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Tenants and sympathizers in a dilapidated Harlem apartment building received good news Sunday night, when the Occupy Wall Street general assembly approved a $3000 donation as a gesture of solidarity. The occupation, which has come to be known as Occupy477, began Nov. 1, when one of the building’s residents, Delois Blakely, urged people to occupy her apartment to protest gentrification and corporate malfeasance. This followed a previous occupation of the building’s boiler room; Blakely said the boiler had been defunct and the door bolted shut for months. By Monday morning, workers were busy installing a new boiler, thanks to an emergency order by the city. Upstairs in Blakely’s apartment, 11 protestors had camped out. Tony Cochran, 25, a Portland, Ore., transplant, who doubled as the movement’s ad hoc communications director, was joined by two Senegalese men, a temporarily-absent Norwegian and Semi, 25, a mono-monikered North Carolinian who had trekked up from Zuccotti Park. It’s a small cadre, but “more than Occupy Wall Street started with on the first day,” said Malik Rhasaan, 39, of Occupy the Hood, which represents people of color and lobbied for Sunday’s donation. The newcomers were quickly learning that they’d waded, perhaps unwittingly, into a thicket of residents’ animosity, financial mismanagement and looming foreclosure. The dispute underlying Occupy477 can be traced to a long series of legal wrangles between the building’s various shareholders. The property on 477 West 142nd St. was abandoned when Blakely, who prefers the title Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely, took control of it in 1978. In 1982, she said, she negotiated with the city to purchase its eight units for $2000. “I learned how to bring life to the building,” Blakely said. But by all accounts, few, if any of the residents paid rent for the next twenty-odd years and by 2007, the city threatened foreclosure for unpaid taxes. “Some people lived here rent free for 10 years, and that’s a mindset,” Blakely said. In May 2007, Shirley Pitts, who lives on the top floor, replaced Blakely as president of 477 West 142nd Street Housing Development Fund Corporation, the building’s board. Pitts, a bishop of the evangelical Faith Restoration Center, Inc., refused comment but asked her adviser and fellow bishop, Ken Bey, 64, to speak on her behalf. He said he managed to negotiate the debt with the Department of Housing and Preservation and Development down to $220,000. The board then borrowed $650,000 from Madison Park Investors, LLC to pay off its debt to the city. The closing “attorney” for the loan was one Nathaniel McLeon who pleaded guilty in 1993 to practicing law without a license. Nonetheless, McLeon continued to represent the 477 West 142nd Street Housing Development Fund Corporation until last February. At closing, the board received just under $300,000 of the loan. Bey said the remainder went into an escrow account or was misappropriated by McLeon, who is currently serving six years in Ulster Correctional Facility, convicted of grand larceny. Neither Madison Park Investors, LLC, nor Thomas S. Fleishell, the corporation’s current attorney, responded to questions. Now Blakely accuses Bey and Pitts of working hand in hand with what she termed “predatory lenders,” to pave the way to foreclosure so the building can be sold. Bey disputed this, and said the board is pursuing a civil case against her. He also questioned what happened to the monthly $7,700 rent roll, which Blakely administered between 2003 and 2009. “She has no lease, no standing, no deed to occupy unit two,” Bey said. “She’s misrepresenting herself to the public.” “Who is Ken Bey?” was Blakely’s response. “I don’t do business with Ken Bey, never have and never will.” Recently the building has been vandalized, its front steps smashed. On Sunday evening, the police forcibly removed Francis King, a toothless man in a cowboy hat who claimed to be undertaking maintenance work for Pitts. “It will not happen again,” King said as he tried to regain entry Monday. Blakely pointed the finger at King and a man named Frank Kargbo who occasionally inhabited the building’s basement, a labyrinth of dust and unused junk. Bey admitted to paying Kargbo between $40 and $100 a week for maintenance work, and granted that he sometimes lodged in the basement. Blakely will now defend herself against eviction in the civil case brought against her by the corporation. Despite the ongoing legal uncertainty – “this is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Semi – the protestors had no plans to leave.

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a1 National Institute for Research in Dairying, Shinfield, Reading RG2 9 AT, UK With either Na caseinate or skim-milk powder, 1% (w/v) additions of pepsin, chymotrypsin or Alcalase and an incubation time of 24 h at 37°C gave the best hydrolysates for subsequent plastein production. In spite of the fact that peptide species which were produced by treatment with the 3 enzymes were entirely different, they were all capable of producing qualitatively similar amounts of plastein when concentrated and further incubated with proteinase, suggesting that the identity of peptide components was relatively unimportant. αs1-, β- and κ- caseins, Na-caseinate and skim-milk powder all led to plastein products with broadly similar properties, confirming the comparative unimportance of peptide composition. This also indicated that for most practical applications fractionation of initial protein mixtures (as in many food products) would not be justified. Optimum peptide concentration for plastein formation with pepsin and caseinate hydrolysates was 20–35% (w/v) with an optimum pH range of 4–5; the best peptide molecular weight varied between 400 and 800 and the optimum temperature was either 37°C for 24 h or 50°C for 4–6 h. Higher temperatures (70°C) gave more rapid plastein formation but poorer yields. Lower temperatures (e.g. 20°C) gave similar yields, but incubation times required to be extended to at least 48 h. The same proteinase should be used for plastein synthesis as that used in the initial hydrolysis stage, or else further hydrolysis (over hydrolysis) could occur during the plastein formation stage causing lower yields due to differences in the specificity of the 2 enzymes. Even under ideal conditions plastein yields never exceeded 27% of the weight of peptide taken and at the present time it seems unlikely that the plastein reaction will have anything more than curiosity value. Economics must preclude its application in low-cost, high volume situations such as generally exist within the food industry. (Received October 06 1981) (Accepted November 23 1981) p1 Present address: Kirkpinar Sokak No 6/5, Cankaya, Ankara, Turkey.

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People Are Awesome: The Soldier Who Died So an Afghan Boy Could Live Just last month, U.S. soldier Robert Bales was accused of slaughtering 17 innocent civilians in Afghanistan, outraging Americans and Afghans alike. Now there's more shocking, sad news out of Afghanistan. Blessedly, though, this story is about virtue, not vice. At the end of last month, less than two weeks after Bales allegedly killed Afghan men, women, and children for sport, 29-year-old Spc. Dennis P. Weichel Jr. did exactly the opposite, giving his life for the sake of an Afghan boy. Weichel was out on a routine convoy with other members of his unit when he noticed children collecting shell casings in the tracks. Most of the kids ran away when they saw the convoy coming, but one little boy leaped directly into the way of a Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle, a nearly 16-ton armored truck. Weichel was able to lift the boy out of the way in time to save his life, but he was struck in the process. He died a week later from his injuries. Weichel leaves behind a fiancée and three children of his own, who will be awarded their father's posthumous Bronze Star. He will also serve as proof that there is plenty of kindness and decency in even the ugliest of circumstances. When you think of Robert Bales, think of Dennis Weichel too.

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I was born in a village called Loruko. I am the last born in a family of nine. Five brothers and four sisters. My father is old, but my mum has some strength. They brought me up by facing some difficulties. Although they were not rich, they tried their best to bring me up. Both my brothers and sisters have not joined high school because of lack of money. My two brothers have only reached primary and have come back to stay at home. They are older than me and they have wife and children. But they don’t have good jobs because in order to get good jobs you have to be educated. I was unable to join school because my family’s earnings were only enough for daily meals. But when I was six years old I joined Ol-Girgiri Primary School because the education was free. My life went on as my parents struggled to provide me with food and clothes. Sometimes I went to school without uniform, books, and pens. The teachers sent me back home, I found no one, I went back to school, and they sent me back again and at the end of it all they understood and managed to buy some books and pens for me. Sometimes at home we didn’t have anything to eat and so that made me be absent in school. But besides lacking breakfast, food, or clothes, my life was still going on. Walking half kilometer to school was my normal routine. Because I used to walk half a kilometer to school, sometimes I was late. My teachers sent me back home to call my parents and whenever my mum came to school she told them my problem and my teachers became more understanding. My teachers advised me on how to cope with life. That’s when I started working hard in my education. I struggled to compete with boys and girls. I had the words in my mind “God help those who help themselves and others” and “in order to succeed you have to struggle”. I started attaining good grades in school and my parents were as happy as a sandy boy as he bathed in the chilly water. Whenever I see my parents working I would cry to my Lord to help me because I know with my education I could help my parents from being poor. I was then having a verse in the bible which says, “Nitainua macho yangu juu miimani, msada wangu watoka wapo, msaada wangu watoka kwa bwana” This verse helped me very much to cope with life. By eighth grade, I was still doing well in my education. My mum tried her best to take me for tuition (a tutoring program) in other schools. I was also participating in sports and athletics, which made me famous in school. I started joining the school teams and I went up to the district level in working race and netball. That made my teachers and schoolmates love me. I finished my eighth grade year in 2009. Life out of school was not as good as life in school. Sometimes I was bored sitting at home alone doing nothing because all my best friends were out visiting their relatives. Yet, I tried to keep myself busy by reading the Bible. Soon, our grade was announced. I was anxious waiting for my grade. I found out that I was the top girl in the school and top three in the district. I felt as happy as a king and my parents were very happy and excited. I learned that Daraja was helping the poor, I then wrote my application and sent it to Daraja Academy. After two weeks I was called for an interview. I found a loving Dad and Mum: Mr. D and Miss Jenny. They showed me a lot of love and they told me that I was amongst the twenty-six girls. Truly I was very happy. I was not even able to express my feelings. I then joined Daraja Academy of Kenya, which means bridge and we are Daraja. I found a loving, wonderful family, which cares for people. For now my mum is still at home with no work to do and also my father is too old to work. My mum is the one to look for food and she struggles every day to get something to eat. She goes to the shambas (farms) to look for a job and if the works is not available she just stays at home. I always have pity for my family. Sometimes it makes it hard to concentrate in class whenever I remember them. I cry and tears of pain come out of my eyes. But with God anything is possible. Daraja makes me so happy so that all the thoughts about my family’s hardships are gone.

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Otto Rehhagel has proved throughout his long career as a soccer player and coach that he has many qualities. Diplomacy was never one of them. “Everyone’s free to say what I want,” he once told journalists. His tendency to gradually assume total control of the German clubs he managed even merited its own term – Ottocracy. Yet, at the age of 74, Rehhagel is being called on by his homeland to show tact and sensitivity on a mission to Greece, which was his adopted home between 2001 and 2010 when he coached the Greek national team. Bild newspaper provided the rather surprising news on Wednesday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had chosen Rehhagel to go on a goodwill mission to Athens in a bid to give relations between the two countries a boost and ensure that German tourists give the Greek economy a lift over the summer. Although Rehhagel will reportedly meet with President Karolos Papoulias and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras during the visit, his assignment appears to be the latest attempt at low-level micro-diplomacy between Germany and Greece.

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Georgetown Supports Workplace Wellness July 1, 2010 – Want to learn how to control your stress levels, quit smoking with support or join a walking program? How about establishing a deeper spiritual life? All of these services and more are available through a program at Georgetown called GUwellness, which reaches out to faculty and staff members who want to enhance their lives and well-being. The comprehensive program seeks to boost the “mind, body and soul” of the university community. Spearheaded by the Office of Faculty and Staff Benefits, GUWellness draws on the expertise and existing activities of many university resources. “We’re creating a culture of wellness at Georgetown University,” says Charles DeSantis, associate vice president and chief benefits officer. “This is the intangible benefit of working at Georgetown.” Taking Control, Taking Time Georgetown wants to get its entire community involved in wellness activities. GUWellness participants include representatives from Yates Field House, the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program, the Jesuit community, the School of Nursing and Health Studies (NHS), university leaders and more. “We want to inspire others to be active around wellness,” DeSantis says. “It doesn’t need to be dramatic. We’re not expecting you to start running a marathon, we just want you to engage in activities that will help you.” Mind, Body and Soul The wellness program is broken into three main sections for the mind, body and soul. On the “mind” side, Georgetown employees have access to services such as confidential short-term and crisis counseling from the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program (FSAP). There also are stress-reduction programs, such as the meditation sessions facilitated by Sue Holyoke Johnston, a wellness counselor in FSAP. “There are proven benefits even if you don’t always feel relaxed,” she says. “It helps our bodies work well.” On the “body” front, GUWellness offers walking and biking groups as well as personal health assessments. Faculty and staff memberships at Yates allow employees to take advantage of the cardio equipment, basketball courts, indoor track, pool and group exercise facilities, says Yates director Jim Gilroy. “Exercise offers both physical and mental benefits,” Gilroy says. “It helps you get rid of stress and can get your mind off of work for a bit.” Rev. Francis Schemel, S.J., chaplain to the staff, helps oversee GUWellness’ “soul” component. Schemel oversees online Ignatian spiritual exercises, which lead participants in the prayers of St. Ignatius Loyola. Spiritual guidance at Georgetown also is available from chaplains in other denominations, including the Protestant, Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox traditions. Chaplains are available on all three campuses.

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Renè Herbst - 1891 - 1983 The last twenty years were the elastic steel tube's furniture years. While Le Corbusier made a chair “a reglage continue”, Renè Herbst has endowed his model by a roping of elastic laces. Renè Herbst produced chairs in his own furnishing firm in Paris, called “the establisement”. In those exciting twenty's, Rene Herbst was called “l'homme d'acier”. He has been one of the formers to start the experimentation of this new material in the furniture field. He was an interior designer. Herbst studied in London, USSR and ltaly. He was one of the formers member of the “UAM” (“Union des Artistes Modernes”) founded in France in the 1930. In the later 1940s the “UAM” regularly organised exhibitions, called the “formes utiles”, which motto was “ Neue Sachlichkeit ”. The most important works of Herbst are the furniture for Begum Aga Khan that allowed him to realise without any arrangement what he meant about quality.

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I Am Forbidden By Anouk Markovits Hogarth, 320 pages, $25 The title of Anouk Markovits’s English-language debut, “I Am Forbidden,” refers both to the tragic climax of the book and to the broader world of this novel, a world defined by forbiddenness. The allure of the forbidden is ever-present in the story, which spans several generations of the Sterns, a Satmar family in Paris and New York. But this is less an exposé of religious fundamentalism, a là Deborah Feldman’s “Unorthodox” and Pearl Abraham’s “The Romance Reader,” than it is a deeply felt account of people caught between worlds. Atara, the eldest of the Stern siblings, is a voracious reader with an inquisitive mind. She is derided by her friends and family for asking heretical questions, and is compared to Spinoza (a capital insult) by her zealous father. Observing a postman on a bicycle, Atara imagines his life is uncomplicated by the conflicting loyalties and desires that torture her. An immigrant Jew from the East raised in Paris yet forbidden to engage with the city’s culture, Atara is neither French nor European, nor is she — given her unorthodox doubts — the sort of Jew she was brought up to be. She envies the postman for having “one language only, one country only.” Sensing that the future she yearns for will require that she sever ties of faith and family that bind her to her past, she envies him, also, his “undivided past, undivided from his future.” It isn’t just heretics who waver in that liminal space of uncertainty. For Markovits, to be human is to doubt, and part of the novel’s strength is that, unlike the many sensationalist literary forays into the “secret” lives of Hasidic Jews, it neither vilifies nor glorifies the very devout. Instead, “I Am Forbidden” depicts ultra-Orthodox men and women as fundamentally human, which is to say deeply flawed but also endowed with redeeming qualities — much like the rest of us. Atara is a clear stand-in for the author, who left her own Hasidic family at the age of 19 to avoid an arranged marriage, and went on to study at Columbia and Cornell universities. While Atara’s story is central to the novel, it leaves off at the moment she makes her decisive break — shortly after her father, an unflinching fundamentalist, refuses to grant her permission to prepare for medical school studies. His exact words: “If you do not follow our fathers’ way you will fail at whatever you undertake. You will sink from one depravity to the next. You will wander the world and never find a home.” There are echoes of Isaiah in this curse, which isn’t surprising, given that Zalman Stern is a Torah scholar and a zealot. The irony here is that Zalman believes all Jews are destined to wander, that they are forbidden from hastening “the end.” He cautions his children: Until “the Almighty delivers us from exile, we Jews have no home.” It is a truth that reverberates for several key characters in this novel who find themselves straddling worlds, never fully at home, never fully at peace. While Atara questions, transgresses and ultimately breaks away, the novel’s other two central characters find comfort in religion. Mila Heller and Josef Lichtenstein are both orphaned survivors of the Holocaust. They first cross paths on the killing fields of Nazi Europe, where Josef saves 5-year-old Mila from certain death. Later, the Sterns adopt Mila, and the two are briefly reunited when the family takes in Josef for a short period of time before he is sent off to study in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, where the Satmar rebbe, Yoel Teitelbaum, lives. The rebbe himself is the subject of heated debate in this novel. For Mila, he evokes painful memories of her parents’ last moments. Well into adulthood, she remembers how her mother caught sight of the rebbe in a halted train from the window of the family’s hiding place. Mila recalls the image of her mother as she “ran to the train, a train of boxcars with open doors and people milling about inside. ‘Rebbe!’” her mother called. But the rebbe sat engrossed in his book, never lifting his eyes, and Mila’s mother was shot to death. Much later, Mila learns of the infamous Kasztner train, which transported nearly 1,700 Hungarian Jews to safety while some 450,000 were sent to the gas chambers. Rudolf Kasztner, the train’s mastermind, was a Zionist activist who negotiated directly with Adolf Eichmann to secure the release of the select group of Jews. The Satmar rebbe, who banished from his congregation anyone who cooperated with the Zionists, had secured for himself a path to safety by the very means he forbade to others. When Mila next encounters the rebbe, they are in America, in the main synagogue in Williamsburg. It is Simchat Torah, and Mila watches the man she recognizes from the train — the man who ignored the cries of her dying mother — as he dances, “twisting this way, that way, like a flame.” Inside the flame, Mila sees “the vanishing train, and she, reaching this way, that way, for her mother and father, reaching, reaching…” She then collapses in a faint. Josef and Mila eventually wed, but theirs is no typical arranged marriage. It’s as though the very brokenness that makes them cling so steadfastly to religion also enables them to cleave passionately, tenderly to each other, and it’s a bitter irony that leaves them, a couple so much in love, unable to conceive. When the couple is compelled by Jewish law to sleep apart, Josef cannot leave Mila’s side: “At dawn, he was still sitting by her bed. Her scarf had slid from her shorn head and he felt awe and gratitude in front of her beauty.” Ten years into their marriage, the couple is still childless. Desperate to be a mother, Mila takes the law into her own hands. Her religious conflict is very different from Atara’s, but the ramifications are no less tragic, and the effects will continue to ripple in the family for generations to come. As for Josef, torn between his love for Mila and his devotion to God’s law, he withers away slowly, painfully, in the in-between. Shoshana Olidort is a frequent contributor to the Forward. Her work has also appeared in The Times Literary Supplement and the Jewish Review of Books.

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Ministerial inquiry into Foreign Charter Vessels 14 July 2011 A Ministerial Inquiry will consider the operation of Foreign Charter Vessels (FCVs) in New Zealand’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) waters. Initiated by Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister, Phil Heatley and Labour Minister, Kate Wilkinson, the inquiry will consider all key issues relevant to the use of FCVs. Mr Heatley says while full terms of reference for the inquiry have yet to be established, it is important for both the Government and our fishing sector to affirm New Zealand’s international reputation as a world-leading fisheries manager. "To do this we need to ensure we are getting the best economic return from our deep sea fisheries, that robust employment protection provisions available on land are reflected at sea, and that the monitoring of FCVs and domestic deep sea operators in our waters is adequate," says Mr Heatley. Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson says reports alleging the failure of some FCVs to comply with proper employment requirements, including crew working conditions, and vessel safety standards imposed by New Zealand had raised the Government’s concern. "We also acknowledge the recent concerns expressed by the Seafood Industry Council (SeaFIC) and others representing the interests of crew members regarding these issues," says Ms Wilkinson. "We decided a Ministerial Inquiry was the appropriate course of action as a number of ministerial portfolios have an interest in FCV engagement and operation. Fisheries, labour, immigration, transport as well as foreign affairs and trade all have an involvement in this area," she says. Cabinet will consider full terms of reference for the inquiry, independent candidates to lead the inquiry, resources and inquiry reporting time-frames over the next month.

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The Writing Program at Illinois Wesleyan University supports and administers the Gateway Colloquium, a first year seminar emphasizing writing and critical thinking, and the Writing Intensive program, which requires students to take two such courses before graduation, one before the end of their sophomore year and one in their major. Instructors for the Gateway Colloquium are drawn from disciplines across campus. Writing Intensive courses fall both within the General Education curriculum and in majors curricula. In addition, the Writing Program is responsible for assessing the quality of student writing across campus and supporting faculty development for the teaching of writing in all courses. Our mission is to catalyze a culture of writing on campus which encourages the use of writing to construct knowledge in all disciplines. Our emphasis on writing across the curriculum - both in the Gateway Colloquium and in Writing Intensive courses - is designed to inculcate writing as a teaching tool and to provide students with frequent practice in writing and the sense that writing is an integral part of learning. The Gateway Colloquium and Writing Intensive classes also require revision as an integral part of the course work, with peer and instructor feedback essential to the conscious development of writing abilities. The varieties of writing we pursue on campus are diverse- including traditional analytic essays to expressive writing to mathematical proofs and science presentations. The ability to use writing to shape and deliver ideas for a variety of audiences and within a variety of disciplines is at the core of our philosophy. Prof. Mary Ann Bushman, Director and Professor of English Joel Haefner, Writing Center Director and Lecturer in Computer Science Nick Nichols, Student Aide Tony Angelos, Student Aide To be announced

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In December 1998 I installed the dictd server, which can be used to access several dictionaries using a simple protocol as defined in RFC 2229 (Text Version). As my primary working environment is Emacs 21, I decided to write an Emacs-Lisp package for accessing this dictionary server. The older webster.el didn't work with the newer protocol. After starting the implementation I was pointed to an already existing implementation, but this was basically a wrapper to the dict client program and didn't have all the features I wanted and have now implemented in this dictionary client. If you didn't receive this file from its original location you can visit it at http://www.myrkr.in-berlin.de/dictionary/index.html. Previous Next Top

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If Rebecca Segall-Wallace is right, lots of otherwise fortunate New York City youngsters are wondering, "Who is John Galt?" Segall-Wallace writes in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that some of the Big Apple's toniest private schools, while happy to compete ferociously in athletics, disavow "thought competition" as treacherous and refuse to support students who want to engage in it. Essay contests? Out of the question. Geography bees? Fuggedaboudit. "We don't want kids to compete individually, put themselves in vulnerable positions as individuals," one administrator explains. Of course, such good intentions will inevitably backfire in the real world. Talented students shielded from expressing their skills may feel undervalued by their teachers and administrators. And the focus on self-esteem, on rewarding "participation" rather than prowess, does nothing to prepare youngsters for a rough-and-tumble society where so-called thought competition is a fact of life and the occasional stumble or failure is unavoidable. Time for a field trip downtown, kids, perhaps to Goldman Sachs. "In Praise of 'Thought Competition'," by Rebecca Segall-Wallace, Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2007 blog comments powered by Disqus

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- Prayer and Worship - Beliefs and Teachings - Issues and Action - Catholic Giving - About USCCB Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy testifies to a churchman of scholarship and pastoral sensitivity. Born in a devout Catholic family and baptized the day he was born, he felt one with the Church from his earliest days.As a boy, with his parents and brother and sister, he visited the Bavarian Shrine of Our Lady of Altötting, a place he returned to as pope. There, he prayed before the Black Madonna (as the smoke-charred linden wood image of Mary is called) and left at its base the ring he had received from Pope Paul VI. His intense fervor for Mary showed clearly in 2008 at Lourdes, where he said, “When speech can no longer find the right words, the need arises for a loving presence: we seek then the closeness not only of those who share the same blood or are linked to us by friendship, but also the closeness of those who are intimately bound to us by faith. Who would be more intimate to us than Christ and his holy mother, the Immaculate One?” Two American Cardinals reflect on Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's legacy and we recall the highlights of of his visit to the U.S. in 2008. CASTELGANDOLFO, Italy (CNS) -- With a warm embrace, a helping hand, shared prayer, a long discussion and lunch together, Pope Francis spent several hours with retired Pope Benedict XVI March 23, 2013, at the papal summer villa. Pope Francis gave Pope Benedict an icon of Mary and Jesus that the Russian Orthodox delegation to his inauguration had given him just a few days earlier. "They told me this was Our Lady of Humility. If I may say, I thought of you," Pope Francis said. Pope Benedict, obviously moved, grasped his successor's hands. Pope Francis told Pope Benedict, "You gave us so many examples of humility and tenderness." The retired pope moved with much greater difficulty than he did a month ago. Walking with a cane, he took smaller and slower steps. When the two went into the chapel of the papal villa to pray, Pope Benedict indicated that Pope Francis should take the front pew, but Pope Francis, reaching out to help his predecessor walk, said, "We're brothers," and they knelt side by side. Traveling by helicopter from the Vatican, Pope Francis arrived shortly after noon. While the two have spoken by telephone at least twice, this was their first meeting since Pope Francis' March 13 election. Pope Benedict, wearing a quilted white jacket over a simple white cassock -- without a short cape or white sash -- was driven to the garden heliport to greet his successor. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said the two rode in the same car to the villa. Pope Francis sat on the right -- the spot reserved for the pope -- and Pope Benedict sat on the left. After their visit to the chapel, the two spent 45 minutes talking alone, Father Lombardi said. He would not release details of the conversation and would not explain what was in the large box and two large envelopes seen on the table between the two. Hundreds of people who were gathered in the main square outside the papal villa were left disappointed. They had hoped the two popes -- one reigning, one emeritus -- would come to the balcony together. Father Lombardi told reporters, "Remember that the retired pope had already expressed his unconditional reverence and obedience to his successor at his farewell meeting with the cardinals, Feb. 28, and certainly in this meeting-- which was a moment of profound and elevated communion -- he will have had the opportunity to renew this act of reverence and obedience to his successor." He also said, "Certainly Pope Francis renewed his gratitude and that of the whole church for Pope Benedict's ministry during his pontificate." By accepting this message, you will be leaving the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. This link is provided solely for the user's convenience. By providing this link, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops assumes no responsibility for, nor does it necessarily endorse, the website, its content, or

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Most Active Stories Tue July 17, 2012 Republican Lawmakers Seek To Block Funding On Black Lung Regulation Originally published on Tue July 17, 2012 6:33 pm Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have inserted into a broad appropriations bill language that would block funding for a Labor Department effort to reduce the occurrence of black lung, the disease that afflicts coal miners exposed to excessive mine dust. The bill covers appropriations for Fiscal Year 2013 for the Departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services. Tucked away deep inside the measure is this language: "SEC. 118. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to continue the development of or to promulgate, administer, enforce, or otherwise implement the Lowering Miners' Exposure to Coal Mine Dust, Including 20 Continuous Personal Dust Monitors regulation (Regulatory Identification Number 1219-AB64) being developed by the Mine Safety and Health Administration of the Department of Labor." The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) proposes cutting in half the limits on coal miners' exposure to coal dust. The agency's proposed rulemaking also establishes the use of Personal Dust Monitors which measure dust exposure in real time. The 2013 fiscal year begins Oct. 1. A rider for FY 2012 blocked the rulemaking until the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issues a report on the validity of research that shows black lung disease has doubled in the last decade. The data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) also shows that diagnoses of the worst stages of the disease have quadrupled since the 1980's in eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia. The GAO report is expected to be released sometime in the next month. NIOSH studies also show that the disease is striking younger miners and progressing more quickly to the most serious stages of black lung. The summary of the legislation issued by Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee includes this comment: "Recent reporting by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity has highlighted the need for more effective 'black lung' disease prevention efforts as there has been a resurgence of the disease among coal miners." NPR and the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) reported last week that the system that is supposed to control miners' exposure to coal dust and silica is plagued by loopholes in the law, weak enforcement and cheating by some mining companies. The proposed rulemaking permits self-policing by mining companies. NPR and CPI are seeking comment from lawmakers and others focused on black lung and will post those comments as we get them. Update at 6:29 p.m. ET. Hope Republicans Will Reconsider: Sen. Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Committee, said this is an issue that should be above partisanship. "The lives and health of miners and their families should not be a partisan issue," he said in a statement. "Last year, Republicans required a GAO study to examine the science underlying the increased incidence of black lung, but now, they are attempting to kill the proposed rule without even waiting for the results of the study they requested. I hope that the House Republicans will reconsider this deeply misguided proposal, and join me in calling for quick action to keep our miners safe." Update at 3:32 p.m. ET. A 'Death Sentence' For Miners: Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), calls the funding language "a potential death sentence for thousands of American miners." The UMWA has had its own objections to MSHA's proposed rulemaking and has joined with one industry group in saying the proposal doesn't go far enough in protecting miners from coal mine dust. But Roberts adds, "We know that the only way to end this disease is to reduce miners' exposure to that dust." Roberts is also disappointed in the language limiting funding for deployment of Personal Dust Monitors. "If this language is allowed to stand, we will not have the benefit of this new technology, meaning miners will continue to be at risk of this always-fatal disease... Preventing black lung isn't a matter of over-regulation. It's a matter of life and death." Update at 1:15 p.m. ET. Democrat Criticizes Any Attempt To Block The Regulations: George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, is outraged by the rider. "The facts are indisputable — black lung is on the rise again and some mine operators are exploiting loopholes in obsolete rules to evade compliance," Miller says, in reference to reporting by NPR and CPI. "The present system is badly broken and improvements are desperately needed. ... Blocking efforts by the Mine Safety and Health Administration to modernize miner protections will only cost lives, careers, and family income for those who go underground every day." Update at 12:23 p.m. Why Block The Regulations? Mining Association Says MSHA Didn't Consider "Constructive" Proposals: The National Mining Association (NMA) refers to the funding withdrawal language as the "Rehberg Amendment." Denny Rehberg is a Montana Republican who chairs the House Committee on Labor, Health and Human Service and Education. NPR and CPI have asked Rehberg's office for comment. NMA spokesman Luke Popovich says the group "sympathizes with the chairman's frustration at MSHA's apparent unwillingness to consider seriously the constructive proposals we have made to address this problem directly and improve miners' health." NMA believes the MSHA approach doesn't do enough to control miners' exposure to coal dust and wants the following actions added to the agency's rulemaking: · Encourage the use of proven technology — (supplied air helmets,) used in occupations other than mining — to provide miners with a stream of fresh air across their breathing zone; · Allow work practices that permit miners to be rotated across alternate work locations to minimize exposure during the shift; · Require that all miners participate in an x-ray surveillance program so that intervention measures can be taken promptly should a miner develop respiratory impairment during his career; · Recognize that longer working periods impact exposure by adopting a weekly, cumulative dose exposure limit rather than the current shift-by-shift approach; · Revise the rule to address the localized nature of the problem (as identified by NIOSH x-ray surveillance data) and the specific conditions it represents rather than impose a general requirement across the entire industry. · Complete the additional research and development needed to ensure integrity of personal dust monitors. One mine safety advocate condemns the "Rehberg Amendment" as "callous, heartless and pathetic." "Appalachian coal miners whose pickup trucks sport 'Friends of Coal' stickers might ought to re-assess who their true friends are," says Tony Oppegard, a former Kentucky and federal mine safety regulator now representing coal miners in lawsuits against mining companies. "It's certainly not Republicans who stand silent in the midst of a health crisis," Oppegard adds. "Our nation needs fewer 'Friends of Coal' and more 'Friends of Coal Miners'."

