless opportunities for WPI students. The Bar Harbor site debuted this summer, the New Zealand project site will be offered in the spring of 2013, and the university is about to recruit the first teams of students who will venture to Russia, India and Albania during the 2013-2014 academic year.
Bar Harbor projects involve research into the preservation, improvement, appreciation, and sustainability of the natural environment. Projects in New Zealand will involve collaboration with government and non-government organizations on issues related to environment, technology and society.
Moscow projects will focus on the marketing and commercialization of small appliances, industrial safety, and preservation of cultural heritage and nature sites. Students in India will collaborate with the Indian Institute of Technology on social and environmental issues such as land use and water quality. Albania projects will focus on environmental issues, education, tourism and business.
Dominic Golding, co-director of WPI’s London Project Center and director of the Nantucket Project Center, said a recent alumni survey revealed that students gained immeasurable value from the projects. “What we’ve found is that the project experiences have a dramatic impact on students’ lives that they may not realize until years later,” he said. “It clearly impacts their professional persona and it ultimately ends up changing the way they view themselves and the world.”
Ryan Kendrick (’08), said his project work in Windhoek, Namibia, was a life-changing event. Kendrick and his classmates helped residents of nearly 4,000 unelectrified settlements in Namibia develop renewable energy businesses.
“Before I went to Namibia, I understood the technical aspects of engineering, but that just isn’t enough,” said Kendrick. “You need to understand the human context. All engineering schools will teach you engineering, but when you have the opportunity to work on a project like this, you see why it matters.”
Students have the opportunity to apply to project centers in dozens of cities worldwide, including Boston, Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, N.M., domestically and London, England; Venice, Italy; and Cape Town, South Africa, overseas.
Vaz is pleased with the progress of the project centers, noting that opening up global centers has become a scalable and sustainable paradigm for WPI. “We’re excited about the continued expansion of project centers globally,” he said. “We are able to replicate the project center concept in any corner of the world, which allows students and their advisers to have a truly meaningful educational experience.”
Sustainability serves as a common theme for the projects, many of which address problems dealing with energy, the environment, sustainable development, education, cultural preservation, and technology policy. For example, projects completed in Cape Town, South Africa, focus on community capacity building, energy sustainability, and water resource management. In Washington, D.C., students have recommended new policies to the Consumer Products Safety Commission and helped the National Science Foundation evaluate the impact and effectiveness of its programs.
In recent years, many students have elected to do their project work in Worcester as a means of supporting the city in which they are being educated and to help solve specific challenges. Corey Denenberg Dehner, co-director of the Worcester Project Center, which will focus on community empowerment and environmental responsibility, said the center is aiming to have students tackle both grassroots environmental issues as well as public sector challenges facing the region.
In the past, students have worked with a Worcester-based AIDS support organization to develop community gardens to improve nutrition, and conducted a study that resulted in a local school erecting a 600-kilowatt wind turbine to meet its energy needs.
“These two parallel themes will allow students to get a better understanding of issues in their own backyard while learning how to apply those new findings,” she said.
In the end, students’ ability to experience other cultures and make an impact holds untold benefits.
“The project experience seeps into students’ lives in ways they can’t imagine,” said Golding. “It affects the way they interact with their colleagues, it helps them gain perspective on the project at hand, and it gives them the capacity to listen to others. It’s truly a transformative experience.”
Founded in 1865 in Worcester, Mass., WPI is one of the nation’s first engineering and technology universities. Its 14 academic departments offer more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science, engineering, technology, business, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts, leading to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees. WPI's talented faculty work with students on interdisciplinary research that seeks solutions to important and socially relevant problems in fields as diverse as the life sciences and bioengineering, energy, information security, materials processing, and robotics. Students also have the opportunity to make a difference to communities and organizations around the world through the university’s innovative Global Perspective Program. There are more than 25 WPI project centers throughout North America and Central America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and Europe.
WPI Marketing and Communications
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Mumbai’s woes and their implications
Mumbai is India’s most prosperous as well as most cosmopolitan city. The city’s local trains everyday carry about 7 million diverse people, and to this gigantic fare is everyday added 1200 families who reach city from different corners of India in search of better life. Mumbai, also India’s tinsel town, is not only known for its exquisite places and lifestyles, wealth and poverty but also as a constant target of terrorist attacks since the menace raised its ugly head in the Indian subcontinent. In the past decade, it has been the target of terror attack at least five times in 2003, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2011. In these attacks, it is the common people who bear the brunt as the targets are usually (perhaps to the sole exception of attacks on posh hotels in 2008) busy market places, local trains, train stations, hospitals, etc. While earlier this year huge fire wrecked havoc in one of Mumbai’s suburbs displaying in national and international media abysmal poverty as a mark of city’s paradox of wealth and poverty, the terror attacks make it clear that Mumbai remains a favourable target for terrorists as whatever happens in Mumbai instantly catches the eyes of the nation and the world, thus in a way fulfilling the aims of the terror designers and their organizations to highlight their presence and activities.
The bomb blasts at the three locations in south and central Mumbai on 13 July 2011 killed at least 21 people and injured about 131 people as per the official sources. The death toll may rise with passing hours, as there are people who are severely wounded in the attacks. The targeting of three locations named Zaveri Bazaar, Opera House and Dadar west in the rush hours were aimed at causing maximum damage to the people. The attacks also pricked the claims of authorities that after the Mumbai attack of 2008, Indian security and intelligence agencies have been successful enough to foil terrorist plans and attacks. India’s home minister recently observed that so far the year 2011 has been peaceful as there has been no terrorist attack. And within days of his statement, the bomb blasts took place. Though India invested heavily in anti-terror operations post-2008, it still appears not fully capable to counter the attacks. After 2008 India witnessed five terror attacks in various parts including New Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Pune and Varanasi, Bangalore. Perhaps two factors explain the difficulties in these operations. First, the terrorists mostly target the busy market places or places which are mostly crowded like trains and that too during rush hours, hence making difficult security operations including surveillance of a particular area. In the case of Mumbai, it is one of the most crowded cities of India, with population at about 21million. Like any big city there are always bursts of activities in Mumbai (any commuter in a local train in the city particularly during rush hours can feel the hustling and bustling of the Mumbai life). Hence, it becomes difficult to always keep a tap on developments in a particular locality in this huge city. Hence, while people this time appreciated quick actions by the Mumbai police and authorities, the fact remains that Mumbai still remains vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
The question then emerges – how to tackle the terror menace in countries like India, or for that matter any other country which is a victim of terrorism? International criticisms have poured in as many countries condemned the attacks in clear terms. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov who was in a bilateral meeting with his US counterpart in Washington expressed strong disapproval of these ‘despicable’ acts which are aimed at creating an atmosphere of ‘fear and division.’ Countries like the US, China, Pakistan, Canada, Australia, etc. have expressed strong criticism of the incident. But, there seems something is lacking at international arena to make a coordinated effort and to devise mechanisms such as to share real time intelligence to fight the menace. Though there are some effective bilateral mechanisms between countries, there is apparent lack of a unified attempt in this context. The Af-Pak tangle is a clear cut example of this conundrum.
Amidst all these bad news, perhaps one positive thing is that India has not accused any particular country for this attack. The earlier habit in a section of Indian establishment was to point fingers at Pakistan for terrorist attacks in India. This restraint is perhaps a welcome sign for India-Pakistan rapprochement which was lagging behind since 2008. India’s Home Minister, P. Chidambaram clearly stated that there must not be any ‘pre-determined assumptions’ towards accusing any particular entity in this heinous act. Though he argued that India lives in a troubled neighbourhood, and countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan have become centres of terrorism, there is no apparent reason to accuse neighbours for this barbaric act. Though yet unconfirmed, there is an argument floating around that the detractors of Indo-Pak dialogue might have triggered the blasts to derail bilateral peace process. This month itself India is going to host two significant events. Pakistan’s foreign minister and the US Secretary of State are visiting India to deliberate on diverse issues of importance. In this backdrop, the bomb blasts will likely push the leaders to think in more pragmatic terms how to tackle the menace. While India accuses Pakistan to use terrorism as an official instrument against India, Pakistan has accused India for not resolving contentious issues including Kashmir.
Is there a large picture attached to these blasts in Mumbai? An analysis of the recent developments in the wider region of South Asia provides some indications in this direction. The recent standoff between Pakistan and the US, the killing of Ahmad Wali Karzai, the powerful half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the rising to power of Ayman al Zawahiri and some Indian Mujahideen’s links to Al Qaeda as the last year’s arrest of an Indian techie in Paris revealed, present a picture of terrorism in the region with wider implications for the world. Though Indian authorities at present suspect the role of Indian Mujahideen, a home grown fundamentalist and terrorist network (emerging out of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India), which is comparatively amateurish and less sophisticated in comparison to other terror groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba or Al Qaeda, a wider linkage in triggering these blasts cannot be ruled out.
Though the recent blasts were unable to dent the spirit of Mumbai and
its people, or putting in a different way, though the attacks were
unable to affect India’s policy options towards its neighbours or other
aspects of its policy making, it certainly challenged India’s recently
acquired expertise in counter terrorism operations. There is certainly a
wider angle. The menace of terrorism is not bound to any particular
nation or group of nations, it transcends national boundaries, and it
holds devastating potentials for the human society.
Dr. Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra is part of the research faculty at the Centre for Central Eurasian Studies, University of Mumbai, India.
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Standard 4: Programs & Instruction
In keeping with its mission "to provide and maintain an intellectual environment grounded in the liberal arts" while focusing primarily on undergraduate education, Keene State College offers associate's and bachelor's degree programs in professional and vocational areas which best meet the needs of the region and the state. Undergraduate students select from thirty-three majors and thirty minors, while graduate students all earn a Master of Education degree in one of four options. Additional two-year associate degrees and post undergraduate certificate programs are also available. Programs in elementary, secondary, and special education are among the largest majors; Psychology, Management, Communication, Safety, and the Graphic Design option in Art follow education in numbers of majors.
Keene State College offers associate's degrees in the arts and sciences and in general studies. Within the required sixty credits, students must complete a concentration of twenty-four to thirty credits of sequential coursework in one department. The bachelor of arts degree requires 120 credits and the bachelor of science 126. Degree requirements and objectives are stated in the College catalog within the description of each major program. These descriptions specify the knowledge, skills, and (where appropriate) career-preparation practices to be mastered. Course objectives and learning outcomes usually appear on course syllabi and are further elucidated by individual instructors.
The College spends slightly over half its budget on instruction and academic support. Expenditures for salaries, wages, and fringe benefits have risen about 30% over the past five years, and amount to over 70% of general operating expenses. Expenditures for technology and technology support have increased 80% over the same period.
Academic planning takes place at several levels: in the office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Deans Council, at the divisional level, and within individual departments. In 1999 the Deans Council and the Vice President for Academic Affairs drafted a strategic plan for the next three years (see documents in the workroom). This plan outlines steps to be taken to improve retention, reduce the time students take to complete a degree, strengthen academic programs, further the integration of technology into academics, and improve classroom and laboratory facilities.
At the departmental level, planning and evaluation are critical components of the program review process (described in Standard Two), which addresses the relevance of the program to the College's mission, student demand, and need for the program within New Hampshire. Based on this process of review, evaluation, and planning, several changes have occurred: a new major in Communication has been added, and the minor in Women's Studies has taken shape. Majors in Industrial Chemistry and Home Economics have been deleted. The former B. S. in Industrial Technology has been revised to create majors in Industrial Design and Safety. Graphic Design has moved from the Division of Professional Studies into the Division of Arts and Humanities. A new minor in International Studies has been created and the Political Science major has been deleted. A B. S. in Health Science has replaced Home Economics. Programs in elementary and secondary education, special education and early childhood education (grouped together in the ESEC department) were most extensively revised. Students seeking certification in early childhood, elementary, and elementary/special education are now required by the state of New Hampshire to have a major other than education. In keeping with its roots in the liberal arts, the College requires that they complete a second major in an academic field.
Three-year staffing plans created by each department project sabbaticals, retirements, and needs for additional faculty. When faculty positions become vacant through resignation or retirement, they are usually filled on a temporary basis for one year. Faculty in the department must then justify the need for a new hire in that position; a program review or three-year staffing plan may offer supporting documentation of that need. If the need for staffing is greater in another area, the faculty line may be transferred to another department. These plans are also important in departmental planning, since chairs are asked to project potential curriculum changes over the next three years.
When programs are eliminated or requirements changed, the College maintains its commitment to students already enrolled, and ensures that they can complete their program as planned. A list of programs deleted over the past decade will be found in the workroom.
The Division of Continuing Education and Extended Studies provides educational opportunities for students returning to college, seeking professional development, preparing to enter a degree program, or taking courses for personal enhancement. Opportunities are available on a part-time basis through credit and non-credit courses, certificate programs, seminars, institutes, conferences, and workshops. This Division is responsible for the largest transfer population to the College's matriculated student body. Many students begin their college career as part-time, non-matriculated students and later apply for admission to a degree program. The Division also works closely with business, industry, school districts, and governmental agencies to provide customized education and training on a contractual basis. It operates the College's Safety Center in Manchester, which includes the OSHA Education Center, driver education teacher certification program, and other allied safety and health programs. All of the resources and facilities used in off-campus programs are under the direct control of Keene State College.
The Division administers three summer sessions with undergraduate, graduate, and non-credit courses. Seats are available for Continuing Education students in the vast majority of divisional courses. Likewise, the Continuing Education Division sponsors a wide variety of courses each semester with seats available for matriculated students. Courses sponsored by Continuing Education are taught by adjunct faculty as well as full-time resident faculty (using the adjunct faculty pay scale). All faculty and courses are approved by the appropriate department chair and divisional dean prior to scheduling.
Distance learning technology has expanded the reach of Continuing Education. In 1997 the Division received approval and funding to develop, administer and evaluate web-based programs. The office developed a cooperative arrangement for distributing distance-learning responsibilities with the Center for Media and Instructional Technology (CMIT). Distance learning credit programming focuses on the niche of on-going professional development for educators and continues to explore potential markets including safety and non-profit management.
The Division of Continuing Education works closely with community organizations, businesses, and government agencies. It actively participates in external committees such as the Greater Keene Chamber of Commerce Education and Training Committee, and convenes its own advisory boards comprised of local businesses, school districts, and College faculty. The Division has aligned with the NH Community Technical College-Nashua campus to provide technical training to local industry utilizing grant funding through the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and coordinates regional offerings of various occupational safety programs with the University of New Hampshire and University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
The National and International Exchange Center is one of the most rapidly expanding programs at Keene State College. It recruits and supports incoming national and international freshmen, transfers, postgraduate, and Continuing Education students. It also recruits, advises, and supports KSC students on study-away programs, which may last a summer, a semester, or a year. Students may participate in exchange programs in their sophomore, junior and/or senior years. They are encouraged to first consider attending a program with which KSC has formal exchange agreements. Such agreements exist with four institutions in the United Kingdom, two apiece in Ecuador, France, and Russia, and with all Quebec institutions. We also have formal consortial agreements that access 115 universities in forty-one countries. As a member of the National Student Exchange, the College offers access to 160 colleges and universities in the United States. A student lounge with Internet access to foreign newspapers, and a club, International Friends, support students from other countries and encourage contacts among students of all nationalities. As evidenced by the newest catalog and Viewbook, the study-away programs are a new and powerful marketing vehicle for KSC. National and International Exchange is funded by fees charged to KSC students who study abroad.
To further support our mission statement that we value diversity in our curriculum and our community, Keene State College's programming draws attention to multicultural and diversity issues. While the Vermont and New Hampshire legislatures debated same sex marriage, the College's Women's Studies program and the President's Commission on the Status of Women co-sponsored presentations and workshops by Kevin Jennings on gay and lesbian issues in the K-12 school community. The Holocaust Resource Center is advised by a statewide board and produces lectures and events which appeal to many constituencies within the local community. Its offerings help to foster respect for others and tolerance for ethnic and religious differences. The College often becomes the site or sponsor of events related to multiculturalism and diversity. Last fall Academic Affairs sponsored a symposium on Ethnic Cleansing. Programming in music and the arts includes Latin American and African artists and musicians.Undergraduate Degree Programs
Each of the College's majors is designed to provide substantial and coherent instruction in a significant area of knowledge. Students completing the sixty credits for an associate's degree must complete half their program in general education requirements, and a concentration of eighteen to thirty hours of related/sequential coursework. Experiential learning and computer literacy are strongly recommended.
Students matriculated in a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science program complete a general education program of forty-two credits as described in the College catalog. They pursue coursework in the arts and humanities, including English composition and a literature course designed to develop writing competency, four courses in mathematics and the sciences, one of which must be biology and another a physical science, and four courses in the social sciences. Some majors require or recommend certain choices within general education; for example students pursuing certification in elementary education must complete courses in music, art, and US history within the humanities component of general education. Students are encouraged to supplement classroom study with workplace experience, internships, and service learning opportunities, which are becoming increasingly popular.
The connections many faculty maintain with the workplace create and support a close correspondence between curricular content and current practice in the field of specialization. For example, master teachers from local schools teach for one or two years in the College's teacher education program. Some faculty who teach clinical psychology maintain a clinical practice. Management faculty sometimes serve as consultants to area companies or non-profit organizations. Theater faculty work in summer stock as well as mounting theater productions at the College's Redfern Arts Center. Adjunct faculty bring additional workday expertise into the classroom.Graduate Degree Programs
Keene State College's newly revised Master of Education program was implemented in the 1999-2000 academic year. It requires students to complete thirty-six to thirty-nine credits, depending upon their program. The Graduate Program is administered through the Teacher Education and Graduate Studies (TEGS) Office in collaboration with ESEC faculty, coordinators, and chair(s). The Office of Continuing Education monitors students who enroll in graduate courses but are not matriculated in order to assist them in the admission and course selection process. Upon admission to the Graduate Program, the TEGS Office, after consultation with the student and ESEC faculty, identifies an advisor. ESEC faculty offer courses in a three-year cycle to allow realistic student planning for completion of degree requirements in two to three years. Graduate students are encouraged to work closely with their advisors on academic and career planning. They can access counseling and other students services on the same basis as undergraduates.
The primary themes around which Master of Education Professional Educator Development programs are organized are self esteem and confidence, striving for excellence, social responsibility and ethics, collaboration in a community of learners, diversity, life-span development, families, integration of knowledge, problem solving, and creating and constructing one's own knowledge. The graduate program has four options: special education, school counselor, educational leadership, and curriculum and instruction. The options are designed to address national standards and, where certification is recommended, the standards for New Hampshire professional educators. These standards specify the knowledge and competencies experienced professionals should have, and thus suggest desired outcomes of the graduate option programs. The College also offers post-master's certification programs in educational leadership, school counselor, and special education.Scholarship and Research
Keene State College strongly encourages faculty scholarship and its application to instruction, and research, where appropriate. Scholarship and research are among the criteria for the evaluation of faculty, and faculty are asked to summarize such activities in annual self-evaluations. The College grants each faculty member an annual sum of money for professional development which can be used to attend professional conferences, travel, undertake research, or purchase equipment or books. A Faculty Development Fund provides additional sums as grants to those who seek additional support; further moneys are available for the purchase of technology. Every seven years, faculty are eligible for sabbaticals which may be used to further scholarship and research interests. Undergraduate Research Grants support research undertaken by faculty and students working together. Grant funds may support re-assigned time for research. The College receives grant funding from the New Hampshire Department of Education for special projects. Individual faculty may apply to outside foundations for support of sabbaticals, research, or travel. A grants officer assists faculty applying for external funds. A list of recent awards will be found in the workroom.
Current funding levels attest to the College's commitment to scholarship and research: about $90,000 is allocated to professional development money, $25,000 per year for the Faculty Development Fund, $165,000 for sabbatical replacements, $120,000 for matching external grants, and $20,000 for TALENT grants (Teaching and Learning Employing New Technology).Instruction
Methods of instruction employed by faculty may include traditional lectures and laboratory exercises, but these are most often supplemented by work in pairs or small groups, collaborative projects, and class discussions. Many departments encourage or require an internship or practicum outside the classroom. Classroom teaching methods are chosen by the instructor; however, students usually self-select to find a teacher whose style fits their learning habits. Most classes have forty students or fewer. In the past decade we have moved away from lecture style classes to smaller formats to encourage greater contact between students and their teachers.
Several measures are in place to enhance the quality of teaching. Students evaluate it each semester in every course in written evaluations which are given to the divisional dean, then returned to the instructor after the semester is over. Faculty are encouraged to read these course evaluations and comment upon them in their annual written self-evaluations. Those who wish to do so may design their own instruments for evaluating teaching. In spring 1999 several faculty pilot tested a new course evaluation form as part of an ongoing effort to improve the validity of the instrument. Peer observations in the classroom form part of the review process for untenured faculty or those seeking promotion. A FIPSE grant in the early 1990s created a series of brown bag lunches where teachers from various departments discussed common issues. Learning circles in certain areas have continued this practice of peer support for effective teaching.
An important planning initiative implemented in 1998-1999 re-organized several of the offices concerned with issues addressed in this standard: advisement of first-year students, academic support in writing and mathematics, the use of technology, and the improvement of teaching. These programs formed parts of the Instructional Innovation Center, which had grown in an organic rather than a logical fashion. In 1995, after the hiring of a permanent Vice President for Academic Affairs ended a decade of hiatus in that office, long-range planning began to restructure the services provided by the Instructional Innovation Center. Media Services moved to the Library and became the Center for Media and Instructional Technology. The First Year Experience, revitalized as the First Semester Advisor program and the First Year Council, joined the Aspire Program and Academic Advising in the Elliot Center. The Writing Center is now more closely tied to the English Department, whose advanced students it employs as peer tutors. The Math Department now more directly oversees the Math Center. Dr. David Andrews has been appointed to direct faculty development activities and serve as grants officer.Advisement
Academic advising has been transformed through the creation of the Elliot Center, consolidating in one location Academic Advising, Career Services, and the Registrar's Office, all offices using the same computer program to monitor and serve students. The physical layout increases visibility and student traffic, thus encouraging students to seek advisement when needed, and to plan early for the transition to a career. Staff in the Elliot Center guide students who have not yet chosen a major through general education and urge them to explore various programs.
Advisement of students begins with the First Semester Advisor program, implemented in fall 1998 and supervised by the First Year Council, which consists of faculty, and professional staff from the Divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. The purpose of the First Semester Advisor (FSA) is to assist first-year students in making a successful transition to college life; in learning to set personal, academic, and career goals; and in developing strategies for achieving those goals. FSAs help students achieve three major objectives: (1) feel connected to the KSC community and find the information they need in order to begin making decisions about their personal, academic, and career paths at college; (2) develop a sense of purpose for being in college; and (3) become familiar with campus resources and expectations, including the add/drop, registration, and declaration of major processes. FSA responsibilities are to: (1) initiate contact and meet with advisees at least twice within the first four weeks of fall semester; (2) provide individualized referrals and support in response to identified problems; and (3) provide support and information about add/drop and spring registration processes, and refer students to an academic advisor in the major or the Elliot Center's Coordinator of Academic Support for continued advising. Entering students who have expressed interest in a particular major (e. g. music) are assigned (when possible) to the summer orientation advising session conducted by a member of that department. Students are encouraged to declare a major (or minor) early in their academic career. Then they are assigned to a faculty advisor in that program, with whom they have the opportunity to develop a mentoring relationship. Upon completion of sixty credits, students must declare a major and be assigned a faculty advisor. This method aims to ensure that they choose a program early enough to complete its requirements within four years.
In fall 1998 the College began the transition to using the Datatel relational database. Though this has been a challenging process for staff, it has produced data that are very helpful in academic planning and scheduling. Staff continue to work with the system to improve services. When implementation is complete, students and their faculty advisors will be able to monitor their ongoing progress toward completion of degree requirements.
Students with special needs or those whose past performance indicates that they are at risk are identified and advised individually through the Academic and Career Advising Office in the Elliot Center and the Aspire Program. They receive extra help such as tutoring or workshops in note-taking or test-taking skills. Individual peer tutoring is offered by the Writing Center and the Math Center; both assist students in completing assignments and work to improve study skills.Admissions and Retention
The Office of Admissions recruits prospective students and plans and manages enrollment. Requirements for admission to Keene State College are stated in the catalog and in the Viewbook.
The College's fall 1999 enrollment was 4,606 students, comprised of 3,900 matriculated undergraduate students, ninety-one graduate students, 154 Continuing Education students enrolled in non-credit courses, and 461 in credit-bearing courses. Eighty-nine per cent of our undergraduates are between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four, while 64% of our graduate students are over age thirty-five. Sixty-four per cent of our current matriculated undergraduates are from New Hampshire, 14% from Connecticut, and 11% from Massachusetts. Most of our students have combined SAT scores between 900 and 1100. In-state students tend to be slightly better qualified; about 43% of the in-state students admitted in fall 1999 were in the top two-fifths of their high school class, as compared to 29% of out-of-state students. Fifty-six per cent of our students are women. Most of our students come from rural and suburban communities, many are first-generation college students, and many come from working class families with annual incomes under $25,000. The percentage of minority students increased imperceptibly from 2.0% in 1993 to 2.2% in 1998; we continue to enroll predominantly white, European-American students. Our latest entering class includes thirty-six students who self-report minority status, reflecting increases in the Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islands groups. About 120 international students, most from our exchange programs in Britain, Japan, and Ecuador, enroll each year. Their presence enriches the cultural environment for all.
The College accepts Advanced Placement credits and those based on College Level Equivalent Proficiency tests. Students with substantial experience outside the classroom can document what they have learned in a portfolio evaluated by faculty to determine what academic credit should be awarded. Undergraduate credits transferred in to fulfill general education requirements are evaluated by academic advisors. Those credits applied to major or minor programs are evaluated by faculty in the appropriate department. Through the New Hampshire College and University Council, students may take up to one year of coursework at another New Hampshire institution and transfer the credits into a degree program at Keene State College.
New initiatives in planning and technology now enable the College to monitor student progress through a tracking system maintained by Institutional Research to follow each entering cohort from enrollment through degree completion. The Assessment Committee and the First Year Council evaluate this data each year. Segmentation analysis identifies subgroups of students having a higher or lower retention rate than average. These committees use such information, and results of the Noel Levitz consultancy in their planning. An increase in first-year retention from 70% in 1996 to 77% in 1997 can be attributed in part, we believe, to such efforts.
In this section, we will briefly address the gains we have made in the area of Programs and Instruction before turning to the more problematic issues of advisement, the definition of learning outcomes and their assessment, the evaluation of teaching, and general education.
During the past decade, College planning and resources have focused on placing academics in the forefront. After a decade of temporary appointments in the office of Academic Affairs, Dr. Robert Golden assumed the vice presidency in 1995, making planning for the long term a reality. The re-institution of department chairs creates the potential for stronger academic leadership within the faculty. New faculty positions in Graphic Design, Psychology, Secondary Education, Communication, Biology, English, and Women's Studies/ Film Studies have been created to meet student demand. The former Lloyd P. Young Student Center (now Rhodes Hall) was converted to academic use to create handsome new classroom spaces, psychology laboratories, computer facilities, and faculty offices for the social sciences and education. Mason Library is undergoing renovation and expansion to seat more patrons and increase space for its collections.
A significant academic initiative is the creation of an Honors and Enrichment Program to begin in fall 2000. Facilitating enrichment activities is a major goal of the program. Under its auspices, our seventeen departmental honor societies will have the opportunity to apply for money from the College's endowment funds to conduct enrichment activities. The major event of the first year will be an Academic Excellence Conference in the spring of 2001.
During the past decade we have significantly increased multicultural offerings within our curriculum. The Communication major offers a seminar in International Intercultural Communication, and the ESEC curriculum identifies diversity as one of its themes. The English major requires two courses in world, multicultural, or continental literature, and the Spanish major requires a course in Hispanic Minorities in the US. The French program includes The Franco-American Experience, reflecting the heritage of a significant number of our students. Sociology offers courses in Race Relations and in Women, Gender, and Culture. We have added a new International Studies Minor. A Women's Studies proposal to place its courses (which address race and class as well as gender) among those satisfying general education requirements has been approved by all three divisional curriculum committees and will go to the Senate in the fall. It will enable our students, the majority of whom are women, to include in their general education program a course focusing specifically on the issues that concern them most.
The College Senate has just passed a modified version of the general education program goals developed by the most recent general education task force. One of these goals, "Cultural Perspectives," states:
During summer 2000, key members of the Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism will attend an AAC & U seminar on Multiculturalism in the Curriculum and return to campus better prepared to assist the College in designating or designing courses to address this goal.
Through effective planning and allocation of resources, we have streamlined our graduate offerings and have succeeded in controlling the proliferation of programs, choosing carefully to expand into areas such as Graphic Design or Communication, which fit our mission and values and will attract students for years to come. Some of our most popular majors (Education, Psychology, Film Studies) now have specific entrance requirements to ensure their quality and to limit student enrollments to a manageable level.
The Admissions Office has made major changes in its recruitment, marketing, and financial aid strategies, guided by findings from the Office of Institutional Research. Working together, Admissions and Financial Aid have improved the decision and award process to focus our financial aid scholarship program on students who are the best match for KSC. A second example of collaboration between Admissions and another office is the implementation of a systemic process to move students through Continuing Education into matriculated status. Admissions and the First Year Council collaborated to offer an Academic Showcase for prospective and current students, an event that drew almost 700 people to campus last fall.
The re-structuring of Academic and Career Advising in the Elliot Center and the creation of First Semester Advisors and Orientation II improve these services significantly, supported by new technology and more efficient planning. These innovations may contribute to raising our graduation rate: 57% of our students now complete a degree within six years. Nonetheless, students continue to complain about the availability and accuracy of advisement and the difficulty of completing requirements on time. To help keep students on track for graduation, the College Relations Office and a Management class in organizational development created the "Road to Graduation" brochure. In this project, students looked at organizational issues and participated in problem solving. To address the time constraints of working and commuting students, changes to the schedule of time blocks for classes took effect in spring 2000, and 40% of the classes in each department must now be offered at off-peak hours. The catalog now specifies which semester courses are offered, enabling students to plan better. Departments regularly prepare five-year cycles of course offerings to facilitate institutional planning, although this information is not widely available to students. Despite these improvements in planning tools, students must be realistic about how work hours impact course scheduling, study time, and the time it takes them to complete a degree.
Often advising problems arise for students who have already declared a major, as all are required to do upon completion of sixty credits. Students who have not yet declared a major are advised in the Elliot Center. However, because 52% of our 100-level courses are taught by adjuncts, students have limited contact in their first four semesters with full-time faculty who can advise them. A more serious consideration is that the distribution of declared majors in any program fluctuates with student demand. In high demand areas such as Education, Psychology, and Management, and in areas with too few full-time faculty such as Graphic Design and Communication, one faculty member may have as many as fifty to sixty advisees. Group advising sessions provide some faculty guidance, yet fall far short of meeting the needs of students who want a personal mentoring relationship and individual advice. Furthermore, because students can, to some extent, select advisors they want to work with, some faculty advise over fifty students, while others advise few or none. Thus the distribution of advising workload within a single department (as well as from one department to another) may be very unequal. Some students choose to self-advise and never forge a mentoring relationship. There is presently no systematic way of overseeing or evaluating the quality of advice that faculty give to students. We encourage students to pursue a minor, and some of our programs (Women's Studies, German, Philosophy, Political Science, International Studies) offer a minor only. However, thus far faculty receive no formal credit for advising minors.
To address these problems, the Vice President for Academic Affairs formed the Academic and Career Advising Task Force, which submitted its report (available in the workroom) in July 1999. After considerable faculty input, the report has been modified and is now ready for implementation. It stipulates that faculty advisors contact student advisees during the first two weeks of the semester. New students would be required to obtain an advisor's signature before registering. Each department chair or designee would serve as liaison to the Elliot Center, to assign newly declared majors to their faculty advisors, and to track and assess the efficacy of the department's advisement program.
To address problems with course availability and to distribute enrollments across the time schedule, the College changed pre-registration procedures for summer orientation in 1999. All new students were pre-registered for three courses, based on their statements of academic interests. This proactive strategy greatly reduced drop-adds and the student confusion which often accompanies registration and the start-up of fall semester. Another positive effect was that it created clusters of students who met during orientation and took several classes together. However, one disadvantage of the change was to decrease enrollments in areas which students had not expressed an interest in studying before they arrived on campus, e.g. the physical sciences, foreign languages, and Women's Studies. We used this pre-registration process again during summer 2000, and will monitor its effects on students and on course enrollments.
The definition of learning outcomes and the assessment of student learning appear to be areas where we fall short of compliance with standards 4.3, 4.18, and 4.19. To measure the scope of the problem, we surveyed all academic departments in spring 1999, using language from the NEASC standards to frame our questions. (The survey and responses to it are available in the workroom). We found that most programs identified broad based goals or competencies, which may be used in a few cases to develop learning outcomes. However, most departments do not define specific learning outcomes, nor make clear how certain skills or competencies are acquired and assessed throughout the curriculum. While degree requirements (courses and their sequence) appear in the catalog, on web pages and program planning sheets, few departments identify degree objectives. Of course the clear definition of learning outcomes and degree objectives must precede their assessment.
Much of what faculty responding to the survey defined as assessment would be considered indirect or anecdotal. Thus in response to questions about their assessment of student learning beyond course grades, departments offered the following methods: post-graduation employment and feedback from employers, admission to graduate schools, student success in internships and other experiential learning, portfolios, capstone courses, oral proficiency interviews (Modern Languages), and the (very limited) use of standardized tests. Similar evidence was cited to support departments' assertions that their methods of instruction are appropriate to students' capabilities and learning styles. It appears that little direct assessment occurs, nor are methods of instruction consistently evaluated for effectiveness. Measured by outside agencies, however, many of our programs fully meet professional assessment standards. Programs in education, music, dietetics, and athletic training, for instance, successfully apply for and receive accreditation by professional organizations.
Work remains to be done in the clearer formulation of learning outcomes and plans for their assessment. An informal survey conducted by a student revealed that students sometimes confuse learning outcomes in a major with course requirements. Students were satisfied that they understood objectives and outcomes for their programs, although they said they gathered this information from course syllabi, talks with their professors, and program planning sheets rather than from a single direct source. Some gains have been made in raising faculty awareness of the necessity for stating learning objectives for their courses on the syllabus. Since all syllabi must be submitted to the divisional deans, this could serve as a checkpoint to ensure that syllabi do state learning objectives and how they will be assessed. Another step was taken last fall: as faculty propose program changes or new courses, they are now required to state the intended student learning outcomes. However, this mechanism affects only proposals for changes to the present curriculum, not our current offerings. The College Assessment Committee has studied some of these issues such as how/where/whether programs state their learning objectives and what information is included on course syllabi.
Program review now requires a definition of the program's learning outcomes, yet this new stipulation affects only those now undergoing or preparing for review, which occurs once in seven years. Some programs have grown in directions taken by faculty interest, rather than being shaped by a coherent planning initiative, and it will be difficult to retro-fit such programs with learning outcomes and models for their assessment. A noteworthy exception is ESEC, where extensive revisions to the curriculum proceeded from the definition of learning outcomes and how their acquisition would be sequenced and assessed. (Materials describing these teacher education programs will be found in the workroom). Similar discussions about course sequencing and outcomes have achieved varying degrees of consensus in English, Biology, Chemistry, History, Modern Languages and Management. In fields such as Nutrition/Dietetics, Athletic Training, and Music Education, conformity to standards of professional accrediting agencies has required clearer statements of learning objectives and assessment plans.
Most departments failed to identify specific competencies for oral and written communication, scientific and quantitative reasoning, the understanding of historical and social phenomena, or the knowledge and appreciation of the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of humankind (Standard 4.19). While these competencies are generally considered to be the purpose of general education, our present system of distribution requirements, most faculty concede, is not coherent, integrated, nor is there any procedure for evaluating its effectiveness.
In an attempt to remedy these deficiencies, the College convened a General Education Task Force in 1996 comprised of elected and appointed representatives from the faculty, administration, and students. Over the course of the next two years, the group studied general education at other institutions, formulated goals, drafted a proposal, and gathered campus input from students, staff, and especially faculty through a variety of forums, workshops, mealtime discussions, and meetings with each academic department. The proposal, which will be found in the workroom, conformed to the College's definition of an educated person as expressed in the mission statement then in use, and included a plan for its evaluation and modification. Most respondents agreed with the proposal's goals, but reservations were expressed about how it would be administered, the adequacy of resources and staffing, and how student completion of required writing proficiency and math proficiency courses would be tracked. Another thorny issue was how to monitor student completion of requirements aimed at developing personal and social responsibility.
The Senate Curriculum Committee conducted voting on the proposal, following the procedure used in gathering informational votes for curriculum changes. Faculty voted in open department meetings rather than by secret ballot, casting only a single yea or nay vote for the proposal in its entirety. A majority of the faculty (50-55%, depending on how we count faculty with dual assignments, such as Women's Studies and English) voted for the proposal, but the department tally showed less success. Eight departments voted for it, eleven against, and one (English) split evenly. The split vote in English was instrumental to the proposal's defeat, since that department would have played a vital role in its implementation. Positioning the voting within departments led to defending turf, and in the absence of a secret ballot, some faculty felt uncomfortable opposing their peers. Some opposed the proposal because it did not require coursework or skills in their subject area, such as computer science. Some faculty attributed the proposal's failure to the lack of academic leadership: they needed to hear that the plan was feasible and were skeptical about assurances that resources could be found to make it work (e.g. for staffing writing intensive or math intensive courses). Faculty also needed to hear that the registrar and Academic Advising could track how each student fulfilled the program's components.
