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Dental plans -- particularly affordable dental plans -- are among employees' favorite benefits, but if not properly designed, they often cost $35/month for single employees and $130/month for families -- or more. Employers needn't pay that much.
By understanding and utilizing available plan design options, employers can lower those costs by as much as 40-50% and create an affordable dental plan. Correct dental plan design is more than just getting quotes for dental insurance -- the impact of the plan design makes a huge difference in affordability.
This article explains how dental plans operate, describes the plan options available, and suggests strategies to make for more affordable dental.
Annual Maximum Benefit
All plans have an annual limit on benefits per person. The most common amount is $1,000 per year, although some plans may pay as much as $1,500-2,000. But employers looking for mor affordable dental can choose to cover as little as $500, $750 or $800.
Reducing the plan maximum will save 5-15%, depending on the level chosen. It's still a full coverage dental plan, but there's a limit on the benefits for any one person in a calendar year.
Note that it's less disruptive to choose a low level before a plan is installed than it is to reduce it afterwards. Also note that only about 5% of employees ever hit the $1,000 annual maximum in a given year.
Deductibles vary. A higher deductible lowers premiums. The difference in price between a $25-deductible plan and a $50 one is 5-7%. Once again, while maintaing full coverage, there are cost control factors.
Deductibles are usually, but not always, waived for preventive services such as semi-annual cleanings. Imposing the deductible on preventive care does little to create an afforable dental plan, and it may discourage good dental preventive habits. So waiving the deductible may actually help lower overall costs by treating dental problems when they are small.
Types of Procedures and Benefit Levels
- Preventive procedures. These are usually paid at 100%, so that a preventive care visit to the dentist is effectively free. Preventive procedures usually include routine exams, cleanings, X-rays, fluoride treatments for kids, and space maintainers.
- Minor Restorative procedures. Commonly paid at 80% after the plan deductible, these procedures have traditionally included fillings, extractions, root canals, and gum surgery.
- Major Restorative procedures. Also subject to the deductible, these are most commonly paid at 50%. They have historically included crowns, bridges and dentures.
- Orthodontics. To be included the plan must cover Major Restorative procedures. Orthodontics coverage for adults is now also available.
Businesses don't need to cover every procedure. Nor does a plan need to pay the "traditional" benefit percentages. By making the right choices, you can help control premium rates without unduly burdening employees.
Strategies for Reducing Costs
Each of the strategies below is discussed elsewhere on this site in much greater detail. The strategies below are suggested primarily as an overview.
Limit Types of Coverage.
The most common way employers create affordable dental plans is to limit the kinds of procedures covered by the plan. For example, older employees generally incur the most Major Restorative procedures. If you have a younger workforce, you can exclude coverage for Major Restorative procedures and save 25-35%.
Of course, if you eliminate coverage types entirely, it's no longe a "full coverage plan," but if it becomes a more affordable dental plan for more employees, that may offset the impact of the reduced coverage.
Allocate Procedures Strategically.
Employers can also rearrange the benefit provisions. For example, it's common today to cover gum surgery and root canals as Major Restorative procedures (paid at 50%) rather than as Minor Restorative procedures paid at 80%. Therefore, those claims are still covered, but only those employees incurring the cost will pay a penalty, not the entire group.
Another common example is to pay for children's space maintainers as a Minor Restorative procedure (80% after a deductible) rather than as a Preventive procedure (100%, no deductible).
Limiting the frequency of coverage of certain procedures also leads to a more affordable dental plan. Many employers now
- Limit cleanings to once in 12 months, not twice.
- Limit the number of bitewing X-rays/year.
- Limit full-mouth X-rays to every 5th year rather than every third.
- Limit sealants to children and reduce their frequency.
- Limit crown replacement.
- Limit bridge replacement.
Select Lower Reasonable and Customary Limits
"Reasonable and Customary" refers to how a carrier determines its maximum payment for a given procedure. If for example, a carrier says it "pays to the 90th percentile level," the carrier is saying that its maximum allowable payment will equal or exceed what 90% of local dentists charge for that procedure.
Those levels used to be part of the contract, but now employers often can choose among levels. By choosing the 80th percentile, or the 70th (or even the 50th!) an employer lowers the costs of the plan (and thus the premium).
Employees will be less satisfied because they'll pay more themselves, but everyone's premiums will be lower. And on the most common procedures (fillings, etc.) the difference between the 80th percentile and the 90th is only a couple of dollars, so employee pain is limited.
The employer can even choose a "Schedule of Benefits" plan. In this plan, a fixed, predetermined amount is allowed for each dental procedure. The employee knows, going into her appointment, exactly what amount the plan will pay, with the balance her responsibility. So-called "schedule" plans pay something toward every procedure, so the employer doesn't arbitrarily penalize any particular procedure such as root canals or periodontic work.
Another important consideration is that a schedule plan effectively eliminates the impact of dental inflation because the amount payable by the plan remains fixed until the employer elects to change it.
Putting the Strategies to Work
How does the employer sort through the forest of options to determine the plan that works best for them?
Easy. That's our job. A good, knowledgeable, independent broker (we think we fit that description!) solicits quotes from several carriers, suggest alternative design options, and guides the employer to an affordable dental plan.
The idea is to -- step by step -- construct a dental plan that will fit your employees' needs and your budget.
BBI in the News
Do you ever wonder if your benefits broker is keeping secrets from you? He or she could be. There are things about your benefit programs that may be more in your broker's interest...More
Five Steps to Keep Your Benefits Broker Straight: Edholm of Business Benefits Insurance Reveals Industry's Best-Kept Secret
"Employers can often save money by partially or fully self-insuring their benefits program or moving to a different carrier. But your broker may not tell you that because it could cut his bonus, Jim Edholm of Business Benefits Insurance...More | <urn:uuid:46c7cfbf-fc66-4467-bb34-42dd7dfd4292> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbibenefits.com/Affordable-Dental-Design.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946279 | 1,504 | 1.640625 | 2 |
In addition to ordinary materials, supplies, and textbooks purchased by all students, certain programs and courses require special materials, supplies or other items due to their specialized coursework. These may include small equipment and tools, uniforms and shoes, health insurance, health screening, immunizations, CPR or first Aid certification, background checks and clearances, etc. These costs are not charged directly by the College and require the student to make additional out-of-pocket purchases. The following is a list of these programs and an estimated additional out-of-pocket cost for each program.
ARTA course electives: Costs range from $10 to $350 depending on the course. Contact the department or instructor for estimated costs.
MATH courses: Some math courses require a calculator or graphing calculator. Contact the department or instructor for type and estimated cost. Calculators are also available for use in the library or to rent from the NCC bookstore.
While NCC makes every effort to provide complete and current information on costs, the above is only an estimate and subject to change based on changes in instructor or program requirements. Estimates are based on minimum requirements; students who choose to upgrade purchases or services will be subject to higher costs. | <urn:uuid:0b53716b-0ee8-4956-bd63-4a5b21659382> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northampton.edu/Student-Resources/Bursar/Tuition-and-Fees/Out-of-Pocket-Expenses.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933291 | 246 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Some DeKalb residents told lawmakers the county cannot stand to have one more city.
“Let’s be careful with this,” said county resident James Wilson, about a movement to incorporate the Brookhaven community. “Because after a while East Lake is going to want a city, Kirkwood is going to want a city, [and] Panthersville is going to want a city. And then what’s going to be left for the county? You’re going to have a little four-block place here between these cities.”
Although residents discussed the proposed transportation tax and changing DeKalb’s form of government, among other subjects, the proposed cityhood of Brookhaven was one of the most-discussed topics during a town hall meeting with DeKalb’s legislative delegation to the state’s General Assembly.
John Steineken, a “50-year resident of DeKalb County by choice,” said the county needs less, not more, cities.
“It’s not going to do the county any good,” Steineken said. “It’s going to hurt it.”
It was because of that possibility that Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D-83) said she pre-filed House Bill 672 in November which would require a two-year minimum period before a community could vote to incorporate.
Proponents of the proposed city are using a study by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute to support their cause. According to the study, the proposed city is financially feasible and would be more advantageous than remaining unincorporated.
But that study, paid for by the non-profit, non-partisan Citizens for North DeKalb, does not consider the costs to Chamblee, Dunwoody and unincorporated DeKalb, Oliver said.
Resident John Stabler, who lives near the proposed borders of the city, said a new city would be “a redundant government entity” with “more possibility for government intrusion” into the lives of residents.
“The people who propose a city are self-appointed, they weren’t elected, and the decisions they make about boundaries will affect people outside the boundaries who do not have a chance to vote on whether or not the boundaries are OK,” Stabler said.
Elena Parent (D-81), who is studying the incorporation practices of other states, said she has concerns with Georgia’s process.
“The current procedures seem wanting and they don’t take into account any of the neighboring communities and the welfare of the county,” Parent said.
Joel Alvarado, the county’s legislative director, said the incorporation movement is part of a trend occurring in the state’s larger counties. In 2008, Dunwoody was incorporated and in November a Gwinnett County community voted to form the city of Peachtree Corners.
“The issue of Brookhaven is not a uniquely DeKalb County issue,” Alvarado said. Georgians need to address a philosophical question: “What do we want it to look like in the future? Do we want a balkanized region where we have all these little communities all competing against one another? We have to ask ourselves what direction we are going as a state.”
Sen. Emmanuel Jones (D-10) had a simple opinion about the proposed Brookhaven: “I’m personally opposed to the formation of any more cities in DeKalb County.” | <urn:uuid:fd24d185-588e-4a30-bac1-c183c052d505> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://championnewspaper.com/news/articles/1245residents-to-lawmakers-no-more-cities-1245.html?comment_id=4503 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963267 | 753 | 1.554688 | 2 |
(Note: the thread for this post began on Monday; please scroll down if you are joining late.)
We saw yesterday that author Stephen Sears publicly styles himself the editor of George B. McClellan's papers based on his book The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1865. His own count in the introduction gives the number of letters in the volume at 813, a very small harvest given the total number of papers out there, even considering his editorial limitation (self imposed?) of only printing letters fromMcClellan, not to him.
He further notes that 260, "nearly a third," had not been published before; and if you invert the form of his statement, nearly two-thirds of the book has appeared previously.
His great point of pride in the introduction is his re-editing of McClellan's letters to his wife, which - with Sears' citantional habits - is the subject of today's blog.
If you have never carefully read the introduction to The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, you have no chance of understanding what these letters to the wife are. And that's a problem, because so many writers use these letters to cast light on McClellan's character, motives, intentions, etc., not least of whom is Sears himself.
It may therefore surprise if I say that no one living has seen these letters; what we regard as McClellans letters to his wife are actually reconstructions from other sources, occasionally collations of undated materials. The situation, from a scholar's point of view, is this ugly:
+ McClellan borrowed his own wartime letters from his wife and wrote out detailed, verbatim extracts leaving ellipses in some parts where he skipped parts - so says Sears. (I accept Sears' explanation but it troubles me. This material, which I have seen, looks like a running log of letter drafts to be written in final form and then sent. I also have trouble believing that note taking for your book would cause you to carefully transcribe full sentences instead of extract factual data in sunmmary form.)
+ Many of these McClellan notes lack dates. And although Sears assures us the ellipses must refer to personal stuff, no one can know that for sure.
+ W.C. Prime, when editing McClellan's Own Story, asked McClellan's daughter May to add detail to some of the notes her father made from the letters. Prime did not see the letters himself. (May McClellan's additions are part of the Library of Congress's McClellan Papers collection. Many are undated. I have not seen them yet and do not know if they are snippets to be added to her father's extracts or longer extracts that stand alone. Sears does not tell us in his books.)
+ Prime augmented the general's notes with his daughter's notes, although we don't know exactly how this was done.
+ Sears, in The Civil War Papers, accuses Prime of leaving out certain material from McClellan's own notes and his daughter's notes. He "severely censored them."
So our situation, as readers and as scholars, is dire. We have these Frankenstein documents derived from a source never seen, some dated, some not, combined by a literary executor, retranscribed, re-edited, and dated by Stephen Sears.
Sears refers to "dates [he] corrected or supplied." Well and good if these practices are noted for each entry. But they are not.
He says, "Where May McClellan copied more of a particular letter than her father had included, the letter has been reassembled based on content and on McClellan's usual pattern of writing."
What on earth does that mean? There is nothing noted in connection with any entries in this book to suggest how a particular "letter" was assembled or dated.
Here's what we have passing as McClellan's "letters." (1) Notes copied out by McClellan, stored with his papers. (2) Supplementary material prepared by his daughter from the same source as McClellan's notes. (3) A combination of these, made by Prime which omitted some of McClellan's material and some of May's material and which (according to Sears) also included errors in transcription. (4) A new combination of these made by Sears from new transcriptions, which involved assigning dates and exercising editorial judgement in how to assemble individual letters "based on content and on McClellan's usual pattern of writing."
The letters, then, are not even letters; and the scholars quoting them as such without caveat have erred, especially where relying on them for issues requiring certainty, dates, timelines, etc.
Here is what Sears says about McClellan's "letters" to his wife in his biography George B. McClellan (1988):
Other quotations are from GBM's letters to his wife to be, preserved in the form of excerpts copied by their daughter, May, after GBM's death; most of the excerpts do not bear dates ...
Here's how he refers to one such "letter" in his Landscape Turned Red (1983): "Letterbook, McClellan Papers, reel 63."
And here's how he does so in To the Gates of Richmond (1992): "McClellan to wife, Apr. 8, McClellan Papers, pp 232, 234"
So he has indeed become the editor of McClellan's papers - simply be designating his own book, McClellan Papers! (see yesterday's post on this.)
The broader point is we have these mysterious patched up documents whose sources are unrecoverable: how do we treat them? What do we call them, aside from "letters"? How do we indicate an added date or the stitching that put two pieces together? Or the material previously omitted by Prime?
For answers, we'll look at a Frankenstein "letter" tomorrow and see what Sears has done with these weighty editorial and scholarly issues. | <urn:uuid:9b72ab43-89eb-4e15-bf2f-45bd315e7dbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cwbn.blogspot.com/2004/01/note-thread-for-this-post-began-on.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974487 | 1,255 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Michal Jesse Valco's mother kicked him out of the house when he decided to enter the Lutheran seminary in Bratislava, Slovakia, last fall. "Being a pastor is a job with no future. It's not profitable," she told Michal, 19, threatening to disown him if he didn't go to business school.
Michal said he agreed with her. "Even after I became a believer, I wanted to be a business manager. I kept saying no to God's call. But when I got involved being a youth program leader, I decided to say yes." So he traveled 200 miles from his village to the seminary , which is part of Comenius University in the capital city.
As a child Michal grew up in a non-Christian home in communist Slovakia (the eastern part of what was once Czechoslovakia). He was staying with a Baptist family in Vancouver, Wash. , as a high-school exchange student when he became a Christian.
The rest of this article is only available to subscribers.
© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers | <urn:uuid:504abcd7-43f9-45fc-8293-8f765ee73d0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=253 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983965 | 222 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Graduation is an important time to reflect on our experience here at Simmons. For those who are graduating, you are about to embark on a new exciting chapter in your life. You have challenged yourself academically, pushed yourself in many ways, developed your leadership skills, and now is your time to soar to new heights.
International CGO Conference: "Interrogating Intersectionality: What's Missing and What's Next?"- Register by June 15th
Interrogating Intersectionality: What's missing and what's next?
Hosted by the Center for Gender in Organizations
Simmons College School of Management, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
29th June - 1st July 2013
STEP 1- REGISTER (by June 15th) AT: http://cgointersectionality.eventbrite.com/#
STEP 2- SEND ABSTRACT (by June 15th) TO: [email protected]
Four decades ago, founding Deans Anne Jardim and Margaret Hennig recognized the need to educate women business leaders and created the Simmons School of Management. On May 7, 2013, more than 200 alumnae/i, faculty, staff, and friends celebrated 40 years of women's leadership at the Simmons Club at the Downtown Harvard Club of Boston.
On Friday, April 26, 2013 the Simmons College and Simmons School of Management hosted a movie screening of "Girl Rising," a film about 9 girls from 9 different countries who all have something in common, they all have incredible inner strength and are determined to make change by pursuing their education.
May 1st CGO Event: WORKING WITH SHARKS: A Pakistani Woman's Story of Countering Sexual Harassment in the United Nations
Dr Fouzia Saeed will talk about her recently published book where she has described a case of sexual harassment she filed against a senior UN official in Pakistan. The case became a landmark for a national struggle in Pakistan that sparked off in 2001 and culminated in the passage of legislation against sexual harassment in 2010. The legislation focuses on transforming the organizational culture in all institutions. It was the first comprehensive legislation on sexual harassment in South Asia. The Prime Minister of Pakistan declared the day she filed the case, 22nd of December, as the National Working Women's Day.
Working with Sharks inspires working women in any part of the world to find their voice and stand up to sexual harassment. (www.WorkingWithSharks.com
Simmons Study Also Finds Female Breadwinners and Partners Often Don't Discuss Women's Lead Financial Role; Women Breadwinners Still Retain Majority of Home and Childcare Responsibilities
Despite the booming number of women serving as household breadwinners, a new study of mid-to-senior level businesswomen found that although these women are "proud" of this role, most keep it hidden from family, friends, and employers.
The study also showed that women often take on this role over time without an explicit discussion with their partners, and still contribute to a majority of home and childcare duties.
James Beard Award-winner and Relais & Châteaux Grand Chef Barbara Lynch is regarded as one of Boston's--and the country's--leading chefs and restaurateurs. As CEO of Barbara Lynch Gruppo, Barbara oversees the operations of eight concepts and employs over 200 people. In addition to running her company, Barbara has always recognized the importance of giving back to the community and has been involved in a number of philanthropic programs over the years.
Simmons School of Management Dean Cathy Minehan participated in a panel discussion at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's 13th annual breakfast for the business community focused on the 2013 economic outlook for the region. The story ran in the Boston Business Journal, March 14.
More than 150 middle and high school girls attended this year's Girl Scout Leadership Conference at Simmons College Sunday, Jan. 27, and heard a keynote address from Marcela Aldaz-Matos, executive vice president for the Boston Chapter of ALPFA, a leading non-profit Latino professional association. Aldaz-Matos is a graduate of the Simmons School of Management. | <urn:uuid:d506faf4-26d2-4e78-9453-c31f1c7deb80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.simmons.edu/som/research/centers/cgo/news/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954541 | 849 | 1.53125 | 2 |
This is a series of Madness Monday posts that describe my research into my 2x great grandfather George Thomas GASSON and his time spent in the Sussex County Asylum (Haywards Heath, Sussex) and the East Sussex County Asylum (Hellingly, Sussex).
It was very challenging work on so many levels, but ultimately very rewarding to uncover a story that had been lost (or hidden) over the intervening generations. It may seem politically incorrect now to refer to him as a lunatic, but this was how he was referred to in the 1901 census, when I found him in the asylum.
- How I discovered my ancestor was a lunatic – how a chance discovery in a WW1 service record lead to the discovery that I had a lunatic in my family tree.
- My first steps in researching George Thomas GASSON and the Sussex County Asylum – more questions than answers as I begin to investigate the asylum records and prove that my ancestor was a lunatic.
- George Thomas GASSON, at last some answers – the admission registers for the Sussex County Asylum reveal more about the nature of his mental illness.
- Notes from an asylum case book – some excerpts from the case notes of George Thomas GASSON during his time at the Sussex County Asylum.
- A lunatic at the wedding? – considering the possibility that I might have a photo of George Thomas GASSON in an unidentified wedding photo.
- Learning about lunacy whilst waiting to move on – discovering some background reading, whilst waiting for permission to view the next set of records.
- Using non-asylum sources for asylum research – a couple of sources to help with my research that I didn’t need permission to access.
- A little light relief in the asylum records – where I discovered that George Thomas GASSON and I had something in common.
- George Thomas GASSON the end of the trail – finally I reached the end of my research, but one question still remained.
- George Thomas GASSON wasn’t just a lunatic – just to prove that George Thomas once had a normal life. | <urn:uuid:1b0a4b6f-cc8c-437b-8384-5cbb338aa3e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wanderinggenealogist.wordpress.com/my-lunatic-ancestor/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=8ef4095fcf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960087 | 432 | 1.742188 | 2 |
kjv@1Kings:12:25@ Then Jeroboam built Shechem in mount Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and went out from thence, and built Penuel.
kjv@1Kings:12:26@ And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now shall the kingdom return to the house of David:
kjv@1Kings:12:27@ If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah.
kjv@1Kings:12:28@ Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
kjv@1Kings:12:30@ And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.
kjv@1Kings:12:31@ And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.
kjv@1Kings:12:32@ And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made: and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places which he had made.
kjv@1Kings:12:33@ So he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel the fifteenth day of the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and ordained a feast unto the children of Israel: and he offered upon the altar, and burnt incense. | <urn:uuid:d904dac2-e70b-4b63-af09-3947fc94462b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shepherdpuplinux.us/cgi-bin/pbiblx-basic.cgi?X=xt&Css=1h&Mode=basic&X=xt&Css=1h&Version=kjv&Book=VSEARCH&Chapter=1Kings:12:25-33 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963307 | 420 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Qatar Airways said Thursday it will introduce thrice-weekly flights to Mozambique, one of southern Africa's fastest-growing investment destinations.
The flights from Doha to the capital Maputo, with a stop in Johannesburg, start on October 31.
"Whether in Africa, Europe, Asia, Middle East or Americas, we have identified great opportunities where other carriers dare not venture into," said the airline's chief executive Akbar al-Baker.
"Mozambique is a great example of a market that we believe has great potential linking up with key feeder markets in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world."
Mozambique's Deputy Transport and Communications Minister Manuela Rebelo said however the deal was yet to be formalised.
"Nothing concrete has been signed," she told AFP.
Mozambique is the airline's 20th destination in Africa.
The former Portuguese colony, which remains one of the world's poorest countries nearly two decades after a devastating civil war, has recently attracted a flood of investment.
Its economy has regularly posted strong growth, estimated at 7.5 percent this year.
Foreign investment has been buoyed by recent discoveries of natural gas and growing exports of coal as well traditional commodities like wood, sugar and tobacco.
Some of the foreign airlines servicing Mozambique include Portugal's TAP, Angola's TAAG, Kenya Airways, Ethiopian Airways and South African Airways.
Two budget airlines that set up shop in the southern African country last year pulled out less than 24 months into their operations, as they found the business not viable due to a government-imposed passenger quota.
One of them was owned by a subsidiary of British Airways and another was a South African low-cost airline. | <urn:uuid:c904825f-10e5-4563-9ee8-1a97cc73364b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/qatar-airways-start-flights-mozambique-154918770.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965536 | 359 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Knox College Will Knock Your Socks Off
Knox College is a small liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois. Despite its small size (1400 students), it has a great deal to offer. All freshmen take a seminar course that serves as an introduction to the liberal arts, and all seniors are required to complete a capstone project in their major. Student research is important at Knox, as evidenced by the fact that there is considerable funding for it — $250,000 in the sciences alone. Service also is important, and Knox has an office in downtown Galesburg that connects students to volunteer opportunities.
According to admissions officers, students who are a good fit for Knox are academically curious go-getters who think outside the box. I also was fortunate to talk to some Knox students, who said the college is defined by accountability and community. Diversity probably should be added to that list, as Knox is in the top 50 most ethnically diverse liberal arts colleges, in the top 25 most international liberal arts colleges, and is among the best colleges for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered) students. Knox operates on a trimester system in which students take three classes per term and each term is ten weeks. Watch this video to learn more about Knox College. | <urn:uuid:7dfae038-8fe1-4172-83b4-5b4f608418f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greatcollegeadvice.com/knox-college-will-knock-your-socks-off/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972895 | 264 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Naptime is not just for kindergarteners. A whole body of research shows that a midday snooze can increase productivity and alertness in the workplace. Naps can often be the perfect weapons to combat midafternoon sluggishness, which tends to hit between 2 and 5 p.m. NEWSWEEK spoke to Helene Emsellem, author of "Snooze...or Lose! Ten 'No War' Ways to Improve Your Teen's Sleep Habits" about how, when and where to do the best napping:
1. The Odd Couple: Coffee and a Nap Turns out that a cup of joe won't ruin your nap, it will enhance it. A 2003 Japanese study found that you can alleviate sleepiness by combining a short snooze with coffee. Sound counterintuitive? Here's how it works: caffeine takes about 20 minutes to a half-hour to kick in, just enough time for you to nap. That way, if you've had a coffee-primed nap, the benefits are twofold: you've rested and you're ready to go when you wake. The British Transportation Department even provides drivers with the following recommendation to combat driver fatigue: "Stop, drink two cups of coffee or a highly caffeinated drink, then take a short nap." Think of a nap as a free extra shot in your latte.
2. The Nicest Nap: Hour Emsellem says that 2 or 3 p.m. is the ideal nap hour—late enough to fit into your natural siesta zone but early enough that it will not interfere with your night sleep. Also take your afternoon schedule into consideration when making nap plans. If you can, Emsellem recommends taking your midafternoon snooze just prior to a big meeting. Dozing right before the meeting will make sure you're not drifting off during the meeting.
3. Length Does Matter: A good nap length is somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. This will give you the restorative benefits of sleep without the lethargy or grogginess—what Emsellem calls "sleep drunkenness."
4. Making the Bed: Location may be the toughest nap quandary. If your company has a health or nurse's room, that could make a good place for snoozing. If that's not an option, you may have to turn your cubicle into a makeshift nap room—but that means you'll probably have to be all right with curling up under your desk. Heading to your parked car is another option—but of course you should make sure a window is open and the engine is not running.
5. Set an Alarm: Chances are, if you're tired enough to take a nap, you will not magically wake up on your own accord. So set an alarm, both to avoid the grogginess of a long nap and to make sure you don't sleep through anything important.
6. Keep It Consistent: Emsellem suggests working that 20-minute nap into a particular sleep routine to make it part of your body's expected circadian rhythm. The easiest way to do that is by using a sleep log to record your snoozing habits.
7. Be an Alert Napper: If you always feel the need for a nap, think about your nightly sleep schedule. Are you down to only five or six hours? While a 20-minute nap is a good refresher, it will not make up for hours lost at night. Conversely, if you're getting eight hours of sleep each night yet still feel the need to nap, that might be the sign of a sleep disorder, or another health problem, so check with your physician or check out the National Sleep Foundation or the American Academy of Sleep Medicine for more sleep resources. | <urn:uuid:3b935ed1-8fab-40e4-9cfd-e09c7ab506a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/10/21/seven-secrets-to-a-great-nap.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938238 | 770 | 1.804688 | 2 |
KEYE-TV - Search Results
New Website Helps You Find Out If A Potential Partner Has An STD
Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in Texas. According to the state's health department, 122,000 Texans were diagnosed with chlamydia last year -- and the number keeps growing.