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Roche Holding AG (ROG) is planning a final-stage trial of a drug that taps into a gene mutation to lower cholesterol and heart attack risk beyond what statins such as Pfizer Inc. (PFE)'s $9.6 billion-selling Lipitor can do. The experimental treatment, developed by the drugmaker's Genentech unit, has been tested in enough people to show it reduces bad cholesterol as expected, said Hal Barron, chief medical officer at Basel, Switzerland-based Roche. Roche hasn't published data on the drug or mentioned it in news releases. The effort puts Roche into the middle of one of the most promising and competitive areas of drug development. High cholesterol is a leading contributor to cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 cause of death in the world. Cholesterol-lowering treatments were a $38.7 billion market in 2011, according to IMS Health. Sanofi and partner Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (REGN), Amgen Inc. (AMGN) and Pfizer are among the companies working on similar medicines targeting the PCSK9 gene. "These drugs allow us to go where no one has gone before," Steven Nissen, chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, said by phone a few hours after a meeting with Amgen about the design of another study. "There's a tremendous amount of interest among a broad range of makers of pharmaceuticals to get involved." Nissen isn't involved in Roche's research. Roche is enrolling patients in a mid-stage trial of the drug. Next year, the company plans to begin the third and usually final phase of clinical testing needed before seeking regulatory approval to sell the new medicine, according to an article in an internal Roche newsletter. Roche hasn't talked about the project publicly because anti-PCSK9 research is very competitive, said Robin Snyder, a Genentech spokeswoman, in an e-mail. Executives plan to discuss it at a presentation to analysts and investors in London in September. Roche doesn't have a cardiovascular drug among its 10 biggest-selling products. The company in May abandoned an effort to develop dalcetrapib, a treatment to increase so-called good cholesterol, after an independent group of experts said patient trials didn't show clinically meaningful efficacy. The PCSK9 gene makes a protein that disrupts the ability of liver cells to strip bad cholesterol out of the blood. About 3 percent of people have a mutated version of this gene, resulting in less accumulation of bad cholesterol. The experimental medicines may extend that benefit to people who don't have the mutation. Most of the drugs are given as a once- or twice- monthly injection. Anti-PCSK9 drugs could help some 1.5 million Americans who aren't able to take statins, or as many as 11 million people including those whose cholesterol doesn't go low enough on a statin, Regeneron Chief Financial Officer Murray Goldberg said in June. Sanofi (SAN) and Regeneron said in March that their drug cut levels of LDL, the bad cholesterol, by as much as 72 percent on top of Lipitor in a 183-person trial. Tarrytown, New York-based Regeneron and its Paris-based partner are beginning final-phase trials. Those results shouldn't have surprised anyone who understands the science behind the project, Barron said in an interview last week at Genentech's South San Francisco headquarters. "If this didn't work, we should all go home," he said. "It behaved exactly as expected." What's unclear is exactly what companies will need to do to get an anti-PCSK9 drug approved in an environment where so many patients are already taking statins, he said. Companies may need to show whether their drugs help prevent heart attacks, not just that they lower cholesterol more than statins, he said. "It's not incredibly intuitive that it's just going to be a linear relationship: the lower the lower the lower, the better the better the better," Barron said. "There may be a ceiling effect." While only the Food and Drug Administration can say for sure what kinds of testing will be required, the agency will probably approve the drugs based on their cholesterol-lowering properties and a "very good demonstration of safety," as long as companies promise to follow up with studies that look at disease and death rates, Nissen said. The cardiologist is a former chairman of the agency's CardioRenal Advisory Panel. The Roche corporate executive committee gave the go-ahead in February for the drug to move toward phase three, which is usually the last of the stages of patient trials, according to the newsletter. Nothing has been decided about the design of that study, said Snyder. "Phase three is being geared up," said Richard Scheller, Genentech's chief scientific officer, in a separate interview last week at the unit's headquarters. He said he expects Roche will need to show the outcome of treatment with the drug and whether it's effective at helping people. "The early part of the trial goes very quickly, because you can just measure cholesterol and see that it goes down," he said. "But then again you have to show it's effective, which it will be, because it lowers cholesterol, and you have to show that it's safe, again a major deal for drugs in areas outside oncology." Anti-PCSK9 is less risky than dalcetrapib, the drug that failed to boost good cholesterol, or HDL, Scheller said. "It's considerably less risky because it's approaching a proven -- a proven in tens of millions of people proven -- target, versus HDL, which was in a number of ways a more innovative target, but much greater risk," Scheller said. Amgen is testing its anti-PCSK9 drug in five second-stage trials, the Thousand Oaks, California-based company said this week. New York-based Pfizer said this week its compound is in late phase two development. Also researching in the area are Merck & Co. (MRK), based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey; New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY); and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ALNY), based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If anti-PCSK9 drugs prove to be safe and effective, "it will be hard for me to imagine them not having blockbuster potential," Alnylam Chief Executive Officer John Maraganore said in a telephone interview, meaning drugs with more than $1 billion a year in sales. The future for anti-PCSK9 drugs may be in showing how they fit together and which has the most desirable characteristics, Barron said. "There may never be -- or at least not in the near future -- a class of drugs with the impact of statins," Nissen said. "But this is a big one. This is a very promising class of drugs."

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Update: Electronic Intifada reports over twitter that the students will not be sentenced to jail time, but instead will have three years probation and will have to do 56 hours of community service at a non-profit. The probation will be dropped if the community service is completed within a year. EI tweets the judge said "defendants were motivated by their political beliefs. No jailtime." Also: Jewish Voice for Peace has released the following statement: 'This is a shameful day for the legal system and the Jewish communal leaders who actively supported this unfair railroading of young Muslim students and unprecedented attack on everyone's right to free speech. How can it be that the Israeli ambassador enjoys more rights in the United States than do young Muslim citizens? We hope this prompts some real soul-searching among those who actively supported the case against the Irvine students simply because they didn’t like what the students had to say about Israel's human rights record. The principle of free expression for even unpopular speech, as it applies to all people, is fundamental to democracy. And it is never, ever OK to allow or support the unjust targeting of a minority group—which is what happened here. And frankly, as a religious and ethnic minority who was once a largely young immigrant population, Jews of all people should understand the need to protect minority rights. Our young Jewish members engaged in a nearly identical protest of Israeli policies-only the venue was larger and the target was the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu. They were let off without even a mark. Their Muslim peers were tried and criminalized. What does this say about America today? Original Post: This is a chilling decision and a very dangerous precedent. An Orange County court has found 10 Muslim students guilty of two misdemeanors for a protest they held against Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in February 2010. For background on the case see the Mondoweiss posts here, here and here. Also read Nora Barrows-Friedman's blog on Electronic Intifada, who has offered the best coverage of this case bar none. From the LA Times: In a case that garnered national attention over free-speech rights, the trial centered on conflicting views of who was being censored. Prosecutors argued that Ambassador Michael Oren was “shut down” when his speech was interrupted by students who took turns shouting preplanned phrases in a crowded UC Irvine ballroom. Six defense attorneys argued that the students, seven from UC Irvine and three from UC Riverside, were only following the norm of other college protests and were being singled out. A guilty verdict, the defense had said during the trial, could chill student activism and the free exchange of ideas at colleges nationwide. University administrators disciplined some of the students involved and suspended the campus Muslim Student Union, whose members participated in the protest, for an academic quarter. The group is still on probation. The case also has drawn the attention of a wide range of groups, including Muslim and Jewish organizations and civil libertarians. The trial began Sept. 7. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Irvine's Law School, has said that although freedom of speech is not an absolute right, university sanctions were enough for the students. But he also added that he believes criminal sanctions go too far. Chemerinsky told The Times last week that "it makes no sense" to use such resources. "It's so minor." Charges against one defendant were tentatively dismissed pending completion of 40 hours of community service at a local soup kitchen.

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Inspired by the buzz around HTML5, game development studio Wooga recently attempted to build a complete mobile game with standards-based Web technologies. To share the results of its year-long experiment, the company has published the game’s source code on GitHub under an open source software license. Wooga also published a blog entry that describes some of the lessons that their developers learned from the experience. The company sees considerable potential in HTML5 gaming, but says that the technology isn’t quite ready yet. Wooga is releasing the source code with the hope that it will contribute to the Web development community’s body of knowledge. "The reason we’re making Pocket Island open source is so that talented developers all around the world can learn from the team’s work here at Wooga, before breaking and improving on it," the company wrote in a blog post. "The promise of HTML5 is still an exciting one and while the time for mass market implementation may not be in 2012, we’re confident its time will come." Over the past several years, browser performance improvements and emerging standards have done much to improve the viability of the open Web as a platform for casual gaming. New standards allow Web applications to handle input from game controllers, display HTML content in fullscreen mode, and programmatically manipulate audio streams. As we reported earlier this year, Mozilla and Google have both taken a keen interest in browser-based gaming. Mozilla even made its own open source game as a demonstration, using WebSockets to support a real-time multiplayer environment. Wooga’s game is even more complete, offering a fairly compelling example of what a real-world HTML5 game would look like. Although it’s not quite as polished as Wooga would have liked, it is an impressive step forward. Interested users can test Pocket Island in a Web browser or on an iPhone.

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PoliticsNation | December 11, 2012 >>> grab in michigan . republican governor rick snyder has just signed bills designed to cripple unions. and take away workers' rights even though earlier this year he said such a move would be quote, divisive and inappropriate. snyder signed the bills despite protests from more than 10,000 people who descended on the state capitol in a massive push back against this shameless power play from the republicans. >> right the work is wrong! right the work is wrong! >> he lied to us. he lied to us on numerous occasions. >> veto! veto! >> kill the bill! kill the bill! >> the protests were passionate and grew tense. in this video from the state's aclu, you can see police actually using pepper spray on some of the demonstrators. the issue in michigan is the republican legislature ramming through a so-called right to work bill. with no warning and no hearings. but the fight is bigger than michigan . it's a fight about worker rights and civil rights across the country. this country, the american people , rejected this kind of extremism on election day . but republicans didn't get the message. gop lawmakers ignored the outcry in the halls of the capitol to pass two bills they hope will devastate both public and private sector unions. >> they have been shut out completely. the people have been shut out of this discussion. >> it has been said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. and this is absolute evidence. >> so what this is is a victory for people like dick de voss, mitt romney , the koch brothers, and other corporate ceos who believe the path to prosperity in michigan is paved with lower wages and lower benefits. >> this is a stunning slap in the face for unions in michigan . the birthplace of the modern labor movement . in 1936 autoworkers in flint, michigan , staged a sit-down demanding their rights. it lasted 44 days and they won. general motors recognized the united auto workers for the first time. and in 1965 , michigan 's republican governor george romney worked with unions to sign historical bills recognizing the right to collective bargaining . nearly 50 years later, the gop is trying to undo all that progress. a massive power grab by a republican party that just lost an election. this didn't just happen out of the blue. we're learning this has been orchestrated by far right conservatives who have made threats against politicians and literally bullied their way into getting what they wanted. >> dick devos and extreme right wing control what's going on in the state. and the koch brothers, americans for prosperity all pushing for the legislation, threatening the governor, threatening different representatives. they were threatened that they would have a primary challenge from the tea party . >> threats, intimidation. on democratic moves. right now michigan is the center of the right wing attack on workers rights and we must fight it. joining me now is democratic congressman from michigan gary peters . he met with governor snyder yesterday. and from lansing, michigan , state senator gretchen witmer, and the reverend charles williams . president of the michigan chapter of the national action network and senior pastor of the historic king solomon baptist church in detroit. thank you, all three for joining me tonight. >> great to be with you. >> thank you. >> congressman peters, let me start with you. the governor snyder has signed this bill. now, what's the next step? >> this is absolutely outrageous. what we've seen in the last hours. compete about face from a governor who said this should not be part of the agenda. and to do this without any hearings. then what i think is particularly outrageous. the next step is we could have gone to a referendum. put it on the ballot for the voters to make a decision. particularly in a state like michigan which has been the center of the labor movement from the very beginning. instead they did a very tricky maneuv maneuver. they put a small appropriation on that bill. you can't go to a referendum. we have democrats that would be joining the state house . they weren't going to pass it in the new legislature, so they jammed it through here and put something in to make it difficult to have a referendum. it is certainly not over. this is going to be a contentious issue going forward. >> can this be overturned? can he be recall snd. >> he could. you could see a move to recall him. you could also see a initiative. there are a number of options. but i think one thing is very clear. particularly with the demonstrations we saw in lanzing here today is that folks aren't going to let this slide by. they're going to be aggressive. they're going to be out there and letting all of those legislators who voted for this know that this is a despicable action. it is a reckless action that is going to harm working class families in the state of michigan . >> senator witmer, you've been out there today. let me show you this. governor snyder today said this. let me let you listen to this and respond. >> i ask them not to go forward. the reason i said is you're going to start a divisive discussion regarding collective bargaining first. then this right to work discussion continued to escalate and was becoming divisive. i viewed it as on the table. it's a hot issue. let's show some leadership. i stepped up to say when i review it, i think it's a good thing. >> now, senator, the governor is saying here because there's a referendum on the ballot, that he told them not to do it. it's almost like he's blaming labor for what they did in a lame duck session with no hearings? >> exactly. give me a break. this governor just last week when he announced this about face said that this was good public policy . now he's admitting that this is about political retribution. this is anti-worker, anti-family, anti-woman. and they're doing it in the most anti- american way . it is absolutely repulsive this governor is such a coward he had to announce it from behind locked doors , lock people out of the capitol, now he's signed it behind a wall of armed police officers. you know why he's doing that? because he knows the public disagrees on this one and he is dead wrong. >> behind a wall of police officers . reverend williams, you and other civil rights groups up there today, what was it look up there? >> well, first of all reverend sharpton, let me thank you for your leadership around this issue in terms of bringing the national civil rights table together. we here in michigan national action network , we're on the front lines of this issue simply because it's not just about the folks in unions but the folks on the outside of unions. so we're going to fight this to the very end. and we're going to not let governor snyder get any rest until we return the working people back their rights that they had before governor snyder signed this. >> the gop 's war on workers, we hear the language very similar to alec when we see michigan 's proposed right to work billing mirror the word for word the detroit free press says. we know there's koch brother moneys. do you expect people around the country now to rally in michigan to possibly deal with a recall? or whatever options are available that congressman peters referred to? >> i think so. i think we've got to hold these guys accountable. this guy won't answer my phone call . he'll ignore 13,000 people at the capitol this morning. but you know whose call he will answer? the koch brothers. and that's wrong. maybe we lost this today, but this fight is not over. >> congressman peters -- congressman peters, explain to the people watching around the country what happened. a lot of people just can't understand how this could have happened so quickly. i mean, like, overnight. the blinking of an eye. all of a sudden you see bill passed the state senate , bill passed the house, governor signs it. i mean, before we understood what was going on. >> it is -- it's hard to explain. and it is particularly hard to explain because we have a governor who repeatedly said this was not on his agenda. this would be divisive for our state. he continually said that for a couple years. and immediately after the election had a really sharp about face and just jammed it through without any hearings or public input. i was able to meet with him and other members of the congressional delegation. he sat and listened to us but barely responded. when he did, i was amazed at the lack of understanding he has about this issue. it is hard to explain. it is something the people in the state of michigan will have to wonder how a governor could do this. how a state legislature could do this. that's why we need to not give up this fight. and push back. >> is he a puppet of the koch brothers, of the amway fortune? is he just working for other interests? >> could be. that's an interesting thing about it. that we saw as he announced this there was a $2 million ad buy financed by outside groups with these tv ads. this was an orchestrated attempt to do this. it was planned well in advance. they sprung it quickly before anybody could really react. >> reverend williams, does this effect people in your church? people that attend? regular people ? this is more than just union bosses. how does this affect ordinary average people in michigan ? >> well, reverend sharpton, right to work means no rights at work. and so we unequivocally understand that these laws are only to break and bust collective bargaining agreements . we understand that is only going to make it so the wages are lower. and as you know and as the statistics show and have shown throughout the years is that seven out of the ten states that are right to work states are the poorest states in the country. this is absolutely ludicrous. and when you talk about the koch brothers and you talk about all of the right wing alignments, this is the same governor that when we fought against him to not sign voter suppression laws, he decided not to sign it. so i believe we can change his mind. but it's going to take fighting. if he don't return senator witmer's calls, we'll have to make house calls . >> all right. we'll be staying on this story. thanks so much for your time tonight. >> great to be with you. >> thank you. >>> the michigan power grab you may not know about. an attack on women's rights is happening now in michigan . and it must be stopped. >>> republicans lost in translation . congressman allen west says he lost because the democrats cheated. yeah, well, you lost. and no santa for you this year. >>> and scalia versus beck. winner take all. the fight that even has the gop afraid. anyone got any popcorn? stick around for that. you're watching "politicsnation" on msnbc. twins. i didn't see them coming. i have obligations. cute obligations, but obligations. i need to rethink the core of my portfolio. what i really need is sleep. introducing the ishares core, building blocks for the heart of your portfolio. find out why 9 out of 10 large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before

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Skip to Main Content In a service oriented architecture requestors should be able to use the services that best fit their needs. In particular, for Web services it should be possible to fully exploit the advantages of dynamic binding. Up to now, no proposed solution allows the requesting agent to dynamically select the most "convenient" service at invoke time. The reason is that currently the requesting agents do not compare the runtime behavior of different services. In this paper, we propose a system that provides and exploits predictions about the behavior of Web services, expressed in terms of availability, reliability and completion time. We also describe a first prototype (eUDDIr) of the specification. EUDDIr relies on a scalable agents-based monitoring architecture that collects data on Web services runtime activity. The computed predictions are used by requesting agents to implement an effective dynamic service selection. Our proposal is well suited whenever requestors do not wish to explicitly deal with QoS aspects, or in the case that provider agents have no convenience in building up the infrastructure for guaranteed QoS, at the same time aiming to provide services of good quality to their customers. Furthermore, the adoption of eUDDIr effectively improves the service requestors "satisfaction" when they are involved in a Web services composition process. Date of Conference: 13-15 June 2005

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Anna Somers Cocks, chairman, and six leading trustees of the Venice in Peril Fund resign Charity to return to its restoration roots but rising waters still a threat to city By The Art Newspaper. Web only Published online: 30 July 2012 Anna Somers Cocks, the chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund since 2000, has resigned. (Somers Cocks is also the chief executive of The Art Newspaper). Lord Norwich and Nathalie Brooke, both honorary chairmen, Sir Ronald Grierson, David Landau, Lady Emily FitzRoy and Sandra Graham, all trustees, have also handed in their resignation. Venice in Peril was founded after the great flood of 1966 with the declared mission of restoring monuments and works of art, and of financing research into the city’s ecological problems. Until Somers Cocks took over, it focused exclusively on restoration. Between 2000 and today, however, while continuing with restorations, the fund has also become involved in the big policy issues regarding the city. From 2001 to 2004, Venice in Peril financed a research project at the University of Cambridge and the Consortium for the Co-ordination of Research into the Venetian Lagoon (CoRiLa) to bring together all the scientific work done on the flooding of Venice since 1966 and to examine the solutions proposed. The project culminated in a conference held in 2003 at Churchill College, Cambridge, where more than 130 scientists from Venice, the rest of Italy, the Netherlands, UK, St Petersburg, New Orleans and elsewhere, met for three days to discuss their findings. Their conclusion was that the city definitely needed mobile barriers at the openings between the Adriatic and lagoon, but that these only bought time, and that the authorities needed to be planning far beyond them. This project led to the production of an authoritative book for the layperson in English and Italian editions, The Science of Saving Venice ( La Scienza per Venezia), Umberto Allemandi e C., 2004. The papers of the conference were published after peer review in the seminal volume Flooding and Environmental Challenges for Venice and its Lagoon: State of Knowledge, edited by C.A. Fletcher and T. Spencer, Cambridge University Press, 2005. In 2009 Venice in Peril financed the research for, and publication of, The Venice Report Cambridge University Press, 2009, which investigated how many tourists can fit into Venice without overcrowding; how many people really live in Venice; how much public money is made available by Italy for the city; and how the use of buildings is changing in the city. Now the remaining trustees of Venice in Peril (the writer Jonathan Keates is serving as acting chairman) have said that they wish to return the fund to just financing restoration. Somers Cocks says: “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has agreed that the minimum rise in sea level by the end of the century will be 60cms, and it might be as much as a metre. There is a widespread and dangerous misconception that Mose, the mobile barriers currently being built, are a solution to the problem of rising water levels and Venice. This is not the case, and what concerns me most is that the Italian authorities are not thinking long-term and that the decision-making process is deeply inefficient and highly politicised. It need not be like this; the Dutch and the English have clear policies in place for at least 50 years into the future. It is terribly serious for Venice.” As Dr Tom Spencer, the director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit and co-editor of the above book on the lagoon, has written to Venice in Peril, “I suspect a reactive model for Venice quickly leads to no Venice as we know it.” Submit a comment All comments are moderated. If you would like your comment to be approved, please use your real name, not a pseudonym. We ask for your email address in case we wish to contact you - it will not be made public and we do not use it for any other purpose. Want to write a longer comment to this article? Email [email protected]

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We have covered BigDog before. BigDog is the aptly-named, big, dog-like robot from Boston Dynamics that, according to the company, “is a rough-terrain robot that walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads.” The project is funded by DARPA, as are several other Boston Dynamics robots — the company has posted several videos of the robots in action on its YouTube channel. Here’s PETMAN: He can do push-ups and you can’t knock him off-balance. Here’s Cheetah Robot: It can run 28.3 miles per hour. And here’s a BigDog greatest hits montage of sorts: I’m trying unsuccessfully to avoid referring to BigDog as a scary robot, since it’s been done a thousand times before on a thousand different blogs. But look at those guys trying to kick BigDog off-balance and watch BigDog scramble back to its feet. Nice doggie. I’m an American. I’m on your team. And here we have the latest BigDog video, wherein Boston Dynamics has outfitted man’s best friend with the ability to whip cinder blocks around: Key to this work, funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, is that BigDog uses the dynamic forces of its whole body to help it throw the cinder block. It begins by taking several steps to the side before quickly accelerating as it swings its arm, temporarily launching itself into the air in the process. This approach is similar to the way an athlete winds up before throwing a discus, for example, and greatly enhances the robot’s throwing power. Since few robots are as capable as BigDog when it comes to balance, it’s an excellent platform to test these sorts of strenuous actions. Is BigDog’s cinder block-throwing feature useful in the real world? I don’t know. Probably! My iPhone came preloaded with a compass app that I never use, but it’s nice to know that it’s there. And I’d surely pony up for a consumer version of BigDog that could lightly — lightly! — toss various consumable items from the kitchen to the living room.

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Hello Ron: Smith wrote a good piece on "Big Bang Cosmology and Atheism: Why the Big Bang is No Help to Theists" by Quentin Smith As with most theistic arguments, it's not "debunkable," which is in itself a glaring problem. I'd just smile and say that's nice, circular, but nice. And then maybe add something to the effect of, it seems we have different definitions of what qualifies as proof. Although I did like that idea earlier of making statements or asking questions that might throw them a bit off, but I think I might start answering them as though I agree while doing the suggested gender pronoun switching, throwing in a different, non-christian name for god or jesus, and whatever else along these lines. Might bring to light some assumptions they make and take for granted. That and it would certainly make me chuckle :). It's also begging the question. The theist is assuming that which they are attempting to prove. (That god exists) Begging questions is one of the tools in the Apologetical tool box. Not to go on ad nauseum, but I like George H. Smith's approach at pulling the rug out from under theistic retreats to presuppositionalism. The following text is paraphrased from George H. Smith's book, “Atheism: The Case Against God” p.41. To exist is to exist as something. To be something is to have a specific nature. That is to have a particular identity. The Laws of Identity A=A and Non-Contradiction A =/= ¬A entail that any ontological being must posses specific determinate characteristics. To have such characteristics is a consequence of being part of nature. But the theistic God is asserted to be super-natural, and that is to be exempt from the uniformity of nature. Herein lies the contradiction fatal to any claim of knowledge about God. Having specific determinate characteristics imposes limits, and those limits would restrict the capacities of the alleged super-natural being. Such restriction then renders the alleged super-natural being subject to the causal relationships that denote the uniformity of nature in actual existence and disqualify it from being God. To escape this contradiction, the religious mind proposes to somehow imagine a God lacking any definite attributes or properties. But a postulated existent devoid of properties or attributes is indistinguishable from nothingness and is incompatible with the concept of existence. For God to have characteristics necessarily means God must have definite characteristics. That is to say that God would then necessarily be limited, for to be A is to also not be ¬A. Any being with characteristics is then subject to the uniformity of nature imposed by those capacities. For a super-natural being to differ from natural existence, it must exist without a limited identity and nature. This amounts to existing without any nature or identity at all. If humanity is to have meaningful discourse about God, we must presuppose it to have properties by which is can be identified. By asserting that God is super-natural theism stipulates existence apart from the uniformity of nature and eliminates any possibility of assigning definite characteristics to God. But by assigning definite characteristics to God, theism brings its God within the natural realm and renders it not-God. Something cannot be both A and ¬A. God then cannot exist, and any claim of knowledge of God is indistinguishable from fantasy of God. The argument then goes round and round with constant request for a way to reliably distinguish God belief from God fantasy. Sometimes this gets a little ugly, but I think it ultimately will have beneficial effect on the believer if it motivates them to question the faith, for indeed false comfort is no comfort at all. Would I be safe, Robert, in translating that as, "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." I don't know if this has been discussed but when someone uses a First Cause argument it's easiest to just ask who created God. Inevitably they will say "God has always existed" or "God created himself". You can then point out that they are guilty of "special pleading", a logical fallacy. The universe requires a creation/creator but God does not. Edit: If they blow this off then they do not care about logic and no amount of logic you use will persuade them. The latest attempt to get around that is to change the statement to 'Everything that began to exist had a cause, the universe began to exist, so it has a cause." They then state that God didn't begin to exist, so it doesn't need a cause. This one is just as easy to knock down. First, the initial statement is assumed but not proven. We know of things that begin to exist that have no known cause (virtual particles), so claiming that everything that begins to exist has a cause is not true. Second, the claim that the universe began to exist is not proven, either. We can only go back to Planck Time with our current understanding of physics, what happened before that is still speculative. Yeah, I remember watching a debate with WLC where he stated that. Even though he talked himself blue in the face he never properly backed up the first two assertions. The statement that "God didn't begin to exist therefore he didn't need a cause" is still special pleading. Dave, what would be a good response to a rebuttal that the atheist is unjustifiably presuming metaphysical naturalism? Probably that no metaphysical naturalism is being presumed. For the first point (things needing a cause to exist not being proven), the fact remains that there are things that begin to exist (such as virtual particles) that have no known cause. Postulating a supernatural cause is possible, but ultimately irrelevant as any supernatural cause can be provided (God, Ra, pixies, Nyarlathotep, and so forth), leaving us in the same spot as before, ignorant of any actual cause. As for the second, "We don't know" is an acceptable answer. We have several hypotheses, some of which involve the universe being created, some not. Even if we were to include the 'God Did It' hypothesis, the answer is still "We don't know". No answer is better than the preposterous one that a magical sorcerer made the universe. What most theists don't get is that their insistence that "there must be a cause because nothing else makes sense" presupposes that the physical laws that prevail now were there in the beginning. There's no reason at all to believe that. The original state may have been strange beyond human comprehension. There are no logical reasons the universe needs a creator to exist. The universe is not a theorem, a proof, a postulate, or any other element of an argument. It exists. It doesn't prove or disprove anything.

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Granted, I am not a Millenium kid, but I like MMORPGs as much as the next techie-mom. I freaked out my 14-year-old son’s friend the other day when I asked them which shard I should start my new warrior character on. He (the friend) stared at me, open-mouthed. “I understood what you just said,” he explained,”but I can’t believe you just said it.” Stereotypes (soccer-mom, nagging-mom, boring-mom, etc) die hard. Here are some important lessons I have learned from playing RIFT and other online games: 1. Keep up with Technology My kids played the first computer games on a Power Mac 7100/80 hand-me-down from work: KidPix, Carmen Sandiago, SimCity (precursor to The Sims). One winter we discovered Myst. It captured my imagination — the lonely island with a terrible secret, the dusty books with static testimonies, the ambient soundtrack with lapping waves. Myst satisfied the artistic adventurer in me. Watching new gaming platforms emerge keeps me up to speed on new technologies. Myst, for example, increased the use of CD-Roms at the time. It’s always good to know what’s coming down the road because as a blogger, you’re in the technology industry, (even if you forget momentarily while you search for a clue in the Mechanical Age). 2. Learn the Shortcuts The first time I played The Sims, I stayed up all night as my virtual family started peeing in corners because I couldn’t afford toilets. When my son woke up for breakfast and saw the plight I was in, he said, “Don’t you know the shortcut?” He nimbly entered a string of letters and numbers, and suddenly, I was a virtual millionaire. I have to say, it was much more fun to be rich. I blogged for years before I started to seriously learn the shortcuts from someone who’s been there. It’s worth it to find a good teacher and subscribe to their blog, try out their advice, buy their products and learn as much as you can. The best teachers will have patience and really good tricks that will make your life online easier and richer. My recommended blogging and business teachers can be found on this page. 3. Understand your Weaknesses The Harry Potter games came along, and playing Quidditch online was fun, but my kids were still better than I was at flying. Was it because their little fingers held a mouse almost before they held a pencil? Instead of giving up, I watched what they did, how they prepared for the next move, and I practiced doing the same. It takes practice to be good at something. Is regular posting your weakest link? The technology behind custom designing your theme? Don’t give up! WordPress wasn’t created to give you nightmares, even though sometimes it feels that way. Use forums, friends and inner circles of experts to help you keep your learning curve curving. 4. Create a Virtual Place of Beauty I next discovered Neverwinter Nights. A huge jump in online graphics made this world beautiful to play in. I opened my backpack from a semi-opague grid interface. The sound of clinking money, bubbling potions, raucous fighting, clashing swords, and especially, the crunching of boots on the snow-covered earth finally won me over and I played for years. I think of my blog as a home where you can come visit, see what’s new, share some experiences. I was recently searching for an image to go with a blog post and chose a digital representation of the air currents around the wings of a bat. It had nothing to do with my post, except the tangential link of a digital negative image, and the fact that the piece was shown at the Santa Fe Complex where I hold Blogshop, but I love the combination of art and science, so I shared that image with you. 5. Interact with your Fellow Players I played World of Warcraft off and on for a couple years. This was my first foray into a MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) where you interact with other twelve-year-olds and Chinese prisoners masquerading as dwarfs and goblins live on a server. My son was usually a fleet-footed elf; I was a big cow with a gun. The first time I flew into Orgrimmar—the equivalent of New York City—I was stunned by the level 80s riding crazy beasts, duels breaking out in the streets, and the 3-character-deep lines at the auction house. I just virtually stared at everyone. There were a lot of fun days during Christmas vacation when my youngest and I, on separate laptops, sat next to each other at my desk and quested together online. We joined up with someone once who kept asking to borrow gold from us, the creep. We joined up with another character and went on a fun hour-long adventure until she told us, “I gotta go shopping with my dad,” and signed off. In the blogging realm, you don’t always know the real people behind your online audience, either. Get to know them better. Ask them to reply to your posts. Set up a survey to find out if you have helped them and what more you can do for them. Hold a free Q & A session. Go on a quest together. 6. Join a Public Group to Defeat the Rifts RIFT came along early this year in Beta version. I only started playing a month ago since they don’t have a mac-supported version. What I enjoy most about it is the ease in joining a public group to battle elemental rifts. Join, battle, goodbye. Mount my double-headed turtle, and I am galloping off to collect unseen eyes or defeat more death invasions. Blogging is sometimes a battle against unseen, deadly elements, isn’t it? I learned to join a public group or two, usually forums, to help me win those battles. Bloggers are online a lot, so even if it’s 2am and I am having a struggle formatting some CSS, or getting a gallery to work, I log on to a forum and look for answers, and post if I don’t solve the problem myself. One good place to interact with other bloggers is David Risley’s Inner Circle. He is one of my affiliates (full disclosure!) but I promote him because I wouldn’t be a successful blogger without his sage and no-BS advice. Click here to visit his site We may not be Ascended Souls in Gnarlwood trying to save the targeted world of Telara, but we can use gaming lessons to better our blogging game.

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If you want to have a volunteer tutor help you with your German on a regular basis, you can request a tutor and get a special mini-forum set up just for your tutoring. Such tutoring is available both for beginners and more advanced learners. - A tutoring thread is reserved for a student who works one-on-one with a tutor. If anyone other than the student or the tutor wishes to comment on something in a tutoring thread, he or she should post a message in the appropriate forum (grammar, vocabulary, general discussion, etc.) referring back to the tutoring message in question. No one other than the tutor and student should post any messages in the student's thread. - The form each thread takes is determined by the student and tutor. Each student must decide how he/she learns best and that is the format the tutor will follow. - Tutors in the Intermediate/Advanced Tutoring folder are all native German-speakers who are also fluent in English (or in the native language of the student). The fluency requirement is waived when the student is very advanced and can easily understand explanations written in German. - Tutors in the Beginners Tutoring folder may be advanced students who can adequately explain grammar rules. It is understood that this arrangement is meant to be temporary and that when the student reaches a certain level of proficiency, to be determined by the tutor, he/she will be transferred to a native speaking tutor in the Intermediate Tutoring folder.

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President Obama's recess appointments to a federal agency-- made without Senate confirmation-- have been struck down by a federal appeals court as an unconstitutional use of executive power. The three-judge panel unanimously concluded Friday three people named to the National Labor Relations Board lacked authority, because the presidential appointments were made while the Senate was technically in a "pro forma" session during the winter holiday break. The case sets up a potential high-stakes Supreme Court fight between the executive and legislative branches. Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the past have used the "virtual Congress" tactic to block unilateral appointments by the President when the Senate is away. "We determine the Board issuing the findings and order could not lawfully act, as it did not have a quorum," said the court. Republicans had claimed the appointments to the NLRB created a panel that was overly pro-union, and this ruling could invalidate hundreds of findings issued over the past year. The administration is expected to file an appeal to the Supreme Court in coming months. And the court's conclusion also put in jeopardy the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a move also being challenged in a separate lawsuit. "Allowing the President to define the scope of his own appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution's separation of powers," said the judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "An interpretation of 'the recess' that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction. This cannot be the law." The White House said it believes Friday's decision will not affect Cordray's appointment, but did express displeasure with the court's action. "The decision is novel and unprecedented. It contradicts 150 years of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations," said Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary. "So we respectfully, but strongly disagree with the rulings. There have been-- according to the Congressional Research Service-- something like 280-plus intra-session recess appointments by, Democratic and Republican administrations dating back to 1867. That's a long time and quite a significant precedent."