At present, many students view general education requirements as something to be gotten out of the way before their real work on a major begins. Some departments use these courses as a way of trawling for students who may pursue a major or minor in the field. Others relegate these "service courses" to adjuncts or newcomers, reserving the senior faculty's time for upper level courses. Students seldom experience the interconnectedness of various academic departments, and no one really knows whether general education courses teach creative or critical thinking.
Despite the defeat of our third attempt in the 1990s to revise general education, we did achieve widespread consensus on the goals of the program, which were approved in a revised form in April 2000 by the Senate Curriculum Committee. Two years of discussion led faculty to re-examine how the material they teach contributes to a student's general education. A foreign language requirement for a degree within the Arts and Humanities Division has also passed the Senate, and will take effect in fall 2001. A Task Force on Quantitative Reasoning is working to support math proficiency in Science Division courses by identifying and assessing math skills needed for specific courses.
Supporting writing proficiency is the mission of the Writing Center, which convenes a Writing Task Force representing all departments, and produces the KSC Guide to Writing, containing descriptions and examples of good student writing for each department. The Center creates workshops for faculty during the semester and the professional enrichment week in May on such topics as commenting effectively on student papers and creating appropriate writing assignments. In 1998-99, its staff of nine trained, peer tutors conducted approximately 1,400 one-on-one tutoring sessions with students from almost every department on campus. Eight or ten classes per semester use the Center for reviewing preliminary drafts of papers. The Writing Fellows program has provided student tutors for classes in Psychology, Biology, Sociology, and English. However, students' use of the Writing Center's services is usually voluntary. In fall 1999 the Writing Center circulated a sample student paper and urged faculty to assign it a grade. While the experiment was certainly laudable, its results showed a lack of common standards for the assessment of writing. Furthermore, the Writing Center's efforts lie outside the core curriculum, and faculty as well as students participate on a voluntary basis.
The evaluation of teaching and the use of results to improve the quality of teaching is another area where our efforts have been more visible than our success. Our present system makes no distinction between a formative evaluation for the purpose of improving teaching and a summative evaluation as a basis for tenure and promotion decisions. Students, who must fill out evaluations every semester in every course, often consider them a waste of time and sometimes respond accordingly. Students and faculty concur that the present form is not conducive to eliciting thoughtful written responses that would help faculty improve. Attempts to develop a better course evaluation form have not found widespread acceptance; some faculty use their own forms, as the KSCEA contract permits. While deans, departmental peer evaluation committees, and the Faculty Evaluation Advisory Committee (FEAC) review course evaluations carefully during the promotion and tenure process, the forms are read in subsequent years only if faculty members wish to do so, or when they come under the five-year review mandated for fully promoted faculty. Of course some scrupulously review their evaluations with the intention of improving their teaching, but others do not bother.
Keene State College has committed financial support to training faculty in the use of computer technology, and purchasing the necessary equipment to support the application of this technology in teaching. This summer, for example, the Center for Media and Instructional Technology offered three one-week seminars to develop technology skills. Each seminar could enroll twelve faculty, who received a $300 stipend. As yet, however, we have not initiated a systematic assessment of the extent of faculty and student use of computer-based instructional materials, Internet sources, or e-mail, nor do we have valid evidence of the effect of such technology on student learning. Faculty Development Grants and TALENT grants for the purchase and use of technology offer financial incentives for the improvement of teaching, but their results are not evaluated.
As of 1998-99, departments were required to evaluate the quality of adjuncts' teaching. Usually the coordinator or another full-time faculty member made one classroom visit and wrote an evaluation. Students also fill out regular course evaluations in classes taught by adjuncts. Such documentation can help deans decide about continuing to hire these teachers.
To encourage the improvement of teaching, the College's Alumni Association annually recognizes a Distinguished Teacher. Some departments use learning circles, brown bag lunches, or discussion groups focusing on teaching; participation is voluntary. As part of faculty development efforts, we need to increase resources to help faculty improve teaching outside the context of formal evaluation. A new faculty development program directed by the College's grants office will replace the professional enrichment activities formerly sponsored by the Instructional Innovation Center.
In the near future, we project improvements in five key areas: advisement, the definition of learning outcomes, the evaluation of teaching, general education, and diversity and multiculturalism.
The College will begin in 2000-2001 to implement the advising plan recently developed by the Academic and Career Advising Task Force. We will continue to monitor the long-term effects on advisement and course availability of our new policy of scheduling incoming first-year students for three courses before they arrive at summer orientation. While we plan no significant changes affecting course availability, we must remain vigilant to ensure that enough seats are accessible in the courses which students need to complete their majors on time. Since ESEC and Physical Education effectively track majors through their programs, we will work to adapt these models to other high-demand programs. We will assess the effectiveness of our current policy of offering 40% of our classes during off-peak hours to see whether it does in fact correspond to students' needs. While we know that accurate timely advisement is key to helping students complete their majors on time, we must also communicate more clearly that their work schedules inevitably impact time to degree.
With the new requirements that proposals for new courses include a definition of course objectives, and that new programs include a statement of learning outcomes and their assessment, academic departments will increasingly attend to these key issues. The College Assessment Committee is comparing the recently approved goals of general education, the College's mission statement, and "Our Plan." The discussion begins from the standpoint of our present majors: based on a particular major, how can we define what competencies and knowledge the ideal graduate of that program should possess? That definition will lead us in turn to see where these competencies and knowledge are developed. The Committee is focusing on English, Biology, and ESEC as models, reviewing their recent self-studies and defining the learning outcomes they need. The three departments chosen represent three different divisions and thus will serve as models in each division.
The KSCEA and the Vice President for Academic Affairs will address the process for designing and pilot testing new evaluation instruments to assess the quality of teaching. We will also initiate more systematic assessment of the application of technology to teaching, and its effect on student learning.
In the area of general education, we will follow up on the spring 2000 approval of goals in the College Senate. We will determine which College body (possibly the Senate Curriculum Committee) should assume responsibility for administering and assessing the effectiveness of general education. To improve chances for the creation of a new general education program, we will ensure that a timeline for designing and approving it be clearly stated, and that voting procedures and funding issues be clarified at the outset. The new general education program must also include provisions for its assessment and modification.
We will enhance the presence of diversity and multiculturalism in two ways: first by addressing the "Cultural Perspectives" goal within general education, and encouraging departments to identify and expand suitable courses to meet this goal. Members of the College Commission on the Status of Diversity and Multiculturalism who return from the AAC&U summer 2000 seminar on Multiculturalism in the Curriculum will spearhead this effort. Second, we will use the Office of National and International Exchange to increase the numbers of minority students on campus. We will re-examine our recruitment strategies in order to set realistic specific targets for the recruitment and support of minority students, faculty, and staff. We will implement the $53,000 fund for tuition assistance to support ten students from developing countries.
In looking ahead into the next decade, we recognize that Keene State College will face the challenge of balancing its identity as a liberal arts college with the need to stay flexible in its program offerings. We must strike a balance between our traditional liberal arts mission and the job market, with its increasing demand for specialized vocations in areas such as elementary and special education, graphic design, and safety. At the same time we believe that our students will continue to need a broad-based grounding in the sciences and humanities to ensure career flexibility in a world whose changing demands no one can accurately predict. | <urn:uuid:6ae35fd8-2926-4c77-bfc1-ed96274034cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.keene.edu/neasc/Std04.cfm | 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 | 0.95927 | 9,310 | 1.75 | 2 |
from 9NewsDelia via Twitter: 'Cheers & Jeers outside ?#SCOTUS? after ruling that upholds mandate as tax'
WASHINGTON (AP/WUSA) - The individual mandate survives.
The Supreme Court has upheld the heart of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul -- ruling in favor of the requirement that most Americans can be required to have health insurance, or else pay a penalty.
READ: Health Care Ruling Opinions (PDF)
The decision means the historic overhaul will continue to take effect over the next several years, affecting the way countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care.
The ruling also hands President Barack Obama a campaign-season victory.
The court found problems with the law's expansion of Medicaid. But even there, it said the expansion could proceed as long as the federal government does not threaten to withhold the entire Medicaid allotment to states if they don't take part in the extension.
Ron Pollack of Families USA was overjoyed. He says the federal government provides 100% of the funding for Medicaid expansion for the first three years and that the feds contribution to the states never goes below 90% after that. He doubts many states will turn down that kind of money.
Twenty-six states sued the Department of Health and Human Services to overturn the act. Many of them have failed to set up the insurance exchanges designed to make it easier for people to get affordable health insurance. They may now have to scramble to set them up by 2014, or the feds will do it for them.
The court's four liberal justices, Stephen Bryer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, joined Roberts in the outcome. Most legal observers had pinned Justice Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote, but he offered a blistering dissent instead and said the whole law should have been thrown out. | <urn:uuid:aa6a9f91-87c6-470b-9192-3887c3b808c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/210581/158/High-Court-Upholds-Key-Part-Of-Health-Care-Law | 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 | 0.956251 | 382 | 1.5 | 2 |
The Center for the History of Microbiology/ASM Archives (CHOMA) presents here a Bibliography of early American microbiology publications (1721 to 1915). Our purpose is to enlist the aid of others in improving and expanding this bibliography, as well as to provide a convenient listing of the holdings of these publications at the Center.
In 1944, Leland McClung published “Early American Publications Relating to Bacteriology” (Bacteriological Reviews 8:2, 119-16). Based on an examination of the catalogues of sixteen libraries, the review offered more than 450 bibliographic records arranged alphabetically by author, cross-references for multi-authored works, and a chronological listing by author only. The current bibliography of over 600 items is based on McClung’s review, which has been edited, rearranged and expanded. Much of the expansion was the result of a systematic search of WorldCat for items from 1880-1915 with “bacteriology” as the Library of Congress subject term. We are certain that this bibliography is not complete, and would like to solicit assistance in finding relevant additions to it.
The criteria for inclusion in this listing are that the primary subject matter relates to microbiology, including all subdivisions such as bacteriology, parasitology, mycology, epidemiology and infectious diseases; that it be published before 1916; and that at least one of the following conditions is met:
- authored by an American (or a person residing in America)*
- translated by an American
- published in America
- published as a special American edition
* The initial focus of this bibliography is on publications relating to microbiology in the United States, from the colonial period to 1916. However, it does include some references from Mexico and Puerto Rico that were in the original McClung bibliography.
In some situations, a particular edition of a work is missing from this list. If there was not a catalog entry for it in one of the libraries used by McClung, and it has not yet been located in a specific collection, this will result in a situation where the list will include, for example, the first, second, or fourth edition only. It should also be noted that a monograph relating to pathology, public health or hygiene is included only if it contains a chapter or a section directly concerned with microbiology or microbiological techniques. The full bibliographic entries are arranged chronologically, then by author, in two sections:
- PART ONE: Publications Prior to the Establishment of Bacteriology as a Specialty - 1721 to 1879. Includes material relating to specific microbial disease or related subjects such as vaccination, hygiene, epidemiology and public health.
- PART TWO: Critical Years in the Formation of the Science of Bacteriology, 1880 to 1915. Covers the period when Bacteriology first becomes recognized as a separate discipline of science and medicine as well as the early publications in specialty areas of microbiology including fields such as mycology and parasitology.
The bibliographic records have generally been pared down to include first author, title, edition, place, publisher and year. For items owned by CHOMA, Library of Congress Catalog Numbers are included in red.
There are two indexes, each covering both parts of the bibliography: a listing of primary authors, arranged by year; and a full alphabetical list of authors, editors and translators, with years of publication. The Center for the History of Microbiology/ASM Archives would like to solicit assistance from interested persons who would like to propose additions to this bibliography. In addition, we would also gratefully accept the donation of any listed items which we do not already own.
Jeff Karr, Archivist,
Center for the History of Microbiology/ASM Archives
This revised and expanded edition of the bibliography was prepared in 2010-12 by Jeff Karr, ASM Archivist, and James A. Poupard, Committee Chair, the Center for the History of Microbiology/ASM Archives, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, with editorial review comments by CHOMA committee member, Karen Beth G. Scholthof. | <urn:uuid:ddcadcc1-de16-4797-92f9-398fcf5672ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asm.org/index.php/membership1/2-uncategorised/8082-bibliography-of-pre-1915-american-publications-in-microbiology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940664 | 887 | 1.835938 | 2 |
6 Strategies to Crush Complacency!
March 11, 2009 Leave a comment
I’m in Guatemala City this week at the Guatemala Festival with Luis Palau for church and business leaders. It’s an incredible opportunity for me to connect with leaders and entrepreneurs I wouldn’t normally have a chance to interact with face to face. A side benefit of this week is that I also have the chance to break way outside of my normal daily routine. This thought lead me to focus this post on something that you and I need to be more intentional about completely eliminating from our lives – complacency.
Complacency is something that we all deal with from time to time. Unfortunately, for some people it becomes a lifestyle. They get stuck in a rut that seems nearly impossible to climb out of.
Multiple reasons could lead to this state of “stuckness”, including fatigue from fighting life’s battles, difficulties dealing with rejection, or just not having found a special motivation.
Regardless of the reason, if you are stuck in a rut of complacency, like most things in life the choice is up to you to get out of it. You can either choose to stay in that same predicament and complain as life passes you by, or you can do something to alter your situation.
I was able to come to Guatemala to change my routine this week. However, you may not be able to radically change your environment like I was able to. So here’s 6 strategies that you can use to climb out of that complacency rut:
- Find something to fight for that has meaning and purpose. Purposelessness is probably one of biggest contributors to complacency. It hard to fight and be lazy at the same time. Sometimes fighting for someone else’s issues is more of a motivator than fighting for your own.
- Do something that brings you joy. (Re)Discover your passion. Identify what motivates you and then start doing it. You don’t have to try to save the world. Just start in your circle of influence.
- Quit eating mental junk food. Continually taking in media and conversations with people that contribute to feelings of apathy, negativity and laziness will just prolong your occupancy in the rut. It you want to think healthy, you must partake only of things that are positive, encouraging, and motivational.
- Connect with people who have a love for life. Complacency loves company, so connect with some enthusiastic people who are making progress in their lives. Their enthusiasm can be contagious.
- Break your current routine. Don’t expect changes in your circumstances if you’re not willing to do anything different. Take a risk. Challenge yourself to do things you haven’t done before.
- Start speaking positive and uplifting words. You increase the difficulty of getting out of your current situation by the negative words that you speak. The most positive words that you can speak are found in the Bible, especially in terms of what God has has promised for your life. However, it would be hard for you to believe what He has said about you if you don’t have a relationship with Him… hmmm (another post for another day )
You must fight passionately and persistently to climb out of the chasm of complacency. Because as long as you’re breathing, there’s somebody out there who can benefit from you and that you can benefit from. Life is too short to be complacent. Go do something worthwhile!
Paul Wilson, Jr.
Connect with me on twitter.com/pwilsonjr | <urn:uuid:418b5579-3880-497c-8fab-8d80fd152054> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://paulwilsonjr.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/6-strategies-to-crush-complacency/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959195 | 755 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Illustration by Jing Wei
How Republicans Can Steal Obama’s Budget Mojo
The U.S. isn’t doomed to be a declining power mired in fractious debate. In fact, the political blocks have fallen perfectly so that a once-in-a- generation improvement in the quality of the federal government is now possible.
More than $600 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts are scheduled to take effect in January -- the so- called fiscal cliff giving lawmakers reason to negotiate a better deficit-reduction deal.
To take the next step, however, the Republicans must shift the debate from tax rates on wealthy Americans to serious spending cuts and entitlement reform. That shift requires them to spell out specific changes they would make in exchange for higher tax rates.
Republicans are happy to cut taxes; Democrats are eager to increase spending. Neither party seems likely to unilaterally produce the painful combination of spending cuts and tax increases needed to bring the budget closer to balancing. Neither party has self-sacrificing leaders willing to reduce the generosity of overly expensive entitlement programs.
Split government requires both parties to share the blame for unpopular change, which mutes the adverse electoral consequences for either side and makes change conceivable. Yet split government can also produce a quagmire or calamity, such as lurching over the fiscal cliff.
Why do Republicans have to make the next move?
Reports suggest that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner offered $1.6 trillion in extra taxes, extra stimulus spending on infrastructure, unemployment insurance extensions and more mortgage refinancing, plus vague entitlement changes that could perhaps cut spending by $400 billion.
Obama then used his bully pulpit to denounce the Republican fidelity to low tax rates for the rich. That was good politics. As long as Republican intransigence is seen as a forlorn attempt to protect the hyperwealthy, the party will take the blame if talks break down. If the Republicans stand to lose the most public support from driving over the fiscal cliff, just as House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s team lost the most by shutting down the government in late 1995, then their bargaining power is weak.
The Republicans can, however, seem like the party of budgetary innovation by making a far more generous offer now that spells out exactly what it would take for them to accept the increase in tax rates. I believe that higher rates deter economic activity, but we’ve already spent vast amounts of money and we’re going to have to pay it back.
Since the Ronald Reagan era, Republicans have championed lower taxes without large spending cuts. This was good politics too, yet it just pushed the pain into the future. That future has arrived. By agreeing to some tax increases for the prosperous, the Republicans benefit by seeming moderate. In exchange of these increases, however, they need to think big on demands for spending concessions.
They might start by requiring cost-benefit analysis for any future federal spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Obama is convinced that the U.S. needs tens of billions in extra spending on transportation projects. The Republicans shouldn’t debate this claim in the abstract. It is easy for the president to defend his stance by pointing to the American Society of Civil Engineers infrastructure report card, which is too often mistaken for objective science rather than the lobbying document of an industry group.
Republicans can agree in principle that the U.S. needs improved transportation while insisting that an expert group, staffed equally by Democrats and Republicans, has veto power over any new project costing more than a few million dollars. If the funding is denied, the sponsor could suggest something else, but after a few tries, the money would either be withdrawn or used to maintain existing infrastructure.
The Republicans should also demand consolidation of federal social policies. The U.S. has six large programs -- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers, unemployment insurance and the earned-income tax credit -- spread across four Cabinet departments and the Internal Revenue Service.
Every one of the six plans encourages recipients to earn less, because aid levels are tied to income. Although the adverse incentives in an individual program are moderate, collectively they can represent an effective tax rate far exceeding 50 percent. (How this works: The federal housing vouchers follow a 30 percent rule -- you spend 30 percent of your income on housing if you have a voucher. If your income goes up by a dollar, 30 cents of it goes for increased housing payments. With food stamps, for every extra dollar you earn, your allotment goes down by 30 cents. Putting the two programs together adds up to a 60 percent tax on earnings.)
The six programs should be better targeted, to provide more effective aid for the disadvantaged at less cost. Rather than extending unemployment insurance, which encourages long jobless spells, current recipients should receive a fixed payment for a limited duration that they will receive as long as they either look for work or find a job. Consolidation will also highlight the total amount of U.S. welfare spending, and will force serious thinking about the trade-offs between different types of spending.
Most important, the Republicans need to demand fundamental changes in Social Security and Medicare. They have already endorsed the easy solution: raising eligibility ages. That move will cut costs, and it is the right response to any Social Security funding shortfalls. Yet it will not save Medicare.
Any program that offers an open-ended commitment to pay for new medical procedures will generate an unending stream of expensive new treatments from private-sector innovators. As economists Jeffrey Clemens and Joshua Gottlieb have documented, when Medicare reimbursement rates go up, costly elective procedures also become more common, with little improvement in patient health.
Republicans should demand at least these three permanent checks on spending, and stop confining themselves to blocking the higher tax rates that seem reasonable to most Americans. If they do this, they can put Obama in the position of defending indefensibly high spending and win the war for public opinion. Their bargaining power will improve, and the spending limits will help the U.S. emerge reinvigorated from the morass of divided government.
To contact the writer of this article: Edward Glaeser at [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Katy Roberts at [email protected].
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions. | <urn:uuid:69d35e54-6fb5-40cf-bab2-2b2041e29e12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-11/how-republicans-can-grab-back-obama-s-budget-bid.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944103 | 1,350 | 1.585938 | 2 |
By Daisy Whitney
So you're thinking about flowers. Or maybe a necklace. Even a day at the spa.
Those are all great ideas for Mother's Day gifts. But maybe this year, it's time for something totally different. More personal.
Like a personal history.
Increasingly, people are choosing to write their lives down, to tell the stories of themselves for loved ones in the form of a personal history. Memoirs and life stories are growing more valued in society. We want to know of a great uncle's escape from Germany during the Second World War or of our mom's efforts to fight for civil rights in the 1960s. At the same time, interest is rising in genealogical research, made possible through the Internet.
Even if her specialty was more simple, like baking a delicious pie or just being a great mom, she's still probably got a story worth telling.
You see, Ilil Arbel believes that everyone has a story.
That's why she's a personal historian, writing a column for the New York Jewish Herald and working with individuals to help them tell their life stories to both pass along to the next generation and to share with family and friends today.
"People sit down and tell me their stories, or they tell about relatives or friends, and then I write it in the column," she says. "If I am lucky, I get also some marvelous old pictures….As for the market for these services, it is really a growing one and there is a strong interest in it," Arbel says.
Here are some other tools that you can use to research mom's ancestry or to begin to compose a personal history for her, someone else or yourself.
Software and Online Tools
Lifescope's Living Time is a software program for recording and charting memorable moments and events of a person's life. " Users create a personalized timeline, complete with journal entries, photographs and small videos. In addition, users can import thousands of world events to help document the personalized memory," says Susan Kohl, spokesperson for the company.
The Internet has made genealogy more than just a popular pastime. The World Wide Web has lived up to its name and truly made it possible for families to connect and for individuals to seek information on their heritage and roots. Myfamily.com, for instance, is a network of online resources that includes tools to learn more about your own roots and to stay in touch with loved ones and to share personal history and family stories online. The sister sites include ancestry.com, genealogy.com, and rootsweb.com.
Software programs like Family Treemaker can do the same with tools to find ancestors, record their findings and create family trees. It's integrated with ancestry.com, a site that counts 750,000 subscribers and 6 billion records and includes: U.S. Federal Census images and indexes from 1790-1930, Social Security Death indexes as well as birth, death and marriage records, and U.S. Immigration Records with five centuries of immigration history for 100 different nationalities
Other software services can help in this quest, such as Passage Express that allows family history buffs to compile their findings into a multimedia presentation to share with family and friends.
Another way families are keeping in touch is through blogs. "Even though they are considered by many to be the province of political pundits and/or bored teenagers, blogs are really just another online tool," says Trudy Schuett, of Yuma, Ariz., who keeps such a blog. "They are easy to use and can be set up and published by anyone who has used word processing software, such as MSWord, and is comfortable using the Internet…A blog of this kind can be very helpful for families separated by geography, and give everyone a chance to participate without needing to be in the same place, at the same time. Family members with stories to contribute may do so, on their schedule."
You can also create an autobiography or write mom's biography with a web tool, such as www.lifebio.com. The site's Founder and President Beth Sanders shared these tips on creating a life history.
Here are some components of a complete life history, she says:
Now you've got the tools and know where to turn. So go forth and tell your life story.
1430 East Victory Drive
Can't find something?
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September 6, 2004
In addition to being a great movie worthy of great web analysis, pulp fiction is a term for a type of literature where selections of fictional short stories are printed in a bulk magazine for distribution. Thus, it makes a great label for the stories to be found in some of the Booker and Fanfan briefs filed in the Supreme Court last week. Though the deftly written briefs submitted by the SG and USSC do not make misrepresentations, the briefs certainly suggest (at least) five pulp fictions that merit focused examination:
Pulp Fiction 1: The US Sentencing Commission is a truly independent agency in which judges make sentencing rules for themselves. As discussed here and here, the USSC both in design and in operation is far more like, in Justice Scalia's memorable phrase, a "junior-varsity Congress" than like a Judicial Branch coach. If the federal sentencing guidelines were written by the Judicial Conference or developed through a true common-law process, the claim for distinct constitutional status might be more plausible. But the SG concedes at pp. 24-25, as it must, that Congressional control over the USSC is considerable. And, Judge Kathleen Cardone recently called "the proposition that the existing Guidelines, which bind a sentencing court to procedures on peril of reversal, are no more than a court rule guiding a judge through sentencing" is "a legal fiction of the highest order" (details here).
Pulp Fiction 2: The federal guidelines merely "channel" or "guide" judicial discretion. The SG and USSC briefs assert repeatedly that the federal guidelines merely guide or "channel judicial discretion." See, e.g., SG Brief at 22; USSC Brief at 15. But of course, as many judges and observers have highlighted, the federal guidelines are guidelines in name only. They are binding legal authority which, in the calculation of sentencing ranges, directly mandate what facts must be considered by judges and also how those facts must be considered. No matter how thoughtful or reasoned, a judge who seeks to exercise her discretion in any manner that does strictly follow the guidelines' "guidance" will be reversed.
Pulp Fiction 3: No parts of the federal guidelines are statutory. Only in a footnote does the SG concede that Congress directly amended the guidelines through the PROTECT Act, and the SG's brief does not explain the potential impact of that reality on the assertion that the Blakely is inapplicable to the federal guidelines because they "are the product of ... a body in the Judicial Branch." And, of course, Congress' direct changes to the guidelines is but one part of the PROTECT Act's alternation of federal sentencing to make the guidelines even more "legislative" and less "judicial."
Pulp Fiction 4: The SRA mandates, and effective guideline reform requires, lax procedures at sentencing. As discussed here and here, the briefs intimate that the success of federal sentencing reform depends upon sentencing judges being able to find many facts by a preponderance of the evidence. But, as many state systems have shown, effective guideline reform does not require complex judicial fact-finding of uncharged "relevant conduct." Moreover, as the USSC brief reveals, the federal guidelines' emphasis on judicial fact-finding of uncharged conduct comes as a result of (highly questionable) choices made by the original US Sentencing Commission, it was not mandated by the provisions of the Sentencing Reform Act. Indeed, the USSC could have devised guidelines from the outset which would have been fully compliant with the rule announced in Blakely — and such a system likely would have been more successful and better received than the current federal guideline system.
Pulp Fiction 5: The issues discussed above matter in the application of Blakely's rule. In the end, the briefs submitted in an effort to sustain the federal sentencing system are all staging Hamlet without the prince. Though pragmatic concerns about applying Blakely to federal sentencing are stressed, lacking in all the briefs is a truly principled argument that defendants should not have a right to a jury find beyond a reasonable doubt sentence-enhancing facts.
September 6, 2004 at 11:30 PM | Permalink
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Exactly. Which is why I suppose so many district judges across the country were applying Blakely to the Guidelines in one way or another. But what's concerning me is the slow trend in the Courts of Appeals to buy each and every issue of Pulp Fiction. They're terrible arguments, really, especially in light of the Court's broad Sixth Amendment statements in Blakely. Yet the Courts of Appeals continue to grasp at these straws (or nickel-priced paperbacks) to justify commanding lower courts to proceed with business as usual (with alternative sentences, of course....). What scares me is that the Court might do the same thing. I think if the Court wants to ignore Blakely in the federal system, it's going to have to make a new substantive reason for doing so. It just can't rely on distinguishing the Washington state system (and do so with straight faces, that is).
Posted by: District Clerk Battling Blakely | Sep 7, 2004 12:37:01 PM
Perhaps needless to say, District Clerk Battling Blakely, I agree 100%. But, for reasons articulated in my "Swing(ing) Justices" post, I really do not think the court which brought us Blakely will run away now (especially if/when the justices realize the potential retroactivity consequences for the states if they buy the SG's arguments).
Thanks for your comments.
Posted by: Doug B. | Sep 7, 2004 12:58:51 PM
Perhaps the lack of a principled argument that defendants should not have a jury find sentence enhancing facts beyond a reasonable doubt is because the authors could not think of any. The Chicken Little "the sky is falling" argument, the principal argument advanced explicitly or implicitly by the briefing, addresses the constitutional issue before the court about as effectively as an umbrella protected Floridians from the rains of Frances this past week end. In the past 200+ years, application of the Constitution's "brakes" on the powers of the government have not yet caused the sky to fall. Indeed, there were many in the first 100 years who believed that the pillars of the Constitutions (State and Federal) are what keep the sky from falling [suggested reading: the treatises by Thomas Cooley (State) c. 1870 and Joseph Story (Federal) c. 1830.]
The SG and USSC both argue that the USSG reflects factors judges have traditionally utilized in imposing sentences. The USSG itself is contrary to that argument. "Offense characteristics" are, with rare exception, more analogous to "elements of the crime" than to "sentencing factors." Indeed, charging the defendant with these and proving them beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury (or court sitting without a jury where a jury trial is waived) should have little adverse impact on the "efficiency" of the criminal justice system. On the other hand, many factors denominated "relevant conduct" are somewhat more nebulous and submission of those to a jury may be problemtical. Hopefully the Supreme Court will announce a rule that allows the USSC and the courts to preserve the right to a jury trial on those characteristics enhancing sentences that can and should be submitted to a jury while reserving to judicial discretion those that truly reflect traditional judicially utilized factors and are not susceptible to jury determination.
Posted by: Thomas Yerbich | Sep 7, 2004 1:05:51 PM
Posted by: laptop battery | Oct 14, 2008 5:44:48 AM | <urn:uuid:26333f05-7e51-4450-b3be-ba67167f3b01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2004/09/pulp_fiction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945838 | 1,575 | 1.5625 | 2 |
AN ACT AUTHORIZING THE TOWN OF MEDWAY TO MAKE CHANGES IN ITS FORM OF GOVERNMENT.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same,
The town of Medway is hereby authorized by vote of the town meeting called
for the purpose at least 90 days prior to the annual town meeting to determine
whether an elected office, board, committee or commission shall be abolished,
divided or appointed by the town administrator or board of selectmen; provided,
however, that no such vote shall take effect and no action shall be taken
thereunder until such matter is submitted to the voters of said town at the
next annual town election in the form of a ballot question and a majority of
the votes cast are in the affirmative.
Any incumbent serving in an elected office which becomes appointive under
this act, shall serve for the balance of the term for which he was elected.
Upon the expiration of said term or a precedent vacancy, the office shall be
appointed in accordance with the provisions of this act. If any elected office
or board is abolished or divided as provided hereunder, said abolition or
division shall take effect 60 days after the vote of the town election. | <urn:uuid:b6243cad-a73a-4e85-8d1c-f97544885cef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/1997/Chapter150/Print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95304 | 264 | 1.625 | 2 |
If you've got a spare 17 minutes this weekend, pop over to YouTube and watch The Story of Fragrances, a short and sweet documentary from the good folks at the International Fragrance Association of North America (IFRANA). It's a fascinating look at how the scents in our perfumes, cosmetics, and body products get made. And this isn't just for fragrance lovers: It's a compelling bit of background for anyone who uses products or smells them on other people. In other words, everyone.
"Consumers probably don't even realize how much of an interchange they have with fragrances on a regular basis," says Jennifer Abril, IFRANA president. And according to perfumer Mark Banwer, we probably use fragrances 10 or 12 times a day. I mean, I just did a quick inventory and so far I've used soap, conditioner, hair oil, eye cream, sunscreen, face oil, body lotion, deodorant, perfume, hand soap, hand cream, and cuticle oil. I'm already at 12 and the day's not even over yet.
You may also be fascinated to learn that the people who create the perfumes we buy at the fragrance counter are often the same people who cook up scents for laundry detergent. Take perfumer Sophia Grojsman. Not only has she made fragrances like Lancôme Trésor, Calvin Klein Eternity, and Yves Saint Laurent Paris, she also invented the scent for Downy. "When it first came out, I could smell it in the streets, and especially the subway. I could smell it on some women and I said to myself, 'Boy, am I proud of myself,'" Grojsman once told me. "I am still very proud of it because everybody does laundry. I did that scent for people who can't afford anything else."
And what do you know? It also happens to be scent number 13 for me today.
⋅ Daily Beauty Reporter: Fragrance Notes: The Scent of the Queen
⋅ Daily Beauty Reporter: Fragrance Notes: A Moment With Lady Gaga
⋅ Daily Beauty Reporter: Fragrance Notes: Is Perfume Art?
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Effectiveness of Ericksonian hypnosis in tinnitus therapy: preliminary results.
The present study was performed to evaluate the efficacy of Ericksonian hypnosis in reducing the impact of tinnitus on patients' quality of life.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
A controlled prospective longitudinal study was designed. The severity of tinnitus was assessed with Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) before hypnotherapy and then 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after therapy. Health Survey SF-36 was used to assess health-related quality of life before and after hypnotherapy. Thirty-nine patients with severe idiopathic subjective tinnitus were enrolled in the study.
The mean SD age of the patients was 44.5 +/- 12.5 years, ranging from 21 to 65 years; 48% were female. Mean THI scores assessed at the beginning and 4 times after commencement of therapy were evaluated. The changes in THI scores were significant. Health Survey SF-36 was assessed separately. The greatest increases were seen in physical role followed by emotional role difficulty.
The preliminary results of our study demonstrated the effectiveness of Ericksonian hypnosis in the study group.
Bakirköy Education and Training Hospital, Clinic of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Istanbul, Turkey. [email protected]
SourceB-ENT 8:1 2012 pg 7-12
Health Status Indicators
Quality of Life
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Wireless data at center of tug of war
T-Mobile, Sprint and other smaller wireless companies want a new Federal Communications Commission regulation to keep them relevant in a world where it’s becoming less important to say “Can you hear me now?” than to text “Can you read me now?”
The smaller carriers want the increasingly valuable mobile data market to be governed by the same sort of FCC roaming rules that now enable their mobile voice customers to make calls anywhere in the country.Continue Reading
The companies are lobbying the commission hard to vote on an order requiring the nation’s largest wireless carriers, Verizon and AT&T, to enter into “data-roaming” agreements with them. Without those accords, smaller carriers say they can’t compete with larger companies that own the largest swaths of wireless spectrum commercially available.
“This really is getting to be a matter of survival for many of our companies out there,” said Steve Berry, president and CEO of the Rural Cellular Association, which represents rural wireless telecom providers in the United States.
Berry and the smaller carriers he represents have seized on language in the National Broadband Plan that calls on the FCC to “promptly move forward” on data roaming as a lifeline. They point out that the FCC has been considering adding a data-roaming order to its meeting agenda for several months now.
Recently, some of the carriers have stepped up the pressure. Last month, T-Mobile President and CEO Philipp Humm met with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to push the commission to establish a data-roaming rule, according to FCC filings.
“The expectation of consumers is their smart phone is going to work wherever they go. Data is not just an abstraction for consumers now. They use it every day and rely on it more and more instead of voice,” said Charles McKee, federal affairs vice president for Sprint.
“We all need to be able to work together in roaming,” McKee added, “and there are two companies who seem to be unwilling to do that.”
A Verizon spokesman said the company has many data-roaming agreements.
“When you put aside the colorful rhetoric and look at the facts, it is clear that wireless service providers can and do enter into data-roaming agreements,” said Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson. “Verizon Wireless, for example, has dozens of such agreements, and most are with small wireless service providers.”
According to the major carriers, their smaller competitors want the government to set a low rate.
“What they are now asking for is rate regulation,” said one executive. “We roam on them. They roam on us, and we pay the same. I don’t know what more they would want other than rate regulation.”
It’s unclear whether the FCC will act. Commission officials refused to comment, but Genachowski will circulate a tentative agenda for April this week. As hard as smaller carriers are working to get data roaming added to the docket, the industry’s telecom giants are pushing hard to keep it off.
Commission aides declined to comment on the panel’s plans. But one senior official said there was a concern among some of the commissioners about the legality of applying voice rules to broadband communications.
Get reporter alerts | <urn:uuid:1c0486f4-5536-4e73-9f7e-2c39e3010b17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51429.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949152 | 706 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Chiefs lineback Jovan Belcher fatally shot his girlfriend and then killed himself with a different gun on Saturday. / Bill Wippert, AP
Former NFL running back Thomas Jones was always around guns, long before he became a football-carrying member of that unofficial gun club within the National Football League.
As a kid, he and his buddies fired guns in the woods in Big Stone Gap, Va. They'd shoot bottles and go hunting.
His dad had guns.
Jones bought his first gun his senior year at the University of Virginia, and, as a rookie with the Arizona Cardinals a dozen years ago, he learned quickly that guns were an ingrained part of the NFL culture.
"Most guys when they first come into the league is when they first start to realize they need protection," Jones says. "Because money brings a lot of positive things. But most of the time, it brings more negative things. People don't like you for what you have, for who you are. They don't like you for what you represent. And people will go to any length to take what you have or harm you in some way just because they don't have what you have. If you don't have a firearm to protect you from situations and God forbid something happens to you, you wish you would have a firearm."
Jones, who retired last season with the Kansas City Chiefs after 12 years in the league, was a big brother to young linebacker Jovan Belcher, who killed his girlfriend, and then himself, last Saturday.
Yet less than a week removed from the tragic shootings in Kansas City, NFL players aren't ready to give any ground on their belief that carrying guns is not only a right but, in their world, a necessity. Indeed, numerous players told USA TODAY Sports that in their estimation, roughly three-quarters of NFL players owned guns, compared with 40% to 45% of households in the general population, according to the National Rifle Association.