Now, a new website, qpid.me, is causing a commotion in Texas. It allows users to see if their new partner has a STD.
The site is supposed to help online daters make healthy choices. Users can share their personal health information by sending someone a link. After the information is viewed, the link expires.
One frisky single I spoke to, jokingly referred to the site as "my safe valentine."
There are plenty of people looking to get lucky this Valentine's Day. And businesses are catering to their carnal desires.
"You get the beer and liquor flowing and see what happens," said Michael Navarrete.
Plucker's is holding its annual "Anti-Valentine's Day" party. And instead of confetti, there are condoms.
"I think we're going to drop them from the ceiling so everyone has a chance to grab one," said Navarrete.
Cody McGinley has been on the single scene for nearly a decade.
"Some successes and some awful failures," admitted McGinley.
She never been on Qpid.me, but is open to the idea of online disclosure.
"I would but I think that is a conversation I would want to have later on in the relationship," added McGinley.
According to the website, 1 in 3 online daters has a STD. The site lets you share your private health history with a potential partner.
"We consistently see both chlamydia and gonorrhea here every day," said Nicole Griffis.
Griffis is a nurse practitioner with Planned Parenthood. She warns against trusting the information since not everyone is aware they're infected.
"Many of them don't show symptoms through course of the illness, you can spread infection without knowing you have it," added Griffis.
Your best bet? Safe sex.
"Condoms, condoms, condoms for any kind of sexual activity," said Griffis.
And for single ladies -- like McGinley -- she's looking for stability before making a sexual connection.
"I just want to make sure someone is stable and not crazy before I'm even worried about all that," said McGinley.
The website does not appear to violate HIPPA laws since all of the health information requires the user's consent. But if you want to make sure your personal information doesn't end up in the wrong hands. Your best bet it to tell someone in person or on the phone.
By Alex Boyer | <urn:uuid:59231dae-3a6f-41f6-9162-c386742e5c1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.keyetv.com/template/cgi-bin/archived.pl?type=basic&file=/news/features/top-stories/stories/archive/2013/02/1pK6dJ8Y.xml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96437 | 579 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Grass (2000) DVD
Although there are more than a few films out there about the history of marijuana, few tell the tale as informatively, and entertainingly, as Grass. This is a full-length documentary film that is narrated by Hollywood film star Woody Harrelson, himself being known for an outwardly positive attitude toward cannabis. Harrelson does a smart job of handling these duties, and is easy to listen too through the 80 minutes of the production. This film follows the often ridiculous history of marijuana policy in the United States, and covers the sometimes frivolous social attitudes about the issue as well.
The interesting thing about this film’s approach to the subject matter is the way that it breaks down the historical context into different segments, which each segment covering around a decade at a time. As expected of a good historical recount, there is a lot of good archival footage in here, including some priceless and fairly damning footage of Harry J. Anslinger himself. Anslinger the notorious leader of the first ever incarnation of what would soon evolve into the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Anslinger, a notorious bigot and racist to the extreme, is shown in his true light as being the destructive, close-minded G-man that he was.
There is also a laundry list of other historically relevant figures featured in the film as well; including such instantly recognizable subjects as former American Presidents, numerous famous entertainers, and others relevant to the now nearly century-long struggle for sensible marijuana policies in this country. With its broad historical content recounted in an informative yet humorous way, and boasting a highly relevant cast of historical players directly involved with the issue, Grass is a nice overview of the long and sorted history of cannabis policy in the USA.
This film was produced by seasoned documentary film producer Ron Mann, and written by Solomon Vesta. Grass was initially released at the Toronto Film Festival in September of 1999. It is a good film to help educate and entertain those that are already on the cannabis loving side of the argument, but would certainly prove an even more valuable watch for those that may not know much of anything about the plant, or its illustrious history, at all.
All and all, this is an easily recommendable film, and as previously stated, an enjoyable time as well. But perhaps the biggest reason to take a look at this one is the sheer necessity for the triumph of true knowledge over government hyperbole and propagandist misinformation about an issue that does dramatically more harm through its policies than could ever occur through human interaction with the cannabis plant itself. | <urn:uuid:7bfffdbd-594f-4c89-809a-f153a2dd7d8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marijuanahistory.org/grass-dvd-2000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971908 | 519 | 1.507813 | 2 |
It's pothole season! This winter's storms have taken a toll on our roadways. Please be aware of the potholes in the streets and near the curbs.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU SEE A POTHOLE:
Please notify the Department of Public Works at (508) 821-1431. If we aren't aware of it, we can't fix it.
If you do encounter a pothole and have damage to your vehicle, you may be eligible for reimbursement. Every claim is investigated and approved or denied based upon the provisions of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 84.
INFORMATION ON POTHOLE CLAIMS:
Potholes are generally caused by the combination of the expansion and contraction of freezing and thawing water underneath the road surface and the compression and recompression caused by motor vehicles passing over the surface. Once the surface of the road is broken, the pieces are knocked away by passing cars, and the material underneath is washed away by the rain. Freezing and thawing conditions can produce a very large number of potholes overnight. The DPW sends crews out frequently to fill potholes. Potholes can be reported by calling the DPW at 508-821-1431. Potholes are also caused by contractors who dig up a street to make utility connections or repairs.
Under state law, the city is responsible for repairing defects in public ways. The law does not guaranty the safe condition of public ways. The law makes the city liable for damages caused by defects only if the city fails to make repairs within a reasonable time after the defect is reported. We use 72 hours as a reasonable time within which to repair a pothole after we received notice of its location. Even if the city is negligent for not repairing a pothole on a timely basis, state law prevents the city from paying the claim if the driver was also negligent. Exceeding the speed limit is the most common form of driver negligence.
A claim must be received by the city within 30 days of the incident.
HOW TO FILE A CLAIM FOR DAMAGE DUE TO ROAD DEFECTS:
Claim forms must be received within 30 days of the incident. If you have any questions please contact the Risk Manager at (508) 821-1172. | <urn:uuid:357714f5-eccb-4784-a19f-4e08f671e654> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://taunton-ma.gov/Pages/TauntonMA_News/03DBB5CD-000F8513 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954393 | 479 | 1.570313 | 2 |
MONTROSE – Thanks to recent precipitation, federal lands in areas of the Western Slope are returning to Stage I Fire Restrictions on Wednesday, July 18, in the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, as well as the Uncompahgre Field Office and the Gunnison Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management.
Stage I Fire Restrictions may also be in effect for several local counties, pending discussions among county boards of commissioners this week for San Miguel, Delta, Ouray, Montrose and Gunnison counties.
While the recent rains have provided some relief, fire managers are monitoring and evaluating whether the rains will have a lasting impact on long-term fire conditions. While the area has received rain, it is spotty in places. Rainfall amounts have been variable across the area and were accompanied by lightning, which has produced numerous small fires. Long-term weather forecasts call for continued hot, dry conditions with high temperatures returning. The area has experienced severe drought conditions and significant precipitation will be needed to recover from these conditions.
“We appreciate the public’s cooperation and support in respecting fire restrictions,” said Acting Forest Supervisor Sherry Hazelhurst. “Fire managers will continue to monitor weather and vegetation conditions across the area, discussing them with the counties and other partners to coordinate needed restrictions.
“Should conditions warrant a change, we will provide media announcements and update information on the MIFMU, GMUG and BLM websites to ensure that people working in or recreating in the area are kept aware of current fire restrictions.”
Stage I fire restrictions on BLM and USFS lands prohibit: “building, maintaining, attending or using a fire or campfire except a fire within a permanent constructed fire grate in a developed (fee) campground; Smoking except within an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site or while stopped in an area at least three feet in diameter that is barren or cleared of all flammable materials; and operating or using any internal combustion engine without a spark arresting device properly installed, maintained and in effective working order is also prohibited.”
Campers are permitted to use, “petroleum-fueled stoves, lanterns or heating devices that meet the fire underwriters’ specifications for safety.”
The use of fireworks, flares or other incendiary devices is always prohibited on federal lands. | <urn:uuid:12209bbc-a3b4-4c33-bce3-f69328ad563b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.watchnewspapers.com/view/full_story/19341452/article-Federal-Lands-Return-to-Stage-I-Fire-Restrictions?instance=2nd_top_story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935517 | 488 | 1.664063 | 2 |
EUGENE, Ore. -- The undead filled Kesey Square Saturday after a worldwide infection that has spread to Eugene. That infection all started with one of Michael Jackson's most contagious dance hits.
Since 2006 people around the globe have gathered together for "Thrill the World", where large groups of people dressed as zombies sing and dance along to one of the pop legend's biggest hits, "Thriller".
Each participating city starts the dance at exactly 12 p.m. local time. Over a hundred ghoulish dancers boogied along to the song when Eugene's clock struck noon, matching the choreographed moves laid out in Jackson's 1983 music video.
For dancing zombies like Lorie Vik, the event provides a chance to connect with people around the world in celebration of Michael Jackson's music.
"It was really motivating actually … and reminded us that everybody else around the world was doing it at the exact same time. You really feel like it's a lot bigger than just Eugene."
This year marks the first time Eugene has joined Salem and Portland in representing Oregon for "Thrill the World".
Each city that participates in the event supports awareness for a different non-profit. For Eugene, organizers chose to recognize Shelter Care.
Organizers said they want to make Eugene an annual participant in "Thrill the World". | <urn:uuid:30e85213-6f01-4c33-ac46-ad60a24bfe67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kval.com/news/local/176129751.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950026 | 273 | 1.53125 | 2 |
- Lesia Bates Moss is president of Seedco Financial, a subsidiary of Seedco, a national nonprofit organization that helps low-income people and communities move toward economic prosperity. Any opinions are her own. -
As policymakers in Washington work to unfreeze the credit market and reinvigorate lending activity, much of the attention has fallen on the biggest lenders and the needs of major companies.
But on Main Streets across the nation, small businesses have also been hit hard by the recession and credit crunch. Unable to obtain affordable capital – and often in need of technical assistance to help them survive the financial tumult – many small businesses are closing their doors and laying off workers.
President Obama has proposed some important steps to address the small business credit crisis. His plan creates incentives for banks to lend to small businesses by expanding loan guarantees and purchasing up to $15 billion of Small Business Administration-backed loans through the Troubled Assets Relief Program.
But a small business rescue package should include a large infusion of capital that puts money directly into the hands of small businesses. In addition, resources should support the activities of community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and other alternative lenders who provide a range of financial and technical assistance services to small employers left reeling by the downturn. | <urn:uuid:980e0121-ed2c-48fb-b363-05e50670a305> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/tag/seedco/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955193 | 255 | 1.8125 | 2 |
'A leader's worth can be assessed by the men around him' Machiavelli. Sometimes, I feel like giving up on Ghana just as some of our founding founders who gave their lives, time, resources, freedoms and liberties to ensure that this country became a respected one.
Joe Appiah of blessed memory did not understand the doyen of Ghanaian politics, Joseph Boakye Danquah of blessed memory, when the latter asked the former, in his cells at the Ussher Fort Prisons, whether 'Ghana is worth dying for'.
Dr. J.B. Danquah, just about a year before his second arrest and detention in 1963, wrote, 'All my life, I have pinned my faith in the Ghanaian that he is sensible and is capable of thinking as a human being. I do not wish to lose my faith in Ghana. God help my faith.'
All of us have faith in Ghana that is why we sacrifice our freedoms, liberties, risk our lives et al to do what we do in the hope that mother Ghana will be what we all want it to be.
I am sure that almost 48 years after what J.B. wrote, and 46 years after his death, a young journalist, Anas Armeyaw Anas, who has sacrificed his life, time and energies bringing to the fore and the attention of Ghanaians and the world, the various forms of corruption and misdeeds very much inimical to the well being of the people of this country, may raise his arms into the air and also ask, 'Is Ghana worth dying for?'
Anas, my consolation to you is: Weep not child, because the centre can no longer hold and the leadership of your country is no longer at ease with fighting corruption and doing what is right in the eyes of descent minded Ghanaians. Indeed, the beautiful ones are not yet born and the ugly ones refuse to die.
President Mills rode on the wings of his unmitigated dislike for corruption in its totality and anything near to it.
Indeed he had told the world that a mere publication of any act of corruption by anybody in his government or by extension by any Ghanaian would attract his investigations.
Today, video evidence of corruption is aired on national televisions for the President and his men and women of integrity to see filifili, but all the man of self-imposed unbridled and impeccable integrity does is to look on helplessly.
Yes, what has the President done about the video evidence publicly displayed on the televisions, showing the criminal conduct of some officers from CEPS and the Police beyond his populist move to Tema to pontificate on the corruption captured by Anas?
Is the Attorney-General not interested in prosecuting these nation wreckers the state has employed and who are paid by the tax payer but decide to engage in acts which tend to undermine the state and rather benefit those who are supposed to protect the interest of the state?
Yes, I understand that evidence collected illegally cannot in itself, be used in court, but there is a window which allows the organizations to use the available evidence offered by what could legally be considered illegal evidence, to embark on investigations to verify the authenticity or otherwise of the information so made public against those persons.
What has been happening ever since Anas came out with the bone-breaking information on cocoa smuggling at the Western borders of this country?
If Prez Mills knew he was not going to do anything about the exposures at Tema, why did he rush there for the cameras to say what he said? Just to deceive Ghanaians?
When Anas exposed the factory at Spintex road which uses or used maggot-infested flour to prepare biscuits for our consumption under Kufuor, at least the factory was closed down for a while until the authorities became satisfied subsequently that the right things were being done.
In fact, I think even the punishment at the time was not deterrent enough, but something was done. Egya Atta, your abhorrence towards corruption has not being manifested in your actions.
Egya Atta, right under your nose, foreigners are bribing their way through officials in this country and are engaging in illegal acts of not just mining, but criminal destruction of our environment. Yes, the police and other public officers are in the know and yet nothing is being done about these.
In fact, some police officers are bribed to pave the way for the perpetrators of the heinous crimes in this country.
Egya Atta, corruption has officially been given a pride of place in your administration, where a public institution can illegally extract a whooping sum of GH¢690 million from Ghanaians and yet not account publicly for those monies. Who authorized them to do that and on whose behalf?
Tell this country and the world your position on this rape of our resources deposited in a secret account without the knowledge of the Auditor-General who is supposed to audit all public funds?Continued... | <urn:uuid:b0a916b6-cac8-48ae-bc9a-d626d7ebe682> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ghanapolitics.net/peacefmonline/prez-mills-endorses-massive-corruption.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974003 | 1,027 | 1.507813 | 2 |
len Spencer Schlie wipes her eyes after her stolen 1830 Book of Mormon was returned to her Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013.(Photo: Michael Schennum, The Arizona Republic)
MESA, Ariz. (USA TODAY) -- Bookstore owner Helen Schlie was heartbroken in May when she discovered a trusted friend had stolen her original Book of Mormon and sold a few pages to a rare-book dealer in Texas.
But Schlie, 89, was relieved Tuesday when Mesa police detectives returned the tome. She smiled as she read her late husband Walter's signature on a back page.
A team of detectives first tracked pages from the stolen book to Texas dealer Reid Moon, who had purchased them from Jay Michael Linford, 49, not realizing they had been pilfered.
STORY: First-edition Book of Mormon stolen in Mesa
Police later recovered the rest of the rare first-edition book, valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, when the U.S. Marshals Service arrested Linford on June 11 in northern Virginia.
Linford, who previously had published a book of Schlie's poetry, pleaded guilty to theft on Jan. 10 and is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 12 by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Cynthia Bailey.
Linford's plea agreement calls for a sentence that includes probation.
He could also be sentenced to 7 1/2 months to two years in prison.
Police returned the book to Schlie because it was no longer needed as evidence.
Tuesday was the first time Schlie had seen her book since May.
She noticed the book was missing on Memorial Day weekend, when two missionaries stopped by her bookstore and asked to see it.
"This has hurt my heart terribly. Jay had been such a help to me," Schlie said. "I can't understand what happened in his mind to do this. I'm just happy to have it back.''
Schlie's family has owned the book, published in 1830, for 40 years.
It is believed to be one of about 200 first-edition printings in existence.
Schlie said she has sold a few pages of the book, but the majority is intact.
"It was in better condition 40 years ago," Schlie said Tuesday as she examined the book.
Because of heavy media coverage of the theft, "it's the most publicized Book of Mormon,'' she added.
The book's binding is loose, and there are glue stains and wrinkles, impressions created when the books were stacked after printing, Sgt. Chris Rash said.
He said the unique characteristics, along with photographs taken by Schlie before the theft, helped police identify the missing book.
"Each book has its own imprint. It's similar to a fingerprint,'' Rash said.
Detectives tracked how the pages were sold to Moon for $7,500 and shipped to him, consulted with experts on the book's authenticity and worked with federal agencies, including the FBI's art unit, he said.
Lead Detective Jodi Schock considers the Book of Mormon caper among the most unique and satisfying of her career.
"I'm so happy I could get it back to her," Schock said.
Schock said she called Moon because he had discussed purchasing parts of the book from Schlie prior to the theft.
"Even though he was out the money, he wanted her to get her property back," Purington said.
Linford's plea agreement calls for him to repay Moon his $7,500.
Court documents said the book itself is valued at $50,000, with a second document quoting a range of $25,000 to $100,000.
But Schlie said the book is priceless to Mormons, who often come by her bookstore near the Arizona Temple to be photographed holding the rare edition.
Mormons consider the Book of Mormon another testimony of Jesus Christ, equal in standing to the Bible.
One couple brought their newborn boy to Schlie's store and took a photograph of him putting his hand on the book, saying he could take the picture with him on his church mission 19 years later, Schlie said.
"They feel the spirit of it," she said. | <urn:uuid:8333f888-e1e0-49e8-b69d-faca7938b39e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thv11.com/news/article/243360/70/Ariz-woman-reunited-with-stolen-Book-of-Mormon | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983593 | 864 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Activist claims victory in forcing Facebook vote over rule changes
Can Facebook users be bothered to vote?
The Europe-v-Facebook campaign organized by Austrian law student Max Schrems is claiming victory after the social networking giant announced it is holding a vote on updates to its operating policy.
"Today we are asking you to join our second global site governance vote," said Elliot Schrage, VP of communications and public policy on the company blog. "Voting will be facilitated by an application developed on Facebook Platform by Wildfire, and an independent auditor will examine the vote tabulation to further ensure accurate results. We strongly encourage you to participate in the vote on our new revised documents."
Schrems, 24, has been waging a personal crusade against Facebook's data policies and made a succession of complaints about their breaking of EU law to the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland, where Facebook has its European headquarters. This led to an audit by the authorities and in response Facebook made alterations to both its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Data Use Policy and submitted them for public comment.
Under Facebook's own rules, if more than 7,000 people comment on policy revisions then they are put to a vote, and if more than 30 per cent of the world user base votes then that result is binding, rather than advisory. Schrems set up Europe-v-Facebook to try and trigger a vote and claims that English users have filed over 7,000 comments and German customers more than 30,000, forcing Facebook to the ballot box.
"The user does not really get to vote on the content of the 40,000 comments. Right now we would suggest to rather vote for the old policy, since this would force Facebook to take another attempt to comply with the Irish regulators," Schrems told El Reg in a statement. “At the same time we are wondering how long Facebook wants to keep on playing this tiring game. It’s time that they simply comply with the law, just like any other company."
Schrems said his objective was to make all data collection and advertising opt-in rather than collection by default. He's posted up a list of suggestions but, unsurprisingly, says Facebook isn’t interested in discussing the issue further and certainly isn’t promoting the voting process other than via a link on its corporate pages. This makes a successful turnout of 30 per cent of its 901 million users highly unlikely before the vote ends on June 8.
Facebook raised the threshold of user voting to 30 per cent in the wake of the fuss caused in 2009 over changes to its terms and conditions, giving it ownership of all user data on its servers. Zuckerberg pleaded that he needed a license to use content properly but then the company backtracked and reinstated the old terms. This latest kerfuffle may cause Facebook to reexamine its corporate democracy policies once more.
"Personally we would understand if Facebook is amending this mechanism, even though it has that bitter taste of ‘democracy is only respected if it brings the right results,’" Schrems said. "We think it perfectly shows how this platform is changing from a user based system to a money-driven cooperation." ®
"Corporate democracy" that made me laugh out loud.
"Can Facebook users be bothered to vote?"
Hmmm, can the average Facebook denizen even tell consonant from vowel? Can they type anything approaching a structured sentence without the use of 'lolz', 'innit', 'well reem' etc.? I have even recently encountered an individual who screamed (during intermittent access problems) "the internet doesn't work without Facebook!"
Can the average Facebook user be bothered to vote? Probably not - such a literary challenge would require an IQ above 0.
Welcome to the FaceBook voting app. To use this app, you must upgrade to timeline and accept our new revised Terms and Conditions...
...Thank you for accepting the new Terms and Conditions. Your vote to accept has been registered. We now return you to a hundred game requests and the usual inane drivel your so-called friends bombard you with. | <urn:uuid:817d1808-d9bd-4e12-bdcb-788a558a75ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/01/facebook_terms_vote/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949812 | 842 | 1.5 | 2 |
Expert Q & A Answers About HIV + AIDS
I want to get tested HIV, but I don’t know anything about HIV tests. Can you help?
Hi. I want to know when to test for HIV. I ended up going home with a guy I met last night and we had sex. We didn’t use a condom and now I’m really worried...what if he had HIV? Can I get tested for HIV right away, or do I have to wait?
How do I test for HIV? I’m a 28-year-old guy and I’m kind of concerned about some of the sexual risks I took when I was younger. I don’t even know where to start when it comes to testing for HIV. Please help.
I think I may be at risk for HIV, and I want to get tested. But I’ve never been tested before and I don’t really want to go to my doctor. Where can I test for HIV anonymously?
I just started hanging out with a new guy. We’ve been kissing and I gave him a blow job the other day without a condom. Should I be worried? How can I get HIV?
My HIV antibody test is positive...but the Western Blot is negative. What does this mean? Do I have HIV or not?
About 7 months ago I visited a gentleman's club in Singapore (I was there for school). I wound up French kissing one of the workers there. I did not have sex ⎼ including oral sex ⎼ and no drugs at all. I got concerned about STDs so I went to a doctor for advice. He said that French kissing is a risk for HIV and I should get tested at 3 months...but I got scared so I got tested almost every week. And all ten tests were negative until my last test at a hospital. That test was an ag/ab test called a chemiluminescence test and the document they gave me had an index number on it (2.69). They ran a Western Blot for HIV-1 and HIV-2, both of which were negative. I went back for confirmation two weeks later and got the same results but with an even lower index number (1.72). I’m so confused about these results...but I also read that false positives are rare...do you have any advice?
Can I get AIDS from having oral sex with another woman? How can I prevent it?
I’m gay and I like having oral sex with my friend. But I heard that oral sex can be risky for getting HIV/AIDS. My partner is free from these diseases…do I have anything to worry about?
I had sex with my girlfriend and didn’t use a condom. I didn’t penetrate deep into her vagina. She and I have not had sex with anyone before and I don’t have any symptoms. Could I still be infected with HIV?
I have a friend who has HIV. She has a girlfriend she has sex with. Her girlfriend licks dried blood off her arm. She says the virus is dead and can’t hurt her. Is that true? Can you get HIV from dried blood? | <urn:uuid:17941e62-8693-457e-b0d6-edca59081797> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sexualhealth.com/hiv-sexually-transmitted-diseases_c_23/?page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979456 | 674 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Last week, we lost a valuable colleague in Ricky DeHerrera, the Optic’s Mora County correspondent for 37 years. He died last week at the too-young age of 65.
His work for this newspaper kept us in touch with current events in Mora, but more than that, his dedication to his community and the Optic brings back memories of how things used to be.
Years ago, small-town newspapers regularly ran news and social items submitted by “country correspondents.” These amateur reporters would collect tidbits of information from their neighbors, muse about the weather or other happenings in their neck of the woods and turn it all in to a newspaper editor, who would then make sure it was published for the larger community of readers to see. About the only qualifications for such a low- or no-paying job was to be connected with your neighbors, have a decent command of the written language and be able to turn in your copy on time.
It was a way in which communities stayed connected, neighbor to neighbor and village to village. There wasn’t anything fancy about it, but it was an effective means of communication. Plus, it served the Optic’s and other newspapers’ interest, because it increased their value for their readers.
As the 20th century brought in other ways to stay connected, these country correspondents slowly fell by the wayside. Now, in this modern world of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail and the Internet, country correspondents seem to be an antiquated idea, with people such as Ricky DeHerrera irrelevant.
But they haven’t. In recent years, the newspaper industry has been on a downhill slide. As a result, newspaper executives have been scurrying around trying to figure out how to reverse the downward trend. And one thing they’ve realized is that newspaper must protect their No. 1 strength — our ability to cover local news and happening like no other medium.
Maybe the old-time country correspondents won’t be returning exactly as they once were, but a semblance of what they did — they gave a voice to the rural areas of a newspaper’s circulation market — is again being recognized as vital to newspapers’ future. The better small-town newspapers never lost sight of this reality, but now everyone in the business seems to realize it.
WANTED: Someone to cover Mora County for the Las Vegas Optic. It’s a freelance job that requires a commitment to serve Mora Valley residents by giving them a voice in their area newspaper. Qualifications include an ability to write and a strong connection to your community.
Don’t apply if you’re just interested in what it pays. Our man Ricky DeHerrera didn’t do it just for the money; his motivation was to represent his home country in the pages of the Optic, and he did so honorably. We’ll always remember him for such dedication — and, now, we’re looking for someone to fill his shoes as our Mora correspondent. After all, local coverage is what we do best. | <urn:uuid:f03dc7e6-9151-42f6-80a8-06240584b442> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lasvegasoptic.com/content/editorial-communitys-coorespondent | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975879 | 651 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Rakvere is a city in northern Estonia, about 20 km from the Gulf of Finland. It is the administrative centre for Lääne-Viru county and has 16767 01.06.2012) inhabitants. Rakvere City Government has 45 employees.
In order to attain the traffic safety goals in Rakvere, the city commits to undertake following actions:
1) Crossroads - the city has decided to make safe 11 most problematic crossroads in the city by the year 2015 by goal-oriented designing of the traffic environment (changing the crossroads into safe roundabouts, creating islands in dangerous crossroads, adding traffic lights if necessary).