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I think it's the *computers* that need all the help they can get, not the composers. I think we are in basic agreement on this stuff.. As for the last: Dang! It must be a lot easier for you to write music than me No ... it's a lot easier for me to write *software* than music. But my own excursions into algorithmic composition have far less lofty goals. First of all, my music is purely digital electronic -- I don't compose for conventional instruments. Second, it's purely a studio, recorded music -- I don't do live performances. And third, mostly I work in conventional general-purpose programming languages, rather than using other peoples' packages that are music-specific. I don't have a problem with coding up something that generates many hours of music, then going through the output and editing it down to a piece. Joined: Jul 07, 2007 Posts: 1505 Location: Berks County, PA Audio files: 26 Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:15 am Post subject: Having sampled this thread numerous times, this post seems a good place to finally jump in. Other than that, algorithms and randomness are actually an oxymoron: an algorithm is a procedure comprised of logical steps, it has a beginning and an end. There cannot be true randomness in computers. My work on real-time improvisational accompaniment driven by MIDI guitar playing (see http://home.ptd.net/~dparson/dafx06_dparson_final.pdf and http://home.ptd.net/~dparson/elmu06talk.pdf) pulls nondeterminism out of nondeterminism in a human string player's real-time performance. Variations in player's state, venue acoustics, player-to-player interaction and player-audience interaction (to name a few) can introduce nondeterminism into the human performance, and an accompaniment algorithm that derives its behavior in part from nondeterministic input is nondeterministic. I don't know whether this qualifies as 'random,' and I am not really sure what 'random' means in this context, but if it means 'not correlated to the original code,' the there are at least some aspects of this computer behavior that are not correlated, hence surprising. Of course there are conventional 'randomizing' tricks like using the real-time clock to seed a pseudo-random number generator, but these rapidly degenerate into noise. They are fundamentally non-correlated with the code. My code is looking for nondeterministic correlation with the playing. In the search for interactive and easy-to-use systems, my personal quest was not very fruitful either: I have developed an application in Visual C++ for my BSc thesis some years ago, that uses evolutionary algorithms and the MIDI protocol to compose music. One of the most important observations is that telling a user how the system reacts in response to his input did not prove helpful at all. I have found that users adjust much easier if they are not informed at all and, instead, are left to explore the sonic possibilities. . . . Things can get very complex when you start working with larger "compositional" blocks: There are programs that use notes but once you start introducing chords, motives or whole compositions it can easily go out of control. For my program I have used chords - 4 voices soprano, tenor, alto and bass and criteria derived from classic harmony. The resultant music was often very "pointilistic" or it had sustained notes, depending on the input material and how mutations and crossovers interact. It is a promising field nevertheless. I might as well draw a parallel between electronic music and algorithm-aided composition techniques: very people believed that it could be done. My system analyzes input rhythm, chords, drones, and matches output of that analysis to stored motives and score. Being driven fundamentally by my guitar finger picking, it is not composing from a blank slate, but it does sometimes come up with interesting accompaniment. Two points are worth noting: 1. In the analysis stages of extracting rhythm, chords, etc. from my guitar playing, mistakes are not deadly. They are usually reasonably well correlated with my playing; small bugs serve as another source of nondeterminstic variation. Of course, I may later fix a bug and destroy some aspect of a particular accompaniment, but so it goes. My own playing changes over time, too. I am not looking to freeze a moment. recordings are good enough for that. 2. From above: uses evolutionary algorithms and the MIDI protocol to compose music One of my goals, stated in those cited papers, was to use the genetic algorithm to generate accompaniment, based on both the analysis of the incoming MIDI stream, and the matching of that to motives/score. I put a lot of work into that GA back end in late 2006, and it is the part that has FLOPPED so far, and the part that I was planning to discuss in this thread some time ago. The GA is an example of what's called a 'weak method' in artificial intelligence jargon. It is 'weak' not because it's a faulty algorithm, but because its application does not require one to 'load the dice' so to speak with cheats and heuristics and special purpose code. It's a general purpose algorithm, in this case examining application specific data (my MIDI + the analysis sdata) and generating application specific data (output MIDI) using a general approach to preserving good musical 'genes' across generations (geners are code strings that conform to a typed R-H-M-T pattern, R being Rhythm, Harmony, Melody and Timbre). The GA part of this has flopped so far, and I have therefore put GA on a back burner, because, as I see the system's behavior, *the search space is too big and mostly boring.* It's like going into deep space and trying to bump into interesting starts and planets -- interesting musical structures in this case -- by starting out with an initial random sample of space (no long range telescopes). There is just too much boring, empty space, so you wind up with chromosomes that are all boring, i.e., nothing interesting from which to apply the GA algorithm to select and cross over behaviors. Of course, I can seed the gene pool by hand, at which point we no longer have a 'weak method.' But I find it even less work to write accompanist code that is basically correlated to ideas I have for a given piece, and skip the GA altogether. It's much more productive and converges on interesting accompaniment quickly *when I am in a good compositional state!* Just like any other kind of composing, except that it *is* nondeterministic, depending in part on my own state at performance time. I have run into an interesting problem that requires attention, although I haven't worked on this system in a few months because my small musical time has been going into novel signal processing on audio streams lately. The problem is outlined by the attached graph below from my talk at electro-music 2006. The minima in that graph are places where score matching was getting stuck. Basically, score matching takes the current chord-mode-drone triplet from my incoming MIDI stream, and tries to match it to a saved trace of a previous reference performance (which is actually a merger of chord-mode-drone triplets from a number of previous performances, in an attempt to average out the errors). When it matches a location in the 'score trace,' this gives down stream accompaniment modules a 'plan for the future' in predicting where to go. What the graph showed from 2006 is that I found it necessary to give score matching more leeway in moving forward than in going backward. The original algorithm allowed forward or backward motion only if the triplet in the score trace matched my extracted playing to within one note. (The extracted playing is not exactly what I played -- chord-mode-drone have already been fitted into a framework, and they are octave invariant, so a max error of 1 note is to as tight as it sounds.) The trouble was, the score matcher tended to be too conservative, getting stuck in matches because moving forward would have required accepting mismatches bigger than one note. Any accompaniment based on score matching would get stuck and keep playing the same phrase over and over, because it was 'afraid' to move. My solution in 2006 was to give it more leeway for moving forward in the score. It could allow two notes of error in moving forward, but only one backward. Statistically, the score matcher started reaching the score about the time I reached the end of the piece, so this seemed like an acceptable kludge. In working with this again during summer, 2007, I found that a bass accompanist I wrote for a rather longer piece than previously tried (about 15 minutes) would sound really interesting at the start of the piece -- the first time my wife walked into the house during a duet with the machine, she asked whether my son was on the bass -- but it would seemingly *run out of ideas* near the end of the piece, and start noodling around in a dull phrase again. I haven't actually debugged the problem yet, but it appears that score matching is now being nudged to the end of the piece ahead of me, and which point it gets stuck in a local minimum at the end of the score. My planned solution will be to make long distance jumps back into the score more feasible when stuck at the end. I am not too worried about getting to the "correct place," because this stuff is improvised and length tends to vary from performance to performance anyway. As long as its jumps to a reasonably consonant spot in the score, it will sound fine. Score matching is also the most computationally expensive part of the running process, so I have additional work to do in there. I guess my summary of the GA issue, which is the issue related to the original post in this thread, is that most of the potential musical space is empty space, entropic and dead boring, and its needs a serious compositional nudge from a composer who probably has no real clue where his/her musical ideas really come from. The search space is big, and people who are good at this have a wealth of space-reduction strategies that I have no clue how to put into a computer. GA needs interesting genes to start with; I find it faster just to compose the chromosomes directly out of C++ library calls! There's a early example of this program in my audio files on this forum, called "Opposing Force," which uses the program to generate weapon and machine noises in response to my guitar playing. This is mostly percussive, bursty accompaniment; I don't have an example of more harmonic accompaniment posted at present. My son Jeremy is playing bass on this sample. This image has been reduced to fit the page. Click on it to enlarge. _________________ "Time is a ruler across the knuckles of eternity." What if we didn't ask "can computers write expressive music?" and instead asked wether writing algorithems can be a expressive act? This is pretty much the issue I've been struggling with, and have asked members of this forum for help on. Not so much whether, as how; and not so much how, as how without getting bogged down in the minutia of the process. There are algorithmic composers who are really algorithmic music programmers, programming in a text based language with or without built in music composition extensions. Forth/HMSL, SAIL/Sampson, Lisp/Symbolic Composer to name a few I'm personally familiar with. These do the job. You can get any level of nuance, any level of complexity, any level of subtlety you are willing to put the time in to achieve. Which is why a lot of serious composers use them and generally won't consider looking elsewhere. My problem with them is twofold. 1. they are not interactive and 2. they require a huge effort for relatively little payback. Regarding the effort, I'm not looking for short cuts because by and by and large you get what you pay for. As mentioned before, art takes time. But just putting in a ton of tedium has no virtue in of itself. Also, the effort is not just in writing the code, it's also in knowing what you've written later. Dozens upon dozens of seriously clever sections that made the piece work so well artistically end up as write-only code you have little hope of modifying or reusing later because you no longer know what the hell they are doing. Most of us who've gone this route recognize the problem. We have perhaps one or two pieces we're very proud of, but they are pretty well frozen because the code became impenetrable. A computer based algorithmic composing environment needs not only to be capable of dealing with large pieces without sacrificing nuance and subtlety, it needs to do it at multiple levels of abstraction, so the process for the composer need not be a coding grind, and cool processes either laboriously developed or serendipitously discovered can be reused as variations, transformations, and so on. If not effortlessly then at least with low enough overhead that it becomes routinely practical. This is basically the wall I mentioned in an earlier post, that I believe bacus and I are trying to deal with coming from two different directions. More on that, perhaps, in another post. Regarding interactiveness, this is a personal requirement, perhaps not a requirement needed by others to write perfectly expressive music, but I gotta have it. And, frankly, I'm suspicious of those who claim they don't. Beethoven may have done fine without it, but even he in his earlier years composed with a piano within reach. In any event, I think that for the time being, a computer based algorithmic composing program that is not fully interactive, is probably not going to be able to provide the environment needed to create expressive music. I do not claim it has to be real-time and immediate as I prefer and as my software always has been constructed, but at least there needs to be a very short write-listen-modify cycle. Very short. Given the above, I think the answer is yes, algorithmic composing can be an expressive act. I hear what you're saying about algorthmic composition software needs to have a very short write-listen-modify cycle. Something similar can be said about software development - if it takes too long to see the results it's not very encouraging. The improvisor software I built (see http://land.percussa.com/audiocubes-improvisor/) is based on the idea that you draw a series of patterns you want to compose algorithmically with, and then you can combine these pattenrs in various ways using physical cubes which represent each of the patterns. A video makes this more clear: _________________ AudioCubes - smart blocks and software for composition, sound design and live performance. Learn more at http://www.percussa.com You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum Please support our site. If you click through and buy from our affiliate partners, we earn a small commission.

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It’s never been written about in any book that I’ve found as to who gave these guys the authority or permission to be the international bankers of the world. Why would you even need international bankers? Why would any government agree to use them? Why would you need to use them? Why can’t any country create its own money? It tells you there’s already an existing super structure already in existence, maybe two, three hundred years ago to give these guys permission to somehow be the overlords of all money for all countries. Tag: G. Edward Griffin The Capitalist Conspiracy: An Inside View of International Banking by G. Edward Griffin 1972 – Classic By law, the seven members of the Federal Reserve Board are appointed by the President for a term of 14 years each, in spite of the incredible length of these appointments. Nevertheless they’re supposed to create the illusion that the people, acting through their elected leaders, have some voice in the nation’s monetary policies. In practice however, every president since the beginning of the Federal Reserve system, has appointed only those men who were congenial to the financial interests of the international banking dynasties. There have been no exceptions. It is now known that the original Federal Reserve board, was hand picked by Colonel Edward Mandel House, who early in his career, had represented British and American banking interests. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the entire nation is working to support and invisible master. And doing so without resentment or complaint because for the most part the people are totally unaware of that fact. They have been economically conquered in a quiet war of which they have been totally unaware. Mariner Eccles was the governor of the Federal Reserve system in 1941. And on June 24 of that year, Eccles was asked to give testimony before the House Committee on Banking and Currency. Now, he didn’t like to do that. And reading through that testimony is interesting because, you think politicians can sidestep answers and be like a greased eel, you should read the testimony of the governors of the Federal Reserve Board. They’re masters. An Idea Whose Time Has Come – G. Edward Griffin

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Across the street from the Thompson Ogle Building C O Wickenden designed another commercial building in 1889, a three bay building, mixing stone and red brick with a complex pattern under the cornice. The building stood for over a century before being demolished – here it is in 1981, dwarfed by the Standard Building next door. (And hasn’t that tree grown well in 30 years?) The Vancouver World’ published a supplement in 1890 which managed to illustrate it as the Innes-Thompson Block, and refer to it in print as the Innes-Townley Block. F C Innes was undoubtedly one half of the development team. Like other important Vancouver developers J V Winch and Walter Gravely, Innes was a native of Cobourg in Ontario. He arrived in Vancouver in 1884 and teamed up in 1887 with S O Richards (of Toronto) to operate one of the most dynamic real estate, insurance and brokerage firms in the city. Innes was third in line when the sale of Canadian Pacific lots was first offered. An 1890 profile said “They own and control some of the most desirable property in the city”. In 1888 he hired N S Hoffar to design a house on Hastings at Burrard, We are no further forward in positively identifying the Thompson – if there was a Thompson associated with this building – than we were with the block across the street. However, circumstantially Philip Nairn Thompson looks a likely contender here too; In 1896 Captain P Thompson occupied an office at 512 West Hastings (part of the Innes-Thompson Block) with prominent architect W T Dalton. If Innes partnered with a Townley, J W Townley, superintendent of the CPR in Vancouver is perhaps the more likely candidate. The building was not demolished until 1993, making way for the Delta Suites hotel in a massive project designed by Aitken Wriglesworth that included Conference Plaza and the retention of the Bank of Toronto next door, later to become the Wosk Centre for Dialogue.

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Born in Tel Aviv and brought up in New York City, writer and artist Maira Kalman has made her mark in literature as well as the visual arts with her stylized, narrative illustrations, which have graced the pages of the New Yorker, the 2005 edition of The Elements of Style, and her own books for adults and children. The image above, of a young Vladimir Nabokov, appears in Kalman’s visual-essay collection The Principles of Uncertainty (Penguin Press, 2007)—which was serialized on Kalman’s New York Times blog—as well as in a retrospective exhibition of Kalman’s work currently on view at the Jewish Museum in New York City. The show, titled Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World), also features works from her image-text memoir And the Pursuit of Happiness (Penguin Press, 2010), her children’s book series about a poet-dog named Max Stravinsky, and the New Yorker—including the iconic “New Yorkistan” cover from December 2001. According to former Gourmet Magazine editor Ruth Reichl, who worked with Kalman on visual narratives such as Herring and Philosophy Club, whose painting of a table covered in simple but delightful fare appears in Various Illuminations, Kalman’s work instructs us to never underestimate “the charm of the daily.” Kalman’s “daily” narrative could arise from the fashion and faces on New York City streets, minutiae marking moments of historical heft, such as the sea of flags at a presidential inauguration, or elements of childhood that shine in retrospect. The text that appears along with the gouache above reads, “Nabokov’s family fled Russia. How could the young Nabokov, sitting innocently and elegantly in a red chair, leafing through a book on butterflies, imagine such displacement? Such loss.” For information on visiting Various Illuminations, which is on display at the Jewish Museum until July 31, visit www.thejewishmuseum.org. Credit: Maira Kalman, Young Nabokov, 2006, Gouache on Paper; Private Collection, Brooklyn

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London, United Kingdom - Last weekend, the Guardian reported that the British prime minister's father, Ian Cameron, held directorships in companies registered in tax havens. These companies were created soon after then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher relaxed capital controls in 1979. They were the foundation of a fortune estimated at around £10m ($16m) in 2009. That Cameron comes from a wealthy background hardly qualifies as front-page news. But his family's links to the offshore sector have not, until now, been widely publicised. In its obituary of Ian Cameron, for example, the Telegraph mentioned his work as a stockbroker and described him as an "old school" City man. But it made no reference to his being the chairman of Close International Asset Management (Jersey), and a director of both Blairmore Holdings (Panama City) and Blairmore Asset Management (Geneva). There is no hint of any offshore connection in David Cameron's recent entries in the Register of Members' Financial Interests published by parliament. In the past year he has listed benefits such as "honorary membership for life of the Carlton Club" and "discounted personal training". He also notes "residential property in London, from which rental income is received". When he was on the board of Urbium, a company that very successfully promotes the consumption of alcohol, he disclosed the fact. Doubtless he is scrupulous in his observance of the current rules concerning outside interests. "A change in the interest rate affects savers and borrowers in a clear and obvious way. But politicians can quietly change the rules governing offshore and deliver huge benefits to a handful of very wealthy individuals." - John Christensen, Tax Justice Network But it is time to ask if the British prime minister has a beneficial interest in an entity or entities registered offshore. Indeed, it is time to ask if any of our politicians benefit from facilities provided by companies, trusts and other institutions located in tax havens. The main purpose of the Register of Members' Financial Interests is "to provide information of any pecuniary interest or other material benefit which a member receives which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes in parliament, or actions taken in the capacity of a member of parliament" [Emphasis added]. If an elected politician uses offshore facilities, for the purposes of long-term tax planning, for example, or to hold wealth in trust for his or her heirs, surely this would qualify as a "material benefit"? And isn't it reasonable to think that such an arrangement could have some bearing on his or her actions "taken in the capacity of a member of parliament"? After all, states such as Britain have a decisive role in determining the size and scope of offshore. The UK government suddenly removed capital controls in 1979. It could, just as suddenly, reinstate them. It could also change its attitude towards wealth held overseas by UK citizens and residents. Politicians can make tax avoidance more or less easy through changes in legislation. There is another sense in which offshore assets are not like other forms of property. John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network points out that the costs of creating investment vehicles and other structures in tax havens ensure that only a tiny minority can afford to take advantage of them: "A change in the interest rate affects savers and borrowers in a clear and obvious way. But politicians can quietly change the rules governing offshore and deliver huge benefits to a handful of very wealthy individuals." There are one or two indications that British politicians are aware of offshore. The most recent Register of Members' Interests notes visits to Liechtenstein by four MPs: Daniel Kawczynski, Angus Macneil, Mark Menzies and Andrew Rosindell. One of the four, Daniel Kawczynski, also visited Jersey at the invitation of the island's first minister. Two others, Brian Donohue and Graham Brady, visited Grand Cayman in the same period. I hope that MPs who visit tax havens make a point of highlighting their concerns about offshore's role in facilitating tax avoidance, tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. Doubtless the bankers of Liechtenstein tremble a little at the prospect of another grilling from Andrew Rosindell and the rest of the "British-Liechtenstein All-Party Parliamentary Group". But presumably there is more to the relationship between offshore and the British political class than occasional parliamentary visits. After all, a lot of politicians used to work in banking and associated trades. Many more look forward to doing so later in their careers. Only full disclosure can dispel the growing sense that politicians have become detached from the country they are supposed to serve, and are loyal instead to the immaterial empire of offshore.i The Register of Members' Financial Interests "is not intended to be an indicator of a member's personal wealth". Perhaps that's reasonable, although it is worth noting that the salary of £65,738 ($106,469) puts MPs in the top five per cent of UK wage earners; by most people's standards, all MPs are rich. But the use of offshore resources to minimise tax is different in kind from the mere fact of wealth. It is a benefit that depends on very particular policies. And as Christensen points out, the British government is "committed to a G20 plan to put an end to banking secrecy, yet we have no idea if our leaders have a stake in keeping effective regulation at bay. Any register of financial interests must include information about any interest at all politicians have in tax havens. The current situation manages to be both sinister and farcical. We would be happy to help parliament draft sensible guidelines". Surely Christensen is right. Arguments can be made in favour of the current arrangements. But if those defending the status quo derive material benefits from it, then these benefits cannot remain effectively secret. Without transparency there can be no accountability, as the register itself acknowledges. Only full disclosure can dispel the growing sense that politicians have become detached from the country they are supposed to serve, and are loyal instead to the immaterial empire of offshore. If the prime minister and other politicians want to keep one foot in Panama City then that is their business. But it is something the rest of us are entitled to know. Dan Hind is the author of two books, The Threat to Reason and The Return of the Public. His pamphlet Common Sense: Occupation, Assembly, and the Future of Liberty, was published as an e-book in March. He is a member of the Tax Justice Network. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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The day you start acting as a business, you become a sole proprietor. It’s that simple. And while fast growth and certain higher liability types of businesses might make you want to consider other legal structures for your company, some types of enterprises are suited for sole proprietorship in the near and long term. Here’s how to determine whether becoming a sole proprietorship is appropriate for your company, and how to go about doing it. Understand the simplicity of it Sole proprietorship is the simplest form of business entity. It means that you just hang your shingle – literally, figuratively, or both – and go about building your business with little practical effect on what you do. And as long as you’re the only owner of the business, you can continue operating as a sole proprietor. “If you decide to cut lawns and get a truck and call yourself Rob’s Lawn Service, you’ve set yourself up as a sole proprietorship without really doing anything formal,” says Rob Markworth, partner in the Shanahan Law Group, a Raleigh, N.C., business-law firm. “The truth is that you sort of set up a sole proprietorship by default.” Register your company with the state Establishing a sole proprietorship is cheap and uncomplicated, but there is one legal procedure you might have to complete: registering your company with the state, usually through the county in which you live. It only costs a few dollars, though the specific cost varies by state. You’ll need to register if you’re going to do business under an assumed name or a fictitious name; if you’re Bill Barnes, opening as Barnes Art Studio, for example. This serves at least two purposes. First, it helps people who deal with your business understand who the real owner is. Second, in the process of registering your business, you will find out if you must obtain a business license to operate under state laws or local ordinances. Realize that you and your company are “one” From several important perspectives, there is no separating you from your company under a sole proprietorship. Legally, for example, you are one thing. And when it comes to income taxes, you and your sole proprietorship are treated as a single entity. You report business income and losses on Schedule C of your own federal tax return, Form 1040, and your company’s and your personal financial streams are inseparable. That also means, for tax purposes, that your spouse is “part” of the business even if he or she has nothing to do with it. And only your spouse can be considered a co-sole proprietor. If any other family member shares ownership with you, the business must be organized as a partnership, corporation or limited liability company. Consider the importance of legal protection Many entrepreneurs decide to form a different kind of legal structure for their businesses, either right away or over the long term, in order to protect them individually from liability claims. If someone sues your sole proprietorship, you’re legally naked: both your personal and business assets are threatened. And for that reason alone, many experts advise forming a limited liability corporation (LLC) or other business entity, which would grant you some protection from potential liabilities. Of course, the amount of risk in remaining a sole proprietorship varies widely depending on what type of business you’re in, and you will want to take that into consideration before you decide to undertake even the relatively small cost and trouble of forming an LLC or other structure. “If you were selling dynamite, you wouldn’t want to remain a sole proprietorship, for example,” says Jim Adams, partner with Gardere Wynne Sewell, a Dallas-based business-law firm. “But if you were, say, a personal shopper for businesswomen and businessmen – how are you really going to have much liability there? The chances of a problem are pretty remote. And the vast majority of businesses are in between those two extremes in terms of the liability risks of being a sole proprietor.” Our Bottom Line You become the sole proprietor of your business by default, the day you set up shop. But you should actively ponder your business structure and then decide if remaining a sole proprietor is still the best vehicle for you.

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Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010 April 2, 2007 Easter brings hope for baptized humanity Easter is the biggest challenge to a secularized world. Christ's resurrection from the dead is not an act of magic with no consequences. It offers humanity – and each human person – fullness of life. It offers each person the opportunity to share in Christ's divine mission of salvation. It offers each of us a share in divinity itself by becoming God's adopted children through Baptism. But fullness of life is not automatic. It involves a choice. Sometimes the choice is "No, I do not want to follow this path. It threatens my autonomy. It crimps my style." If one follows through on that choice in a consistent fashion, one arrives at the resurrection and says, "No, this did not happen. The story is made up. Jesus' followers stole the body. Or, Jesus escaped, married Mary Magdalene, fathered children and died a natural death." And then the hunt for Jesus' earthly remains begins. Without Christ's resurrection, what hope is there for humanity? We live our 70 or 80 years, die and our remains are put into the ground. That's the end of it. If that is the end of it, why should we be bothered with morality? Why should we consider the needs of others except for some advantage they may give us? Why should we love? For the pure secularist, love is the greatest folly. It imputes to the other a depth, a dignity, a stretching-forward beyond the material that cannot be if there is no resurrection. Love is a sham. I had better just look out for number one. Oh, those Christians! Listen to what their leader Jesus said: "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." They are so self-righteous. How can anyone have the audacity to claim to be perfect? Indeed, it is an audacious claim, one that none of us fulfill. But Jesus does admit the impossibility and point us toward perfection. "For men, this is impossible; but everything is possible for God" (Matthew 19:26). God comes to us through the sacraments, first of all through Baptism. Baptism is not simply the negative sacrament of washing away of sins; it is the sacrament of salvation through which we are incorporated into Christ. We are made one with him. Really, truly one. Just as Jesus is the Son of the Father, so we become adopted children of the Father. We are not merely human, but divine too. This surely is the most audacious claim. It does not mean we are perfect now. We stumble, we fall and, if we admit our fall, we are picked up. But we have entered into a fullness of life that outstrips human imagination. It began with the Incarnation. Christ deigned to accept our humanity. His bending low was for one purpose – to raise us up. At every Mass, this is proclaimed when the priest prays during the Preparation of the Gifts, "By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity." Our role is to let God work in us. Through Baptism, we become priests, prophets and kings. As priests, we make our whole lives – work, prayer, family life, hobbies and relaxation – spiritual sacrifices that we bring to the altar. As prophets, our words and example bear witness to the Good News. Through our kingly role, we strive to make all of life and creation reflect the goodness of God. This is not reserved for a spiritual elite. It is God's power working through us through Baptism. If we let it. If we commit ourselves to that power. At Easter, there is hope for humanity. In Baptism, we are baptized into Christ's death so that we too might walk in newness of life. The old self of slavery to sin was crucified with him. In its place, we rise with Christ to a fullness of life that makes eternity real here today. It is a fullness of life that reveals the purely secular outlook for the shrivelled up, impoverished view of humanity that it is. - Glen Argan Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 -- Western Catholic Reporter Our mission: To serve our readers by bringing the Gospel to bear on current issues in the Church and in secular culture through accurate news coverage and reflective commentary.

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WASHINGTON—The kidney care community is committed to being good stewards of Medicare dollars, which is why we believe the new dialysis payment system should reflect the total cost of caring for patients with kidney failure. We also believe it is important to allow the experts, armed with the most up-to-date and accurate data, to work with the kidney community to accomplish this. Provisions contained in the just-passed fiscal cliff package require a rebasing of the new Medicare dialysis payment system. Expected to save Medicare funds, rebasing comes on the heels of numerous cuts to dialysis funding, cuts that have resulted in tenuous economics for many dialysis facilities. If implemented inappropriately, rebasing can have a devastating impact on vulnerable patients. Access to high quality care for individuals with kidney failure also will be threatened if the fragile economics of dialysis facilities are further undermined by any additional cuts, whether through sequestration or other action. Medicare covers 85 percent of the estimated 400,000 individuals receiving dialysis in America, making Medicare’s funding of dialysis crucial to the health of the dialysis system. We urge Congress and the Administration to protect the kidney care community from the looming sequestration cuts—and from any other cuts. We also urge Health and Human Services (HHS) officials, in implementing the fiscal cliff legislation, to: - Use the most recent data on utilization and costs - Examine the payment system holistically - Address other flaws in the calculation of Medicare dialysis payments By working with the kidney care community to implement these provisions and by avoiding sequestration-related cuts, the federal government can assure continued high quality care for individuals with kidney failure who depend on dialysis to live.

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posted on August 02, 2004 00:00 Ohio sets seasons for fowl hunting Sunday, August 01, 2004 The early Ohio hunting seasons for mourning doves, Canada geese, teal and woodcock have been approved by the Ohio Wildlife Council. The regular duck and goose seasons have yet to be approved but they should be the same as a year ago, reported the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday as it set guidelines for those hunting seasons. The Ohio dove season is Sept. 1-Oct. 17 and Dec. 21- Jan. 2. The special Canada goose season is Sept. 1-15 and the early teal hunting season is Sept. 1-9. The woodcock season is from Oct. 15-Nov. 28. Also approved were seasons for rails and moorhens from Sept. 1-Nov. 9 and a snipe season from Sept. 1- Nov. 28 and Dec. 6-25. The USFWS proposals on Friday for the 2004-2005 waterfowl seasons are similar to last year. The Ohio duck season will again be a 60-day campaign. Ohio is part of the Mississippi Flyway and both the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways were given 60-day seasons. The Central Flyway was given a 74-day season and the Pacific Flyway a 107-day season. "While breeding habitat conditions in some of our survey areas are not as good as we have seen in recent years, overall the habitat and populations of key waterfowl species are sufficient to justify the hunting opportunity these regulations afford," said service director Steve Williams. "All flyway councils joined the Service in supporting these regulations." The proposals restrict the pintail and canvasback harvest because of slumping populations. Seasons for pintails and canvasbacks will be 60 days in the Pacific Flyway, 39 days in the Central Flyway, and 30 days in the Atlantic and Mississippi Flyways. Bluebills, also known as scaup, remain well below their long-term average and the decreased limits will continue, including a daily bag of three bluebills for Ohio hunters. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services reports it has shipped the new federal duck stamps featuring Minnesota artist Scot Storm's pair of redhead ducks to post offices around the country. Migratory bird hunters must purchase the $15 stamp. Last year's waterfowl harvest was up and down, said the USFWS. The goose harvest was up while the duck harvest was down. The Ohio Rifle and Pistol Association is teaming up with the Tusco Rifle Club in Midvale, Ohio in the Dover-New Philadelphia area to give its members a top-notch range for shooting competitions. The ORPA had been seeking to develop its own grounds in Ohio, which would be a major investment. The Tusco Rifle Club is among the finest private shooting facilities in the state and will improve with an investment by the ORPA, which wants a 1,000-yard range for long distance shooting. Two men from Columbus were each fined $300 and ordered to pay $500 in restitution after being found guilty of illegally gill netting 108 saugeye from the tail waters of Hoover Reservoir in Columbus in March. Jiahe Weng, 39, and Hua-Xin Ye, 28, were cited after wildlife officers watched them net fish after dark. Both men are in the United States on visas and could be deported. PWT in 2005: Lake Erie is being ignored by the In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail in 2005 despite the outstanding catches here, including the recent tournament in Cleveland. The tournament trail is heading to southern walleye waters, visiting Kentucky's Lake Cumberland and making a return visit to Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas. The eastern U.S. events will be held in Michigan on Saginaw Bay and the St. Mary's River. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

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Stimulants and building up a tolerance October 13, 2012 1:51 PM Subscribe Why don't people with ADHD build up tolerance to their stimulant medications, unlike people without ADHD who take them? posted by sunnychef88 to health & fitness (16 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite I have a few friends who have struggled with ADHD since they were children, and take stimulants to manage their conditions. They've been taking the same dosages for years and allegedly haven't become desensitized to their effects. They don't get a "high" from the meds either, supposedly. I've heard about people without ADHD who take Adderall and become addicted, feeling some sort of euphoric sensation. These people take more and more of the stimulant to get the same "high". Some end up abusing stimulants. What's different about how ADHD works in individuals with the disorders vs those without the disorders that affects tolerance and that "high" feeling? I can't get a straight answer about this with all the information to sift through on Google.

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A December 2010 NYT article by Sam Grobart inspires this post. The first five items are directly from his list (edited with my comments); the second five are my additions. I like this blunt advice for those not breathing from the technosphere on a daily basis. What would you add? 1. Get a "smart-phone." Having the power of a personal computer in your pocket means that you…Continue This post was inspired by Kevin McAllister's blog entry, "Nine Jobs." It got me thinking about the various roles which the tech department fills, and how I've seen these roles staffed at various schools. I've added a few items to his list and re-arranged them. What else would you add or say about this? What's on your Top 10 list of free web-powered software for communicating, playing, and learning online? Here are a few of my favorites. The last four are new to me in 2010. 1. Google Apps for Education (in a class by itself): gmail, docs, calendar, blog, video chat, maps, earth, picassa, sketchup, groups, & more, all free for educators and accessed from one…Continue Added by Demetri Orlando on December 26, 2010 at 2:30pm — No Comments 1. Teams need a "home page" -- someplace they can rely upon to house all relevant links to tools and resources the team will be using. A ning group creates a nice home page, since it includes head-shots of participants, messaging, and discussion boards. 2. For larger teams, an email list-serve is essential. Smaller teams don't need the formality of a list-serv, but do need to ensure… Added by Demetri Orlando on October 25, 2010 at 4:00pm — No Comments Added by Demetri Orlando on September 25, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments Added by Demetri Orlando on August 25, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments Added by Demetri Orlando on June 25, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments Added by Demetri Orlando on May 20, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments Added by Demetri Orlando on March 25, 2010 at 4:00pm — No Comments

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In WaPo of 12/7/12 Fareed Zakaria calls for an eventual end to the officially designated "War on Terror." I fully agree. He notes that the US has been since 9/11/01 in a state in which the president has wartime emergency powers, the limits of which remain undefined, even though the US Congress has not declared war since 1941. The mastermind of 9/11 has been terminated, and the core of his organization has been decimated, even if a shadow of it remains. While offshoots crop up here and there, none of them seem capable of attacking the US itself, and indeed none have since 9/11. It is time to end this unpleasant state in which presidents continue to expand their ability to monitor and control the most private details of the lives of US citizens. This peculiar situation reminds me of a story that many consider to be quite silly. During WW II, one of the most brilliant people who ever lived became an American citizen, the logician Kurt Godel, who was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton at the time. Accompanying him to the final installation in Trenton were Albert Einstein and Oscar Morgenstern. They were well aware that Godel was worried that he would fail the exam and be denied citizenship and had been carefully studying such matters as who were the Chairs of County Boards of Supervisors around the country. At the swearing in, the judge made the required speech about the duties of citizens and declared that the US was a democratic nation that could not become a fascist dictatorship of the sort that the US was at that time in a legally declared war with. Godel interrupted the judge to declare that it was possible under the Constitution for the US to be a fascist dictatorship. What followed that declaration remains in dispute as his companions intervened. In any case, Godel was granted his citizenship, but we have never learned why he thought this unpleasant outcome was possible. However, the current situation of 11 years in a row of presidents possessing emergency wartime powers without any war being declared or any attack upon the US during this time suggests that whatever Godel's own ideas on this were, he had serious grounds for his concern.