Though no statistics on NFL gun ownership exist, and league spokesman Greg Aiello called the percentage estimates "a wild guess," even former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy - widely viewed, even now, as the moral compass of the NFL - says the number of players who armed themselves during his tenure "shocked" him.
When Dungy, now an NBC analyst, was coaching the Colts, he'd always ask at the first team meeting of the year, "How many of you guys have guns?" Then he would tell the players that they needed to register their weapons in Indiana.
"I was always shocked at the number of guys who raised their hand. ... That was kind of eye-opening to me. ... (But) it's just a fact of life. These guys had them. ... I think so many of these young guys have been around guns and have seen guns, and they just feel that's part of the landscape for them growing up."
Like Jones, Belcher owned guns. But Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, the mother of their three-month-old daughter, and then killed himself with a different gun in front of his coach and general manager in the parking lot of Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium.
"I'm not ... trying to tell guys in the league they need to purchase firearms," Jones says. "I'm just saying to be realistic about our lifestyle."
Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer for the NRA, dismisses any notion that guns are to blame for the tragedy, or that NFL players are in some way different.
"It's not a culture of athletes," he says. "It is particular behavior by particular individuals that is no different from the rest of society. We've got to stop making excuses. A murderer is a murderer."
Lessons of Taylor's death
According to numerous players, it's not a secret that the NFL is loaded with firearms. One of the reasons routinely mentioned is protection, and one of the incidents players often cite is the death of Sean Taylor, a Washington Redskins safety who was killed in a home invasion in Miami in 2007. He was 24.
Redskins kick returner Brandon Banks echoes the mantra that it's all about protection. The third-year player, who declined to say whether he owns a gun, says "70% of the NFL players have guns. Guys get them as soon as they start getting some money, when people start knowing where you live."
Players in other pro sports leagues agree with that sentiment, including in the NBA where former Utah Jazz star Karl Malone, a noted outdoorsman, once put the number of gun owners at "close to 60%."
But just as in the greater society beyond sports, gun ownership isn't only about protection. For many players and millions of Americans, guns are simply the equipment for another popular sport: hunting.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger calls himself "a huge hunter" and says he owns rifles, shotguns and handguns. He estimates the percentage of NFL players who own guns at "over 75%-80%."
Roethlisberger's teammate, James Harrison, is a gun collector and one of the most avid gun advocates in sports. Harrison reacted to the Belcher story with sadness, but the all-pro linebacker is unapologetic about his passion for firearms.
"It has nothing to do with the guns," Harrison says. "Somebody goes out and kills somebody with a knife; you going to blame the knife? It's the person who did it who's responsible."
Redskins wide receiver Josh Morgan no longer owns a gun. But he says he grew up in Washington, D.C., carrying unregistered handguns. He gave up guns "after one of my best friends got killed. That's when I had to stop. When you see so many people get killed and you witness so many deaths and go to so many funerals before you leave high school - and you've got 12, 13, 14 friends die from murder or get stabbed - you get tired of going to funerals. You get tired of crying."
Morgan says he knows a lot of players who own guns for protection, and he defends their right, even as he chooses not to exercise his.
"Some people just have nothing to lose," he says. "When you've got people like that, you've got no choice but to protect yourself and protect your family."
The NFL's Aiello says the league educates players about guns and weapons every year. Each team conducts an annual mandatory preseason meeting with NFL security, club security and local law enforcement at which gun laws are reviewed and explained. At this meeting, NFL employees are urged not to own guns, according to Aiello.
Some players have followed that advice.
"I do not own a gun," says Redskins tight end Logan Paulsen. "It's something my wife and I have discussed. We (the team) are away a lot, so it gives me some peace of mind knowing she could protect herself (if she did have a gun). It also makes me nervous because there are a lot of issues with gun safety."
Paulsen, who puts the league gun ownership number at "70-80%," realizes that he's "definitely in the minority."
But Troy Vincent, the NFL vice president of player engagement who played from 1992-2006, disputes that the league has a gun culture, or that players commonly own and collect guns.
"No. No. I've never. â?¦ You'll hear people say, 80%-90%, 20%. How do you know that? We don't ask that question. That's personal information. ... (But) we're not naive by any stretch of the imagination."
While echoing Aiello's comments that the league does all it can to educate players, Vincent shed tears and became emotional when asked about the Belcher tragedy.
"A young lady lost her life, and it didn't have to be that way."
Family and friends said goodbye to Kasandra Perkins, 22, at a funeral Thursday in Blue Ridge, Texas.
Too eager to arm?
Because Belcher was a gun owner, a person in his home would have been three times more likely to be involved in a homicide, and five times more likely to have killed himself, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.
If that Saturday in Kansas City were an average day in America, 32 people were slain with guns and another 54 people were killed by guns in suicides or accidents, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. More than 31,000 people in the USA die in gun-related incidents each year. This year, one of those deaths was the stunning suicide of recently retired NFL superstar linebacker Junior Seau, who had acquired a handgun for protection but, according to his friends, hardly knew how to load it.
Whatever the reasons athletes give for gun ownership - or their Second Amendment rights to legally purchase firearms - gun safety advocates continue to be concerned about the link between guns and professional athletes. There's nothing wrong with owning a gun, they say, if the buyer is ready for gun ownership.
"You have young people with a lot of money, and there may be a quickness in a decision to buy a gun," says Dan Gross, president of the Brady Center. "There's a kind of social norm that exists in certain professional sports around ownership of a gun. It's kind of encouraged. And I think there's a tendency among professional athletes not to look into the right equation in terms of risks versus benefits."
Not true, says the NRA's LaPierre, who blames the premise of a gun culture in the NFL on the media and anti-gun groups.
"You've got good Americans who love to play sports, who are disciplined, who are responsible, and they're no different from any other Americans," he says. "Owning guns is a mainstream part of American culture, and it's growing every day."
Gross says he and his organization aren't trying to ban guns. They seek education and awareness, and they urge potential gun owners to pause and consider that - statistically speaking - placing themselves around guns increases their risks.
"What we saw with Belcher and Kasandra Perkins was a very clear manifestation of those risks, as was Junior Seau," Gross says.
LaPierre counters: "The one thing missing in that equation is that woman owning a gun so she could have saved her life from that murderer."
Other sports leagues
Just as with the NFL, other pro sports leagues have had their share of gun controversies.
In December 2009, Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton violated NBA rules when they had unloaded guns in the Washington Wizards' team locker room. Both were suspended for the remainder of the season. But gun ownership - for sport and protection - remains vibrant.
Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, now a commentator on TNT, says, "Most of the guys I played with over the years always had protection. We've had some players get mugged going home late at night, coming off a road trip or leaving nightclubs. But I've never heard of a situation like (the Belcher shootings) where everything went crazy."
Barkley, too, says that a tragic aberration like what happened in Kansas City doesn't diminish his right to own a weapon: Having a gun "is a personal choice. It's my personal choice, and I'm not going to change it. I don't care what anybody says."
NBA veteran and Los Angeles Clippers star Lamar Odom doesn't own a gun, even though he was once held up at gunpoint.
"I understand there are mixed feelings and mixed emotions about it," he says. "I think it's our right to be able to protect our homes, but I just don't feel the need."
Major League Baseball has long been associated with a hunting culture. This week, Chicago Cubs manager Dale Sveum revealed that former teammate Robin Yount accidentally shot him in the right ear on a recent quail hunt. And San Diego Padres general manager Josh Byrnes spoke out on guns after one of his pitchers, Andrew Cashner, lacerated a tendon in his right thumb with a knife after a deer hunt this offseason.
"As a GM, I am concerned," Byrnes said Thursday, while noting that he supports gun control. "We can control things on the job, but away from it, we hope they make the right decisions."
But Atlanta Braves general manager Frank Wren argues that hunting lends itself to experience with guns.
"What's different is that the hunting culture for the most part are the most gun-savvy and the most careful and cautious of any group of gun owners," says Wren. "And we're also not talking about handguns. That's a whole other class that we don't see."
Wren has plenty of experience on his teams with avid hunters, among them recently retired star Chipper Jones and former Braves first baseman Adam Laroche. Wren recalls them often setting up targets under the stadium where the grounds crew stores sand and practicing with bows and arrows. But he says in his 25 years with several franchises, he's never come across issues with players and guns. He says part of that stems from many players coming from Sun Belt states, where guns are often introduced in childhood.
"The first thing you do as a kid in the South is go take a gun safety course," Wren says.
Saving lives, or taking lives?
But just a day after the Chiefs gathered at Belcher's memorial service, players question whether the murder-suicide will have any lasting impact on the league.
Steelers wide receiver Plaxico Burress, infamous for accidentally shooting himself in a New York City nightclub in 2008, called the Belcher shootings "very, very unfortunate" but isn't sure the tragedy will be a lasting lesson to a gun-heavy league.
"It will for a little while," says Burress, who served 20 months in prison because he was carrying the gun illegally. "But over time something else will happen and we'll be having the same discussion then. Things like this happen to people every day. It just happened to be Jovan, somebody that we knew."
Steelers safety and player representative Ryan Clark doesn't own a gun in a locker room where his quarterback estimates that most of his teammates do. He has twice seen gun-related tragedies up close. Clark's freshman year at LSU in 1999, a close friend killed himself with a shotgun blast to the face.
"Everybody sat around the next day when we found out, wondering what could we have done different. What could we have said to him? You don't see the signs. We never found out why," Clark says.
He was also a teammate and friend of the Redskins' Taylor, whom he played with from 2004-05 before joining Steelers in 2006. Taylor armed himself with a machete during the home invasion in which he was shot dead.
"If Sean had a gun, he's probably alive today," Clark says. "I choose not to own one. But guys are targets and they have their families and they have guns in their homes, they want to protect themselves and they have the right to. The law gives them the right to."
Clark recognizes the difficult calculus, and societal wrenching, over the issue of gun ownership.
"In that case, Sean Taylor, maybe it saves a life there. But in the next case (Belcher), it takes two lives."
Contributing: Jim Corbett in Pittsburgh, Lindsay H. Jones in Kansas City, Mo., Robert Klemko in Landover, Md., Mike Garafolo Florham Park, N.J., Paul White and Bob Nightengale in Nashville.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: NFL players: Three out of four own guns | <urn:uuid:6450e8f9-3018-4582-b5b8-f958f5454f1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenvilleonline.com/usatoday/article/1752195&usatref=sportsmod?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CSports%7Cp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984889 | 3,270 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Archive for the ‘DAVID POLLARD ON SIMON JENNER’S PESSOA SERIES’ Category
THE SIMON JENNER PAGE
Crowley and Pessoa
DAVID POLLARD WRITES:
Simon Jenner – the Pessoa Series
I bend to pluck its auxiliary nerve
We are treating here of colours. To be precise: of the constituents of white light. Can we use the prism as a metaphor for hetero-naming? Jenner at least implies as much as his series on Pessoa is flooded with the violence intrinsic to the breakdown of light – every colour of the rainbow as ‘a lozenge of April / shafts a century’s light through the glass, / oblique’. When a writer retreats from his own creativity, leaving it in the hands of others, his reader, especially if he is also a poet, will have to change the way he reacts to what is left behind; the shimmering range that flows from the other side of the prism which is ‘out of your shining character’ and cannot return to its origin. The flow is also, as it must be, of blood: ‘Take blood colour from you for visages you now don’t believe’. He will remind us of the medieval makers of stained glass that flooded the floor with golds and reds and blues – ‘some fantastic redundant glow’ – all that is visible of the transformation the window performs on the light beyond, ‘sectioned in jade’:
in different stains of glass:
intense throw of lapis, freaked with violet,
age-burnt ruby and sunken emerald;
gold whitened by the sun. Encrusted.
Or, in ‘Bernardo Soares’:
apple-green and stretched through the bole.
Coral dresses would flounce slowly to
Burgundy underwater, fluting in the glaze
Pessoa’s portraits returns the writer’s glance:
The slowing down of mauve I can face.
Its unnatural chemics striate: cerulean,
faded cerise stranding in my nose’s shadow.
This can be put another way, as Jenner also does. There is a discourse here that involves rather too much in the way of aufheben in the sense of a discourse that the prism has bent rather too much under the weight of its own creativity and cannot return to the upright to synthesise with its opposite. It “has been cleared away or annulled” rather than ”kept and preserved”; a bowed reed of dialectic which is indeed one of separation, of division, of distance that ‘could bend to pluck its auxiliary nerve’, ‘it was your language that leaned on without me’, granting speech to the other in a retreat that vanishes behind its newspaper in the corner of his favourite bar, the Martinho da Arcada:
mixed palate, hat dwarfing
me as it has to – sits on approval, smudged
into the Dufy marine of Lisbon
Here Pessoa sits while a host of others write chest-loads of words with the merest of glances in his direction. Thus at the core of his creativity is a refusal which speaks in strange voices that are (let us be clear) not his own and yet must (let us be equally clear) in some sense also be his own in order to grant him his avowal that:
Dignity is the last refuge
of the abandoned.
Some 25,000 fragments were indeed found abandoned in a trunk after his death. These were written on the backs of envelopes, on scraps of paper and on the reverse side of other manuscripts. They were written on a huge range of topics including philosophy, history, sociology and literary criticism There were plays, short stories, treatises on astrology and a variety of autobiographical material. Much of this is still to be catalogued. We are reminded perhaps of the valise that Walter Benjamin dragged across the Pyrenees in 1940 on his escape from Vichy France a journey that led to his death at the age of 48 (Pessoa died at 47). Like The Book of Disquiet, Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Project’ is a fragmentary work that was never completed:
And who’s here when I’d pick about his books,
piled in ranks like a hypocaust exposed?
Fernando’s stripped us back to our paper looks;
we play through his collapse, hot winds where no flue’s closed.
But we are left with a problem; If words keep flowing, surely the author must accept responsibility for them as words can hardly generate themselves. Indeed the word ‘author’ means ‘beginner, former, or first mover of anything; hence, the efficient cause of a thing; a creator; an originator’. Auto = self-driven; independency as in autochthonous, autobiography, autoerotic, etc. After all, when the author dies, the words stop coming. Again: a text cannot generate itself as long as the writer continues to place his signature under it and claims his copywrite. Seeing the writer as function (Foucault), position (Derrida) or relationship (Barthes) does not really overcome this.
It may be that there are two kinds of hetero-naming: the liar and the truth-teller. The first of these is the role player who hides behind a mask so that his reader may mistake him, Cyrano-like, for what appears. He is a ventriloquist of sorts and wishes to avoid the fixity of personality or the constraints of a philosophical or literary position or the restrictions of a particular set of ideas. He may even be the victim of political repression. Here the hetero-naming is done for a reason, the retreat is tactical and this is a kind of lie and, inevitably, the voice behind the mask has a tendency to re-assert itself. The authorial voice still speaks behind the mask.
The second is more complex as the validation of his voices is grounded in a more radical otherness. This self-destruction or negative capability is crucial if heteronomy is to be authentic and entirely genuine.
And so to Keats as exemplar of so many who speak of this truth-telling retreat from pure light and the fragmentation of identity and write of the ‘silent workings of the imagination’ which come ‘continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness’. He writes that, ‘nothing startles me beyond the moment’ and continues, ‘If a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the Gravel’. Hazlitt said of Shakespeare that:
“He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune [...] He had only to think of anything in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it”.
We are speaking here of ‘negative capability’ where Hazlitt replaces einfühlung – empathy – with something more like einfüllung – a filling up with. The poet fills himself up with the object of contemplation to such a degree that his own ego, like white light, is dissolved into the many. Keats tells us:
“what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”.
The “poetical Character”, the character “which Shakespeare possessed so enormously”, has no identity of its own, least of all some special kind of identity which can be called “poetic”. “A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity”. A poet is “camelion”, “he is continually in for – and filling some other Body”. So, whereas “Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them some unchangeable attribute, the poet has none, no identity”:
“As to the poetical Character itself [...] it is not itself – it has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen”.
Pessoa wrote of his “purely negative” state of mind. In a “Personal Note” he writes: “My intellect has attained a pliancy and a reach that enables me to assume any emotion I desire and enter at will into any state of mind. And so the poet retreats into silence leaving the stage to the others. Pessoa as Keats and Shakespeare, Cyrano-like, vanishes and leaves the others (in his case 72 at the last count, the first appearing at the age of 6) to do the talking. “To deny me the right to do that would be the same as denying Shakespeare the right to give expression to Lady Macbeth’s soul. And if that’s true for fictitious characters in a drama, it is equally true for characters not in a drama, since it applies because they are fictitious and not because they are in a drama”. The white light is left behind in its ‘dignity’ shattering out into all the colours of the rainbow:
Jenner gives us:
He never borrowed these other selves. He purloined
both sides so much there was just a heavy pencil
shadow of him left, like the gable on a time-
eaten roof before the timbers crash
or, so as he is held at bay ‘simple in the soft declension of his no’s’ as another poem has it:
throw his casements open to denote
friends from all the suburbs of his will;
In Jenner Queiroz can write to Campos:
You need no’s like ball bearings,
Campos, my dear, offerings for sweet oil
to keep Fernando running on tracks he thinks his own.
We worry for it, want to freshen it from its calf
bind a gender; a name, so it can feel at home
with the way your joint and several selves
field different rhythms, let alone
vocabulary. This foxed it, spotted it quite.
An author’s words smell comforting, dark fustian
even. Yours war and shift, on some sucked-out
bones of metaphor.
Go for the verb, we told it, make black coffee sense
of Campos’ sweep of referents, or
Caeiro’s double-takes on sheep. Ries
crossing the cod classic bar-line; and Pessoa,
we said, simple in the soft declension of his no’s.
Pessoa’s grasp on his own self was so weak that he even wrote to former acquaintances in Durban as the psychiatrist Faustino Antunes. He earnestly asked their opinion on the mental state of one, Fernando Pessoa, his patient, who had, he said, either committed suicide or was in a mental institution. Having so little grasp of his own identity, he was desperate that they might be able flesh him out. Retreat because retreated from, perhaps, his father dying when he was only five and his brother a year later, the same year that his mother remarried.
This silence of retreat to the point of neurosis could leave a space for hetero-naming. Not ventriloquism which implies an original voice speaking through others, rather other voices speaking for. These speakers are rather too real, their existence crowding out Pessoa’s own orthonymous existence which was other even when writing under his own name. He certainly existed but so did Ofelia and so did More, Crowley and others. Jenner is concerned to give us a concrete insight into this rainbow of characters. We have come to the point when we are in need of some examples.
First is Alberto Caeiro, the pagan who is closest to Pessoa himself and almost but not quite orthonymic:
He bid me rise pristine, he said. I can’t see this.
I was there, phlegm in the throat of his idiom.
Stood within him? He could hardly spit me out;
a year his junior, I’d taken possession of words, walked in,
shook his flinched hand – the index still tender? – before he
dreamed of me
and, again like Pessoa, is himself a hetero-namer:
I never kept poets, but it’s as if I had.
You who claim me like a branding-iron
to crisp a finger-tip’s breadth of skin
where your writing callous crimps your index.
So Queiroz could write:
– told him only you existed.
Not the others, not him, but you, absent snap-
He has “all the simplicity, all the grandeur of the ancients”. He dresses carelessly in the style of Ribatejo after living too long in the country with little to do. He has little education. He has taken on the positivism of the peasant; ‘It’s how I shepherd the sounds, if I could imagine. / But I can’t’ (Jenner). ‘He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind and he refuses subterfuge and artificiality. He does not allow any thoughts to arise when he looks at a flower and in this he is totally unpoetic. “My mysticism is not to try to know / It is to live and not think about it”’ (Pessoa). Jenner’s Caeiro begins:
To arrive, ripe with the appointed fire
and quake your scribbling like a seismograph
sheer off its track, wasn’t it at all.
so writes in free verse with a wide-eyed, childlike wonder at the infinite variety of the natural world which is hard, quizzical, homely: ‘a farm / cat’s purr amplified in an empty tin bath’. He is happy through simple acceptance and the limitations that demands and asks nothing of life.
who mastered him in a nice decree
Next we have Alvaro de Campos, another disciple of Caiero, a naval engineer, bisexual and a dandy who, after studying in Glasgow where:
They ravish patter-songs in upper Albion,
spilling from pubs on the Clyde, swinging
like derricks rusted by a hundred years.
Here, my tuning fork rings through an empty hull,
a campanile of instant religions.
They’re right. Cheaper labour will kill it all
like a finger on the fork’s windpipe.
I cannot stay here and breathe.
So went out to the Orient to work and later lived outrageously in London. He does his master’s travelling so that Pessoa can stay at home. ‘The best way to travel is to feel’ yet this feeling is grounded in a sense of isolation and nothingness which ‘throws a lattice work before him
shade of an Eiffel dawn, Chicago’s sudden steel reach’,
a powerful striving for exultation resting on a melancholic vacuum.
Unlike Caeiro he asks too much of life.
With Queiroz we come to something a little too translucent; too real, This is Queiroz; Ofelia. Pessoa worked with her in the offices of Valladas & Freitas in 1919, He 32 she 19, a middle class woman working in those day and at that time was thought dangerously emancipated. He developed a love for her that lasted something over a decade not entirely unrequited:
Your fingers reached for the difficulty
of yes across the cream lace fiction
of the cheap restaurant.
What surgery of refusal will your acumen elide
this time? My voice, perhaps, so I’m a girl
shuttling returns of black and white, silent
as the movies.
She it is who now stands up of her own free will and comes over to him placing on his table a few papers before paying the waiter with a strange smile and departing. Our poet replaces his glasses and, dragging the papers towards him, reads
my oxygen revives a spent taper
in a bell jar of glass arteries, pumped of
the old self that had blood to lose. I’m happening
to you in a last glow. Forgive me. You’re transparent.
He loves her among the heteronyms as our poet (in his own love for her) understands:
I could never stake out the man who kissed me
from the league who write each other screeds
of how it happened to another, dead now; as it had, and is.
What can a minor voice like mine
hope to sliver between such querulous giants?
Perhaps it was he put the non-requital in her soul:
but there’s me O stenographer,
putting words to your mouth to bite with your nails.
It’s me, stop, me.
She wrote a gentle portrait of him in her old age.
Bernardo Soares as Pessoa avers “was only a semi-heteronym because, although his personality is not mine, it is not different from but rather a simple mutilation of my personality. Jenner’s Pessoa asks :
Why did I feel such cruel paring, this
shoehorn of a life to shadows, was more me
“He is me minus reason and affectivity”. It is he, of course, who wrote The Book of Disquiet and this demands apology:
I’m sorry I so straitened you, a poor clerk; me,
minus intellect and affectivity –
a stupid way to touch the why I felt.
Yet admits that there is some lack of control as there must be:
You’ve outgrown me, are the essence
of what I forgive in me for what I can’t absolve:
the Venetian blind heart that knows itself false,
for the gem mind that glances with the truth.
The heteronyms became more and more fantastical. Having so little ego Pessoa, influenced in this by his Aunt Anica, tried the occult.
Aunt, she vanishes into planets,
their essence of sanctuary, flashing rounds.
I can’t abandon such foreign witness.
I’ve jotted her dark lines into Venus’ mounds
For a year or so about 1916, he involved himself in a series of automatic writing sessions and succeeded in contacting several intelligences, among them Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist who told him: “You masturbator! You masochist! You man without manhood!… You man without a man’s prick!”
and advised him to lose his virginity.
You, sir, are a masturbator, as if
your destiny was a virgin splash of names –
a self-swallower’s barren touch of time.
How can an onanist engender truly, inhere
the identities of all your bloodless ticking selves?
The striking thing here is the solidity, the reality of all this naming. These people, even when they are real, are real. It is both the solidity of their reality and how this reality came to be that is the subject of this wonderful series of poems. This solidity is crucial. There is a fugal intensity here that plays with words to create an interplay of lives. A couple of examples
de Campos, sucked-in tubercular Caeiro, Reis wan
as a child’s first essay in wax pastels.
I’ve breathed each of you, Caeiro, Reis too,
though city-white I’m not his rich-skinned taste.
I give you breath, write de Campos who winces you
a second skin he sees I’ve burned,
These people talk among themselves, about themselves and about Pessoa. Even Pessoa speaks about Pessoa. And that is as it should be. Thus this series gives us a meditation on language and creativity as well as subtle biographies and inter-relationships.
So there should be a ‘library wine to sip books with’ that ‘should be noiselessly refilled. All these , ‘self-cancellings’ For now the poet (Jenner?) beckons to the waiter who brings him his bill. He is now a super-homonym and stands above them all, Pessoa included, and granting himself a quiet unnoticed smile, takes his leave of the place and of them all:
my self-communers who echo whitewashed
walls I concaved for them; and those who drew me
outside my circle. This café loses them; fleshed and
not of my sad gravity, they can’t compel me back.
Thus he allows himself, along with all of them to:
shuffle half-cut home, to bare boards,
an aching bulb, planting no long evening shadows;
days bleached so much together
that the scent of memory is impossible
David Pollard was born under a hospital bed during the blitz in 1942 and brought up a Londoner. After working in the furniture trade and serving his articles for accountancy, he fled to the University of Sussex where he was given his three degrees in literature, the history of ideas and philosophy. The last of these, a doctorate, awarded on his 40th birthday, was published as The Poetry of Keats: Language and Experience.
He worked at the University of Essex and Sussex and pesnt a year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a Lady Davies Scholar. He also published the KWIC Concordance to the Harvard Edition of Keats’ Letters as well as other work on Keats, Blake and Nietzsche. His latest, Nietzsche’s Footfalls, is a meditation on the philosopher and his times and came out in 2003.
He has also reviewed extensively in the fields of both philosophy and literature. Apart from a Waterloo Sampler, this is Pollard’s first book of poetry although his work has appeared in: Omphalos, Tears in the Fence, Aletheia, Fire, Eratica, Eclipse and Poetry Monthly. He is currently writing a comparison of Blake and Nietzsche and his holiday task is a historical novel, The Memories of Herod Agrippa II.
Simon Jenner writes for Poetry Review, PNR, The Tablet, Music on the Web and the British Music Society, is the recipient of many awards and bursaries, his collection of poems ‘About Bloody Time’ was published in 2007. He is Director of Survivors’ Poetry, and editor of Waterloo Press (see http://www.waterloopress.co.uk) | <urn:uuid:764dbf97-d4bc-409d-a663-b7f1faeecf28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ccwe.wordpress.com/category/simon-jenner-page/david-pollard-on-simon-jenners-pessoa-series/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964549 | 5,041 | 1.570313 | 2 |
I’m sure readers will recall a time when it was virtually impossible to find a decent cup of coffee in most establishments north of the Vindhyas. Coffee then was virtually synonymous with Nescafe — instant powdered sludge that passed off as the real thing for generations of Indians who knew no better.
Of course, the South has had a long and proud tradition of imbibing strong, aromatic filter coffee that is prepared in a percolator and served piping hot, inexplicably in a steel tumbler that scalds your fingers.
But for the rest of India, the coffee revolution came about only rather recently with the advent of chain stores that encashed on the enormous popularity of American sitcoms such as Friends and Frasier. Indians, particularly the urban youth, suddenly discovered the joys of sipping Cappuccino, Latte, Macchiato and Espresso and realised that it was really quite cool to bond over a cup of freshly brewed java rather than a beer.
These chain stores also started selling coffee-making paraphernalia, as also quality beans — both imported and local — like the delectable Peaberry and Highland variety, which is grown in south India.
One of the most effective ways of brewing a great cup at home is doing it the authentic Italian way, with a stovetop espresso maker. This ingeniously simple device requires you to fill in water at the base, top up the perforated mid-level funnel with coarsely ground coffee powder and then let it simmer on slow flame for a few minutes. The heated water turns to steam and rushes up a nozzle to finally emerge and cool in the top chamber as fresh aromatic coffee.
Purists often regard the French Press or cafetière as the most effective way to brew a flavourful cup of coffee and it is also by far the easiest. Simply spoon in some freshly ground coffee powder into the glass chamber and add hot, never boiling, water. Stir and then leave to steep for five minutes. Then slowly press down on the plunger to extract a superbly invigorating cup. Connoisseurs will quibble about the need to use a gold-plated plunger to ensure the finest extraction but a steel one is perfectly adequate for most enthusiasts.
There are now a multitude of coffee makers available in India. I recently purchased a very nifty, retro looking Espresso machine that has an old-style pressure gauge and toggle switches. One can now whip up a perfectly professional espresso shot, with the crema on top, within seconds at home.
If grinding your own beans and labouring over a stove is not your idea of fun, you can always pop into an international café recently opened with great fanfare in India. Just be warned that no self-respecting coffee snob would be caught dead in a Starbucks. | <urn:uuid:b8e00eff-1da3-4622-96a8-1308508f8d24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/1041596/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948834 | 582 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Had a chance to go to a conference this year that opened a conversation about energy conservation and many experts said that the future of energy conservation was actually in personal energy development. That blew me away! To tell the truth, I had no idea that affordable home energy opportunities were that close at hand. After hearing about thermowells, new solar capturing devices, and home size wind generators I was convinced that the next home I owned would be outfitted with as many energy supplying elements as I could manage.
Since then I have been keeping my eye on several sites to see what new technologies and specifically, products are coming out that might fit my needs in the next home. This product, the Skystream 3.7 is a renewable, wind generator designed for residential homes. This machine can actually spin your meter backwards in a good wind. That means you , not only don't spend as much with your local utility, but "in theory" could get paid by a utility company.
Standing 40 - 50 feet tall it requires a .5 acre of open space for wind, and costs $5,400. Makes me want to move today. | <urn:uuid:46ba3f71-67ac-48fc-8f6d-0ab60684fffb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://brainblenders.blogs.com/pop/2007/04/skystream_37.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978999 | 229 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Updated: The big news in London this week was the announcement that the government was pumping £50 million, or $80 million, into rebuilding Old Street, the startup-heavy area at the heart of what some call “Silicon Roundabout”. The great and good turned out to hear — yet again — how the British authorities were putting their weight behind the cluster of tech and web companies circling around East London.
Listen to the noises coming out of the local companies, and it’s clear that they feel good about this. Former Facebook executive Joanna Shields, now working for the government’s Tech City organization, said it would help turn a “vibrant community” into a “global leader in tech innovation”. And the head of Google Campus, the internet giant’s local bridge-building effort, said it would “help to establish London as a global center for tech entrepreneurs”.
London’s time, you’d assume, is now.
But here’s the message I took away from it all: it’s time to step things up.
Britain’s government has been one of the biggest cheerleaders of London’s nascent startup scene over the last few years. While the Old Street area has been a center for the country’s digital economy ever since the birth of interactive media, the decision to create an official “Tech City” movement has seen a concerted effort to court technology companies.
This is for a few reasons. It’s partly an attempt to find some light in the economic gloom. It’s partly an attempt by Prime Minister David Cameron to appear connected, forward-thinking and switched on (look at his relationship with Google to understand the positioning here). And it’s partly an attempt to turn the legacy of the Olympics into something more by enticing big tech firms to the area — even if they don’t contribute much in the way of tax revenue to the British economy.
But Cameron’s commitment to bolstering the startup economy is actually even deeper than that.
It’s dealing with big problems in a smart way, tackling and operating in a lean, mean, aggressive manner: a world-leading approach that Tim O’Reilly recently said set the standard for governments. And to do that, it’s hired some of the most impressive coding, design and strategic talent around. Over the last couple of years a sequence of great talent — mainly from London, many of them friends of mine — have been sucked into the gov.uk machine as they try to reinvent the way Britons connect to their public services.
Don’t get me wrong: tackling big problems is great, and the work that Government Digital Service is doing is extremely important. But I think it’s an indictment of the local scene that so many great people are choosing to work for the civil service, and that the apparently thriving scene around Old Street seems to be more and more reliant on government boosters.
So how do you fix that?
The challenge to Britain’s startup community
A few months ago, I wrote that London’s tech community was looking at “golden moment”: a confluence of circumstances that could see the region really push on and make good on its promise.
Now, however, I’m less optimistic. There are lots of great companies and strong ideas floating around the UK startup scene, but right now there are too many poseurs and very few world beaters. The latent potential is not being achieved, and the signal is being crowded out by all the noise of bearded startup hipsters tapping away aimlessly in local coffee shops.
Still, I believe this is a glass-half-full situation. Those who are really taking the bit between their teeth and developing serious businesses are doing very well. Moshi Monsters has turned into a massive children’s brand; online loans company Wonga is doing things that banks can’t; innovative smaller outfits like BERG and Makie and others are making waves in their industries.
But the scene needs an injection of real talent and ambition — in part from the same people who have been subsumed into the government’s digital efforts. While they get down to Important Public Service stuff, the hangers-on have fallen into a self-congratulatory funk, drunk on applause from boosters and ego massages from investors looking to pump up their own interests.
most some of the talented individuals working on gov.uk are contractors, not staff. When their time is up, they’ll be back out. Let’s hope they do something great when they’re free again.
In the meantime, listen up, Silicon Roundabout: don’t buy into the mirage of success. It’s time to stop combing your mustaches and build something important.
Update: Mike Bracken, who heads the GDS project, has been in touch to say “most of our people are civil servants, as we’ve removed loads of contractors as per government policy”. | <urn:uuid:8f71bf5f-f494-40ea-9cf4-e71e4652ec16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gigaom.com/2012/12/09/stop-crowing-london-its-time-to-step-it-up/ | 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 | 0.95745 | 1,064 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Home business, small business, and large corporations all need accounting services to one extent or another. Larger business will have staff accountants while small business may have one or two bookkeepers and a home business has, well, you! As the chief cook and bottle washer of a home business, the owner handles the production, marketing, sales, shipping, accounting, and more. Outsourcing accounting functions is an option of course, but many start up businesses want to save money and owners prefer to control all aspects of company operations.
How much about accounting did you learn in high school or college? A few terms here and there and the difference between accounts receivable and accounts payable. If a few accounting classes were taken, one might understand the difference between a balance sheet and a trial balance report or be able to define and describe E.B.I.T.A and G.A.A.P. Lost yet? I have taken a few classes in accounting and know little more than terms and roughly how they apply to accounting. When I do need help and terms explained in plain language, I turn to a friend – Mark Holtzman - that puts terms into plain and clear English on his blog: www.accountinator.com .
Mark’s basic tenet is pure and simple: “Do-it-yourself accounting – quick, cheap and easy.” Here at Homepreneurs we understand and agree with quick, cheap, and easy. The concept has guided us from the beginning and continues to this day. We are constantly on the hunt for free or low-cost services that can help you start and run a home business. The Accountinator is one of – if not the – most valued informational site we’ve run across.
When you need tips on starting a business, Homepreneurs can help. If you need to know the language of business and all things accounting, I’ve not found a better source than Mark Holtzman’s Accountinator. In his several times per week postings, you’ll find wisdom, advice, humor, and education. Check the site out, you won’t be disappointed.
By Dion D Shaw
Dion D Shaw is the founder and owner of Homepreneurs
Homepreneurs does not endorse nor have any relationships (Mark Holtzman is a friend) with any of the services listed. Homepreneurs receives no compensation or consideration for its suggestions. Homepreneurs strongly urges all interested parties to conduct research and accepts no responsibility for any losses incurred.
© Homepreneurs 2010 – 2012, All Rights Reserved | <urn:uuid:f504def0-9425-400a-a9ef-0ea17f78a180> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://homepreneurs.net/2012/04/02/accounting-made-easy-by-the-accountinator/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95227 | 539 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Granted, the property looks like the aftermath of one of those aerial shots of somebody’s homestead after a tornado passed through, but the animals themselves look fine.
The real bottom line
So what was really going on here? Was this truly a case of rampant animal cruelty worthy of a media circus of TV reporters and hovering newscopters?
Apparently not. According to the newspaper, Kitsap Humane Society officials said they’re facing a $180,000 shortfall, and indicated that their facility might have to shut its doors if they can’t convince the public “to donate a little more freely and permanently.”
“It would be a shame should it come to that,” the newspaper editorialized. “The low-kill facility provides an indefinite home to animals with no place to call their own.”
As a result, of its fiscal crisis, the society announced that it isseeking 1,500 people to commit to $10 a month. Does anyone really believe that conducting the society’s “largest rescue effort to date” wasn’t part of a kickoff to that fund-raising effort?
And why isn’t the national Humane Society of the United States forking over some of its multi-millions to help out this struggling local agency? Oh, that’s right. HSUS doesn’t actually fund animal rescue efforts; they just talk about their “commitment” to ending animal cruelty—which doesn’t come with a check attached.
One of the local residents commenting on the story summedup the situation perfectly:
“[Calling it] animal cruelty gives the impression these people were beating the animals and allowing them to starve to death. Not the case at all. Multiple complaints were launched over a sickly cow that they probably should have slaughtered a long time ago, but they felt the need to keep doctoring & feeding it when they should have cut their losses. Overcrowding & algae growth in some water bottles is the other complaint KHS has, stating [that] the living conditions were unsanitary. They should have mandated the owners to downsize and given them a timeline in which to do it. Instead, they took every animal these people own and try to present them as monsters to the community.
“They invited every media they could gather with helicopters circling overhead & rolled in with a lineup of vans and trailers that went down half the road and made of circus of the entire situation. If you ask me, someone at the KHS is looking for a promotion, and these poor people, who have been suffering from multiple deaths in their family and illnesses of their own, having each been hospitalized themselves twice in the past two years, provided the perfect medium for them.”