2) Turn the railroad crossing into a safe level crossing - the city will close a one-level crossing of the railroad and build an overpass (viaduct) over the railroad diminishing thus the number of accidents on the railroad crossing.
3) Developing and building bicycle routes - the city is developing about 30 km of bicycle and other traffic vehicle roads and will establish bicycle parking lots with the objective of turning the other vehicle traffic into most important way of movement in the city and improving the traffic safety by it.
4) Pedestrian crossings - the city has decided to increase the safety of 20 crossroads in the city by taking constructional measures and rising this way the attentiveness of the drivers by building safety-islands, narrowing the roadlanes and improving the visibility conditions.
5) Communication and informing - in schools and daycare centers (3 daycare centres and 6 schools) information days and campaigns directed towards traffic safety and improving behavioural patterns will be conducted in order to increase the awareness amongst children. | <urn:uuid:b82fdead-bf32-4780-9ea5-ef632bdda3b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.erscharter.eu/signatories/profile/15389 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933427 | 338 | 1.765625 | 2 |
ST JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. -- Where most of us call home is a welcomed break for drivers like Jeffrey Venezin. "I try to make this trip once a year from New Jersey. Florida is a nice place," he said.
40 million people drive to the sunshine state every year, but this trip is costing more because of a spike at the pump. "$3.75, in Michigan it was $3.60," said Edward Krol.
Gas prices have jumped about 45-cents since January. And they are expected to get higher before they drop. "We've seen that the price has to go upward of $4.50 or so before people tend to change their plans," said Richard Goldman.
Goldman is the Executive Director of the St Augustine and Ponte Vedra Beaches Visitor and Convetnions Bureau. He says with St. Augustine's 450th Commemoration, he is expecting a big year for tourism. "Even if gas prices do increase a little bit, we don't think they will do a lot of damage to our celebration," said Goldman.
Tourism is St Johns County's biggest industry. It brought in $750 million last year. Goldman says it's to early to tell if gas prices will make an impact. "They didn't effect me, I am still down here," said Venezin.
It's traditions like Venezin's annual Florida road trip that continues to drive-up the local economy. You can find the cheapest gas prices for your next road trip by going to Gas Buddy | <urn:uuid:b52b188b-a56c-4fdf-93b4-bf411bf2bcb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.actionnewsjax.com/content/topstories/story/Rising-gas-prices-could-slow-Floridas-tourism/5RDpmA4No0SuL1gUmR3RVQ.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978489 | 321 | 1.5625 | 2 |
A grove of 250-foot tower cranes, tallest of all construction cranes, soon will fill a gap in Galveston’s skyline reserved for the new 13-floor Jennie Sealy Hospital, which is scheduled to open in 2016.
Two of the big cranes already are at the hospital site, hoisting material and equipment in an industrial-grade aerial ballet. Two more are due in October and December.
“The arrival and installation of the tower cranes is exciting because everyone in Galveston can see them and know that UTMB is making progress,” said Jake Wolf, senior project manager.
The tower cranes will help place Jennie Sealy’s vertical columns, which are expected to start going up by January. The hospital will have two distinctive towers, 310 patient rooms and an adjoining seven-floor support building, the Clinical Services Wing.
“The crane is the lifeblood of the project,” said Joe Burrus, project superintendent for Hensel Phelps Construction Co., the hospital general contractor. “Everything revolves around it.”
Coordinating the movements of tower cranes is a lot like controlling air traffic. “It’s a dance,” said Barry Enderle, superintendent with Vaughn Construction, contractor for the Clinical Services Wing. “And a good dancer knows when to lead and when to follow.”
In Galveston, the two contractors, Vaughn and Hensel Phelps, have abutting work areas. They operate their own tower cranes, but work together every minute on their maneuvers. Each crane operator has two spotters on the ground, a flag or signal person who guides the operator, and a crane coordinator who communicates movements with other cranes on shared radio frequencies. Cranes at the site also have an electronic collision-avoidance system.
Crane maneuvering can be tricky in congested work areas. A tower crane hoists cargo from a boom, or jib, that extends horizontally more than 200 feet. The jib can rotate 360 degrees and enter the perimeter of another crane’s jib. Collisions can be avoided by timing a movement or changing the elevation of the jib’s cargo, much like air-traffic controllers do.
“Safety is our No. 1 priority on the jobsite,” Wolf said. “We want to ensure that all the construction workers, hospital staff, visitors and patients go home safely to their families.”
A crane operator’s workday lasts 10-12 hours, usually starting before dawn with the day’s toughest physical challenge – climbing an enclosed ladder up to the cab at the top of the crane.
“I may take 20 or 30 minutes to get to the cab some mornings, but usually I’m up there in about 15 minutes,” said Keith Crawford, 57, crane operator for Hensel Phelps. He starts work at 4:30 a.m. His crane is 260 feet high.
Crane operators and their coordinators are usually among the most experienced construction personnel at a site. Crawford has been a crane operator for 27 years; his ground coordinator, Elroy McKnight, also a certified crane operator, has 33 years of experience. Operators undergo a rigorous process of regular physical exams and job-skill testing to get certified.
Tower cranes are built to withstand high winds. One tower crane at Galveston, for example, is designed to withstand 95-mph winds; another is designed for up to 138-mph winds. A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of 74-95 mph. Crews will lower a tower crane if the probability of a hurricane arises.
Crawford and McKnight said they have ridden out thunderstorms. “I’ve been in 80-mph winds and you don’t know whether to stay in the cab or try to climb down,” said McKnight, 63. “You are almost always better off staying in the cab because there are greater dangers climbing down like getting hit by lightning or being blown off the ladder.”
Do operators get a break? “Only when the crane is not in use,” said Burrus, the Hensel Phelps superintendent. “The operator takes his lunch with him so that he does not have to climb down until the end of the day. He has facilities to use the bathroom and amenities for when he is not working. He has video access in the cab so he can watch Doppler radar for any adverse weather developments.” | <urn:uuid:cfc069de-f53f-4e43-9eea-b2cc5391fe44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utmb.edu/impact/article.aspx?IAID=860 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943626 | 945 | 1.796875 | 2 |
| Mar 26, 2013
Paige Flink and Jan Langbein: Dallas men, your next job in stopping domestic violence
25 March 2013
The Dallas Morning News
To the men of Dallas:
It was an amazing sight to see thousands of you braving the weather, standing in front of Dallas City Hall to take a pledge to stop domestic abuse in our city. There were men from all walks of life, teachers, preachers, coaches, celebrities, politicians and students — fathers and sons, fathers and daughters.
For more than 30 years, family-violence service providers have worked to see this day come, and we say thank you. Thank you for making Dallas a model for the nation, a place where men say enough is enough — domestic violence is not acceptable, period.
But what comes next? How do we maintain this momentum? How do we make this a beginning of a new movement? What will you do individually and collectively to make sure that this wasn’t a one-time show of support?
Mayor Mike Rawlings asked the men at the rally to pledge to never hurt a woman. Even if you weren’t at the event, you can join them by making these personal commitments:
I will never physically harm or emotionally abuse women.
I will speak out and step in when I see a man abusing a woman.
I will hold abusive men accountable for their actions and encourage them to seek counseling.
I will teach my daughters, nieces and granddaughters that they never have to accept violence in a relationship.
I will teach my sons, nephews and grandsons that violence is an unacceptable way to express anger.
I will never blame the victim for “bringing it on herself.”
You can also make an impact by holding our elected officials accountable. Make sure your representatives in Austin and Washington pass laws and provide funding to help curb violence in the home.
Talk about domestic violence at work. It will help make your company more productive if the women you work with aren’t afraid in their homes. Make work a safe place for them to share their fears.
Encourage your faith leaders to think safety first when someone in the congregation comes to them for advice.
Get involved as a volunteer and financial supporter of agencies working to stop family violence. Go to genesisshelter.org and learn about how your co-workers, church members and other groups can participate in special events that allow Genesis Women’s Shelter to provide lifesaving services to women and children at no cost.
Keep the momentum going by coming to the Family Place Training Camp. This free, four-part educational series will help men understand how to recognize the warning signs of abusive relationships, gain tools to train young men to avoid abusive behaviors, learn how to become a mentor and leader in holding men accountable, and find ways to have positive relationships in their family lives. To sign up for the first camp, April 18, go to familyplace.org.
Many of us have deep-rooted beliefs that domestic violence is someone else’s problem, that it’s a family matter and somehow not our business. National statistics show that one in four women will be a victim of physical assault in her lifetime.
That means somewhere, a woman you know has experienced the unspeakable — hurt and harm at the hands of someone who is supposed to love her. It matters to her if you speak up and tell her that you care, that you don’t want her to suffer alone and that she doesn’t deserve to be abused.
We know that violence against women will decrease when men are involved in the solution. The outcome of men’s involvement in the solutions will be powerful. Working together, we can reduce the number of domestic violence murders in our city. We can all agree on that goal.
The men of Dallas can do this. You can make Dallas a place where the culture changes, a place where women can feel safe that a bystander will be there for her to step up and say, “No more!”
Paige Flink is executive director of the Family Place and may be contacted at [email protected]. Jan Langbein is executive director of the Genesis Women’s Shelter and may be contacted at [email protected].
Read more at Dallasnews.com. | <urn:uuid:6c14e5f3-d221-4223-ab1f-2b6897b4ae23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://familyplace.org/inside-the-family-place | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957403 | 910 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The figures depicted in Nicole Eisenman’s paintings and works on paper often convey a sense of unsettled contemplation and disenchantment. Typically highly personal and speaking explicitly to our current economic and political environment, her works ultimately go beyond these themes to explore a broader interest in the human condition. From allegorical tableaux such as The Drawing Class (on view in the Museum Lobby) to individual portraits like Breakup and the untitled monotypes shown in the Biennial galleries, she exhibits a fascination with human interaction and detachment. Every subject is depicted in a unique and distinctive manner, in accordance with the artist’s belief that “different images ask to be painted in different ways” and adding to the impression that each of her subjects, even those sharing a scene with other figures, exists in an isolated psychological space.
Combining an erudite, easygoing virtuosity and deadpan humor with a wide variety of techniques culled from the history of painting and printmaking, Eisenman carves out a world in which meaning is elusive if not painfully unavailable. Often identified with significant shifts in feminist art of the 1990s, her practice embraces popular culture and encompasses many types of media and subject matter. Through all of it is revealed an artist— frequently cited as one of the seminal painters of her generation—both passionate and with a remarkable facility for witty self-critique, deeply invested in exploring her own time, in all its forms.
Nicole Eisenman’s work is on view in the Museum’s third floor galleries and in the lobby. | <urn:uuid:fd3e5739-0d94-4edd-81bf-2f58ff2c73a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/2012Biennial/NicoleEisenman | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946002 | 322 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Fifty years after her flight, a new graphic novel recounts the saga of the dog that made space history.
- By Tony Reichhardt
- AirSpaceMag.com, November 01, 2007
(Page 4 of 4)
A&S: One of the heroes in your story is Yelena, the woman who trains Laika and suffers through her flight. Was she an actual person, or based on an actual person?
Abadzis: There’s a good story behind "Yelena." I based her very, very loosely on a woman I had known had worked for the Soviet space bureau, the IMBP, several years after the Laika mission. She had worked for the Soviet state circus. She worked with Gazenko a few years after the events of Laika. So I had the idea that I could put a female worker in the story and it wouldn’t be too much of a dramatic stretch. I didn’t want it to be an all-male cast. But as far as I was concerned, she was my character, completely invented. Then after I finished the book, I had a conversation with Chris Dobbs, who with Colin Burgess did a book called Animals in Space. He’s a bit of a Laika expert, too. There was a photograph in his book that I hadn’t seen, a picture of a woman who looked incredibly like the character I had created. I asked Chris, "Do you know who this woman is?" He had no idea, but he could date that picture to 1956 or ‘57. So suddenly I had confirmation that a woman very like my character worked for [the institute] at the time. It was one of those coincidences that both creeps you out and makes you feel very satisfied.
A&S: The ethics of animal experimentation is obviously a large part of this story. The space arena has been fairly progressive in that regard—animals have largely been banned from U.S. and European spaceflights. In the early space shuttle era, they were still flying monkeys, but I don’t think there are plans to do that anymore. Chalk one up for the space program?
Abadzis: The more questions we ask, the healthier this debate gets. And I think it should remain a debate. If we put these issues out on the table to talk about, we are going to slowly shuffle forward. And that’s the idea, isn’t it, of space exploration? We’re trying to shuffle forward and make the whole human condition slightly better. | <urn:uuid:9c0c0441-eb71-4697-9907-5fdd768a0cef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/FEATURE-Laika.html?c=y&page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985066 | 535 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The aftermath of hosting what has been dubbed by one and all as a successful 2010 FIFA World Cup™ will certainly bring a massive hangover for South Africans in the next few days. However, the tournament has given them a new sense of pride, confidence and optimism, and opened a new chapter not only for hosts but for the African continent.
Spain might have emerged as the winners on the pitch of the prestigious event, but South Africa won hearts in the global arena, and the hosting of the FIFA World Cup has brought with it renewed hope for the continent and belief for a country whose ability to host the finals was perennially under scrutiny. And so, today, South Africans are rightfully basking in the afterglow of the event. This is, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, yet another "miracle for the Rainbow Nation" – a country that emerged from a painful past only 16 years ago to claim its rightful place in the brotherhood of nations.
"We have witnessed the explosion of national pride across all races and cultures," South Africa head of state, President Jacob Zuma said. "One thing is certain, Africa will never be the same again. The world's view of this continent has been changed. When they think about Africans, they now see competent people capable of getting things done by themselves."
The euphoria brought by the tournament has inspired the continent to look beyond these finals, and it is no surprise that belief in South Africa's capability to host other major events has since soared. It was a long road travelled since the 2010 FIFA World Cup was awarded, and one that was marked by "trust and confidence" in FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter's words – both of which seem to have been rewarded mightily.
For ordinary South Africans, it has been an opportunity to pen a new script for their country and continent at large. "We are proud to be Africans. Throughout this tournament we have seen people from all races, tribes, creeds mingling together nicely," said Aaron Chinhara. "This is a step ahead. We are no longer the continent of disease and poverty, but the continent of joy, happiness and good." Another South African, Mark Smith, added: "We are proud of this moment, this has been a remarkable World Cup. This has been an incredible period for our country."
Inside the host nation, the local media has hailed the success of this tournament. Under the headline "SA Silences Pessimists" the Independent Online wrote: "The sceptics are now finally having to eat their words. It is no surprise that South Africa is now basking in a glow of satisfaction and unprecedented self-confidence."
Pretoria News wrote: "Well done South Africa. We can now hold our heads high after a fantastic World Cup." In its editorial, The Times of South Africa said: "World Cup success shows that South Africa can tackle its challenges. With the World Cup came the outpouring of South African patriotism in ways we have never seen before. The national flag was everywhere, and the national soccer team enjoyed support from South Africans across past racial lines."
The Daily Dispatch wrote: "We have done it." Meanwhile, England’s Guardian praised South Africa in its article titled, "Sceptics drowned out by another rainbow nation miracle" by saying: "History will show that South Africa defied fears of violent chaos to host one of the best-attended World Cups ever. It has put Africa on the global sporting map in a way which seemed unthinkable only six months ago."
Probably, the most famous discovery of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was the vuvuzela – an instrument that became a sensation and obsession for visiting fans who were introduced to it on their arrival here. South Africans have since declared that they are now primed for more international events, having succesfully passed their biggest test on the world stage. | <urn:uuid:d94aa4a3-9df9-46fd-8904-cea132ec759b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/archive/southafrica2010/news/newsid=1273210/index.html?cid=rssfeed&att= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972552 | 788 | 1.65625 | 2 |
A major conference is to examine the church's attitudes to disability and its failure to include disabled children and adults.
'Enabling Church', hosted by Premier Christian Media, will cover issues ranging from spirituality and disability, the mission of the Church and disability, healing and wholeness, hidden disabilities, and engaging with children with disabilities.
A recent survey by Premier Christian Radio highlighted the need for such an event. A survey of Christians, undertaken by ComRes, revealed that that almost half of those questioned believe that their church needs to make improvements to be more accessible to people with disability.
Two-thirds of churches said they would be grateful for ideas on how best to include people with a disability in church activities. Though much has been to improve access to church premises, disabled people still frequently feel alienated from church activities.
'Enabling Church' aims to dig deeper into the issues and to explore the way Christians understand disability and wholeness.
Theologians and commentators such have pointed out how the church's liturgies, theology and behaviours have been shaped predominantly by able-bodied people for hundreds of years. Professor John Hull is amongst those who have previously highlighted the need for the church to re-examine its approach to disability, and the way it interprets biblical texts.
Peter Kerridge, Chief Executive at Premier, believes that the conference can help church leaders to make a radical improvement: "Our attitudes and actions are shaped by our theology.
"There is clearly a wish to move forward and a desire to incorporate everyone in church activities. We need to start acting on this now, rather than let the issue fade. It's time we articulated a biblical understanding that truly embraces disabled people within the life of our churches. That is why we are holding the 'Enabling Church' conference."
Speakers at the conference include Rt Revd Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter, Jonathan Clark, Director of Premier Lifeline and Mind & Soul; Rev Malcolm Duncan, Founder and Director of Church and Community; Roy McCloughry of St John's College Nottingham. Dr Mike Townsend, Trustee of RNIB and Torch Trust, Chief Executive of Torch Trust; and Revd John Naudé, Vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Crookhorn and Chair of Churches For All.
Most of the speakers themselves have disabilities, and have some direct experience of disability through their immediate family. All come from with in the church. Global disability advocate Joni Eareckson-Tada will contribute by video.
'Enabling Church' is taking place on 7th October in Friends Meeting House, London. Tickets cost £25 per person. To register visit premier.org.uk/enablingchurch or call Premier Response on 08456 525252 | <urn:uuid:22cf1dba-0f52-49aa-81d7-af2e9c1915fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/12501 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963159 | 562 | 1.65625 | 2 |
If you are one who looks forward to receiving mail on Saturday's, you're in for a disappointment come August because your mailbox will be empty, according to the U.S. Postal service.
In a move that is expected to save $2 billion a year, only packages will be delivered on Saturday's.
"It really to me doesn't impact me because I have a post office box," Jan Mardis said. "And I don't come and check my mail but maybe two or three times a week anyway."
"I just thought it should probably run because I go to school during the weekdays," Hannah Scott said.
"I thought it was a great idea," Craig Wilkes said. "It's a waste of money to have Saturday deliveries. Saves some taxpayers some money. It's a good thing."
The postal service says it has seen an increase in package delivery in recent years because of online shopping, but says letter delivery has dropped significantly because of e-mail.
"That's okay too because I do do a lot of ordering online too," Mardis said. "But a lot of that comes either Fedex or UPS."
The news comes just days after it was announced that the price of a stamp was being raised to 46 cents, likely because of the nearly $16 billion the postal service says it lost in the last year."
"It's still such a great value," Wilkes said. "I mean, 46 cents to get a letter from New York to San Francisco."
"I don't really mail that many letters, so I don't really buy that many stamps," Scott said. "But it could effect a lot of other people who buy a lot." | <urn:uuid:dc59ab0d-fafc-4976-abc2-27b8ad95649f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtok.com/news/headlines/Locals-React-to-No-Saturday-Mail-Delivery--190544301.html?site=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988296 | 351 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Insurance for Money Funds Ends Today
A year ago over a period of just a few days, money-fund shareholders withdrew more than $100 billion from these supposedly safe investments after the value of one fund's shares fell below a dollar. Although deposits in money-market mutual funds had never been guaranteed, there had always been an implicit promise that the value of each share would stay at $1.
To prevent a run, the Treasury Department created a temporary insurance system for money funds. That insurance program ends September 18. But as Joan Goldwasser writes in Money Funds Lose a Safety Net, you don't have to worry.
Even though money-market mutual funds still will be safe without the insurance, you can get better rates and a guaranteed safety net with deposit accounts. See Banks Trounce Money-Market Funds. | <urn:uuid:1b3b0957-f52b-45c8-a0f6-60e614e56978> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kiplinger.com/article/saving/T005-C011-S001-insurance-for-money-funds-ends-today.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959447 | 166 | 1.773438 | 2 |
'The BLT Cookbook' by Michele Anna Jordan
Fabulous, Darling: Michele Anna Jordan's gig as a restaurant reviewer means she needs to remain anonymous--but here she shows her flair for accessories.
Life's Too Short
Michele Anna Jordan's philosophy involves eating well and living well
By M. V. Wood
Einstein said, "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Horace said, "Carpe diem," or "Seize the day." Michele Anna Jordan says, "Life is too short for bad macaroni and cheese."
Mac and cheese might sound like mere sustenance, but take a bit of extra time to make it with quality cheese and real butter, and suddenly you've gone from survival to sheer transcendence. Jordan, the author of 14 cookbooks, has built a career--and a life--out of exposing the miraculous within the mundane. Her newest book is all about that other ubiquitous American favorite, the BLT (The BLT Cookbook).
The Sebastopol resident believes it's important to pay attention to the everyday things in life--food, shelter, clothing--because these are the things that make up our lives. And Jordan embraces it all. She loves to cook and decorate her home and put together outfits. But Jordan has a very independent, free-spirited sense of how to go about doing these things. She's like Martha Stewart and Frank Zappa's love child.
"Life is for living, to be who you are, to express yourself," she says. "And it's getting absolutely ridiculous that as a culture we're turning to so-called experts to feed us and cloth us and decorate for us, and basically tell us how to look and how to live."
Take, for example, Jordan's home. She painted the interior burgundy and muted lime green. A bathroom is also green with leopard-print shower curtains. Although it sounds absolutely hideous, her home is exceptionally charming. As far as fashion goes, anyone who's met Jordan can attest to her unique personal style and her penchant for distinctive purses, scarves, and sunglasses. "Life is too short for boring accessories," she says.
Then there's her sense for cooking, which is the nexus of her career. Yet Jordan does not believe her talents in the kitchen are particularly special; it's just that she gives herself the freedom to experiment and play with food. In fact, she gives herself the freedom to experiment and play with life.
2003 Food and Wine Issue
What Chefs Really Eat: Do chefs hoard deep, disturbing food vices? It depends on whom you ask.
Wine Alive: Biodynamic wines, where flaws are welcomed and individuality is coveted.
Who's Cooking Now?: With the help of cooking schools, it could be you.
Half a century ago, pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock revolutionized the field when he dared utter the obvious: Most people have an inherent wisdom of how to care for their young. Back then, many American parents were in awe of doctors and intimidated by the various directives professionals imposed upon childcare. But Spock assured parents that they were the true experts.
Think of Jordan as the Dr. Spock of cooking. She believes people have an inherent wisdom about how to feed themselves. And she sees her job as inspiring people's sense of wonder in food and prodding their confidence, so they have the interest and self-assurance to create wonderful dishes themselves.
"There's this idea floating around that in order to get a really good meal you have to go out to a restaurant and have a professional cook it for you," Jordan says. "That's ridiculous. Anyone can make a wonderful, delicious meal. All of us have the capacity to nourish ourselves and others in this way. We don't have to rely on well-paid experts to do it."
This manifesto on personal expression underlies her life and her many varied works. In addition to having written 14 cookbooks and co-authoring or contributing to a dozen more, Jordan is also an award-winning magazine writer and newspaper columnist. Plus, she is the host and executive producer of the KRCB radio show Mouthful: The Wine Country's Most Delicious Hour.
Mouthful was recently nominated for a James Beard Award (Jordan's third Beard nomination), the "Oscars" of the food world. The other nominees in the category were All Things Considered, out of Washington, D.C., and Dish, out of New York City. She already won a James Beard Award in 1997 for a magazine article about Alice Waters. More recently, the magazine Bon Appétit ran a picture of one of Jordan's salad recipes as the cover of its August issue.
Being a full-fledged foodie, Jordan loves to whip up exquisite meals in her kitchen. For instance, she spent two days making a winter squash, smoked chicken, and chipotle broth, in which she poached pumpkin pasta raviolis filled with smoked chicken and drizzled with chipotle oil, fresh cilantro, and toasted cumin seeds. She is also partial to pricey pinot noirs from the Russian River Valley appellation.
Michele Anna Jordan definitely has a fondness for the finer things in life. But, as far as she's concerned, the finer things include such fare as BLTs and mac and cheese--as long as they're done right. That means using fresh, quality ingredients, preferably from your local farmers market or your own garden.
Jordan is a big supporter of small, local farms, organic produce, and sustainable agriculture. Currently she's working in whatever way she can to stop the proposed casino in Lakeville (also referred to as Sears Point). On Aug. 19, she's hosting a literary salon at Zebulon's Lounge in Petaluma. The topic is Lakeville Stories.
"My approach is to help increase public knowledge of this amazing and pristine part of Sonoma County, where I just happened to raise my girls on a dairy farm," Jordan says. She also speaks her mind about corporate farming and McDonald's and Monsanto--which can be summed up in the phrase "They're evil." No one can say Jordan is not opinionated, but her opinions are tempered with a sense of humor.
It's hard to believe that such an outspoken, confident woman could have ever been a shy, insecure girl. These days, Jordan's comfortable enough to go on The Today Show to promote her books. She's also appeared on television as host of a series of short segments she developed for PBS about Sonoma County's appellations.
And then there are the many in-person talks, book readings, and cooking demonstrations she's given around the country. But there was a time when Jordan could barely stand to be in a roomful of people, let alone stand up in front of a roomful to give a talk.
I can't tell you exactly how Jordan went from unassuming to exuberant. I can't tell you how she went from having the nickname Virgin Lips (thanks to her reputation of not kissing boys) to being called Ms. Mouthful (thanks to her radio show). But, I can tell you why Michele Anna Jordan started dancing the hula.
Back in high school, she met a boy from Hawaii who was kind and handsome. The two fell in love. But eventually they allowed themselves to float away from each other. As the years passed, Jordan led a life that, if not particularly passionate, was at least relatively safe and secure. And then, one day, her first love went out surfing and drowned.
"Something just changed, something clicked," she says. "You know, you don't have forever. You can't live life wondering what could have been, or just imagining that maybe someday it will be. Life isn't about staying safe and hidden. It's about going out, doing what you need to do and saying what you need to say, and really living. I know it sounds cliché, but you have to live each day to its fullest, because that's what life is, one day and another and another."
These days, there's still one thing left that Jordan needs to say, but she hasn't been able to put it into words. "And then it finally occurred to me that I can dance it," she says. "In the hula, each motion means something. It's like a whole other language. And if I can learn that language, I'll be able to express it."