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First things first, you may be curious as to why the biggest social media giant in the world would be interested in investing their money, in what at first glance appears to merely be a straightforward mobile photo sharing app. Well my little ‘Instavirgins’ I’m going to tell you exactly why! The free Instagram app, although initially available exclusively to iOS users, has now been offered to all android smartphone users. Much like Facebook and Twitter, one has to create an account with a username and password in order to post photos and edit them with the filters, and creative tools which enable all you budding amateur photographers out there to literally let their work of art ‘speak’ for themselves. Dummies guide to advantageous ‘instagramming’ in a business domain 1. Privacy schmivacy Businesses can benefit from utilising this app as it encourages the user to openly share their whereabouts, by the geolocation check-in tool. To avoid time consuming individual posts on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr and Flickr, your Instagram account can be interlinked with each of your social networking feeds, resulting in your images and visuals reaching a wider audience. So…the moral of tip number 1…being shy gets you nowhere in the world of social networking! 2. A story without words For those of you who aren’t the next Charles Dickens, Instagram is all about the visuals. Images often speak for themselves, and more often than not prospective customers nowadays are more receptive to visual imagery than text of a descriptive nature. 3. Your online scrapbook Although arguably more light-hearted and informal than its rivals, Instagram can be used to create albums of photos which can often showcase your e-portfolio with examples of your work. Take a picture of your work in progress or you sat at your desk deep in thought (aka sucking your tummy in and posing), it provides a relaxed window into your business. 4. A talking point Even if you use Instagram on a more personalised basis, for example taking a snap of a beautiful landscape, something inspiring or something which has made you laugh, share it with like-minded people. You’ll be surprised at how one image to some people, can be meaningless and irrelevant and to another a talking point and worthy of a mention or a comment. It’s likely to increase your customer interaction while enabling people to empathise with your brand and evaluate you as an individual. 5. Professionalism at risk? Taking a picture of your dinner may have been irrelevant to customers in the 20th century…..but hello! What century are we in? Whether it’s a meal, a picture of your kids birthday party or those pair of shoes you’ve wanted for literally years…share it! No one is going to think twice at the thought of you being allowed a life outside of business hours. Putting a face to a business creates a notion of trustworthiness, and sharing your pride and joy, whether it’s your kids…or those new shoes helps to personalise your approach to business and just goes to show you’re a genuine human being. 6. Sharing is caring The more you are seen sharing material, the more willing people will reciprocate. Adding to your showcase portfolio of pictures on a regular basis increases the likelihood of customer acquisition but also creates that ‘buzz’ that gets people talking. It really is as easy as that! As with any social networking site, when utilised correctly, it can be so much more than just a communication tool to gossip with your friends (let’s face it…we all do it!). The key to Instagram is to not take it too seriously, this app was created so you can have fun, and sometimes what can be most beneficial is letting that privacy guard down. Allow your clients and prospective customers to get a behind the scenes look into your business. You’re appealing to their inquisitive nature, and in turn you let your personality shine through and utilise Instagram as a subtle marketing tool. I’m not going to mislead you by telling you it can increase your sales…because quite frankly…it may not. What it will increase, perhaps more importantly, is your likability, and that for me, on a personal level, is imperative when establishing a business relationship. What do you think? Is Instagram merely a play app? or a useful business app? Latest posts by Lilach (see all) - How to make your website traffic convert into sales - May 22, 2013 - 10 ways to get more engagement on #Pinterest - May 21, 2013 - Google+ new features: hit or miss? - May 17, 2013 5 crazy ways to get Buyers to your website Subscribe and give yourself an unfair advantage!

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Google already has better app search features than Apple. News Section Index Wanna play Angry Bonds? Digia plans to continue development on the open source application development toolset. New framework speeds the cloud-based development and deployment of Node.js applications. A Developer.com eBook Discover how to start developing for the Android platform with this extensive guide, which provides a reference to the Android platform as well as a look at developing your first Android application. You'll explore the top 10 features for developers as well as learn design and development tips that go beyond the phone and target tablet development as well.

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Supporters of same-sex marriage demonstrate outside a San Francisco courthouse… (Robert Gauthier, Los Angeles…) In San Francisco, George Roehm got the chills and reached for his smartphone to text an out-of-state friend. In Long Beach, Stan Mallard thought about how far this struggling country has come — and the great distance still ahead to achieve anything like progress. And dance instructor Chaz Knight, an urban dweller if ever there was one, found himself wondering Monday how President Obama's words would sound to a teenage kid in the rural South. How freeing it would be, he figured, to hear the president declare that this country's work would not be done "until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law." "I thought of a small family in Arkansas and their 13-year-old son who hasn't come out yet, and how great he's got to feel," Knight, a West Hollywood resident by way of New York, said as he strolled along Santa Monica Boulevard, headphones on, iced coffee in hand. The president took the stage with the Supreme Court justices — who soon will consider the constitutionality of gay marriage — arrayed behind him. When he told the world that "if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well," Obama brought the issue of gay marriage "into everyone's home, whether they like it or not," Knight said. Monday wasn't the kind of day that sent thousands of gay Californians into the streets waving rainbow flags and weeping tears of joy. Demonstrations like that usually are reserved for milestones — court decisions, election results, legislative breakthroughs. Actions, not words. But words still matter. And on the occasion of Obama's second inauguration, his call for equality resonated from San Francisco's Castro District to West Hollywood. "I never expected in my lifetime to hear our president talk like that," an emotional Roehm said as the inaugural parade tromped silently along on a muted television screen in Twin Peaks Tavern, known as the Castro's answer to "Cheers." It is believed to be the first gay bar in the country that uncovered its windows, opened its doors and let the world look inside. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently voted to designate the bright and cozy saloon an official city landmark. That heartened Roehm, who has co-owned the Twin Peaks for nearly a decade. But it was a different kind of history that overwhelmed him Monday. As Obama likened the gay rights movement to campaigns for civil rights and women's suffrage, Roehm texted a friend in Seattle before the president was even done talking. Obama, Roehm thumbed, "makes me so proud to be an American!!" A few blocks down Castro Street, Alan Pardini and Ken Noyes walked hand in hand, taking an afternoon break from home repair. The men have been together for nearly 35 years. Pardini, a San Francisco native, marched with gay rights activist Harvey Milk in the 1970s before Milk was assassinated. "We're standing here near Harvey's camera store on Martin Luther King Day, and a historic president is including us in the definition of the civic family," Pardini said. "I'm just glad that he did." Obama's words brought out more than immense feelings of personal pride. In dozens of interviews, many gay Californians commented on the president's pragmatism. Obama announced his support for gay marriage last year, after his outspoken vice president, Joe Biden, did so. And he waited until he had no more elections ahead, many noted, to make Monday's bold comments about gay rights. George Balsana, who was strolling the Castro with an out-of-town guest, said he was touched when he heard the president talk about "Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall" in the same breath. It took "bravery," the tech worker said. "But … 20 years ago, it would have surprised me more," Balsana added. "It's his second term. He can do what he wants." Mallard, a Republican who said he supported Obama, was touched by the symbolism of the president's speech but wanted to see more. Mallard is a retired biochemist turned chef. His partner, Scott McDonald, is a retired Army officer. On Monday they were hanging out in Long Beach's Sweetwater Saloon. The two men have been together for 23 years, but Mallard said he would not have access to McDonald's pension should something happen to his partner. And they can't get married in California. "In the next four years, do I think I can walk down the street holding the hand of my gay husband?" Mallard asked. "I don't know." La Ganga reported from San Francisco and Flores and Rojas from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Anh Do in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. (1 John 5:19) Despite the existence of countless political, cultural, and social entities in the world, there are in reality only two realms. It is the comforting privilege of believers, in addition to having eternal life, answered prayer, and victory over sin, to know they belong to God. Though they exist in this world, they are not part of it (John 15:19; 17:14); they are children of God (John 1:12–13), “aliens and strangers” (1 Peter 2:11; cf. 1:1, 17; 1 Chron. 29:15; Ps. 119:19; Heb. 11:13), whose true citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). On the other hand, the whole world—its politics, economics, education, entertainment, and, above all, its religion—lies in the power of the evil one. The evil world system is hostile to God and believers (John 15:18–19), as John noted earlier in this epistle. It takes its cue from its ruler, Satan (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; cf. Eph. 2:2; 6:12), the archenemy of God and His people. Because the world is completely under Satan’s influence, believers must avoid being contaminated by it (2:15–17; cf. James 1:27). There is no middle ground, no third option. Everyone is part of God’s kingdom, or of Satan’s. In the words of Jesus, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters” (Luke 11:23). Or as James scathingly declares, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

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Posted by Michael P. | Posted in Books | Posted on 06-08-2012 Tags: Arthur Conan Doyle, Guy Adams, Holmes, London, Moreau, Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, Watson First of all, I will start by saying this is a pretty loose review. That’s because I hate spoiling a book. And spoiling anything in a Sherlock Holmes novel seems twice as bad. Secondly: It might not be for you. Playing with an iconic character is like playing with fire. Some handle it very carefully. With gloves they use the character to tell a story both befitting in content and in style that everyone associates with the character. Some chose to use the fire to re-mold the character or the world they are envisioned to be a part of. With that being said, I admit that I am normally not a fan of Sherlock Holmes novels. I usually want more from the characters than what the novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did with them. To me they always felt as if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was just using them as an intellectual exercise of designing a mystery as intricate as possible. Only to then use Holmes as the only character capable enough to unravel it. All to show off both the mystery and Holmes’ amazing skills of deduction. Great characters, but in many ways the material of that era comes across as a bit dry. Understandably those that prefer their Sherlock Holmes written in that Victorian style will probably not like this book. Ok, on to what I thought of the book: It was a grand adventure. Adams is clear about his goals in his “Medical Notes” section at the end of the book. And this section was both a refreshing and informative way for the author to explain that this book was not a rewriting of Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Watson. But rather, Adams aims for The Army of Dr. Moreau to entertain by telling a fast paced adventure with mad scientists, monsters, and many special guests. Having not read his previous novel, Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God. I had no idea what type of book I was about to read. As already stated, Holmes can be an intimidating name to hear in a title. But, Adams deftly handles Holmes as more neurotic than simply eccentric. And Watson as one of the few people who can stand to be around him. Watson is also a great character here and his military exploits and bravery holds him in high regard with many characters that couldn’t care less that Holmes is even standing next to him. Adams using the character of Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s brother, as the leader of a relatively new covert agency for the government makes a lot of sense as well. This agency involvement lends credibility to Holmes and Watson’s involvement well beyond the cases typically seen in a Sherlock Holmes novel. These cases cross into areas where Holmes’ intellect is probably not enough. That in itself is great. Holmes is in need of others to complete his mission. In that respect, Adams does something very interesting. He borrows some other notable literary characters who would fit into the timeline. As this story revolves around the monsters created with the misguided science of Dr. Moreau, Adams brings in some of fictions great scientists to assist Holmes and Watson. Abner Perry from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ At the Earth’s Core, Professor Challenger from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Professor Cavor from H. G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, and Professor Lindenbrook from A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Vern. These characters add a vitality and color often missing from a Holmes novel as well as the sense of scope. These characters mixed with that of a secret agency imply adventure not only of London but with worldly implications that take Holmes and Watson quite a bit out of their element. In conclusion: By doing all of these things, Adams has opened the door for larger and larger adventures which may entwine other iconic fictional characters. The specific story here is as fast paced and energetic as the recent films starring Robert Downy Jr. Holmes is a genius that would lose himself in his own mind if it wasn’t for being grounded by Watson’s humanity and friendship. And this tale is not a Calabash pipe tapping war of wits with an always present archenemy. It is an adventure with scientific heroes and monsters whose outcome would change much more than the city of London. Adams aims for you to have fun reading Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Dr. Moreau. It is my opinion that without a doubt you will. Unless, of course, you are not a fan of where he has taken this character. If you don’t enjoy it, please remember how much easier it would have been for Adams to have Holmes and Watson to solve a murder or fight Professor Moriarty…again. Now I’ll have to pick up Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God. You can also check out Guy Adams’ site here: http://www.guyadamsauthor.com/

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Cookies and privacy Browse frequently asked questions and answers on key HR issues. Navigate by topic or key word search. View latest additions or suggest a question to the XpertHR editorial team. What happens if a contract is out of date, or does not reflect the intention of the employer? If a term in a contract is discretionary or flexible, does this mean that the employer can change it? What mechanisms are there to allow the employer to change the terms of a contract? Is there any way to change the terms of an employee's contract if there is no provision for the change in the contract? Can an employer change an employee's hours where there is no contractual clause authorising it to do so? How can an employer improve the chances of an employee agreeing to a change in terms and conditions? Do all employees have to agree to a change to their contractual terms before the employer can implement the change? Can an employee refuse to accept a variation to his or her terms and conditions of employment but continue to work under the new terms? Is it possible to change the terms of a contract by dismissing an employee then re-engaging him or her under different terms? Why should employers take into account collective consultation when varying employees’ contractual terms and conditions? For how long is an employer obliged to consult with employees to obtain agreement to changes to their contractual terms? If a contract of employment contains a flexibility clause, does the employer have to consult with the employee before it implements a variation to his or her terms and conditions? How should an employer weigh up its options where only a small number of employees have agreed to a proposed contractual variation? When will a term agreed through a collective process be binding on individual employees? Can employers use an intranet to advise employees of changes to policies and procedures? Can an employer use an intranet to advise employees of its wish to make a change to their contractual terms? Where an employer has used its intranet to advise employees of its wish to make a change to their contractual terms, can the employer treat the fact that its employees have not objected as their acceptance of the change? What procedures must an employer follow if it needs to cut employees’ pay? Can an employer change the date on which it pays its employees? What can an employer do to help an employee adapt to a change in his or her contractual terms? XpertHR is designed to work consistently across a range of browsers, including Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. If you find bugs in our site, please Contact Us. We appreciate feedback.

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Maintaining the right weight is a survival necessity that no one can afford to ignore. Some people may manage to lose weight by a diet and exercise regimen over a few weeks or months. But they often hit a roadblock when it comes to maintaining that weight. continue reading » Category Healthy Diet Whether it’s famous athletes or camera-hoarding socialites, energy drinks are endorsed every day by celebrities all over the world. So what motivated you to buy your first energy drink? Was it the bright, colourful packaging? Your favourite footballer on the front of the bottle? Maybe it was the actual taste and the way it made you perform? Whatever your reasons, energy drinks have a variety of misconceptions, and the majority of health risks are ignored despite the research to the contrary. continue reading » There are a lot of drinks on the market that claim to replenish your body after exercising or build up your immune system or give you all the vitamins of a full serving of veggies. But if you read the labels of some of those supposedly healthy drinks, you may be disturbed by the high amounts of sugar, artificial flavoring and artificial colorings they contain. So what are the best drinks to keep your body in top health? Here’s a quenching rundown: continue reading » Many persons wanting to lose weight go one crash diets to lose the pounds only to gain it back and become even fatter than they were before they went on a diet. The reason behind this many times lie in the fact that these crash diets are impractical and way too restrictive. Losing weight is a gradual and long term process if you want real and permanent results. There are no quick fixes. continue reading » Vitamin C is an essential nutrient that almost animals make – except humans. Although we require vitamin C to live, we are one of the few species in the animal kingdom that do not produce it on our own. That means that we must get all of our vitamin C from outside sources. continue reading » There are different reactions that you can get upon hearing that word DIET. Some would feel good about themselves, because they are doing a great job when it comes to dieting. Some would hate the word because of different reasons. continue reading » This question has probably been around ever since the dawn of man. Most fitness-seekers are agreed that a morning workout is great because the mind and body are fresh and unencumbered by the fatigue of a long day. However, a consensus on whether or not to eat before getting physical is yet to be reached. Some argue that eating before hitting the gym or jogging circuit gives the body the energy it needs to tackle the task ahead; enabling it to accomplish more. Those on the other side of this argument remind them that the aim of exercise is to burn fat and when the body is not given that fuel before the workout, it burns the reserves of fat it has stored to produce energy.Perhaps the best way to discover what is best for you as an individual is by asking yourself a couple of questions: continue reading » In health there is no such thing as a ‘silver bullet’. You might think that it’s possible to simply take the right supplement and then see your health improve, but this is in fact completely the wrong way to think about using them and can lead you to end up wasting your money or worse actually damaging your health. continue reading » There are certain types of nutrients that that everybody needs as part of a healthy diet. These are universal. However, there are also certain things that different people need to eat, and these can change based on your medical situation. To better understand your specific dietary requirements, take a look at the following list, and ask yourself, “what should I eat if…” I Have High Cholesterol Stay away from any fat as often as you can. Eating steaks every day is probably probably not a good idea, neither are other fatty foods such as ice cream, doughnuts, cream and whole milk. Try to stick to low-fat options such as skimmed milk, egg whites and low-fat yoghurt. continue reading » How often on the way home from work do we feel the urge to buy fast food? Whether it is quickly popping into Burger King, or picking up a sandwich or ready meal at the local supermarket, it is something that is very easy to do when we have had a tiring day and the last thing we want to do is go home and cook. How you long for the energy you have in the mornings when you are up ultra early and ready to burst out of the door with a lot of time to spare! There is a way to make the most of this energy and also motivate you in the afternoon. Knowing you are heading home to a tasty, wholesome meal gets rid of the afternoon crash pretty quickly and puts an extra spring into your step. Whether it is tasty Italian recipes that grab your attention or something more Caribbean and spicy, say goodbye to the unhealthy splurges that tiredness often bring. continue reading »

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This post originally appeared on DISCOVER’s Discoblog. If you can’t laugh about the federal government’s repeated attempts to muzzle scientists whose findings don’t jibe with the administration’s political agenda…well, what can you laugh about? The Union of Concerned Scientists decided to fight hubris with humor by launching the Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest this spring. The voting is open, and this is the last week to pick your favorite—all voting ends on Friday. The final 12 entries are pretty good—we have our favorites here at DISCOVER, but we don’t want to sway the polling. “Science Idol,” as the contest has been nicknamed, may not attract the national attention of its television namesake. But perhaps dealing with government interference with humor will open a few more eyes—or at least we’ll get a good laugh out of it. Links to this Post - Online Cash Advance | September 15, 2008

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The California Vehicle Code says: (d) A bicycle operated during darkness upon a highway, a sidewalk where bicycle operation is not prohibited by the local jurisdiction, or a bikeway, as defined in Section 890.4 of the Streets and Highways Code, shall be equipped with all of the following: (1) A lamp emitting a white light that, while the bicycle is in motion, illuminates the highway, sidewalk, or bikeway in front of the bicyclist and is visible from a distance of 300 feet in front and from the sides of the bicycle. I have a pretty bright Cygolite headlight, but it emits practically no light from the sides, if you look at a 90 degree angle you can't see any light at all from the headlight. Is this strictly legal under the law? I do supplement with a blinky light that provides some side illumination (though I'm not sure you could see it from the sides at 300 feet from the bike), but I'm wondering if my headlight meets the letter of the law? If I'm ever in an accident, I don't want the other driver to be able to say "How could I have seen him, he didn't even have the headlight required by law!" I've looked at a few other states but they didn't have any requirement for side visibility of the headlight.

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09.25.2012 / Blog Posts Health and Wellness For the past few weeks, I have talked about why it’s so hard to lose weight after 40, why we should lift heavier weights and some exercise ideas to get you started. Now, let’s look at a healthy lifestyle from another perspective. Exercise is only part of maintaining your fitness. There are other important aspects that we need to consider in order to incorporate it into our crazy busy life. Consider employing the following three techniques to help you get on the right path to health. Get your zzzz’s. You may be thinking to yourself, how is sleeping going to improve my health and fitness? The reality is sleep plays a critical role in not only ensuring optimal health, but it is also a key factor when it comes to weight loss. Research has shown that lack of sleep may be a potential contributor to weight gain and the growing obesity epidemic, as it causes disruptions to a number of hormonal and metabolic processes. In fact, one study found that partial sleep deprivation can lead to increased appetite, as the hormones that regulate hunger are altered by decreased sleep. Insufficient or irregular sleep has also been shown to increase the risk for developing diseases such as breast cancer, heart disease, colon cancer and diabetes according to several reports from the Harvard-run Nurses’ Health Study. So how much do you need? Most researchers agree that 7-8 hours of sleep per night is optimal for most individuals. Regular exercise, establishing a comfortable sleeping environment (free of noise and light) and adhering to a regular sleep schedule are just a few strategies for helping you to get those 7-8 hours of much needed rest. Be flexible. Now, you probably heard this tip and immediately thought I would talk about stretching, right? While flexibility training certainly is a key component of a well-rounded exercise program, the “flexibility” I want to touch on is in regards to your overall approach to leading a more healthy lifestyle. For many of us, we get caught up in what I refer to as “the all or nothing” mentality. That is, we think that leading a healthy lifestyle means that we have to hit the gym for an hour a day, and if we are unable to do so, then we often just say forget exercising today and we do nothing at all, right? Truth is, we all lead busy lives and sometimes it can seem next to impossible to carve out 30-60 minutes in our day for exercise. The reality is we do not have to exercise in one continuous bout in order to reap the many physiological and psychological benefits that we know regular physical activity provides. In fact, research continues to emerge supporting the notion that small bouts of exercise accumulated throughout the day may provide many of the same benefits as one continuous bout of activity, including improvements in aerobic fitness and even weight loss. So what can you do? Try restructuring your approach by breaking up your physical activity into three 10-minute bouts of exercise, which you can accumulate throughout the day. You could, for example, try 10-minutes of bodyweight exercises (push-ups, lunges, squats, etc.) in the morning, take a 10-minute brisk walk during your lunch break at work and unwind with 10-minutes of yoga-inspired stretching in the evening. Remember, every little bit of physical activity goes a long way. Think happy thoughts. And yes, I’m serious about this one. In exploring the effects of positive thinking, researchers have found that individuals who think positively tend to have lower rates of depression, a better ability to cope with and manage stress, an increased life span, and are more likely to adopt and adhere to an active, healthy lifestyle long-term. The process of consciously changing the way we think is called cognitive restructuring, and requires us to develop an awareness of our automatic thoughts, or the “self-talk” that takes place in our minds all day long. Once you become aware of the thoughts that you have, especially those which are counterproductive, you can then begin to practice replacing those negative thoughts with more positive, realistic ones. Yes, it does take some practice but it most certainly is possible. If you think to yourself “I hate exercise” what do you think will probably happen? More than likely you won’t exercise, and if you do you own't enjoy it and are less likely to stick with it long-term. Replace it instead with “I wouldn’t mind walking outside during my lunch break. It would give me a chance to enjoy some fresh air during the day and also be more physically active.” That's just one of many possibilities. The key to changing the way you feel about exercise is to change the way you think about exercise, which starts by finding activities that you enjoy! Stay Fit and Healthy, Refer a friend now WOW is better with friends. So get yours to join. And share every Burgundy and Gold moment. - May 25, 2013 - May 29, 2013 - June 11, 2013 - June 26, 2013 - July 12, 2013 - July 17, 2013

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Invictus: A Film Review Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman as President Nelson Mandela, Invictus makes a major contribution towards the building up of the mythology of Nelson Mandela as a modern day idol. This stirring film on South Africas 1995 Rugby World Cup victory includes serious distortions of history. Time and again the film focuses on Mandela’s imprisonment on Robben Island, often with dream-like imaginative flashbacks of Nelson Mandela breaking rocks on Robben Island. The film even includes a pilgrimage to Mandela’s cell in the prison on Robben Island, but there is never any mention of why he was imprisoned. Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. He had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela’s MK terrorists. Invictus never mentions Nelson Mandela’s open support for brutal communist regimes such as Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe, Red China, Gadhaffis Libya, Saddam Hussein, Yasar Arafat and other dictators. During the very time covered by Invictus Mandela received Fidel Castro, the longest reigning dictator in the world, and gave him the highest award that South Africa could give and then had both Houses of Parliament gather to hear an address from the Cuban tyrant. The Ugly Reality During the very time covered by the movie many hundreds of white farmers, and their wives and children, were being brutally murdered, actually tortured to death, often by UmKhonto we Sizwe guerillas, many of whom were now part of the South African National Defence Force. Although Invictus gives all glory for the Springbok Rugby World Cup win to Nelson Mandela, it does not attach any blame to him for the rising crime and plummeting economy. During one short visual in the film Mandela looks at a newspaper headline which speaks of the rising crime and plummeting rand. This reality deserved a little bit more attention. During 46 years of National Party apartheid rule over 18,000 people had been killed by rioters, terrorists, by the police and the army, on all sides, including terrorists, civilian victims, military casualties and police. A total of 18,000 dead during 46 years of conflict. However, in peacetime, under Nelson Mandela, an average of 20,000 to 25,000 people were murdered every year. Fueling the Crime Wave Yet to celebrate his birthdays, Mandela would regularly open the prison doors and set many criminals, including armed robbers, murderers and rapists, free. Some of whom were murdering and raping within 24 hours of being released. In the 1970s, even while facing terrorism, riots and engaged in a border war with the Cubans in Angola, the South African Rand was stronger than the US Dollar. However, after years of US sanctions, the South African Rand had fallen to R2 to the Dollar. Under Nelson Mandela even with no war, no sanctions, no riots, no conscription, and with massive international aid and investment, the Rand plummeted to R8 to the Dollar, and even R10 to the Dollar, then R12 and even to R14 to the Dollar for a time. But according to Invictus, no blame can be attached to Nelson Mandela for the economic deterioration and the sky-rocketing crime rate under his presidency. However, he should be given all the credit for what the Springbok rugby team achieved on the field! Legalising Abortion and Pornography Viewers of Invictus also need to be aware that the kind and thoughtful gentleman portrayed in Invictus was the prime mover of the legalisation of abortion, pornography, gambling and homosexuality in South Africa and of the introduction of sex education in public schools. Since Nelson Mandela forced through the legalisation of abortion, not even allowing ANC MPs a conscience vote, and signed it into Law, 1 February 1997, over 900,000 South African babies have been killed through abortion, officially, legally and with tax-payers money. «- Postmillennialism: Of the increase of His government there shall be no end - Forerunner Videos -» A World to Win Your comments are welcome! Who is the dreaded beast of Revelation? Now at last, a plausible candidate for this personification of evil incarnate has been identified (or re-identified). Ken Gentry’s insightful analysis of scripture and history is likely to revolutionize your understanding of the book of Revelation — and even more importantly — amplify and energize your entire Christian worldview! Historical footage and other graphics are used to illustrate the lecture Dr. Gentry presented at the 1999 Ligonier Conference in Orlando, Florida. It is followed by a one-hour question and answer session addressing the key concerns and objections typically raised in response to his position. This presentation also features an introduction that touches on not only the confusion and controversy surrounding this issue — but just why it may well be one of the most significant issues facing the Church today. Ideal for group meetings, personal Bible study — for anyone who wants to understand the historical context of John’s famous letter “… to the seven churches which are in Asia.” (Revelation 1:4) Running Time: 145 minutes $17.95 — ORDER NOW!(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.) Special Two-Disc Set! After 40 years of intense study and world-wide ministry, Dr. Francis Schaeffer completed his crowning work of scholarship – to present profound truths in simple film language. Dr. Schaeffer’s brilliant analysis of the past and predictions for current trends have proven so uncannily accurate that this amazing series still feels contemporary almost three decades after its initial release. Ultimately, Schaeffer concludes that man’s only hope is a return to God’s Biblical absolute, the truth revealed in Christ through the Scriptures. Available for the first time on DVD, this documentary spectacular also includes intimate in-depth conversations with Francis and Edith Schaeffer. With the on-disc study guide, this presentation forms a unique course of comprehensive study. While this series forms an innovative analysis of the past, this outstanding work is more than history. Each episode focuses on a significant era, yet speaks clearly to 21st-century man with answers for modern problems. $49.95 — ORDER NOW!(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.) Exposing The Occult Roots of Abortion This presentation looks at the spiritual roots of abortion and exposes the myths surrounding child killing. Little known historical facts about abortion and how they relate to modern feminism are presented logically and accurately. Has been effective in converting many to a pro-life position. Massacre of Innocence goes where no pro-life presentation has gone before in “tearing the lid off abortion” to reveal the spiritual realities we must battle if we will bring an end to this crime. The presentation is absorbing, fast-paced, informative and incredibly devastating to any attempt to justify abortion. “… an extraordinary statement … a powerfully articulate presentation about what abortion really means, and why a great and moral nation like the United States must not allow the slaughter to continue.” — Congressman Robert K. Dornan Running time: 85 minutes $19.95 — ORDER NOW!(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.) Download the free Study Guide! Is there a connection between pagan religion and the abortion industry? This powerful presentation traces the biblical roots of child sacrifice and then delves into the social, political and cultural fall-out that this sin against God and crime against humanity has produced in our beleaguered society. Conceived as a sequel and update to the 1988 classic, The Massacre of Innocence, the new title, The Abortion Matrix, is entirely fitting. It not only references abortion’s specific target – the sacred matrix where human beings are formed in the womb in the very image of God, but it also implies the existence of a conspiracy, a matrix of seemingly disparate forces that are driving this holocaust. The occult activity surrounding the abortion industry is exposed with numerous examples. But are these just aberrations, bizarre yet anomalous examples of abortionists who just happen to have ties to modern day witchcraft? Or is this representative of something deeper, more sinister and even endemic to the entire abortion movement? As the allusion to the film of over a decade ago suggests, the viewer may learn that things are not always as they appear to be. The Abortion Matrix reveals the reality of child-killing and strikes the proper moral chord to move hearts to fulfill the biblical responsibility to rescue those unjustly sentenced to death and to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 24:11,12; 31:8,9). Speakers include: George Grant, Peter Hammond, RC Sproul Jr., Paul Jehle, Lou Engle, Rusty Thomas, Flip Benham, Janet Porter and many more. Ten parts, over three hours of instruction! Running Time: 195 minutes $19.95 — ORDER NOW!(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.) Foundations in Biblical Eschatology By Jay Rogers, Larry Waugh, Rodney Stortz, Joseph Meiring. High quality paperback, 167 pages. All Christians believe that their great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will one day return. Although we cannot know the exact time of His return, what exactly did Jesus mean when he spoke of the signs of His coming (Mat. 24)? How are we to interpret the prophecies in Isaiah regarding the time when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:19)? Should we expect a time of great tribulation and apostasy or revival and reformation before the Lord returns? Is the devil bound now, and are the saints reigning with Christ? Did you know that there are four hermeneutical approaches to the book of Daniel and Revelation? These and many more questions are dealt with by four authors as they present the four views on the millennium. Each view is then critiqued by the other three authors. $12.95 — ORDER NOW!(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.)

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What will be covered? The lessons fall into one of three sections: (1) How to Improve Productivity, with lessons including What is PKM, Attention and Focus, Calendars, Productivity Apps, and Notebook software; (2) How to Create an Efficient Academic Workflow, with lessons including the Concept of Academic Workflow, Citation Software, Alerting Services, and Mindmaps; and (3) How to Develop a Learning Network, which includes lessons What is a Learning Network, Which Social Network Tool is for You, Effective Online Professional Image; and Tools Facilitating Further Training to name only a few of the topics planned. What do I have to do? The exercises will vary with the topic of the post. For posts that emphasize definitions of a topic, exercises might include writing a journal explaining your own ideas or current productivity regime. We find that the process of writing something down has a great effect in clarifying one’s thoughts. Mind maps have a similar ability to clarify and will be another option for exercises. Some exercises will encourage the reader to explore a particular productivity tool, or to write a list of goals. While we will not collect and grade the exercises, we do want the experience to be an interactive one, and we encourage all participants to share your thoughts/exercises as comments on the blog posts. We expect to learn as much as you do. Where do I sign up? Interested individuals may sign up to get our blog by email or RSS feed at any time. As a bonus, there will be other posts on personal knowledge management topics (as well as the lessons) which we hope will enlighten and/or entertain. The first lesson will be up on the blog Monday, January 7th, 2013, and new lessons will be posted biweekly thereafter. We hope the experience will be challenging, engaging, useful, interactive, and fun. All participation is welcome.

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China’s US$20 billion solar industry is avoiding loan defaults and mergers by taking aid from local governments, preserving jobs at money-losing companies such as LDK Solar Co (江西賽維), the world’s second-biggest maker of solar cells. LDK agreed last month to sell a 19.9 percent stake to a renewable-energy investor part-owned by the city of Xinyu, home to its headquarters. Suntech Power Holdings Co (尚德電力), the world’s largest solar-panel maker, got a US$32 million loan in September organized partly by Wuxi, the city where it is based. The aid helps as the companies prepare to report combined losses of US$987 million for this year, analyst forecasts compiled by Bloomberg show. The moves counter efforts by the central government to engineer mergers that create a handful of larger solar companies, said Jeremy Haft, founder of BChinaB Inc, a New York-based consulting company that specializes in Chinese business practices. The country has previously pushed consolidation to strengthen industries such as steel and coal. Provincial governments mostly want solar manufacturers “to keep the lights on and not lay people off,” Haft said. “There are a lot of people unemployed” in China and local government officials do not want to see solar factories close, he said. Local aid efforts have not sparked a rally in LDK and Suntech. They have lost 38 percent and 17 percent respectively in the last three months, outpacing the 9.6 percent loss for the 17-member Bloomberg Global Large Solar Energy index over the same period. LDK gained 1.1 percent to US$0.90 at the close in New York on Friday. Suntech closed at US$0.906. At the same time, GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd (保利協鑫能源), the world’s biggest solar wafer maker, has increased 15 percent in the last three months. The company has been mentioned in Chinese news reports as a possible merger partner. The China Securities Journal said national government-run China Development Bank Corp (國家開發銀行) is encouraging consolidation between panel makers, pledging financial support for 12 companies. The move may lead other struggling solar manufacturers to close their doors or agree to be bought, the journal said in a Sept. 25 report. China Development Bank is motivated to keep struggling solar firms afloat, especially those that have borrowed from it, Washington-based Center for American Progress policy analyst Melanie Hart said. The lender is putting pressure on local governments to support companies so they will repay loans, she said. The bank is telling local officials “we won’t lend anymore to anyone in your region until they pay us back,” she said. Those local efforts contrast with China’s national goals, which are commonly described as “grasping the big, letting go of the small,” Hart said. Help from local governments may be the biggest obstacle to making China’s solar industry competitive, Boston-based GTM Research solar analyst Shyam Mehta said. “Until they stop supporting the uncompetitive manufacturers, this won’t go away,” Mehta said. “If LDK was allowed to fail, the market reaction would actually be positive.” Suntech is evaluating various financing options and cutting costs, and in September temporarily reduced production in Wuxi, Suntech spokesman Rory Macpherson said in e-mail. He did not say whether the company expects additional support from the community. Telephone calls to LDK spokesman Li Longji went unanswered. The country’s state-owned electricity distributor, China State Grid Corp (國家電網), announced incentives on Oct. 26 to encourage smaller solar projects, with capacity of less than 6 megawatts, such as rooftop systems. It will buy the electricity and exempt owners from certain fees. Other Chinese communities are supporting local solar manufacturers. A company controlled by Dongying, a city in Shandong Province, offered US$10 million for a 50.38 percent stake in CNPV Solar Power SA’s sole asset, CNPV Dongying, on Nov. 1.