“Looking for a promotion,” indeed. It appears as if this local Humane Society, while it might not be receiving funding from the national HSUS, is downloading and deploying their tactics to a “T.”
And that stands for “tragedy,” which is what you call it when the animal welfare community adopts heavy-handed tactics aimed at making a media splash, rather than righting any wrongs which the animal owners they target might have been guilty.
Review the photos of this animal seizure.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Murphy, who is a veteran food-industry journalist and commentator. | <urn:uuid:2e636462-f521-42de-ad12-e296240c452d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dairyherd.com/dairy-news/Commentary-Pursuing-the-cruelty-scam-133976943.html?cmntid=79246462&email=yes&page=2 | 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 | 0.971563 | 715 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Liveblogging isn’t just about big media covering international events.
From high-school sports to weather reports, a liveblog is also a great tool to bring information to a community, keeping people informed on local happenings.
Last week, for instance, OpenFile covered a Supreme Court hearing in Halifax about the sale of St. Patrick’s Alexandra School.
The outlet used polls, pulled in Tweets from on-scene reporters and took readers’ comments, creating a dialogue with ScribbleLive while keeping Halifax informed on what was going on behind closed courtroom doors.
OpenFile’s liveblog is just one example of how local news can be covered with real-time media.
Weather reports are a popular way of using liveblogs to create localized content, and Hearst’s stations have been quite keen in this regard.
Over the past few days, WBAL has been keeping its viewers in the know with a liveblog about the Maryland snow forecast. KMBC brought readers in Kansas City information about school closures and roadway problems caused by a storm Feb. 12-14, while KCRA kept readers up-to-date on snow and rain in their Western US region last week.
Some sites opt for general catch-all liveblogs, that update readers on general local news.
The Toronto Star, for instance, runs its “Toronto Now” liveblog every day, giving people traffic and weather updates as well as neat tidbits of news – like the post pictured, which notes the death of hockey and coffee icon Tim Horton on this day in 1974.
Local sport liveblogs are also a popular way to keep readers engaged on news websites.
On Feb. 10, Lee Enterprises wrote about how two different local media outlets covered the Montana High School State Wrestling Tournament using ScribbleLive.
Over the course of two days, the Billings Gazette and the Missoulian worked as a team to cover the event through a liveblog. The outlets were able to take turns reporting, each posting to the liveblog about different parts of the tournament, creating a multi-voiced narrative that followed the story to the finals. | <urn:uuid:b14e17ed-3fb7-4025-b10e-4aba042eede6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.scribblelive.com/tag/hearst/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938593 | 441 | 1.773438 | 2 |
- Friday, August 17, 2012
Like so many South Africans, I have been watching with growing alarm the escalating violence at Lonmin’s Marikana Mine over the last week, and am now stunned and appalled by yesterday’s events which left so many more dead or injured. It is a terrible, heart-breaking, tragedy, for the individuals concerned and for our nation. Our fervent prayers are with all the bereaved, and the hurt and wounded.
Whatever the merits of the various disputes — whether between employees and employers, between unions, between workers and union leaders, between miners and police — whatever the legality of the strikes or the responses to them, this death toll is unacceptable. Even one death is one too many, and there must be an end to this senseless loss of life.
There must be strong, but measured and proportionate, interventions to end this warpath and stop the killings. I call on the Ministers of Justice, and of Mining and Mineral Resources, to engage fully. Police and union leaders must also strive to reverse the spirals of mistrust and violence. Further, the whole country must register our utter frustration at the unacceptable handling of the dispute. We must also make resoundingly clear that common sense must prevail, and that sincere, mature, negotiation must always be the route to solving our differences. Violence is never the answer.
Yet we cannot just pray for wounds to be bandaged and pain healed, and demand that conflict ends, without addressing the wider context and the underlying issues on which conflict feeds. In the Bible, the Prophet Isaiah records the promise of God that ‘I will appoint Peace as your overseer, and Righteousness as your taskmaster: violence shall no more be heard in your land, devastation or destruction within your borders …’ (Isaiah 60:17-18). Devastation and destruction end only when there is true peace and righteousness. In other words, our greatest need is to ensure that genuine justice and fairness prevail in all sectors of our country’s life. These are marked by true economic emancipation of all, good governance, honesty and truth, mutual respect regardless of status, flourishing democratic systems, free but constructive speech. We must not lose sight of this vision, encapsulated in 1994 and in our Constitution. Its achievement lies in our hands, if we recommit ourselves positively, and work hard, rejecting complacency and hopelessness in the face of the country’s challenges. God wants what is best for all his children, and will help us, if we strive for all that is good and right.
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa
Photo by Diocese of Lichfield/Flickr | <urn:uuid:42b9e091-596f-49e2-87a7-8d6148dac3a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.livingchurch.org/makgoba-decries-deaths | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936662 | 559 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Sugar pills, injections of nothing — studies show that, more often than you’d expect, placebos really work. At TEDMED, magician Eric Mead does a trick to prove that, even when you know something’s not real, you can still react as powerfully as if it is. (Warning: This talk is not suitable for viewers who are disturbed by needles or blood.) (Recorded at TEDMED, October 2009 in San Diego, CA. Duration: 9:06)
Watch Eric Mead’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks. | <urn:uuid:ebaddb3c-b037-4ab6-8814-1b47d9af639c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.ted.com/2010/03/12/the_magic_of_th/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965518 | 144 | 1.570313 | 2 |
- Posted January 18, 2013 by
This iReport is part of an assignment:
Lance Armstrong speaks out
"Winners Do Anything To Win"
It has never been about celebrating a win with others, but the act of winning....the attention that follows.....and ultimately being # 1 (at least for Lance and others). The best athlete I have ever known did not have killer instinct to slash the rules to get ahead. In many ways he did get ahead and it is clear in his life today. You can win races.....lie how you got there.....but, what does all that mean when you cross the finish line later in life?
Personally, I don't have anything against Lance or what he did and why he did it. I do have a problem that Oprah used his story to get viewers and even worse he accepted this platform (wonder what he got paid?). I have a better idea Lance.....blow off TV......and write a letter that you sign listing what you did wrong and what you are going to do to make things right? There is no question he has to earn trust all over again which may never be earned. Here is another idea.....sell your luxuries in life and live the simple life and take the proceeds and pay back those who believed your lies. Probably not easy to measure how Lance could do this, but it shows good faith. Perhaps tour the country on your own dime with out a bike......and express your humility and apologize to the kids who idolize you. Bring yourself to personal platforms to ask for forgiveness....and keep the torch alive to raise cancer research dollars. That you did right my friend........however, coming in second or third with honor trumps coming in first and hurting others to get there.
As I get older I find my own idols to be ordinary people that have done extraordinary things and look for no recognition. | <urn:uuid:a389eba4-5876-471d-9c60-10fa24b50f6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-912514 | 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 | 0.973091 | 381 | 1.617188 | 2 |
By Alan Simkins
Our brief Cornwall break continues…
As regular readers will be aware, I’ve visited the National Maritime Museum a couple of times since last Spring, to check on the progress of their reconstruction of a Bronze Age boat, based upon the design of a boat uncovered at Ferriby in East Yorkshire. This is true experimental archaeology, using only hand tools that would have been available at the time.
The original plan was for the boat, started in April, to be launched sometime in October, but several delays meant that this deadline was missed. On my last visit in October, a possible date in November was mentioned for the launch, but this was always overly ambitious, given the work left to do. A new date of early spring this year has now been set for the flotation.
And so, on the last day of 2012 I visited again (the museum having a policy of limitless revisits in a 12 month period) to gauge the state of play. Luckily, although the group was on a Christmas break, one of the volunteers had popped in to finish off his last paddle, and after a brief discussion invited me behind the barriers to take a close up look, for which I’m very grateful.
At first glance, it didn’t look as if much real progress had been made, but on closer inspection a great deal has been accomplished. The second of three layers of planks have been added to the sides, and much of the yew stitching to hold the planks together has been completed, including the caulking. This has been done using a mixture of moss, wood shavings and sheep fat, and looks to be very effective.
The completed vessel will be just over 49 feet long, and weigh approx 5 tons. There are 7 struts along its length, and it will be powered by 16-18 rowers, using 5′ paddles made of ash. A total of 20 paddles have been prepared.
The project has been managed by professional boatbuilder Brian Cumby, under the control of Exeter University, and with a team of 15 volunteers. Month by month time lapse videos of the build are available via YouTube. | <urn:uuid:39a8d8b4-f6c7-477b-b535-cb469d51ea0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/a-falmouth-boat-update/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=eb8d9d939c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974954 | 447 | 1.648438 | 2 |
At a recent credit union meeting when I raised the subject of the NCUA’s recent proposal to permit credit unions to voluntarily prepay their assessments, earning zero percent interest with the agency, CEO heads were shaking. All in disbelief and all in response to the question, “Will your credit union be participating?”
According to the NCUA, it doesn’t have the authority to make them participate in a program like this. Yet the industry was asking to see something like the FDIC’s plan. But Sheila Bair can make her banks pay, and they have.
Unlike credit unions, banks have access to the capital markets to fall back on to help them keep the lights on. Yet credit unions’ income is under attack at every turn, just like the banks.
The deadline is winding down on credit unions and other debit-issuing financial institutions to push through the delay of implementation of the debit interchange cap. Though it applies only to the largest financial institutions–ensnaring a few credit unions–the marketplace will ultimately determine which institutions are going to be giving up all but 12 cents per transaction.
In response, some credit unions have decided to charge fees for certain services that otherwise might have been offered for free, in the name of consumer protection of course.
The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, also born out of the Dodd-Frank Act, like any other government bureaucracy will only add to the compliance burden and expenses. Though it is encouraging the bureau has shared streamlined and combined TILA and RESPA paperwork, adding another rulemaking body logically can’t make things easier.
The NCUA has already created an office of 13 staffers dedicated to consumer financial protection in response; the agency’s budget approved in 2009 said it expects the office will be fully staffed at 30. By 2010, the authorized staffing level was 37, though only 30 were included in the NCUA budget. Additionally, Dodd-Frank also required an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion with staffing of six at the NCUA. Each item, plus the National Treasury Employees Union contract, pushes the NCUA budget, which is entirely funded by credit unions, higher and higher.
At the same time, credit unions are having a tough time lending and margins are compressing even further. Credit unions’ loan-to-share ratio fell below 70% in the first quarter of this year, according to CUNA, for the first time since 1994. ARMs, fixed-rate mortgages and used autos are leading the way in credit union lending.
And straw polls I’ve done show that most credit unions are selling off the fixed-rate mortgages to help avoid the interest rate risk, which the NCUA has been strongly encouraging.
But what will ultimately be the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the housing market and how will that impact your credit union’s ability to underwrite mortgages? Will a credit union solution arise? There are rumblings of this as the market has stabilized.
Used autos have been a popular option for cash-strapped, nervous consumers, but how will Japan’s earthquake affect that? Toyotas and Hondas have been known for their long life spans, but if the parts that previously were coming out of Japan are unavailable, what will that do to used auto lending? Should credit unions be making nice with the domestic dealerships?
Then there’s the competition. Target has introduced a pass-through rewards debit card (see article, page 16). Rewards will push them top of wallet and what little interchange income you were getting into the retailer’s pocket. Ironic that retailers are usually at fault in card data security breaches, yet they could be taking the interchange income that credit unions and other financial institutions are supposed to be collecting to pay for expenses related to breaches.
The American Banker also recently reported a linkup between Microsoft’s Xbox and PayPal. We recently reported (in the May 4 issue) on some overseas banks integrating Xbox’s Kinect into their branch functionality.
With the national average credit union ROA at 51 basis points as of year-end 2010, what’s a credit union to do? Credit unions don’t need to turn a huge profit, but they at least need to keep the lights on. But if credit unions don’t generate earnings, they can’t grow and offer the services their members expect from financial institutions. Then they could become extinct by irrelevancy. | <urn:uuid:ab6641ef-94a5-4077-b3a9-7386446954a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cutimes.com/2011/05/31/where-will-the-litany-of-woes-lead?t=washington&page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960708 | 921 | 1.609375 | 2 |
It’s an Indian summer outside and, professional contrarion that I am, I thought I would write a post about rain. Ever since Tacitus called Britain the land of continual rain, the wet stuff has formed part of our national imagination. There was something phlegmatic about this association of rain and the British: it was the small price we paid for our temperate climate, which was used to explain everything from our placid national character to our moderate political system. The great philosopher of rain, however, was the German critic Walter Benjamin. In one of the many gnomic statements of the Convolutes, Benjamin suggests that a characteristic feature of modernity is the ‘diminishing magical power of the rain’. The great promise of the arcades, the nineteenth-century Parisian version of a shopping mall, was that they would allow humankind at last to escape from the tyranny of the rain. Benjamin even unearths an obscure late-nineteenth-century text by Léo Claretie which imagines a Paris of the future entirely enclosed within a ‘crystal canopy’ to protect it from the rain. But this quote about a rainy day in the city hints at the overlooked utopian possibilities of rain: ‘Rain makes everything more hidden, makes days not only grey but uniform. From morning until evening, one can do the same thing – play chess, read, engage in argument – whereas sunshine, by contrast, shades the hours and discountenances the dreamer.’
What blissful hours I spent as a child examining raindrops! Now life seems too short to waste time looking at the rain.
Mundane quote for the day: ‘And why should I not choose that raindrop sliding down the windowpane? I could write a whole page, ten pages, on that raindrop; for me it will become the symbol of everyday life whilst avoiding everyday life; it will stand for time and space, or space within time; it will be the world and still only a vanishing raindrop.’ – Henri Lefebvre | <urn:uuid:40714760-c2c7-4f21-b44c-35dd7e851837> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.joemoransblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/magical-power-of-rain.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937845 | 427 | 1.679688 | 2 |
LONDON (Reuters) - The European Medicines Agency is to review the safety of third and fourth-generation combined oral contraceptives to decide if there is a need to restrict their use.
Monday's move followed a request by France, where authorities have already taken steps to reduce use of the drugs in favor of second-generation birth control pills.
The newer pills, which include Bayer's Meliane or Yasmin, have proved popular because they reduce side effects seen with earlier versions, such as weight gain and acne.
But France wants the European Union regulator to restrict their use because of concerns they carry a higher risk of dangerous blood clots.
While all oral contraceptives are associated with some danger of blood clots, a number of studies suggest the most recent third- and fourth-generation pills carry a higher risk than their predecessors.
The London-based European Medicines Agency (EMA), which said earlier this month there was no new evidence of safety risks, said the blood-clot risk with all birth control pills was "very small", although it was higher for third- and fourth-generation ones.
"There is no reason for any woman to stop taking her contraceptive. If a woman has concerns, she can discuss this with her doctor," the EMA said in its latest statement.
The French government earlier this month said it would stop reimbursing prescription costs of the third- and fourth-generation pills and would restrict their use after a woman sued Bayer over alleged side effects.
About 2.5 million women in France take third- and fourth-generation pills, roughly half all those on oral contraceptives. French health authorities argue this use of the newer pills is excessive.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Anthony Barker) | <urn:uuid:1e4ca070-dc80-407b-9726-7758bb49fa82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtvbam.com/news/articles/2013/jan/28/eu-drugs-agency-to-review-safety-of-contraceptives/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968642 | 355 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Note: This item is more than five years old. Please take the publication date into consideration for any date references.
July 30, 2007
High Expectations for Upcoming Dove, Teal Seasons
AUSTIN, Texas — The outlook for September’s early migratory bird hunting in Texas looks promising, according to wildlife biologists with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Dove and teal are expected to flourish as above-normal rainfall through the summer has yielded excellent range conditions throughout much of the state.
“Above-average precipitation statewide has created ideal habitat conditions for doves,” said Jay Roberson, TPWD dove program leader. “I expect above-average production this year and hunt success should be higher provided doves are not dispersed.”
Roberson explained that the abundant seed production, predominately sunflower and croton, will help recently fledged birds to rapidly put on weight. But, quality range conditions could also cause doves to disperse as food sources become readily available and make managed fields less attractive early in the season.
Dove season in the North Zone is set for Sept. 1-Oct. 30, with a 15-bird bag and not more than two white-tipped doves; the Central Zone runs Sept. 1-Oct. 30 and reopens Dec. 26-Jan. 4, with a 12-bird bag and not more than two white-tipped doves; and the South Zone is set for Sept. 21-Nov. 11, reopening Dec. 26-Jan. 12 with a 12 bird bag and not more than two white-tipped doves. Possession limit is twice the daily bag.
The Special South Texas Whitewing Zone, which now encompasses land west of I-35 and south of U. S. Highway 90, is open to white-winged dove afternoon-only (noon to sunset) hunting the first two Saturdays and Sundays in September. The daily bag limit is 12 birds, not more than four (4) mourning doves and two (2) white-tipped doves.
The early teal season runs Sept. 15-23 in the High Plains Mallard Management Unit and Sept. 15-30 in all other Texas counties. The daily bag limit for teal is four.
“There is lots of rain and water on the coast and we’re looking at the third highest population of bluewings on record heading this way, so it could be unbelievable,” said Dave Morrison, TPWD’s waterfowl program leader. “Greenwings are also at near record highs. But, with all the water we have, it could spread the birds out. Everybody is going to get some of the gravy.”
Both greenwing and bluewing teal numbers this year are about 50 percent above the long-term population averages, said Morrison. “The September teal season has the potential to be one of the best in the last several years,” he added.
Because hunting conditions are so good, TPWD anticipates a large turnout for the dove season opener in the North and Central Zones and is urging hunters to purchase their hunting license early to avoid last-minute delays. Licenses go on sale Aug. 15 and can be purchased at all TPWD law enforcement offices and from more than 1,200 retail outlets statewide.
Hunters are also reminded a state migratory game bird stamp is required for doves, waterfowl and sandhill cranes and in addition, a Federal Duck Stamp is needed to hunt teal.
Dove and teal hunters should take note they may only use “plugged” shotguns capable of holding no more than three shotshells and if you are hunting teal be sure to carry only approved nontoxic shotshells into the field as lead shot is prohibited.
If you don’t have a place to hunt, TPWD offers opportunities for both dove and teal on managed public lands and leased private land. For $48, the price of an Annual Public Hunting Permit from TPWD, hunters can access more than a million acres of public hunting lands, including 155 units covering more than 56,000 acres leased primarily for hunting dove and other small game. TPWD’s public hunting program leased the land using money generated by permit sales.
While public hunting lands can be found throughout the state, most of the dove and small game leases occur along the I-35 and I-10 corridors within easy driving distance of the major metropolitan areas. Some areas offer special hunting opportunity for youth.
For the latest dove hunting conditions across Texas, check out TPWD’s Weekly Migratory Game Bird Report on the Web starting in early September.
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If you have any suggestions for improving these pages, send an e-mail to [email protected] and mention Plain Text Pages. | <urn:uuid:1d94ce08-024d-47b7-8001-abeaaff2b9c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/?req=20070730b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933737 | 1,206 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Welcome to the post 10 year frame on the timeline of the Flash generation. 10 years is quite an achievement in this fast paced industry.
An industry where technologies evolve and die faster than the amount of time it takes to actually master them, an industry that can literally be defined by a single word, a word that sums up the speed in which we pace ourselves as designers, developers and end users; a word that describes the nature of our game.
Flash has established itself as the supreme king of interface on the web. From its humble beginnings at Future Wave Software going by its original name (Future Splash) to its appointment into the ranks of Adobe’s best line up.
Future Splash was originally used early on in 1996 to add some pop to websites like Disney and The Simpsons. Websites like YouTube and thousands of others use it as its main interface and video player of choice.
Television and movie studios are now pumping its content through the Flash codec and video games are being launched on the web using Flash. Flash is everywhere.
The New Age
Flash has extended itself well beyond its humble beginnings from the browser it was born in.
We are now in a new age, an age where web design has been completely redefined and the interfaces that are being developed closely resemble the world we live in.
Flash is being implemented not just on the web but on cell phones, kiosks, environmental installations and it is being applied in new ways every single day.
I was recently perusing The FWA as I do every morning, getting my daily dose of inspiration. No matter how many times I go through the various sites listed I always find something useful for a project I am currently working on.
The evolution of Flash is so gratifying because every time a new SOTD winner is posted we are exposed to some new element, new expression and new implementation of Flash.
The variations seem to be endless, the possibilities are exciting. Design and functionality seem to be right at home in the fluid and sexy interface Flash offers.
Some of the latest SOTD winners have been designed around the new trend of using realistic environments as an interface and navigational tool.
The sites are rich in color and real world elements. They take over the screen, content now comes to life. It’s immersive, engaging and exciting.
The depth of the navigations and content seem endless; it is an exploration into new worlds. 3D elements are being utilized and video is now a staple of any decent Flash site.
The days of boxed out content living in tight quarters and scrollable text aligned perfectly within neat little areas are done.
Free at last
Design is now an explosion; it has finally been released from its captive state and can breathe free onto our screens. Design has never been this alive and it’s only the beginning.
What we are experiencing now is an online coming of age, a turning point for designers, developers and end users.
We are breathing a soul into the nostrils of the flat static internet that we have known until now and are collectively bringing it to life by raising our expectations; developing sites and applications that reflect what the web is truly capable of.
Take a look as some of the more recent sites on The FWA and you will find examples of what I am referring to.
One site I especially enjoyed was the Come in to Your Closet minisite for Ikea; finally the pages of the Ikea catalogue have emerged from its bulky print catalogue.
Even companies like Perdue have taken the environmental approach to get their messages across.
The Future Path?
Has the web finally chosen the path to become more aligned with our real world?
Has it inherited our attributes and addressed our needs as people who want massive amounts of information and don’t want to read pages and pages of text to get it?
Have we imprinted our real world onto the web; expanding it into virtual worlds beyond our wildest imaginations?
I certainly don’t have the exact answers to these questions but they are fun to think about when looking at some of these newer sites popping up all over the internet.
I find it to be exhilarating when I come across a site that transcends the norm and brings me into a new world.
This is exciting because it will not only give us end users a better overall web experience but it will help to expand their minds and their ideas and take them to places they weren’t capable of going to before.
All made possible using Flash.
About the Author, Craig Elimeliah
Craig Elimeliah (former) Producer at Firstborn Multimedia. He is a native New Yorker who started his design career in Jerusalem. Craig has a background in design, technology, project management, entrepreneurship and sales.
When Craig is not producing projects for Firstborn he spends his time with his kids, writing, painting and cooking. | <urn:uuid:3fb06536-d35e-4623-947c-93ca491929cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thefwa.com/article/environmental-awareness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954463 | 1,006 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Sri Lankan cinema took a revolutionized twist with screening of Jackson Anthoney’s epic ‘Abba’ a big budgeted film that went down our own rich history. Then several award winning directors followed the footsteps and engaged in massive projects to explores our roots and project Sri Lanka’s rich cultural traditions to the world. ‘Mahindagamanaya’ and ‘Kusa Paba’ are the latest films which got tremendous attraction of the Sri Lankan movie lovers. ‘The God King’ and ‘ Veera Puran Appu’ were two of the old hits in the history of Sri Lankan cinema based on historic epics. They all proved one common fact; films based on historic epics have never failed to enthrall the audience. Packed with action, battle scenes and drama such films have the uncanny touch to leave a ‘historic impact’ in the industry.
Sugath Samarakoon’s epic ‘Vijaya Kuweni’ – Rejuvenating of Kuveni the Yakka Princess
Well known playwright and actor Sugath Samarakoon is the latest artiste to take to the task with his epic film ‘Vijaya Kuweni’. Samarakoon well-known for his controversy ridden plays like ‘Uthure Rahula Himi’ and ‘Commando Diyasena’ in 1980s has returned to the limelight with this massive cinematic venture, a story of the ‘Mahawamsa. It is only after doing an in-depth analysis for seven years on the Vijay-Kuveni story that Samarakoon started work on the project to present the injustice done to Kuveni.
“I don’t think the Mahavamsa tells the real story about our ancestors. Ven Mahanama thera does not tell the real story of Kuveni. For some reason or other, he has buried the true details and tried to highlight the heroics of king Vijaya. Kuweni was branded a traitor because she helped Vijaya capture the island. However it was Vijaya who betrayed her in the end because his friends and advisors requested him to bring an Aryan princess to bear fair skinned children as future heirs to the throne,”
Filming was done in Anuradhapura, Rajanganaya, Gampaha and Pilkuththuva. Roger Seniviratne plays the role of King Vijaya while the Dulani Anuradha of Aba fame gives life to Kuveni. Minister Mervin Silva portrays the role of Kuveni’s father. | <urn:uuid:da33c903-dbe6-4894-9e06-72cbb575a45f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://films.lk/FilmDetails.php?id=2017 | 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 | 0.950619 | 558 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Developing A “Carry-On Only” Spirituality
I used to do a fair bit of travelling and along the way I picked up some tips on how to make a trip less stressful. One of them was to only take carry-on baggage. By doing this I saved countless hours not having to stand in line to check and drop off my bags and then again to pick them up again at the carousel. It also made it possible to use public transportation to and from the airport thus saving me a lot of money. But probably the biggest benefit I learned, which wasn’t immediately apparent, is that when you are able to live with just a little you discover how little you really need.
In the Gospel today Jesus sends out 72 appointees from among the disciples to go preach the Good News. The first thing that Jesus tells them as they are about to leave is how dangerous it is going to be, they are being sent like lambs into the midst of wolves. This was not going to be any luxury resort vacation.
Given the perilous nature of the mission the next thing that Jesus asks them might have made them stop and think. He says, “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals and greet no one on the road.” That’s right, no extra food, no safety equipment, no sunscreen and certainly no credit card. This was going to be a lightweight, unencumbered trip. Every good sailor knows that too much ballast will sink the boat and every missionary sooner or later learns that too much stuff gets in the way of the mission. It is not pastorally productive to be too self-reliant because it gets in the way of one’s faith in God.
We should see in Jesus’ minimalist approach not an invitation to die of starvation or by exposure to the elements. In fact it is just the opposite. It is an invitation to be open to what God wants to provide for us through the circumstances we encounter and in the people that we meet. With trust we will find that God’s bounty is greater than what we could think of supplying for ourselves.
Practically speaking not all of us have the ability to be carry-on only types. For some, life will always have to make space for the mini-van pulling a U-Haul trailer with the kid’s bicycles piled on top. But from an interior point of view, the missionary spirit is one that anyone can begin to foster, if we were to know what it looks like.
Today’s memorial commemorates two of St. Paul’s helpers in the mission field, Timothy and Titus. St. Paul was an important mentor to these young men and in his letter to his spiritual son Timothy we can discern the most important things that Paul would think a good missionary should always have handy. The list I came up with looks something like this:
Gratitude, A heart for prayer, Empathy, Joy, Courage, Love, Self-discipline, Pride (not for self but for the Gospel), Trust and the ability to accept suffering.
This is quite the packing list, but it doesn’t weigh a thing and it doesn’t take up any space in the overhead compartment.
See Also: Living the Liturgical Year on the Memorial of Sts. Timothy & Titus | <urn:uuid:e7ad4ac8-bf30-4334-abc0-0793310cae48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://redemptoristpreacher.com/tag/jesus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965784 | 691 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Why Palau? If you're looking to disappear from the face of the earth, Palau's your place. That's not only because this Micronesian island nation 550 miles east of the Philippines is the most remote location on our list, but also because if you visit -- or move -- you're likely to spend much of your time underwater. Palau, with its crystal-clear lagoons, unique reefs, teeming undersea life and World War II shipwrecks, is among the world's top dive destinations. American-funded infrastructure improvements mean the roads are paved and there's now a modern airport, but beyond that, if you're a Robinson Crusoe type, you might find the life of your dreams.
Life of an "Expat" "I grew up in Olympia, Washington, and my mother married a Palauan gentleman who was serving in the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Lewis up there," says Sam Scott, 46."The next thing that we know..."
"My stepfather is being discharged and brought back to Palau to take over the position of high chief." Sam's stepfather, it turned out, was a "Very Important Palauan." A king of sorts. After finishing high school, Sam joined his stepfather in Palau. "I was thinking, 'Wow, I'm coming to Palau; I'm going to be living in royalty, blah, blah, blah." The reality was a little different. "He put me to work in his restaurant for a dollar an hour," Sam says with a laugh. "This was not what I was expecting." Over time, however, Sam's stepfather introduced him to Palau's broader possibilities, which included a life spent primarily on -- and under -- the water. "The moment he took me out to the Rock Islands, to the lagoon area, and I saw this beautiful underwater world, I was just blown away. This was something I had to see more of." Sam learned to drive a boat and took up scuba diving. One day, out of the blue, his stepfather handed him the keys to a boat. "He said to me, 'Sam, I want you to take this boat and become the biggest, most successful tour operator on Palau.' And with that boat, and nothing else in my pocket, I built what I have today." Now, almost 30 years later, Sam's Tours operates a fleet of a dozen boats and employs a staff of 50. The company runs tours and dive trips around Palau, which, with its globally renowned reef and wreck diving, has been named an "Underwater Wonder of the World." But Sam has built more than a business; he has also built a life on Palau. He's married to "a beautiful local girl," Martul, and is the father of five kids -- ranging from 1 to 18. The family lives on the premises of Sam's Tours. "I open the blinds and look across the water to the Rock Islands," he says. Palau, too, has developed since Sam arrived -- "all the roads are nicely paved" -- and the airport, once little more than a tin shack, is now state of the art. Even so, the island Sam calls "the jewel of Micronesia" retains its natural beauty and remains fertile ground for entrepreneurship. "There's still opportunity here," Sam says. "A lot of people who come to visit come back to live, and they find their niche."
Your New Home
Facts of Life
For getting away from absolutely everything. See more island real estate suggestions in the Best Islands to Live On database. | <urn:uuid:1bbd879d-8cb0-4c38-9cb7-45f3e7475b9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.islands.com/article/Best-Islands-to-Live-On-Palau | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980267 | 747 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Buy animals from the pet store? Check out this guest blog from PETA’s Alisa, and hopefully you’ll think twice before ever doing so again.
It’s déjà vu all over again, and it’ll probably have you wondering: What is PETCO thinking? Other than, “Hey, we can make some money!”
A PETA undercover investigator worked for more than three months at Sun Pet Ltd., an animal dealer in Atlanta that sells hamsters, mice, gerbils, birds, fish, and other small animals directly to PetSmart, PETCO, Pet Supplies “Plus,” Petland, and Walmart. He documented that animals were cruelly killed, abusively handled, and kept in severely crowded, filthy conditions. Surprised?
PETA’s investigator witnessed numerous abuses. A worker put hamsters in a plastic bag and bashed them against a table in an attempt to kill them. He also reported that many sick and injured animals died after PETCO and PetSmart stores returned them like damaged goods to Sun Pet without enclosing any food or water for the long journey, instead of providing them with veterinary care or ending their suffering.
Sun Pet sells hundreds of thousands of animals annually, just like U.S. Global Exotics (USGE), the exotic-animal dealer that PETA investigated late last year. That investigation resulted in the seizure of more than 26,000 animals, the largest animal seizure in history. (Perhaps also not surprisingly, Sun Pet has ties to USGE. Before that hellhole was raided and shut down, Sun Pet purchased hamsters from USGE and then sold them to PETCO stores, among others!).
This is PETA’s fourth exposé revealing the abusive and filthy conditions endured by animals who are eventually sold at PETCO stores and our third exposé revealing conditions for animals who are eventually sold at PetSmart stores. Please tell PetSmart and PETCO in no uncertain terms to stop selling animals in their stores.
PETA investigations amply demonstrate that appalling neglect and abuse is just business as usual for companies that buy and sell living beings, so please tell your coworkers, friends, and everyone you know not to shop in their stores.
- Alisa Mullins | <urn:uuid:6bc1db18-5c23-406e-8ca7-3ddd8f200ac6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peta2.com/blog/authorities_are_on_the_scene_at_petco_supplier/?send_to=Ally%20 | 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 | 0.953148 | 475 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Christian approaches to whatever subject you are studying
Fictional Absence - Chapter 4: After the Funeral
- Pete Lowman has a doctorate in English literature on God and the novel. He loves Bible exposition and is currently co-pastor at Wycliffe Church in Reading, England. Pete worked for IFES for 23 years and has spoken to student audiences in nearly 30 countries. His publications include Gateways to God and A Long Way East of Eden. View all resources by Pete Lowman
In Fictional Absence, which has been slightly revised for publication here, Pete Lowman considers the presence and absence of God in English literature.
Introduction: The Practice of the Absence of God
One: The Birth of the Novel
Two: The Eighteenth Century
Three: The Nineteenth Century
Four: After the Funeral
Conclusion: Learning to go Blind
Appendix I: The Possibility of Providence
Appendix II: The Fictional Hypothesis
Yet, even if God had died in English fiction, He still did not quite stop moving. Supernaturalism did not disappear altogether. To the Christian reader, this comes as no surprise: if human beings are 'built' for relationship with a God, then denial of that God will not lead to total forgetfulness, but rather to a hunger that will resurface from time to time. It would seem that the imaginations of a number of leading novelists required something of the kind; and the result was various forms of 'secularised supernaturalism'. Miriam Allott comments that:
Paradoxically, it is in this context of doubt and scepticism that the novel acquires its most potent supernatural ambience – we are particularly aware of it in the novels of Hardy, James and Conrad, where it is associated with a vivid sense of hostile and evil forces in the world.
We also find – later in the twentieth century – the emergence of writers with visions of Christianity that deviate significantly from biblical orthodoxy, but in whose fictions God is nonetheless doing something. Perhaps the cultural situation was now at a stage where it would be hard for a novel based on a genuinely biblical worldview to 'make it' into the literary canon, since that worldview was now becoming very much a radical minority viewpoint. But God and the supernatural could not be squeezed out altogether.
(i) Whispers, Echoes and Metaphors
The first thing we would expect to find in a situation of 'loss of faith' is that the images of Christian supernaturalism, while no longer believed in as such, would continue to retain their attraction as a source of powerful metaphor. This tendency can be seen emerging back before the departure from a Christian pattern had become entirely dominant, in two virtually contemporary novels, Dickens' Dombey and Son (1846-48) and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847).
In Dombey and Son Dickens repeatedly makes metaphorical use of the concepts of Christian supernaturalism. Alice and Edith are both compared to fallen spirits. Florence is referred to as an angel throughout the book; and when she leaves Edith, it is as if the latter's 'good angel went out in that form', and she is left to the 'devil' Carker says 'possesses' her at Dijon. As Edith’s husband Dombey is also possessed by a 'moody, stubborn, sullen demon', disaster follows. Carker has lost 'his solitary angel' with his sister Harriet's departure; the full result is only reaped in his return from Dijon, drawn by 'smoking horses...as if...ridden by a demon', after which he is run down by the 'fiery devil', the train. This is only one of the chains of images in the novel, of course. And we are clearly involved in a process of secularization when the primary use of the Christian supernatural is as a source of metaphor on a par with explicitly "legendary" images such as 'enchantress', 'ogress', and 'good monster', which are also employed in Dombey and Son.
Something similar occurs in Wuthering Heights, where the invocation of the demonic is integral to Emily Bronte’s success in building up a very real sense of evil. The demonic archetype is introduced in particular with reference to Heathcliff, who is described as being, at his first appearance, 'as dark almost as if it came from the devil'. He is portrayed as 'possessed of something diabolical' as a boy, and, elsewhere, as a goblin. Isabella wonders, 'Is he a devil?', and soon decides he is indeed 'a lying fiend, a monster, and not a human being'; Nellie too asks herself if he is a 'hideous, incarnate demon’. There are several similar references. But the demonic seems to have a share in most of the characters: Hindley is 'Devil daddy' to Hareton, Catherine Earnshaw dreams of being unhappy in heaven and consequently being expelled thence, and even the younger Catherine ('taking a long , dark book from a shelf’) claims to have 'progressed’ in black magic – 'I shall soon be competent to make a clear house of it.’ All in all it is hardly surprising to find Wuthering Heights described as an 'infernal house', and as purgatory or worse.
These references are employed to give a kind of resonance; there is no unambiguous suggestion that the moors have suffered the intrusion of supernatural beings. The demonic is an archetype that is being used primarily to dramatise a quality which can come to power in the soul of the ordinary mortal. The prosaic Lockwood's unexpected and horrific dream, and the force of Heathcliff's final experiences. serve to leave just a shadow of a doubt – as if the forms invoked by the author, and the figure of Catherine contemplated so intensely at the end by Heathcliff in a bizarre kind of neo-Platonism, might just possibly have independent objective existence.
A providential view is indeed suggested as something of an alternative by Nellie: 'He trusted God; and God comforted him', she remarks in a matter-of-fact way about Edgar; and she advises the latter to resign the younger Catherine to God, in view of His providence. A certain ambiguity hangs over this; in a sense Nellie's faith could be said to be justified – Catherine does survive in the end. But the providential view can more plausibly be seen as Nellie's attempt to impose a 'civilising shape' on what she sees. The old retainer Joseph's Christianity does not exactly add any lustre to the faith: and Edgar's merely becomes part of the colourlessly 'safe' world of the Grange.
When Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights, Nellie remarks, 'I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy.' There is no question of prayer as a resource or grace as a solution to the problems of Isabella or the younger Catherine; and one of the most painful things about Wuthering Heights is the way one character after another is left at the mercy of forces that will corrupt or destroy it. God is as catastrophically absent from the world of Emily Bronte's novel as from the world of Zola. But where God is absent the demons have full power: the language of demonology provides categories for the description of an evil (or an amoral power doing much that within the Christian framework would be described as evil) that is rendered with such devouring intensity as to dwarf and distance the 'normal' world of Nellie and Lockwood; thereby almost imparting a kind of reality to the numinous world from which its metaphors are drawn.
This is similar to what takes place in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, at the end of which Hardy's tragic movement reaches a mythic culmination: 'The President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.' Hardy is not setting up a metaphysic: the myth merely expresses an insight – or an opinion – about the nature of ordinary life. At the same time, if Hardy's coincidences are not to seem too contrived, if his reader is not to be left with too much unease about the 'dismal generalizations he illogically induces from the extraordinary actions he invents', then the support of a mythology that comes close to taking on objective reality is of some assistance. The necessary background to Hardy's vision involves a hint of supernaturalism.
In Conrad there are some clear examples of this 'secularised supernatural', the 'vivid sense of hostile and evil forces in the world' to which Miriam Allott refers. There are the hostile seas of The Shadow Line, where the young captain laughs at Mr. Burns' fears of the evil influence of his dead predecessor, but immediately afterwards, with 'the southern shoulder of Koh-ring ... like an evil attendant, on our port quarter', encounters 'an inexplicable, steady breeze, right in our teeth. There was no sense in it.... Only purposeful malevolence could account for it.' In the end it is by 'the exorcising virtue of Mr.Burns' awful laugh' that 'the malicious spectre had been laid, the evil spell broken, the curse removed. We were now in the hands of a kind and energetic Providence.'
In Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness Conrad presents something persistently 'abominable' which comes almost to seem more than natural, and reveals itself in the malevolence of the universe through which Jim (in his open boat) and Harlow (in his river steamer) travel; finally culminating in Jim's temptation by Gentleman Brown – 'it was as if a demon had been whispering advice in his ear' – and Harlow's encounter with Kurtz who 'had taken a high seat among the devils of the land – I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you?' In all this Conrad remained an agnostic. But his work seems virtually to demand a transcendent ground for its metaphor. It does not assume that such a ground exists: it merely enacts Sartre's remark that a finite point, if it is to have meaning, must have an infinite reference point. The use of some kind of 'beyond' becomes essential if the 'given' is to be described. How, after all, is one to define evil in a totally relativistic universe, or disorder if there is no underlying order to give the term meaning?
Graham Greene sees something similar taking place in the fiction of James. To him, the 'crystallization' of the 'dominant theme' in James' private universe is the point in the scenario to The Ivory Tower where James speaks of 'the black and merciless things that are behind great possessions'. To Greene, this is the keynote of a 'sense of evil religious in its intensity' in James' work.
Experience taught him to believe in supernatural evil, but not in supernatural good. Milly Theale is all human; her courage has not the supernatural support which holds Kate Croy and Charlotte Stant in a strong coil.
The ghosts in The Turn of the Screw are presented with a deliberate ambiguity as to whether they are to seem objective realities, or the creation of the governess' brain; at the very least they serve as 'secularised supernaturalism' in the sense of a mythic representation of evil. James himself remarked, 'I recognise that they are not ghosts at all, as we now know the ghost, but goblins, elves, imps, demons. The essence of the matter was the villainy of the motive in the evoked predatory creature.'
Moving into the twentieth century, Lawrence and Forster also include such references to give depth and resonance to what they are describing. Forster writes (fascinatingly) in A Passage to India:
If this world is not to our taste, well, at all events there is Heaven, Hell, Annihilation – one or other of those large things, that huge scenic background of stars, fires, blue or black air. All heroic endeavour, and all that is known as art, assumes that there is such a background.
When Mrs. Moore encounters the 'echo' in the Marabar caves that, for her, destroys this background, Forster depicts it (one paragraph after the previous quotation) in supernaturalistic terms:
What had spoken to her in that scoured-out cavity of the granite? What dwelt in the first of the caves? Something very old and very small. Before time, it was before space also. Something snub-nosed, incapable of generosity – the undying worm itself. Since hearing its voice, she had not entertained one large thought, she was actually envious of Adela... Visions are supposed to entail profundity but – Wait till you get one, dear reader! The abyss also may be petty, the serpent of eternity made of maggots; her constant thought was: 'Less attention should be paid to my future daughter-in-law and more to me...'
Laurence Lerner notes 'the tact with which Forster stops just short of the supernatural, the completeness with which the newly-released evil is embodied in the book's action and yet retains a further, numinous quality', and proceeds to call the 'Caves' section 'one of the most brilliant and disturbing episodes in modern fiction'.
D.H. Lawrence almost takes a step further into outright paganism, for example in the powerful section at the close of St.Mawr. Lou, weary of men and of sex, resolves to 'give myself only to the unseen presences', like a Vestal Virgin, 'woman weary of the embrace of incompetent men ... turning to the unseen gods, the unseen spirits, the hidden fire, and devoting herself to that, and that alone.'
She buys a ranch in the wilds of New Mexico; the previous owner had given up the struggle against the 'aroma and the power and the slight horror of the pre-sexual primeval world', where there was 'always some mysterious malevolence fighting, fighting against the will of man. A strange invisible influence coming out of the livid rock fastnesses in the bowels of those uncreated rocky Mountains, preying upon the will of man, and slowly wearing down his resistance, his onward-pushing spirit.' This alien force has its own attraction, however:
The same when a couple of horses were struck by lightning. It frightened her...and made her know, secretly and with cynical certainty, that there was no merciful God in the heavens. A very tall, elegant pine tree just above her cabin took the lightning, and stood tall and elegant as before, but with a white seam spiralling from its crest, all down its tall trunk, to earth. The perfect scar, white and long as lightning itself. And every time she looked at it, she said to herself, in spite of herself: 'There is no Almighty loving God. The God there is shaggy as the pine trees, and horrible as the lightning.' Outwardly, she never confessed this. Openly, she thought of her dear New England Church as usual. But in the violent undercurrent of her woman's soul, after the storms, she would look at that living, seamed tree, and the voice would say in her, almost savagely: 'What nonsense about Jesus and a God of Love, in a place like this! This is more awful and more splendid. I like it better.'... There was no love on this ranch. There was life, intense, bristling life, full of energy, but also, with an undertone of savage sordidness... Nay, it was a world before and after the God of Love.
Lawrence is a superb writer, and the power that has left the pine tree 'tall and elegant' but with a 'perfect scar' is conveyed to the reader as real, daunting, in the strict sense awesome. As it happens, what Lawrence creates is something not entirely removed from the vision of the God of power, of 'otherness', that appears in some of the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 45:7 for example: 'I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things'). The Christian reader may feel that Lawrence – like many another – is right in what he affirms, while hopelessly wrong in what he denies. Anyway, it is – perhaps disturbingly – to this power that Lou surrenders herself a couple of paragraphs from the book's close:
There's something else even that loves me and wants me. I can't tell you what it is. It's a spirit. And it's here, on this ranch. It's here, in this landscape. It's something more real to me than men are, and it soothes me, and it holds me up. I don't know what it is, definitely. It's something wild, that will hurt me sometimes and will wear me down sometimes. I know it. But it's something big, bigger than men, bigger than people, bigger than religion... It's a mission if you like. I am imbecile enough for that! – But it's my mission to keep myself for the spirit that is wild, and has waited so long here: even waited for such as me. Now I've come! Now I'm here. Now I am where I want to be: with the spirit that wants me... And it doesn't want to save me either. It needs me. It craves for me.
On the far side of the Enlightenment, 'secularized supernaturalism' comes to the very edge of turning into a new animism. It is still, probably, a myth: a reification of the disparate forces of the 'other', of the natural world. But to make such a comment is to run the risk of 'demythologizing' Lawrence into something more comfortable, more humanistic. Certainly Lawrence is here speaking to parts of the human psyche seldom stirred since the 'loss of faith'; imaginative capacities that could have reached forth in worship to the God of the unabridged biblical revelation. Worship, devotion, is what Lawrence gropes after here: if only, alas, for something that is no more than power, that finally rises no higher than the Baals, the nature gods denounced in the Old Testament.
A more directly Christian supernaturalism is toyed with, for other purposes, in Faulkner and Fitzgerald. In 'The Bear', the central story in William Faulkner's masterly Go Down, Moses, the saint-hero, Isaac McCaslin, gives a theistic interpretation to the history of the American South, and proceeds at some cost to base his whole life on that. On the other hand, he does not pray, and the theistic content of his opinions are really (once again) biographical data, intended to say more about him than about history. Providential reference is likewise employed to indicate America's existence beyond the possessiveness of any particular group of human beings in Fitzgerald's The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. Here the significantly-named Braddock Washington has built his personal empire on ruthlessly selfish exploitation of the enormous natural resource he has discovered – a mountain that is one solid diamond. But his empire collapses; and the rejection of his last proud bribe by the Creator of the diamond on which his wealth and power are based – the God behind the ‘Providence’ that supposedly led him to the diamond in the first place – is a device emphasising Washington's lack of any real title to the resources he has used with massive and deliberate egoism. But the objective existence of a Creator is not absolutely essential to the point Fitzgerald is making; the Creator, like the diamond mountain, is part of Fitzgerald's fable. Fitzgerald's real attitude to providence, one suspects, is exemplified by the hero of The Great Gatsby, who can find no reality anywhere to match the grandeur of his Platonic dream; the 'act of God' for which Daisy sends Nick Carraway to watch does not take place, and the only eyes watching over the valley of ashes are the expressionless, unthinking, heedless eyes of the advertisement for Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. The man who appeals to these as divine authority goes off and kills the wrong person as a result; it is a powerful image of a world adrift.
(ii) Deviant Visions: 'Brideshead Revisited'
Of course the 'loss of faith' did not render the depiction of a supernaturalistic causality utterly impossible; and there have been authors who have attempted to fly in the face of the dominant convention. Two that deserve particular attention are Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.
Not much of Waugh's work is relevant here, but Brideshead Revisited (subtitled 'The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder') undoubtedly is. Its theme, according to Waugh's own 1959 preface, is 'the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters'. In this respect, the central passage is the conversation between Ryder and Cordelia that gives the title to Book Three, 'A Twitch Upon the Thread':
'Still trying to convert me, Cordelia?'
'Oh, no. That's all over, too. D'you know what papa said when he became a Catholic? Mummy told me once. He said to her: "You have brought back my family to the faith of their ancestors." Pompous, you know. It takes people different ways. Anyhow, the family haven't been very constant, have they? There's him gone and Sebastian gone and Julia gone. But God won't let them go for long, you know. I wonder if you remember the story mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk – I mean the bad evening. "Father Brown" said something like "I caught him" (the thief) "with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread."'
The various characters are indeed gone away from God to 'the ends of the world'. Ryder, the narrator, has passed beyond his 'Arcadia' phase of illusions, aestheticism, alcohol and Oxford:
"I have left behind illusion," I said to myself. "Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions – with the aid of my five senses."
I have since learned that there is no such world, but then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all about me at the end of the avenue.
Since that moment of naturalistic optimism he has roamed the jungles – of Central America, painting the geographical 'ends of the world’. Of the Brideshead family, Julia has married a divorcee, and then become deeply involved in an adulterous liaison with Ryder after his return from Central America (the moral 'ends of the world'); Sebastian has settled in Morocco and become an alcoholic; and Lord Marchmain himself has been living in Venice for years, again in an adulterous relationship. How exactly the 'twitch upon the thread' operates for these people is something that Waugh leaves unclear. Sebastian finds some sort of equilibrium in Morocco, and goes 'back to the Church', for reasons that are not particularly obvious, apart from the fact that he was looked after by Franciscans when he was ill. Finally, still something of an alcoholic, he attaches himself to a monastery in Tunis. Cordelia (a member of the family who has remained a committed Catholic) predicts that 'one morning, after one of his drinking bouts, he'll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments. It's not such a bad way of getting through one's life.' Julia's return begins when she simply starts to think in Catholic categories again. She tells Ryder:
I've been punished a little for marrying Rex. You see, I can't get all that sort of thing out of my mind, quite – Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell, Nanny Hawkins, and the catechism. It becomes part of oneself, if they give it one early enough. And yet I wanted my child to have it... now I suppose I shall be punished for what I've just done. Perhaps that is why you and I are here together like this...part of a plan.
It is difficult to avoid an impression that the 'divine grace' that is Waugh's theme functions primarily as sacramental grace, even though what is being stressed in this immediate context is Catholic teaching rather than infant baptism. At any rate, the idea seems basically to be ‘once a catholic, always a Catholic'. As time goes on, Julia becomes haunted by a feeling that 'all mankind and God, too, were in a conspiracy against us But we've got our happiness in spite of them.... They can't hurt us, can they?' 'Not tonight; not now', her lover Ryder reassures her. She replies uneasily, 'Not for how many nights?' The same idea of inevitable re-conversion recurs when – after an embarrassing passage where Julia waxes hysterical about sin and damnation in pastiche Eliot – Ryder says:
'Of course it's a thing psychologists could explain; a preconditioning from childhood; feelings of guilt from the nonsense you were taught in the nursery. You do know at heart that it's all bosh. don't you?'
'How I wish it was!'
The process continues: Julia's relationship with Ryder fades slowly but inevitably. Nineteen pages later, a page after the account of Sebastian's return to the Church, Ryder (who has learned through talking with Cordelia to stop thinking of her piety as 'thwarted passion') glimpses Julia wearing a 'thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?"'
Cordelia's faith, not Julia's secularity, begins to appear the norm. And then the final, conclusive 'twitch upon the thread' comes with the return to England of the dying Lord Marchmain. Brideshead, the eldest son, a convinced (if somewhat dense) Catholic, arranges for his father to be visited by a priest. Ryder is outraged: 'No one could have made it clearer, all his life, what he thought of religion... How can we stop this tomfoolery?' Julia 'did not answer for some time; then: "Why should we?"' Waugh seems to be setting up a direct opposition in both Julia's life and her father's between a more or less predestined grace ('Papa doesn't want him yet', is Cordelia's comment on the priest (my emphasis)) and human freewill (as expressed in Lord Marchmain's lifelong rejection of religion, and Julia's 'wish' that Catholicism should be untrue).
Indeed, Ryder's attitude to the 'tomfoolery' is unmistakeably endorsed by Lord Marchmain: 'I have not been a practising member of your Church for twenty-five years. Brideshead, show Father Mackay the way out.' But Waugh throws a subtle aura of doubt on Ryder as the embodiment of objective wisdom:
I felt triumphant. I had been right, everyone else had been wrong, truth had prevailed ... and there was also – I can now confess it – another unexpressed, inexpressible, indecent little victory that I was furtively celebrating. I guessed that that morning's business had put Brideshead some considerable way further from his rightful inheritance.
This 'indecent' hope that the family mansion would go to Ryder’s beloved Julia is so easily understandable, like Julia's sense of being thwarted; and yet both of these imply some norm by the standards of which they are incomplete.
Next, Waugh succeeds paradoxically in making the Catholic belief about the reality of grace in the ritual of last rites seem all the more strong by appearing absurd. Ryder asks for the rationale of the priest's visit to the dying man to be explained:
Brideshead told me at some length, and when he had finished Cara slightly marred the unity of the Catholic front by saying in simple wonder, 'I never heard that before.'
That the steady commitment of the dour Brideshead and the admirable Cordelia, not to mention the erratic Sebastian, should have stayed loyal to such a faith, seems almost to demand the existence of a power of divine grace such as that in which they believe.
Lord Marchmain suddenly worsens. Brideshead and Cordelia are absent: Julia is forced to take action, and calls in the priest, even though the doctor says the disturbance might kill her father. The priest anoints Lord Marchmain and pronounces words of absolution, asking him to make a sign that he is 'sorry for his sins'. It is a taut moment: Julia and Cara (Lord Marchmain's long-term mistress) are kneeling, and then, very credibly, Ryder follows suit:
Then I knelt, too, and prayed: "O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin" ... I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved... Suddenly Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I thought he had felt the touch of the chrism and was wiping it away. "O God," I prayed, "don't let him do that." But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.
It is the miracle that authenticates Waugh's 'grace'; in that room, where the cool, objective narrator Ryder is praying – praying for reasons immediately explicable in emotional terms, yet in praying putting the emotional force of the narrative point of view firmly behind Julia and the priest – it all seems very logical, very credible. Within a page the action moves swiftly to an equally logical consummation. Lord Marchmain dies, 'proving both sides right in the dispute, priest and doctor' (a shrewd move on Waugh's part, implying that the novel is not really seeing things only from the Catholic angle); and Julia bids farewell to Ryder, recognising that as a Catholic she cannot marry him. The logic of the movement of events – under grace, perhaps – is emphasised to the end:
"I don't want to make it easier for you," I said; "I hope your heart may break; but I do understand."
The avalanche was down, the hillside swept bare behind it; the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mound glittered and lay still in the silent valley.
With that marvellous final image the book's main section closes. It is an image Waugh used earlier for Ryder's sense of being threatened by Cordelia's and Julia's faith: a vast mound of snow building up behind an arctic trapper's hut, about to crash down and destroy it. In so many ways it is admirably suited to depict grace – powerful, huge, overwhelming, glittering, silent, dangerous. There follows an epilogue depicting Ryder's return to the mansion years later, along with what seems to be his own 'twitch upon the thread'.
Again, no reasons are given; we only know (from the prologue) that in the intervening years he has grown disillusioned with the Army in which he now serves. He simply tells us, without comment, 'I said a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words', as he visits the chapel. The house has been desecrated by its military occupants; but still there is a lamp burning in the chapel. Ryder's words again draw out the sense of an irresistible power of grace:
Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame – a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle... It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.
Despite the desecration of the mansion; despite the 'tragedy' of Ryder’s own relationships; something of grace continues. Ryder leaves ‘looking unusually cheerful'. Here, then, is a twentieth-century novelist attempting to depict the operations of grace. The twin images of the avalanche and the 'lamp of deplorable design' (one depicting the irresistible strength of grace, the other the weakness, indeed tawdriness, of its physical expression) are crucial to Waugh's success. But the less successful aspects of the work have to be recognised too. Brideshead Revisited is a book in which Waugh's Catholicism cannot be disentangled from his other positives. To this reader, at any rate, the values of the opening 'Et in Arcadia Ego' section, narrated with loving remembrance and with all the colour and glamour of Fitzgerald's Gatsby, become distasteful when one is forced by the introduction of the Catholic theme to consider them in moral categories rather than in aesthetic detachment. The problem is, essentially, that Waugh really tries to have both the aestheticism and the Catholic vision; the aestheticism is gone beyond recall, but the Catholicism is not distinct from it. Sebastian, to the end the alcoholic of 'Arcadia', yet nonetheless (according to Cordelia) 'holy', embodies this attempted fusion.
And there are parts of that 'Arcadia' which (although tongue-in-cheek) read distastefully today:
'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning.
'Yes, I think so.'
'I think so too.'
I remember Sebastian looking up at the Colleoni statue and saying, 'It's rather sad to think that whatever happens you and I can never possibly get involved in a war.'
Sebastian's undergraduate mixture of aestheticism and Catholicism is represented by his praying 'like mad to St.Anthony of Padua' to find his lost teddy bear, and his indignant assertion that he is 'very, very much wickeder' than Ryder. That is acceptable, viewed benevolently through an alcoholic haze: the difficulty is that Waugh later asks us to believe in Sebastian's 'holiness' without him showing too much sign of having matured.
An important aspect of the problem is that Waugh's Christianity seems to possess little in the way of ethics. The savouring of alcoholism or of the dubious morality of the 'Old Hundredth' merges with the dilettante proto-fascism ('Jean...claimed the right to bear arms in any battle anywhere against the lower classes'), with Ryder's scathing treatment of his wife, and his bitter hatred of the twentieth century, which is sometimes satirically effective but almost entirely lacking in anything positive or constructive. An overall mood is produced that is never quite affirmed as admirable, but is narrated with relish (in the passages of indulgence) or at least with feeling (in the passages of bitterness) – and never really transcended. Grace, the author seems to suggest, fits very well with this kind of dilettante elitism.
And finally there is the sacramentalism. Waugh's refusal to indicate any kind of 'conversion' at the level of ideas would appear to present grace as something a Catholic possesses from birth. Sebastian and Julia never quite lose it and eventually (we are invited to believe) drift back into it. It is one sentence after Lord Marchmain is anointed with sacramental oil that he 'suddenly' makes his sign. But it is very hard to accept such an isolated deathbed gesture – dramatically effective though it undoubtedly is – as a real, heartfelt repentance. Yet Lord Marchmain has accepted the sacrament; and his condition matches the state Cordelia predicts Sebastian will die in, 'after one of his drinking bouts', showing 'by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments.' However, the problem at this point is not literary: it is theological, a matter of whether the reader can accept a presentation of salvation by sacraments that seems to leave so little room for meaningful exercise of faith.
(iii) Deviant Visions: Greene's Religious Trilogy
But among twentieth-century fiction it must surely be Graham Greene's work that most obviously requires our careful examination. Greene is the most famous post-war 'religious novelist'; and his novels concede a great deal to the convention of the absence of God. Yet, as we shall see, this absence is by no means total, and some of his fictions take the activity of God more seriously than any other writer who can be regarded as an indisputable member of the century's literary 'canon'; even if, in the end, Greene's underlying vision is heterodox in a peculiarly contemporary way.
The Heart of the Matter is perhaps Greene's most impressive novel; and, along with Brighton Rock and The Power and the Glory, it forms a kind of trilogy of religious novels. It is set in wartime West Africa. Its hero, Scobie, a police officer, falls into adultery with a young and rather helpless widow named Helen Rolt, while his wife Louise is out of the country. Scobie's attitude towards Helen is neither love, nor lust, so much as pity for her loneliness and bewilderment; and that same pity prevents him breaking off the affair when his wife returns. But at the same time he does not want to hurt Louise, and rather than admit the affair to her he takes the sacrament in a state of mortal sin. But this, too, he cannot endure repeating, and he commits suicide.
Greene has become famous for the depiction of a drab, frustrating and above all seedy world that his critics call Greeneland. (Reading Greene's novels, and being plunged into this world, can be a depressing experience: to this reader at any rate there is scarcely any other author who implants in the mind such an overwhelming sense of weariness and futility.) The West Africa of The Heart of the Matter certainly falls into this category:
Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst.
'The injustices, the cruelties' and particularly 'the meanness' are what Greene gives us as the book proceeds. From its opening, in which Wilson, 'almost intolerably lonely', shares a balcony (which overlooks a street full of schoolboys pimping for the local brothel) with an Indian fortune-teller, the totally disenchanted Harris, and a vulture, we are presented with a setting where the dominant features seem to be corruption, sweat and fatigue. 'What an absurd thing it was to expect happiness in a world so full of misery', reflects Scobie. 'Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, evil – or else an absolute ignorance.' Helen describes 'Everybody on the beach...pretending to be happy about something'; Harris 'felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness – the sense that that is where we really belong'. Consequently, 'It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?' Death is indeed, in Hamlet's phrase, 'a consummation devoutly to be wished': Scobie's daughter is dead and 'safe now, for ever', and the problem of suffering presents itself to him at Pende in the form of the question he asks God: 'Why didn't you let her drown?' 'But it is all right. She will die.'
It is a world that is very far from being 'very good', as Genesis has it: and religion, instead of being a transcendent source of joy, is an integral part of the depressingly futile whole. Prayer, to Scobie, is formal, purposeless, and a duty, certainly not part of a joyous and creative relationship with God: '"I neglected my evening prayers". This was no more than admitting what every soldier did – that he had avoided a fatigue when the occasion offered.' As he continues praying he falls asleep. As his despair grows he finds that 'The Lord's Prayer lay as dead on his tongue as a legal document': and the idea of prayer is further undercut by its employment by the fat Portuguese captain, dripping 'gently with sweat in the stuffy cabin' as Greene's characters tend to do, and praying his way around the contraband traffic: '"When the moment of Grace returns [our prayers] rise", the captain raised his fat arms in an absurd and touching gesture, "all at once together like a flock of birds."'
Scobie's visit to confession is similarly a well-meaning but shallow piece of routine. He has no real sense of sin (and accordingly no real sense of holiness); and the Church can supply only 'a formula...a hocus-pocus'. In fact the Church seems to be very little use anywhere; we are shown the restless Father Clay 'with his breviary and a few religious tracts. He was a man without resources'; and Father Rank – 'For twenty-two years that voice had been laughing... Could its cheeriness ever have comforted a single soul? Wilson wondered: had it even comforted itself? It was like the noise one heard rebounding from the tiles in a public baths' – a superb image. 'When I was a novice, I thought that people talked to their priests', reminisces Father Rank gloomily – the fact that even this doesn't occur doubles his tragedy – 'and I thought God somehow gave the right words. Don't mind me, Scobie, don't listen to me... God doesn't give the right words, Scobie....'
Consequently, when Scobie finds himself trapped, as he does in some of the most effective scenes in the book, he is left to find his own way out: he may be a Catholic, but God is not a 'very present help in trouble'. There is no dynamic of grace and faith. Scobie is as lonely and 'abandoned' a man (in a religious sense) as any tragic hero could be:
He would still have made the promise even if he could have foreseen all that would come of it. He had always been prepared to accept the responsibility for his actions, and he had always been half aware too, from the time he had made his terrible private vow that she should be happy, how far this action might carry him. Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.
It is presumably because Greene is a Catholic, because he has a strong sense that God ought to be present, that he can render the absence of God and the loneliness of moral decision with such power and poignancy. That absence becomes particularly significant in the crucial passage at the end of Part One when Scobie's entire spiritual destiny is at stake. Here he slips into adultery with Helen Rolt more or less accidentally: he is completely unwarned, God is not mentioned. It is, admittedly, not the strongest aspect of the book; why Scobie's morality so suddenly and drastically collapses – and why a committed Catholic proceeds from an impulsive kiss to fully-fledged adultery – is very unclear. (Why his adultery should then, of necessity, have to be repeated, receives even less explanation; Helen 'needs' him, it seems, and that need cannot be satisfied by anything short of further adultery.) But it is striking that, despite the many earlier references to religion, God is unmentioned in this vital scene when Scobie's fate is more or less sealed (for Scobie will take communion in a state of mortal sin, and finally commit suicide, because of his inability to abandon either Helen or his wife Louise). Instead of a God who 'with the temptation will provide the way of escape also', there is in the world Greene creates a sense of inevitability at the moment of crisis, by which God is implicitly denied.
Even when God does step into the action in The Heart of the Matter, it is in a highly paradoxical manner, as we may see from the occasions when Scobie's prayers receive answers. His first prayers – that Louise will not lose Wilson’s friendship by patronizing him or being absurd, and that he himself will die before retirement – are both fulfilled, but with a strong element of paradox: Louise keeps Wilson's friendship to the extent that he attempts an affair with her, Scobie dies before retirement because he commits suicide. Scobie has prayed for peace, and when Louise leaves, he believes he is getting it; but only at the cost of compromise with the dishonest Syrian, Yusef: ‘He thought... It's terrible the way that prayer is answered. It had better be good. I've paid a high enough price for it.' We may well feel that this answer to prayer that has been won from God with such difficulty and at such cost – and that consequently Scobie displays neither joy nor thankfulness at receiving – is in actual fact the product of his own efforts; besides, his peace lasts only until Helen Rolt enters his life, bringing with her the eventual temptation to a fatal adultery. His next prayers are prayed at the bedside of a dying child who reminds him of his own dead daughter. First he prays, 'O God, don't let anything happen.’ But despite this the child worsens:
Looking between his fingers he could see the six-year-old's face convulsed like a navvy's with labour. 'Father', he prayed, 'give her peace. Take away my peace for ever, but give her peace.' The sweat broke out on his hands. 'Father...'
The prayer is answered: the child is given peace – that is to say, she dies. Death is the blessing by which Greene's God keeps His side of the bargain – and in exchange for which He does indeed take away Scobie's peace for the rest of his life. In a letter to Marcel More, Greene wrote:
Obviously one did have in mind that when he offered up his peace for the child it was genuine prayer and had the results that followed. I always believe that such prayers, though obviously a God would not fulfil them to the limit of robbing him of a peace for ever, are answered up to the point as a kind of test of a man's sincerity and to see whether in fact the offer was merely based on emotion.
However, it would seem that providence overplays its hand, as it were, given that the eventual consequence of Scobie's loss of peace is one mortal sin after another, and finally suicide. If the teaching of Greene's own church is meant to be seen as any guide at all to the wishes of providence, then the bargain would seem to have gone wrong for both parties. His next prayer – 'O God, I have deserted you. Do not you desert me' – he unsays later.
Then soon afterwards he prays, 'The dead can be forgotten. 0 God, give me death before I give them unhappiness.' This is answered in part (God seems to answer when the prayer is for death); but nonetheless Scobie is not to die before making both Louise and Helen miserable over his affair; and his death will make matters worse for both of them.
Next he prays to be convinced of God's will, and goes into the confessional hoping that 'a miracle may still happen. Even Father Rank may for once find the word, the right word….' But he doesn't. It is a tragic scene, and Greene handles it well; but it is tragic because the motive power that marks every aspect of Scobie's world and drives him into an ever deeper dilemma is a moral awareness, and the God (and the church) that are the source of that morality are unwilling or unable to assist him. This absence of God creates a spiritual dilemma to which Greene's description of the discomfort of the airless confessional-box, and the sweat dripping into the priest's eyes, give striking concreteness. Scobie comes out of the box:
It seemed to Scobie that for the first time his footsteps had taken him out of sight of hope. There was no hope anywhere he turned his eyes: the dead figure of the God upon the Cross, the plaster Virgin, the hideous Stations representing a series of events that had happened a long time ago.
Scobie's damnation then progresses unhindered. He takes the sacrament in a state of mortal sin. Only a miracle can save me now, Scobie told himself, watching Father Rank at the altar opening the tabernacle, but God would never work a miracle to save Himself... For a moment he dreamed that the priest's steps had indeed faltered: perhaps after all something may yet happen before he reaches me: some incredible interposition... But with open mouth (the time had come) he made one last attempt at prayer, '0 God, I offer up my damnation to you. Take it. Use it for them,’ and was aware of the pale papery taste of an eternal sentence on the tongue.
It is only after this, as Scobie chooses suicide as the only way out, that God appears to take action. Scobie visits the church for the last time, and, as it were, informs God of what he is going to do. The monologue turns into a dialogue:
He couldn't keep the other voice silent; it spoke from the cave of his body: it was as if the sacrament which had lodged there for his damnation gave tongue. You say you love me, and yet you'll do this to me – rob me of you for ever. I made you with love. I've wept your tears. I've saved you from more than you will ever know... and now you push me away, you put me out of your reach.
This is effective; the voice of God – assuming, as we probably can, that it is intended to be God and not altogether a projection of Scobie's mind – is neither a piece of tasteless melodrama nor an embodiment of religious jargon. There is real passion in its reply to Scobie's farewell. But what it cannot do is persuade Scobie:
So long as you live, the voice said, I have hope. There's no human hopelessness like the hopelessness of God.... But no, he said, no. That's impossible. I won't go on insulting you at your own altar. You see it's an impasse, God, an impasse, he said, clutching the package in his pocket. He got up and turned his back on the altar and went out. Only when he saw his face in the driving mirror did he realize that his eyes were bruised with suppressed tears.
Like the promotion to the Commissionership that could have prevented all his problems, God’s intervention comes to Scobie too late. And so he comes to his last night. This chapter has at times an almost unbearable power. A suicide is, of course, good raw material for a writer: and Greene makes the most of it. Scobie's mental condition remains calm, and the situation is reported with cool awareness:
Everything he did now was for the last time – an odd sensation. He would never come this way again, and five minutes later taking a new bottle of gin from his cupboard, he thought: I shall never open another bottle. The actions which could be repeated became fewer and fewer. Presently there would be only one unrepeatable action left, the action of swallowing.
Scobie forces himself to display an interest in the future so as to leave his suicide unsuspected, while at the same time taking his farewell of Louise:
Bed-time came, and he felt a terrible unwillingness to let her go. There was nothing to do when she had once gone but die. He didn't know how to keep her – they had talked about all the subjects they had in common.... People said you couldn't love two women, but what was this emotion if it were not love? This hungry absorption of what he was never going to see again? The greying hair, the line of nerves upon the face, the thickening body held him as her beauty never had.
God, too, is present at last:
Though the voice was no longer speaking from the cave of his belly, it was as though fingers touched him, signalled their mute messages of distress, tried to hold him...
The first edition adds, 'He had never before known so clearly the weakness of God.' The weakness of God, however, is not, in Greeneland, stronger than men. Louise goes to bed with a perfunctory kiss and a casual caress, and Scobie is left alone with his poison. And God: for 'solitude itself has a voice' which urges him to throw away the tablets he has saved. '"No", Scobie said, "No".' Even now, however, it is not all over; there seems to be quite a flurry of divine activity when it is too late; not enough for Scobie to be able to pray, but enough for this:
It seemed to him as though someone outside the room were seeking him, calling him, and he made a last effort to indicate that he was here... All the time outside the house, outside the world that drummed like hammer blows within his ear, someone wandered, seeking to get in, someone appealing for help, someone in need of him.
Scobie 'strung himself to act' and responds to that need with a final prayer that gets as far as 'Dear God, I love...' before he slumps to the floor. Under the ice-box – a final touch that keeps the atmosphere from getting too highly-charged – tinkles a medal of a 'saint whose name nobody could remember'.
It is a very moving scene, a powerful example of fiction that presents God within its narrative; and apart from the dialogue with God in Scobie’s last visit to the church, it is the first unambiguous divine intervention in the book. But God’s deliverance has been absent or ambivalent, and heaven has remained 'rigidly on the other side of death’, until it is too late. Such is Greene's conception of the workings of providence – real, capable of depiction in his novel, but paradoxical. The consequences can only be left to the mercy of God that Father Rank is sure he knows nothing about.
This picture is what we find again in the opening book of Greene's trilogy, Brighton Rock. This is set in Brighton, but Brighton is part of Greeneland, and Greeneland remains quite like Hell. 'This is Hell, nor are we out of it', says the crooked lawyer Prewitt, quoting Faustus, to the boy gangster Pinkie. There is little need: Pinkie is Mephistophiles' nearest kinsman among Greene's characters, his eyes 'touched with the annihilating eternity from which he had come and to which he went'. His creed is 'Credo in unum Satanum', and although hell is to him a self-evident fact, the existence of heaven is merely a dubious inference from the existence of its opposite. (Actually, the same could be said of much of Greene's work in general.) Pinkie is an ascetic who had once vowed to become a priest, but his devotion does not belong to heaven: instead he is one who enjoys 'the finest of all sensations, the infliction of pain', and thinks of 'all the good times he'd had in the old days with nails and splinters: the tricks he'd learnt later with a razor-blade.' In Pinkie's life, even more than in The Heart of the Matter, Heaven stays 'rigidly in its proper place': ‘Hell lay about him in his infancy', and grace never seems to have broken through the infernal monopoly.
An awful resentment stirred in him – why shouldn't he have had his chance like all the rest, seen his glimpse of heaven if it was only a crack between the Brighton walls.... He turned as they went down to Rottingdean and took a long look at Rose as if she might be it – but the brain couldn't conceive....
But things are little different for the other denizens of this God-abandoned part of Greeneland. Greene disposes early on of one of the alternatives to Pinkie, that of the 'modernist' religion represented by the clergyman at the funeral of Fred Hale, killed by Pinkie early in the book. Pinkie is convinced of hell, but has only a dubious concept of heaven: the clergyman has dispensed with hell, and heaven into the bargain. Greene makes short work of this particular target in the 'bare cold secular chapel' with its
impoverished jam-pots of wilting wild flowers. Ida was late. Hesitating a moment outside the door for fear the place might be full of Fred's friends, she thought someone had turned on the National Programme... 'We believe,' the clergyman said, glancing swiftly along the smooth polished slipway towards the New Art doors through which the coffin would be launched into the flames, 'we believe that this our brother is already at one with the One.' He stamped his words like little pats of butter with his personal mark. 'He has attained unity. We do not know what that One is with whom (or with which) he is now at one. We do not retain the old medieval beliefs in glassy seas and golden crowns....’ He touched a little buzzer, the New Art doors opened, the flames flapped and the coffin slid smoothly down into the fiery sea. The doors closed, the nurse rose and made for the door, the clergyman smiled gently from behind the slipway, like a conjuror who has produced his nine hundred and fortieth rabbit without a hitch.
The 'wilting' flowers, the confusion with the 'National Programme', and the pompous nonsense of 'Our brother is at one with the One... He has attained unity', matched by total vagueness as to what these words actually mean, combine to make a competent piece of butchery on Greene’s part. A page later it turns out that what Fred Hale has become 'part of' is 'the smoke nuisance over London'; although the references to his being 'launched into the flames... the fiery sea' hint that there might be some reality to the 'old medieval beliefs' too. (Pinkie would certainly have thought so.) Having jettisoned these beliefs, however, the clergyman, with his coffin sliding smoothly down, is really no more than a conjuror producing rabbits 'without a hitch'; and God is nowhere to be found.