So once a week, Jordan goes to class, listens to Hawaiian music, and learns the language.
Life's also too short not to dance.
A schedule of Michele Anna Jordan's classes and appearances is available at www.micheleannajordan.com.
[ | Metroactive Central | ]
From the July 31-August 6, 2003 issue of the North Bay Bohemian. | <urn:uuid:4c901032-be65-420d-9654-2e1d5343d647> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bohemian.com/northbay/2003-food-and-wine-issue/Content?oid=2179074 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973514 | 1,851 | 1.515625 | 2 |
BEIRUT (AP) - Rebels in southern Syria freed 21 U.N. peacekeepers on Saturday after holding them hostage for four days, driving them to the border with Jordan after accusations from Western officials that the little-known group had tarnished the image of those fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.
The abduction and the tortured negotiations that ended it highlight the disorganization of the rebel movement, which has hindered its ability to fight Assad and complicates vows by the U.S. and others to provide assistance.
It also has raised concerns about the future of U.N. operations in the area. The Filipino peacekeepers were abducted on Wednesday by one of the rebel groups operating in southern Syria near the Jordanian border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where a U.N. force has patrolled a cease-fire line between Israel and Syria for nearly four decades.
Activists associated with the group, the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, gave different reasons for seizing the 21 men. First they demanded that all government forces leave the area. Then they suggested the peacekeepers were human shields against government attacks. Then they declared them "honored guests" held for their own safety.
They also released videos online, including one on Saturday of a bearded rebel commander with his arms around two peacekeepers' shoulders, flashing a V for victory sign.
On Saturday, after negotiations that the top U.N. official in Damascus described as "long and difficult," the rebels changed the plan to deliver the peacekeepers to a U.N. team, instead taking them to the Jordanian border.
Video broadcast by Arab satellite channels late Saturday showed them sitting at a round conference table in Amman, their bright blue helmets in front of them.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed their release and called on all parties in Syria to respect the peacekeepers' freedom of movement.
Raul Hernandez, spokesman for the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs, said Sunday the initial plan for the peacekeepers is for them to stay in Jordan for two days before they return to the Golan Heights.
Hernandez also cited reports from Philippine Ambassador to Jordan Olivia Palala indicating that the peacekeepers are safe.
"They are safe, they are unharmed, they are OK, and they are whole," he said, quoting Palala.
It was the first time in nearly two years of violence in Syria that U.N. personnel have been directly caught up in the civil war, which evolved from an uprising against Assad that broke out in March 2011 and has left more than 70,000 people dead.
Since then, hundreds of independent rebel groups have formed across the country to fight Assad's forces, overrunning military bases and seizing territory in northern and eastern Syria while the regime maintains its grip in the center and the capital, Damascus.
Although some groups have banded together into organized brigades, most still operate independently, competing with each other for resources and booty from captured sites.
Even the rebel's political leadership, the Syrian National Coalition, which the U.S. and other powers have officially recognized, has no direct control over fighters on the ground. And it remains unclear how many rebels follow its associated High Military Command, which was formed in Turkey in December.
This lack of a central command has hindered rebel efforts against government forces and discouraged the U.S. and others from providing arms.
Last month, the U.S. promised $60 million dollars in new aid for the opposition but refused to arm the rebels, saying more weapons would worsen the situation and could help extremists.
The release of the 21 peacekeepers serves as a case study in rebel disorganization.
As the days passed and the captors' terms changed, international indignation rose.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland blasted the Syrian government on Friday for shelling the area, while also warning the rebels that the kidnapping was "not good for their reputation and that they need to immediately release these people."
The men were held in the village of Jamlah, less than two kilometers (a mile) from the Jordanian border.
A U.N. team tried to retrieve the hostages on Friday, but abandoned the plan because of government shelling.
On Saturday, another U.N. team reached the area and stopped in a village less than a mile away to wait for the captives, said Mokhtar Lamani, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria.
Lamani said the team was "surprised" when the rebels issued a "very urgent request" that the team come to the village itself.
The team demurred, Lamani said, then was "surprised" again when rebels took the peacekeepers directly to Jordan.
"We were surprised to hear to hear the news from a satellite channel that they had reached Jordan," he said. "Praise God in the end that all of them were released safely."
An activist associated with the captors said via Skype that the rebels had not been able to reach the U.N. team because of "security conditions" so had taken them to Jordan instead.
He said the Syrian government had been shelling and carrying out airstrikes on the area for weeks, and that locals worried the situation would get worse after the captives left.
"They lightened the shelling today, but we fear that now they will launch a harsh attack on the area," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a letter to the United Nations Saturday that the Syrian army had held its fire in the area "out of concern for the security and safety of the U.N. forces."
It called on the U.N. to "unequivocally condemn the attacks of those terrorist groups against civilians and work to dislodge those terrorist groups immediately from the region."
The Syria government says the uprising is a foreign-backed conspiracy to weaken the country carried out by "terrorists" - its blanket term for the opposition.
The peacekeepers are part of a U.N. mission known as UNDOF that was set up to monitor a cease-fire in 1974, seven years after Israel captured the plateau and a year after it pushed back Syrian troops trying to recapture the territory.
The truce's stability has been shaken in recent months, as Syrian mortar shells have hit the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
Israeli officials worry the violence will prompt UNDOF to end its mission.
On Friday, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said "the mission in the Golan needs to review its security arrangements and it has been doing that."
Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Beirut and Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:a353a4a6-0440-4be8-9f19-ef9c2121cdb7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.am1280thepatriot.com/PrintPage/Rebels-free-21-UN-captives-in-southern-Syria-PoliticsAndGovernment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974875 | 1,389 | 1.632813 | 2 |
I first want to thank all those who linked to or posted on my TAC piece on Jimmy Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech. I appreciate your thoughts and comments.
It’s been said that my piece is part of the Reagan “revisionism” by some on the right and it’s something I wish to address. The dictionary defines revisionism as “one who proposes a course of action regarded as deviation from accepted ideas or established policy.” From that technical definition, my article is ”revisionist” in looking upon Carter’s speech and Reagan’s electoral coalition from a different viewpoint than is generally held by conservatives and others on the right.
But revisionism has the connontation that one’s views or tries to re-state history or worse, distort it, in order to serve an ideological end. That was certainly not my intention. The coalition that put Reagan into the White House included a lot of Democrats as I pointed out. But to do anything one has to be elected first and the Democratic Party at that time had over 50 percent party ID. Reagan needed a lot of Democratic votes in order to win and that’s why he wasn’t about to trash Democratic heroes like FDR or Truman or JFK. In fact he quoted them quite often, especially FDR. Given the fact he voted for FDR four times, isn’t it interesting he never once repudiated all those votes and wished the he could have voted for Robert Taft? That’s why, unlike Goldwater, he became president. He was aiming for 51% percent of the vote not 39%.
Thus it is interesting to hear those attacking the New Deal nowadays not acknowledging the fact that Reagan himself said he was not running for President to repeal it.
Reagan’s move from New Deal liberal to Republican Conservative came in the late 1940 and 1950s and had much to do with Cold War and the influence his wife Nancy, who came from a right-wing Republican family, had upon him. And Reagan’s campaigns had far more dimensions to them than just reducing the size of government. There was the defense build up, there was standing up to the Communist Bloc, there was restoring America’s spirit and pride. There was standing up for moral values. Reagan probably saw himself as another FDR and Carter as another Hoover. He would play the same role. The political reality was that Reagan was more of a conservative Democrat than a Republican in the Taft/Goldwater/Charlie Hallack a tradition who fought against big government and lost every time. That’s why he won. And conservative Democrats, whether populists like George Wallace or Southern Bourbons like James O. Eastland or Northern Catholic ethnics like Ray Flynn, were not exactly the kind of people who wanted to smash the state.
If you believe that ending the Cold War with a victory for the West and taming the inflation monster that was destroying the economy was a victory for conservatism, then Reagan should be honored as a conservative hero. But if reducing the size of government is really is now the main focus of what’s left of the right, then we cannot escape the irony that a Jimmy Carter or even a George McGovern or Bill Clinton for that matter. would be better in that regards than a Ronald Reagan, because Carter, Clinton and McGovern would or did reduce the biggest parts of big government, the military-industrial complex, the national security state and the drug war whereas Reagan helped to enlarge all three. And was it not Bill Clinton who said “The era of big government is over” as he and a GOP Congress reformed welfare?
GOP plans to reduce the size of government (like the Ryan Plan for example) have no credibility whatsoever unless the party and its members deal with this paradox. And I don’t care how many military installations South Carolina and or Texas has. This doesn’t mean repudiating Ronald Reagan. It simply means being forthright with what you say you want. Otherwise, you’re better off being Tory conservatives. At least you’ll more honest and perhaps might accomplish more. | <urn:uuid:f92e6ecd-22e0-429a-9d06-fc837d777606> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theamericanconservative.com/reagan-revisionism-do-you-like-the-new-deal-or-dont-you/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971832 | 860 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership
The Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership was set up in October 2010 to help strengthen local economies, encourage economic development and enterprise, and improve skills across the region.
The Partnership was initially formed of Birmingham and Solihull, with East Staffordshire, Lichfield and Tamworth, and was subsequently joined by Bromsgrove, Cannock Chase, and more recently Redditch and Wyre Forest. The Partnership is now one of the largest in the country, encompassing a population of over two million people, and 840,000 jobs.
The LEP's successful bid, jointly proposed by business leaders and local authorities, set out ambitious plans to:
• Increase economic output (GVA) in the area by £8.25 billion by 2020;
• Create 100,000 private sector jobs by 2020;
• Stimulate growth in the business stock and business profitability;
• Boost indigenous and inward investment;
• Become global leaders in key sectors, including: automotive assembly; low carbon R&D, business and professional services; financial services; clinical trials; creative and digital sectors;
• Increase the proportion of adults with appropriate qualifications to meet employment needs.
A new wave of Enterprise Zones, offering a range of benefits to stimulate development, create new jobs and boost the economy were announced by Government in March 2011. The Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP chose Birmingham City Centre as the location for their Enterprise Zone.
Councillor Mike Whitby, Leader of Birmingham City Council said:
"The Government laid down the gauntlet to businesses and local authorities, and asked them to work together in a new way to tackle the challenges of growth and prosperity, and we have responded with a bold vision for the future. Together we have all the ingredients to be a powerful driver of not only our local economy, but the UK growth agenda as well - in fact, we are now one of the country's largest and most significant Local Enterprise Partnerships."
Bridget Blow, Chair of LEP Development Board, said: "We have made good progress since we were given the green light by government and we are committed to working together to making our LEP area the easiest place in which to set up and do business.The partners involved in the LEP have come together with a common voice - we all recognised the great opportunity our LEP has to impact on the lives and futures of the people and institutions of our area and agreed that our work should remain outcome focused. The regular eUpdate, below, will be a great way of keeping everyone in touch."
For more information go to: www.gbslep.com or www.birminghamchambergroup.com The LEP has recently issued the first in a new series of regular eUpdates, highlighting the good progress made since October 2010. | <urn:uuid:98d215c1-22d1-4c1b-8529-d0dd7789b443> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite/lep?packedargs=website%3D4&rendermode=live+ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955469 | 587 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Huey Lewis, (born Hugh Anthony Cregg III, July 5, 1950 in New York City) is a singer, musician and actor. He sings lead vocals and plays harmonica for his band Huey Lewis & The News, a rock group based in San Francisco, California that was particularly popular during the 1980s. He also played with the band Clover from 1972 to 1979.
Huey grew up in Marin County, California, and graduated from Monte Vista High in 1967 with very high SAT scores. Huey applied and was accepted by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, In an interview with David Letterman he talked about hitchhiking across the USA to New York and how he learned to play the harmonica whilst waiting for rides. He talks about hanging out at the terminal for 3 days until he stowed away on a plane to Europe. In Europe Huey became an accomplished blues player and he hitchhiked around and supported himself by busking with his harmonica. He gave his first concerts in Europe earning enough to buy a plane ticket back to the USA. | <urn:uuid:cc92f221-ce55-4d43-ad4c-ecbb2a69ba23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chordie.com/song.php/songartist/Huey+Lewis/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987701 | 221 | 1.570313 | 2 |
REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft Corp. is rolling out a test version of an all-in-one subscription service that aims to protect computer users from viruses and spyware and give them tools to make machines speedier.
The Redmond-based software company is distributing Windows OneCare to its 60,000 employees this week. It plans to run a larger invitation-only test this summer, then launch a full-scale test by year's end.
The company has not said when it would release the subscription service to consumers.
"We're going to take our time. We want to make sure we get this right the first time," said Ryan Hamlin, general manager for Microsoft's technology, care and safety team.
Microsoft hasn't set a price for an annual subscription, but Hamlin said it would include unlimited phone, e-mail and chat support.
Microsoft has spent three years developing the service, which would run only on the operating system's newest version: Windows XP with Service Pack 2, a major security upgrade released last summer.
The company has been devoting more attention to security in recent years as its flagship Windows operating system and market-leading Internet Explorer browser become chief targets for hackers and writers of viruses and spyware.
Microsoft had been expected to enter the antivirus business following its recent acquisition of two antivirus companies. The company already makes a free antispyware tool available for download, and Windows ships with firewall protection.
But the company says most users don't take full advantage of those products.
Among its features, Windows OneCare would offer two-way firewall protection. A green icon would be displayed if the service didn't detect any problems. A yellow icon would indicate a relatively low-priority problem, like some files that needed to be backed up. A red icon would signal a virus or some other critical problem that needed fixing.
PC users could set up OneCare to periodically perform maintenance work like cleaning up disks, repairing files and defragmenting hard drives so that bits of data aren't inefficiently spread out. The service would keep track of how long it takes a computer to boot up and pin down problems that might be making the machine run more slowly. And consumers could opt to have their files automatically backed up on CD or DVD.
Microsoft risks alienating security vendors in releasing its own, competing products, but if it doesn't do more to stem Internet attacks, it also risks further alienating customers unhappy with the multitude of threats already facing its ubiquitous software. Microsoft has downplayed the competitive angle, saying it is simply responding to requests from customers for more protection options. | <urn:uuid:ce40e5b6-e1df-44b5-87da-9284742c2c55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.securityinfowatch.com/press_release/10594493/microsoft-rolls-out-subscription-anti-virus-service | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953638 | 534 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Wired has an interesting article noting how Microsoft “crowdsourced” some of the development of Office 2010. Although I’m a user of Google Documents and not a fan of the MS Office Suites, feeling they are too big, clunky and overengineered for 99% of the tasks most people need, clearly I’m in the minority because, as Wired notes in the article, only 4% of online users “regularly use” Google Docs where 67% say they use MS Office products. I think familiarity is a key issue here, and it will take more than a decade for the MS dominance to give way to the online suite tools that probably need another few generations of improvements and visibility to come into widespread use.
Of the 2 million Send a Smile comments, 81,000 included the senders’ e-mail addresses so the engineers working to improve Office could follow up with them.
To their credit Microsoft created a way for beta testers to give feedback and follow up, and hopefully this innovation will result in a product that is superior. In my view Crowdsourcing is arguably the most powerful aspect of social media, but the science of using it effectively is still in its infancy and we’ll need very clever routines to make sense of human input – much of which is counterproductive, nonsensical, or simply worthless. For the Office Suite project Microsoft developed relevancy algorithms to process the millions of comments, and it would be interesting to hear more about the approaches that went into the evolution of that process.
Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/06/microsoft-office-2010/#ixzz0sMYfsPaw
(Thanks to Ken Kaplan at Intel for noting this WIRED story)
Here’s a quick CES video summary of what you can expect in the North Hall which is between Central Hall and the Hilton at the Las Vegas Convention Center Complex. Note that the South Hall is (I think) the largest of all the key exhibit areas as it contains two floors of exhibitors, where it seemed to me from the past years that Central often has the largest display setups from the biggest CES exhibitors such as Microsoft and Intel.
Wow, I’m liking my Yahoo stock which just jumped over $5 per share,but Microsoft couldn’t you have announced the possible bid to buy Yahoo about a month back when I had my 2000 YHOO 30 calls? With Yahoo at $33.34 I could have sold that 1000 investment for a cool $67,000!
Henry Blodget thinks it’s important to spin off a new company rather than just suck Yahoo up into the borgness of Microsoft.
But hey, I do think this aquisition/merger is a good idea. Yahoo is very different from Microsoft. However, to the limited extent I interact with MS and Yahoo it seems to me that both of those corporate cultures have become bureaucratic, sluggish, and uninspired when compared to Google’s freewheeling yet very productive approaches. Yet very importantly, the people I meet from Yahoo and MS are often as impressive as those at Google, and certainly capable of great things as all these folks reinvent the online world on a regular basis.
If Microsoft can pool the innovations of the LIVE project with Yahoo’s superb developer support programs, and hire and inspire more people to have the evangelical zeal of Googlers, it could be a whole new online ballgame.
Update: Om Malik’s reporting that WSJ’s reporting the talks appear to be off already.
Looking forward to Sunday’s trip to Las Vegas to attend the Mix06 conference at the Venetian Hotel. Thanks to MS and Scoble I got a free ticket to the convention saving me $995. With airfare at 300 and the Imperial Palace for only $65 nightly this will be a cheap trip and hopefully a very informative look into the future of Microsoft. At other conferences the Web 2.0 pecking order seems clear – Google and Yahoo are getting it and MS is not. However I think people are really underestimating Microsoft in both the search and the Web 2.0 space.
Google is conspicuously absent at MIX06. Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay, and others there, though I think this is going to be a very Microsofty experience. | <urn:uuid:e446ecf1-4bd6-42ea-b47b-90388c0f9930> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://technology-report.com/category/microsoft/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953336 | 903 | 1.75 | 2 |
Tailored For Success, Inc. (“TFS”) was founded in 1999 as a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to helping economically disadvantaged women return to the workforce. Our mission is achieved by distributing free interview appropriate business suits and career clothing, providing interview coaching and professional image consulting; and giving women the opportunity to participate in career development workshops.
TFS is based in Malden, MA and works collaboratively with a variety of social and human services organizations to reach our target population in fourteen communities who are labeled as the “hard to employ”. Our primary client is typically a single mother who comes from diverse racial, cultural and linguistic communities and is attempting to transition off public assistance through job training, ESL classes and other workforce development programs. Our clients have significant barriers to employment such as lack of work experience, limited English skills, lack of basic computer skills, and childcare issues. We feel our services of empowerment through self-esteem building will help our clients overcome these barriers and lead them along the road to economic self-sufficiency.
TFS, in an effort to better serve clients, has opened Tailored Impressions, a Resale/Consignment Boutique to benefit the clients of Tailored For Success, Inc. Clients are now served in
an upscale retail boutique where they can shop for a wide variety of career clothing and accessories,donated by the general public, free of charge.This social enterprise will also help the organization by providing much needed operating income that is rarely supported by grants. Clothing that is donated to TFS that is not used for client purposes, is sold at reduced prices to the general public. Although the store is open to the public, clients are served only when the store is closed to preserve confidentiality.
For eight years, Tailored For Success, Inc. is a member of The Women’s Alliance. The Women’s Alliance, based in Miami, FL, is a not-for-profit organization of independent community-based members that provide professional attire, career skills training, and related services to low-income women and their families seeking employment. Each year, the services provided by The Women’s Alliance help more than 30,000 women in transition from welfare and poverty to overcome barriers to employment and the “cost of making a good appearance” by ensuring that they have the professional attire they need to make the right impression on job interviews and to succeed in the workplace. Personal and professional development training services conducted by 75% member organizations also helps to support job readiness, personal growth, and career advancement for women and their families seeking to improve their lives and achieve self-sufficiency. | <urn:uuid:5cc90491-4890-483f-929c-15ac1c389a6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tailoredforsuccess.org/aboutus.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974078 | 544 | 1.640625 | 2 |
In my earlier post, I discussed the development of my appreciation for the various Fortuny patterns and the stories linked to each. While not every pattern is associated with as specific a history as the tragedy behind Lamballe, each one does find its inspiration in the events, art, and persons of the past, whether factual or mythical in its origin.
Since my return from banishment to the sample closet at the Fortuny showroom in New York, where I spent a solid ten hours taking stock and reorganizing the samples, I left with a more developed and personal appreciation for the variety of Fortuny fabrics, patterns, and colors available to our clients. In fact, it presented me with a unique combination of my two academic disciplines, studio art and history, in a context I had never expected to explore, textiles.
As you may have noticed from our New Years Resolutions....I love purple. Any shade of it. I think it’s fun, flattering, and fabulous. That’s why my fabric of the moment is Barberini in blackberry texture. The richness of the background highlights the playful pink hues of the pattern. I just love the juxtaposition of this two-toned purple on a pattern like Barberini. It feels so classic and yet so modern. Where would I like to see this wonderful fabric used? On a bedspread. Preferably my own.
It's a four way brawl: back stabbing, greed, corruption, murder--all Fortuny Fabrics, all drama, all the time. You think I'm kidding? Well, let me tell you, I'm not.
How did I stumble into this mess? This week I was assigned the task of updating the fabric descriptions for our new pattern cards. Each pattern card has a brief, rather vague description of its origins, and, honestly, in my 15 months of working at Fortuny, I haven't given their names much thought. Most of the names are pretty straight forward. Melagrana, for instance, means Pomegranate in Italian, and guess what: there are Pomegranates in the design. Simple.
Lamballe, on the other hand, says only, "18th Century French Design named for Princesse de Lamballe." Why? "Because she's a princess, and that's cool," I thought. Wrong. As I read more and more about the historical figures that are the namesakes of our fabrics, I found myself enraptured with their stories in a way that I'm certain Mariano Fortuny himself was.
So onto the gore. This all started with Barberini because, naturally, I was working alphabetically. Enter into the ring, Barberini:
That's Pope Urban VIII also known as Maffeo Barberini. A power-hungry, big player in the height of Barberini influence.
But the Barberini family began as grain, wool and textile merchants. Small time nobility in the Florentine Republic. The Barberini estate only began to grow when Antonio Barberini traveled to Rome. Why did he travel to Rome? Just because the entire Florentine Republic was invaded and taken over by the Medici family.
Meet deMedici, named for the Medici family. The big Kahuna. The wealthiest, most powerful family in Italy for nearly FIVE centuries.
It only took a few years before the Medici family saw the threat the Barberinis posed to their fiscal monarchy, and Antonio Barberini was "offed" so to speak, by Medici forces.
The assassination of their patriarch did little to stop the Barberinis, though. In a few years, Maffeo Barberini was elected Pope, and he formed a noble/clerical entourage of his brother and three nephews. Together, they ran Rome. These bad boys were eager for power, and to many eyes, they had no limits. A critic of theirs wrote: "What the barbarians didn't do, the Barberini did." Indeed, Pope Urban VIII was famous for a number of terrible things like removing ancient bronze pillars from the Pantheon to build weapons and pimp his throne. Perhaps most notable of all of his power schemes, he started the Wars of Castro against....the Farnese Dukes.
Enter Farnese--the original old school Italian family, tracing their nobility back to the 900s:
Though change is in the air (and a fair amount of dust) some classics need no adjustment, so of course we're adorning the walls with our own, classic fabrics. Here is Felice Ciancarelli beginning the job last week--he is putting Carnavalet in grey, black and silvery gold behind the bar. The rest of the walls are covered in Papiro, Glicine, Campanelle, the original Barberini, and we have one wall upholstered in Bevilacqua Caccia. Stop by to see the rest of the walls, or check in for more pictures in a couple of days!
In honor of Philip Johnson’s birthday tomorrow, our fabric of the week is Piumette in pink, aquamarine and gold! Philip Johnson loved to use this fabric as wall covering. You can find it in the brick guest house at the Glass House, his home in New Canaan. | <urn:uuid:f13a1e7e-2f63-44f8-ae87-7c79665865e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fortuny.com/blog/category/fabric-of-the-week/page/2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960579 | 1,097 | 1.554688 | 2 |
CELEBRATE TECH - FIRST ANNUAL TECH CELEBRATION IN BROOKLYN, NY - FOR ALUMNI, STUDENTS, FACULTY, FAMILY MEMBERS AND COMMUNITY! http://journals.eventjournal.com/view_journal.php?journal_id=341
BUY YOUR TICKETS TODAY, GET YOUR UNIVERSAL JOURNAL AD TOO! BE SEEN BY A WORLD FULL OF TECHNITES!
Brooklyn Technical High School, commonly called Brooklyn Tech or just Tech, and also administratively as High School 430, is a New York City public high school that specializes in engineering, math and science and is the largest specialized high school for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the United States!
It's going to be held at Giando's On The Water, 400 Kent Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. November 9, 2011! Can't wait! Please join us for the First Annual Celebration of Brooklyn Tech, on Wednesday, November 9th from 6-10PM at Giando on the Water.
PERSONAL INVITATION BY MS. ELIZABETH SCIABARRA: http://youtu.be/BZNsXo87-4o
The Distinguished Alumni Award - recognizes alumni who have achieved high levels of excellence in their career fields or academic area and have in some way given back to the community (either the Tech community or other aspects of society).
Anthony S. Bartolomeo , P.E. ' 70 - President and CEO, Pennoni Associates Inc. and Chairman of the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia, who has more than 30 years experience in environmental engineering.
Lionel Marks '49 - An accomplished attorney who was one of the founders of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation and served as it legal counsel for over a decade.
Kimberley "Kim" Coles '80 - American Actress, Comedian and Author who has starred in an impressive catalogue of television shows, written a book and started a national empowerment program, G.I.F.T.S. where she uses comedy and inspiration to help people learn about their own unique qualities.
The Tech Faculty Emeritus Award - recognizes a retired faculty member, who was outstanding as an assistant principal, teacher, guidance counselor, coach, faculty advisor, and/or mentor.
Howard Falick - Teacher of Architecture and Structural Engineering
Nicholas Malachias - Teacher of English; advisor - Survey, the school's newspaper
Jules Peemoeller - Teacher of Civil and Structural Engineering
Carol Powers - Teacher of Physical Education; Girls' Swim Coach
Alice Timothy - Assistant Principal, Speech and Music; advisor to the Debate Team and the Drama Club
The Technite - Younger Alumni Recognition Award - recognizes talented alumni who graduated from Tech within the last 25 years.
Jeanine Aguirre-Ramirez '88 - is the NY 1 Brooklyn reporter, primarily responsible for covering the borough's 2.5 million people as well as its schools, politics, religions and neighborhoods. Her expertise as a reporter has enabled her to serve as M.C. for many different events of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation.