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> The idea is that I can print relevant sections out > and have them for reference as I'm learning Linux > right now. I've looked at the LDP but anything > there seems to be online web pages. AFAIK, the LDP site also has the various docs in downloadable formats for off-line reading - most of them are available as tarred-and-gzipped html along with dvi and postscript which might be more printer The various "Guides" (System Admin guide, Network Admin guide etc.) are well written and give a good overall picture, in contrast to the HOWTOS that are of their nature very specific. For documents which aren't available as one down- loadable file, the "wget" utility is very useful for retrieving a set of linked html pages as a Maintained by the ILUG website team. The aim of Linux.ie is to support and help commercial and private users of Linux in Ireland. You can display ILUG news in your own webpages, read backend information to find out how. Networking services kindly provided by HEAnet, server kindly donated by Dell. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds, used with permission. No penguins were harmed in the production or maintenance of this highly praised website. Looking for the Indian Linux Users' Group? Try here. If you've read all this and aren't a lawyer: you should be!

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This week is Banned Books Week, and we’re celebrating by showcasing various books which have been censored for a variety of reasons. Celebrate this week by picking up one of these books and reading. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a young adult novel that could be set in any decade starting with the eighties, given the music and clothing references. Take away those and it could be set easily two decades earlier. The point being that this is a typical suburban, small town tale of a kid just trying to make it through high school. There are some differences with this kid. He is sensitive to the point of being overly emotional, highly intelligent and thoughtful, and not your usual sophomore, but one who would be a really good friend despite the ridiculous clichés and rumors of high school. As to the reason why it is banned in some places? All I can think of is that Stephen Chobsky did an extraordinary job of describing high school life. It is not painted and polished like many television shows aimed at this population. The main character Charlie has a gay friend (didn’t we all, even if we didn’t quite realize what that meant), a sister who is popular, a crush who is a senior, a girlfriend he just kinda goes along with for a while, and a brother in college. He tries drugs, but isn’t really a fan. One of his teachers thinks he is brilliant and gives him extra stuff to read. He lets his gay friend do what he needs to do and even supports him. There is a teenage pregnancy that he helps with. His crush is also his friend who kisses him once or twice, and of course, the local Bob’s Big Boy is a sight of many small dramas. It could have just as easily been the Dairy Queen or the Taste Freeze. Finally, at the end, things come to a head as they can only do in a small town, and we discover that Charlie was molested as a child. Charlie calls himself a wallflower because he quietly observes his surroundings and engages when it is safe. This was most of us in high school, and the story isn’t that far off of most of us. But why is it banned? I don’t get it really, unless it is the references to homosexuality or molestation. And those are common in high school, not to mention life. Chobsky never gets graphic with anything. He just reports things in a letter to an anonymous “friend.” It is all very real, and we all dealt with at least one or two of these things, usually many of them. High school and college are times when these things are real and alive developmentally. It is normal on a human development level, and the explorations of both drugs and sex are common during this age period. So I am left scratching my head on this one. This age group is old enough, both cognitively and developmentally, to deal with these issues, and they probably already are in their own lives, so why not talk about it? The politics of literature never cease to amaze me. photo credit: Tayrawr Fortune Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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det versteh ick nick - Wieso kein Fussgaengertunnel? We *only* have pedestrian crossing buttons here. If you don't press it, you don't get the green walk symbol.In my opinion the green walk symbol should be on by default as long as the green traffic light is lit. Why should pedestrians have to 'request' to cross the road?Of course, if it is deserted, the button should trigger an early cycle of the lights, but that's all.The same goes for all our bicycle crossing lights. They default to 'don't cross' unless you press the button. @#$% that... Where I live (Poland), the crossing buttons are present at almost every intersection or pedestrian/bicycle crossing. If you don't press it - you don't get the green light. If you're too late, you have to wait full cycle, although the cars going the same direction have green light.And now - the funniest part. According to Polish law, a bicycle - like a car - is a vehicle, which means that all kinds of manual green light triggers are not allowed on bicycle crossings. A couple months ago someone in my city outlined that these buttons are illegal. And the city council reacted accordingly - they replaced the buttons with capacity sensors. And now cyclist still have to stop before crossings and touch the sensor instead of pressing the button, but the city council claims that the sensors are automatic. :) Very common in Germany. Even cyclists have to press a button to get the green light. Here an example from Hamburg: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-FoVRzrEjAHI/TYITRCCiPTI/AAAAAAAABL0/TbbHx3SKUVM/s1600/_001.jpg (On the sign above the signals: "Radfahrer bitte Grün anfordern" / Cyclists please ask for green)The reason: So-called "intelligent" signals operate at many crossings. Detectors on the street measure the number of cars, but there are no detectors in the cycle tracks. Even if the cars get green light along a main road, the parallel cycle traffic has to stop at the intersection and press the button to get a green light, while the cars a running. Cyclist going straight at the crossing could impede cars turning to the right, and these cars would delay other cars going straight. The crossing is no more efficient enough for the car traffic flow, even this could produce more air pollution. And a European Green Capital does not like that . . . Pedestrian tunnels are still commonly regarded as good idea in Russia as even in city center traffic lights are considered enemy to 'free flow of traffic'. The reason I love downtown Denver so much, there's no buttons to push for pedestrian crossings. Pedestrians are considered part of the normal traffic flow. Pedestrians even get their own phase in the light cycle where all vehicle traffic gets a red light and pedestrians get the walk signal. Allows for diagonal crossing. Here in Boulder, passenger crossings and lights have become ubiquitous, including in areas where there are no intersections. Don't think most people driving have caught on, however, because I see many drivers ignoring or not seeing the big signs that say pedestrian crossing. Maybe after a few people are killed, they will begin to catch on. Anyway, at least Boulder is trying to recognize the pedestrian and the bicyclist as an important part of the transportation scene. There are also a lot of cameras at intersections to catch people running lights. Would like to see these at pedestrian crossings with massively high fines. Where I live it really can depend, most often as many of you have said, it needs to be pressed, however in some parts they are automatic. The coolest bit however, is in the Jewish area of Melbourne, on the Sabbath, because technology is to be avoided... They trigger themselves for the whole day. Berlin is *way* better than London for not having to press buttons to cross the street. Button-controlled lights are so rare in Berlin, especially the centre, you get confused when you encounter one. In London automatic crossing lights are so rare that they usually come with placebo buttons to avoid confusion.We are at least catching up with the removal of our dark and dirty underpasses. Post a Comment

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Revival of the agriculture sector is one of the thrust areas in the state budget for 2012- 13 moved by Finance Minister K.M.Mani in the Assembly on Monday. In his budget presentation, Mr.Mani has earmarked Rs.100 crore for an integrated agricultural development scheme to improve the production of paddy, vegetables and tuber crops. Declaring tender coconut water as the official drink of Kerala, he announced a scheme to make coconut farming remunerative by grouping coconut farmers into societies. The budget proposes the adoption of high tech methods to combat climate change and ensure higher productivity and better quality of agricultural produce. It has allocated Rs.10 crore for the establishment of rice bio parks to boost paddy production in Alappuzha and Palakkad districts. The parks incorporating rice production units, manufacture of cattle feed, power generation from paddy husk and mushroom cultivation, is proposed to be implemented through special companies for public- private- farmer partnerships. Technology support would be provided by the M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). An amount of Rs.15 cr has been allocated for three coconut bio parks to be set up, one each in south, central and north Kerala to revive the flagging production of coconut. The scheme seeks to achieve a two to three fold increase in productivity. Introduction of value- added products like virgin coconut oil, coconut powder, coconut chips, coconut milk and milk powder, coir products and geotex and promotion of cluster farming are other objectives. Mr.Mani announced an outlay of Rs.45 cr for the greenhouse scheme, a state- wide project to ensure year- round production of vegetables by farming under controlled conditions. Three greenhouses, costing Rs.4.5 lakh each, are proposed to be set up in each panchayat. The state and central governments would subsidise 75 per cent of the cost. An international research and training centre for below sea level farming in Kuttanad is proposed to be set up in association with MSSRF at Kumarakom at a cost of Rs.10 cr. Mr.Mani has earmarked Rs.175 cr for the Kuttanad package and Rs.40 cr for the development of kole paddy fields in Thrissur. The budget proposes an outlay of Rs.211 cr for 22 projects in the animal husbandry sector. A multi speciality mobile veterinary clinic, emergency veterinary care service and calf adoption scheme are the highlights of the package. The dairy sector has been allocated Rs.35 cr for various projects. Construction of milk sheds and fodder cultivation are key projects. The Kerala Veterinary University has been allocated Rs.40 cr and Rs.5.22 cr has been earmarked for hi tech dairy farms at Kolahalamedu and Kulathupuzha. The budget has announced an integrated scheme to ensure the safety of seagoing fishermen. A control and surveillance mechanism, vessel tracking system and safety equipment for fishermen are the highlights of the proposal. All fishing vessels will be equipped with wireless or mobile units. VHF towers would be established at Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam for fishermen to communicate with ships, fisheries stations, coastal police stations and the Coast Guard. Mr.Mani announced an ambitious scheme costing rs.13 cr to boost inland fishing from 75000 to 2,50,000 tonnes. A cold chain network and 50 new fish markets are other major proposals. The budget proposes an outlay of Rs.20 cr for the completion of fishing harbours at Thalai, Chetuva, Muthalapozhy and Cheruvathur and a new harbour at Tanur.

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It's time for first lady Michelle Obama to raise her game. Nothing wrong with telling kids to eat their peas or showing them how to Hula-Hoop. But after four years of focusing on the body, she'd do well to spend these next four on building strong minds. "If I had the first lady's ear, I'd say talk more about the kind of education that women and girls - girls of color, in particular - will need to make it in a global economy," said Avis Jones-DeWeever, executive director of the National Council of Negro Women. E. Faye Williams, chairwoman of the National Congress of Black Women, said: "I'd like to see her promote the important work being done by women in this country, talk more about how she overcame her own difficulties, and encourage girls not to back away from goals that may seem out of reach." Williams and Jones-DeWeever are among Michelle Obama's most ardent admirers - and defenders. Their comments were not offered as critiques but as responses to my question: What else would they like to see her do? The first lady is reportedly looking for an expanded role in her husband's second term, and I, for one, hope she finds it. Soon. Enough with the broccoli and Brussels sprouts - to say nothing about all the attention paid to her arms, hair, derriere and designer clothes. Where is that intellectually gifted Princeton graduate, the Harvard-educated lawyer and mentor to the man who would become the first African American president of the United States? Surely that was not the first lady bumping hips and doing hand-jive dancing with Jimmy Fallon in drag on his late-night TV talk show. On Wednesday, the president and first lady attended the unveiling of a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks at the U.S. Capitol. Michelle Obama could have hung back and pondered: If a seamstress from Alabama could help move a people to the front of a bus, what might she do to help move them to the head of the class? Let's not forget who Michelle Obama is. The daughter of a Chicago city pump operator and a secretary, she was raised in a one-bedroom apartment on the rough-and-tumble South Side. She and her brother slept in the living room. And yet, by sixth grade, she was speaking French and taking advanced courses at a magnet school. At Princeton, she majored in sociology and developed a profound understanding of African American history.

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INAUGURATION OF THE NATIONAL PASTORAL CONFERENCE HOMILY OF POPE JOHN PAUL II "Maria Hall", Catholic medical College Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, "go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matth. 28, 19). This last command of the Risen Lord, sending out the Apostles to the ends of the earth to announce the Good News, is the real reason why we are gathered here today. In celebrating with joy and thanksgiving the Bicentennial of the Christian faith in your beloved land, you have resolved with God’s grace to bring "A Light to this Land". In this National Pastoral Conference you want to pray and search together - in close collaboration with your Bishops and in union with the universal Church - for ways to make that resolve a living reality. 1. Jesus Christ, who entrusts you with this mission, was not only the first and the greatest evangelizer but was himself the Good News of God (Cf. Pauli VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 7). And so, in order to know what your mandate is and how to carry it out, you must turn to him. Jesus said: "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God... for I was sent for this purpose" (Luc. 4, 43). From that time he "began to preach, saying: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’" (Matth. 4, 17). But what was this Kingdom all about? On Jesus’ own lips, this message of hope and salvation becomes the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit... Christ not only preaches these things. In his life and death and Resurrection he himself is the Good News of salvation (Cf. Marc. 1, 1; Rom. 1, 3). He is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (Io. 14, 6). From this fact, the Second Vatican Council drew a conclusion which affects us all: "Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Church must walk the same path which Christ walked: the path of poverty, obedience, service and the sacrifice of himself unto death, from which he came forth a victor by his Resurrection. For thus did all the Apostles walk in hope" (Ad Gentes, 5). The first Christians had no wealth, no prestige, no power, not even church buildings. But, like Jesus himself, and because they were filled with his Spirit, they bore witness to the Good News by their own life, attracting the multitudes to conversion (Act. 2, 42). 2. And what of your saintly ancestors? They too truly believed and lived the Beatitudes. They made the presence of Jesus visible and credible by their lives. Only this living witness, sustained by great charity and evangelical zeal, can explain how the Church could grow even under the cruellest persecution. Today you are asking how you in turn are to bear witness to the Good News of God’s Kingdom. The Church in Korea today is widely known to be flourishing. Great things are being accomplished. For this we must raise our hearts to the Lord in joyful thanksgiving. Still, many challenges face you: how as a Church community are you to live the Beatitudes in the actual circumstances of your family, social and national life? What are you to do, in order to grow, not only in numbers, but in Christian maturity and in spiritual depth? This is what your Pastoral Conference is all about. These are the concerns that underlie your discussions and reflections. 3. You are blessed to have an enviable, indeed a priceless heritage in the eminent examples of your ancestors, to inspire and guide you as you enter into the third century of your Christian history. First, there is the bond of fraternal love that knew no barriers: nobles and ordinary people, rich and poor, they mingled, prayed and suffered together, and shared everything as brothers and sisters helping one another in adversity. No group predominated among them and none was neglected, as so frequently happens in the world. The humblest and the poorest felt quite at home in the community of faith. How will the Church in Korea have to be, so that these same virtues will be your strength? So that the poor, the workers, the outcasts will be loved and served without distinction of persons? So that the spirit of the Beatitudes will prevail over every form of discrimination and selfishness? Then there is the peerless example of a laity full of apostolic initiative and zeal. Following the tradition of the early pioneers who of their own initiative sought the faith, studied, prayed together and spread the Good News, groups of dedicated men and women catechists were already formed in the 1780s. In the same way the invaluable work of the Myongdo Society, the "Society to Light the Way", during the decades of persecution, should also be emulated today. May the selfless apostolate of Saint Paul Chong Hasang spur you on! Your ancestors asked neither for recompense nor for recognition, but quietly and generously served others and spread the Gospel. Admirable too is the life of faith they lived within the family. Of the 103 martyrs canonized today, many are of the same families, blood relatives, or descendants of martyr families. This is because they prayed together and together came to maturity in the faith, learning to fear and love God, to cherish, respect and love every human being as God’s child, all in the family. The family is the "domestic Church", where the parents are "the first communicators of the faith to their children" and where vocations are fostered (Cf. Lumen Gentium, 11). The truly Christian family is a "place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates" (Pauli VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 71). Building on the great spiritual and cultural traditions of Asia, in what ways will you become ever more a Church of praying families, and an example for the rest of the world? 4. Your forefathers in the faith made marvellous efforts to incarnate the Gospel in their own culture and national identity. In simple yet profound and beautiful language, they preached and composed songs, prayers, hymns, catechisms and devotional books that were so deeply rooted in their own culture and soul as to speak directly to the minds and hearts of the people. Such efforts, if imitated and sustained, will lead more surely to the evangelization of the culture within its own identity. Particularly today, when the onslaught of unassimilated foreign civilization, with other life-styles and thought-patterns, creates confusion even within Church life, your farsighted and enlightened effort here will be invaluable. 5. And, firmly rooted as they were in their own specific identity, your ancestors never ceased to seek the closest possible union with the universal Church in belief, worship and life. No effort, no sacrifice was spared to establish and maintain living ties with the Bishop of Peking and the Successor of Saint Peter. Saint Paul Chong Hasang travelled nine times to Peking on foot and in secret to see the Bishop there! And now, how will you seek the universal in the particular, and live the particular in such a way as to enrich the universal Church? Your Korean ancestors found the faith through China. Yet, while remaining completely true to their own identity, nevertheless they were able to be perfectly united to the universal Church. Thus they set a living example of the fact that genuine identity and true catholicity, far from being mutually exclusive, require each other. And it is good to see you, dear faithful of Korea, earnestly seeking to live that worthy heritage creatively for today tomorrow. May the great and wise people of China who also first received the faith from without, seek, as true Chinese, to live that faith in full communion with the universal Church, to the joy and enrichment of all. 6. Doubtless, our day and age present wholly new challenges with its unprecedented speed and depth of transformation. Yet, as you enter undaunted into the third century of the presence of the Church in your land, may you be guided in announcing the Good News by the fixed bearings of witness of life, reconciliation through conversion, and sharing in love, which are themes of my pastoral visit to Korea. In this way you will bring "A Light to this Land", but above all you will be "A Light to this Land". May your martyr Saints accompany you on the journey, and may our Blessed Mother Mary, the Star of the Sea, lead you and your dear ones to the heaven of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom "be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever" (Apoc. 5, 13). © Copyright 1984 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

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Al Fresco Nibbles Rose hips. Lois the Rottweiler would sit on my deck and eat the ripe hips off my Rosa rugosa plants. The fruit of the rose softens and becomes very sweet in the fall, rich with vitamin C and many other beneficial nutrients. The vet concurred that they were equally as healthy for dogs as for people, and probably gave Lois some of the vitamins her body craved. Moreover, he said that the astringent quality of ripe rose hips would protect her from urinary tract infections. So feel free to plant roses for the dogs and let them forage in the fall! Wheat and oat grass dog patch. Fresh wheat grass juice is a popular drink for humans. Wheat and oat grass are also good for dogs, in moderation. They will naturally graze on it when they need the nutrients it contains, rather than browsing through your flowers. If you have a dog in a small city yard, consider planting wheat grass in an outdoor patch. It grows great in low, wide troughs. Most pet suppliers sell the seeds in small quantities. For a sizeable dog patch, save money by purchasing your oat and wheat seed in quantity at a health food store. It’s free of chemicals and ideal for large plantings. Bark Tip: Container gardening is a good way to try out herbs with dog-appeal. Easy-to-grow specimens include chamomile, lemon grass, lemon verbena, lemon balm, peppermint, spearmint, oregano, thyme and yarrow. Not only can you reposition the containers if needed, the pots restrain notorious spreaders—mints, for example—from taking over your yard. Keep Your Yard Foxtail Free Foxtails are a group of grassy weeds that have seeds attached to long serrated fibers. They are designed with barbs to penetrate an animal’s fur or skin and stick there until they finally drop off somewhere else. When grasses turn brown, foxtails become quite stiff and are easily inhaled by dogs. The tips are sharp enough to penetrate through the softer parts of the paw, mouth and other sensitive spots. Once inside the body, foxtails can travel through the bloodstream and cause serious injury. Keep your yard free of these weeds by pulling all grasses while they’re still green.

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Current Ithaca College community members may contribute stories and comments as well as view additional topics by logging in. Contributed by Deborah Harper on 09/13/2010 The Assisting Students at Risk Initiative at Ithaca College can help. Responding to Students in Distress: A Guide for Faculty and Staff gives information about responding to specific behaviors, finding resources on campus and reporting your concerns. You can view portions of this document at the Assisting Students at Risk Initiative page. The Assisting Students at Risk Initiative provides a central location for reporting concerns you may have about an Ithaca College student. As demands of the academic year rise, so does stress and behaviors that cause us to feel concerned. Find out how you can be a helping resource for students you know. The Assisting Students at Risk Initiative is a collaborative effort between the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs and Campus Life and the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS).

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[ locale string ] We are showing you the Taiwanese version of our site: would you prefer a different location? Today, a number of Rapha products are designed in London and made in China. This may seem like a contradictory statement, but it's not. The creative vitality of the UK and London’s network of talent means it is one of the world’s great design hubs. But in terms of quality manufacturing, to a scale that can satisfy the demand, Rapha has key pieces of performance roadwear made in the Far East. The discussion about unethical practices in the east continues, but a new trend is emerging: As the Chinese economy’s meteoric rise continues so too do improvements in working conditions, standards of product output, quality and the technology used to create them. The idea that Chinese-made products are cheap and inferior might be likened to that of the view taken towards electronics and machinery made in Japan fifty years ago. Now, as an economic powerhouse and technological leader, the Made in Japan label holds significant value intellectually as well as economically. Ironically, as the economy in the west falters, Chinese consumers are enjoying their prosperity through western luxury goods. However, some of these goods are only western by design – designed in the west but manufactured in the east. Indeed, Rapha now have a healthy dose of customers in Taiwan and South Korea. Whilst a label stating 'Made in England' implies quality, it doesn’t necessarily mean the product has been made with more skill or craft, materials or energy. Some western manufacturers are undoubtedly excellent but there are plenty of these now residing in the Far East. Standing for Knowledge Technology Craft, KTC's pioneering approach puts them at the forefront of 'performance manufacturing'. Their mantra is simple but it works, which is why Rapha have partnered with the firm for almost six years. Having arrived in China four decades ago, KTC have observed some of the fundamental changes in the industrial worlds of the east and west. Managing Director, Gerhard Flatz, explains how they became pioneers in apparel manufacturing: "KTC was founded in Hong Kong in 1971 by two Austrians, Hans Kremmel and Dieter Waibel, who imported Swiss yarns to manufacture turtlenecks for one of Austria’s oldest apparel brands, Benedikt Maeser. Following early success, Hans got in touch with the Dassler family and a long and fruitful partnership developed with adidas. Hans Kremmel became the exclusive sourcing partner for production in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand. KTC were one of the earliest western companies to set up production in mainland China. By 1981 KTC had set up a joint venture in China with adidas, manufacturing apparel such as tracksuits. They progressed onto the production of premium ski-wear, most notably for the German brand Bogner, one of the most luxurious ski-wear brands in the world." Much of this discussion of poor ethical practice is based on misconceptions of manufacturing in the Far East today. KTC, manufacturers of several key Rapha products, see the Made in China label standing as a mark of quality in performance wear, just as Made in Italy might indicate quality in the fashion world. Today a large, motivated workforce resides in the east. Whilst the west has experienced a decline in its skill base and, as a consequence, levels of quality, the opposite has been true of the east. In the last thirty years China in particular has bridged the gap with the west and, in many examples, overtaken it. As the second largest economy in the world China continues to flourish, whereas the western world struggles through one financial crisis after the next. The national persona of China is a hard working one. The agricultural population, possessing a stringent work ethic, has flocked to the cities. In addition, more than 1.5 million engineers and scientists graduate from Chinese universities every year. KTC have continued to work with some of the most premium brands in the world, particularly in sports clothing. KTC’s unparalleled reputation is expressed in their phrase ‘the Art of Performance Manufacture’. Gerhard continues: “The capabilities of Chinese manufacturers are far beyond those in Europe. With such a large, skilled workforce in China and fast developing technology, Europe faces a tough task competing.” This may suggest the perception of Chinese manufacturing in the west is perhaps owed to a fear of the competition, rather than reality. As the Chinese economy has grown, working conditions have improved and business has developed a social, ethical conscience. There have been major improvements in education, hospitals and the marks of western gentrification, like big fast-food brands, shopping centres, hotels and housing estates. The living conditions have improved rapidly and the east is enjoying what the western world has failed to maintain. "Consumers need to understand that the time of sweatshops in China does not exist anymore. In their place are highly sophisticated factories with modern work practices and forward thinking employees." KTC has doubled their workforce’s wages in the last year alone and expects salaries to rise again by as much as 20-30% over the course of the next year. Additionally, the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF), which is dedicated to improving the working conditions in the clothing industry, seek to uphold a strict code of labour practices in the east. KTC was the first independent sportswear manufacturer in the Far East to be endorsed by FWF. For more information about KTC and their social responsibility scheme visit their website » www.ktcquality.com Read about the manufacturer of Rapha's leather goods » burfields-and-co

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Editor's note:This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content. Tag Archives: Awareness Our coalition is working on educating the public on these issues so that community members take the responsible step and report these parties to law enforcement before they get out of hand. Yes your neighbors might not appreciate being turned in for hosting an underage drinking party, and the youth who receive citations for Minor in Possession may not appreciate your act of citizenship, but having a few people think you are a jerk is a small price to pay to reduce underage drinking and the high price tag that comes with it.Read More Inspired as I am by the “Be a Jerk” Movement, I am proud to say I am a jerk. I am bothered by the perception that minors will drink and there is nothing to be done. As a first step towards establishing myself as a jerk I will work to spread the following message: the legal age to purchase alcohol is 21.Read More This is a one in a million opportunity for Texas to lead the nation in drunk driving prevention. We are not going to get there, as Chief McManus of the SAPD will admit, by arresting this problem away. We must do everything within our power not only to arrest current offenders, but to prevent future offenders from getting behind the wheel, or better yet, from drinking to the point of public intoxication.Read More Written by: Andrea Salazar, Prevention Resource Center We love to watch the newest Hollywood “It” woman or man make it big and reach their dream of being on the big screen. We all love a feel good story, for a while. Then secretly we wait for them to fall, for them to get into drugs, [...]Read More

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September 17, 2012 – If you were unable to join the School Nutrition Foundation for their webinar on Wednesday, September 12th, a recording of “Back to School with the New Meal Pattern – Commonly Asked Questions and Answers” is now on the SNA website. During this webinar, USDA staff answered many questions that SNA members have had in regards to the new meal pattern. Discussions ranged from age/grade groups to using existing inventory. Dr. Janey Thornton, SNS, welcomed members to the webinar followed by nearly an hour of questions and answers with staff of USDA’s Child Nutrition Division. To access the recording, visit www.schoolnutrition.org/webinars, and follow the archive link to “Back to School with the New Meal Pattern – Commonly Asked Questions and Answers.” © 2000 - 2013 School Nutrition Association, All Rights Reserved

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Of course it is. If you're a player who knows the game, then having a big stack will also give you a crucial psychological advantage. Your opponents will fold to your bets and raises much more often, this will allow you to make much more effective bluffs. They know that the guy with the big stack is able to go all-in without a significant risk to himself. Which means he's much more likely to do it, even with marginal hands. This big stack effect is amazingly powerful, surprisingly even. Even good players, that know this fact well, can't supress it. There are 2 key characteristics of the big stack effect: - big stacks get bigger over time. You can easily see this in both cash games and tournaments. People fold easily against his bets or raises and he can easily collect the pot. This is until... - big stacks are big targets. Everyone at the table focuses on them and tries to get their chips. At one point, someone will find a way to make a big bluff or a smart slow play and they will hit the big stack. Hard (see |1| at the bottom). And, in an instant, the big stack becomes an average stack. This happens especially in No-Limit games because of the ability of players to go all-in whenever they want. If, when you play, you find yourself among the biggest stacks, do this: - put pressure on the average stacks. They will fold a lot because they don't want to be put against a big decision. They will play very tight and conservative. You will win a lot of pots because of this. - put pressure on the short stacks as well. They will probably just wait for a good / premium hand to go all-in with. All you have to do is keep the pressure on and make a simple decision to call or fold when they do go all-in. - Be careful if you play against people with solid stacks (above average, but below the top) or players that are very good. You have a very big stack, so you can afford to avoid them. This way, they won't be able to put pressure on you. - If you do play against solid players and/or solid stacks, think very very very good about every decision. You can be easily tempted to call a bet or a raise (because of your stack) when such a decision doesn't make much sense. Bottom line: Having a big stack gives you an obvious advantage. But it's an advantage that is easily lost. Just be careful with it, especially if you're not used to being in this position. |1| = this is usually the reason why the guy who is chip leader in the middle stage of a tournament can finish in a mediocre position (for example 20th / 100 participants). If I remember correctly, this happened once at a WSOP Main Event final table. The chip leader finished 9th i.e. he was the first one knocked out.

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Developing world ripe for wind energy New markets need to be opened worldwide for wind power to regain its stellar pre-2009 growth rates, which helped to make it a mainstream energy source in many markets, said the head of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) at a conference for the industry in Europe. “The growth of wind power over the past 15 years has matched that of telecoms and IT, with wind becoming a mainstream generation technology around the world,” said the IRENA Director-General, Adnan Z. Amin. But the industry has faced tough times since 2009, when annual market growth fell into single digits, following 15-year average growth of 28 per cent. Along with the prevailing economic uncertainty and fiscal challenges, the industry suffers from high market concentration, with oversupply in the most advanced wind markets. IRENA – an intergovernmental agency promoting all forms of renewable energy – can help to spread wind-power technology into other, high-growth markets, such as developing countries with rising energy needs, Mr Amin said on 4 February. He made the remarks at the annual meeting of the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) in Vienna, Austria. (See Mr Amin’s keynote speech.) “We see enormous potential in Africa, Asia and Latin America in markets hungry for energy, with growing populations, high economic growth, expensive electricity and widespread shortages,” he said. IRENA recently launched the Global Renewable Energy Atlas – an open-access online platform for investigating wind and solar resource potential. A new IRENA report, 30 Years of Policies for Wind Energy, prepared in cooperation with the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), outlines policy lessons from 12 leading wind markets, from the US to China and Denmark to Brazil. Wind power is starting to spread more widely, with 68 countries around the world now boasting above 10 megawatts of wind capacity. Meanwhile, the share of wind and other renewables also continues to grow in advanced markets. In Spain, wind farms have become the largest source of electricity, accounting for more than a quarter of total power generation. Wind-power took the largest share – ahead of both nuclear and coal-fired power stations – for the first time in the last three months (November-January), according to reports on 4 February citing Spanish energy data. “The long-term fundamentals of wind remain strong and are growing stronger,” Mr Amin said. “I am confident that the best days for the wind industry lie ahead.”