The other alternatives are represented by Ida Arnold and by Pinkie's wife Rose. Ida is the person who finally brings retribution on Pinkie, very much a woman of the people, easy-going in her morals, sharing the popular pleasures and the popular superstitions, simplistic and egoistic in her attitudes to right and wrong:
"I'm going to work on that kid every hour of the day until I get something." She rose formidably and moved across the restaurant like a warship going into action, a warship on the right side in a war to end wars, the signal flags proclaiming that every man would do his duty. Her big breasts, which had never suckled a child of her own, felt a merciless compassion.
As the novel progresses Ida's ideas of 'right and wrong' are set against the different universe of Pinkie and Rose, of evil and good. 'You can see she don't believe a thing.' says Rose of Ida; '... You can tell the world's all dandy with her.' The world is God-deserted; Pinkie knows it, Rose knows it; to Ida, however, it's 'all dandy'. '"Right and wrong"', Rose says later with contempt. '"Oh, she won't burn. She couldn't burn if she tried." She might have been discussing a damp Catherine wheel.' The universe Ida knows is very far from that of Pinkie and Rose (or of God): 'She was as far from either of them as she was from Hell – or Heaven. Good or evil lived in the same country, spoke the same language, came together like old friends.’ God would seem to have even less to do with this secularised ‘damp Catherine-wheel’ of a woman than with Pinkie himself.
And then finally there are the saints. Rose, it would seem from the references to 'good or evil', should be classed among these. But her sainthood does not amount to much: a concern that Pinkie should go to mass, an occasional attendance herself, a loyalty to Pinkie based on hardly any foundation (but then the girls in the restaurant where she works seem fairly desperate for husbands), a willingness to be damned with Pinkie, and a rosary in a handbag. It is not very difficult to be a saint in Brighton Rock, it would seem, providing you are born that way. But the relationship of all this to salvation through grace is nearer parody than enactment. In practice it seems that Rose, too, has no contact with God.
Thus, although Greene’s novel sets up the spiritually conscious – Rose and Pinkie – as the characters that are fully alive ('She's just nothing', says Pinkie caustically of the sublunary Ida), none of them have any real relationship with the divine. All of them are deistically predestined to their own class. They belong to a Brighton that is devoid of God: except, perhaps, in the mass – offstage, so far as the novel is concerned. Rose, in her desire to be damned along with Pinkie, worries that 'you couldn't tell what life would do to you in making you meek, good, repentant... You could win to the evil side suddenly, in a moment of despair or passion, but through a long life the guardian good drove you remorselessly toward the crib, the "happy death."' But we do not see such a process occurring. Pinkie is damned from his birth; Rose, it seems, can do nothing to jeopardise her salvation; and Ida remains a nullity, without the contact with the spiritual universe that would make her human. It is not surprising that Greene has found himself accused of sharing the rigid Jansenist view of predestination.
And yet there is again a hint of the supernatural behind it all; and, as with The Heart of the Matter, the supernatural element moves finally into the picture at the book's culmination. Ida and her companion have a chance meeting with the gangsters on the pier: 'It's fate', says Ida. Whether it is fate or not, Ida's persistent investigation gives Pinkie (who wants to get rid of his wife) a pretext for urging Rose to commit suicide; and they go out into the country, with Rose thinking it to be a suicide pact involving them both. They call at a pub for a drink and Pinkie feels 'the prowling presence of pity'. The latter is imaged as something locked outside:
He had a sense that somewhere, like a beggar outside a shuttered house, tenderness stirred, but he was bound in a habit of hate. He turned his back and went on up the stairs... Life would go on... The huge darkness pressed a wet mouth against the panes....
This is image and metaphor, of course, and refers primarily to what is going on inside Pinkie: and yet Greene contrives by his use of the 'outside' image to hint at something external and objective, some embodiment that is more than metaphor. The image is repeated when downstairs Pinkie watches two travellers making a contemptuous pass at Rose: 'Tenderness came up to the very window and looked in. What the hell right had they got to swagger and laugh...if she was good enough for him.' But she isn't: he wants to be 'free again', and he and Rose drive on. She asks if he had hated her for sleeping with him.
He hadn't hated her.... There had been a kind of pleasure, a kind of pride, a kind of – something else.... An enormous emotion beat on him; it was like something trying to get in; the pressure of gigantic wings against the glass. Dona nobis pacem. He withstood it.... If the glass broke, if the beast – whatever it was – got in, God knows [sic] what it would do. He had a sense of huge havoc – the confession, the penance and the sacrament – and awful distraction, and he drove blind into the rain. He could see nothing through the cracked stained windscreen.
This seems successful as a symbol of grace, hovering between mere metaphor and the mental embodiment Pinkie gives to something with external existence. Possibly it is a final revelation, Pinkie's last chance.
But it stays on the other side of the glass; and Pinkie leaves Rose, having given her a pistol and instructions to shoot. Rose, however, wants to live; that urge produces a verbalization of itself which, as in the suicide in The Heart of the Matter, might just possibly be her 'guardian angel'. If it is, then, again as in The Heart of the Matter, it achieves nothing; it is the arrival of Ida that prevents her shooting herself, not the inner voice. And if the apparition of grace beyond the windscreen was to prevent Pinkie from having an attempted murder on his conscience, it has failed there too; failed where the easy, shallow force of Ida Arnold succeeds. Pinkie attempts to use his vitriol bottle, scalds his own face, then in agony – and mortal sin – leaps over the cliff. Rose, longing to be damned with Pinkie, goes back to the shivering priest, with his '"appalling...strangeness of the mercy of God... We must hope", he said mechanically, "hope and pray."' But the ending of the book shows the hope he has 'mechanically' offered as being very fragile; Rose walks off towards 'the worst horror of all', a taped message that is the proof of Pinkie's hatred for her.
Grace may have intervened at the crisis, then; but it seems, again, to be to little purpose. The Greeneland of Brighton Rock is a place where human beings are abandoned until it is too late. Abandonment is also the keynote of the third book in the trilogy, The Power and the Glory. This is the story of how a 'whisky priest', the last priest in a particular part of Mexico, is hunted down and executed. The world of Greene's Mexico is the same as that of The Heart of the Matter and Brighton Rock; here is how the novel opens:
Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few vultures looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn't carrion yet. A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr. Tench's heart, and he wrenched up a piece of the road with splintering finger-nails and tossed it feebly towards them. One rose and flapped across the town: over the tiny plaza, over the bust of an ex-president, ex-general, ex-human being, over the two stalls which sold mineral water, towards the river and the sea. It wouldn’t find anything there: the sharks looked after the carrion on that side. Mr. Tench went on across the plaza.
It is a world of devitalized physical discomfort where even the vultures are indifferent. The faintness and petty destructiveness of Mr. Tench's rebellion, and the splintering of his fingernails, give a sense of the futility of all effort; and the 'ex-president, ex-general, ex-human being’, like the earlier ‘he wasn’t carrion yet’, enforce a feeling of inevitable decay and disintegration in a world divided between the sharks and the vultures. Mr. Tench makes his way to the river bank:
Mr. Tench stood in the shade of the customs house and thought: what am I here for? Memory drained out of him in the heat. He gathered his bile together and spat forlornly into the sun. Then he sat down on a case and waited. Nothing to do. Nobody would come to see him before five.
The General Obregon was about thirty yards long. A few feet of damaged rail, one lifeboat, a bell hanging on a rotten cord, an oil-lamp in the bow, she looked as if she might weather two or three more Atlantic years, if she didn't strike a Norther in the gulf. That, of course, would be the end of her. It didn't really matter: everybody was insured when he bought a ticket, automatically.
Again, the overwhelming sense is of the unrewarding nature of all activity (even spitting), the collapse of the faculties (such as memory), and, overall, decay and worthlessness; whether the particular instance is that of the General Obregon or of her passengers, whose insurance would be the most significant thing about their deaths. Civilization's contribution has been to automatize the insurance: nothing has been done about death or the general futility of life. Human beings and their activities are in general not very significant in Greene's Mexico. Even in religion; we find the confession of the treacherous halfcaste presented as a typical, unimportant part of 'a world of treachery, violence and lust in which his shame was altogether insignificant'; God, it would appear, is not really interested. (Or at any rate the priest who is the book's central character is not; and at that point, as the priest journeys through the wilderness with his betrayer, most of what he says seems to be endorsed by his author.)
Just such a sense of the unimportance of man played a significant part in Scobie's tragedy in The Heart of the Matter. (Scobie's prayer, for example, was 'a formality...because it had never occurred to him that his life was important enough one way or another.') It is an attitude that can appropriately be contrasted with the alert, faith-impelled responsiveness called for in the New Testament by the apostle Peter: 'Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith...' Such a sense of spiritual reality was a motivating force in the Puritan contribution to the rise of the novel, as we noted early on in this study. But Greene's world lacks the awareness of such realities; and, in God's absence, lethargy, spiritual and physical, seems the inevitable consequence of the environment. The circumstances are to blame; it is the natural, created but Creator-less universe that is all wrong. Man's situation is determined by the forces that come to bear on him. In the absence of God, the heat is presented as the most important of these.
This depiction of man is particularly paradoxical given Greene's own insistence in his essays that the importance of the human act depends on the religious sense. A greater awareness of human significance does indeed surface in the whisky priest's last desperate words to his illegitimate daughter –
My dear, my dear, try to understand that you are – so important.... You must take care of yourself because you are so – necessary. The president up in the capital goes guarded by men with guns but my child, you have all the angels of heaven....
– but unfortunately the novel's world demonstrates far more clearly the need to 'take care of yourself' than the possibility of anyone being concerned in heaven. Still, a similar faith informs the priest's compassion for the halfcaste who betrays him, despite his unconcern about the latter's sin and confession. In a sense the priest, as (we are to believe) God's final representative, is the last fitful outpost of faith in human worth: all around him is a universe hostile to man's significance.
R.W.B. Lewis quotes Greene's remarks on Conrad that 'All he retained of Catholicism was the ironic sense of an omniscience and of the final unimportance of human life under the watching eyes', and suggests that 'It is a paradox. and a perfectly sound and traditional one, that human life is both infinitely important and infinitely unimportant from the divine standpoint.' This is true: yet although Christianity is aware that man set beside God is no more than 'a drop in a bucket', the main emphasis in the New Testament is that Christ's death on Calvary was the value God set on us – and on human sin, which is the point Greene raises in the passage about the halfcaste's confession. But in The Power and the Glory, there are few signs of the nearness and involvement of God, of 'watching eyes' that might contain love and concern for man. The priest's activities are almost the sole exception, for example in the mass – but even he, like Father Rank in The Heart of the Matter, is not enabled to do his job properly: 'If only one could find the right word... He leant hopelessly back... But the right words never came to him.' In The Power and the Glory we are faced with a 'huge abandonment', an 'abandoned star'. 'It was as if man in all this state had been left to man.'
The Power and the Glory in a sense offers a definition of the ways in which it is possible for sainthood to operate in such a situation. As such it comes as a reply to the simplistic black-and-white idealizations of the piece of hagiography that the pious Catholic woman reads to her children. For, despite his fornication and drunkenness and unreliability, despite the fact that he is in a continual state of mortal sin, the whisky priest – like Scobie – is presented to us as something of a saint. When he comes to one village, he is badgered by an old man to hear confession and celebrate the Mass: the priest responds impatiently and irritably (he wants to get some sleep), and he falls asleep at the end of the confession. But his tiredness has already gained our sympathy, and we feel that his annoyance is understandable.
His eyes closed, his lips and tongue stumbled over the Absolution, failed to finish... he sprang awake again.
'Can I bring the woman?' the old man was saying. 'It is five years...' 'Oh, let them come. Let them all come', the priest cried angrily. 'I am your servant.' He put his hand over his eyes and began to weep. The old man...went across to the women's huts and knocked. 'Come,' he said, 'You must say your confessions. It is only polite to the father.'
They wailed at him that they were tired... the morning would do. 'Would you insult him?' he said. 'What do you think he has come here for? He is a very holy father. There he is in my hut now, weeping for our sins.' He hustled them out...
Here all our sympathy is engaged on the side of the priest's weariness. (The reader may well feel sympathy by this stage with any character who is tired: there can be few novelists with Greene's ability to make the reader feel and share in the enervated exhaustion of his world.) So what is conveyed is not the discrepancy between the old man's description 'He is a very holy father' and the reality we have seen, even in this episode, but a sense that possibly, paradoxically, the old man might be right: that anyone who does anything like their duty in such a 'huge abandonment' deserves our respect. And as he weeps, although it may be from tiredness and vexation and not 'for our sins' as the old man imagines, he wins our compassion.
To this end Greene makes use of hinted parallels with Christ (the man who preaches to the poor is betrayed by a Judas-figure: ‘He knew. He was in the presence of Judas'); and there is the symbolic identification when the priest and an American gangster figure in the 'wanted' posters – 'Somebody had inked round the priest's head to detach him from the girls' and the women's faces: the unbearable grin peeked out of a halo', where 'the unbearable grin peeked' saves the halo from being obtrusively portentous. More importantly there are his actions: his mention in the jail of the price on his head, because 'if there was an informer here, there was no reason why the wretched creature should be bilked of his reward'; his repeated compassion for the halfcaste who, he knows, is going to betray him; and finally his journey back into danger across the mountains, after hardly surviving his first crossing into safety: going knowingly to his death to give confession to an American gangster dying in mortal sin.
Indeed, even our knowledge of his vices is mobilised to contribute to this presentation of the whisky-priest as saint. It becomes, to use a phrase from the end of Brighton Rock, ‘a case of greater love hath no man than this that he lay down his soul for his friend', because the priest believes his own soul is in a state of mortal sin as he goes back across the border to capture and death, and that his death will therefore mean, not a momentary suffering, but an eternity of loss. Still, there is perhaps an element of authorial sleight-of-hand at this point; for the vices Greene presents are mostly such as will not damn his hero in the reader's eyes. (Nobody in Greeneland seems to be able to do much with prayer but neglect it; and fornication and drunkenness are sins that the reader of the modern novel has been trained to treat leniently, and the lapses mostly take place ‘offstage', as far as the reader is concerned.) Hence, when the priest finds himself unable to communicate with his illegitimate daughter (who is, it seems, damned from the start), it is compassion for him that the reader is led to feel, and not a sense that it is his fault his daughter is in this situation, that the price he has caused her to pay is greater than that he has brought on himself. The assessment we accept is that of his opponent: '"You aren't a bad fellow", the Lieutenant said grudgingly.' In Greene's 'abandoned star' this is the best we can expect: God is (almost) absent, and those who find themselves called to be saints must muddle on as best they can, on their own.
But again we should notice how different this is from the vision of the New Testament. Paul emphasises repeatedly that holiness and Christlikeness are unattainable in our own strength; but they may however be brought about slowly by the power of the Spirit within us. The human weakness is there in Greene, certainly: but is there much more than an ironical embodiment of the 'power and the glory'? One wonders whether this rogue-saint figure, predicated as it is on God's absence or inactivity, does not owe (or surrender) a great deal to a non-Christian ethos, in its thorough reinterpretation of the notion of holiness. As a presentation of the product of an individual's own unaided efforts it might be acceptable; but the postulate of omnipotent grace intervening should open up another dimension of possibility. It may be, indeed, as Mauriac and others have suggested, that sainthood is extremely hard to portray in a novel; but that cannot be true of simple goodness – one thinks of Dilsey in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, for example. It is true, too, that every Christian is aware that God's strength is 'made perfect in weakness'; that is an integral part of the very idea of grace – St. Paul was very aware that apart from the power of the Holy Spirit 'the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practise the very evil that I do not wish'. So any fictional portrayal must take seriously the need for 'warts-and-all' presentation of the negatives, the failures. Still, the Christian is not expected to exhibit quite the lack of integrity of a drunken, fornicating priest – a figure which, all things considered, deserves few admirers among Christians or humanists. Accepting that, as R.W.B. Lewis insists, complexity and contradictoriness may be essential elements in the depiction of a successfully 'good' figure, we can nevertheless assert that goodness – even a real power and a real glory – triumphing amid very real weakness is a mark of ordinary, not particularly outstanding, mortals of our acquaintance, who can (with skill) have fitting fictional analogues. For the Christian, the possibility of goodness through the power of grace is an essential part of their vision. The Holy Spirit came to convict the world, not only of the existence of sin, but also of the existence of righteousness; and the practical demonstration of this possibility was part of the charge Christ gave to His disciples. Otherwise the awareness of man's failure ceases to be part of any conceivable 'gospel' or' good news', but rather an announcement that everybody is trapped. The Power and the Glory is all too much like that.
Yet, once again, the absence of God is not quite the whole story in Greeneland. It is a fair description of how the priest experiences things, most of the time; but nonetheless there is a hint of providence at work. When the priest is captured and put in jail, he muses that it was, of course, the end, but at the same time you had to be prepared for anything, even escape. If God intended him to escape He could snatch him away from in front of a firing squad. But God was merciful. There was only one reason, surely, which would make Him refuse His peace – if there was any peace – that he could still be of use in saving a soul, his own or another's.
And, indeed, he is released. 'God had decided. He had to go on with life, go on making decisions, acting on his own advice, making plans.' Once again, there is no sustained divine guidance involved here; the saint remains alone, with providence intervening in the hunt for him only to dictate the timing of the kill – a bizarre variant on the hound of heaven, rather than a companion through the valley of the shadow of death. We are left to guess that the point of the escape, and the unexpectedly safe journey over the mountains ('as if Somebody had determined that from now on he was to be left alone – altogether alone'), are overruled to make possible the sacrifice of crossing the border yet again on the road back to martyrdom. (Perhaps, too, his escape makes possible the long ride with the lieutenant, which at least jolts the latter's atheism.) Certainly, when the double journey is completed and he is captured again, he knows there will be no further escape. He believes in miracles, but 'not for me. I'm no more good to anyone, so why should God keep me alive?'
In the end, The Power and the Glory, like the other two novels in the trilogy, would seem to point to a 'kingdom of heaven' that remains fairly 'rigidly in its proper place' on the other side of the watertight firmament between this life and the next. Concerning that next life the priest is not hopeful: 'If there's ever been a single man in this state damned, then I'll be damned too', he says to the Lieutenant. 'I wouldn't want it to be any different. I just want justice, that's all.' But the reader knows that this demand for justice is discounting mercy: as the priest says just before, 'I don't know a thing about the mercy of God.' And it seems that the priest's lack of any faith in this mercy is to be considered unimportant; for some such possibility of mercy is suggested in his last dream before his execution.
Greene's dream scenes always have a good deal of power without being particularly explicit, and this is no exception. The priest is eating a meal of six dishes, which 'did not taste of much', expecting the seventh to be the best, while meanwhile mass is being celebrated, ignored by him:
At last the six plates were empty; someone out of sight rang the sanctus bell. and the serving priest knelt before he raised the Host. But he sat on, just waiting, paying no attention to the God over the altar, as though that were a God for other people and not for him. Then the glass by his plate began to fill with wine, and looking up he saw that the child from the banana station was serving him. She said, 'I got it from my father's room.' 'You didn't steal it?' 'Not exactly', she said in her careful and precise voice.
He said, 'It is very good of you. I had forgotten the code – what did you call it?'
'That was it. Morse. Three long taps and one short one,' and immediately the taps began: the priest by the altar tapped, a whole invisible congregation tapped along the aisles – three long and one short. He asked, 'What is it?’
'News,' the child said. watching him with a stern, responsible and interested gaze.
What this ‘means' is not clear: but it would seem that it is the priest’s relationships with others, especially his love for his daughter (which 'seemed to contain all that he felt himself of repentance'), that make up for what is lacking in his relationship with the God of Mexico’s abandonment. Earlier in the book. the girl from the banana station had promised to help him if he signalled in Morse; she seems to be presented as his spiritual daughter, so paralleling his physical daughter, Brigitta. Hence, while, as he thinks to himself, he has loved all the wrong things – the dishes which 'did not taste of much' – and has neglected his prayers and religious duties, yet, through the daughter-relationship, he can nevertheless be given the sacramental wine he has ignored and the help he has forgotten to ask for. And we may also understand the dream as implying perhaps that the priest is being assisted through the girl's prayers: she is now dead, and in the dream she brings the sacramental wine 'from my father's room... with a stern, responsible and interested gaze.' The priest has forgotten the Morse code for help (just as in reality he has forgotten his prayers), and is 'paying no attention to the God over the altar, as though that were a God for other people and not for him' (just as in reality he believes that miraculous deliverances occur 'But not for me'). Appropriately, then, when he receives the wine from the child, it is by means that do not adhere strictly to the rulebook: just like his love. The dream is a very effective way for Greene to hint that grace may be operating in this situation after all.
But, when all is said and done, few people benefit from it. By staying at his post the priest wins just one convert – the boy Luis. At the end of the book Luis goes to bed feeling 'cheated and disappointed', disgusted with the lieutenant's successful extinction of the priests and the heroes; he dreams of the dead priest winking at him, and wakes straightaway to find another priest – again, 'a tall pale man with a rather sour mouth... with an odd frightened smile' – at the door. Providence has still its purposes, it seems, even in the 'vast abandonment'; but it remains that abandonment that sets the dominant tone. Grace keeps only a foothold on this side of death, and most of its activity seems devoted to bringing that foothold to martyrdom. Otherwise, the world is left to itself; which is a rather bizarre kind of Christianity.
So here we have the problem. The major religious novelist of the mid-twentieth century turns out to be building fictional worlds from which God is absent, where heaven stays 'rigidly on the other side of death’ – almost. In that ‘almost’ lies the specificity of Greene's vision. Admittedly the real causality of the supernatural events in these novels is not entirely certain: the voice that pleads with Scobie in the powerful scenes at the end of The Heart of the Matter might be purely subjective; the whisky priest might be wrong about his unexpected release and escape; Pinkie might be wrong about the 'something trying to get in' at the close of Brighton Rock. Of these three, Brighton Rock is the instance that can most plausibly be seen as mere subjective experience or mere metaphor. But neither Scobie nor the whisky priest nor Pinkie – the people who seem to know best the worlds they inhabit – would see the supernatural world as anything but real. Greene's trilogy seems therefore to invite the reader to contemplate the possible objective reality of grace; the pattern of each book suggests that the causality of its events is in fact providential, supernaturalistic. So it is not a formal difficulty that hinders the full emergence of the Christian pattern in Greene's narrative; the problem is theological.
© 2009 Pete Lowman
Fictional Absence is published here by the kind permission of the author.
Miriam Allott, Novelists on the Novel (1959), p.39. See also T.S. Eliot, After Strange Gods (1934), pp.56-57.
Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (1846-48; Everyman edition of 1907), pp.613, 698.
Ibid, p.604.
Ibid, p.708.
Ibid, p.522.
Ibid, p.440.
Ibid, p.714.
Ibid, p.720, where also Carker wonders when the next train is due – 'when another Devil would come by.'
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847; Penguin edition of 1965), p.77. The reasons why the causality of Emily Bronte's novel should be so different from the providentialism of her sisters' work lie beyond this study's scope. Nonetheless, it is striking to note, in Charlotte Bronte's 'Biographical Notice' for her two sisters, the emphasis on Anne's being 'a very sincere and practical Christian' in life and death, and the lack of such references when she speaks of Emily (cf.pp.34-35 of the Penguin Wuthering Heights).
Ibid, p.106.
Eg ibid, pp.149, 359.
Ibid, p.173.
Ibid, p.188.
Ibid, p.359.
Ibid, p.148.
Ibid, p.120.
Ibid, p.57.
Ibid, p.106.
Ibid, pp.217-18.
Ibid, p.219.
Ibid, p.289.
Ibid, p.146.
Herbert J. Muller, 'The Novels of Hardy Today', in Southern Review, Summer 1940, quoted Q.D. Leavis, 'Hardy and Criticism', in A Selection from 'Scrutiny', ed. F.R. Leavis (1968), Vol.I, p.295.
Joseph Conrad, The Shadow Line (1917 Everyman edition, with The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' and Typhoon,1945), p.271.
Ibid, p.299. Cf. also p.254: 'It appeared that even at sea a man could become the victim of evil spirits. I felt on my face the breath of unknown powers that shape our destinies.' Nonetheless, Conrad's preface makes it clear that the supernatural in the book exists only as metaphor (pp.207-08).
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900; Everyman edition of 1935), p.285.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902; Everyman edition with Youth and The End of the Tether, 1974), p.116.
Graham Greene, Collected Essays (1969; Penguin edition of 1970), p.21.
Ibid, p.43. The argument is developed in the two general essays on Henry James in this book.
Quoted Dorothy Scarborough, The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (1917), p.109. It is interesting that of all the major novelists it should be James, the supreme craftsman, who found the supernatural significant enough to introduce a ghost into fictions like The Portrait of a Lady and The Jolly Corner.
E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924; Everyman edition of 1942), p.180.
Laurence Lerner, The Truthtellers (1967), p.188.
D.H. Lawrence, St. Mawr (1925; Phoenix collected edition of 1956), p.128.
Ibid, p.135.
Ibid, p.133.
Ibid, pp.138-139.
Ibid, p.146.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (original story 1922; Penguin collection of 1962), pp.105-06.
That is, provided some humanistic values – what The Great Gatsby (1926; Penguin edition of 1950; p.7) calls ‘fundamental decencies' – can be invoked to replace a theistic morality. A complete relativism would leave no basis for judging Washington: in terms of the 'will to power', or the survival of the fittest, what he does is unquestionable – as Fitzgerald is aware (p.116).
Ibid, p.112.
Ibid, p.166.
Cf. Henry Dan Piper, 'The Untrimmed Christmas Tree: The Religious Background of The Great Gatsby', in The Great Gatsby: a Study, ed. Frederick J.Hoffman (New York,1962), p.333. Piper cites the short story 'Absolution' (originally planned as Gatsby's prologue) and suggests that the main point about the world of Gatsby's imagination is that there 'he was safe from God', and so free to follow his own 'Platonic conception of himself' (The Great Gatsby, p.105.) But this does not mean that Gatsby should be read as a (conscious) retelling of Adam hiding in Eden, the man running away from God. Rather, as Piper continues, the standards by which Gatsby's dream is judged, the standards of the reality that is not 'a rock built on a fairy's wing' (The Great Gatsby, p.106), are a combination of 'fundamental decencies' and an awareness of mortality and the irreversible nature of time (ibid, p.117): humanistic values rather than theistic, although they would have been theistically grounded in an earlier era.
Malcolm Bradbury suggests that in most of his work, Waugh, 'despairing of God's sensible presence in modern history, feels free to represent it as chaos, as a vulgarized nonsense, without any really significant moral substance. Faith may enter, but the idea of it as a possession that redeems this world is not given; it is as often as not an attribute of those who suffer or are historically victimized, a story or a remarkably oblique alternative.' ('Muriel Spark's Fingernails', in Contemporary Women Novelists: a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey,1977), p.139.) Bradbury includes Brideshead Revisited as an example of the 'oblique' variety.
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1945; revised Penguin edition of 1962), p.212.
Ibid, p.164.
Ibid, p.276.
Ibid, p.294.
Ibid, p.247.
Ibid, p.263.
Ibid, p.276.
Ibid, p.295.
Ibid, p.309.
Ibid, p.312.
It is a technique he uses throughout the novel. Cordelia is much better equipped to be the novel's mouthpiece of Catholicism for having appeared in a superbly farcical scene earlier, where she confesses having told Rex – who is methodically turning Catholic in order to marry Julia – that Catholics must sleep with their feet pointing east because that is heaven's direction, 'and if you die in the night you can walk there'; besides similar gems about sacred monkeys, and damning your enemies by giving the Church a pound note with their name on it (ibid, p.187).
Ibid, p.314.
Ibid, p.322.
Ibid, p.324.
Ibid, pp.295-296.
Ibid, p.331.
Ibid, p.291.
Ibid, p.82.
Ibid, p.98.
Ibid, p.84.
Ibid, p.112.
Ibid, p.193.
Ibid, p.322.
Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter (1948), pp.35-36. All references are to the Penguin edition of 1971, henceforth referred to as THOTM, unless otherwise indicated.
Ibid, p.11.
Ibid, p.123.
Ibid, p.156.
Ibid, p.166.
Ibid, p.52.
Ibid, p.26.
Ibid, p.126.
Ibid, p.120.
Ibid, pp.115-16.
Ibid, p.189
Ibid, p.201.
Ibid, p.154.
Ibid, p.86.
Ibid, p.68.
Ibid, p.183.
For example, after Louise's telegram (ibid, p.189) and her request that they go to communion (ibid, p.219).
Ibid, p.60.
The only exception to this is the veiled hint in the sentences that close the chapter two pages later: 'Somewhere on the face of those obscure waters moved the sense of yet another wrong and another victim, not Louise, nor Helen' (ibid, p.162). (The first edition included the additional sentence, ‘Away in the town the cocks began to crow for the false dawn' (p.192) – where the cockcrow probably echoes Peter's denial of Christ.) This further victim is presumably the God for whose protection Scobie will kill himself at the end of the book (cf. Genesis 1:2, 'The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters'). But the reference here is to the aftermath; God is absent from the crucial moment of need when Scobie's destiny is in the balance.
1 Corinthians 10:13.
The Heart of the Matter, p.33.
Ibid, p.43.
Ibid, p.98.
Cf. in contrast John 16:24: 'Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.'
THOTM, p.125.
Quoted Marie-Beatrice Mesnet, Graham Greene and The Heart of the Matter (1954), p.102.
THOTM, p.181.
Ibid, p.189.
Ibid, p.220.
Ibid, p.222.
Ibid, p.225.
Ibid, p.258.
Ibid, p.259.
Ibid, p.228.
Ibid, p.262.
Ibid, pp.262-63. He has pretended to be suffering from angina. It is, of course, appropriate that the climax of The Heart of the Matter should be a faked heart attack.
Ibid, p.263.
Ibid, p.265.
Ibid, p.272.
Brighton Rock (1938; Penguin edition of 1975), p.210.
Ibid, p.21.
Ibid, p.163. Even his phone number – three sixes (p.48) – is the mark of the beast in the book of Revelation.
Ibid, p.52.
Ibid, p.164.
Ibid, pp.101-102.
Ibid, p.51.
Ibid, p.68.
Ibid, p.228.
Ibid, p.35.
Ibid, pp.120-21.
Ibid, pp.222-23.
Ibid, p.91.
Ibid, pp.113-14. To Pinkie it seems that 'right and wrong' are controlled by the successful gangster Colleoni: 'He looked as a man might look who owned the whole world, the whole visible world that is, the cash registers and policemen and prostitutes, Parliament and the laws which say "this is Right and this is Wrong"' (p.65) – which obviously reflects on Ida. It is, one assumes, the invisible world of Good and Evil that is outside Colleoni's control.
Ibid, pp.126-27.
Ibid, p.195.
There is a resemblance here to that other Catholic novel, Brideshead Revisited.
Brighton Rock, p.127.
Ibid, p.241.
Ibid, p.221.
Ibid, p.231.
Ibid, pp.237-38.
Ibid, pp.239-40.
Ibid, p.241.
Ibid, p.246.
Ibid, p.247.
Graham Greene,. The Power and the Glory (1940; Penguin edition of 1971. henceforth referred to as PG), p.7.
Ibid, p.8.
Ibid, p.97. A similar note is sounded by the priest at the end of The Heart of the Matter:
'A priest only knows the unimportant things.'
'Oh, I mean the sins...' (THOTM, p.271).
Ibid, p.115.
1 Peter 5:7-9.
Graham Greene, Collected Essays (1969; Penguin edition of 1970), p.91.
PG, p.82.
Collected Essays, p.140; quoted R.W.B. Lewis, The Picaresque Saint (1960), p.233. In Nostromo as in The Power and the Glory this sense is conveyed by use of the sun.
R.W.B. Lewis, ibid.
Cf. Isaiah 40:15.
PG, p.151. Indeed, the priest feels that God is totally dependent on him: 'When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist' (ibid, p.65).
Ibid, p.132.
Ibid, p.18.
Ibid, p.30. Here the effect is generalised to a statement about the world in general. The radio broadcasts from England have this function in The Heart of the Matter.
PG, p.150.
Ibid, pp.25ff, 49ff, 217ff.
Ibid, p.45.
Ibid, p.91.
Ibid, p.58.
Ibid, p.128.
Ibid, pp.95, 182, 197.
Ibid, p.180.
Brighton Rock, p.246.
PG, p.201. The sceptic Bendrix is used to establish Sarah's sainthood in the same way in The End of the Affair.
Eg. Paul's classic treatment in Romans 7 and 8.
It is worth noting that R.W.B. Lewis – who argues in The Picaresque Saint that the saint-figure in contemporary fiction must be at least half rogue – suggests that this 'crucial connection between sainthood and roguery – with all the attendant paradoxes' is expressed 'beyond anything elsewhere proposed in this generation' by the existentialist Sartre, in Saint Genet – Comedien et Martyr (Lewis, p.308).
Cf. Francois Mauriac, God and Mammon, quoted A.A. De Vitis in Graham Greene: Some Critical Considerations, ed. Robert O Evans (Kentucky, 1963), p.117.
2 Corinthians 12:9.
Romans 7:19.
Lewis, op.cit., p.213. Cf. also Lionel Trilling: 'We think that virtue is not interesting, even that it is not really virtue, unless it manifests itself as a product of "grace" operating through a strong inclination to sin.' ('Jane Austen and Mansfield Park', in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, ed. Boris Ford, Vol.V (1957; revised edition of 1969), p.116.)
John 16:8-11.
Matthew 5:16, John 13:35.
PG, p.129. Ibid, p.138.
Ibid, p.148.
It is possible too that the hunt does what the priest had felt only a confessor could do: 'to draw his mind slowly down the drab passages which led to grief and repentance' (ibid, p.128; cf. p.210).
Ibid, p.201.
Ibid, p.200.
Ibid, pp.209-210.
Ibid, p.147.
Ibid, .pp.52-53, 214.
Cf. ibid, pp.140ff, 211ff.
Ibid, p.196.
Ibid, p.201.
Ibid, pp.219-22.
© 2009 Pete Lowman
Fictional Absence is published here by the kind permission of the author. | <urn:uuid:9c1cb9f1-da5d-4d37-ba6a-8608b7695f08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bethinking.org/your-course/advanced/fictional-absence-chapter-4-after-the-funeral.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965035 | 22,433 | 1.75 | 2 |
Bruce Nauman was born December 6, 1941, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He studied art, mathematics, and physics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison from 1960 to 1964. He went on to study under William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson at the University of California at Davis, graduating with an M.F.A. in 1966. In 1964, Nauman gave up painting and began experimenting with sculpture and Performance art and collaborated with William Allan and Robert Nelson on film projects. He supported himself teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966 to 1968, and again at the University of California at Irvine, in 1970.
Since the mid-1960s, the artist has created an open-ended body of work that includes sculptures, films, holograms, interactive environments, neon wall reliefs, photographs, prints, sculptures, videotapes, and performance. His Conceptual work stresses meaning over aesthetics; it often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about existence and alienation, and increasingly it provokes the viewer’s participation and dismay.
In 1966, the Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, held Nauman’s first solo exhibition. In 1968, the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and the Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, initiated a long series of solo shows. Also in 1968, he was invited for the first time to participate in Documenta in Kassel, and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that enabled him to work in New York for one year. In 1972, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized the first solo museum exhibition of the artist’s work, which traveled in Europe and the United States. Nauman moved to New Mexico in 1979. A major retrospective was held at the Rijksmuseum Króller-Müller, Otterlo, and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, in 1981. Since the mid-1980s, primarily working with sculpture and video, he has developed disturbing psychological and physical themes with imagery based on animal and human body parts.
Nauman has received many honors, including an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1989, the Max Beckmann Prize in 1990, the Wolf Prize in Arts-Sculpture in 1993, and the Wexner Prize in 1994. The most recent Nauman retrospective was organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and traveled to many venues throughout America and Europe from 1993 to 1995. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico. | <urn:uuid:fea4826d-eeed-471b-ab39-38ffe8fb922f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rogallery.com/Nauman_Bruce/nauman-biography.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947406 | 539 | 1.632813 | 2 |
ATLANTA (AP) - State officials are reaching out to over 500 people who lost their jobs in the recent Hostess company liquidation.
Officials say 558 people in Georgia were impacted by the closure of Hostess Brands Inc. earlier this month.
The Governor's Office of Workplace Development and the Georgia Department of Labor are asking job seekers to visit their local department of labor career center for information on unemployment insurance.
Officials say job seekers will also find information on new jobs as they become available.
Aside from providing unemployment insurance, the organizations also provide job training and assistance through the Workforce Investment Act.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) | <urn:uuid:935fb699-3ba5-461f-bc76-ecfc41a5cecf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.13wmaz.com/news/georgia/article/205992/52/Ga-Officials-Reach-Out-to-Former-Hostess-Workers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948228 | 150 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Click here to read the whole article.
Iranian Journalists Flee, Fearing Retribution for Covering Protests
TORONTO — For two months Ehsan Maleki traveled around Iran with a backpack containing his cameras, a few pieces of clothing and his laptop computer, taking pictures of the reformist candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi during the presidential campaign. He did not know that his backpack and his cameras would soon become his only possessions, or that he would be forced to crawl out of the country hiding in a herd of sheep.