John Prakash Albert '90 - Counsel, Manott Phelps and Phillips; worked as a lobbyist for more than 10 years. He served as a Foundation Board member and officer.
The Blue and White Outstanding Service/ Leadership Award - recognizes alumni and/or non-alumni who have strengthened and enhanced Brooklyn Tech and/or its community through outstanding contributions to Brooklyn Tech and/or its Foundation.
Joseph Kaelin - Has enlisted the support and involvement of students in Alumni Foundation activities for over two decades in his capacity as the Coordinator of Student Activities and Advisor to the National Honor Society.
Sidney Milden '77 - Two decades of leadership and dedicated work with Boys' Track Team Alumni to support the Track Program
The MVP Alumni Award - recognizes alumni for their athletic achievements seeded in Brooklyn Tech and solidified in college and/or professional sports.
Lorenzo Charles '81 (posthumous) - Was an outstanding Tech basketball player, who became an NCAA athlete and professional basketball player. While playing for the North Carolina State University Wolfpack, he scored the game-winning dunk in the championship game of the 1983 NCAA Tournament over the heavily favored Houston Cougars led by Akeem Olajuwon, Clyde "The Glide" Drexler and the rest of Phi Slama Jama.
So, go the Alumni Foundation Website, http://bthsalumni.org and register to find your classmates! | <urn:uuid:9590dc05-e398-4526-b2b9-8b8f834fc46c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://carmenmcolon.blogspot.com/2011/07/bths-nyc-alumni-chapter-is-having.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932086 | 955 | 1.515625 | 2 |
New technologies could allow identity equipment to use biometric information, such as photographs, face, hand or iris measurements, or fingerprints. ID equipment is commonly used for Employee ID cards,
Student ID cards,
or as Membership Passes.
If any contact details you have found on this page are inaccurate, please help us by reporting it. | <urn:uuid:8c148b0b-7dca-4db2-9ba6-874d72785745> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.longislandexchange.com/business/identification-equipment.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965422 | 70 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The two pilots of the Northwest Airlines flight last week that missed its airport by 150 miles were apparently using their personal laptops to review scheduling as air traffic controllers repeatedly tried to reach them, the National Transportation Safety Board said.
The use of personal laptops in the cockpit violates airline policy, according to the NTSB, which issued a statement today on the incident after interviewing the pilots.
Neither pilot was aware of the airplane's position until a flight attendant, Barbara Logan, called about five minutes before they were scheduled to land and asked about their estimated time of arrival. It was only then that the captain realized they had passed the airport.
"I just called them and said when are we landing, and that was it," Logan told ABC News.
She said she didn't know anything was wrong, but just wanted to find out when the plane was landing. Logan said she didn't have a clue about what happened in the cockpit and the pilots didn't tell her.
Flight 188 had 144 passengers, two pilots and three flight attendants on board. It landed safely about an hour after its originally scheduled time.
The FAA is expected to either suspend or revoke the licenses of the pilots as early as Tuesday and it looks like Delta will move to fire the pilots.
Delta Monday afternoon said that using laptops or engaging in activity unrelated to the pilots' command of the aircraft during flight is against airline policy "and violations of that policy will result in termination."
"Nothing is more important to Delta than safety. We are going to continue to cooperate fully with the NTSB and the FAA in their investigations," Delta CEO Richard Anderson said in a statement.
For one hour and 18 minutes Wednesday night the pilots -- flying at 37,000 feet above sea level between San Diego and Minneapolis -- were radio silent as air traffic controllers at times tried to reach the cockpit.
As the event unfolded, concern was high among air traffic controllers, who repeatedly attempted to establish contact during the incident, using multiple methods, the air traffic controllers union told ABC News. Eventually, controllers asked other planes in the air to attempt to contact the Northwest plane, a method that the union said ultimately proved successful.
Federal counterterrorism agencies treated the stray jetliner as a serious threat. Fighter jets were placed on alert, though not put in the sky.
In separate interviews with the NTSB, Capt. Timothy B. Cheney and First Officer Richard I. Cole, told investigators they were in a "concentrated period of discussion" over a new monthly crew flight scheduling system in place as a result of the merger of Delta and Northwest. Both accessed and used his personal laptop computer while they discussed the airline crew flight scheduling procedure. Cole, who was more familiar with the procedure, was providing instruction to Cheney, the NTSB said.
The pilots said they lost track of time and were using cockpit speakers to listen to radio communications, not their headsets.
Initially, there was speculation that the pilots had fallen asleep in the cockpit. Both pilots dismissed that, saying they were not fatigued. Each had commuted to the flight, but they had a 19-hour layover in San Diego before arriving at work. They both told investigators that they did not doze during the flight and there was no heated argument. | <urn:uuid:35f71237-f170-4f22-b616-dc78301ea264> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/northwest-pilots-missed-airport-laptops-discussing-scheduling/story?id=8920291 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985003 | 658 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Combining research, education and clinical services into one state-of-the-art facility, the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute is the only one of its kind in Arkansas. With its tall glass façade and naturally lighted atrium, PRI is a monument to those who helped create it and those who continue to serve it as they attempt to shed light on the world of mental illness.
The five-story, 110,000 square-foot building offers inpatient and outpatient services, with 40 beds dedicated to psychiatric patients. The Walker Family Clinic is home to the majority of PRI’s outpatient clinics, including individual, group and family therapies utilizing evidence-based practice techniques for mental health and addictive diseases. Located on the structure’s second floor, it will provide specialty programs, including treatment for addictive, eating, anxiety, depressive and post-traumatic stress disorders. The clinic expects more than 50,000 visitors each year.
Patients will have access to some of the most experienced psychiatrists in the state. Attending physicians have an average of more than 10 years of experience and additionally will be able to integrate the cutting-edge research being done at PRI in the Fred and Louise Dierks Translational Research Laboratories. | <urn:uuid:b1eef7e4-953f-4a1c-858c-6ba907eb419a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://psychiatry.uams.edu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939212 | 252 | 1.523438 | 2 |
“I saw a boy about ten years old walking by. He was carrying a baby on his back. In those days in Japan, we often saw children playing with their little brothers or sisters on their backs, but this boy was clearly different. I could see that he had come to this place for a serious reason. He was wearing no shoes. His face was hard. The little head was tipped back as if the baby were fast asleep.
“The boy stood there for five or ten minutes. The men in white masks walked over to him and quietly began to take off the rope that was holding the baby. That is when I saw that the baby was already dead. The men held the body by the hands and feet and placed it on the fire.
“The boy stood there straight without moving, watching the flames. He was biting his lower lip so hard that it shone with blood. The flame burned low like the sun going down. The boy turned around and walked silently away. | <urn:uuid:7c599e4f-234a-4d35-bea6-8ed02295a0af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://timetowhistlee.tumblr.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.995288 | 203 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The Center hosts the Graduate Health Law Network (GHLN), a network of over 300 Georgia State Law graduates who practice in the health law field.
The “health law field” includes legal practice in any area of law which affects the health of individuals and the public. The field thus encompasses many diverse areas, such as corporate law, environmental law, tort law, bioethics and law, constitutional law, family law, juvenile and elder law, administrative law, public health law, intellectual property law, social welfare law, and international law.
Graduates are invited to participate in a variety of activities. Examples of opportunities that GHLN offers participants include: | <urn:uuid:c15f8813-6a85-4341-b9e7-0066b6ede0ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://law.gsu.edu/clhs/6476.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946561 | 136 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Approximately 600 youth a day attend two Clubhouse locations in Salinas and Seaside; the Clubs also serve 200 more children in three school-based sites at Harden Middle School, El Sausal Middle School and La Paz Middle School. These daily programs are intentionally designed to boost Club Members’ ability to achieve on-grade progression, graduate from high school, and be college and career-ready.
Those interested in helping can make monetary donations, give new and unused school supplies, or volunteer as mentors or homework helpers, please call 831.394.5171 or visit www.bgcmc.org.
VP of Development & Marketing, Boys & Girls Clubs of Monterey County
(831)394-5171 extension 206
About Boys & Girls Clubs of Monterey County:
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Monterey County (BGCMC) has played an integral role in the community for over 43 years. With Clubhouses in Seaside and Salinas, BGCMC provides youth between the ages of 6-18 an afterschool safe haven where they are mentored to achieve academic success, acquire healthy lifestyles, and develop good character and citizenship. Over 95% of the total budget comes from generous individuals, corporations and foundations. The Clubs are open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. during summer and school breaks, and from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. when school is in session. Additional information is available at www.bgcmc.org or via phone at 831-394-5171. | <urn:uuid:5162650f-632e-4b9f-8a5b-ae921ceba1d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prlog.org/11941752-boys-girls-clubs-launch-back-to-school-campaign-growing-need-for-safe-after-school-care.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938228 | 322 | 1.617188 | 2 |
It's because of BTAC, Alvarado said, that her family will have a
happy Thanksgiving. She signed up for a "basket" that includes
turkey, canned vegetables, pie-filling, stuffing mix and more.
"[The kids] usually get up really early, because they know that I
have all this food, you know. All my daughters, they say, 'Mom, what
do you want me to help you with?' They're really excited about
helping me cook," Alvarado said.
Each year, BTAC prepares what it calls Thanksgiving baskets, or
packages for low-income families and individuals that include all the
ingredients necessary for a Thanksgiving dinner with all the
"We also try to give them breakfast. We try to take care of the
whole day," said Barbara Howell, executive director for BTAC, adding
that they sometimes include pancake mix in the baskets too.
Since Nov. 15, the center took more than 185 orders for
Thanksgiving baskets. The center's funding comes from a variety of
places, including the general public, religious organizations,
private donations and the city's community development block grant --
a type of funding dispersed to the city through the federal
Fortunately, Howell said, the center doesn't have to buy food for
the baskets. "If we didn't have all of the food donated, it would be
impossible," Howell said.
Trader Joe's and Pavilions are among the providers of food, and
local residents often drop off extra turkeys.
"Yesterday, my husband went to the grocery store ... they were
handing out free turkeys with your purchase and we had actually
already purchased our turkey and said 'We'll take it and donate it,'
" resident Linda Fitzgerald said.
Those needing assistance through the holiday season should contact
BTAC at 846-2330. | <urn:uuid:b90f1cea-7f8f-41f8-84c6-9069e6708f97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.burbankleader.com/2004-11-27/news/export2250_1_thanksgiving-baskets-thanksgiving-dinner-turkey | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965435 | 399 | 1.703125 | 2 |
In November 2011, the Shuttleworth Foundation awarded me a so-called flash grant. Flash grants are an awesome idea: instead of a full fellowship, a smaller sum of money is given to people, with only the condition of reporting about their activities to the world. Since I haven't been blogging very much about many of the projects in which I've been involved over the last few months, here's a small recap.
Soon after receiving the grant, I decided that I wanted to use this time to work on two areas: promoting the idea of open government and open data in Germany and helping advocates and journalists to make sense of open data and to use it for their purposes.
In Germany, things are either done very properly or not at all. Many options are considered, few are tried out. While adopting this attidude in opening up governemnt is not surprising for political actors, German geeks seem to be doing the same: instead of using their technical skills to create digital civic infrastructure, many are now running for office. While this is an interesting development, it also means that there are few interesting open government initiatives.
OffenesParlament - a legislative tracking site.
As a demonstration of the kinds of tools needed, I spent a lot of time in October and January trying to to productize OffenesParlament, a legislative tracking site for the federal parliament. It allows citizens to easily search parliamentary business, speeches and to subscribe to updates about a specific topic or politician. The site has recently entered entered its beta phase and we're now actively seeking more coders to help with further development.
But software along is not enough, so together with fukami and the support of various NGOs (OKFN, CCC, Digitale Gesellschaft and the Open Data Network), I helped to organize a series of hackdays across Germany, in Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne. The events helped to connect different data initiatives, but attendance was low, showing a need for more professional organizing.
A working group at the cologne open data hackday.
Based on these experiences of trying to grow the German community, we're currently in the planning stage of an open government incubator. Our goal is to raise a small fund which we can use to support civic hackers who want to initiate new projects — an initiative that is obviously inspired by the flash grant.
As more and more open data becomes available, the question of how it can effectively be used to inform public opinion becomes more salient. Two key groups in this, journalists and advocates, are often inexperienced in using information technology — not to mention raw data.
In late January, I was able to join the African Media Initiative and the World Bank Institute for a three-day data journalism workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. As I'm writing this, I am on my way to Chisinau, Moldova, to contribute to a similiar event organized by the same groups. Through the OKF, I also had the opportunity to participate in the School of Data Journalism in Perugia, Italy, and Data Harvest, a meeting of EU-focussed investigative reporters in Brussels. I was further able to lend a (web-designing) hand to the awesome team producing the Data Journalism Handbook, a collection of texts about this emerging practice.
Data journalism training in Nairobi.
Although the external conditions of these events are very different, their goals are very similar. We're trying to establish a dialogue between journalists and coders, the explore how data can be used to make better news. Our work there is focissed on introducing journalists to new strategies and tools for information acquisition, processing and presentation. On the other hand, I have learnt a lot about investigating an issue and telling a story from the people I've met.
A recurring technical need articulated both by investigative journalists and NGOs hat I talked to was a tool for the mapping of actor networks. Such a tool would allow its users to create a structured analysis of the relations between different companies, persons or organizations involved in a certain topic.
To explore this question, I teamed up with the Corporate Europe Observatory, LobbyControl and Friends of the Earth Europe to create a site around the European Union's lobby register. After creating a prototype discussion piece in December, a lot of data cleansing work lead into a second demo version of the site near the end of March.
Second prototype of the EU lobby tracker.
The data work, however, proved not to be the most challenging part of the project. It became clear that defining how the information can best contribute to the campaigning goals of the organisations would be key to the site's development: What is the message? What are the key topics we want to focus on? We therefore decided to invite the Tactical Technology Collective to join the project and to use their experience in facilitating this design process.
The backend technology of the lobby register project, a software called Grano, is a re-usable service for actor and relationship mapping, which I hope to develop into a journalistic tool in the future. It could help to enable the evidence-driven analysis of power structures in an accessible way.
Grano: social network analysis for advocacy.
I tremendously enjoyed the freedom afforded by the flash grant. Defining your own work turns out to be a hard job, but it is a fantastic way to explore a domain like open data. After taking on a new role as tech lead of OpenSpending in February, there was unfortunately less time for me to work on independent projects. Still, I hope that some of the initiatives spawned over the last six months will evolve into useful tools and active communities.
Many thanks, Mark! | <urn:uuid:deb74bcd-d713-447a-981e-a49290bb437d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pudo.org/blog/2012/05/15/shuttleworth.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95815 | 1,155 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Japan seems to have it all, including decorated gas tanks. Of course, when you take into consideration that they created murals on their manhole covers, I guess you wouldn't be too surprised that they would also take the time to render other seemingly everyday objects into works of art.
Photographed by Pink Tentacle, these decorated gas tanks can be found all over Japan. From sport and food allusions to more abstract artworks and anime characters, these designs are diverse, fun and extremely well-executed.
According to Pink Tentacle, these decorated gas tanks are commissioned by the local gas companies. It is small touches like this that make a city more enjoyable to live in and pass through.
Adorable Gas Tank Decor
6,003 clicks in 118 w
More Stats +/- | <urn:uuid:ac6df0e2-3aba-4a62-9244-f237f9d57e38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/decorated-gas-tanks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969664 | 161 | 1.523438 | 2 |
December 13, 2011
Researchers gave a group of men and women quotes from the British lad mags FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo, as well as excerpts from interviews with actual convicted rapists originally published in the book The Rapist Files. The participants couldn’t reliably identify which statements came from magazines and which from rapists — what’s more, they rated the magazine quotes as slightly more derogatory than the statements made by men serving time for raping women. The researchers also showed both sets of quotes to a separate group of men — the men were more likely to identify with the rapists’ statements than the lad mag excerpts. The only slightly bright spot in the study: when researchers randomly (and sometimes incorrectly) labelled the quotes as coming from either rapists or magazines, the men were more likely to identify with the ones allegedly drawn from mags. At least they didn’t want to agree with rapists. | <urn:uuid:b5256a3a-ed64-46f8-9c3e-8d69c5e27e7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clusterflock.org/2011/12/the-difference-between-a-mens-magazine-and-a-rapist.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972564 | 186 | 1.59375 | 2 |
It has been on display in Boston since April 10th and will be here until August 7th, which means you have the rest of the spring and a good majority of the summer to plan a trip to The Museum of Fine Arts. The Chihuly: Through The Looking Glass exhibit provides an opportunity to view the full range of Dale Chihuly's artistic achievements with hand blown glass over the last four decades. Based in Seattle, Washington, Chihuly actually works with a team of glassblowers to bring his revolutionary visions to life in grand form. Room size installations create enchanting environments with bold colors, fascinating shapes and mystical designs. It is truly an extraordinary glass blown wonderland to which my pictures do very little justice. In summary - If you're local: Go. If you're not: Patiently await the day when this exhibit comes to a museum near you. And in the meantime, feel free to live vicariously through this post."My installations are singular in scale, composition, and form. At times they sit peacefully in nature, sometimes they hang from the ceiling or spring fourth from the walls. In any setting the color, form and light unite to create something magical" ~Dale Chihuly
The Ikebana Boat is a captivating installation that grasps hold of your attention and doesn't want to let it go. The mash up of whimsical pieces float out of the boat towards you while simultaneously reflecting the smooth black Plexiglas surface below. It's a different work of art every which way you look at it. Stacked among one another ever so delicately are the Tabac Baskets, inspired by Native American baskets that Chihuly used to weave in the 70s. The way the light reflected off their muted tones of brown, tan, taupe and white turning them into sheer sparking objects was pretty amazing. In this same room, a Pendelton blanket display also commanded my attention. Unfortunately, I am not sure the connection to Chihuly, but these were gorgeous.And really, it's all about the glass so I suppose the fact that I missed the explanation of the blankets is nothing to worry about. The next installation titled Mille Fiori means One Thousand Flowers. It's a flamboyant maze of awe striking-brightly colored botanical forms. They are displayed in an arrangement of vast proportion and shape, where some garden areas are crowded and others sparse."People have asked what inspired me to do the Mille Fiori. It wasn't so much trying to replicate the plants as it was a way to work with all the techniques we've learned over the last fourty years" ~DCThis assembly combines pieces from some of his earlier work in the 80s and 90s as well as more recent work. This garden brought to life through glass at the MFA is the largest Mille Fiori to date. "My philosphy says when one is good, a dozen is better" ~DCMoving into the enchanting Persian Ceiling - you'll leave this room with a sore neck from constantly staring up, and it will be well worth it. Dynamic colors and an endless bounty of shapes radiate through the glass, it's all you can do to absorb every inch of the happenings above. It's phenomenal. The Boston Phoenix article quoted "It's like looking up from the bottom of a fairy-tale tide pool" and they couldn't be more right. I could sing its praises with even more fancy adjectives and exclamations, but I have a feeling you're catching on just fine. It is me, or does that yellow shape suspended below take on the fine form of martini glass?!From balls and cups to seashells and sea creatures - (there is definitely a baby octopus floating around in the shot below!) the loosely derived shapes are open to interpretation, making you think twice and then think about them again.
The next room beholds a Chandelier Gallery which contains six chandeliers, apparently more than Chihuly has included in any previous museum exhibit! These are some of his most complex structures in which thousands of elements come together to create a single powerful piece. Oynx and Caramel Colored Chandelier above.In the foreground radiating a pale light blue is the Chiostro di Sant'Apollonia Chandelier. In the background and below is the Palazzo di Loredana Balboni Chandelier.The Orange Hornet and Eelgrass Chandelier showcases a favorite complimentary color combination of bright orange and royal blue. The final MFA installation fuses the glass with nature in Neyodimium Reeds on Logs. From start to finish, this artists creative vision pushes the boundaries and blurs the ideals of art as you know them. I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be back to see it again before it leaves Boston. The exhibit rooms were super crowded. Mom, Leah, Tray and I were among the "first" to arrive when the MFA doors opened at 10am on Sunday. The museum encourages weeknight visits (with the exception of free Wednesdays) for good reason. Next door in the Art of The America's Wing the crowds become sparse over four floors and multiple galleries. I visited for the first time back in February and found myself excited to check out some favorite pieces again while happily discovering new / unseen works. Just outside the galleries, the Shapiro Family Courtyard was a buzz - especially with diners waiting in line to check out the New American Cafe, which we would have dined at had the line not been 20 deep at 11:30am. (It opens at noon.) Instead we marveled at one last glass blown statue, the Lime Green Icicle Tower which took Chihuly and his team over a week to install in the courtyard. Mounted on a steel frame, assembled on location from an original photograph, each time this statue is put together it is different than the last.I found it fascinating to learn that this 40 foot statue contains 2,342 individual pieces and weights in at a mere 10,000 pounds.
The MFA is located at 465 Huntington Avenue and can be reached by Public Transportation on the Green Line via E trains (Museum of Fine Arts stop). Visitors have ample parking options including lots which cost $6/half hours or valet.
The Sunday Funday had only just begun as the four of us set off on foot in search of lunch!! To be continued.... | <urn:uuid:05bea5d8-d4d9-4268-9053-89162b56577e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indulgeinspireimbibe.blogspot.com/2011/05/chihuly-through-looking-glass.html?showComment=1306189769563 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963392 | 1,322 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Rescuers face dangerous conditions in recoveryFargo, ND (WDAY TV) - Firefighters from Kindred, Davenport and a specially trained crew from Fargo Fire all worked to not only recover Sam's body, but keep all other rescuers safe. It was not an easy job.
By: Kevin Wallevand, WDAY
LeRoy Skarloken – Fargo Fire Department: “The safety of the rescuers and treating the victim with dignity
The biggest problem facing firefighters and rescue squads in a situation like this. Time and gravity. Corn piles can be silent killers.
Skarloken – “It flows like water and so you end up with the same problems you do with water it will engulf and squeeze you.”
Today we talked to Kindred and Fargo Firefighters who together used bracing and cribbing to keep the corn from piling on to the rescuers. At one point, they all had to stop. Too dangerous.
Ken Blilie – Kindred Fire Chief: “You need someone watching the whole scene and watching the pile in case there is a landslide of the corn.”
Ben Willey – Fargo Fire Department: “Probably the most nerve racking part for me was watching my brother firefighters dealing with a 30 foot wall of corn that could engulf them at any point.”
On site today, OSHA inspectors along with safety officers with Cenex and counselors made available for coworkers of Sam's who too are mourning his loss.
And some of the rural squads are hoping a glitch in a new computer system at regional dispatch is resolved. It delayed the initial page and call out of firefighters in Kindred last night.
When you are dealing with quick responses important every minute counts.
Regional dispatch officials told us today, they are reviewing the entire 9-1-1 calls and response from last night. Last year alone, 51 grain storage workers died nationwide after being covered by grain or corn piles, the highest number on record. | <urn:uuid:aa50e445-1f54-4719-9f23-61fc9aaf6fe8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/47803/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95289 | 411 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Supposed to possess the evil eye; looking with an evil eye, or with envy, jealousy, or bad design.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Possessed of the supposed evil eye; also, looking with envy, jealousy, or bad design; malicious.
“Not only that, but America as well as the rest of the world would have been blown up by evil-eyed villains.”
“Jorgen lurched behind it, his haggard face twisted in a hungry, evil-eyed grin.”
“Quinn might not want to hurt his evil-eyed honey, but Evalle did.”
“She had been his mistress long enough to know that hard evil-eyed look.”
“ In my “Golden Book of Dinosaurs” there was a picture of rat-like, evil-eyed animals sucking giant dinosaur eggs, with pathetic fetal lizards inside.”
“In my “Golden Book of Dinosaurs” there was a picture of rat-like, evil-eyed animals sucking giant dinosaur eggs, with pathetic fetal lizards inside.”
“Inside, works of such beauty or whimsy: Light Waves' sculptie ballerina, the gigantic evil-eyed cat, the Lovers' Rock, the Man Angel... even Dreaming and the birdcage, which I hope to own someday.”
“Boomer (the big'un) and Pandora (the evil-eyed one) share a moment of mutual non-aggression ...”
“For example, thereâs a picture of young-Mo sitting awkwardly between two evil-eyed fellows with Saddam-like moustaches.”
“Now you can be mobbed in strip malls and preyed upon by evil-eyed "talent managers" before your inevitable slide into the merry-go-round of tabloid-covered arrests and rehab culminating in a spot on Hollywood Squares, just like the honorable celebrities before you.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘evil-eyed’.
135 Offensive Shakespearean Terms =)
From a list of insulting words that you might encounter in a Middle English shouting match.
The list was given to me by my English teacher.
Looking for tweets for evil-eyed. | <urn:uuid:3bae6b5a-6dc6-438c-939f-6c3eccca68b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/evil-eyed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93766 | 498 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Payment processing solutions for ecommerce merchants have two parts. Separate, yet working together, both are important to the success of all payment processing solutions in creating profits and increasing sales.
The first element all payment processing solutions is the merchant account itself. The second element is the secure payment gateway.
The merchant account part of payment processing solutions establishes a line of credit at an acquiring bank. Different payment processing solutions providers work with different banks. The decision on which bank a payment processing solutions provider uses is based on the underwriting criteria of the bank.
The payment processing solutions provider submits the application to the bank which then approves a merchant to accept cards based on underwriting criteria. The bank underwrites the account based on criteria to determine that merchant submitted by the payment processing solutions provider will remain in business, will not have excessive chargebacks, treats customers’ well and has the experience to manage the account.
Sometimes a bank offers merchant accounts directly to its customers without using a 3rd party payment processing solutions provider. However, it is common for businesses to obtain accounts through a payment processing solutions provider, commonly called an independent sales organization, which are registered to offer the accounts on behalf of the bank.
When a business is accepting cards online, there must be a way for consumers to buy from the merchant’s website. That’s where a secure payment gateway fits into the picture.
The secure payment gateway is ecommerce software which connects to a website through a simple interface. A secure payment gateway is an integral element of accepting payments online. As IP terminal applications continue to grow at POS, a secure gateway is also becoming part of the retail environment.
The secure payment gateway is connection to the banking network. When a customer buys online, the authorizations and approvals or denials on the credit cards flow into the banking network through the secure payment gateway.
The correct choice of a secure payment is crucial to providing a solid infrastructure for payment processing solutions.Large ecommerce businesses use the secure payment gateway to dynamically manage ecommerce processing from a single payment processing gateway control panel. In this way, financial operations are streamlined and duplication of functions is eliminated, increasing productivity.