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Children in Nigeria victims of superstition In a small village in Nigeria, a little boy of 5 years of age is frightened and confused. His mother and father have abandoned him; their normally loving embrace will never be felt again. The other villagers are angry, and some of them throw stones at him. He does not cry. Part of him has accepted his fate, and the rejection of his loved ones is enough to make the boy numb. The only question in his mind is how all of this is happening, and whether or not it’s simply just a bad dream. If you’ve ever thought human superstitions were quaint and amusing, this is due to the fact in your society, science has unmasked superstitions and shown how foolish and silly they are. No one takes the idea of throwing salt over their shoulder for good luck seriously, any more than we avoid black cats. But in places like Nigeria, superstition is a powerful force which dominates their lives. It is made worse by the fact that the fear they trigger is being used by powerful evangelical ministers to gain power and wealth. The victims are little children who are often tortured, abandoned, and sometimes killed. Their tactic is simple: by accusing children of witchcraft, a minister offers his expensive services to exorcise them. Often, however, when the parents can ill afford the treatment, their fear turns them from caring parents into brutal murderers. Some of these preachers have become extraordinary wealthy doing this. All of them have the blood of innocents on their hands. It’s difficult enough to watch as whole villages turn on innocent children without seeing the long term affects. Many of the children, even when they do find a home, look despondent and scared. Their childhood has been savagely ripped away, leaving sorrow, despair, and unhappiness. A little while ago, we did a podcast on the subject, but a fan of the site thought it necessary to remind me that this was still going on. I felt it should be mentioned again, if only to encourage those generous few to donate to an organization called Stepping Stones Nigeria which takes in these abandoned children who would otherwise be turned into slaves, or simply raped and killed. I don’t normally ask this of anyone, but it’s far too shocking to do nothing. I’ve heard it said atheists are less generous than their religious counterparts. I think this untrue. I encourage you to help out this worthy organization, and if you have Christian friends, make them understand that their Savior is being used to justify torture and death. If they feel even half the outrage I do, hopefully it will match their generosity. Spread the outrage

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WASHINGTON — Average U.S. rates on fixed mortgages fell again to new record lows. The decline suggests the Federal Reserve’s stimulus efforts may be having an effect on mortgage rates. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan dropped to 3.40 percent. That’s down from last week’s rate of 3.49 percent, which was the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s. The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, fell to 2.73 percent, down from the record low of 2.77 percent last week. The Fed is spending $40 billion a month to buy mortgage-backed securities. The goal is to lower mortgage rates and help the housing recovery. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the program will continue until there is substantial improvement in the job market. Some economists expect mortgage rates to fall even further because of the Fed’s bond purchases.The Associated Press

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Richard O'Dwyer is a 24-year-old U.K. citizen entangled in a two-year extradition saga with the U.S., which wants him to face copyright charges issued in 2010. Over the weekend, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (pictured above) got directly involved in O'Dwyer's situation by launching an online petition to stop his extradition. The petition, which encourages signers to tweet with the hashtag "#SaveRichard," has received more than 54,000 signatures in two days. It's hosted on Change.org and is directed at the U.K.'s Home Office. 44,000 signatures so far - please let's get to 50,000 by tonight - rt and share please!... fb.me/1aQI0WXbf — Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) June 26, 2012 "O'Dwyer is not a U.S. citizen, he's lived in the U.K. all his life, his site was not hosted there, and most of his users were not from the U.S.," wrote Wales on the petition page. "America is trying to prosecute a U.K. citizen for an alleged crime which took place on UK soil. The internet as a whole must not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement. As citizens we must stand up for our rights online." Wales' petition goes on to cast O'Dwyer as the international poster boy for the ongoing struggle between copyright holders and content consumers. Previously, that face-off has only taken abstract legislative form in bills such as the Stop Online Piracy Act, better known as SOPA. "Richard O'Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public," writes Wales. "Earlier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second. Copyright is an important institution, serving a beneficial moral and economic purpose. But that does not mean that copyright can or should be unlimited." O'Dwyer is the founder of TVShack.net, which allowed users to search for links to online streams of television broadcasts from around the world from 2007 to 2010. A court in New York charged O'Dwyer with a pair of copyright charges in 2010, which combined could put him behind bars for up to ten years. The TVShack.net domain was seized by American law enforcement. O'Dwyer re-registered the site at TVShack.cc, which he shut down for good after a visit from police in late 2010. The U.S. Department of Justice has been after the U.K. to extradite O'Dwyer since May of 2011 to face charges in U.S. court. The extradition was ordered by a U.K. judge in January and approved in March of this year, but O'Dwyer is appealing the decision. O'Dwyer's legal team has maintained that the U.S. lacks jurisdiction in the case because none of TVShack.net's servers were hosted in the United States. Could the petition cause the U.K. government to put a stop to O'Dywer's extradition? Share your thoughts in the comments. Image courtesy of Flickr, via Joi

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|Home > War on Iraq > Article||Saturday April 5, 2003| "Where are the Iraqis?" asked Sergeant Tracy Jones, a frontline explosives expert. "I don't see them. Are we being lured into a trap?" The Iraqi soldiers who fought in Al Azizyah never had a chance. They would have known that had they looked through binoculars at the tanks, armoured vehicles and trucks that massed earlier on the town's outskirts. The convoys, stretching for kilometres, included boats, portable bridges, bulldozers, ambulances, tow-trucks and cranes. When the Herald drove slowly through Al Azizyah, 65 kilometres south-east of Baghdad, several oil storage tankers were ablaze and shops were smouldering. Three wounded Iraqi soldiers lay groaning beside the road. Prisoners sat in the scorching sun, hands tied behind their backs, looking dirty and sad. Marines pushing on to Baghdad glanced at a pile of clothes just out of town. It was a pile of bodies. They passed in silence. None of them is enjoying this fight; they just want to "get the job done" and go home. But their morale has been lifted in the past 24 hours by a change in the way civilians are greeting them. Further south, people appeared defiant, even antagonistic, but in towns north of the Tigris River they have victory signs and smiles. "Go to Baghdad ... go," one man yelled in English as marines passed. "We support you." Late yesterday, the marines were pushing on towards the capital, destroying pockets of resistance. The highway was littered with smouldering Iraqi artillery guns, tanks, trucks and civilian vehicles that had carried ammunition. By the roadway a statue of Saddam had its head blown off. A painting of the dictator on a building was sprayed with bullets. Printer friendly version Email to a friend War On Iraq US moves to strangle regime Basra's siege mentality linked to past betrayal War machine rolls on amid the Republican Ghosts When a message becomes a lifeline What happens now, Mr Rumsfeld? Losses hit home in a town where it's cool to be a patriot Turkey on a hair-trigger to fight Kurds Chirac expresses support for allies in war cemetery apology Stemming the fatalities with a modern touch El Paso becomes hostile territory for German troops Iraq's neighbours fear they are next Blair and friends staring into war's political abyss Embed with the Pentagon? Not necessarily US invaders caught off guard by use of potent and portable tank-killer Petrol not enough to ride road to recovery Greatest challenge the battle within: trying to stay awake, alert - and alive Fleeing citizens cheer as troops close in on city Tanks roll in without a rumble Secret operations revealed in effort to cower the foe Stay out of the fight, ayatollah tells Shiites General darn glad for help After the war, a lingering legacy of hate Up go those flag sales as the radio boys rally round Eyeing the inside running in race to cash in on destruction Howard backs US as new split emerges |text | handheld (how to)|| Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald. |advertise | contact us|

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On the Nature of “Stuff” In celebrating National Schadenfreude Day yesterday, I could not help noticing Bill O’Reilly’s complex analysis of the election returns: “Voters want things. They want stuff. Who’s going to give them stuff? Obama.” Well. Actually, the government has given the wealthy ”stuff” all the time. It gives them a whole plethora of specific tax breaks and credits. Indeed, one could argue that Bain Capital’s entire model is based upon tax arbitrage — a huge gift from the federal government to certain forms of finance capital. What’s more, government gives the rich patents, trademarks, and copyrights. It gives them limited liability corporations. It gives broadcasters broadcast licenses. Property is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky. It is created by the state. In the United States, common law courts create and define the bounds of property. That does not mean that because the state creates property, it can take it whenever it wants. Far from it. Property rights are good, and vital, and important, for reasons having to do with everything from privacy to liberty to efficiency to personality. That’s why they have and should have legal and constitutional protection. But the background assumption behind O’Reilly’s statement — and really behind the statements of all conservatives having hissy fits processing their defeat — is the idea that some people’s property is inherently more legitimate and “natural” than others, and that some people deserve property and others don’t. There is an argument there. But it is an argument that should be made on moral and political grounds. Why does Bain Capital deserve its government-created property more than, say, a family of four with two working parents in minimum-wage jobs making a total of $28,000 a year? If this is the best that the Right can do in the wake of Election Day, it will be a long time before it has anything constructive to say about the future of our country — whether it wins elections or not.

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I was going for a long walk late this evening, when I began to think about complaints I hear about government welfare. My thoughts have led me to compile a list of 5 ways to best lodge our complaints about the government-run welfare system. Here we go: 1. Take the time to meet the poor. When you see a person asking for change, give them 5 minutes, ask them questions, and show that you value them as a person with value. 3. Invite someone who is homeless to come to your home for a meal, and potentially a roof for the night. It may seem scary, highly inadvisable, and they may be unwashed; but what you’ll have to choose is whether or not you value love and kindness over your own belief in what security actually is. Organize your church or community group to use building space to provide a shelter for the shelterless to sleep at night. If churches and groups began to do this as a priority, cities will be transformed by love and kindness. 4. Learn about who a person living in poverty truly is. Discover their talents and passions, and help them earn income by doing what they are naturally good at. You’ll discover there are many people living on the streets with high-level degrees, and unique abilities,but are in need of someone to take the time to nurture and bring those abilities into the world. 5. Give extremely to any person who is in need. When we begin to change our culture in to a culture of giving, the needs of all people are met, and all are invited and welcomed into the family of the community. We have the tremendous honor and liberty to give to one another, to lift each other up in times of need. When that liberty is not exercised, the government steps in to fill the holes. The government welfare system is incredibly inefficient, and creates dependency within people upon an institution. But what if we began to rely on one another and the love we have for each other? We have the choice to eliminate the government welfare system. If the people rise up to meet the needs of one another, we will have no need for government welfare, and indeed we will know liberty to a degree we have in my estimation – never before seen.

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The Will Dance for Kids Project, now in its second year, is a collaboration between 10 to 15 dance studios and the dance community across the Salt Lake valley. "It's helping the kids learn that when they share their talents, they can share their talents and art to help other people," said Penny Broussard, founder and director of the Will Dance for Kids Project. Broussard worked the dance scene for so long that after retiring a few years back, she started looking for a way to be involved again. "For me I get to work with these great people, great dancers, but it's important to teach them to be more than dancers," Broussard said. "We have to teach them to be great people." Last year, the Dance Project SLC raised $3,000, which contributed to the overall $15,000 raised by the project. The proceeds benefit two Utah Food Bank programs designed specifically for kids. Kids Cafe offers hot and nutritious meals weekly, and the BackPack Program provides resources such as milk, tuna and peanut butter for kids to take away for the weekend or during school holidays. Laila Hardman, director of the Dance Project SLC, located in Cottonwood Heights, said the cause speaks especially to the dancers in her studio because they tend to come from a more privileged background. "This is a way for them to understand," she said. "They take a pair of dance shoes for granted, but this money goes back to kids that can't afford to eat." The dancers put together a flash mob to kick off the fundraiser in October at Gardner Village, where they collected 2,430 pounds of food. Dance Project SLC came up with ideas to raise money such as organizing a cooking class, Zumba dance class and a pilates class for parents. The studio also held a fairy tale princess class for preschool-age kids, in which dancers hosted a party with music and of course dancing. "It got our kids involved in teaching other kids," Hardman said. The studio is for girls ages 3 to 18. Monet Frank, a senior dancer, collected about $200 in donation from the workers at her dad's company. She said she's delighted to use her dance platform to fundraise. "It's a great way to do what I love while giving back to the community," Frank said. "I asked all of his workers if they could donate even $5, and in return I got a lot more money than I was expecting." Each studio moves to its own rhythm when it comes to raising money, but the studio tries to incorporate as much fun as possible and a bit of competition between the senior and junior dancers. "It's been a really great experience, and the dancers are competing for a cause that's greater than themselves," said senior dancer Mikaila Hardman. "It's a competition that benefits everybody at the end of the day." The fundraiser will culminate in a two-day competition involving many major dance studios at Taylorsville High School Mar. 1 and 2. Although there will be actual dancing within the competition, the winning studio will be the one that raised the most money. "I love the idea that the dance studios come together," said Monica Matthews, director of marketing for the Dance Project SLC. "It took away the sense of competition in that way and put them in the same direction of moving toward the same goal." Dancers are selling $1 Utah Food Bank donation cards, which are like raffle tickets that will be put into a drawing at the competition in March. The top prize includes two round-trip JetBlue flight tickets to anywhere. For every $1 donated, the Utah Food Bank provides $7 equivalent of food and services. JetBlue is among the various sponsors that range from restaurants to car washes, which have donated numerous prizes for the drawing. "A lot of girls have gone above and beyond to sell raffle tickets," Mikaila Hardman said. Junior dancer Alexis Wilson sold a lot of raffle tickets and was one of seven girls at the Dance Project SLC who collected at least $500 by the end of 2012. "I went to my family, friends and neighbors," Wilson said. "I told them that this helps kids who don't have food like we do, who don't have the same opportunities as we do." As incentives, the top individual fundraisers can win scholarships to dance workshops and conventions. Broussard said it's especially important that this project allows kids to help other kids, and she hopes people will consider how important hunger issues is in Utah, especially for children. "The statistics are pretty staggering," she said. "One in five kids [in Utah] don't know where their next food is coming from." Dance studios will come together for a two-day competition held at Taylorsville High School on March 1 and 2. $1 raffle tickets will be sold up to and including the days of the competition. Numerous prizes in the drawing including the top prize of two round-trip JetBlue tickets to anywhere. For every $1 donated, the Utah Food Bank provides $7 of food/services. Forty-four percent of monetary fund comes from the community. One in five Utah children are unsure where their next meal will come from.

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What's viral, anonymous, and will find you when you're least expecting it? Nope, it's not the clap, it's those political or activist email forwards. You know, the ones that originate from points unknown, to share information (?) or opinions with every Tom, Dick, and Inbox. Here's one that crossed my Spam Filter this week: Subject: Midwest Flooding As you watch the flooding in the Midwest, have you noticed that there are no farmers running around with stolen plasma TVs or holding stolen liquor over their heads? I heard a dimwit talking head on CNN yesterday say that this reminded him of New Orleans. How? Outside of being flooded the similarity stops there. There is no looting, no people wandering the streets looking for meanness. . . there is not one damn thing, other than water, that is similar to New Orleans. The actions of the people of Des Moines only makes the actions of the people of New Orleans look like what it was. . . people of several generations of dependency on government unable to depend upon themselves to save themselves. That is what always happens when the government bails folks out for generation after generation! It relays an opinion, to be sure — but are these forwarded email missives taken as fact — and are they beneficial? They're a double-edged sword: by sending one on, you're assuming that the recipient shares your views while simultaneously espousing them as your own. Though they are a way to share information and start a dialogue. Do you forward them on?

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Under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies, dollars are hard to come by in Iran. The rial fell from 20,160 against the greenback on the street market in August to 36,500 rials to the dollar in October. It’s settled, for now, around 27,000. The central bank’s fixed official rate is 12,260. Yet there’s one currency in Iran that has kept its value and can be used to purchase goods from abroad: bitcoins, the online-only currency. Read more » Created by Cyphase 24 weeks 3 days ago – Made popular 24 weeks 3 days ago

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Photo by Solana Jean I'm buying my first road bike and I'm told I should have a professional fitting. What's involved in a fit session and am I "fit" differently as a woman? A professional fitting helps you find the right bike positioning so you can ride stronger, longer and more comfortably, as well as avoid overuse injuries. During a session, a bike-fit specialist will focus on such things as the height, tilt and setback (forward or backward position) of the saddle. She'll examine the reach, width and brake lever placement of the handlebars, and the position of the pedals and angle of the cleat (clip-less system). The length and cost of a fit session can range widely. A $75 to $100 one-hour fitting at a local bike shop is fine for a recreational cyclist, whereas elites or people with certain injuries may spend more than $500 for the technology and expertise of a professional training facility. I recommend getting a dynamic--instead of static--fit. A static fit involves plugging your body measurements, like arm and leg length, into a mathematical formula to determine your bike positioning. On the other hand, during a dynamic fit, a specialist examines you in motion taking into account how you pedal, move on the saddle or grip the handlebars. In addition, a good fitting will factor in such things as your core strength and flexibility, and your cycling goals (racing, touring, cross-training). Women aren't fit any differently than men, but you may want to get a fitting before you select a bike to see if a women-specific frame--generally with a shorter top tube, narrower handlebar and shorter-reach brake levers--would better suit you. Also keep in mind that your strength and flexibility will change over time, so you may need to get refit periodically. There's no set rule for this; some of my professional cyclists haven't changed their position for their entire careers, while others are constantly tweaking their seat and handlebar heights. But if you find you're less comfortable on the bike than before or you're developing aches or pains, a refitting may help. I'm a veteran runner with a history of knee pain, and I'm thinking of taking up cycling. What knee problems do cyclists commonly have and how can I avoid them? In sports medicine we have a favorite joke: What do you call a runner with bad knees? There's some truth in this. Many runners turn to cycling for relief of knee pain. Although both cyclists and runners experience overuse injuries, biking does offer advantages over running to better avoid and treat injuries. In addition to sparing the body the constant impact that running inflicts, cycling allows you to vary the level of resistance through the use of gears, helping to reduce stress on aching hips, knees or ankles. Perhaps the most common overuse injury in cycling is patellofemoral syndrome--pain on the front of the knee. Weakness in one of the four quadriceps muscles in the front of the thigh allows the kneecap to slip out of its groove, usually toward the outside of the knee. Patellofemoral syndrome is worse when walking or running downstairs or uphill. On a bike, riding uphill or using hard gears can exacerbate the problem.

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A new app designed to encourage online shoppers to abandon whimsical Amazon purchases in order to transfer money into their pre-established savings goals, like an upcoming trip to San Diego, launched this week. ImpulseSave, a Boston-based personal finance company, announced Thursday an e-commerce plug-in for the Google Chrome web browser that lets users transfer money into their savings goals while they're shopping on more than 50 e-commerce sites. The service works like this: After an ImpulseSave user installs the browser plugin, he will receive reminders of his longer-term financial goals when he is viewing his shopping carts on sites like Zappos and Amazon. Say he's about to buy an espresso machine. A picture of his child with an upcoming birthday might rise from the bottom of the checkout screen to remind him he's saving for a fancy red wagon, for example. With a click, he can choose to transfer the amount of what the espresso machine would have cost — or a percent of it — into his savings goal instead. "We are becoming an angel on [users'] shoulders," Phil Fremont-Smith, co-founder and chief executive, tells BTN. "We are tempting them at the point of sale to take action on those goals." ImpulseSave's latest news comes on the heels of Des Moines-based SmartyPig's announcement Wednesday of a Chrome plugin that's designed to help people set savings goals for specific items while searching the web. Though at first blush, ImpulseSave's and SmartyPig's latest offerings seem identical, there is a subtle nuance. Unlike SmartyPig, ImpulseSave's app is not meant to allow for creation of new goals while consumers are shopping online, but rather remind consumers of their pre-established financial objectives. The two new offerings point to an interesting mini-trend of emerging technology to stall instant-gratification purchases. "I'm intrigued by any kind of tool that reminds consumers of what they're trying to accomplish," says Mark Schwanhausser, director of multichannel financial services at Javelin Strategy & Research. "Too often the budget is about what I can't afford, but if you can turn it on its ear and say here are my top goals, here's why I'm saving and remind me at the time of decision. …it's a fundamental rewriting of PFM." ImpulseSave accounts are backed by Leader Bank NA, a nationally chartered community bank. The startup also tempts users to make transfers to their savings accounts through mobile apps and Instagram. A typical user saves $3000 a year.

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By Rachel Louise Ensign Families are getting less scholarship money from colleges and are taking on bigger loan burdens, according to a new study from lender Sallie Mae. And parents are more reluctant to foot the bill. The survey, which was conducted during the just-finished 2011-12 academic year, comes on the heels of some elite colleges announcing cuts to their aid programs, including Cornell University, Wesleyan University, Williams College and Dartmouth College. It asked questions of both parents and students. Today’s Wall Street Journal article on the study left out a bevy of statistics that looked at families’ changing feelings about funding an undergraduate education. Among them: As tuition continues to rise, more families are considering cost when choosing a college. Fifty-one percent of families decided not to apply to a particular school because they thought it would be too expensive, up from 45% in 2010-11. And 50% said they eliminated colleges based on the financial-aid packages they offered, up from 43% the year before. “What many people are saying is: Is this worth spending $200,000 plus on when we could spend $80,000 or $90,000 on it and get into the same graduate program or work at the same firm?” says Kalman A. Chany, the founder of Campus Consultants, a New York City firm that helps families maximize financial aid. Only 53% of parents said they strongly agreed that they were willing to stretch financially to pay for college, down from 64% in the 2009-10 academic year, though consistent with the 2010-11 survey. Just 47% of parents said they strongly agreed that it’s better to borrow money than have their children not attend college, a figure that’s steadily fallen from its 59% peak in 2009-10. Students, on the other hand, remain enthusiastic that college is an investment in their future, and about as many strongly agree that they’d “rather borrow than not go” as in recent years (62%). This new cost-consciousness was reflected in what parents actually shelled out. The average parent put 5% less toward their child’s education, paying out $7,787, down from $8,237 the year earlier. That figure includes parent loans and direct tuition payments. The amount of their own savings a parent put toward their child’s education plunged 22% to $1,930, down from $2,482 the year prior. “It may not be that families are less willing to pay for [a] college education. It may be that families are more sensitive to the net price of the college and the return on investment,” says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of financial-aid site FinAid.org.

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Each month you can learn about some of your ancestors on their special day. Along with vital statistics, you can read the stories told through the years along and/or personal memories of my own. Please add your stories here too. 03 Oct 1851 - FRANCIS BRISON AUSTIN, SR. - My great-grandfather was born on 03 Oct 1851 in Greenville, Greenville, South Carolina. He married Flora Ann (Annie) HUNSUCKER on 13 Mar 1880 in Raleigh, Wake, North Carolina. The family moved from North Carolina to Savannah, Chatham, Georgia, around 1888. He died at the age of 61 on 25 May 1913 in Savannah and was buried on 26 May 1913 in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia (Laurel Grove Cemetery, Lot 2903). Austin family at home on 208 West Anderson Street, Savannah, GA about 1889 In photo: Standing left to right - Katie, Lillian, Will, Daisy Sitting: Frank and Annie, and Georgia and Fred on the steps (Photo owned by Frank's great-granddaughter Stephanie Irish) 05 Oct 1884 – LOUIS FALLIGANT THOMAS, SR. – Louis was born in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia, to parents Adelaide Almira LAVIER and John Augustus THOMAS. He married Charlotte Melissa HORNE on 10 Feb 1910 in Savannah (St. Paul's Episcopal Church). He was employed as a Machinist. He died on 10 Mar 1920 in Savannah and was buried in Bonaventure Cemetery (Section A, Lot 136). The cause of death was Influenza/Pneumonia. Louis and Charlotte had one son, Louis Falligant THOMAS, Jr., who was killed in a streetcar accident at the age of six. Their marriage ended in divorce. 05 Oct 1824 – ANNE MATILDA ENGLISH TOWLES – Anne Matilda ENGLISH was the oldest sister of my 2nd great-grandmother Sarah Jane ENGLISH. She was born in Bryan County, Georgia. She married Daniel Freeman TOWLES on 17 May 1843. They had three sons: Henry G., Francis S., and Daniel F., Jr. Anne died on 01 Sep 1854. 09 Oct 1821 – MANSON GRICE TOWNSEND - Manson was born on 09 Oct 1821 in Georgia. He married Elizabeth JENKINS on 06 Jun 1847 in Henry, Georgia. They had three children: Susan T., Eliza, and Manson L. Manson died on 09 Sep 1887 in Atlanta, Fulton, Georgia. "**M. G. Townsend buried Rockdale Cemetery, b. 10/9/1821, d. 9/9/1887. Served in Co. F 42nd Ga. Regt., wife Elizabeth Townsend also at Rockdale Cemetery b. 7/29/1827, d. -- not on these markers in 1933 when Franklin Garrett took down information on these markers in 1933. Marker information extracted from Franklin Garrett's cemetery records found on file at the Atlanta Historical Society." Source Information: Georgia Confederate Soldier Obituaries, Henry, Newton and Rockdale counties 1879-1943, Compiled by Rhoda Anne Bowen, Freda R. Turner, Editor, p. 380 13 Oct 1888 – EDDIE CALHOUN AUSTIN – Eddie was born in Wilson, Wilson, North Carolina, to parents Ann HUNSUCKER and Francis Brison AUSTIN, Sr. He died on 26 Aug 1891 in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia. 14 Oct 1831 – ELIZABETH REBECCA MONTOGOMERY GEIGER – Elizabeth (my 2nd great-grandmother) was born in Jasper County, Georgia. She married James Michael GEIGER on 29 Apr 1852. They had four children: Benjamin Franklin, Charles Jenkins, Mary Jane, and Emma L. She died on 17 Oct 1866 at the age of 35. 14 Oct 1899 – IOLENE HARPER – Iolene (my 2nd cousin 2x removed) was born to parents Carrie UNKNOWN and Edward A. HARPER in Rockdale County, Georgia. She died on 15 Nov 1969 in Conyers, Rockdale, Georgia, at the age of 70. 15 Oct 1786 – ROSANNAH SHORT SWANN – Rosannah, my 3rd great-grandmother, was born on 15 Oct 1786 in Rowan County, North Carolina. In 1804, she married Thomas SWAN in Rowan County. After the death of Thomas, she moved to Newton County, Georgia where she was enumerated on the 1850 US Federal Census. She died at the age of 71 on 08 Jun 1858 in Rockdale County, Georgia. She was buried in Conyers, Rockdale, Georgia, in the Smyrna Presbyterian Church Cemetery. |William "Bill" Thomas| 15 Oct 1914 – WILLIAM BURRINGTON THOMAS – Uncle Bill was born in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia. His parents were Kathryne “Katie” Elizabeth AUSTIN and Raymond Mitchell THOMAS, Sr. He lived in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia until he moved to Columbus, Muscogee, Georgia, in the 1960’s. His first marriage was to Sue UNKNOWN, which ended in divorce. They had a daughter, Sharon Kathryne. His second marriage was to Margie UNKNOWN. This marriage produced a son, John Robert. Uncle Bill died on 08 Dec 1992 in Columbus, Muscogee, Georgia, and was buried in Hillcrest Abbey Memorial Park Cemetery (Lot J152) in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia. 16 Oct 1857 – WILLIAM CLIFFORD THOMAS – William, the youngest son of Sarah Jane ENGLISH and Joseph H. THOMAS, was born in Chatham County, Georgia. He was listed on the 1860 and 1870 US Federal Census sheets living in Chatham County, Georgia. In 1880, he was living in Bryan County. The 1900 US Federal Census lists him in Bulloch County, Georgia, where he resided until his death. He was married to Gabriella BOWIE and they had a daughter, Ruby. After Gabriella’s death, he married Elizabeth JOHNSON (about 1909). Their marriage produced three children: Jewell June, Pearl E., and William Clifford, Jr. In his early years, he worked in a sawmill, and later as a farmer. He died on 10 Jan 1922 in Statesboro, Bulloch, Georgia. The Georgia Death Certificate (Bulloch County) is signed by his wife, Mrs. W. C. Thomas. He is listed as “Willy” in the Thomas Family Bible. 18 Oct 1874 – VIRGIL MACK LEFTWICH – Virgil (2nd cousin 2x removed) was born to parents Clementine Green PARKER and James Mack LEFTWICH. He died on 23 Aug 1876 and was buried in Rockdale, Georgia, in the Smyrna Campground - Presbyterian Church Cemetery. 19 Oct 1882 – WILLIAM PALMER AUSTIN – Will (my grand uncle) was born on 19 Oct 1882 in Wilson, Wilson, North Carolina, to parents Annie HUNSUCKER and Francis Brison AUSTIN, Sr. Will was married to Margaret ROBERTSON on 26 May 1902 in Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina. He lived in Louisville, Jefferson, Kentucky, in 1910. He married Callie WARD on 07 Jul 1913 in Raleigh, Wake, North Carolina. He married Helen O. BROWN in Nov 1928 in Raleigh, Wake, North Carolina. The 1930 US Federal Census shows Helen and Raleigh lived in Albuquerque, Bernalillo, New Mexico. He died on 03 Nov 1954 in El Paso, Texas. He was also known as Willie. Will was the oldest brother of my great-grandmother, Kathryne Elizabeth AUSTIN (THOMAS). 21 Oct 1874 – WILLIAM COLLIER HARPER – William (1st cousin 2x removed) was born in Georgia. His parents were Mary Frances HENDERSON and James Edward HARPER. He married Della Bell MIZELL around 1900. 23 Oct 1849 – ALPHA BIBB POSEY (MADDOX) - Alpha (1st cousin 3x removed) was born in Georgia. She married James Elisha MADDOX. They had six children, Lawson, Lee, Eva, Augusta, Julian E., and Theo O. She died on 21 July 1926 in Fulton County, Georgia, and was buried in Old Conyers Cemetery in Conyers, Rockdale, Georgia. Adelaide’s granddaughter, Alice SALTER told me that Edwin believed his middle name “Wilbert” was the surname of his natural parents. He is shown on the 1900 US Federal Census as the adopted son of Margaret SALTER. He named his first three children with the middle name of "Wilbert." 23 Oct 1881 – ADELAIDE THOMAS (SALTER, WARNER) – Adelaide was born in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia. She married Edwin Wilbert SALTER on 23 Oct 1899 in Savannah (Christ Church, St. Michael's Chapel). She is enumerated in both the Savannah, Chatham, Georgia 1900 US Federal Census (living in parents household) as well as in the Lacey, Ocean, New Jersey 1900 census (living in mother-in-law’s household). They had four children: Augustus Wilbert, Burrington (Burton) Wilbert, Madeleine Wilbert, and John Thomas. Their marriage ended in divorce on 27 Oct 1913. She married John Joseph WARNER on 12 Apr 1916 in Petersburg, Dinwiddie, Virginia. They had one son, Wilfred Digges. She married William G. GUTERMAN about 1920. She married Eldridge FORD about 1937. She died on 09 Feb 1953 and was buried on 13 Feb 1953 in Suitland, Prince George's, Maryland (Washington National Cemetery - Section N, Lot 520, Site 2). |Portrait of Adelaide Thomas Warner owned by | Joseph Patrick Warner (grandson) 26 Oct 1820 – MARGARET ANN HARPER PARKER – Margaret (2nd great-grand-aunt) was born in Georgia to parents Rhoda GREEN and Henry Austin HARPER. She married David Mack PARKER. They had ten children: infant daughter, Palastine M., Clementine Green, Sarah M, William, Henry Austin, John W., Lemuel D., Martha, and Hager/Hagen: She died on 19 Nov 1877 in Rockdale, Georgia, USA. She was buried in Rockdale, Georgia, USA (Family Cemetery, Highway 212). Her husband, David, married my great-grandparents in a ceremony that was held at the home of Nancy and Edward Harper. 26 Oct 1878 – THEODOSIA THOMAS – The infant daughter of Adelaide Almira LAVIER and John Augustus THOMAS, Theodosia, was born and died on 26 Oct 1878 in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia. She was buried in Savannah, Chatham, Georgia (Lot 796, Laurel Grove Cemetery). Gussie and my mom (Frances SWANN (THOMAS)) were great “cousin” friends! The families visited each other often when they were children and the visits continued the rest of their lives. Gussie loved to crochet and was always making things for family members. She loved to tease and there was never a dull moment when she was around. I always enjoyed our visits to her home and her visits to see us in Savannah. 27 Oct 1913 – GUSSIE MAHONE HAMMOCK – Gussie was born to parents Julia B. SWANN and James Fletcher MAHONE, Sr., on 27 Oct 1913 in Henry County, Georgia. Gussie married Orestus (Russ) C. HAMMOCK. They had one son, Otis Franklin HAMMOCK (named after his mother’s favorite uncle and my grandfather, Otis Franklin SWANN). She died on 16 Jun 1974 in Henry County, Georgia, and was buried in Locust Grove, Henry, Georgia. |Gussie Mahone Hammock| |Frank Austin, Jr.| My great-grandmother (Annie) lived with Uncle Frank and Aunt Eva as far back as I can remember. Most Sunday afternoons my family visited my maternal grandparents (Eddye Mae and Otis Swann). At some point during those afternoons, we walked around the corner to Uncle Frank’s house to visit them and Grandmother Austin. Many times when I was playing in Mama Swann’s backyard, I heard Uncle Frank typing in his office located in the back of the house. I always enjoyed going to their house and usually saw Aunt Georgia, Aunt Daisy, and Uncle Fred there. Aunt Eva always had cookies for us. 29 Oct 1876 – EDWARD HOLLOWAY – Edward HOLLOWAY, Jr., was born to parents Jessey THOMAS and Edward HOLLOWAY on 29 Oct 1876 in New Jersey. He married Grace E UNKNOWN in 1898. They had two sons: Paul E. and Robert L. Edward died in Mar 1966 in Clementon, Camden, New Jersey. |James Edward Harper| 30 Oct 1843 – JAMES EDWARD HARPER – James Edward was born in Georgia to parents Nancy TOWNSEND and Edward HARPER. He married Mary Frances HENDERSON about 1865. They had nine children: Hattie, Nancy, Robert Lee, Edward Cole, William Collier, Gordon, Solomon Graves, James Longstreet, and Franklin Euell. He died on 15 Jan 1912 in Orange County, Florida. He was buried in Orlando, Orange, Florida (East Conway Cemetery). (NOTE: Most of the information I have on the James Edward HARPER family came from Shirley HARPER (SWISHER), great-granddaughter. Shirley died 07 Apr 2007. I never personally met Shirley, but we talked over the phone several times and exchanged many emails and family photos.) |Kathryne Thomas Brunson| Photo owned by Lindsey A. Brunson (grandson) Aunt Kathryne was a beautiful lady. All three of her brothers loved her dearly and would do anything she told them to do. Her mother died when she was eight years old and the welfare of her brothers (ages six, four, and two) was her concern. My earliest memory of Aunt Kathryne was when she walked in one day while my dad was playing on the floor with my brother and me. She looked down at him and said “Get up from there and give me a hug.” Before Daddy come move she fell down on the floor with him. This upset me and I wondered, “WHO was this beautiful woman that was kissing and hugging MY Dad?” and I ran to get my Mom. When I was in my late teens and she was sick with cancer, we found we could knit on each other’s projects and no one could tell where one of us stopped and the other began. I have never had that happen with any person other than her. She was bedridden and knitting an afghan the last time I visited her. She made me promise I would finish it for her if she weren’t able to do so. Sadly, I finished it for her. It was a beautiful afghan with lovely cables. I kept the cable hook she used on the afghan and I treasure it to this day. She was always energetic and fun, but she ran a tight ship.

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August 15, 2008 (by Capt. Gabe Johnson) - In the transition from Soviet-built MiG-29s and Su-22s to American-built F-16s, Poland takes on one of NATO's most aggressive fighter up-starts known as "Peace Sky". First Lt. Adam Jantas (left), a Polish Air Force student pilot, goes over his morning sortie with F-16 instructor pilot Maj. Julian Pacheco on the 162nd FW flightline. A new generation of Polish Air Force pilots are learning how to fly their country's most advanced fighter, the F-16C/D block 52 "Jastrzab" or Hawk as it's called, from the Arizona Air National Guard. To date, the Central European country has received 41 of the 48 F-16s it has on order, and is rapidly increasing its number of qualified pilots with help from seasoned instructors at the 162nd Fighter Wing based at Tucson International Airport. "When the program started here in 2004 we were training Poland 's senior pilots and squadron commanders. These days we're training their junior pilots," said Lt. Col. Will Johnson, an instructor pilot in charge of the wing's Polish program. "We've graduated about 34 Polish pilots so far, and we anticipate that there will be more to come." Polish fighter pilots undergo a rigorous selection process at home to fly the F-16 - the future of their country's Air Force. The Su-22 Fitter, for example, is scheduled for retirement in 2012 prompting more pilots to apply for the Peace Sky program. First Lt. Adam Jantas is one of seven Polish Air Force pilots currently half-way through the initial F-16 course. He's a graduate of Poland's Air Force Academy and has eight years of fighter pilot experience in the Su-22. "It was my goal to train in the U.S.," said the lieutenant. "I've been here for two years. I started at language school at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas then I went to T-38 training at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. My final phase is here." Jantas flies an average of two or three times per week, but in the first months he flew as much as five times per week. "In the beginning it was good to fly often so I could practice. Sometimes long breaks are not good when you are learning something difficult, and repetition is very important," he said. Jantas and his countrymen are not only learning a new aircraft, but also a new way to fly. "Take offs and landings I can do, but all the other stuff in the F-16 is very difficult," he said. With 40 F-16 hours under his belt, Jantas observed that the F-16 inflicts more G forces, and requires more aggressive flying. "The airplane's fly-by-wire system and computer keeps us from exceeding the limitations of the fighter," he said. "Before, I had to be more careful not to exceed [the Su-22's] limitations." According to Colonel Johnson, the goal is to get the Polish Air Force to fly like the U.S. Air Force. "We teach Polish students that fighters can be flexible," said Johnson. "We teach them that when you make a flight plan, that's a good starting point, that's where we're going to deviate from. We teach them to adapt, and they like it. They like to have the ability to take off and make decisions." Since Poland adopted the F-16, it's changing its ways. Pilots are learning to plan the mission prior to take off, which gives their sorties added flexibility. "At home I would spend two or three days planning sorties and then go fly several in a day," said Jantas. "I knew exactly what I was going to do in those sorties, but here it changes everyday. Just when you think you've learned something, you will also be introduced to something new at the same time." The real learning begins at debrief when student and instructor review video from the flight and all questions are answered. "Our instructors are like mothers who love you and are eager to correct you when you do something wrong, but they do it because they care about you and they want to help you," he said. "They know what they are doing, and I see that they have a lot of experience and a lot of patience. They just calmly say, 'Ok, don't do that again.'" When Jantas and his compatriots graduate this winter, they will return to flying squadrons in Poland. Their instructors know they will see them again. "We've been sending our members to a base in Poznan for the last two years as mobile training teams," said Colonel Johnson. "The teams consist of three pilots and they spend three months at a time assisting Polish F-16 pilots keeping them current on their training," Johnson himself has visited the country nine times to assist former students. "It's a great county, the people are nice and the food is great. As a former Soviet republic they have really adopted capitalism. They have joined the West from a free market standpoint, and they are good allies for our country." The unofficial motto of the Peace Sky program is "We are more than allies, we are friends." Everywhere U.S. troops are deployed in the War on Terror, Polish troops are there also. "Seeing them succeed gives me a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction," said Johnson. "We will continue to build our alliance with them, and it's a great feeling knowing that the work we do here in Tucson is translating into a safer environment in other parts of the world."