Mr. Maleki, 29, is one of dozens of reporters, photographers and bloggers who have either fled Iran or are trying to flee in the aftermath of the disputed June presidential election. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based organization that promotes press freedom and monitors the safety of journalists, said the number of journalists leaving Iran was the largest since the years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The wave of departures reflects the journalists’ anxiety over the retribution many of them have faced for reporting on the government’s violent suppression of the post-election protests. As bloody clashes unfolded in the streets of Tehran, the government went to great lengths to restrict the flow of information to the outside world. Foreign journalists were banned, and local reporters and photographers were warned to stay at home.
A number of Iranian journalists defied those orders, disseminating information in phone interviews, on Internet sites and through pictures sent to photo agencies. Now, they say, they are paying the price.
Many journalists in Tehran, including a Newsweek reporter, Maziar Bahari, who is also an independent filmmaker, were among the hundreds of Iranians arrested and jailed. Some are defendants in the mass trials the government is conducting. The wife of one journalist, Ahmad Zeidabadi, said he had been tortured while in prison.The editors of some opposition blogs, which reported the killings and the mass burial of protesters, have gone into hiding, and their whereabouts are not clear. The homes of some journalists, like Mr. Maleki, have been ransacked.
Today we find out the Obama Administration has defunded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, an organization that investigates human rights abuses by the killer regime.
The Boston Globe reported:For the past five years, researchers in a modest office overlooking the New Haven green have carefully documented cases of assassination and torture of democracy activists in Iran. With more than $3 million in grants from the US State Department, they have pored over thousands of documents and Persian-language press reports and interviewed scores of witnesses and survivors to build dossiers on those they say are Iran’s most infamous human-rights abusers.
But just as the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was ramping up to investigate abuses of protesters after this summer’s disputed presidential election, the group received word that - for the first time since it was formed - its federal funding request had been denied.
“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was sur prised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.’’
Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush. But the timing has alarmed some on Capitol Hill.
“The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is at the forefront of pioneering and vitally important work,’’ said Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, in a statement yesterday. “It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when these brave investigations are needed most.’’
"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."
Barack, you should be ashamed of yourself. But I know you aren't. Narcissists aren't capable of humility, introspection and genuine compassion for others. | <urn:uuid:194757a7-da12-463d-9d07-b1cc9c78dd3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://libertarianadvocate.blogspot.com/2009/10/botus-extends-hand-to-mullahs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969561 | 873 | 1.625 | 2 |
America's High Incarceration Rate Puts Justice at Risk
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, a trend that disproportionately affects racial minorities.
June 01, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- America is supposed to be the "land of the free." Unfortunately, we don't always live up to this motto. In fact, the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country on earth.
More than six million people in the United States are currently under some form of correctional supervision, and an astounding 730 out of every 100,000 Americans are currently behind bars. This is twice the incarceration rate in Iran and more than five times higher than in China, both of which are countries that many regard as having significant problems with human rights.
So why do we lock up so many people? Is it because we have more crime than other countries?
Not really. Instead, our federal and state governments tend to take a more punitive outlook toward crime than those in other countries. Take, for example, the so-called War on Drugs that puts addicts and non-violent drug offenders in prison instead of providing them with much-needed chemical dependency treatment. Or, look at legislatively-mandated mandatory minimum sentences that take away judges' discretion out of a fear that they may be too "soft on crime."
As of 2009, more than half of all the people in federal prisons were incarcerated for drug crimes. Less than 8 percent were locked up for committing a crime of violence.
The Pervasive Problem of Racial Inequality
The American criminal justice system used to be focused on rehabilitating the offender. Now, though, the system is much more punitive.
Indeed, the effects of incarceration extend far beyond the actual prison sentence. Nearly all convicted felons lose their right to vote, either temporarily or permanently. Most find it difficult to secure jobs or housing when they get out, making it extremely hard to escape the circumstances that landed them in prison in the first place.
The effects of incarceration tend to fall disproportionally on minority populations. African-American men are incarcerated at a rate six times higher than their white counterparts.
In fact, according to Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University and the author of the book "The New Jim Crow," as of 2010, there were more African-American men under correctional control than were enslaved in the decade before the Civil War. More African-American men have lost their right to vote because of felony convictions than were prohibited from voting before the Constitution was amended to stop states from discriminating based on race.
Unnecessary Incarceration Hurts Everyone
Our high incarceration rates don't just affect prisoners and their families. They also take precious government resources away from much more needed areas. In Massachusetts, the state spends approximately $50,000 per year on each prisoner.
The best guardian against unfair incarceration is a robust criminal defense system. If you are charged with a crime, be sure to get help from an experienced criminal defense lawyer.
Article provided by Cunha & Holcomb, P.C.
Visit us at www.cunhaholcomb.com
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The November Employment Report: A Wake-up Call
Awful. That’s the best one can say about the November employment report. The headline — that unemployment jumped to 9.8 percent — is not really the bad news. If and when the economy does catch fire, droves of discouraged workers will flood back into the labor market and the rate will easily exceed 10 percent. So a rising unemployment rate is not really the main concern.
No, the main concern is that there were only 50,000 private-sector jobs created, not nearly enough to make a dent in the employment woes. And that was the bright spot. For blue-collar workers — “production and nonsupervisory employees” — aggregate hours fell, aggregate payrolls fell, average weekly hours fell, average hourly earnings fell, and average weekly earnings fell. In the household survey, employment actually declined.
Unlike the recent past months, this report offers less of a mixed reading and more plain bad news.
It’s also a bit mysterious. The other data for November showed considerably more promise, and the ADP Employment Report on Wednesday pointed to large job gains. We should expect the data nerds to tear apart the seasonal adjustment of the numbers — always tricky for the holiday season — and see if something fishy turns up.
But mostly this is an alarm bell for the lame-duck Congress. No more games — extend all the tax cuts for two years, patch the AMT, and turn to cutting spending and tax reform.
Going forward, Congress has lost the luxury of extended debate on boutique social issues. All focus should be on growth. Every policy should be evaluated for its impact on growth. Wake up.
This originally appeared on National Review Online on December 3, 2010. | <urn:uuid:91664f0a-f215-46fa-9706-cd06b433c021> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanactionforum.org/content/november-employment-report-wake-call | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948734 | 362 | 1.578125 | 2 |
CLOSUP poll: Most local leaders in Michigan report ongoing financial woes
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Nearly half of Michigan's local governments say they are somewhat or significantly less able to meet their financial needs in 2011, though some negative trends eased this year, a new University of Michigan survey reports.
Although 48 percent of the local leaders reported having fiscal struggles, the percentage was lower than those reported during the past two years, the survey from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy says.
Last year, 61 percent of the jurisdictions reported declining fiscal health, while 52 percent did so in 2009, according to the polls in the Michigan Public Policy Survey series.
The easing trend can be interpreted in different ways. Optimistically, it may mean the fiscal crisis that has been hitting local governments peaked in 2010. Another interpretation is that local governments are better able to meet their financial needs because of cuts in employees and services.
Despite the easing trend, local leaders are still worried, with 50 percent predicting their jurisdictions will be less able to meet their fiscal needs in the coming year compared to their ability this year.
Although the large percentage is a significant concern, it is smaller than those reported in the two previous fiscal surveys. Last year, 65 percent of the jurisdictions predicted declining fiscal health, while 62 percent did so in 2009.
The ongoing pessimism is being fed by a variety of financial challenges. This year's survey says:
- 74 percent of the jurisdictions reported continued declines in revenue from property taxes.
- 61 percent of the local governments reported declines in state aid.
- 56 percent reported an increasing number of home foreclosures.
- 47 percent said tax delinquencies were a growing problem.
As revenue declines, many local governments reported facing more pressure to spend on infrastructure, human service and public safety. The cost of health care benefits continues to climb, though only 50 percent of the jurisdictions reported in 2011 that they offer any kind of fringe benefits to their current employees.
Local governments are dealing with the financial challenges by cutting back on services and staffing; raising charges for fees, licenses and permits; collaborating more with other jurisdictions; and having employees pay more of their medical costs.
The poll was done by the Ford School's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy. It was conducted from April 18 to June 10 and involved online and hardcopy surveys sent to the top elected and appointed officials in all counties, cities, villages and townships in Michigan. A total of 1,272 jurisdictions returned valid surveys, resulting in a 69 percent response rate. The margin of error was plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
The report is available online at http://closup.umich.edu | <urn:uuid:f99e7684-0e18-4585-8d20-600b4680e5b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fordschool.umich.edu/news/?news_id=634 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960821 | 552 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Reports that FBI counterterrorism training programs relied heavily on Islamophobic material has sent shockwaves through the FBI and the Department of Justice. Wired’s Spencer Ackerman has closely followed the influence of FBI trainer William Gawthrop’s presentation, “The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in Islamic Law,” and notes that the slides have been cited in Justice Department training material which portray an existential battle between Islam and the West.
Ackerman notes that in 2007, Gawthrop taught a class on “intelligence and homeland security” and the National Defense Intelligence College. A ThinkProgress investigation into Gawthrop’s background reveals he was part of a U.S. Army War College think tank, the Proteus Management Group (PMG), at which Islamophobic training material and papers were regularly produced and shared.
Pat Cohn, a contractor for the Army who works at the War College and is listed as a contact for the group, told ThinkProgress that, to the best of his knowledge, Proteus had been shut down when it lost its funding. He could not say when the funding had been cut. Portions of the project’s website have been erased but a combination of a cached version of the website and documents still hosted on U.S. military web-servers reveal a DOD operation which served as a breeding ground for the Islamophobic narratives present in Gawthrop’s presentations.
Proteus’ mission was to “consider differing values and perceptions,” and “frame complex issues holistically.” A banner on the now-erased Proteus website reflects the group’s “outside the box” mission:
Proteus, which was sponsored by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence and the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership, hosted Gawthrop as a “PMG Fellow.” A March 2007 Proteus newsletter directs readers to one of Gawthrop’s articles in which he suggests the ideas of Islam should be “countered” through “critical vulnerabilities.” He writes:
Critical vulnerabilities of the Koran, for example, are that it was uttered by a mortal; portions were ghostwritten by others; portions were lost or redacted, and it was revised and re-issued by another mortal. Similar vulnerabilities may be found in Mohammad’s character as a political and military leader, the character of other Clerics in the Modern Era, as well as the topics addressed in the Haddiths.
But Gawthrop’s portrayal of Islam as inherently violent — indeed he glosses over the history of Christian wars of aggression by declaring “the Crusades were a delayed response to Jihad” — and at odds with Western civilization was hardly outside the norm in the “future” research conducted at Proteus.
Documents hosted on DOD webservers and associated with the Proteus program lay bare a culture of hostility toward Islam and closely resemble the messages in Gawthrop’s training materials.
A “Proteus Monograph Series” on “Truth, Perception, And Consequences,” authored by Christine A. R. MacNulty, reads:
[The Enlightenment] was the time of a major paradigm shift for the West, away from the authoritarian epistemology of medieval religious doctrine and towards an empirical epistemology based on the scientific method. The Islamic world has not been through a similar shift, which could explain its current predicament. [...]
While the [Islamic] radicals permit no creativity in general, they exhibit great creativity in terms of tactics and the development of IEDs, bombs, and other weaponry. They are innovative in their uses of technology such as cellphones. But behind them are still the concepts of revenge, honor, and “face” mixed with resentment and envy of the West.
In a presentation delivered by Cynthia E. Ayers at a Proteus workshop in August 2006, she warns that the Bush administration’s offer of incentives for Iran to cease nuclear enrichment could “be interpreted by Iranian leaders as an offer to pay ‘tribute’ in submission to Islam.” The presentation concludes with the following slide:
While public attention has focused on Gawthrop’s presence at the FBI, documents from Proteus would suggest that the Islamophobic narratives in his presentations were common, if not actively encouraged, by the Department of Defense at the Army War College. | <urn:uuid:83eb8370-09e7-490c-9f5b-3bd114a6b5d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/10/06/337556/exclusive-dod-proteus-management-group-cultivated-islamophobic-training-materials/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966685 | 926 | 1.507813 | 2 |
If you've ever lost an important business card, wracked your brain to remember that website with the great design or struggled to collect three years of sales reports, the free software Evernote can help you organize your business life.
"Small-business owners live and die by the volume of information they need to access," says Alexandra Samuel, author of Work Smarter with Evernote (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012). "The time it takes to coordinate all that information into systems can become another job in and of itself. You can easily spend more time managing tools than tasks. Evernote makes accessing information as easy as possible."
Evernote works like a bookmarking tool, but instead of generating one long list of sites, it puts information from the web or your computer into notebooks. For example, if you are doing market research and find an interesting study on the Internet, you can save it in your Research notebook. Or if you're planning a business trip, you can store flight and hotel reservation information and conference details in a Trip notebook.
Two similar tools to Evernote include Catch.com, a free tool that allows you to save and organize an unlimited amount of text, photo and voice notes, and OneNote by Microsoft, which allows you to create and store up to 500 searchable notes for free.
"Because it's flexible, Evernote can manage a lot of day-to-day work," says Samuel, who uses Evernote to track things like financial records, meeting notes, deliverables, and task management.
Evernote's basic service is free, with an upload capacity of 40MB per month, but only allows users to upload certain file types, such as images, audio and pdfs, and comes with advertisments and upgrade prompts that can be annoying. To aviod these, you'll have to pay for the premium version, which costs $45 per year. It offers greater sharing options and a larger upload capacity, as well as the ability to upload of any file type.
Here's how you can use Evernote to organize, prioritize and access information:
Everything you save to Evernote is stored as a note. Open the Evernote software and click on the New Note command to add information. If you want to save information from the Internet, click the Evernote elephant button that is automatically added to your web browser toolbar when you install the software.
To organize your information, you have the ability to group notes into notebooks and notebooks into stacks by using commands in the Evernote file and sidebar menus.
Samuel says a small-business owner might create a notebook for “Contacts” to store names of people you met at conferences; “Actions,” for to-do lists; “Ideas,” for project drafts; and “Inspiration,” for motivating blog posts.
Everything you save to Evernote is searchable by keywords, which means you can quickly find what you're looking for and misfiling a paper is never a problem. And Evernote’s character recognition tool even allows you to search for words within a photo.
Prioritize and Motivate
An entrepreneur's success depends on prioritizing, Samuel says. "Evernote helps you set and sustain priorities by helping you anticipate and structure what you should pay attention to so that you stay focused on what matters most.”
Samuel says business owners shouldn't consider notebooks to be like files; instead, they should think of notebooks as buckets to fill. For example, when generating sales leads, label a notebook "Key Industries" or "West Coast Prospects." Samuel says this will motivate you to add more information to the notebook.
Notebooks can be put into stacks, which will help you pay attention to related groups. Samuel suggests creating stacks for things like current projects, past projects, creative practices and areas of responsibility.
"If you have a notebook stack that you aren't using regularly, it's a sign that there is an area of your professional or personal life that you're neglecting or that there is an area of responsibility you're ready to take off your plate," she says.
Access and Collaborate
Evernote can be downloaded on to your smartphone or tablet, and files can be synchronized between all of your devices. Evernote also has a collaboration feature, providing an easy way to share information with coworkers. | <urn:uuid:ff0493e4-251e-4800-af23-3d60478904ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/printthis/225858.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941614 | 913 | 1.539063 | 2 |
reply to Kearnstd
Re: Just face the facts... The Person was never really alive. The Man gets a Name for his Person, which is owned by the state with the Man as Beneficiary. The Man can give the Rights of his Person to any other Fiction, Person. When the Man dies the Person still exists. The Fiction lives forever as it was never born, it only berthed. Whoever sails the Ship gets the profits. | <urn:uuid:a490c10e-81e5-405b-a2c0-30fefdecee40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r23544292-Just-face-the-facts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979094 | 91 | 1.5625 | 2 |
A Big Ten university experiences the challenge of getting its school hues just right when it builds a new football stadium.
University of Minnesota football fans have always shown their loyalty by sporting maroon and gold on game days. But until recently, they clashed with the stadium.
For almost three decades, the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers didn't have their own football facility on campus. Instead, they played in the Metrodome, the downtown Minneapolis stadium that's home to the Minnesota Vikings, the state's professional football team.
"There was more purple and gold [the Vikings' team colors] than maroon and gold," says Shawn Gaither, principal at Studio Hive, a Minneapolis architecture and interior design firm that played a major role in designing a new stadium for the university. "It was a lackluster fan experience; there was no sense of place."
Creating a sports venue that celebrated not only Golden Gophers football, but also the University of Minnesota itself, was the primary mission when the university brought football back to campus with the construction of the $288.5 million TCF® Bank Stadium.
It's the first Big Ten stadium constructed from the ground up since 1960, and the first football facility to receive LEED certification.
The University of Minnesota was seeking a "collegiate" look for its new stadium, says Myron Chase, project architect for PopulousTM, a design firm out of Kansas City, Mo., that designed the core and shell. The design includes a brick façade and arches, the better to blend in with other buildings on campus and evoke the university's former Memorial Stadium, which hosted its last game in 1981. "All the facilities around it are brick," Chase says. "It made it a no-brainer to select those materials."
The stadium has no main front door; rather, it has multiple entrances of equal design weight. "We wanted the stadium to address all corners of the site," Chase says. The university is developing a research corridor near the stadium and didn't want future facilities to be faced with an unsightly view.
One unique and highly visible design element of the stadium is a promenade lined with 87 massive stone plaques, each inscribed with the name of a Minnesota county. The design fulfills the U's commitment to recognize the entire state and its financial contribution to the stadium, Chase says. It also serves a practical purpose, he notes. "When you're going to a game, you can say, 'Hey, meet me at Ottertail County.'"
Construction of the horseshoe-shaped open-air facility required 8,600 tons of steel, which was 90 percent recycled and fabricated primarily in Minnesota, in keeping with the green mission of the project. The steel was coated on-site using a two-coat system, designed to expedite the process in light of Minnesota's weather-shortened painting season. The steel was primed with Sherwin-Williams Zinc Clad III HS 100 and finished with Sherwin-Williams Fast Clad Urethane.
The stadium used 30 different custom colors, in Sherwin-Williams coatings exclusively, including ProGreenTM 200, ProMar® 200, Duration Home® and Sher-CrylTM.
Obviously, maroon and gold played major roles in the palette. "The biggest challenge was getting those colors, which are so important to the university and the team, to look the same in all different types of materials, finishes and lighting," says Sherwin-Williams representative Brian Laramy. "There were multiple matches, submittals and changes, to ensure that the concrete block wall looked the same as the doors, which looked the same as the drywall, and so on." When designing with school colors, there's a fine line between spirit and overkill, according to Gaither, lead designer for the interior's premium spaces, such as its lounges, clubs and suites.
"Those trademarked University of Minnesota maroon and gold colors are quite electric," he says. "You tend to lose the impact of the brand if every wall and ceiling is that same palette. It becomes overwhelming. We had to use each color in a strategic manner, reinterpreting the colors while not straying too far from them."
For very large surfaces, for example, "We found a gold that's softer, a maroon that's not as purple," Gaither says. "You still get the impression you're in a University of Minnesota environment."
In the premium club rooms and suites, Gaither and his team walked another design tightrope: balancing comfort and luxury with just enough school spirit. "Here in Minnesota, people don't like things that are ostentatious," he says. "We had a lot of conversations about what makes for a premium-level space without being too flashy."
When considering a venue like this, consistency was important, as was the appropriateness of materials. The lower-level, public lounges feature plastic laminate that resembles wood, while the premium spaces, such as the Board of Regents suite, utilize makore, also known as African cherry. The wood comes from trees that grow in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Liberia, and ranges in color from light, pink-red to deep red or reddish brown.
The University of Minnesota's trademarked block "M" symbol is a major design motif, with about 9,000 of them appearing throughout the stadium. But some are so subtle that visitors have to look carefully to spot them.
"We had a lot of fun with custom things, such as stitching the M on the back of a leather club chair or etching it into the arm of a wooden chair," Gaither says. Throughout key areas of the club rooms, the design team created custom upholstery fabric printed with the lyrics of the "Minnesota Rouser," the university's fight song. "From a distance you see that the fabric has an interesting pattern to it, but when you get close, you can actually see the words to the famous song,” he says. "It carries a lot of energy."
TCF Bank is a registered trademark of TCF Financial Corporation. | <urn:uuid:195538cc-d7ec-4956-b9d7-d4ccc5262ce0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sherwin-williams.com/home-builders/services/project-profiles/sw-article-pro-schoolspirit.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971288 | 1,271 | 1.703125 | 2 |
One of my favorite steps in the app development lifecycle is the creation of the artwork. I'm not stellar at creating original artwork, but I definitely recognize when things look just right, and sometimes I stumble upon it. I must also have a little bit of marketing in me, because it's my constant effort to brand things.
The artwork and branding is important, because an app developer must live in a constant state of capturing the user amid so much noise. An app needs to say "here's precisely what I do and how it adds value to your life". It takes a lot of design thought and effort to cut through the noise and reach your audience.
Good messages to communicate are: clean, simple, creative, elegant, and fluid.
I'd like to walk you through my process of creating artwork for an app called Everyview. Everyview is webcam viewer that attempts to implement well the design principles of Windows 8. It's intended to feel like a breath of fresh air. There are plenty of apps for viewing web cams and it's nothing that can't be done in the browser too, but it's seldom a consolidated and elegant experience. As of this writing, Everyview is not yet published to the Windows Store, but by the time you read it, it may be. Try searching for Everyview.
My artwork for Everyview started with the creation of a symbol. The symbol had to represent every image that could possibly come through the eye of a camera and so I simply chose to represent the eye of a camera. I didn't want to make the app subject to aging by choosing a specific camera though, and I didn't want to specify a still camera or a video camera. So I created a camera lens. The icon doesn't determine absolutely that you're looking down the barrel of a DSLR, an amateur video camera, a high-end video camera, or any other specific model. It's an agnostic character of a camera.
Looking into the eye of a camera invokes a bit of a "live" feeling, as if you're on the air. I chose not to embellish the icon with a lot of gradients and or other attempts to make it look more realistic. As long as it says "camera" to the user, that's enough. I did, however, ad a lens glare that identifies it without doubt as a camera lens.
Let me show you how I created this image.
I used CorelDRAW because… well, because I always use CorelDRAW. Use your graphics package of choice, but don't restrict yourself to a bitmap editor. Creating images in a vector-based graphics package has serious benefits and will make exporting to the various required app graphic sizes a breeze. Creating images in a bitmap package will inevitable find you needing a size larger than what you designed for. I recorded a primer on using CorelDRAW and you can access it at http://aka.ms/coreldrawprimer.
Before I show you how I created that image, let me show you how I set up CorelDRAW for creating images for Windows 8. Choosing File | New in CorelDRAW by default will start you out with a document the size of a piece of paper. CorelDRAW is very good at creating artwork for print, but we're concerned here more with pixels than we are with inches, so let's change the defaults and save it for future use.
I created a preset called Win8 App that uses the base Windows resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. I also chose a color mode of RGB since the results are to be rendered to a screen rather than a printer. When you're working with documents of a designated pixel width/height, the resolution I mostly irrelevant.
If you'd like a nice place to start, try downloading the template I created at http://codefoster.com/w8tiletemplate.
Now, with a new document, we can go about creating our camera lens graphic.
Creating the lens graphic
Create a series of concentric circles like so. You do this by creating the largest and then resizing it with the CTRL key held to resize about the object's center and hitting the right mouse button when you have your next circle to create a copy.
Use the second largest to trim the largest by clicking first the second largest and then holding shift and clicking the largest. Then hit the trim button on the toolbar. Then delete the second largest circle. Setting the fill color of all objects to black and removing the outline color should leave you with something like this…
That's nice and simple and we have only to create the lens glare, which is only slightly harder than what we've done so far.
Make another couple of circles inside the smallest. I like to give them a red outline (right click on red from the color palette) while I'm working so they're easily discerned.
When you draw an ellipse (in this case a circular ellipse) in CorelDRAW, you have an ellipse, which is different from a custom curve. Ellipses have the property that you can grab their little vertex using the shape tool and drag to reduce the ellipse to an arc. Use the shape tool (F10) to do just that and work your way to something like this…
And then use some trimming and intersecting to end up with this…
Designing the tiles
Now it's time to design yourself some tiles. At a minimum, you'll need a standard app tile (150 x 150), a small logo (30 x 30), a store logo (50 x 50), and a splash screen (620 x 300). Additionally, you can design a wide logo (310 x 150) and some additional promotional images in case the Store finds your app worthy of being featured. It's recommended that the wide logo only be used if you're going to implement a live tile.
Let's start with the main app tile. Here's what I came up with for that…
Obviously, the tile incorporates the symbol we just created, but I also add a stylized app title below that. I chose a fairly bold font, condensed it, used different colors for the words and even shoved them together and created a little notch. Little design choices like this are somewhat arbitrary, but will end up becoming your brand and how people recognize your app. Finally, I added a soft gradient behind the entire title. You have to be careful with gradients in modern apps, but a shallow, gray gradient here seems to add a sort of dreamy, modern, cloud feel to the app.
Next, I'll elaborate a bit on the standard logo design when creating the wide logo and the splash screen which I tend to make rather similar. Here's what I came up with.
Now with more horizontal space than vertical, we stretch the brand elements out left to right and I like to add a little subtitle that describes without a doubt what the purpose of the app is – it's a webcam viewer. Like the notched v in view, I notch the E with the camera lens and keep all of the graphics tight and bold.
The last step is the creation of the store and small logos.
The Store logo
The store logo is used for your apps dedicated detail page in the Windows Store. It's common practice to just shrink the app tile down from 150 pixels to 50 and call it good, but that's unfortunate because it's rare that the app's main tile will look so good at this size. Take a look at the Bing app's Store logo captured from its page in the Store…
You want this image to be even simpler than the main app tile, to use most of the 50 x 50 pixel space, and to have a transparent background.
For my Everyview app, I stuck to the basic, original symbol. In CorelDRAW if you want to render something out a certain size even if the elements inside don't quite fill up that size, you just create a bounding rectangle the size you want and then give it no fill and no outline. I have rendered this bounding box orange below for visibility only. To export this image, you simple set the bounding box's outline color to none (invisible), select the entire group (bounding box and symbol together), and then export (CTRL + E) it.
Here's how that would be rendered, however.
Notice a few things about this:
- The image has been rendered to pixels custom made for the export size chosen (it could be rendered absolutely huge and would still look great)
- The bounding box is not visible, yet it is responsible for the overall size and shape of the exported image
- The background is transparent (designated by the checkerboard pattern) but the lens glare is always white
- The transparency is 24-bit which means it has various levels of transparency around the edges to make it blend perfectly with the background
- There is a little bit of space around each edge of the symbol
- The symbol is large enough to capture all the quality we can in this restricted space
The small logo
The small logo is used to represent your app when the user semantically zooms out of their start screen. Try it and see.
You can use the exact same techniques to create the small logo as you did for the Store logo. The small logo (30 x 30 pixels) is even smaller than the store logo (50 x 50 pixels) so it becomes that much more important to be intentional about simplifying your image.
That's as far as I'll take this for now. Of course, you would continue your design effort into the app itself so that the entire effort is unified and consistent.
I'd like to point out one of the advantages to Microsoft design principles that ends up being highlighted by the content of this article. No part of the splash screen or the tiles or even the app itself are contributed to by Windows. The entire space falls under the responsibility of whoever wears the design hat in your organization (even if you are your organization and you wear all the hats!). The app tiles as well as the app's main design surface because a truly empty canvas and 100% of the pixels are there to deliver your brand, deliver your functionality, and delight your user.
Have fun with this. It's fun stuff for sure. | <urn:uuid:0bede752-df34-4a68-b442-f5ba5536d336> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.codefoster.com/?tag=/design | 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 | 0.944267 | 2,132 | 1.578125 | 2 |
It's getting more and more difficult these days to fight the big money that
runs the political system.
And it appears the status quo would prefer it that way.
The New York Times reported recently that at the annual convention
of the National Association of Secretaries of State in July the big talk
was about bringing order to the presidential nomination process. One proposal
on the table appears to be to host several large regional primaries -- similar
in nature to the South's Super Tuesday -- that would be rotated every four
years to prevent any particular state or region from controlling the process.
The secretaries apparently are concerned that the jockeying to see who could
host the earliest primaries and caucuses -- and therefore put their state's
imprimatur on the race -- was creating a political crisis.
"This is getting to be a bigger mess than ever, a political and civic
crisis," William Galvin, secretary of state for Massachusetts, told
the Times after the convention.
There is a crisis. But it has nothing to do with a lack of order.
In fact, the problem is too much order and too great a reliance on the two
major parties. Essentially, the Democratic and Republican parties are private
clubs with privileges protected by law in most states. They are guaranteed
slots on the ballot and have their candidate selection processes -- the
primary election -- paid for by each state's taxpayers.
Contrast this with independent and alternative-party candidates who have
to climb the steepest of hills just to get their names before voters, and
then have to do battle against better-funded, better-coordinated and often
more professionally organized opposition.
During presidential elections, the concentration of power in the two-party
system is further consolidated, with front-running candidates determined
by a handful of states with early primaries and regions holding massive
multi-state primaries. Candidates need to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire
for their candidacies to be considered viable enough to the people who fund
their runs. Those candidates who can't raise the cash can't compete in the
races that follow -- the giant regional primaries that are fast becoming
the norm and that are the ultimate arbiter of who gets on the ballot.
And since the major media outlets generally ignore independents -- except
if they are like Ross Perot and have large personal war chests or are considered
novelties like Ralph Nader -- this leaves voters with few choices.
The secretaries of state should be seeking ways to open the ballot and to
loosen the grip that the two parties have on the national electoral process,
rather than fighting off the insurgents.
The states could start by making the two major political parties pay for
their primary elections and make all candidates follow the same petition
requirements to get on the ballot. In many states, independent candidates
are required to get significantly more people to sign their petitions than
their party-backed opponents.
And they need to change the rules that govern elections at the state level
and allow some of these reforms to be used in elections for national office.
Louisiana, for instance, holds one large primary in which voters choose
from among all candidates for a particular office with the top two -- regardless
of political party -- facing off in the general election.
Other states have experimented with weighted-voting systems in which voters
can cast more than one vote for a particular candidate. If there are five
open seats, for instance, voters could cast all five of their votes for
a particular candidate rather than be forced to either choose five or not
vote at all.
And there is the fusion system in place in states like New York, which allows
candidates to run on lines from more than one political party.
None of this will have much of an impact, however, if the influence of money
on the process cannot be limited. Candidates for national office in 1996
spent more than $800 million, not including the money spent by the sponsors
of the Democratic and Republican conventions that year, and significantly
more is expected to be wasted on the next presidential-year vote.
This kind of money means that candidates and office holders are forced to
spend most of their time fund raising and crafting special privileges for
their corporate patrons -- rather than developing and implementing policies
that will benefit average Americans. And it means that independents and
alternative-party candidates cannot effectively get their message out.
Various reforms have been floated, but those being taken the most seriously
will do little to change the ways things work. Comprehensive reforms are
needed that address the outrageous sums being spent while not minimizing
the very real First Amendment concerns being raised.
Providing free television time to qualified candidates -- provided the qualifying
bar is set low enough to allow independents to get on the air -- would be
A voluntary system of public funding would be better -- candidates would
get public funding and a large block of free TV and radio time in exchange
for promising to limit to smaller donors their intake of private contributions
and by capping their overall spending. This would level the playing field
for independents and remove the influence of large donors, while allowing
candidates an out if they do not want to play by the new rules.
These reforms might not make for a more orderly election system. But they
will open it up. And, after all, democracy is a messy business.
Hank Kalet is a writer living in South Brunswick, NJ.
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Copyright © 1998 The Progressive Populist | <urn:uuid:47b7605f-c4a8-4a07-8ca9-8f46c85d7188> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.populist.com/98.9.grassroots.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950033 | 1,172 | 1.828125 | 2 |
“. . . as sweet and soothing as a Smith Brothers cherry cough drop.”
Hello Goodbye Hello is a perfect daisy chain of acquaintances old and new.
And the whole experience of reading it is as sweet and soothing as a Smith Brothers cherry cough drop.
The concept is certainly simple enough: one notable person meets another and then that one meets yet another and so on and so on, until we have, as the subtitle promises, 101 Remarkable Meetings.
We start things off when Adolf Hitler meets John Scott-Ellis (aka Baron Howard de Walden), who nearly knocks the little mustache off the guy, who is crossing the street without looking while Scott-Ellis is driving his Fiat down the Briennerstrasse in Munich. Later, after Hitler has come to power and Scott-Ellis is on his honeymoon, again in Germany, they meet at the opera in the Residenztheater. Hitler is charming as he assures the young man that he does indeed remember him and his car.
For the rest of his life, Scott-Ellis dines out on the anecdote:
“For a few seconds, perhaps, I held the history of Europe in my rather clumsy hands. He was only shaken up, but had I killed him, it would have changed the history of the world.”
From there, Scott-Ellis meets Rudyard Kipling, who then himself meets Mark Twain who then meets Helen Keller (about whom author/raconteur Craig Brown comments, “She is, in a way, the Nelson Mandela of her age: however great you are, you can’t feel really good about yourself until you have shaken hands with Helen Keller.”) and so on, until the end of the book, when The Duchess of Windsor meets Adolf Hitler.
Before that, The Duchess met with the Queen Mother, who, before that, met T. S. Eliot, who, before that, met Groucho Marx, but I digress.
No matter where you jump into the book, someone interesting is meeting someone of note with as full a range of results as the characters involved (dancers, actors, writers, politicians, philosophers, poets, architects—rush to read about Frank Lloyd Wright being called in to design a country estate for Marilyn Monroe and her then-husband Arthur Miller—magicians, Tsars, singers, and living saints are all sort of mashed up together).
Some folks who you would swear would have loved each other (Jackie Kennedy and Andy Warhol, two birds of a feather) turn out to be a bad pairing:
“She never invited me to her Christmas party again, so she’s a creep. And now I wouldn’t go if she did.”
While others who seem oddly mismatched end up respecting or even liking each other, like Madonna and Martha Graham, about whom Madonna remembers:
“She was part Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. The rest of her was a cross between a Kabuki dancer and the nun I was obsessed with in the fifth grade, Sister Kathleen Thomas.”
For her part, Graham withheld comment until a then incredibly famous and successful Madonna gave the Martha Graham Dance Company a donation of $150,000. After that she was quoted as saying:
“She is naughty and dares you to react. But she only puts onstage what most women hide, and yes, it may not be respectable. . . . Respectable! Show me any artist who wants to be respectable.”
Not now content with the fact that his neat little formula is working well, the author, in his note to his readers, lets us in on the fact that there are circles within circles at work here:
“To lend a pattern to a book that revolves around chance, and to insert a note of order into the otherwise haphazard, I have described each of the 101 meetings in exactly 1,001 words, which makes Hello Goodbye Hello 101,101 words long. The acknowledgements, prefacing quotes, note to the U.S. edition, book description, author’s biography, and list of my other books each consist of 101 words, as does this note.”
We wonder just what kind of mind needs to shackle itself with such requirements, as certainly the anecdotes themselves would do. To put it to the test, counting the words of just one story at random, the one when James Dean met Elizabeth Taylor for the first time on the set of Giant. (After a rocky start in which the actor, nervous and terrified, seems to shun Taylor, then perhaps the most famous woman in the world. He would go on to tell her, “Until you tone down your veneer, you’ll never be an actress.”) The word count? Just 1,001 words long, a word for each of Scheherazade’s nights.
The tales of state functions (The Queen of England meets the Duke of Windsor), negotiated introductions (Nancy Reagan meets Michael Jackson) and chance events (James Dean again, meeting Alec Guinness this time, who due to his involvement with the occult reportedly on seeing Dean’s Porche 550 Spyder said to the younger actor, “If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week,” just a week to the day before Dean died in that same car) make for delightful reading. And especially, given their bite-sized, uniform lengths, ideal bathroom reading.
To prove to us that he has done his research, the author supplies us with a lovely bibliography. And perhaps as a means of dumbing down his text for the American market (Craig Brown is a British writer, as becomes swiftly obvious given his selection of subjects), he also gives us thumbnails bios for those that he feels may be too obscure. Although his selection of George Lazenby, Terrance Stamp, and Sarah Miles for this list makes us wonder if our author fears we have never seen a movie.
Still, there are so many bits of information to be enjoyed in reading this book:
There is the fact that, when he was dying of cancer, Walt Disney reportedly asked the composers of his film Mary Poppins to come over every Friday to play for him his favorite song from the film. Each time they begin the slow, sad melody of “Feed the Birds,” Disney turns his face to the window so that they cannot see him weep.
And there is the wonderful quote from Australian comic Barry Humphries, perhaps best known for his character Dame Edna, who said, “When Arthur Miller shook my hand I could only think that this was the hand that had once cupped the breasts of Marilyn Monroe.”
Speaking of Humphries, there is also the story of the time he met Salvador Dali, whose wife, Gala, took advantage of the occasion to grab the back of Humphries’ head and begin to hack away at his hair with a pair of scissors, while the artist “merely watched the proceedings from an armchair, his head on one side and his hands resting on an elaborate walking stick.”
And there is the show-stopper concerning when Alexander Woollcott gleefully informed Harpo Marx that George Bernard Shaw would be coming to lunch the next Wednesday, only to have Marx retort, “Bernard Shaw? Didn’t his name used to be Bernie Schwartz?”