Most secure payment gateway software has rule-based filtering parameters and cascading filter to safeguard companies from fraud. Customizable strategic tools built into the secure payment gateway lets merchants defend themselves against cybercriminals hiding out in cyberspace. Secure payment gateway fraud protection enables merchants to quickly set policies for accepting and rejecting transactions for all payment processing solutions.
Secure payment gateway software has security features to protect merchants against security breaches. For example, merchants who need recurring billing as part of payment processing solutions find a secure payment gateway eliminates storing cardholder information.
Merchants still must implement and update internal security protection because payment processing solutions are unable to keep companies safe from attacks from their internal employees or outside vendors.The majority of payment processing solutions security breaches has been tracked back to merchants that haven’t taken the most basic precautions such as limiting who has access to the system or changing passwords on a regular basis.
Reporting functions of a secure payment gateway are also important. The best payment processing solutions give merchants the ability to customize reporting. | <urn:uuid:bafdb98c-9005-4b23-a881-d6edecb90364> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chargebyphone.ws/payment-processing-solutions-with-a-secure-payment-gateway/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932553 | 648 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Propuesta Civica, or Civic Proposal, said the database it posted on its website contains details on 20,851 missing people that it says were collected by the federal Attorney General's Office during the just-ended administration of President Felipe Calderon.
The missing include police officers, bricklayers, housewives, lawyers, students, businessmen and more than 1,200 children under age 11. They are listed one by one with such details as name, age, gender and the date and place where the person disappeared.
The database also includes chilling details of kidnappings, including the case of a man who was taken by a group of gunmen who stormed into his workplace in the city of Gomez Palacio, in the northern state of Durango, and took him away while his co-workers watched.
Another report details the disappearance of three businessmen in the western state of Michoacan, a place dominated by the Knights Templar drug cartel, a quasi-religious organization that controls most of the state. The report says the men were kidnapped in the town of Patzcuaro by gunmen traveling in two pickup trucks.
A spokesman for federal prosecutors, who would not allow his
Civic Proposal executive director Pilar Talavera said the database doesn't contain enough information to determine how many of the disappearances are linked to the drug war.
She also said the report has inconsistencies that raise questions about whether all the missing are included.
For instance, the northern state of Baja California, where the border city of Tijuana is located, has only 15 people reported as missing even though it had hundreds of people killed as warring drug gangs fought for control. Baja California is also the state where soldiers in 2009 detained a man who confessed to disposing of at least 300 bodies over a decade by dissolving them in vats of lye.
Mexico City, with 7,137 people on the list, has the largest number of missing in the country, but the capital is one of the cities least affected by drug-related violence.
Despite the inconsistencies, the organization decided to publish the database to pressure the government to release official information on the missing, Talavera said.
"This database is one of the few sources of information that civil society has had access to (and that can help) to start to comprehend the true magnitude of violence in Mexico in the last six years," she said.
Numbers vary on just how many people have disappeared in recent years. Mexico's National Human Rights Commission says that 24,000 people were reported missing between 2000 and mid-2012. It says nearly 16,000 bodies found over the years remain unidentified.
The database, which Civic Proposal said it got from a Los Angeles Times reporter, was released three weeks after the Washington Post published a story saying it had received a list of missing people created by the Mexican Attorney General's Office that recorded more than 25,000 disappearances.
In a letter to new President Enrique Pena, Human Rights Watch's director for the Americas, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said that if the numbers quoted by the Post were correct, they would "place the wave of disappearances in Mexico that took place during President Felipe Calderon's six-year administration as the worst in the history of Latin America."
In Chile, about 1,200 people disappeared during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In Colombia, non-governmental organizations and authorities say at least 50,000 people have gone missing during more than 40 years of internal violence.
Between 2006 and 2012, Calderon waged a campaign against organized crime that included the unprecedented deployment of thousands of soldiers. It is estimated by some that there were at least 70,000 deaths tied to organized crime violence during his six-year term, which ended Nov. 30.
Associated Press writers Eva Vergara in Santiago, Chile, and Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:b9215ad1-abb0-4203-909f-824739a476d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_22235619/more-than-20-000-missing-mexico-past-6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978596 | 809 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Organisations are no longer talking about cloud adoption. For most organisations, the cloud is already here; it is a reality. The discussion now is about the need for best practices and technologies to secure the cloud.
This was one of the main highlights of CloudSec 2012, a cloud security event held in Singapore on 15 August.
At the event, keynote speakers from industry leaders such as Trend Micro, VMWare, Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), and National Institute of Science and Technology underlined the need to boost customer confidence and urged all stakeholders to come together to resolve the fundamental issues that bedevil cloud security today.
At the event, a signing ceremony to highlight the establishment of Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) corporate headquarters also took place. The ceremony also brought attention to the partnership between CSA, the Economic Development Board (EDB) and Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) to further cloud security in Singapore.
The Cloud is here
Cloud drives innovation and trends such as analytics and Big Data, social networking and consumerisation of IT are feeding the cloud frenzy, said Dave Asprey, global vice president, Cloud Security, Trend Micro.
He was moderating a panel discussion for the media at CloudSec 2012.
Other participants at the discussion were Timothy Grance, senior computer scientist, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Jim Reavis, co-founder & executive director, Cloud Security Alliance, and Nicholas Tan, country manager, Singapore, VMware.
Citing research, Dave said that the cloud will create £702.1 billion (US$1.1 billion) in new revenues every year. This sector will create 14 million jobs between 2011 and 2015 across all businesses-from small & medium businesses to large businesses. One third of these jobs will be in four industries: communications, media, banking and manufacturing.
He also said that cloud will drive jobs in the Asia Pacific region during this period (2012-2015). Cloud-related job growth will be 155 percent in Japan, 129 percent in Australia, 109 percent in Singapore, 107 percent in Malaysia, 103 percent in Indonesia and 99 percent in India.
However, he noted, the adoption of cloud computing in the region is slower than expected. "Singapore manufacturing has the least affinity for cloud," he said. But the good news is that, he added, Singapore government and financial services lead cloud adoption in the country. "Overall, rate of growth is still relatively low."
Dave said that the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) establishing its corporate headquarters in Singapore augurs well for the region and will provide the necessary shot in the arm to accelerate the adoption rate here.
The Cloud Security Alliance is a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing. Trend Micro, a global cloud security solutions provider, is the founding sponsor of CSA Asia Pacific.
According to an announcement made on 20 July, the CSA will undertake a three-year strategic private-public partnership with support from the Singapore government to further the security of cloud computing.
As part of the agreement, the CSA will establish a Global Research Centre, Global Standards Secretariat, and Global Centre of Excellence for CCSK training and education in Singapore.
Referring to the CSA, Dave said that three important steps are being taken to strengthen its work in the region. One, there is focus on training manpower to fill the cloud security jobs that will be created as the sector develops. Two, TrendMicro has established a research lab in Philippines to study and thwart threats to the cloud environment. The lab employs 1,000 security experts. Three, CSA is developing industry guidelines to educate end-users on the best practices in cloud security.
At the event, the industry leaders agreed that the need for guidelines would be the single most important factor responsible for ensuring success in cloud. | <urn:uuid:9339d473-632e-4027-ade3-ab18dc7c5035> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/?newsid=3376322 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938641 | 813 | 1.59375 | 2 |
IRP RIDGE Center Visiting Scholars
Each year, the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) invites applications from U.S.-based food assistance scholars to visit the IRP\RIDGE Center for National Food and Nutrition Assistance Research for one to two weeks during the academic year, interact with its faculty in residence, and become acquainted with the staff and resources of the Institute.
The intent of the IRP Research, Innovation, and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE) Center is to stimulate innovative research related to food assistance programs such as SNAP (formerly food stamps) and school breakfast and lunch, and to support training of researchers interested in food assistance issues.
Visits of one to two weeks’ duration can be supported during either fall or spring semester of the academic year. The scholars will be invited to give a seminar, to work on their own projects, and to confer with IRP faculty affiliates. Transportation, lodging, and meal expenses will be covered by IRP.
Calls for applications are released in April each year for visits to take place during the following academic year. View the pdf version of the 2012-2013 Call for Visiting Food Assistance Scholar Applications. Applications are due June 30, 2012.
2012–2013 Food Assistance Scholars
Daniel P. Miller, an assistant professor of human behavior in the Boston University School of Social Work, will be in residence from April 13 through 19, 2013. He will present a seminar on April 18.
Miller earned a Ph.D. with distinction in social policy and policy analysis from the Columbia University School of Social Work in 2009. His research and practice interests include child obesity and the effects of the environment on racial and ethnic disparities in rates of overweight and obesity; the intersection of developmental science and social policy; and father involvement and child outcomes. He maintains an interdisciplinary research focus, although his over-abiding interest is in the health and well-being of children and families. He is committed to maintaining his focus on child health by expanding his focus on child food insecurity and food assistance programs.
Miller is a co-principal investigator of a grant, Nonresident Fathers' Involvement and Welfare Policies: Impacts on Childhood Hunger, which has been funded by the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research. Two specific projects funded by the grant are a paper, which takes the novel approach of using multiple datasets to examine whether the prevalence of child food insecurity differs by family structure (two biological parent, single biological mother, cohabiting biological parent, and repartnered biological mother), and how rates of food insecurity change by child age. The second is a paper extending this first effort using growth curve modeling to examine how changes in family structure affect the food insecurity of children in middle to late childhood.
Taryn W. Morrissey, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at American University, will be in residence from March 11 through 15, 2013. She will present a seminar on March 14.
Morrissey earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Cornell University in 2008, with a minor in social and health systems planning. She was a 2008 to 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)/Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Congressional Fellow, and was subsequently hired as a Health Policy Advisor on the staff of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, first for Senator Edward Kennedy and then for Senator Tom Harkin. Morrissey worked primarily on federal health reform legislation, particularly child and maternal health and workforce issues.
Morrissey is interested in the social and economic determinants of children's health and development. Two key areas of focus are the macro- and family-level processes and characteristics that affect children's physical development. At the macro level, her ongoing research, funded by an IRP RIDGE Center grant, examines how local food prices affect young children's body mass index (BMI), eating habits, and food insecurity, and the role that public food assistance plays in exacerbating or mitigating these effects. In related collaborative work also funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she investigates the neighborhood- and family-level predictors of entry into and exit from food insecurity among children prior to entering elementary school.
Andrea Anater, a public health nutrition researcher at RTI International, will be in residence at IRP from March 5 through 9, 2012. She will present a seminar on her work on March 8.
Anater completed her Ph.D. in Health, Behavior, and Society at Johns Hopkins University, where she was also a National Institutes of Health predoctoral fellow and a Center for a Livable Future predoctoral fellow. Much of Anater’s research has focused on the ways that limited-resource households develop food-acquisition coping strategies outside the assistance of government safety net programs and emergency food providers such as food pantries. In a current USDA-funded project, Anater is developing basic categorizations of food security with the goal of using the findings to develop specific program and policy interventions to ensure that individuals have adequate access to food to sustain a healthy life.
Anater’s host and mentor during her visit will be RIDGE Center Director Judith Bartfeld.
Rusty Tchernis is associate professor of economics in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University and is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He will be in residence at IRP from April 9 through April 13, 2012. He will present a seminar on April 11.
Tchernis’s primary areas of research are applied econometrics, health economics, and labor economics. In particular, Tchernis has evaluated school breakfast and lunch programs, the effects of various environmental and geographical factors on childhood obesity, and the ways in which participation in food assistance programs changes the ways that families devote their time to other household tasks. His 2010 edited volume with Daniel Slottje entitled Current Issues in Health Economics brings together leading health economics researchers to examine issues of preventive care and effective use of finite health care resources.
Tchernis will be hosted and mentored by RIDGE Center Director Judith Bartfeld during his stay at IRP.
Christopher Wimer is associate director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality (CPI) and senior editor of CPI’s Pathways magazine. He will be in residence at IRP from April 9 through 13, 2012, and will be presenting a special seminar on Wednesday, April 10.
Wimer earned a Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2007. His main research interests are in inequality, neighborhoods, employment, and family. At CPI, he is engaged in efforts to improve poverty measurement at both the local and national levels, as well as efforts to understand the impacts of the Great Recession on family behaviors and young adults. Alongside these efforts, Wimer has worked with colleagues at CPI to create the San Francisco Economic Distress Index using a variety of public data indicators. Also, in a partnership with the San Francisco Food Bank, he has helped develop measurements of unmet food need in the city of San Francisco.
With a grant from IRP’s RIDGE Center, Wimer and colleagues are studying attitudes and behaviors of non-users of food assistance in order to better understand ways that food assistance programs could meet the needs of more food-insecure people.
IRP Podcast with Christopher Wimer, Measuring unmet food need in San Francisco and Marin County (May 2012)
Wimer will be hosted and mentored by RIDGE Center Director Judith Bartfeld during his visit.
David E. Frisvold, assistant professor of economics, Emory University, will be in residence April 25 through 29, 2011. On April 28 he will present a seminar at IRP on his recent work, "The Federal Reimbursement Rate and the Nutritional Quality of School Meals."
Frisvold received a Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University in 2006 and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan from 2006–2008. During his IRP visit, he will continue his research on the influence of federal reimbursement rates on the nutrition quality of meals provided through the School Breakfast Program (SBP), a project that is an extension of his IRP RIDGE-funded (2008–09) research on the impact of the availability of the SBP on cognitive achievement.
He is interested in understanding whether food assistance programs, particularly the SBP, improve the nutrition and school performance of low-income children. His current research on the impact of the availability of the SBP on cognitive achievement and childhood obesity suggests that state mandates that require schools to offer the SBP have improved childhood outcomes. Yet, an improvement in the quality of the meals provided could perhaps further benefit children. Additionally, as food prices have increased more so than the federal reimbursement rate in recent years, there is the possibility that the nutritional quality of meals will decrease. He is interested in understanding how the federal reimbursement rate influences the nutritional quality of breakfast and, in turn, whether students consume breakfast.
Frisvold’s host and mentor during his stay will be RIDGE Center Director Judith Bartfeld.
H. Luke Shaefer, assistant professor of social work, University of Michigan, and research affiliate, National Poverty Center, will be in residence February 28–March 4, 2011. On March 3 he will present a seminar at IRP on his recent work, "The Effects of SNAP on the Food Security of Poor Families with Children: New Evidence using an Instrumental Variables Approach."
He is co-principal investigator on a two-year project to examine food assistance and child well-being in collaboration with Sheldon Danziger. The project builds on his existing research on families supported by low-wage workers, economic shocks, and the U.S. social safety net. He is analyzing data from the 2004 and 2008 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), utilizing topical modules with data on food security and other measures of well-being.
Shaefer is examining the effects of participation in food assistance programs on well-being for children living in low-income families that experience adverse economic shocks—job loss, divorce, or separation. The analyses focus on the two largest food assistance programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) and the National School Lunch Program (for children receiving free or reduced-price lunches). The primary measure of child well-being will be food insecurity, a key outcome used by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service to evaluate food assistance programs.
Shaefer’s host and mentor during his stay will be RIDGE Center Director Judith Bartfeld. | <urn:uuid:a8d4987e-c0a1-4396-8a74-5a27856177ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irp.wisc.edu/initiatives/irpridge/scholars.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955654 | 2,231 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Eyking, the Liberal MP for Sydney-Victoria, suggested Revenue Canada is trying to push Canadians to file online.
Many seniors in Cape Breton live on low incomes and don’t have access to computers, he said.
“For 70 or 75 per cent of the people, they can go online but there are so many people who don’t have Internet, so many seniors who don’t have computers, and many parts of Cape Breton don’t even have Internet connection.
“Anyone who filed a paper tax form last year should be mailed one this year.”
Revenue Canada is abandoning proactive mailings of income tax forms but the forms are still available on the web or can still be picked up at post offices and Service Canada centres, or requested over the phone. Canadians can also file online.
Eyking wondered if some Canadians are still waiting for a tax form that isn’t coming.
“Say they usually get the form mailed to them. They are waiting and waiting and waiting and the next thing you know, it’s going to be too late.”
Eyking has raised the issue in the House of Commons telling the minister for Revenue Canada, Gail Shea, she is making life harder for low-income seniors at tax time.
Shea has said too many of the mailed out forms went to waste. Last year, more than 1.3 million packages that were mailed out were never used, she told the House of Commons.
CARP, an organization representing people over 50, has said the government should have given people the option to order a paper form when they filed last year's taxes.
The CRA monitors and refines its business processes on an ongoing basis to make sure it uses its resources responsibly and remains efficient and effective in delivering services to Canadians.
A spokesperson for the Canada Revenue Agency said in an email it encourages taxpayers to file and pay electronically, and more Canadians than ever are making the shift to its secure online services.
Mylène Croteau said a significant majority of Canadians now file their tax returns online. | <urn:uuid:0328e7ad-9a4e-41b7-984c-b3f541aad785> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Local/2013-03-12/article-3198307/Eyking-concerned-about-income-tax-forms/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961064 | 436 | 1.726563 | 2 |
In the books of Ezekiel and Revelation, four very important images are formed: That of the four creatures/chrubim which praise God… One with the face of a man (air/Aquarius), lion (fire/Leo), Ox (earth/Taurus) and Eagle (water/Scorpio – which can be represented by the Scorpion, Eagle and Serpent). These four signs are the “fixed signs” of the zodiac and represent the four elements of ancient knowledge and alchemy… These are the four elements that are combined to make everything that we know of on this planet. These are the elements known to all ancient cultures, and although there in true Christianity (esoteric), lost in traditional Christianity (exoteric).
Also remember… Jesus was the fish, who made “fishers of men” (Age of Pisces), born of a Virgin (Virgo), and tells the Apostles to follow the man carrying the pitcher of water (Aquarius) to the Last Supper. Follow Him to the New Age of Aquarius (yes, it has been dawning for a while now)… the New Age of Christ, of the deification (theosis – an extremely Orthodox idea and term of the early Church in recognition of the divine potential of Man through our Saviour, Jesus Christ) of the human species through Jesus Christ, of the New Heaven and New Earth. Yes, His atonement is accounted for, for this current, godless Age (Pisces), where His blood covers our sins since we are not capable of being responsible for our own. However, in the next Age of Aquarius, where we are called to realize our divine nature, once one puts on Christ, becomes a partaker of the divine nature, becomes responsible for their own salvation (work it out with fear and suffering as Paul said!). Thus, Jesus’ blood covers us in the Age, but not the next Age…
In the end, this is what it all points to… Jesus Christ is the Son who sustains our spiritual life, as the Sun sustains our physical life. The ancient Sun worship of all true religions (including Christianity) – while the pagan religions worship the creation instead of the Creator (a big no no), Christianity is really no different, it also worships the Sun in a symbolic manner (although symbolic is the key phrase – as the Sun merely is representative of Jesus as the giver our True Life, as Christians in reality, worship the Creator), and that is why we worship on Sunday with the fulfillment of the New Covenant through Jesus Christ. Think about it! Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, the Son, just as the Sun is the physical light of the world!
The Son/Sun… in the end, Christianity is a retelling of all ancient wisdom of the ages — warning that the Sun, while the sustainer of physical life, will also destroy it when the events of Revelation come to pass (my guess is 2012 based on Mayan end-date calendar, where time as we know it stops – the ancient Chinese I Ching also validates this date – but you never know, that’s just the most likely date we have to go on at this time). This is the end of the 26000 year Great Cycle, as depicted in one full rotation of the zodiac constellations around the night sky. December 12, 2012, is the date that our solar system, for the first time in thousands of years, will eclipse the galactic core on its plane, and this very well may be the beginning and/or cause of those events which will come to pass in Revelation. Make no mistake, they WILL pass, and also make no mistake, they will be of natural origin (although of divine happening, which happens on a cyclical basis).
There is a scientific basis and truth to all in the Bible, and Revelation too. It will come to pass, whether on December 12, 2012 or at some later date. The zodiac is an ancient way that our ancestors tried to warn us of the impending disaster… there’s nothing we can do, but at least we know. The Bible tells us again, what the ancients had known for many thousands of years. Revelation is God’s warning to us, I hope you all pay heed.
And yes… in most circles, the above would be considered “occult knowledge” — although it’s taken right out of the Bible itself! “Occult” is not a bad word, it simply means “hidden”, and much of the ancient secret knowledge of all true religions is hidden within the Bible, and is tied into the Sacred Apostolic Tradition that is handed down from Jesus to Apostle to disciple. Tradition AND Scripture, otherwise, you are missing fully half of the story and gospel!!! Also think of ancient Judaism which had a strong reverence for the Zodiac… this is a fact which has been lost in modern Christianity, although the Zodiac is truly a strong base for the true, esoteric, faith. | <urn:uuid:2d09f128-2a16-417d-876c-038d2f68e482> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://petitepets.com/blog/tag/revelation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955582 | 1,039 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A live reading performance of a full-length play about Robert Green Ingersoll delighted a standing-room crowd at Manhattan's historic Players Club on the evening of January 31, 2011. Defying a gathering winter storm, more than 200 people packed the landmark theater in the Gramercy Park residence of 19th century Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth to experience a reading of Richard Stockton's play "Speak of the Devil."
The production was produced by casting director Irene Stockton, widow of the late playwright, and directed by Chelsea Theatre Center founder Robert Kalfin. A slate of expert Broadway actors read such roles as Robert Green Ingersoll, his brother Ebon, his future wife Eva Parker, her father Judge Parker, and many others. The play presents a fictionalized account of Ingersoll's young and middle years that powerfully captured the wit, insight, and singular courage of the man who dared to challenge America during its Gilded Age by being its most public agnostic.
Ingersoll Museum director and Council for Secular Humanism executive director Tom Flynn offered brief comments before the performance. Richard Stockton's play has been performed twice before on the New York stage, in 1983 at the Chernuchin Theatre Off-Broadway under the title "Royal Bob," and in 1972 at the Lamb's Theatre under the title "One World at a Time." This was its first performance under the playwright's preferred title and in a revised edition edited by Irene Stockton. | <urn:uuid:8d7c4192-9db6-47e7-a593-c678658821cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=press&page=ingersoll_play | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964138 | 301 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Fuel tankers, which were used to carry fuel for US-led forces in Afghanistan, are parked at a compound in Karachi, May 23, 2012.
The Pentagon has requested the US Congress to shift billions of dollars in defense budget to compensate for the additional fuel costs of transporting supplies to Afghanistan, following Pakistan’s refusal to reopen US-led NATO supply routes.
In an 82-page letter to congressional defense committees, the Pentagon demanded "reprogramming" $8.2 billion in funds which were previously approved to bankroll “higher priority” items, the Pentagon said Monday.
There were "some unanticipated costs that we just didn't foresee," Pentagon spokesman Captain John Kirby told reporters at a press conference.
He added that a large portion of the requested fund was due to the expenditures "associated with the extended closure of the ground lines of communication" in Pakistan.
Islamabad closed the border crossings used to transfer US-led NATO supplies to Afghanistan in November 2011, after 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in US-led airstrikes on two checkpoints on the Afghan border. Pakistan had been the main supply route for US-led forces occupying Afghanistan from October 2001 to November 2011.
Last month, NATO reached agreements with Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan to allow the Western military alliance to transport vehicles and other military hardware from Afghanistan.
NATO previously made an agreement with Russia on an exit route, permitting the alliance to send tens of thousands of vehicles and supplies from Afghanistan to Europe later this year.
Yet the Pentagon has argued that the additional funds are necessary. “Without this funding the Army runs the risk of an interruption in the flow of supplies, subsistence and mail to deployed war fighters,” read the request sent to the Congress. | <urn:uuid:ac18093e-25bf-4b9b-b381-cd18cc64203b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://presstv.com/detail/2012/07/03/249082/closed-pakistan-routes-costly-for-us/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965992 | 360 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Jump at every new web design trend
Each time I come across a new trend or style of building websites, I wonder: should I be implementing this into my own site? The most recent innovations to catch my eye are responsive design and grid layouts. Neither of these are particularly new, but responsive website designs work particularly well for mobile devices without needing a separate design. So, despite the fact that my site is already mobile friendly, and the fact that I've already redone my site a few times, I feel the need to use this new responsive framework I've found and implement it into my website. I am also thinking about using a grid layout or creating a grid layout template for future use.
Responsive layouts vs Mobile versions
Responsive websites adjust according to the browsers width. This works very nicely, but has its disadvantages. Adjusting to the browsers width seems like a great idea, but what happens to elements that are built to be large, such as banners or large images? Some templates deal with this problem by having a header that isn't visible on mobile devices. This is a double-edged sword. What if the banner looks great on a tablet but doesn't show up when the site is viewed from a mobile device? Mobile versions are great because you have control over how a mobile visitor sees your site. The disadvantage is that another version of the site must be created. In addition people with tablets may still be looking at a website designed for a phone or vice versa. Which is better? It is difficult to say. In the past, I would have gone with a mobile version. When I looked at some of the responsive designs today, I was so impressed that I changed my mind.
Look for the video tutorial later this week
If everything goes as planned, and I don't get swamped suddenly, look for a video with me adjusting the blank responsive template for my website. I'm feeling inspired and think this would be a great addition to my website. I will be using The Wright Framework by Joomlashack. It has a variety of module positions to work with, and it will hopefully convert well once I've recreated the 'look' of my site. Well, I'm off to look at the template and work on some CSS. | <urn:uuid:5bee5bab-ae1b-4a9b-a589-2a276afea08c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://houtsgraphics.com/web-designer-dilemma.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965608 | 460 | 1.5625 | 2 |
An MMT site bringing you dogma-free economics without the pleadings of self interest
we definitely need to steer away from economic activity of making things hot as well as making it expensive to be cool.has anyone bothered to map out global CO2 levels, temperatures, and other metrics on a graph superimposing with economic activity cooling ?In other words, when the economies cool off, industry reduces output.Therefore we should see a corelation to atmospheric science IF there is one.The BUSH run up is a great example of overheating an economy and supposedly local and global environments.The post BUSH cool down would show the opposite.Subtract for solar cycle input and see if there really is global warming due to industry.If this model exists, then place the link ... here !
goog,I had a conversation with a guy who is in solar recently.You're correct the issue imo is Air Conditioning. The solar panels produce DC current. The air conditioning compressors and fans run off AC motors due to Power Utility Transmission aspects.So solar DC has to be converted to AC (some loss) and then AC motors are maybe 15-20% less efficient than DC motors.Well the HVAC industry is planning on going to DC motors (I think Lennox already has a model out) on the compressors and fans that can run straight off the DC solar panels at a pretty good efficiency gain. It looks promising.Resp,
We have to figure out how to make the roofing systems themselves out of some sort of conformal solar arrays instead of paying twice for the installation of the regular asphalt shingle roof and then the panels on rails over top of the real roof....