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://www.f-16.net/news_article3014.html

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en

Authors: Tindle HA, Shiffman S, Hartman AM, Bost JE Title: Switching to "lighter" cigarettes and quitting smoking. Journal: Tob Control 18(6):485-90 Date: 2009 Dec Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Smokers who switch to "lighter" cigarettes may be diverted from quitting smoking. We assessed factors associated with switching and the association between switching and (1) making a quit attempt, and (2) recent quitting, yielding a measure of net quitting (attempts x recent quitting). DESIGN: In 2003, a total of 30 800 ever-smokers who smoked in the past year provided history of switching and 3 reasons for switching: harm reduction, quitting smoking and flavour. Among those who made a past-year quit attempt, recent quitting was defined as >or=90-day abstinence when surveyed. Multivariable logistic regression identified determinants of outcomes. RESULTS: In all, 12 009 (38%) of ever-smokers switched. Among switchers, the most commonly cited reasons were flavour only (26%) and all 3 reasons (18%). Switchers (vs non-switchers) were more likely to make a quit attempt between 2002 and 2003 (51% vs 41%, p<0.001, adjusted odds ratio (AOR) 1.58, (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.48 to 1.69)), but less likely to have recently quit (9% vs 17%, p<0.001; AOR 0.40 (95% CI 0.35 to 0.45)), yielding lower overall net quitting (4.3% vs 7.0%, p<0.001; AOR 0.54, (95% CI 0.47 to 0.61)). The effects of switching on outcomes were most pronounced for reasons including quitting smoking, whereas switching for harm reduction alone had no association with outcomes. CONCLUSION: Compared with no switching, a history of switching was associated with 46% lower odds of net quitting.

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http://appliedresearch.cancer.gov/cgi-bin-pubsearch/pubsearch/abstract.pl?id=3090

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en

How is manufacturing doing? Today we received two separate reports: industrial production from the Federal Reserve and the Empire State Manufacturing Survey from the New York Fed. What we see is that recent production points to tepid growth, but what is coming down the pike might be more positive. In January, manufacturing output decreased 0.4%, after upwardly revised gains of 1.1% in December and 1.7% in November. For the fourth quarter as a whole, manufacturing production is now estimated to have advanced 1.9% at an annual rate; previously, the increase was reported to have been 0.2%. Production is 1.7% above year-ago levels. Of course, this points to sub-2% growth for the sector in months past, roughly corresponding to real final sales more broadly. However, manufacturers tend to produce on the basis of estimates for new sales, as they try to anticipate what consumers and businesses are likely to buy in coming months so as to have enough stock on hand. Of course, another factor is how much inventory retailers and wholesalers already have. Ample inventories likely played a role in relatively softer current production. That doesn't mean that conditions going forward are expected to remain tepid. We can look to what manufacturers expect in coming months by looking to survey data, such as the Empire State report from the New York Federal Reserve. The New York Fed district includes a greater proportion of high-tech firms than do some of the other Fed districts, so the Philly Fed survey, which includes more heavy industry and automotive businesses, may show different results when it is released next week. In the New York Fed district, the general business conditions surged 18 points to 10.0, now in positive territory, where zero is the dividing line between expansion and contraction. The new-orders index also rose sharply, climbing 20 points to 13.3, and the shipments index increased 16 points to 13.1. And the index for number of employees rose for a third consecutive month and, at 8.1, registered its first positive reading since September, though the average workweek index remained negative. Twenty-nine percent of respondents reported that conditions had improved over the month, while 19% -- a significantly lower percentage than in the January survey -- reported that conditions had worsened. In the previous month's survey, 26% of businesses reported better conditions, while 34% reported worse conditions. And we can infer from capital-spending plans that manufacturers might be expecting even better conditions ahead. A supplemental question posed to the respondents in the Empire State survey showed that dollars budgeted to spend on new equipment and software in 2013 are up 11% from what was spent in 2012. (However, roughly the same proportion of respondents indicated that they expect to increase capital spending as said they expect to lower it.) The most widely cited factors constraining 2013 capital investment plans were tax and regulatory considerations. We still have the sequestration -- the spending cuts by the federal government -- that look likely to take effect on March 1. Right now, Congress doesn't seem especially motivated to avoid these cuts, though efforts are under way in the Senate to address this issue. While this likely won't cause a recession, it does mean that the federal government will be placing fewer orders from manufacturers, and this will slow economic growth more broadly. And the reversion of the payroll tax rate to its previous levels -- which can reduce many workers' take-home pay by 2% -- can very well crimp consumer spending. Still, James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, said in a recent speech, "This year seems to be characterized by less macroeconomic uncertainty compared to previous years," he said. "This bodes well for U.S. macroeconomic prospects in 2013." And while there are headwinds from fiscal policy, the fact that we now know what is happening is sufficient to cause manufacturers to become more confident, as we see in the Empire State data. Thus, one important constraint to growth -- uncertainty -- seems to have been reduced. And that is a good thing.

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/02/15/2013/manufacturers-see-better-times-ahead?puc=rm

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en

On February 26, we are, I think, likely to see Viola Davis walk to the stage to accept a Best Actress Oscar for playing a maid. It will have been about 26,000 days — is that a lot or a little? — since Hattie McDaniel won an Academy Award for her role as Gone With the Wind’s house slave Mammy and tearfully expressed the hope that she would “always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry.” How far we’ve come. How far we haven’t. Historically, the Academy has awarded some Oscars as an expression of self-congratulation, some as an act of atonement, and some as a pure recognition of excellence. Davis’ win would represent all of the above and then some. She wouldn’t be the first African-American to take the Best Actress prize (that was Halle Berry a decade ago). But an award to Davis for making the absolute most of an imperfect part in an even more imperfect movie with a terribly imperfect grasp of history would be the truest definition of a milestone: A mark along a path by which progress can be assessed, and perhaps also found wanting. Finally, we have a category with the kind of churning emotion and uneasy subtext that too much of this steadily room-temperature Oscar season has been lacking. Whenever one brings up race and the Academy Awards, outrage can flare. Some people may imagine I’m suggesting Davis will or should win because she’s black. That’s nonsense, but you’d have to be willfully blinkered to watch The Help, vote in the Oscars, and never even let the issue of Hollywood’s treatment of African-American women flit across your consciousness. Others argue that merely raising the topic is “playing the race card,” a phrase now used mostly by people who like to believe that the whole thing was settled long ago and don’t appreciate being reminded that the playing field remains so profoundly unlevel that you cannot even call it a playing field. So to clarify: In a category boasting five fine performances, I’d say Davis takes it on merit. Rooney Mara is terrific in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but Lisbeth Salander would be a showcase for any young actress, and voters haven’t yet seen enough of Mara to assess what she gave the part that’s all her own. Glenn Close is constrained by a role that is entirely about being constrained; in Albert Nobbs, she creates a surface with impeccable precision, but the character’s interior is a mostly unfurnished room. And few other actresses could have combined technical brilliance (the voice, the walk, the breathing, the singing) with the intuitive empathy that Michelle Williams brought to My Week With Marilyn. But the movie’s version of Monroe is filtered through a protagonist so self-regarding that he can’t seem to decide whether his story is “The Week She Changed My Life” or “The Week I Changed Her Life.” That framework, a series of brief encounters with a smug, starstruck nit, rarely lets Williams go as deep as she clearly can. That leaves Meryl Streep and Davis. And it’s close. Streep’s portrayal of the octogenarian Margaret Thatcher in dementia ranks with the greatest work she’s done. No actor alive better understands how to use elaborate makeup as a tool without being defined or buried by it; somehow, she becomes an imperious, frightened, and lost old woman struggling to remember her place in the world. Streep may be overstating matters to call the story “King Lear for girls,” but if she ever wants to play Lear, I’m there. Unfortunately, that still leaves the other two-thirds of Iron Lady, which lets its subject down by insisting that the most — no, the only — interesting thing about Thatcher is that she was a woman in a world of male power. There’s a campy scene in Mommie Dearest (OK, many, but bear with me) when the widowed Joan Crawford tells off an all-male Mad Men-era boardroom by bellowing, “Don’t f--- with me, fellas! This ain’t my first time at the rodeo!” That’s a fun idea for a moment, but not for a whole movie. And for a subject as complex as Thatcher, it’s fatal. Sometimes it seems Academy voters invent new excuses every year to make Streep their second choice, but this weekend’s last-ditch campaign from the Weinstein Company, built around a quote reminding everyone that she hasn’t won an Oscar for 29 years, feels unsubtle and, as a tactic, insulting. Streep — who has handled this awards season with typical grace — doesn’t need a sympathy Oscar in 2012 or any other year. If she doesn’t win for Iron Lady, it won’t be because voters failed her but because the movie did: How fully can you play a politician without politics? On the other hand, perhaps this is the version of Thatcher that Streep preferred to play. After all, she’s Meryl Streep; if she’d wanted a different script, she probably would have gotten one. Davis doesn’t have that kind of clout. It means next to nothing in Hollywood that she won two Tonys for her performances in August Wilson plays. (One of them, the searing family drama Fences, in which she and Denzel Washington were husband and wife, has been in and out of film development for 25 years. Hollywood, if not now, and with that cast, then when?) Over the years, Davis did TV guest spots and occasional series work, as actresses who are not movie stars do. But well before breaking through with an Oscar-nominated role opposite Streep in Doubt, she routinely gave the kind of small supporting performances in movies for Oliver Stone, Stephen Gaghan, and (three times) Steven Soderbergh that made the most of her limited screen time. With her deep voice, her gravity, and her gift for restrained sorrow and quiet moral authority, Davis often gets cast as responsible people — detectives, doctors, social workers, cops. Once she was a mayor; once she was the head of the CIA. Either she hasn’t been asked to play a maid very often, or she has declined those roles; before The Help, her one memorable stint as a housekeeper was in Todd Haynes’ brilliant Far From Heaven, in which she and Haynes seemed to collaborate on an onscreen deconstruction of the qualities of a 1950s film domestic. The Help was different: At 45, Davis was finally given the opportunity to play the lead in a studio movie. (Are we really still not going to talk about race, and how much sooner that opportunity might have come otherwise?) But it meant wearing that uniform and holding a little blonde white girl in her lap while saying, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” I don’t know what it cost Davis emotionally to go there for her first high-stakes starring role, or what argument, if any, she had with herself beforehand. I’ve talked to tough, smart black actresses who say that a great part is a great part, and other equally tough, smart black actresses who simply, categorically, do not want to play maids or slaves, just as I’ve met Arab-American actors who felt they had to turn down the golden opportunity to be killed by Kiefer Sutherland on 24. You don’t get to call them prima donnas unless you yourself have spent years facing the hard knowledge that regardless of your talent and training, a huge percentage of what you’re going to get offered is the chance to play an ethnic cliché. Yes, Hattie McDaniel elevated a caricature by dint of sheer talent. It was 72 years ago. In 2012, we should be further than we are past the sentimentality of Mammy’s “I done raise that chile from a baby.” The Help’s racial politics aren’t Gone With the Wind’s, but, as I wrote when the movie opened, it’s far too comfortable trafficking in clichés about super-maternal black women whose compassion and capacity to nurture always trumps their anger. Faced with the peril of that archetype, Davis did the hardest job of anyone in the Best Actress category: She made the movie better — much better — without playing against it. Much of The Help is bright, candy-colored, and loud: It’s full of silly wigs and garish costumes, sitcom slapstick and shit pies, wicked old dears like Sissy Spacek, finger-snappin’ Designing Women tell-offs, and the kind of steroidal pivots from comedy to poignancy to melodrama that would shame an episode of Glee. What Davis gives the film is humanity. Aibileen is a gentle but wary woman — she’s lived long enough to know that in her world, you survive by bending, not breaking, by keeping your thoughts to yourself, by seeing and hearing everything while appearing to register very little, and by trying to apply your own sense of decency and kindness to a badly needed paying job in an often indecent and unkind world. When she’s on-screen, the hummingbird shrieks of the movie’s other characters are hushed; you’re reminded that the human toll of daily, casual racism doesn’t really get addressed by making Bryce Dallas Howard eat poo. Because Davis is a physically gifted actress who can incorporate the exhaustion and strain of being Aibileen into every motion and muscle, and also the rare performer — even in this year of The Artist and Max von Sydow — whose silences draw you even closer, she seems to correct The Help’s excesses without ever standing self-protectively outside it. At every turn, she un-simplifies the movie. There are many ways Hollywood should respond to a performance that good. An Oscar would be a fine start. When she won the Screen Actors Guild award last month, Davis cited two actresses: Cicely Tyson, her inspiration in childhood, and Streep, her inspiration in college. Those names represent two different pasts and two possible futures. Tyson, whose early-‘70s performance in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman moved Pauline Kael to praise her “supreme integrity” and predict that she was “on her way” to becoming one of the all-time greats, never had the career she should have had. Streep, on the other hand, continues to fulfill and then redefine everything we imagine a great actress can do. And Davis? She’s got a movie called Won’t Back Down in the can and has just signed for a couple of supporting roles, but the big thing? The movie built around her? The amazing new part that her starring role in a smash hit should bring about? The passion project she now has the clout to make? That hasn’t happened yet. An Oscar would represent acknowledgment for a job extremely well done. But maybe it could also serve as a kind of promise from an industry that knows it’s got to start meeting talent like hers at least halfway.

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http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/42932/oscarmetrics-viola-davis-the-help-and-hollywoods-ongoing-issues-with-race

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en

Definition: BOMA (noun)- family, village, animals, community, culture, environment, and the essence of a place. Origin: Maasai This March, Jason and I were selected to be one of the three pairs of students this year participating in Project BOMA. Our goal is to show each other our boma. Along the way we learn about each other, how our families live, and the regions in which we live. The first leg of our journey took us to my home in Lancaster County where I have lived for all of the 18 years of my life. I was really nervous about bringing Jason home with me. I know that Jason and I get along really well, and that we have been living in the same dorm this year, but I didn’t know how my home life would mix with my college life. I wasn’t even sure how much I have changed over the past year and how it would be for me to come home and revisit the places that were central to my life a year ago. Now I know that home is still home even though I have changed so much during my freshman year. The places stay the same and the people continue on with their lives. However, as I have grown this year, my perspective has changed. We went to my high school several times, and it all seems so small now. I show Jason my AP classes and talk with my teachers, but he tells me of how his entire high school was as good as those select students whom I considered the intellectually elite group a year ago. The fields, farms, and trees that I took for granted are now places of peace and slow quiet life after living in Easton for the school year. As I take Jason hiking through the forests, I relax and blend into the environment where I grew up and spent many weekends throughout the years. I see memories around every corner as I tell him about catching crayfish in the streams and writing poetry by a waterfall. As I walk with him around my neighborhood, each house holds a story for me. Those memories make this place really home to me. Now as we continue to my grandmother’s house which is my summer getaway in Colorado, I look forward to making many new memories with Jason.

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://voices.lafayette.edu/2012/05/23/taking-a-chinese-to-lancaster-county/

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en

Her mother was 14 years old when she married Everline’s father. She was his fourth wife. CFCA social workers in the area of Kisumu, Kenya, see many sponsored children come from polygamous families. They encourage youth to retain traditions and customs that are worthwhile and discard those that can be harmful. They teach girls like Everline to believe in themselves and pursue a good education. ìI think itís an outdated tradition,î Everline said. ìMy wish is to excel in my education and have a good job so that I do not have to get married to a polygamous man.”

<urn:uuid:d2335e84-262b-450c-a58b-197707871bef>

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http://blog.cfcausa.org/2011/09/21/sponsored-child-polygamy-is-outdated-tradition/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=e5382928c8

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en

The role of Canberra as the National Capital, and its development in accordance with an overall design concept, has produced an urban environment of a high quality. The city’s urban design is characterised by its physical form, its functions and its quality, at a variety of scales and perspectives. The NCA is seeking to promote high-quality design to achieve a more attractive and sustainable National Capital. Well-designed buildings, infrastructure and landscape projects make a lasting contribution to the public realm, provide more people-friendly streetscapes, and result in a more economically, socially and environmentally resilient city. Click the following links for more urban design information or use the navigation sub-menu links on the right hand side of the page. |Last Updated on Friday, 30 March 2012 11:23|

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CC-MAIN-2013-20

http://www.nationalcapital.gov.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2273&Itemid=865

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en

I’ve been reading a lot these days about the good old days of dirt tracks in California and how much better off racing was before the installation of synthetic tracks. But I would just like to offer a slightly different perspective on the subject – a perspective from someone who has worked in racing in California for 30 years and been a witness to many changes. With the rain cancellations we have experienced this season, it is natural to draw comparisons to the good old days of dirt tracks when racing was rarely ever cancelled due to weather. But there is so much more involved here than just a “show must go on” ideology. Sure, we ran in the slop. I watched many races in pouring rain, when the horses looked like they were running in pea soup and the horses and riders ended up completely coated with mud. But I also remember riders saying it was like “running on concrete.” I remember horrific breakdowns. What we need to remember is that the times have changed in more ways than one. We haven’t been the victims of some cruel hoax; we didn’t have the synthetic tracks forced on us against our better judgment. Rather, California racing was trying to do what it has always done: boldly lead the industry to make racing safer for both the equine and human athletes. I think we can be proud, out here in California, of the “kinder, gentler” racing industry we have become. In my early days, in the 70’s and 80’s, the newspapers were not filled with statistics about the number of injuries and breakdowns on the racetracks, but not because injuries were nonexistent. But things began to change in this country. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) was founded in 1980. Drug testing became a common part of sports, from baseball to horseracing. Where once you never heard about what happened to horses when they were finished racing, today there are more high profile equine retirement facilities and programs than you can shake a stick at (if that’s your idea of fun). It has all been part of an overall trend to examine the traditional ways we have been doing things, to put them under scrutiny, make people accountable, and establish the highest levels of safety and integrity in sports. As a student of history, I know it is human nature to glorify the good old days. Perhaps it is a blessing of our nature that we remember the good times while allowing the troubles and tribulations to fade into the recesses of memory. On the other hand, if we truly want to learn from history we have to be objective. Maybe the good old days had their drawbacks too. Before we forge ahead, I hope everyone involved in the decision making process will make their best effort to uncover the truth and to carefully examine the available statistics on injury rates both on dirt and synthetic tracks. The future of our sport depends on the decisions we make now. These are the good old days.

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http://maryforney.blogspot.com/2010/03/for-what-its-worth.html?showComment=1267810461827

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en

I laughed when I wrote the title for this post. Just the thought of pondering anything in an 19th century corset sounds stifling! Haha! But, anyhow, that is what we will be talking about today. Corsets! I got the idea to research this after reading Siri Mitchell's book, She Walks in Beauty and everything Clara had to endure to get the "perfect" waist size. So to begin with, for any non-historical readers out there, a corset is a garment worn to shape the woman's waist into a desired shape. The first thought that might pop into your head (at least it popped into mine when I first heard of it) was "Cool! Something to make my figure look perfect!". But as I learned more about the corset, I found it more of an instrament of torture than to give a woman a nice figure. Just hearing the size of some of the woman's waists back then--18 inches--makes me cringe! (and Clara was forced to shrink her waist to a 16 inch! :-o) Where did corset's come from? Well, the created of bringing them into style goes to Cathrine de' Medici, wife of King Henry II of France. During the 1550's she enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance. I guess she had a problem and, since she was Queen, went to great lengths to see a bunch of thin-waisted women! (Talk about extreme! Wowza.) Over the years the corset has undergone many changes. Its interesting watching the clothing fashion for women change as the years roll by until, in the 1900s, the corsets slowly faded from history. While I in no way would want to force my waist to 16 inches, the corset seems like such a neat part of the 1800s--at least to me, it did. I love watching the special features to movie set years ago and listen to the actors complain about not being able to breath in the corsets! Haha! Make's me want to wear one just to experience it. :-) Well, that's all I have to say on corsets. If you have anything else to add about it, though, feel free to jump in with your knowledge in the comments section. I love learning more about our history!! :-D

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http://bookponderings.blogspot.com/2011/06/ponderin-pastin-corset.html

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en

As I got to the last part of my recent chair assembly, I decided to try a hunch and redesign my rockers. The rockers on my chairs have always been simply portions of a large circle with an area at the back that has a slightly larger radius. This flatter area at the back of the rockers acts as a brake, slowing the motion and helping it reverse. I have always felt that rockers that are simply a portion of a circle can rock back too far and make me tense. After years of "winging it", I decided to try laying out a parabola, which naturally and fluidly flattens out toward the ends. After some tinkering with the numbers, I settled on the dimensions and layout shown below. The layout is pretty simple (and cool!). Start with a baseline that is 38 inches long. Half way across it draw a perpendicular line that is marked at 4 1/8 inches and 8 1/4 inches off the baseline. Next draw lines from the ends of the baseline to the top mark on the perpendicular. Then mark off the sides into equal increments (the more the better). Finally, connect the lowest mark on one side to the highest on the other. Proceed up and down the sides as shown. The lines will form tangents to the parabola and give a relatively smooth curve. Here is the final rocker, in the chair. I found that by shifting the rockers forward or back, I could place the "brake" exactly where it is most comfortable. I'd be curious to know if anyone else has worked with parabolas this way, and if so, why didn't you tell me!

<urn:uuid:f613795f-5a94-4375-91dd-2aa764b4251c>

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Christine Pelosi Attorney, author and Democratic activist : Optimally this sordid week is a teaching moment for all to remember the golden rule of feminism - in actions personal and political, treat women as you wish your grandmother/mother/daughter/granddaughter to be treated. It is facile to link Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger (and Gingrich and Ensign and Spitzer and Edwards and ...), but as a former sex assault prosecutor I object to linking violent sex crime with a consensual affair. The court of law makes careful distinctions and so must the court of public opinion: let's not minimize the plight of the New York City chambermaid because she was allegedly violently assaulted in the same news cycle that an allegedly consensual affair became known. To the question about men misbehaving sexually: there is nothing wrong with powerful men that empowering women can't solve: the more women elected to office and the more feminist policy we practice, the more wholesome our society will be. Yes, men and women both abuse power, but we don't hear of successful female politicians mothering children of subordinates outside of marriage and I hope we never do. We are getting better: a generation ago, U.S. jury instructions could read "rape is a charge easy to make and hard to disprove" but now that would be improper. Before the OJ Simpson murder case, other uncharged acts of violence or sex assault were largely inadmissible while the victim's past behavior was fair game; now that is largely reversed. Again, these advancements in courts of law should also be practiced in courts of public opinion. Certainly there is more our laws must do to protect crime victims and to put a humane face on the justice system so that women are not victimized twice - first when assaulted and second when coming forward. There is more we can do to practice the golden rule of feminism and ask boors how they'd like their daughters to be treated by randy old men in the workplace. Too many women encountering boorish powerful men feel that if they say no they could end up where the chambermaid is. It is interesting that two other Strauss-Kahn accusers, each more powerful and well-connected than the chambermaid came forward after she did. Credit one gutsy lady, some compassionate coworkers and law enforcement personnel, and more feminist laws for an apparently long-needed pursuit of justice.

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Slate: Do Prisoners Really Spend All Their Time Lifting Weights? The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that crowding at California prisons constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, and ordered the state to reduce the number of inmates by more than 30,000. An outraged Justice Scalia dissented, noting that many of the released prisoners "will undoubtedly be fine physical specimens who have developed intimidating muscles pumping iron in the prison gym." Do people really get super-buff in the slammer? While the latent homoeroticism of Scalia's dissenting opinion reminded me of The Onion, I thought I'd take a moment on this topic. Slate continues: Not anymore. It's true that most state and federal prisons had extensive collections of free weights and weight machines through the 1980s, and that inmates could spend significant portions of their days bulking up. But that all changed around 20 years ago. As stories about prison gyms spread in popular culture, they became an increasing source of public concern. Some shared Scalia's worry that muscle-bound ex-cons would be even more dangerous after their release, and legislators across the country responded. In 1996, an amendment to an appropriations bill expressly prohibited the federal Bureau of Prisons from purchasing "training equipment for boxing, wrestling, judo, karate, or other martial art, or any bodybuilding or weightlifting equipment of any sort." Many states, including California, made the same decision, either by statute or policy. These days, whatever free weights you'd still find in U.S. prisons are decades old. Despite popular approval, sociologists and many prison officials have criticized the prohibition on weights in correctional facilities. Some research suggests that weight lifting decreases aggression among inmates. Wardens have noted that idleness is the biggest threat to order in a prison, and weight lifting gives the convicts something to do. As a former inmate myself, I have a firm, hard, well-toned opinion on this topic, even if it is still a little bulky around the midriff. It's all the sugar in my diet, I know. Judge Scalia's dissenting opinion isn't all that surprising: the eroticization of prisons and prisoners has been with us for a long time. I'm sure there's plenty of films set in mens' prisons, but frankly, I tend to notice these ones more: Starring, of course, the inimitable Brigitte Nielsen. Maybe they'll do one with Lindsay Lohan, now that she's actually been inside and all? She is kinda hot. Wait, that wasn't my point at all. This notion that prisoners can't have weights is based on two distinct ideas, one somewhat scientific and the other not. Firstly, the more scientific one is a claim that weightlifting and similar pursuits increase aggressiveness. It doesn't seem to be true. A similar one is the idea that pornography leads to more violence and "a hostile environment", which isn't true in society at large, so one wouldn't expect it to be true in prison. Nonetheless, South Carolina still bans pornography from its prisoners, which the ACLU has challenged and been criticized for by Radley Balko, which I thought was damned odd. The latter idea is perhaps best exemplified by the Zimmer Amendment, quoted in the Slate.com article. The amendment was introduced by congressman Dick Zimmer and passed by Congress in 1995 "To amend the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to prevent luxurious conditions in prisons." In Section 2, "Elimination of Luxurious Prison Conditions", the amendment demands not providing: "(vii) any instruction (live or through broadcasts) or training equipment for boxing, wrestling, judo, karate, or other martial art, or any bodybuilding or weightlifting equipment of any sort;" Although the amendment has since expired, it's left a legacy of Byzantine guidelines on what kind of exercise equipment is and isn't allowed in prisons. Most state and federal prisons still more or less abide by the terms of the Zimmer Amendment, and are phasing out weightlifting equipment by not replacing it as it wears out. So one strand of the argument against weights is "prison luxury", a staple of the law and order platform. Prison, they insist, must be a punishment, and prisoners shouldn't be allowed "luxuries" because they're being punished. The different views on the topic can pretty much be found in the New York Times article on the amendment. Here's the law-and-order plank: Behind all these measures, supporters say, is the idea of making prison a less pleasant place for repeat offenders to come back to. "To habitual criminals, prisons are resorts with televisions, weight-training facilities and libraries that some colleges would envy," said State Senator Gerald A. Cardinale of New Jersey, who has sponsored a no-frills measure called the People's Prison Act, which the Legislature will take up in the fall. "For a lot of them, jail time is just an extended vacation." Mr. Zimmer said: "When you break the law of the land, you should pay the price for your crime, not be rewarded with a vacation watching premium cable on your personal television." "Prisons have become mini-resorts and it's disgusting, and it's particularly disgusting to crime victims," said Mr. Deeds of the Law Enforcement Alliance, which enlists crime victims to campaign for harder prison conditions. "We strongly believe that prison is meant to be punishment, a deterrent and a prevention tool, not a resort experience." So when it's a womens' prison, our society fantasizes about lesbians and Brigitte Nielsen, but when it's a mens' prison, we fantasize about fine physical specimens pumping iron and watching cable TV. Both those fantasies have one thing in common: none of the people responsible for them have ever been to prison. For starters, the "women in prison" movies. I don't think the reality of a womens' prison sounds particularly sexy: Sexual aggression and abuse by male prison staff is widespread. (...) “In federal women’s correction facilities, 70% of guards are male,” reinforcing female inmates’ powerlessness. (...) In 2005, “the Office of the Inspector General and the DOJ released a report documenting widespread sexual abuse by prison employees nationwide, noting that only 37% had faced some kind of legal action. Of those, ¾ walked away with no more than probation. It took all of this evidence for the BOP to finally criminalize sexual contact as a felony in 2006, so that guards can actually face up to five years in prison”. However, “when authorities confimed that corrections staff had sexually abused inmates in their care, only 42% of those officers had their cases referred to prosecution; only 23% were arrested, and only 3% charged, indicted, or convicted. Fifteen per cent were actually allowed to keep their jobs”. Despite such legislative progress, women are fully dependent on the guards for basic necessities and privileges, and in many states, guards have access to inmates’ personal history files which can empower them to threaten prisoners’ children if the women retaliate. Female inmates who retaliate also face the loss of ‘good time’ for early parole in addition to prolonged periods of disciplinary segregation, and detrimental write-ups, which further deters acts of resistance. The fear incited by such threats as well as the concern that no one will believe them or that no one really cares can successfully silence women. Experience of sexual abuse in prison can greatly impede women’s capacity to reintegrate into society upon release. That's how far the reality of womens' prisons is from the exploitation movie fantasy. Mens' prisons are about as far from being the luxury resorts these concerned citizens imagine them to be, and as Scalia's opinion shows, they're about as far removed from the reality of prisons as the people making "women in prison" porn. In general, none of the people who speak with this authority about how easy and wonderful prison life is have experienced it. I'm sure many of them have visited a prison once or twice. I remember a delegation of Finnish members of parliament visiting the prison I was in: they walked around the block for about ten minutes, had lunch in the cafeteria and left. I'm sure that gives them an excellent grasp of the day-to-day realities of prison life. It's been pointed out that Judge Scalia should, you know, actually bother to find out such minutiae as whether prisoners are actually allowed to pump iron at the prison gym or not before committing it to writing in a court decision, but really, the way he handled it is perfectly in line with most commentary on prisons. While no-one familiar with the reality of womens' prisons would describe them as pornographic, I'm equally certain that very few people who've actually been living in correctional facilities would describe mens' prisons as "a vacation", let alone a "resort experience". Certainly, for some people, having walls and a roof as well as regular meals is a huge improvement on their living conditions, but not only are they in the minority, but they too suffer from the single biggest punishment prison inflicts. Even if it was a resort, it's one you can't leave. The whole discussion on prisons and prison conditions has made me think that being deprived of your freedom is a punishment that most people simply don't seem to understand. Take for instance a closed ward in prison, around where I'm from, or one of those secure housing units or whatever they're called on National Geographic, where you spend 23 hours of each day inside a tiny cell. I've been locked up in one of those, and I assure you, it isn't a holiday. No sane person would willingly choose to go to prison over their everyday life unless that everyday life is truly horrible. Even in the more open wards, the constant reality of being locked inside a small space and being unable to leave is a very real punishment. Having experienced it, it's somewhat bizarre for me to have to explain this, but the tone of law-and-order pundits everywhere makes it seem necessary. By the way, here's a note of reality that crept into the NY Times proceedings: Mr. Stout, who killed a man during a mugging in Newark in 1976, maintains that pumped-up prisoners do not stay strong for long. "In here," he said, "you have all the time in the world, so you work out. Once they get back out, they've got other worries, and they don't stay big for long." That's certainly true. A fitness or bodybuilding regime is fairly easy to adhere to when you're taken to the free gym regularly every week; when the gym costs money and takes personal initiative to get to, it's a whole lot harder... And it's this interface between life in an institution and life on the outside that raises the biggest questions of all about prison as punishment. From Wikipedia: Meta-analysis of previous studies shows that prison sentences do not reduce future offenses, when compared to non-residential sanctions. This meta-analysis of one hundred separate studies found that post-release offenses were around 7% higher after imprisonment compared with non-residential sanctions, at statistically significant levels. Another meta-analysis of 101 separate tests of the impact of prison on crime found a 3% increase in offending after imprisonment. Longer periods of time in prison make outcomes worse, not better; offending increases by around 3% as prison sentences increase in length. This raises the question of what the point of prisons is in the first place. Do we just want to punish people? It's worth remembering that nearly all prisoners will be freed, sooner or later. The longer they're kept inside and the harsher their punishment, the more brutalized and angry they'll be when they finally get out. When one takes into account studies such as this one on how difficult it is for ex-convicts to reintegrate into normal life, it becomes pretty obvious how the prison system works: all it seems to reliably do is ensure that inmates will end up back inside. There are alternatives to prison as punishment, mainly the much-maligned idea of rehabilitation. With such things as California's recent decision to release inmates due to overcrowding in mind, it needs to be remembered that not only is prison tremendously expensive, but the inmates aren't producing anything. Each prisoner is a twofold expense: they need to be provided for and their productivity is removed from the economy. The goal of rehabilitation is that a prisoner can return to society as a productive citizen, changing from an expense to society to a taxpayer. Of course, there are some individuals who can't be rehabilitated, but they are the exception, not the rule. Several studies show that many prison inmates have life goals that are very similar to those of the population at large; where they fail is in realizing those goals. As the study I linked to earlier shows, our penal and judicial systems are failing to help convicts realize those goals and are in fact actively working to make it harder for them. If what you want is punishment, it's worth reading this interview, where criminologist Peter Moskos quite seriously advocates the reintroduction of flogging as a punishment. I’m deadly serious. Given the choice between five years and ten lashes, wouldn’t you choose the lash? What does that say about prison? And if flogging were so bad, where’s the harm in offering it as a choice? Of course some people are too dangerous to release, but these people are kept behind bars simply because we’re afraid of them. But for most criminals, those we just want to punish, flogging is a more honest. It’s also a lot cheaper. Simply to bring our prison population down to levels we had until the 1970s, we’d have to release 85 percent of our prisoners. How are we going to do that unless we end the war on drugs or have alternative forms of punishment? Ironically, once people hear my idea, often they say that flogging isn’t harsh enough. It’s good to move beyond the facile position that flogging is too cruel to consider, but if you think flogging isn’t harsh enough—that we need to keep people locked up for years precisely because prison is so unbelievable horrible—then you may be a truly evil person. His point is excellent: if what you want from criminal policy is pure and simple punishment, then what's wrong with corporal punishment? Surely it'll have a deterrent effect! And given that we know prison doesn't, in fact, rehabilitate criminals, then why bother with it in the first place? As he points out: So California now says they’re not going to release prisoners who are a danger to society. But if they’re not a danger to society, why are they behind bars in the first place? If we just want to punish people for breaking the law, there are better—and cheaper—ways to do so. Yet somehow the idea of floggings as a punishment is repellent to us, but the idea of prison as a punishment isn't. I'll repeat myself by saying that I firmly believe that this is because everyone who is able to has most likely experienced physical pain, and so thinks they can imagine the pain of flogging; however, to those who haven't experienced prison, the simple reality of imprisonment doesn't seem to communicate itself at all. But to regard one as a cruel and inhuman punishment and the other as not smacks of hypocrisy to me. The focus on prison as a punishment is actively hostile to prison as rehabilitation. In my mind, this is largely because of a mentality created by law-and-order politicians and Hollywood, who depict crime as the actions of a criminal class determined to exploit society's weaknesses. If one takes the view that all crime is committed by hardened professional criminals, and also adopts the strangely antithetical idea that they'll stop being professional criminals if they're punished hard enough, then it makes sense to rail against "prison luxuries" and demand tougher treatment. But this idea isn't based on any perceivable reality; instead it's part of the culture of fear our politicians maintain to frighten us into compliance. As long as we make decisions on criminal policy based not on reality but on illusions, we're behaving irrationally. In this case, it means creating a judicial system that encourages and maintains crime. It's a worthwhile sociological question to ask whether this is, in fact, done on purpose, but that's a larger topic for another time. To wrap up, I'll return to what kicked this whole thing off: prison gyms. We still have those in Finland, but rumor has it that they're considering getting rid of them. Martial arts equipment like focus gloves are banned. Focus gloves were, in fact, the subject of my only foray into jailhouse lawyering, when I trudged through the prison regulations and found that they were, in fact, prohibited. As I said earlier, studies seem to show that instead of increasing aggression and violence, working out seems to do the opposite. What's more, simply banning exercise equipment won't stop prisoners from working out. There's always push-ups and all kinds of improvised exercises that can be done in the absence of equipment. Even martial arts training is easy; I've seen some impressive home-made focus gloves. So the ban doesn't stop prisoners from working out, but that doesn't have the adverse effects it's said to have either. The ban on exercise equipment in prisons addresses a non-existent problem in an inefficient way, so it doesn't make any sense. It's pretty much par for the course in our criminal legislation. Far from being a problem, I think exercise equipment in prisons is a positive thing. First and foremost, it gives inmates something to do. Prison is 99% mind-numbing boredom, and anything that you can spend energy on is basically a good thing. And fitness is a positive thing in and of itself, especially since I think the reason bodybuilding and working out in general are so popular is that the prisoner's own body is one of the only things they can control. A workout program is a long-term project, and I'd say getting involved in non-criminal long-term projects is only good for rehabilitation. I'm beginning to think that the majority of our laws and regulations are coming about as nothing more than knee-jerk reactions to some level of moral panic, where it doesn't even matter if the problem is real or if the solution works, as long as the act of passing the regulation expresses our ethical view on the matter. This is basically the argument in favor of the war on drugs, for instance, as well as on prison conditions: it doesn't matter what the practicalities are, but we have to take a certain stance for moral reasons. It's a staggeringly irrational way to run a society. I'll finish off with a reminder of how I ended up acquiring the personal experience that went into writing this blog post. Tricky - Black Steel by Tricky