On the assigned day, Harpo met Shaw and bonded with the great playwright by making him laugh. Remembering the occasion, Marx recalled that Woollcott had smugly enjoyed the whole thing, knowing that he was bringing together perhaps the oddest of couples. “He loved playing the game of Strange Bedfellows,” said Marx, “Harpo Marx and Bernard Shaw. Corned beef and roses!”
Some meetings seem historic (Isadora Duncan meeting Jean Cocteau, Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust, and especially Janis Joplin and Patti Smith), some seem fated (Eli Wallach and Frank Sinatra, Phil Spector and Leonard—especially given the fact that it is reported that Spector pulled a gun on Cohen) and still others seem outrageous enough to have been imaginary (Marilyn Monroe and Nikita Khrushchev, Tsar Nicholas II and Harry Houdini) but all result in the sort of crackling good tale of the sort that comes in so handy at the dinner table.
Where you can tell your friends all about the time that a 52-year-old Princess Grace rescued a 19-year-old Princess Diana by pulling her into a bathroom in Buckingham Palace when the young royal became overwhelmed as the object of so much attention and scrutiny.
And Grace, who had been there, said to Diana, cupping the girl’s cheek with the palm of her hand, “Don’t worry, dear. You’ll see—it’ll only get worse.” | <urn:uuid:b981295d-dc97-4f6d-a32f-5e9898d54e6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/hello-goodbye-hello-circle-101-remarkable-meetings | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970356 | 1,882 | 1.78125 | 2 |
>>So if two 17's could be 200 w and the power supply in the computer might be 200 w,,,,thats 400 watts so a 500 va should more than handle it ....wacha think,,,,?|
First, it depends on the wattage, not VA, which are potentially (yes, pun is intended <g>) different when impedences other than pure resistance are in the circuit and made worse when the power source is not a pure sine wave, which is true of all but the most high-end UPSs. Second, your 200-watt power supply refers to its OUTPUT not its input. You have to check the rating on the power supply itself to see what it would draw.
A 500 WATT ups would probably handle 2 17" monitors plus a worstation, though I wouldn't expect more than a couple of minutes.
Sean Smith used to speak highly of OPTI-UPS, especially for price-performance. Buy.com has a 500 watt (yes, watts, also 500VA - dunno how they manage that since it's not true sine-wave output) for 89.95 (roughly), with LAN/Phone protection. 500VS, I think it is.
HOWEVER, I ordered one and it was DOA. That's off-putting but can happen to anybody, of course (I've also had a couple of APC UPSs fail in service - dern batteries don't last). I've ordered a replacement for the OPTI, but I can't comment on the OPTIs personally yet. | <urn:uuid:7e198ad0-aadc-454a-863b-11df2ccf2450> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsgs.aspx?subjectid=18946&msgnum=9854&batchsize=10&batchtype=Next | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964505 | 321 | 1.75 | 2 |
Whether is it's a tweet from a colleague or a face pile on a site, social proof can be a wildly effective form of marketing. But like all marketing, the effect can vary greatly for a number of reasons.
In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand discusses different ways to approach your social proof and tactics to increase the potential conversion rate by increasing the specificity of your efforts.
What do you do to enhance your social proof? Has anything really worked great for you? Share and discuss in the comments below!
"Howdy SEOmoz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit about the power of social proof. Now social proof is a psychological, like behavioral psychology type of phenomenon whereby human beings are interested in what other human beings are doing, and by showing that other humans are interested in something or are taking some activity, you can actually encourage people to take that same activity.
It's not that we're all sheep or lemmings. It's just that we like each other. We tend to follow each other. We tend to be interested in and remember the behaviors of those around us.
This gets used all the time in inbound marketing and web marketing all over the place. You can see this, for example, in search results. Think when you perform a search on Google and you see all those star ratings, and it's been rated by this many people, and it's 4.5 out of 5 stars. Now they've got the Zagat ratings and local. They have product ratings. You can see the number of times that someone has +1'd something, so it will say, "This is +1'd by 3000, 4000 people." There will be their profiles on the right-hand side. Google is clearly doing this.
You can see this in Yelp and Urbanspoon, places like that, that rate local restaurants. You can see this in all sorts of places that rate hardware, rate software, rate anything. You can see this on a lot of people's websites, where they've got the Facepile widget installed, and they show the faces of people like you who have subscribed. If you're logged into Facebook, they'll show you, "Oh well, Rand, your friends, Mike and Adam and Sally, they've all subscribed to this email newsletter." All right. Great. Or they've liked this brand on Facebook.
This sort of social proof stuff is used all over the place, and primarily the activity that you're trying to drive toward is some type of conversion. You're trying to get someone to engage in an activity like share something socially, like something, +1 something, click on something, or you're trying to actually get them to convert. But social proof has varying degrees of effectiveness, and that's what I wanted to talk about a little bit today.
There's been a lot of research into this area and a lot of interesting tests performed online. I might try and cite some of those in the link here or on the page here or maybe in the comments below. You can see this type of varying effectiveness. So saying something like, and you'll see this on the front of a lot of websites or on their landing pages, where they'll say, "40,000 small businesses use GetListed.org." Or you might see, what's a good example? Box.net has something where they say, "92% of Fortune 500s use Box. Why aren't you? You should give us a try." That kind of thing.
What's essentially being said here is, "Lots of other people use us. Therefore, this is a good data point to indicate that we're reliable and trustworthy and we're popular." Usually even better than this generic is when you get much more specific. There's been a lot of good research to this effect. So, "141 restaurants in Portland, Oregon use GetListed to manage their online listings and SEO." Oh, well, if I have entered my information and GetListed knows that I'm a restaurant in Portland, Oregon, wow. This essentially says to me that may not be nearly as many as the 40,000 number, but this says, "People like me. My peers, my equals are doing the same thing. They're using this product. Therefore, this must be a good product." In fact, this proves out to be, generally speaking, much more effective in converting than the generic ones, and the more specific you get, the better it gets.
We talked about the Facepile widget saying, "141 restaurants in Portland, Oregon, etc., and your friends." Then these are your friends that are logged in from Facebook or from LinkedIn or Google+, whatever it is. These people in your network, especially if you've already done an email connect of some kind, and you can show who those people are, now this is very, very effective. You might be saying, "Well, okay, but this is a pretty specific use case. You've got to have a lot of information about somebody before you would be able to say, even the specificity of this, although you can get pretty specific if you know who your target customer is." Including the Facepile or something like that gets much harder because you have to get someone to log in with a social network, provide those details. Facepile, obviously, if they're already logged in, you get it automatically, but this actually works tremendously well for social networking itself.
One of the things that we do here at Moz is we look at multi-touch attribution, and we look at where people have seen us and those types of things. We can actually see with some effectiveness that a lot of people, who eventually take a free trial of Moz or make a purchase or those kinds of things, have seen us, been exposed to us on a social network. In fact, they probably followed a link to us from a social network, often Twitter, at one point or another in their buying cycle, which by the way is usually about seven visits long.
In here, there's a lot of social proof in social networks themselves. If you've seen several people in your network mention a brand or a product or a place or a person, you are much more likely to think positively and to have a brand memory of that place. Seeing tweets like, "I just used GetListed to check my local listings," and you see that from two or three of your friends, and the funny thing that happens here is that people, who are exposed to just a few messages from close inside their network, often have a belief that a product is much more popular than people who see messages like this saying, "40,000 small businesses."
The fact that it's in my network, "oh well, if two people in my network mention it, it must be a huge product." As opposed to, "Well, it could just be that it's doing really well in your network." This isn't the psychological belief that we tend to have as people. So this can be very effective. Hence, social media as a branding tool becomes very effective for providing social proof.
Then perhaps not surprisingly, one of the really interesting ones to me, this is in offline use, but in person, if you are out with a group of folks, let's say you're at a conference or an event or a dinner or something like that and someone says, "Oh, have you heard about GetListed.org? They're a great site to do these local listings," and someone else at the event says, "Yeah, they're awesome." These people who have never heard of it before will actually have the most positive impression and the highest likelihood to have a positive brand memory because that in person social behavior is so incredibly powerful.
We have to assume that they're actually going to remember it and that they'll have a brand association from that memory. But this in person stuff is the most powerful one. This is, in fact, why you will see . . . I think there was some great research done. I can't remember exactly the book. I'll try and pull it up. There's some great research done about online auctions versus in person auctions and why Christie's and Sotheby's continue to do auctions, a lot of expensive places, charity auctions, continue to get people together in person. It's because our social behavior and the power of social proof in person, when we're standing together next to each other and hearing from each other, is so much more powerful, and that turns up the dial on what people are willing to spend, how high they're willing to bid, and therefore all the big art auctions and charity auctions and these kinds of things still do in person because the web is not yet providing the same power of social proof as a psychological behavioral modifier that you see in these other ones.
Still I think these can be tremendously effective for your marketing efforts. I would urge you to try these out, if you're not already, on your landing pages, in the search results that you're trying to get, in your social media efforts, in your email subscriptions. Social proof, a very, very powerful tactic.
All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week. Take care."
SEOmoz doesn't provide consulting, but our friends at Distilled still do. Rock on!
Copyright © 1996-2013 SEOmoz. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:9b3b9848-8c94-49d3-907e-5913ab59209f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-varying-effectiveness-of-social-proof-whiteboard-friday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974241 | 1,961 | 1.539063 | 2 |
PARISHVILLE - The town now has a wind energy facilities law on its books.
The town board voted unanimously Tuesday morning to approve a local wind law. The law allows Parishville to create a wind overlay zone, a designated area where turbines could go.
Supervisor Jerry G. Moore said the zone may be along a stretch of farmland near the Parishville/Hopkinton border.
Im not zoning them to keep them out, Mr. Moore said. Im zoning them so that theyre not all over town.
Mr. Moore previously said Iberdrola Renewables Inc. was interested in siting 40 to 50 wind turbines between Parishville and Hopkinton. The company still has several months of data to obtain from a test tower before it provides a closer estimate how many turbines it may site in the two towns.
In the meantime, Mr. Moore said, the town will create the district and be prepared when Iberdrola is ready to move forward with its plans.
Mr. Moore said he believes Parishville will be unaffected if the state finalizes Article X and establishes a board to review local wind laws and determine if theyre too restrictive.
I want to keep the states nose out of here. Let them go somewhere where theyre too restrictive, Mr. Moore said. I dont think were too restrictive. I think its a good law.
Mr. Moore pointed out previous public hearings on the wind law drew large crowds of wind energy opponents and supporters to Parishville. Tuesdays hearing was sparsely attended.
A lot of people arent coming now because they realize were putting together a comprehensive law, Mr. Moore said.
Attorney Bernard C. Meleuski, who the town consulted on the law, advised board members to review their code of ethics as wind energy progresses in Parishville.
Currently, the ethics law states board members must recuse themselves from decisions which could financially benefit a relative, which includes extended family like aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces and first cousins.
Your code goes beyond what the state requires, he said. In a small community, it might create some complications down the road.
Councilwoman Kari Tremper agreed. As the youngest of 10 children, she said she could be related to many in the town.
Mr. Moore said he was pleased the town now had a wind law.
We had no wind law before. We had no way to permit them, Mr. Moore said. We have some say in where theyre going to be. Thats very important to me and has been right along. | <urn:uuid:50d1facb-4133-442c-9301-833afefc59df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mpcourier.com/article/20120523/DCO01/705239889/0/dco | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971831 | 533 | 1.609375 | 2 |
STRUT YOUR STUFF
The mentally stimulating effects of physical exercise have long been recognized in our kindergartens and universities. But in the world at large such recognition has been woefully lacking. Of course there have been golf and tennis, but these are summer sports, not ever-available means of relaxation. It appears, however, that a change is taking place. The craving of the human body for its share of activity is at last to be acknowledged.
All the world now knows of the electric hobby-horse in the White House. This was the first sign of the coming revolution. It has been followed by an even more portentious event. Bernard Shaw has been taking tango lessons in Madeira. During this period he claims to have written more than during any other equal period of time in his career.
The possibilities of the movement must be apparent to all. After a strenuous session of Folies-stepping under the tutoring of Ned Weyburn, even Congress might be expected to accomplish something. Think what master-pieces would flow from the pen of Chesterton should he spend an hour daily with Gilda Grey! And the work of a John Roach Straton who had mastered the shimmy is beyond the farthest reach of the imagination. | <urn:uuid:f801b331-47ab-4f7b-a9be-b1ea6ee4d538> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1925/2/14/strut-your-stuff-pthe-mentally-stimulating/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970967 | 257 | 1.617188 | 2 |
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Agony in Gaza
With the last attack on Gaza, at first I was just thankful that my daughter was safe. After viewing just a part of the carnage where civilians were deliberately targeted, I felt sick and angry.
The horrific situation in Gaza is not an accident. It is fueled by the U.S. and paid for with U.S. tax dollars.
The U.S. taxpayer pays out more to the Israeli military than does any Israeli citizen, (ifamericansknew.org). The continued human rights violations, the ethnic cleansing and genocide, are policies of the Israeli government and funded and fully supported by the U.S government, taxpayers, and consumers. If you feel courageous, read Losing Omar (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ world-middle-east-20466027) Blaming terrorists is easy but fails to questions why terrorists exist.
Remember Columbine! People will react, especially the young, when they have reached a breaking point. When your land is stolen, your olive groves destroyed to build homes for Israelis, you have no means to make a living, when you have no health care, no education, and your children and families are murdered or beaten on a regular basis, with human rights violations that should result in war crimes trials, that breaking point is not far away.
People will listen to the voices of Hamas even though that voice doesn’t offer a real solution. Very few Americans would act with restraint under the same conditions.
It is time for Americans to stop blaming, “those Muslims” and look in the mirror. Stop buying products produced on stolen Palestinian land and labeled “product of Israel.” Join the BDS movement (boycott, divest, sanction). This is the only route to peace.
When Israel is crippled financially, they will stop perpetuating the holocaust in Palestine. The $8.2 million PER DAY sent to Israel with no questions asked has to stop. All of us can find a better place for that money in the U.S.
Barbara Young • Bear Lake
Respect other religions
The Episcopal Peace Fellowship at Grace Episcopal Church has reviewed the decision by the pastor of First Congregational Church to ban the Islamic prayer from the presentation of “The Armed Man - a Prayer for Peace.”
While attempting to be respectful of this decision, we are surprised, disappointed, and shocked. This decision did not convey Christian love and respect for others’ views.
The Episcopal Peace Fellowship holds an annual service to honor and commemorate Michigan soldiers who were killed in the past year. Members of different faiths, including Jewish, Native American, Buddhist, Christian, and Islam, present prayers for peace.
Including all people and faiths as we pray for a less violent world is one way to work for peace.
This work by Karl Jenkins is dedicated to the Kosovo war victims. It is an anti-war concert. In addition to portions of the Mass, it uses words from other sources, including the Islamic call to prayer, the Bible, and the Mahabharata; and quotes from Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Sankichi Toge, who survived Hiroshima.
The concert is an integrated professional work of art, the integrity of which is debased when portions are removed.
Betsy Davidson, Chair - Episcopal Peace Fellowship
We have been waiting way too long for Congressional action on the fiscal crisis.
Excuses: summer breaks, holiday breaks, campaign breaks, and now a “Lame Duck session.” Obstruction and delays are no longer acceptable.
Yesterday, I phoned Congressman Camp and Benishek’s offices to suggest my goals.
-- Simpson-Bowles as a bipartisan framework. Increased entitlement cuts ACROSS THE BOARD: Agricultural (even tobacco growers), energy sectors (oil companies too), -- Defense and all areas. Perhaps in 2103 a 2% cut, 5% cut next year, 8% next, etc.
-- Tighten the belt slowly framework.
Our re-elected President has addressed cooperative action and has been delayed and blocked.
A Benishek’s office staffer curtly advised that I needed to call Camp’s office as he represents our district until January! I thought in a democracy that our views were of interest even if not from the district. Not so according to ‘Federal Law’ she said.
There is a will, there must be a way to act.
Mary Hagan • Empire
Guys, While I applaud your goal of providing the “extra” content to Northern Express through the medium of video clips, all I can say is... you need help!
I realize you may not have much of a budget for this endeavor but at the same time, it shows! Sending someone out with a hand-held camera and talking to people from behind it just doesn’t cut it. Do you have any experience in video production?
I know this is a rather scathing review but you look bad, real bad. The “interview” with Russ Springsteen at Right Brain was not thought out, it was spur of the moment, and as far as I’m concerned was a disservice to his business. There was more footage of The Accidentals than there was of the new brewery. I could go on and on. I apologize for being so critical but c’mon, you can do a better job.
Tom Speers • via email
(Thanks for the tips, Tom. We’ll try to do better. In the meantime, readers can check out our cinema verite videos by subscribing to the new, free Express Extra email publication with a sign-up link at www.northernexpress.com. The Extra includes breaking news and two or more videos in each edition. Or scan the QR code (below) with your smart phone to go to the new Express Video Seen page.
Musicians, arts organizations and activists are welcome to submit their videos to the Express Extra for consideration. -- ed.) | <urn:uuid:675ee470-a08c-4752-9e4a-d8eb2154aa6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northernexpress.com/michigan/print-article-5970-print.html | 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 | 0.951167 | 1,332 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Kerry A. Dolan, Forbes Staff
Always looking for news and stories about wealth and philanthropy.
Four years ago Jeff Skoll arrived via small plane in the depths of the Brazilian Amazon region, just in time for the Waura people’s festival of the pique fruit, where he sipped from a bucket of its bitter, bright-yellow brew. The eBay billionaire was there to see work being spearheaded by Mark Plotkin and Liliana Madrigal, whose nonprofit, Amazon Conservation Team, was teaching the scantily clad Waura to use a GPS to map their ancestral territory and carve out a protected area free from deforestation. “It’s the neatest thing,” says Skoll, his voice rising with enthusiasm. “It’s amazing to see these tribes that have barely been contacted, running around in war paint and living in mud huts, but with GPS they figure out how to go around on their land.”
Skoll was so pleased by the results of Plotkin and Madrigal’s efforts with the Waura and other tribes of the Amazon that last year his foundation gave $1.6 million to a project with Amazon Conservation Team and two other social enterprises that Skoll backs to use GPS and satellite mapping to create “conservation corridors” that will protect 114 million acres of the Amazon from deforestation. It’s a long-held goal for Plotkin and Madrigal, who have been working with indigenous tribes to protect the rain forest for nearly three decades. Skoll expects significant progress in three years.
There are thousands of people in the world like Plotkin and Madrigal, inspiring social entrepreneurs who dream up innovative solutions to pressing problems–poor education, lack of health care, deforestation–and then act on them. Jeff Skoll is their financier. As eBay’s first president, Skoll became a billionaire at age 33 shortly after the auction site went public in 1998. Like all good entrepreneurs, he was born with a knack for spotting the unmet need. Social entrepreneurs need money, media exposure and a network for collaboration.
The Skoll Foundation has been providing all three since the days when social entrepreneurship was just an emerging trend. Skoll has given $342 million in grants to social entrepreneurs, more than any other funder. Before the Skoll Foundation, social entrepreneurs with a bit of a track record had a hard time raising money from big foundations because of their onerous paperwork, short-term funding and inability to abide changing plans along the way. Skoll understood as a Web entrepreneur that money to effect big changes needs to be patient. “I wouldn’t quite use the term ‘mezzanine financing,’ but in a way it is,” says Skoll. “Our financing is the ground between seed and some sort of exit.”
In just over a decade as a full-time philanthropist, with a heavy emphasis on poverty issues, Skoll can tick off plenty of successes. Due to the efforts of Skoll-funded groups, everyone in Gambia (pop. 1.8 million) has access to health care; deaths from water-borne diseases have declined by 85% in 700 villages in the state of Orissa, India; 6,000 communities in seven African countries have declared an end to female genital cutting; and thousands of rural poor with HIV in Haiti are getting treated with antiretroviral drugs. There are at least a dozen more examples. “We’re trying to change the equilibrium,” explains Skoll when we meet at his foundation’s office in Palo Alto, Calif.
Skoll wasn’t the first to invest in social entrepreneurs. Credit for that goes to Bill Drayton, who founded Ashoka in 1980. Ashoka has granted $97 million to date. Jacqueline Novogratz’s Acumen Fund has invested $75 million since 2001 (see FORBES , Dec. 19, 2011). What the shy, Canadian-born entrepreneur with intense brown eyes and a slightly nerdy air has done is to amp up the appeal of his grantees by providing more money (there’s $930 million in dry powder at the foundation) and a new twist: He smartly exploits mass media to promote his social entrepreneur’s agenda.
Matt Flannery, cofounder of online microlender Kiva, still gushes about how great it was for his then-nascent nonprofit to be featured on the PBS show Frontline in 2006–thanks to the Skoll Foundation, which funded the production. The onslaught of microloans from people who saw the show was so great that it crashed Kiva’s servers for three days.
Skoll’s funding of social entrepreneurs often dovetails with his other line of work, running the five-time Academy Award-winning film production company Participant Media, which produced The Help, An Inconvenient Truth and Syriana. Its movies often pursue Skoll’s social agenda, but they don’t have to make money like a regular studio’s do, and that’s exactly the point (see box, p. 112).
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put $2 million toward an online social action campaign that accompanied Participant’s 2010 documentary Waiting for “Superman ,” which examined charter schools and the failings of the U.S. education system. The Gates Foundation is also codeveloping with Participant a TV special on America’s great teachers that will air next year. “It’s terrific working with Jeff because of his innovative approach to doing good,” Bill Gates says in an e-mail. Adds Ashoka founder Drayton: “Entrepreneurs are different–they’re about change. They can’t stop until they’ve changed the pattern,” he explains. “Jeff has never thought about a local solution.”
What drives a middle-class kid from Toronto (he’s now a U.S. citizen as well, ranking number 120 on this year’s Forbes 400) to spend a billion dollars-plus fixing the world’s problems? It starts with a dose of anxiety, the near-death of his father and the mores of the Jewish community in which he was raised. By the time Skoll had his bar mitzvah, he had heard countless times the phrase tikkun olam, a core Jewish ideal that means “to heal the world.” “Growing up with that, it gets built into one’s psychology,” Skoll says. | <urn:uuid:f45e6f73-5f43-4b70-851e-394d556a31fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2012/09/18/jeff-skolls-billion-dollar-plan-to-save-the-world/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958132 | 1,385 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Shaving with a new HNMRazor
The NMR razors are simple and (probably) powerful applications that can simulate a spectrum directly from the molecular formula. For the user's point of view it works like a (very) simplified version of ChemDraw. When you have finished drawing the structure, you hit a button to simulate the spectrum. When you hit the button, the program asks you such spectroscopic details like solvent, temperature, magnetic field, etc.. When you have finished this further step, the razor calls home. Yes, because all you have downloaded is a graphic interface, the true program is running into a remote and ultra-secret location.
I like this program because I have understood everything in 5 minutes.
To start with, I have simulated the 1-H spectrum of ethyl acetate in CDCl3, at 200 MHz.
Here it is:
Well, you know, I am not a lucky guy! Enough for today. If you want to try by yourself:
This morning I shaved my face with a Gillette blue II. It is as good as a Gillette can be and it is much cheaper than the other models of the same brand. Officially it is disposable, yet I don't remember when I bought it. Quite likely I have been using the same razor for 3 or 4 months. As long as it works... Two complete reviews in a single post, I am very productive... | <urn:uuid:80f7565f-cc0b-4ab7-93d4-ad06ad0772ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nmr-software.blogspot.com/2009/05/shaving-with-new-hnmrazor.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933751 | 295 | 1.523438 | 2 |
My friend gave me his bass (mentioned in title) for some setup and soldering. He had some problems with the original preamp and EQ.
The only thing I have found is quite similar diagram for SR600 from the mid 90's, but the main difference is the amount of cables coming out from pickups.
The diagram shows only white and black (which is quite obvious what they are for) and 886 has four cables (bare, white, black and red). Are they active or what? I assume that this is a power supply circuit for them.
Anyway, following my thoughts I soldered them like active pu's and the bass plays kinda wierd. I mean too quiet (which was the main problem earlier so I didn't fix the issue
the treble pot brings no difference when you dialing it and bass pot make the signal stronger or weaker (like a second stage of a preamp
If you have any knowledge I would help me a lot.
I know that it would be easier to replace the whole thing but I would like to keep it original. | <urn:uuid:f32ea833-0673-4ccc-b690-609caa36926e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/wiring-diagrams-ibanez-sr886-needed-970260/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977897 | 222 | 1.523438 | 2 |
News By Readers
Rowlett resident wins robotics competition
The winning Vex Robotics Team, left to right: Ruben Rodriguez, Lakeview High School (from Garland); Dylan Pacetti, Garland High School (from Rowlett); and Justin Matthews, Garland High School (from Sachse).
By Cyndi Matthews
For the second week in a row, Rowlett resident Dylan Pacetti, a member of the Garland High School's Vex robotics team, has beat out the competition.
Garland High's Robotics Team 3795A, also known as "Vex-ation," proved to be just that: a vexation to the other teams competing in Greenville last week and this past Saturday in Garland. More than 55 teams competed each week and Vexation managed to come out on top both times!
Team members are Justin Matthews and Dylan Pacetti from Garland High School and Ruben Rodriguez from Lakeview High School. By winning these two competitions they have qualified to attend the Vex Robotics World's Competition in April, in Anaheim, California. They first formed their team at Austin Academy in Garland while working under the direction and mentorship of Mr. Corey Bankston, the robotics and science teacher at Austin. They have been working together as a team for the past two and a half years and have not only learned computer programming and robotic design skills, but also have formed very strong friendships with each other.
These high school freshmen spent time over the past two summers in GISD's robotics camps and working together at each other's homes on their robotics skills and on their robot. All three were very excited about their competition wins and look forward to going to California in April. Team 3795A, Vexation, is now trying to save their pennies and find ways to gain corporate sponsors and funding to attend the World's Vex Robotics Competition in April.
Team members pictured in photo from left to right:
Ruben Rodriguez - Lakeview High School (from Garland)
Dylan Pacetti - Garland High School (from Rowlett)
Justin Matthews - Garland High School (from Sachse) | <urn:uuid:35376182-dd3e-48f0-93c5-e2239f2720c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lakeshoretimes.com/articles/2012/12/10/news_by_readers/doc50c524cdb1e7a353515543.prt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967834 | 429 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Moscow to start evacuating Russians from Syria
The Observatory also reported a car bombing in the Damascus neighborhood of Dummar and said another car bomb exploded late Monday in central Syria, killing at least 30 pro-government gunmen in Salamiyeh.
In addition, the group said there were clashes in the town of Ras al-Ayn near the border with Turkey between fighters from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, which leans in favor of Syria's government and anti-government rebels, who entered the town in November.
Tensions have flared between Syria and Turkey after shells fired from Syria landed on the Turkish side of the border. As a result, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States decided to send two batteries of Patriot air defense missiles each to protect Turkey, their NATO ally.
On Monday, German soldiers unloaded trucks carrying the missile systems at the port of Iskenderun, while another ship, carrying the Dutch shipment, waited its turn anchored at the harbor.
The U.N. said that there are an estimated 4 million people were in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in Syria, including at least 2 million who are internally displaced. With harsh winter conditions, people are facing heavy rains and sub-zero temperatures, often without adequate food, shelter, water or access to medical care.
The McClatchy news organization published a report on Monday, supporting activists' claim that Syrian forces have been targeting bakeries. According to data compiled by the news organization, government forces attacked bread lines and bakeries at least 80 times last year, causing hundreds of casualties and in most cases destroying the bakeries.
The Syrian government, meantime, blamed a rebel attack on a key power line for a blackout that hit Damascus and much of the country's south overnight, leaving residents cold and in the dark amid a fuel crisis that has stranded many at home.
The Syrian capital's 2.5 million residents have grown used to frequent power cuts as the country's conflict has damaged infrastructure and sapped the government's finances. But some said Monday that the overnight outage was the first to darken the entire capital since the conflict began.
The blackout hit residents especially hard because of rampant fuel shortages and below-freezing temperatures.
"We covered ourselves from the cold in blankets because there was no diesel or electricity for the heaters," said retired teacher Mariam Ghassan, 60. "We changed our whole lives to get organized for power cuts, but now we have no idea when the power will come or go."
By midday Monday, power had returned to more than half of the capital, and Electricity Minister Imad Khamis said authorities were working to restore it in other areas.
Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.
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- 4108Oklahoma City Thunder: Amnesty Kendrick Perkins? | <urn:uuid:dce1e65d-5a00-45a4-aea1-1642cedc993a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsok.com/moscow-to-start-evacuating-russians-from-syria/article/feed/489760/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955863 | 672 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Celery is often combined with other aromatics to give a subtle background flavor to dishes such as soups, stews, and braises. Because of its high water and fiber content, celery is an ideal low-calorie snack.
In Season: Celery is available year-round.
What to Look For: Choose crisp, tight bunches that are free of dark spots. Or, if you prefer, buy bags of celery hearts that contain only the tender inner stalks.
How to Store: Bunches of celery can be kept in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for up to three weeks. Rinse before using. | <urn:uuid:0b1702d6-e9d6-42df-a444-e859a6b9072a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marthastewart.com/274670/celery-recipes/@center/276955/seasonal-produce-recipe-guide | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942636 | 133 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Rollover Minutes: When you buy your calling plan, you may be able to go to the contract, the rollover program. What this amount of minutes you can not be transferred to the next settlement period. For example, if your plan has 500 minutes per month. If you use only 400 minutes, the carrier can be completed within 100 minutes, you can not use it. This program is usually good only until the end of this year. At the time, you start over again.
Family Plan: With most family plans can set a plan where you can buy X number of minutes per month. This will usually give you one or two phones. However, for an additional monthly fee you can have more phones and more people to the system. The system generally works as follows. Your plan is 1000 minutes say, these protocols will be sharing plan for all people. Everyone should have a separate number, but the protocol will be shared.
Early termination fee: This is the fee that your carrier will charge a fee if you withdrawal your contact prior to its expiry. Many times a carrier service may not charge a termination fee if you are moving from the area (the possibility of being transferred, or moving to another state.) However, if you're just dropping the service because you want to use another carrier will probably charge a withdrawal fee. They really do not charge if you simply change your plan, and in the hands of the carrier. This fee usually applies even if you drop the service because you lost your phone, they will be very happy to sell you another phone. On the other side of the phone you have with your service. If you purchased a service plan update, which includes a very high price, and you drop the phone service because you are being transferred, they may charge you the difference between these prices and you have a phone upgrade.
Caller ID: This feature allows you to see who is calling before you answer the call. There is also a feature called Caller ID, Call Waiting. This feature allows you to see who is trying to reach you while you are talking about the next call.
Call Waiting: Call waiting, anyone can call your number and you have to talk to the other party. Instead, the caller get a busy signal, the call will go ahead and sound as it normally would. You would get a beep or tone to indicate that someone tried to call. You can then press the flash button or press the Off button. It could be intercepted, and his first caller for you to answer the second call. When you are finished with the second call you can press the flash button and go back to the first caller.
Voice mail Voice mail allows the caller to leave a message if you can not answer the phone. This could be because you are transmitting station coverage, or simply turned off the phone. The system is easy to send the caller to voice mail, if you are talking with another person rather than to answer the call when the second person beeps in. You can set the phone to ring a number to ring before going to voice mail.
Residential Phone Service at the lowest prices. Get started for $0 down.
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UPDATE #2: INSTALANCHE! THANKS GLENN!
UPDATE #3: LINKED BY INCENDIARY INSIGHT! THANKS, DW!
UPDATE #4: LINKED BY BRUTALLY HONEST! THANKS!
UPDATE #5: LINKED BY ILIOCENTRISM! THANKS!
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Former President Bill Clinton's speech to the DNC this week was notable for several reasons.
It was notable for being such a lengthy catalog of lies and half truths, even after one considers the source.
It was notable for the skillful, earnest delivery of those lies, reminiscent of the way a younger Bill Clinton assured the American people that he did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. For those who want to believe him, he makes it easy.
It was perhaps most notable, though, for Clinton's observation that “Since 1961, for 52 years now, the Republicans have held the White House 28 years, the Democrats 24. In those 52 years, our private economy has produced 66 million private- sector jobs. So what's the job score? Republicans: twenty-four million. Democrats: forty-two.”
This actually is not a lie, or even a half-truth. It is true that there have been many more jobs created under Democratic Presidents than under Republican Presidents, even though it is something Bill Clinton said. That's a bit like walking out into your backyard and finding a unicorn, so take a moment to savor it.
I'm sure it was an honest mistake on Clinton's part. Maybe he just accidentally double-counted the half-million American jobs that President Johnson created in South Vietnam. Forty three times.
Whether Democratic Presidents outpaced Republican Presidents in job creation by a factor of 2.8 or merely 1.9 isn't really the big problem. Either way, the basic point is true. It is just deeply misleading. As skilled as he is at it, Bill Clinton really only has one trick.
Ben Shapiro notes one problem with the methodology, namely the counting job creation from inauguration to inauguration. It assumes that Presidents take full control of the economy on the day they take office. Aside from not being true, this assumption is, as Shapiro notes, deeply damaging to Obama's claim to a second term. If everything that happened in the first quarter of 2009 is fully attributable to Barack Obama, re-election should not even be a possibility. Banishment would be a more appropriate outcome.
But the real problem with Clinton's sure-to-become-ubiquitous talking point is that it imputes to the President a level of power that he just doesn't have. Presidents don't get to wipe the slate clean and start the economy over from scratch; they must play the cards they are dealt. President Obama inherited a very bad hand indeed, with the bursting of the mortgage bubble. But he is far from alone in inheriting a bad hand.
His immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, inherited the bursting of the tech bubble that had helped make the late Clinton years seem so prosperous. George H.W. Bush inherited what was, at the time, the worst banking crisis since the Depression, courtesy of a real estate bubble that had left the country dotted with see-through office buildings that had been built on spec and never leased.
Ronald Reagan inherited stagflation from Jimmy Carter. Had Reagan been fixated on maximizing job creation in his first term, he never would have given political support to Paul Volcker's aggressive interest rate increases at the Federal Reserve, which succeeded in choking off inflation but at the cost of what was, at the time, the worst recession since the Depression.
Similarly, Richard Nixon inherited the inflation and various other distortions created by LBJ's guns-and-butter policies. Moreover, his elimination of those half million American jobs LBJ had created in South Vietnam was fairly popular, particularly among the men being displaced.
Actually, it makes sense that Clinton would ignore this, as the President who enjoyed probably the richest economic inheritance of the period in question. Our first Baby Boomer President inherited a remarkably robust economy, rode it as far as it would take him, and bequeathed Enron and Nortel to his successor. It's almost like some sort of metaphor.
Anyway, nobody in the MSM seems prepared to offer any such qualifications for Clinton's jobs factoid, so I will just offer a factoid of my own based on assumptions that are in no way more flawed than Clinton's:
In the past 100 years, 630,000 Americans were killed in foreign wars. So what's the body count? Republicans: 30,000. Democrats: 600,000.
A less charitable observer than myself might even argue that the grief of those 600,000 bereft mothers constitutes some sort of "war on women."
I'm rounding off the figures as Clinton did, but tweak them as you will, the ratio of dead servicemen produced by Democrats to those produced by Republicans will stay around 20:1. And even if you back out the two World Wars and use the time period Clinton used, the ratio is still 2.4:1. Even in Afghanistan, President Obama has presided over more than twice as many combat deaths as President Bush, in half the time.
Personally, I reject both factoids due to their shared reliance on an assumption of Presidential omnipotence. But I would challenge anyone accepting the jobs claim to offer logical grounds on which to reject the casualty claim. | <urn:uuid:246523f7-e045-45ac-8e8d-a059cf01a32a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://senatorjohnblutarsky.blogspot.com/2012/09/democratic-presidents-produce-more.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971614 | 1,140 | 1.585938 | 2 |
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New Scotland Archives The Altamont Enterprise, April 29, 2010
Voorheesville grapples with student suicide
By Saranac Hale Spencer
VOORHEESVILLE The school library became a counseling center yesterday as students and staff dealt with the suicide of Jerry Clark, a high school junior, on Tuesday evening. (His obituary is on page one.)
Staffed by school social workers, guidance counselors, school psychologists, and counselors from the Albany County Department for Children, Youth, and Families, the center was busy for most of the day, said high school Principal Mark Diefendorf.
“It has ebbed a little over time,” he said late in the afternoon. He expected that some counseling would be available through today.
The district has begun planning a forum for May 11 to educate the community and school on suicide, he said, with a program directed towards students to follow at a later date in May.
“It’ll be educational,” Melanie Puorto, the director of suicide prevention for the state of New York, said of the community forum. It will include speakers from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Albany County’s mental health department, she said, which is similar to the forum held in Guilderland in the fall, following the suicide of a student there.
It is important to teach people to recognize the symptoms of depression, she said, and provide them with resources.
There has been a “slight increase with teen suicides,” Puorto said, which she attributes to a “lack of social connectedness… [and the] impact of social networking sites.”
Kids are more vulnerable than they were before, she said, but teens can combat suicide by including information like 1-800-273-TALK, which is the phone number for the national suicide hotline and links on their personal webpages. | <urn:uuid:21f2a169-cc6e-40cb-bd67-00468f4a40af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.altamontenterprise.com/Weekly%20Archives/2010/04-29-10/New%20Scotland2Voorheesville%20Grapples.html | 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 | 0.962026 | 457 | 1.648438 | 2 |
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