Solar shingles have been available commercially since 2005.
Great graphics, Matt.Definitely more women now than in the 60's and 70's anti-war protests. The young men were mostly affected then, since women were not subject to the draft. But the economic downturn is affecting everyone. In addition, it would be a big mistake to see this as simply a reaction to the economic downturn. The youth of the world is now both self-aware, savvy, and united in purpose. This is a global revolution, and it is going viral, lead by youth standing up and saying no to the status quo and f*ck you to the TPTB. The more repression, the more radicalization.This is morphing into a great turning, as Strauss and Howe, and Ravi Batra predicted. This time the women are out in front, and it is global. Women around the world are saying no to second class status.
We need to find a way to manufacture women using DNA processing (according to required specifications). This will eliminate one of mankind's major sources of time and resource wastage - catering to women. No more messy divorces, alimony, asset pledges etc.
Post a Comment | <urn:uuid:e763f919-4ad9-4715-9829-12de1da03b2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/women-protest-worldwide.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942999 | 593 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Improved adherence, med management can reduce hospital re-admissions, healthcare group says
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Improving medication adherence may be the key to reducing hospital re-admission rates, according to a new issue brief by a health policy research organization.
NEHI issued the brief Friday, saying that incorporating medication adherence policies into discharge planning was important as earlier this month, hospitals began facing federal penalties for Medicare patients re-admitted for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia within 30 days of discharge. Hospital re-admissions cost the healthcare system $25 billion per year, while medication nonadherence costs $290 billion, according to NEHI research.
Successful new models of advanced discharge planning and transitional care, NEHI said, include accountability for medication-related tasks in which care coordinators own the medication-management process; teamwork to coordinate professionals inside and outside the hospital; medication reconciliation for medications patients might be taking that hospital staff don't know about; direct engagement with patients and caregivers; and follow-ups with patients after discharge.
"Medication management and improved adherence are critical tools for lowering readmissions," NEHI executive director Valerie Fleischman said. "And new models of hospital discharge planning are showing the way."
Earlier this week, Walgreens announced WellTransitions, which brings together the retailer, hospitals and health systems in a coordinated care model designed to reduce re-admissions through MTM and improvements to adherence. | <urn:uuid:a5680da3-485c-4238-ad8d-a3aa668a391c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m.drugstorenews.com/article/improved-adherence-med-management-can-reduce-hospital-re-admissions-healthcare-group-says?ad=studies-and-surveys&device=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936837 | 297 | 1.765625 | 2 |
In a front-page article in today’s Sunday edition, the L.A. Times tells us that the Latino vote increased heavily in this past election. So much so, in fact, that Texas may be a battleground state in the future. The article explains:
A major shift in the Latino vote took place in Florida and the Southwest, where the Obama campaign spent at least $20 million on targeted appeals and organizing, including one television ad in the final days featuring the candidate reading Spanish from a script.
Latinos made up a greater share of the electorate than in the past in every Southwestern state, according to exit polls compiled by CNN.
What explains these increases? A massive in legal immigration? A massive increase in the turnout of legally registered Latino voters?
Might some part of the increase be due to illegal immigration?
The article seems remarkably uninterested in that last possibility.
The article does drop some hints, such as when we were told of Obama’s campaign: “Much of the campaign’s attention in that effort focused on Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley.” Which, it just so happens, is right next to Mexico.
But the article makes absolutely no effort to determine whether these numbers have been in any way affected by massive increases in illegal immigration over the past several years. Indeed, the subject of illegal immigration comes up only as a way to rebuke Republicans for focusing on it: “Many Latinos, for instance, are angry at Republicans for the harsh anti-illegal-immigration rhetoric used by some in the party in blocking a path to citizenship for undocumented workers.”
Several days ago, I asked you: “What do you think is the single greatest source of voter fraud in this country?” To me, the answer is obvious and intuitive: votes cast by illegal immigrants.
By all accounts there are far more than 10 million illegal immigrants in this country. Most estimates are around 12-13 million; some are 16-17 million; some are as high as 20 million. We have gotten about 500,000 new illegal immigrants per year every year since 2004; from 2000-2004 this number was even higher, ranging from 800,000 to 850,000 new illegals every year.
We all know that these illegals do much of what citizens do: drive, work, receive health care, etc.
Many do these things off the books, driving without licenses and working without documentation. But many others do these things with phony documentation, obtaining fraudulent licenses and filling out work papers with bogus information.
Why wouldn’t they vote, too?
It certainly seems logically possible that there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of illegal votes cast in this past election. If this is true, it is possible that illegal immigrants decided this election.
Tell me where I’m wrong.
But of course, none of this comes up in the article. This is a newspaper that loves to talk about the ills facing our society in general, and Southern California in particular — but somehow, the most obvious cause of those ills never gets mentioned.
P.S. You need to understand that this problem is self-perpetuating. The more illegal immigrants we let in, the more will vote. Even if you utterly discount the idea that illegal immigrants vote, it’s clear that Latinos in general are voting more heavily Democrat because they perceive an anti-immigrant bias from opposition to illegal immigration. See, for example, here (.pdf). This means that, more and more, politicians will feel the need to cater to that constituency. Meaning that our policies will get more and more lax still. Meaning still more illegal immigrants will be let in. And so on.
We have already lost the battle. We lost it long ago.
P.P.S. In the extended entry, I’ll take a quick stab at analyzing some of the numbers that the L.A. Times fails to analyze.
For some states, the article gives specific percentages of increases:
The Latino share of the vote nationally rose slightly from 2004, but the increases were sharpest in a few states: rising from 8% to 13% in Colorado, from 10% to 15% in Nevada, and from 32% to 41% in New Mexico.
Let’s look at Colorado, one of the three states for whom the paper gives numbers — and the linchpin of Obama’s Western state strategy.
According to FAIR, the estimated illegal alien population in 2007 was 270,000, or about 5.5% of the total state population of 4,861,515.
In addition, the number of foreign-born in the population was 508,480, meaning that the percentage of foreign-born who are illegal are 270,000/508,480, or about 53%.
FAIR also says: “The INS (now dissolved into the Dept. of Homeland Security) estimated in February 2003 that the resident illegal population in Colorado was 144,000 as of January 2000.” This means that there are 130,000 more illegal aliens in 2007 than in 2000. If the increase was steady, that would be about 18,571 people per year, or around 75,000 people since 2004.
Due to numbers I gave above, it is not quite a fair assumption that the increase has been steady. In the entire country, illegal alien increases of 850,000 per year from 2000-2004 gave way to increases of 500,000 per year from 2004-2007 — meaning that while there was an average increase of 700,000 per year (the total increase divided by 7) per year from 2000-2007, the average increase from 2004-2007 per year was only 500,000, or 71% of the average increase over the whole 7-year period. So if these numbers were true for Colorado, the average increase from 2004-2007 would be 13,185 illegals per year (71% of 18,571), or a total of 39,555 new illegals since 2004. (Births don’t count, since children born to illegals are considered legal.)
So we have just shy of 40,000 new illegal immigrants in Colorado since 2004.
Meanwhile, numbers from the Denver Post tell us that in 2004, there were 2,424,000 total registered voters in Colorado. 204,000 or those were registered Latino voters, and 165,000 of them voted. In 2007, there were 2,891,000 total registered voters in Colorado, an increase of 567,000. There were now 274,000 registered Latino voters, an increase of 70,000. Of registered voters, 8.4% were Latino in 2004, and 9.5% were Latino in 2007.
Does the increase of 70,000 new registered Latino voters from 2004 to 2007 have anything to do with the fact that the illegal population increased by almost 40,000 since 2004? I don’t know. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
At the very least, I’d like to see some discussion of these numbers in the L.A. Times.
I don’t know whether illegal immigrants decided this election. But certainly, if you take into account the phenomenon of legal Latinos voting Democrat because of the issue of illegal immigration, the case is pretty persuasive that this issue decided the election. | <urn:uuid:b427fb93-cb5a-473f-a95c-75100e4d8bc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://patterico.com/2008/11/09/did-illegal-immigrants-decide-this-election-the-la-times-seems-remarkably-incurious/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963726 | 1,520 | 1.554688 | 2 |
“How do you reinvent matzah after 130 years?” Arye Weigensberg,
assistant brand manager for Manischewitz, asked the crowd before
announcing the winner of the first ever Manischewitz Matzah Sculpture
Competition. The answer: build with it.
James Donovan, a freshman studying studio art at New York University,
won the contest, held on Monday at the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for
Jewish Life at NYU. His winning sculpture recreated the Washington
Square Arch entirely out of matzah.
Shocked at receiving top honors and the $1,000 grand prize, Donovan turned beet red, in contrast with his teal-dyed hair.
“I’m just completely overwhelmed, flabbergasted,” he said. “Home to me
is Washington Square.” His design proposal referred to the arch as a
symbol of a unified home for NYU students, emblematic of New York
itself in his eyes.
Weigensberg and curator Lois Stavsky judged the event. “It was amazing
the diverse response to a simple request,” Weigensberg said.
Other entries in the contest included “Passover and New Orleans: Exodus
and Empathy Revisited” by Erica Dobin, who constructed a series of
sukkot out of matzah, foam board and photographs she took while
attending a New Orleans rebuilding trip with a group of Muslim and
Jewish NYU students during spring break. Daniel Rosenberg, a graduate
student in the NYU Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, recreated
souvenir photograph projector keychains with old family photos to show
the idea of “home as an idealized construct.” Chana Langman recreated
the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and Leia Weil and Erica Frankel built a
model of the Western Wall, complete with worshippers.
Any student attending a school served by the Bronfman Center, including
Cooper Union, The Fashion Institute of Technology, The School of Visual
Arts and NYU, was eligible to compete. The sculpture had to incorporate
matzah as an artistic medium and be no more than two feet in height or
Out of 12 entries received, eight were chosen for display at the
Bronfman Center. They are part of the “Home and Away: The Spaces We
Inhabit,” an art exhibit that runs through May 13. | <urn:uuid:47188bb0-7d9b-424b-bb0e-f1dce194b23b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.joi.org/bloglinks/JewishWeekSculpture.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942782 | 524 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Editor's note: James K. Galbraith is the author of "Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis" (Oxford University Press). He teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.
(CNN) -- Let's start with the good news. If the House passes the deal, the fiscal cliff melodrama will be over. Under the spur of this contrived crisis, Congress will let tax rates rise (just a bit) on the very wealthy, extend unemployment insurance, and defer the sequesters for a couple of months. Good.
Even better, there have been no new cuts (yet) to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Would those who wasted December predicting disaster if these programs were not gutted by Christmas now in penance please be quiet for at least six months? Could we instead spend those months doing something useful, like raising the minimum wage?
Drumbeat against social insurance
Sadly, no. The first thing we can be sure of is that the Beltway drumbeat against social insurance will start again. The next pretext will be the debt ceiling, which will now occur alongside the new sequester deadline in late February, shifting leverage to the right. It seems the president has decided that the Constitution, which orders that all public debts shall be paid, is optional on this point. So it will be up to Sen. Harry Reid and his majority to battle on in defense of our most vital programs, so deeply hated by the eternal enemies of the New Deal.
Economy will limp along
Meanwhile, we will discover that raising taxes on the rich makes no difference. Interest rates, already near zero, will not go down. Consumer spending and business investment will not be changed. Keeping middle class income taxes and the alternative minimum tax from rising is also a no-change step; same goes for the one-year reprieve for unemployment insurance.
None of these measures will increase total private spending, which would have been useful right now. And the one tax break that no one tried hard to save -- namely, the expiring payroll tax holiday -- will cut into spending power where it hurts. Given that drag, the economy will limp along at best.
Where are the jobs?
Barring a new recession -- now unlikely -- the Fed's new 6.5% unemployment rate target will be approached the hard way: Not with new jobs, but mainly because workers desert the labor force, take retirement, or just drop out. This will be lousy for young and old alike.
Household finances could improve
Most Americans will continue to pay down mortgages, even where they remain larger than the value of their homes. They will do it because they consider it right and honest to do so. Some, unable to hang on, will default and be foreclosed. The bankers whose frauds ruined the middle class will go mostly unpunished, except perhaps by civil plaintiffs.
Still, whatever happens, household finances will improve slowly so long as the safety net (which is the federal budget deficit) continues to support total incomes. Yes, you read that correctly about the deficit. We would be much worse off without it. As of today, the big risk to the economy is that austerity measures so far avoided, including cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, will be imposed to get past the debt ceiling and to again defer the sequesters. If that happens, it would slow the economy and squeeze the middle class even more.
Europe's crisis will worsen
In Europe, where the fiscal fools are in complete control, things will get worse. Europe does not have a government that can run a deficit covering the entire union. So the pain falls on Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy. These countries are being forced to damage and even destroy themselves with spending cuts and tax increases, mainly to satisfy the Germans. And the German powers-that-be will argue that Germany too must now face "iron austerity" even though it has no financing or competitiveness problem. If that argument prevails, the European Union will take another step toward ruin. The model of Yugoslavia comes to mind.
China may be OK
China remains the exception, since it is governed by pragmatists who are not afraid to run budget deficits when needed. But Chinese people are impatient with the collateral damage from growth: Inequality, environmental stress, and especially corruptions. Chinese growth is vulnerable to rising energy prices, as is Japan.
I do not foresee economic disaster in 2013. But forces that could produce disaster -- mainly attacks on our most vital and successful social programs in the name of deficit reduction -- are at work almost everywhere. So it's a good year to reflect on what has already gone wrong by looking first at what is wrong and changing our thinking.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of James K. Galbraith. | <urn:uuid:96b2272b-b367-49b5-b398-eac99429d8f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/01/opinion/galbraith-economy-2013/index.html?hpt=hp_c2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950106 | 1,012 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Imogene Heap continues to convince me she must be an incredibly interesting person in person … as well as a talented musician. And she just released another new song … from China.
Think of this:
Featured on TED (magical gloves <that capture sound through motion>).
Finds musical inspiration in almost absurd ways (newspaper printers).
Innovative thinker (YouGov).
Certainly not mainstream (I envision most people have no clue who she is). But certainly way ahead of what I would consider a global collaborative thinker (not just a musician).
First. The song.
Heap is working on her fourth cd. But she is going about it in a really interesting way … it is almost like sh is releasing each song as a “cd” as she rolls out the entre cd one-by-one. While the cd will be a collection of songs written and released individually two months apart each “Heapsong” is a story in itself. As I just said … each song is almost its own cd. People should be paying attention to is concept … REALLY paying attention. Because this may be the way of the future. Full length cds simply being a means to an end (a compilation of individual songs).
The newest song, the 5th, she made in China and is called Xizi She Knows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgvAx2Bdt-o&ob=av2e
Ok. About the song (and another reason why I think she is one of the most innovative musicians out there today):
We went into a primary school class, where the children were doing their eye exercises, and the teacher giving them their instructions gave us our tempo. The sound of the newspaper printing presses – that became the beat. And we caught this woman who heads up this huge hill to a temple every day at sunrise and screams at the top of her lungs, so the sound of that is now in the middle section of the song.- Imogene Heap
She worked with YouGov to conduct a unique piece of research.
Imogen wanted to find out more about her fans by working with YouGov to write a tailored survey. Through it, she hoped to discover how her fans first came into contact with her work, when, how and why they enjoy her music, and what it is about Heap fans as individuals that mean they connect with her sound. It is a fascinating way to stay in touch with not only fan base but a larger base of what I would consider ‘global influencers’ or, at minimum, people who care about issues globally.
By the way.
Every one of my readers (because I assume they read because they like to explore new ideas and be involved in a worldview) should register with YouGov.
While it is certainly UK based it explores global issues as well as UK issues and is really well done. A very easy way to keep in touch with a variety of global issues (and some are serious and some are not).
Here is the registration site: https://labs.yougov.co.uk/account/register/
I love the fact she has made new technologies and social media integral to who she is and what she does … WITHOUT losing her individualism.
Heck. in 2010 she accepted her Grammy for the best engineered non-classical album (there are so many frickin’ grammy categories its nuts) wearing an interactive Twitter dress <yeah … interactive> specially-made to enable her to ‘bring’ her fans on stage with her.
She has been featured on TED as assisting in the development of “magical gloves” which capture sounds in motion.
I love the fact she is recognizing the importance and functionality of social media as a vehicle for, and measure, of not only engagement but also the possibilities created through collaboration by constantly involving people with various projects.
I have written about her before an this 4th cd but it us using an entirely new innovative approach to writing & recording by releasing one song every three months … because each song is basically being created through collaboration in a two-week song-composing flurry.
‘Lifeline’ and ‘Propeller Seeds’ were the first and second tracks created this way.
For ‘Propeller Seeds’, Imogen invited fans to share their moments of ‘clarity’ with her – namely, the times in their lives when “everything seemed to click” – to inspire her interpretation of this moment in her music.
Fascinating young lady.
And, from a bigger picture perspective, I believe her efforts and working style actually does more to encourage arts & music in people’s lives than any “music & arts is good” advertising initiative. She is involving people … and young people to see how music can be part of their lives.
Here is the Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/feb/23/30-minutes-with-imogen-heap#1
And if you ever wanted to be part of a song writing process … well … here is your chance. Her cd ain’t done yet. | <urn:uuid:a8f424a0-c420-418d-9546-c44a6096fff4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://brucemctague.com/heapsongs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971431 | 1,092 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Peter Brian Gabriel (born February 13, 1950, in Chobham, Surrey, England) is an English musician. He first came to fame as the lead vocalist, flautist, and percussionist of the progressive rock group Genesis, went on to a successful solo career, and more recently has focused on producing and promoting world music and pioneering digital distribution methods for music. In addition he has been involved in various humanitarian efforts.
Gabriel founded Genesis in 1967 while a pupil at Charterhouse School with bandmates Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, and drummer Chris Stewart. The name of the band was suggested by fellow Charterhouse School alumnus, the pop music impresario Jonathan King who produced their first album 'From Genesis to Revelation'.
A lover of soul music, Gabriel was influenced by many different sources in his way of singing, mainly Nina Simone, Gary Brooker of Procol Harum and Cat Stevens. He also played the flute on Stevens' Mona Bone Jakon album in 1970.
Genesis quickly became one of the most talked-about bands in the UK and eventually Italy, Belgium, Germany and other European countries, largely due to Gabriel's...
|Born||February 13, 1950|
|Origin||Chobham, Surrey, England|
|Instrument||singing, guitar, piano, flute, drums|
|Genre||world music, pop music|
|Occupation||musician, record producer|
|Years active||1967 – present (time)| | <urn:uuid:13b6f437-2fae-4646-b5ec-51edf58474cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chordie.com/song.php/songartist/Peter+Gabriel/index.html?filter=a%20long%20and%20lasting%20love | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954872 | 312 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Communications watchdog Ofcom is to overhaul the regulations covering VoIP services after huge growth in the sector.
Ofcom published interim guidance on VoIP services in 2004, but since then the choice of providers and the range of services offered has increased, while equipment has also developed significantly. There are now an estimated 500,000 VoIP users in the UK.
The regulator has published proposals for a new approach, including a code to ensure service providers give their customers information about service capability.
It will outline how Ofcom will investigate breaches of providers’ obligations on network reliability and emergency calls, and will increase the incentive for VoIP services to offer 999 access.
Ofcom is promising a “planned approach” to reviewing the regulations to take into account future market and technology development.
Consultation on the proposals closes on 3 May 2006, with a statement of the results expected in August. | <urn:uuid:d7e9e088-c201-403d-9cd5-58a016f4cb36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240076653/Ofcom-issues-consultation-on-VoIP-regulations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95423 | 183 | 1.539063 | 2 |
It is my intention to present the landscape as beauty itself, without reference to man and industry. The adjective “catastrophic” is sometimes connected to my work because the question is asked, “what happened to the people?” Though any work I’ve made could be a place here on earth, I think of these panoramas as existing millions of years ago, today, or millions of years in the future. It has been suggested that the landscapes could be from another planet. The Hudson River School is most often associated with my work because of the idyllic quality and color of the vistas. A lot has been written about my work but my most favorite line was written by Kit White, “There were mountains, sunsets and ocean shores before there were eyes to see them.”
What makes these dioramas unusual is that they are created in a 200 gallon tank filled with water. Though I sometimes build a scene in front of and behind the tank, most of the “action” takes place in the tank with paint injected into the water for cloud formations. I use whatever materials I can find on the street, in stores and on the internet that might add to a perception of reality that is not quite what it seems. | <urn:uuid:d709d336-0dab-402a-b5ae-e8c7d4c7e230> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kimkeever.com/landscapes-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982699 | 260 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Today, Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, released his analysis of the stimulus plan House Democrats put forth last week. Zandi concluded that the plan “will not reverse the current recession, but it will provide a vital boost to the flagging economy”:
With the stimulus, there will be 4 million more jobs and the jobless rate will be more than 2 percentage points lower by the end of 2010 than without any fiscal stimulus. Without stimulus, unemployment will rise well into the double digits by this time next year, and the economy will not return to full employment until 2014.
Zandi also highlighted an important point that has been somewhat lost in the hoopla surrounding the stimulus: a solution to the housing crisis — the very root of the economic downturn — has still not been found. Data shows that foreclosures in 2008 increased 80 percent from 2007 and 225 percent from 2006. Zandi rightly noted that these problems facing homeowners “are clearly everyone’s problems“:
[P]olicymakers’ most serious missteps so far have come from acting too slowly, too timidly, and in a seemingly scattershot way…Debate about whether it is fair to help stressed households stay in their homes appears quaint. Their problems are clearly everyone’s problems. Only concerted, comprehensive and consistent government action will instill the confidence necessary to restore financial stability and restart economic growth.
Indeed, the foreclosure epidemic hurts everybody, as foreclosed properties drag down home values, making it harder for neighbors to sell or refinance, which could result in even more foreclosures.
Zandi suggested that money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) be used “to fund a much larger and more comprehensive foreclosure mitigation plan.” This is an approach long-advocated by the Center for American Progress, and since the Senate voted last week to release the second tranche of TARP funds into the waiting arms of the Obama administration, there is a golden opportunity to implement it. | <urn:uuid:c404dc65-53b3-48ba-a1a8-954b7513601e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2009/01/21/172558/zandi-homeowners/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936092 | 418 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Leadership Studies minor is based on the concept that underlies the Elon Experiences and is at the heart of an Elon education: active and engaged learning. The study of leadership must be an effective marriage of content and process; this minor is designed to provide both. It is built on the strength and expertise of Elon’s faculty and is designed to expose students to theories and practices of leadership across disciplinary boundaries, shape their definition of leadership so that they understand it occurs at the interchange of vision and action, teach them the importance of vision being informed by values, provide them with practical skills in the art of working with people and encourage in them an understanding of leadership as a focus of academic inquiry and research.
While it takes advantage of multiple disciplinary perspectives, the minor also provides a common thread to move students along a continuum from the concept of leadership as holding office or getting people to do what you want them to do, to the understanding that leadership is working with people to move together toward the attainment of a vision informed by the common good.
Regardless of the career or life path a student chooses, he or she will always have the opportunity to engage in a significant leadership role. Whether having formal or informal responsibility for helping an organization achieve its goals, he or she will be in a position to lead and shape the direction of others. Effective leadership cuts across all disciplines and levels, and the Leadership Studies minor provides a solid academic, theoretical and practical vehicle to prepare students for these key roles.
Two separate papers by Elon faculty were recently published in a special issue of Leadership Quarterly (volume 24, issue 3), one of the premier academic journals for leadership research. The issue’s theme was leadership integrity.
Chris Leupold, associate professor of psychology and Faculty Leadership Fellow, was part of a research team that recently presented two research papers at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP). | <urn:uuid:e5cb4da5-f7d2-48e5-8cfa-27c70065a960> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elon.edu/e-web/academics/elon_college/leadership/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967948 | 387 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Politics & Government
Tue February 5, 2013
Lawmakers hope to boost veteran-owned businesses
A Republican state senator wants each state agency to set aside 10% of its contracts each year for veteran-owned small businesses, a move supporters say the will help reduce veteran unemployment.
Governor Mike Pence signed an executive order his first day in office establishing a goal of procuring three percent of state contracts for veteran-owned businesses.
Proposed legislation would expand that to 10%, something American Legion state commander Richard Jewell says could help reduce veteran unemployment, which is double the state rate.
“Veteran-owned businesses tend to hire veterans,” Jewell said. “So we look at this as not only a great opportunity for the veteran-owned businesses in the state of Indiana, but it also has an opportunity to put those newest patriots back to work.”
Indianapolis Democratic Senator Greg Taylor says while help for veteran-owned businesses is needed, the proposed bill may run into constitutional problems.
Taylor says his concerns are based on his experience with a similar program, the minority- and women-owned business preference.
“You have to show a history of disparity in order to have the goal set,” Taylor said. “So, in order for this program to hold muster and actually pass legal scrutiny, we need to have a disparity study to include veteran-owned businesses.”
Taylor says until that kind of study can be done, the issue is best left to the governor’s executive order and the state Department of Administration. | <urn:uuid:74ff3ae6-4b29-4d1d-a7dc-a2bd375e65b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nipr.fm/post/lawmakers-hope-boost-veteran-owned-businesses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966805 | 323 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Yup, real baby babies, not non-real grown-up babies:
Scottish Opera is attempting to reach beyond its normal audiences of middle-aged music buffs by launching a series of concerts aimed at infants, aged between six and 18 months.
The experimental performances, to be staged at venues across the country, will feature no lyrics, narrative or plot. Instead, classically trained singers will create baby-friendly noises, such as Wellington boots splashing in puddles, buzzing bees, quacking ducks and the fluttering of feathers.
The audience will also be encouraged to gurgle along to the score and to crawl over a furry garden set, featuring hand puppets and a range of themed props.
There are many quote-worthy paragraphs in the article. Like this:
“We were advised that when you are seven months old you are still not focusing very well [TC: I doubt this] so we have created a tactile garden set.”
Davidson said test performances had confounded expectations. “We expected it to be quite noisy, but we were delighted when we saw the happy expressions on their wee faces,” she said.
“When I first mentioned the idea of opera for babies, some people looked at me as though I was demented. People would roll their eyes and say, ‘You can’t expect a six-month-old child to sit through a performance of Wagner,’ ” said Davidson.