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While I am in favor of a teacher to guide you as mentioned in the first two answers I would like to expand on all of this. The first thing is getting a guitar. If you already have one, have your teacher check it out. Also, have your teacher show you how to care for the instrument, and how it should be set up, as well as going to a good luthier for a set up. I would recommend a nylon string acoustic guitar for starters. When I was 12 years old I wanted an electric more than anything but when Christmas arrived that year, I was fortunate to be given a nylon string acoustic. Although I was a bit disappointed I quickly learned that having a nylon string guitar was better for me as a beginner as it was so much easier on my fingers before I developed calluses--a steel string would have made this a lot harder to learn. I had already started piano when I was 10 so having 2 years of piano and basic music theory helped me start learning scales, chords, and arpeggios from the start. It wasn't until a year or so later that I took a few lessons. If I was headed for classical or jazz guitar I would have continued the lessons, but soon I was in a rock band and learning pop songs which was what I wanted. I encourage you to hook up with like minded folks and play music together even if it does not lead to gigs. Working with others is a great way to learn to play live, on time, and make music. I eventually moved over to electric bass and played in a blues band during my high school years. This was a great experience to learn how to be a part of a rhythm section and how to support the beat. By this time I had acquired a couple of electric guitars and was still learning on my own. I eventually studied composition in college and graduate school. I have always had a guitar handy to compose with as well as access to a piano which for composing are very helpful tools. Many years later, I returned to blues and got a stratocaster and a vintage fender black face amp and still play these with a small collection of other electrics and amps too. I jam with pals but rarely play gigs, but love playing. I always find new things to learn so I mention this, as guitar like anything artful has no end to learning and expressing. My focus is composition and making music for my own films so my development has a lot to do with the music that I think works on my current video project. Get a good starter guitar that will facilitate learning. Get lessons from a teacher that can guide you to the music you want most to learn. Work in an ensemble or combo to get use to playing with others. Continue your development as your passion drives you, take music theory in college or high school or if you're beyond that age, take night or weekend classes at your local junior college or continuing adult education center. Never give up, keep working on the things that you want to master, and you can always find a teacher if you get stuck. And finally, be willing to take chances, don't be afraid to learn things that seem impossible now.

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Protests planned for Saturday in Russian cities are a cry for dignity and respect. They deserve moral support from Obama, not Putin's heavy hand. But this weekend, he must focus on the most important American priority. Tens of thousands of Russians plan to rally Saturday in dozens of cities in hopes of regaining their rights and dignity after the highly flawed election for parliament Dec. 4. Daily flash protests began Monday in various cities. Young people, already upset at Vladimir Putin’s presumption of his return to the presidency, were further incensed by a YouTube video showing an official stuffing a ballot box. Mr. Obama cannot ignore this surprise eruption of Russian frustration over Mr. Putin’s denial of basic democracy. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has already spoken up, giving support to the “rights and aspirations of the Russian people.” She also criticized the official conduct of the election. The wisdom of her action was reflected in the verbal tongue-lashing given to her by Putin. Now Obama must openly side with the protesters. The leader of the free world cannot lead from behind on the question of freedom for the world’s largest country. Obama was too quiet during Iran’s 2009 protests for democracy. He was late in backing the 2011 Arab Spring. In both cases, young people looked for moral support from the American leader. Perhaps Obama was just too hesitant to adopt the “freedom agenda” of his predecessor.

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The pace of growth in the U.S. services sector increased slightly in November while U.S. factory orders expectantly rose in October, according to two industry reports released on Wednesday. The Institute for Supply Management said its services index rose to 54.7 last month from 54.2 the month before. The reading topped economists' forecasts for growth of 53.5, according to a Reuters survey. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector. The survey's business activity index jumped to 61.2 from 55.4 and was at its highest since February. The new orders index also rose, hitting 58.1 after October's 54.8, to its highest since March. However, the employment and prices paid indexes both fell to their lowest since July. Employment fell to 50.3 from 54.9, while prices paid dropped to 57.0 from 65.6. In a separate report, new orders received by U.S. factories unexpectedly rose in October as demand for motor vehicles and a range of other goods offset a slump in defense and civilian aircraft orders, a hopeful sign for the manufacturing sector. The Commerce Department said orders for factory goods increased 0.8 percent after a revised 4.5 percent rise in September. It was the second straight month of gains and beat economists' expectations for a flat reading. Factory orders were previously reported to have jumped 4.8 percent in September. Manufacturing, the pillar of the recovery from the 2007-09 recession, has lost momentum in recent months as fears of the "fiscal cliff" and slowing global demand slammed the economy. There are worries that a wave of tax increases and sharp cuts in government spending early next year could suck $600 billion from the economy and push it into recession unless the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress can agree on a less painful plan to cut the budget deficits. October's factory orders suggested that manufacturing was not heading for a hard landing, even though factories are struggling to regain momentum. The Institute for Supply Management said on Monday its index of national manufacturing activity dropped last month to its lowest level since July 2009 when the economy was starting to emerge out of recession. The Commerce Department report showed orders for transportation equipment fell 2.3 percent in October on weak civilian and defense aircraft. Orders for motor vehicles and parts rose 3.0 percent. Factory goods orders excluding transportation rose 1.3 percent after advancing 1.2 percent in September. Unfilled orders at U.S. factories rose 0.3 percent in October after increasing 0.1 percent the prior month. Shipments of factory goods increased 0.4 percent after rising 0.7 percent the prior month, while inventories edged up 0.1 percent. The department said orders for durable goods, manufactured products expected to last three years or more, rose 0.5 percent instead of being flat as reported last week. Durable goods orders excluding transportation were up 1.8 percent in October instead of up 1.5 percent. Orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft - seen as a measure of business confidence and spending plans - increased 2.9 percent in October instead of the previously reported 1.7 percent increase. More From CNBC Productivity Gets Big Boost; Labor Costs Plunge China PMI Survey Shows Growth Reviving, but Uneven The Perfect Income for Happiness? It's $161,000

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|CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS & RESEARCH MINISTRY|| 1 On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king. 2 And it was found written, that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s chamberlains, the keepers of the door, who sought to lay hand on the king Ahasuerus. 3 And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this? Then said the king’s servants that ministered unto him, There is nothing done for him. 4 And the king said, Who is in the court? Now Haman was come into the outward court of the king’s house, to speak unto the king to hang Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him. 5 And the king’s servants said unto him, Behold, Haman standeth in the court. And the king said, Let him come in. 6 So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour? Now Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself? 7 And Haman answered the king, For the man whom the king delighteth to honour, 8 Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head: 9 And let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king’s most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honour, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour. 10 Then the king said to Haman, Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king’s gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken. 11 Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour. 12 And Mordecai came again to the king’s gate. But Haman hasted to his house mourning, and having his head covered. 13 And Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his friends every thing that had befallen him. Then said his wise men and Zeresh his wife unto him, If Mordecai be of the seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him. 14 And while they were yet talking with him, came the king’s chamberlains, and hasted to bring Haman unto the banquet that Esther had prepared. Return to Bible Online AND RESEARCH MINISTRY

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Over one-third of women of reproductive age have an abortion by the age of 45. However, women who have chosen abortion are often absent from the public debate. In order to break the silence surrounding abortion, we will be featuring real stories from real women each Wednesday on our blog. If you would like to share your story with us or have it published on our blog, go to http://www.prochoice.org/pregnant/hotline/share.html. I am homeless with three kids already. I do not want to have another child without being able to care and provide for it. --submitted by Alyssa* through a member clinic When I found out I was five weeks pregnant, I had been sick with persistent pneumonia for months and my lungs were at risk of collapsing. I had half of the red blood cells I should have had and I had taken antibiotics known to cause birth defects. My mother was dying of bone cancer at the time and I couldn't have helped her and cared for an infant. I was working two jobs and enrolled full-time in college. My fiance and I agreed together that abortion was the best option, and I had a medical abortion. The only unwanted effect I had was cramping, and I was able to rest at home during the process; it was nothing like the horror stories some people would like you to believe. It has been over five years since the procedure and I have had no complications, physically or phsychologically, as a result of the abortion. I love my life and do not regret my decision. Of all the myths about abortion, the ones that anger me the most are about the women who have them. We are portrayed as promiscuous, unintelligent, selfish, weak or child-hating. Those who oppose abortion would like people to believe that women either can't make a good choice or don't even deserve one. Nothing could be further from the truth. --submitted by Sophia* via our website *Names have been changed to protect patient privacy

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Right to Die Movement is Really About Euthanasia, Not Compassion May 1, 2006 THERE IS A PRETENSE in contemporary assisted suicide advocacy that goes something like this: "Aid in dying" (as it is euphemistically called) is merely to be a safety valve, a last resort only available to imminently dying patients for whom nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering. Meanwhile, in the real world, the founder of the Swiss suicide facilitating organization Dignitas is just about done with pretense. The Sunday Times Magazine (London) reported that Dignitas' founder, Ludwig Minelli, plans to create sort of a Starbucks for suicide: a chain of death centers "to end the lives of people with illnesses and mental conditions such as chronic depression." Minelli believes that all suicidal people should be given information about the best way to kill themselves, and, according to the Times story, "if they choose to die, they should be helped to do it properly." Dignitas admits to having assisted the suicides of many people who were not terminally ill. As Minelli succinctly put it, "We never say no." The story about Minelli illuminates a deep ideological belief within the euthanasia movement: that we own our bodies, and thus, determining the time, manner, and method of our own deaths, for whatever reason, is a basic human right. That is certainly how one of the other superstars of the international euthanasia movement, the Australian physician Phillip Nitschke, sees it. Nitschke travels the world presenting how-to-commit-suicide clinics. Several years ago he was paid thousands of dollars by the Hemlock Society (now merged into the assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion and Choices) to create a suicide concoction made from common household ingredients (a formula he calls the "Peaceful Pill"). Like Minelli, Nitschke is straightforward about his goals. In a 2001 interview, National Review Online asked him who should qualify for the Peaceful Pill. He responded: My personal position is that if we believe that there is a right to life, then we must accept that people have a right to dispose of that life whenever they want . . . So all people qualify, not just those with the training, knowledge, or resources to find out how to "give away" their life. And someone needs to provide this knowledge, training, or resource necessary to anyone who wants it, including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, [and] the troubled teen. Nitschke and Minelli's position has a large constituency among euthanasia believers. Indeed, over the years, the movement has left many telltale signs that assisted suicide is not intended ultimately to be restricted to the imminently dying. Take the "Zurich Declaration," issued at the 1998 bi-annual convention of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies. (The WFRD is an umbrella group made up of 37 national euthanasia advocacy organizations, including Compassion and Choices and Hemlock founder Derek Humphry's Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization, or ERGO.) It states: We believe that we have a major responsibility for ensuring that it becomes legally possible for all competent adults, suffering severe and enduring distress, to receive medical help to die, if this is their persistent, voluntary and rational request. We note that such medical assistance is already permitted in The Netherlands, Switzerland and Oregon, USA. It should also be noted that one need not be dying or even sick to experience "severe and enduring distress." SUPPORT FOR A BROAD AND LIBERAL ACCESS to suicide extends far beyond activists in the euthanasia movement. It has been embraced by some people in the mental health professions, where a concept known as "rational suicide" is being promoted in professional journals, books, and at symposia. Typical of this genre is a 1998 article by James W. Werth published in the journal Crisis, with the ironic title, "Using Rational Suicide as an Intervention to Prevent Irrational Suicide." Werth urges that mental health professionals should not always save the lives of suicidal patients, but instead, should non-judgmentally facilitate the suicidal person's decision making process. If the professional agrees that the desire to die is rational, then the suicide should be permitted, or perhaps even assisted. To qualify for a rational suicide, the patient would have to demonstrate to the mental health professional that he has a "hopeless condition," which Werth defines as, "terminal illnesses, severe physical and/or psychological pain, physically or mentally debilitating and/or deteriorating conditions, or qualify of life no longer acceptable to the individual." This is circular thinking. By definition, if one is suicidal, he has a quality of life that he believes is no longer acceptable. Not surprisingly, assisted rational suicide is already permitted in the Netherlands where the Dutch Supreme Court approved a psychiatrist's facilitating the death of a distraught woman who wanted to die because her children were dead. Similar suicide-friendly attitudes are often expressed among mainstream bioethicists--and not just by Princeton's Peter Singer. For example, the University of Utah's Margaret Pabst Battin suggests that "suicide can be rationally chosen," to "avoid pain and suffering in terminal illnesses," as a "self-sacrifice for altruistic reasons," or in cases of "suicides of honor and principle." Along these same lines, Julian Savulescu, an up-and-comer in the international bioethics community, argues that respect for human freedom demands that society permit the suicides of competent persons--even when they are expressing an "unjustified desire to die." "Some freedoms are worth the cost of innocent life," Savulescu wrote in a chapter for the book Assisted Suicide. "The freedom to finish one's life when and how one chooses is, it seems to me, about as important as any freedom." The right to receive assisted suicide for virtually any reason is especially popular among self-declared "free thinkers" and humanists. Thus, Tom Flynn, the editor of Free Inquiry, the house organ for the Council for Secular Humanism, wrote in the Spring 2003 issue, that the belief in human liberty must include an unfettered right to die. "While suicide has never been exactly popular, a new assault on our right to suicide is brewing. It's something secular humanists ought to resist." Why? Because Flynn (and other humanists) believe fervently that a right to suicide is a crucial element of human liberty: What's really in play here is the old dogma that individuals don't own their own lives. Physician-assisted suicide is but part of the issue. If we trust our fellow humans to choose their occupations, their significant others, their political persuasions, and their stances on religion, we should also defend their right to dispose of their most valuable possessions--their lives--even if disposing of life is precisely the choice they make. There are even ongoing discussions in bioethics suggesting that some people might have an ethical obligation to commit suicide. Thus, a 1997 cover story in the prestigious bioethics journal the Hastings Center Report, philosopher John Hardwig argued that there is not only a right, but also a "duty to die": A duty to die is more likely when continuing to live will impose significant burdens--emotional burdens, extensive caregiving, destruction of life plans, and yes, financial hardship--on your family and loved ones. This is the fundamental insight underlying a duty to die. A duty to die becomes greater as you grow older. As we age, we will be giving up less by giving up our lives . . . To have reached the age of say, seventy-five or eighty years without being ready to die is itself a moral failing, the sign of a life out of touch with life's basic realities. Bioethicist Battin has also supported the concept of an eventual duty to die for those living in rich countries, not just to spare burdening our loved ones but to promote world egalitarianism. Thus, she wrote in a book chapter called "Global Life Expectancies and the Duty to Die" that the time may come when we will have the moral obligation to "conserve health care resources by forgoing treatment or directly ending [our] life" toward promoting "health prospects and life expectancies" that are more equal around the globe. DESPITE THIS THICKENING ATMOSPHERE of suicide permissiveness, most assisted suicide advocates in this country continue to insist that "all" they want is for the terminally ill to have access to hastened death. For some, clearly, this is a mere political tactic. The ultimate goal is a much broader death license. Others may actually mean for the initial terminal illness limitation to be permanent, believing that "restricted" assisted suicide, once accepted widely, would not spread to ever widening swaths of acceptable killing (as it has in the Netherlands). Which camp one decides best represents the overall euthanasia movement doesn't really matter. Once assisted suicide is accepted in law and culture, the premises of radical autonomy and allowing killing to alleviate human suffering would conjoin, unleashing the irresistible power of logic that would push us inexorably toward the humanist nirvana of death on demand. Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. His most recent book is the Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World. The work of Discovery Institute is made possible by the generosity of its members. Click here to donate.

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ようこそ HK INSTITUTE OF LANGUAGES へ！ プロから学ぼう世界の言語！Read on Each year, at HK Institute of Languages, we are pleased to offer you a unique choice of overseas summer camps / study tours. For 2-8 weeks, your child will have the opportunity to experience a foreign language in its 'natural' surrounding: a country where it is the native tongue, while enjoying a fun, action packed programme of sports, recreational and cultural activities.Read on We are always looking for qualified and experienced language teachers to join our expanding team. We recruit bright, enthusiastic and energetic individuals who are passionate about teaching.Read on HKIL has thoroughly upgraded its service with a multi-media system in all classrooms and has now expanded this to offer lessons through Skype so that you can access them any time and any place where you have access to the internet. Enjoy a special 15% on your Skype lessons* Read on Private and small group options with flexible scheduling. Don't miss our new classes starting in March & April 2013! Daytime or evening. Dynamic, communicative teaching approach. Experience our state-of-the art multimedia system in all classrooms! Also available: Overseas Study Programmes - From 1 week up. The perfect way to reach language fluency fast! Read on HKIL is an approved provider of courses under the Hong Kong government's Continuing Education Fund (CEF). CEF was set up to support adult learning. Hong Kong residents between the ages of 18 - 65 who successfully complete our CEF courses can claim up to 80% reimbursement of their tuition fees, up to a maximum of HK$10,000. We currently have CEF approved courses in French and English. Read on Don’t wait until the last moment to give your child the support that he/she needs! At HK Institute of Languages, we do not believe in last minute exam cramming sessions. Instead we view exam revision as an ongoing process that involves learning effectively and developing a solid foundation on which to build exam success... Proven 28-year track record. Read on If you are looking for a great place for your child to learn or improve his/her English, French, Spanish, German, Mandarin or Japanese language skills the fun and effective way, contact us! We offer a full range of courses specially designed for children aged 1½ -12 years old at all levels. Read on European languages are now key languages in the International Baccalaureate. Give your child a head start by learning an additional European language! Our classes are available at Beacon Hill School, Bradbury School, Chinese International School, Clearwater Bay School, Glenealy School, Sai Kung and Shatin Junior School, in small groups of 4-6 children. Also available: Mother Tongue Support with special French classes for French speaking children, Spanish classes for Spanish speaking children and German classes for German speaking children. Our mother tongue support programme is in line with IB guidelines about mother tongue support and the preservation of a child's cultural identity, for students schooled in a language other than their mother tongue. Lessons also available for students 12-16. Read on

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|Kidlutions(tm) Preferred Product Award winning DVD: | "Baby, Toddler, and Preschool Sign Language" by Signing Families(tm). |The inimitable Louise Masin Sattler, founder of Signing Families(tm)| Communication is a key aspect to getting our needs met, expressing ourselves and building relationships. And of course, all of that is directly tied to social emotional development. But, what if a child is too young to talk, has delays that inhibit speaking or has other conditions or factors that mitigate verbalizing their needs? Frustration. Irritation. Tantrums. Explosions. The “Baby, Toddler, and Preschool Sign Language” DVD helps you help your child reduce frustration and increase cooperation. In her own inimitable style, Louise will have you signing with the best of them. She’ll give you quick, easy ways to remember the signs and she spends plenty of time explaining the origin of most of the signs. All of this helps anchor the signs in your memory, meaning easier recall and a smooth transition to teaching your child! You’ll have your youngster learning how to share, take-turns, clean-up, pay attention, wait, and use caution sooner than you can say "jump"! Louise even teaches the sign for “STOP”, but, as any admirable psychologist would do, reminds us that using the sign too much will make it lose its effectiveness! Save that sign, and that word, for times when it is really necessary! This DVD is appropriate for use in the home or the school setting. Parents, as well as teachers will find applicability to their respective settings, and will be able to utilize what is taught on this DVD. Louise remembered all of the important words to increase social awareness and courtesy, too, helping you teach your youngster the signs for “please”, “thank-you”, “sorry” and “you are welcome.” You’ll teach your child how to ask for help or indicate they are hurt, as well! Of course, to be worthy of a Kidlutions Preferred Product Award, there must also be a link to helping kids recognize, identify and/or deal with feelings. Yep! It's in there, too! The “Baby, Toddler, and Preschool Sign Language” DVD features 50 English signs, numbers 1-10, the ABCs, as well as Spanish words and numbers in sign, as well. When she isn’t busy signing, or training teachers and parents on the merits of signing, Louise spends time entertaining the masses on her radio show, “Learning and Laughter with Louise”, which airs Wednesdays at 8 a.m., Central Standard Time, on Toginet Radio.

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The Office of Intercultural Relations is an integral part of the Student Affairs division at West Virginia Wesleyan College. Initially established to address the unique social, cultural and academic needs of the students classified as United States minorities. The Office of Intercultural Relations has expanded its thrust to include serving as a primary resource for multicultural education, information and training. While serving the needs of underrepresented students continues to be at the core of its mission, the Office of Intercultural Relations is committed to initiatives designed to enhance Wesleyan student, faculty and staff consciousness about issues of social justice and equality. A Director and work-study staff the office. Annually, the director works with a student, programming coordinator intern, who plays a critical role in the planning, development and implementation of Intercultural programs. The Office of Intercultural Relations is located in the Advising and Career Center area of the Student Affairs Division in the Benedum Campus Center.

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3 Words Could Increase Drug Costs By $1.2B Annually Arizona governor Jan Brewer has generated a lot of press lately and a lot of jokes with her proposal to require some of the state's Medicaid members pay an annual $50 fine for engaging in certain unhealthy behaviors like being obese and smoking. Google "Arizona + obesity" and more than 6.8 million results from last week appear concerning Brewer's fee proposal along with plenty of references to a so-called flab-and-fat tax. I have no opinion about the fairness of a flab tax, but it does make me think about how easily our national debate about healthcare can be bogged down and distracted by some nickel-and-dime proposals. If every man, woman and child in Arizona's Medicaid program paid the fine the state's coffers would swell by $50 million, which is a drop in the state's annual $8.9 billion Medicaid budget. Meanwhile, according to a recent study, three words cost our healthcare system several billion dollars each year. "Dispense as written," or DAW is used by some physicians to avoid the generic equivalent of brand name drugs. Some states allow the patients themselves to request a brand name drug even if the prescribing physician will allow generics. Researchers at Harvard University, Brigham and Women's Hospital and CVS Caremark studied 5.6 million prescriptions for 2 million patients. Here is what they discovered: - Some 4.7% of the prescriptions were designated as DAW. - For the most part physicians, used DAW when no generic alternatives were available. - In 2% of the prescriptions, patients opted for brand name drugs even when a generic version was available and the physician approved the substitution. - CMS Seeks to 'Rapidly Reduce' Medicare Spending with $1B in Grants - Building a Better Healthcare Board - Case Study: Advance Care Conversations - Patient Harm Data to Remain on Medicare's Hospital Compare Site - Quiet ORs Better for Patient Safety - Hard-Nosed About Physician Teamwork - Hospital Pricing Data Dump Won't Hurt You, Yet - CMS Releases Hospital Pricing Data - Tavenner Confirmed as CMS Administrator - Evidence-Based Practice and Nursing Research: Avoiding Confusion

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- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation - http://blog.heritage.org - How Congress Can Defend DOMA Posted By Hans von Spakovsky On March 1, 2011 @ 12:00 pm In Family and Religion,Rule of Law | 10 Comments On February 23, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner that President Obama had instructed him to no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), but that he would notify the courts of DOJ’s “interest in providing Congress a full and fair opportunity to participate in the litigation,” i.e., to defend DOMA. The president’s decision seems driven by politics and violates his law enforcement duty, calling into question the integrity of our justice system. It contravenes long-standing Justice Department policy to defend Acts of Congress unless no reasonable argument can be made in their defense or they infringe on core presidential constitutional authority, neither of which is the case with DOMA. Congress must now make sure that DOMA is adequately defended in court. To that end, there are several federal statutes that authorize Congress to intervene and take over the defense of a statute when the Justice Department goes AWOL and such intervention has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Under 2 U.S.C. § 288e(a), the Senate has the right to intervene in litigation “in which the powers and responsibilities of Congress under the Constitution are placed at issue.” There is obviously no question that the constitutional power of Congress to pass DOMA is at issue in the litigation that has been filed against it. In order for the Senate’s Legal Counsel to appear on behalf of the Senate “or in the name of an officer, committee, subcommittee, or chairman of a committee or subcommittee,” the Senate must adopt a resolution authorizing intervention (2 U.S.C. § 288b(c)). This statute does not prevent members of the Senate from attempting to intervene or file amicus briefs in their personal capacities. Similarly, under 2 U.S.C. § 130f(a) the General Counsel of the House of Representatives can “enter an appearance in any proceeding before any court of the United States” without compliance with admission requirements (except for the Supreme Court). This does not mean that the House’s General Counsel cannot appear before the Supreme Court; simply that in that court, he must comply with its admission requirements. Section 130f(b) requires the Attorney General to “notify the General Counsel” as required by 28 U.S.C. § 530D, which mandates that the Attorney General submit a report to Congress if he determines that he intends to refrain “from defending or asserting, in any judicial, administrative, or other proceeding, the constitutionality of any provision of any Federal statute.” The House of Representatives can also hire private counsel because the term “General Counsel of the House of Representatives” is defined to include “any other person authorized and directed in accordance with the Rules of the House of Representatives to provide legal assistance and representation to the House” (2 USC § 130f(c)(3)). Under the Rules of the House of Representatives (Rule 2, Clause 8), “[t]he Office of General Counsel shall function pursuant to the direction of the Speaker.” The same Rule says that the Speaker shall “consult” with a Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, “which shall include the majority and minority leaderships.” But that Group has no veto authority over the Speaker’s decisions, according to the plain text of the Rule. So the General Counsel (or private counsel) can be authorized by the Speaker alone to defend the constitutionality of DOMA. There is no federal statute, as in the Senate, requiring a resolution passed by the House. One of the cases where congressional intervention occurred is INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983). Both the House and Senate intervened after the Justice Department joined with the plaintiffs to argue that a provision of federal immigration law was unconstitutional. The provision authorized either house of Congress, by resolution, to veto the decision of the Attorney General to allow a deportable alien to remain in the United States. It was an attempt to micromanage the President’s prerogative to enforce the federal immigration law on the books. The Supreme Court ultimately found this provision unconstitutional. The disagreement with the Attorney General over the deportation of the plaintiff involved a determination of policy that Congress could implement in only one way: “bicameral passage followed by presentment to the President” (462 U.S. at 954-955). However, relevant to the issue of the ability of Congress to defend DOMA, the Court held that both houses had standing to intervene in the Chadha case because the Court had “long held that Congress is the proper party to defend the validity of a statute when an agency of government, as a defendant charged with enforcing the statute, agrees with plaintiffs that the statute is inapplicable or unconstitutional” (462 U.S. at 940). If the House of Representatives wants to intervene and defend DOMA now that DOJ has said it will not defend the law, the Speaker can authorize intervention or, if he chooses, he could submit the question for a House resolution vote. The House would also have to consider whether such a resolution would set a precedent calling for a vote when that is not required under the Rules of the House. For the Senate to intervene, a resolution would have to be approved authorizing such action. Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/01/how-congress-can-defend-doma/ URLs in this post: Image: http://www.foundry.org/wp-content/uploads/capitol_building100128-2.jpg driven by politics: http://blog.heritage.org../2011/02/23/obama-drops-pretense-administration-will-not-defend-doma/print Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved.

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Archbishop Calls For Fairtrade Mark For British Produce Wednesday 25th July 2012The Archbishop of York today called for British farmers to be paid a fair wage for their produce, saying that supermarkets were not valuing the contribution the agricultural sector makes to national life. Dr John Sentamu said British consumers, aided and abetted by supermarkets, were paying too little for their food and claimed that cheap imports are making it difficult for the country’s farmers to earn a decent living. The Archbishop, an impassioned advocate of British farming, said he regularly visited farms and found he was often being told the same thing – that prices are too low. He also maintained that Britain’s uplands communities, such as the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors, would fall into ruin without the presence of farmers. But he said upland farmers were often the most economically disadvantaged. Dr Sentamu said: “The economic climate has made it very difficult for many British farmers, with dairy producers in particular bearing the brunt of poor prices. I regularly meet local producers across Yorkshire and I know they are going through really tough times right now. “As consumers, we have got to be prepared to pay a fairer price for what we are getting. I know everyone is feeling the pinch in their pocket during this long recession, but really how can we expect to pay less for our milk than say a bottle of mineral water or cola? How can we expect farmers to go on producing the best produce in the world – tasty and nutritional home grown produce – when we are paying them below the going rate for their labours? We should be concerned about food security: Fairer prices should be the bench mark of our concern. “Yes, the supermarkets have got to pay farmers the right price, particularly when it comes to milk. Absolutely. What they pay now is derisory. But as customers we should not collude with this – it simply isn’t a fair situation at the moment. “I would love to see a Fairtrade mark for British goods. Cheap foreign imports are flooding the market and British farmers are not getting a fair deal. We should demand fairness not just for workers overseas, but also at home too. Why not buy British farm produce and take less in imports? It would be encouraging to look at the shelves of our supermarkets and know that the producer has been paid a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. “What we have in the UK is often better quality farm produce and if we have to pay a bit more and give British farmers a higher price, then we should do that.” “I have long supported a ‘buy British’ and ‘buy local’ approach where possible, as it is necessary to benefit the rural economy and make our supply of food more sustainable and secure.”

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