“Of course, that was never going to happen, but some people still have fixed opinions of what they perceive opera to be. We believe this project will show just how robust and flexible an art form it is.” | <urn:uuid:69cd9f1d-7470-4891-9811-ca33bd13927f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/03/markets-in-everything-opera-for-infants.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971636 | 351 | 1.703125 | 2 |
When I posted the Advance to Mullaitivu on January 8th, the situation was roughly thus:
The 53rd Division had just taken the northern side of Elephant Pass, and the 55th was rolling down the northeast coast of the Jaffna Peninsula, squeezing the Tigers into the narrow Chundikilam spit. On the mainland, Task Force 1 — newly formalized as the 58th Division had sent a brigade up the A9 to secure the southern end of Elephant Pass before its other elements started pushing southeast down the A35 against the Tiger’s next line of defence. Further south, the 57th Division was pushing through Irananamadu and across the Old Kandy Road. This division was also in contact, as was elements of Task Force 3 on the 57th’s right flank. Task Force 2, between Karuppaddamuripu and Oddusuddan, lined up just north of the A34 was fairly static. On its right flank, Task Force 4 was in heavy contact in what looked like a probing or diversionary attack up the Oddusuddan – Puthukkudiyiruppu road. At the far right of the line, the 59th Division was fairly static as well, just south of Mullaitivu, though facing regular counterattacks.
My prediction at the time was that of a ‘left hook’ with the main thrust going down the A35, spearheaded by the 58th Division. It’s left flank would be protected by mechanized elements of the 55th, moving quickly across from Elephant Pass if the causeway was motorable. The four division-sized formations south of the 58th would apply pressure into the southern and western sides of the Tiger triangle, moving forward incrementally where possible to threaten the LTTE’s left flank as it defended the A35. The 59th, south of Mullaitivu, would apply maximum pressure against the tigers and act as a pivot for the entire line. However, Task Force 4 could still be used to punch up into the triangle’s underbelly, driving for Puthukkudiyiruppu if the 58th found its advance faltering. I predicted that the end of Phase 1 would look something like this: Read more » | <urn:uuid:7069158d-1cd5-47f5-8a84-9d5dcd389a61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blacklightarrow.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969353 | 470 | 1.609375 | 2 |
My name is Kirstin Abril Trevino, better known as Kat to most. I am three days into my three-week internship with Jamie Ortiz at San Diego Coastkeeper. I entered this organization with little knowledge about how serious San Diego's water pollution problem is, even though I have lived in this beautiful city for the past 15 years.
Like most in this city, I frequently visit the beach. At the beach, I kick back, listen to Pearl Jam, and watch the surfers ride by in the pristine waters of La Jolla. Now that I have learned about the pollution problem, I find that our ineffective stormwater system rather frightening and disappointing.
Pollution affects not just the shops on the waterfront but everyone living in San Diego. I know a large part of San Diego’s economy is based on tourism. There are pretty much two things that bring tourists: Comic-con and our beaches. Trust me, I know how crowded San Diego can be during the summer. Millions of people flock to our city for these two attractions, and I would think keeping our waters clean would be a top priority for our city.
I've been assigned the task of creating videos to show that it isn't just surfers or beachgoers who are knit-picky about seeing a plastic bag in the water. Pollution of our waters can cause illness and can financially hurt San Diegans. Many people aren't willing to give teenagers such an important task, and I am grateful for this opportunity. I will prove to my mentor and school what I am capable of accomplishing, while bringing awareness to San Diegans about the importance of keeping our waters clean. | <urn:uuid:67237b20-f339-4bb4-a3ab-e93a0e3db661> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sdcoastkeeper.org/blog/other-green-thoughts/item/328-reality_for_a_sixteen_year_old.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960547 | 338 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Date of this Version
Bovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1) is a significant viral pathogen of cattle responsible for a variety of disease conditions, including: conjunctivitis, pneumonia, genital disorders, abortions, and shipping fever, a serious upper respiratory tract infection. Following acute infection in mucosal epithelium, BHV-1 establishes a lifelong latent infection in sensory ganglionic neurons. During latency, transcription is restricted to the latency related (LR) gene. Elevated corticosteroid levels due to stress and/or immune suppression can initiate reactivation from latency, resulting in virus shedding and spread to susceptible cattle. Additionally, administration of dexamethasone (Dex), a synthetic corticosteroid, to calves latently infected with BHV-1 reproducibly leads to reactivation from latency. During reactivation, productive viral gene expression is readily detected in sensory neurons, LR gene expression decreases, and infectious virus is secreted. However, as with other alpha-herpesviruses, the molecular mechanisms that occur during successful reactivation from latency are poorly understood. Therefore, this dissertation was aimed at the elucidation of the early events of the latency-reactivation cycle of alpha-herpesviruses. Furthermore, the aim was to reveal the function of cellular transcription factors in the latency-reactivation cycle. Since BHV-1 is the only alphaherpesvirinae subfamily member that can be reproducibly induced to reactivate from latency, we were also interested in examining the effect of these cellular factors on other important members of this virus family.
Collectively, studies presented in this dissertation characterized several cellular transcription factors that are induced in the trigeminal ganglia of latently infected cattle following treatment with Dex to induce reactivation from latency. These cellular transcription factors activate viral transcription and stimulate BHV-1 productive infection in cultured cells, suggesting they may facilitate the exit from latency. A subset of these cellular factors also regulates herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) productive infection and/or promoter activity. Therefore, based on the data presented in this dissertation, we hypothesize that stressful stimuli promotes the exit from latency by activating specific cellular transcription factors, which consequently activate lytic viral gene expression and production of infectious virus.
Advisor: Clinton Jones | <urn:uuid:d5d8ba50-1707-4e29-a365-6a3cbc8368ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/bioscidiss/27/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938656 | 476 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has claimed responsibility for the capture in August of a 70-year-old American citizen in Pakistan, according to SITE, a website that monitors terrorist threats.
"Just as the Americans detain all whom they suspect of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban, even remotely, we detained this man who is neck-deep in American aid to Pakistan since the '70s," al-Zawahiri said, according to SITE.
The al Qaeda leader also listed demands that needed to be met before he would release Warren Weinstein. The demands included the ending of airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. He also added that Muslim prisoners including Abu Musab al-Suri, the "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdul Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, Sayyid Nosair, and the family of Osama bin Laden must also be released.
Police have arrested three suspects in the kidnapping of Weinstein, a development expert from the United States who was snatched August 13 in his home in Lahore, Pakistan, a police official said.
The official asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said she was not aware of any arrests.
Weinstein was abducted August 13 when gunmen, posing as neighbors offering food, pistol-whipped him and his driver and tied up his guards, U.S. Embassy and Pakistani officials said.
Weinstein works for J.E. Austin Associates Inc., a U.S. consulting firm based in Arlington, Virginia, a Pakistani official said. He is a world-renowned development expert, with 25 years of experience, according to his company's website. The site says he was heading what the company described as the "Pakistan Initiative for Strategic Development and Competitiveness."
As Weinstein's security guards prepared for the meal before the Ramadan fast, three men knocked at the front gate and offered food for the meal - a traditional practice among Muslims during the Ramadan holy month, according to senior Lahore police official Tajamal Hussain.
Once the gate was opened, the three men forced their way in, while five other suspects entered the house from the back, Hussain said. The men tied up the three security guards and duct-taped their mouths, he said. They pistol-whipped the driver and forced him to take them to Weinstein's room where the men hit Weinstein in the head with a pistol, and forced him out of the house and into a waiting car, Hussain said. | <urn:uuid:cfc602b4-ec39-47a6-b70f-4cc07d91f035> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/01/al-qaeda-leader-al-zawahiri-claims-responsibility-for-kidnapping-american/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978433 | 522 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Of all the celebrations and observances throughout the year, none has a closer association with imbibing alcoholic beverages than New Year’s Eve.
Greeting the new year with champagne and other spirits for many is just as traditional as fireworks, streamers, noise makers and the big ball dropping in Times Square. But there is one aspect of celebrating the dawn of 2012 that should be sobering — the danger of driving while intoxicated.
Last year in Georgia, seven people lost their lives in traffic accidents over the New Year’s day weekend, which also saw the Georgia State Patrol work 320 wrecks that resulted in another 270 injuries. Another 174 drivers were charged with DUI over that holiday weekend.
Drivers who were out on Georgia’s roads — particularly the interstate highways — over the Christmas holidays that we just concluded can attest to the fact that troopers and other law enforcement are patrolling heavily during these year-end periods. While the overall traffic crash numbers worked by troopers were down for the four-day Christmas weekend — 280 wrecks compared to 351 in 2010 and 169 injuries compared to 280 the previous year — the death toll was up one from three to four, with three of those worked by agencies other than the GSP.
The messages seem to be sinking in with many of our state’s drivers. Georgia roads may be well on the way toward a sixth straight year of improvement. Federal and state authorities reported Tuesday that highway fatalities in Georgia dropped for the fifth consecutive year in 2010 — 1,244 compared to 1,292 in 2009, and far below the state’s record of 1,744 traffic deaths in 2005. Authorities say that Georgia is on track to see more improvement this year, with 62 fewer traffic deaths as of Monday compared to the number of deaths by Dec. 26 last year. The Georgia Office of Highway Safety reports that impaired driving fatalities dropped 11 percent in 2010 from 2009.
But law enforcement statewide will be out in force through Monday, GOHS officials say, as they implement the annual Drive Sober Or Get Pulled Over campaign that started Dec. 16. Under the campaign, any driver caught with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher will be arrested and see jail time.
“It’s going to be hard to spread holiday cheer if you’re stuck behind bars for a completely avoidable offense,” GOHS Director Harris Blackwood said. “Don’t let your holiday season end in arrest, or worse, death. It doesn’t matter if you’re buzzed, had one too many or way too many. It’s just not worth the risk.”
Blackwood’s organization has some tips for keeping the holiday celebration happy and safe:
Plan a safe way home before the festivities begin;
Before drinking, designate a sober driver and leave your keys at home;
If you’re impaired, use a taxi, call a sober friend or family member, or use public transportation;
If you happen to see a drunk driver on the road, don’t hesitate to contact your local law enforcement;
If you see know someone who is about to drive or ride impaired, take that person’s keys and help him or her make other arrangements to get home safely.
Drunk driving wrecks are 100 percent avoidable. However you choose to greet the start of 2012, make sure you greet it with family and friends, not with a cellmate or the grim reaper. The new year should be one full of promise, not regret. | <urn:uuid:14500e6e-f1ae-43cf-8e8e-a207dab6582f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albanyherald.com/news/2011/dec/27/get-2012-good-start/?sports | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951547 | 732 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Accidents can occur anywhere and workplaces are not the exception, especially if the employees are working in dangerous areas, such as automated machinery facilities. If you are hurt due to the negligence of your owner or supervisor, you are entitled to receive compensation. This includes your employers as well as your organization. You can file a case against the organization or company as well where you are working.
Laws have been formulated in order to protect the rights of personal injury victims. These lawyers are termed as personal injury lawyers. Aside from injuries caused by machines, you can also recover compensation for your injuries due to a faulty product. Moreover, if you are injured due to the attack of an animal, you can file a case against the owner of the animal and obtain compensation. This is possible if you hire a personal injury lawyer. In this article, however, we are going to cast a look at injuries occurred in the workplaces. Read on to find out more.
No matter what type of injury you have sustained, you can get help from personal injury lawyers. The injury can be either physical or psychological. These laws tend to compensate victims who sustained injures in the workplace. In case of an injury, you suffer from a great deal of loss. You cannot work. You cannot enjoy your life. You cannot perform your day-to-day works. Instead, you have to part with your savings because you have to meet your domestic expenses. So, you have a right to get compensation in order to meet all those expenses. For this purpose, it is highly recommended to get in touch with an experienced lawyer.
You might find it hard to find good lawyer because there are so many lawyers to choose from. However, one way to find a good lawyer is to study yellow pages. Another means is to visit law firm websites in order to come up with a short list of competent lawyers.
The aim of a personal injury solicitor in Sacramento, California is to get you the compensation you deserve. Your insurance company can try to pay you less by making your case weak. The insurance company will try to find loopholes in the case in order to refuse to make payment. But with an experience lawyer, you can build your case and recover compensation you really deserve. So, it makes perfect sense to get a lawyer and let him handle your case.
The fee of the lawyer you will hire will be charged on contingency basis, meaning you will pay only if you recover compensation from your defendant. When you discuss your case with the lawyer, you will be able to settle on an amount of compensation. So, fee is neither here nor there while you are thinking about hiring the services of a solicitor in California. You can easily pay out the compensation once you have recovered a big amount of compensation from the defendant. Hope the article is information enough to help you out. Thanks for reading. | <urn:uuid:22d30013-e45c-4244-a951-ba2b819d16e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sacramentoinjurylawyerblog.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976376 | 574 | 1.6875 | 2 |
The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology is in its third year with the Tablet Program for all incoming freshmen. The first two years have been a great success.
The tablet PC has all the functionality of a regular laptop. In addition, the screen pivots to become an electronic notepad on which you can write. It is wireless-equipped so that students will be able to access the internet from any of our classrooms or even outside on the quad. Students will also be able to download any of the specialized software for which the School of Mines has site licenses.
All incoming freshmen are part of the program and will be issued tablet PCs. A Tablet Program fee of $372.75/semester (Fall 2009) will be charged to the student to pay for the costs associated with the TabletPC and the Tablet Program (eligible for financial aid).
More information on the TabletPC Program. | <urn:uuid:7f94a0e0-84c9-4931-9716-0a7bf157c7ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gotomines.com/academics/technology/tabletpc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950702 | 181 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Europe’s retail banks are now entering a period of regulatory reform that looks certain to put pressure on revenues, profits, and margins, and may alter these banks’ core business models. McKinsey’s latest research is described in Day of reckoning for European retail banking. We estimate that without any mitigating action by banks or material changes in the economic and competitive environment, recent global rules, especially Basel III, and new regional and national regulations will help reduce retail banking’s average return on equity (ROE) in Europe’s four largest markets to 6 percent, from about 10—a 41 percent decline. The analysis, based on 2010 financial-year data, assumes that the cumulative regulatory impact expected over the next several years will be realized immediately.
The effects vary across the four markets, but in all cases the outlook is grim (exhibit). In France, ROE will fall to 9.5 percent, from 13.5—a 29 percent decline driven by changes affecting mortgages, debit cards, and investments. In Germany, ROE will fall to 3.5 percent, from 6.6 (a drop of 47 percent); almost all retail products will be affected and many will become unprofitable. ROE in Italy’s retail banks starts from a lower base, 5.1 percent, but will fall further, to 3.1 percent. In the United Kingdom, returns will fall to 7 percent, from 13.6 percent. The impact here, 48 percent, is high because of extensive country-specific regulation.
All these figures assume no action on the part of banks, but of course they are already adjusting to the new world. While we think it unlikely that the industry will return to preregulation ROE levels in the short to medium term, individual banks can do so if they pull all four levers available to them:
Technical mitigation. By raising the efficiency of capital and funding (through improved data quality, better risk processes, and refined risk models), banks can increase ROE by 30 to 160 basis points.
Capital- and funding-light operating models. Banks can further improve their funding efficiency and reduce risk-weighted assets by, for example, changing their product mix and characteristics and pursuing collateral more vigorously. All told, these techniques might improve ROE by 10 to 80 basis points.
Repricing. Banks will have only a severely limited ability to raise prices but may still be able to do so in some product markets.
Business model alignment. Over the longer term, retail banks that embed an ROE consciousness in their management approach, address industry-wide cost challenges, and pursue some focused M&A (including divestitures) will probably make the biggest strides toward reclaiming their former profit levels. In the coming months, ongoing research will explore the development of possible future retail-banking business models.
Download the full report. | <urn:uuid:23d88d86-9340-4194-bf7a-de0ede8533cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/financial_services/how_europes_banks_can_navigate_a_regulatory_squeeze | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930515 | 587 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Most Active Stories
Gulf Oil Spill
Mon July 26, 2010
Admiral Allen Outlines Schedule For Killing BP Well Next Month
By Eileen Fleming
New Orleans, La. – Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen says plans call for strengthening the relief well, then pumping mud down through the containment cap in a procedure called a static kill. The relief well is designed to then seal it off permanently from the bottom. Allen says preparations will continue through mid-week, with timelines set for the next steps.
"Wednesday through Saturday and Sunday, running the casing pipe to be in a position on Monday the 2nd of August to begin the static kill. And then approximately five days later to begin the bottom kill"
Allen says long-term monitoring will be needed to keep track of the tar balls that appear as the oil dissipates in the warm water of the Gulf.
For NPR News, I'm Eileen Fleming in New Orleans. | <urn:uuid:53e42451-5aed-446c-93f1-939f5ab7e8a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwno.org/post/admiral-allen-outlines-schedule-killing-bp-well-next-month | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934139 | 195 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Carotid stenting should be avoided in symptomatic patients ages 70 and older but may be as safe as its surgical counterpart in younger patients, researchers determined.
Stenting blocked carotid arteries yielded a 53% higher overall rate of any stroke or death in the first 120 days compared with endarterectomy (8.9% versus 5.8%, P=0.0006), Martin M. Brown, MD, of University College London, and colleagues reported online in The Lancet.
But their meta-analysis of patient-level data from the EVA-3S, SPACE, and ICSS trials of symptomatic carotid stenosis indicated that older patients accounted for almost all of stenting's excess risk (P=0.0053 for interaction).
Those younger than the median age of 70 in the three trials showed no difference in 120-day risk of stroke or death with stenting versus surgery (5.8% versus 5.7%) for a neutral relative risk of 1.00 (95% confidence interval 0.68 to 1.47).
However, in those 70 or older, that risk doubled with carotid stenting compared with endarterectomy (12.0% versus 5.9%, relative risk 2.04, 95% CI 1.48 to 2.82).
Age represented the only significant determinant of treatment effect, the researchers noted.
Older age might be a marker for greater burden of atherosclerosis, for less stable plaque, or more difficult anatomy, they suggested.
If so, "elderly patients might be at increased risk of dislodgement of plaque debris or thrombi during the stent procedure," they wrote in recommending against use of carotid stenting in those older patients.
The meta-analysis included all three large randomized trials comparing the two treatments for symptomatic carotid stenosis in patients at standard surgical risk. Each showed a higher periprocedural risk of stroke with carotid stenting compared with endarterectomy.
To see whether there were any patient subgroups that might have benefited, investigators from the three trials collaborated on a preplanned meta-analysis to pool their data for the 3,433 individual patients in order to boost statistical power.
The main results were by intent-to-treat, but the per-protocol analyses yielded similar findings.
The one large trial that had shown equivalent early outcomes for the two procedures -- the CREST trial -- wasn't available for inclusion. It allowed both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases and reported results for a longer follow-up period.
Looking just at the short-term results in symptomatic patients for comparable outcomes, though, the results were similar to those in the other three trials, Brown's group noted.
The 30-day risk of any stroke or death in CREST was 6% with stenting versus 3.2% with surgery overall (P=0.02).
CREST also indicated an effect of age on outcomes, although it was not reported separately for the symptomatic group alone, Brown and colleagues noted.
Carotid stenting does have a potential advantage over endarterectomy for myocardial infarction as a complication of surgery or anesthesia, they pointed out.
The meta-analysis didn't include that outcome because routine screening for silent MI wasn't included in any of the three trials nor was it a prespecified endpoint in the SPACE trial, they explained.
But pooled analysis suggested an MI risk less than 0.5% with either carotid stenting or surgery.
By comparison, CREST did include MI with routine screening regardless of symptoms and found a lower MI risk with stenting than endarterectomy (1.0% versus 2.3%), although both were higher than in the meta-analysis.
This lower MI risk appeared to be counterbalanced by a threefold higher risk of silent cerebral ischemia with stenting, though, based on an MRI substudy of the ICSS trial, Brown's group noted.
Questions do remain about the risk of recurrent stenosis after stenting, they added.
But based on the cumulative evidence, "an approach of offering stenting when technically feasible as an alternative option to endarterectomy to patients younger than 65 to 70 years with symptomatic carotid stenosis, in centers in which acceptable periprocedural outcomes have been independently verified, might seem justified, as long as patients are made aware of a possible increase in the risk of restenosis," they concluded.
They cautioned that the meta-analysis remained underpowered for some subgroups, such as women, and did not include data on surgeon and center experience with the procedures before entering the trials.
Primary source: The Lancet
Carotid Stenting Trialists' Collaboration "Short-term outcome after stenting versus endarterectomy for symptomatic carotid stenosis: a preplanned meta-analysis of individual patient data" Lancet 2010; DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61009-4. | <urn:uuid:033ea02a-95c3-4689-b2bb-5e7ccd93fe86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/PCI/22105 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949731 | 1,057 | 1.640625 | 2 |
On the verge of the decree of Canonical Erection of the Ordinariate in the UK provided for in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, it is worth looking back a year to the debates that followed shortly after it was announced. Here is the full text of an article by Fr Mark Woodruff published in The Tablet in October 2009, as he looked back across the previous 15 years to address concerns and fears about the motives and outlook of Anglicans becoming Catholics and, in view of many questions about what Anglican Patrimony might mean, the hopes and contribution they have wanted to offer, with a special emphasis on Unity and Mission.
Fourteen years ago, twelve priests were ordained by Cardinal Hume in Westminster Cathedral. They had been priests of the Church of England, invited to bring their Anglicanism with them. Outside there was a demonstration of Catholic supporters of the women’s ordination to whom the new priests were a sign of contradiction. For months the candidates had been described in the press as defectors, dissidents, traditionalists, disloyal. It is interesting that there are similar reservations about the kind of people, their motivation and baggage, who may join the ordinariates set up by Anglicanorum Coetibus. We turned out not to be Trojan horses in 1995 and I suspect there is no more cause for grievance today than then. The Apostolic Constitution is to be a fact of our Church’s life – our faith must be that all things work together for good to those who love God.
When I became a Catholic it was not to negate Anglicanism, but to be embraced by the Catholic Church. When I am asked why I became a Catholic, the only answer is, “Because I believe the Catholic faith is true”. I learned this faith in Anglican Sunday School, choirs and organ lofts, an Anglican university course, the cathedrals and my life-changing training for ordination with the remarkable religious order, the Community of the Resurrection. All this I treasure and brought with me. And in the prayer inserted into the rite of our ordination by the Holy See it was thankfully received and brought to fruition in the presbyterate of the Catholic Church. I did not become a Catholic in order to become an ex-Anglican.
Cardinal Hume instilled in us that the purposes of the Catholic Church are not served by hurting the Church of England, our vital ecumenical partner. Peter must strengthen his brethren. Somehow our ordinations had to be seen as ecumenical moments; we had to reconcile them to the Catholic Church’s promoting Christian Unity. I fear I handled the transition poorly and my journey felt to some Anglican friends like an act of schism. So I resolved to work as a Catholic for the unity of Christians.
By the same token, whatever misgivings some have about the Apostolic Constitution, we have to discern its purpose as an instrument of Christian Unity. We owe the Anglicans who may take up its provisions not to caricature them. Catholic Anglicans are of various schools and histories. Generalisations like “traditionalists”, “dissidents”, or “extreme Anglo-Catholics” may be handy, but they encourage prejudice and fail to do justice to a rich weave of traditions that soon we will be asked to welcome. There are High Anglicans of the mainstream “Catholic but Reformed” tradition. There are “middle of the road” Anglicans who can find themselves at home in a Catholic parish in
, feeling they naturally belong to the same western Catholic tradition. There are those who looked to Orthodoxy to support an Anglican non-papal Catholicism. There are Anglo-Papalists who, despite Apostolicae Curae, insisted after the 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference that true Christian Unity involves the whole Church, including Roman Catholics. Some worship only in the Roman rite, a tradition Roman Catholics find difficult to comprehend but which we could credit as the exchange of spiritual gifts commended in Unitatis Redintegratio. There are also “Prayer Book Catholics”, whose Catholicism is expressed in the historic and contemporary Anglican formularies. France
From these backgrounds will come not theological or ritualist reactionaries, but fellow Christians who share the same faith as ours. Last year, the eminent Anglican ecumenist Mary Tanner observed that closing the period of reception on women’s ordination before it was resolved by the Church as a whole in the future meant that those who could not accept it no longer enjoyed an assured place within the Church of England. And Cardinal Kasper at the 2008 Lambeth Conference informed the Anglican bishops that “the ordination of women to the episcopate effectively and definitively blocks a possible recognition of Anglican Orders”. It is not surprising that those whose Anglican Christianity aspired for consummation in visible unity with the Roman Catholic Church have sought the corporate reunion they have prayed for over a century – or that Pope Benedict has responded - especially now that the restoration of complete communion envisaged by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey has “receded” as a “realistic possibility”.
What patrimony will they bring? There are Anglican traditions of spirituality, preaching, mission and theology in which the Anglican and
both recognise the same faith. There is an Anglican approach to music and liturgy borne of 460 years using the vernacular that makes even their celebration of the Roman rite distinctive. There is the liturgy derived from the Book of Common Prayer that has been the mark of the Pastoral Provision for former Anglicans in the Catholic Churches . I can still recite the Prayer Book services from memory. Perhaps the most distinctive form of Anglican patrimony is its hymnography. Often misunderstood by Catholic liturgists as out of place, this is a comprehensive body of doxological theology from the Greek, Latin, Reformation, Independent and Wesley traditions, as well as the Victorian and postwar “hymn explosions”. Its careful arrangement at services is a subtle science. For Anglicans it has been the most important means of teaching doctrine and fostering spirituality. As a gift to the wider Catholic Church it should not be underestimated. United States
Accommodating the “objective reality” of Anglican liturgical life is a signal that there is nothing distinctive of the Anglican tradition that cannot be encompassed in the contemporary Catholic Church. Perhaps the most hopeful development in ecumenical dialogue in recent times has been receptive ecumenism, which asks each tradition what with integrity it can receive from another to make its own as a step to unity. Through Anglicanorum Coetibus is not the Catholic Church receiving the gifts of another tradition? In the ecumenical long term, does this internal awareness of Anglican identity not provide Catholics with a greater disposition towards unity between them and all Anglicans?
Will many come? It will take courage, time and discernment. Some will discover that they remain convinced Anglicans. Others will be uncertain of how they will be understood. In the 1990s some people’s long sacramental life as Anglicans was disregarded; they were put in RCIA as though they were candidates for baptism or new to the notion of Catholicism. One priest told me they had to have a desert experience. Another said, “This is for the Forty Martyrs.” Hurt and repelled, some walked away. We do not thus treat Catholics coming from the other side of the world while they get acclimatised to UK Catholicism. There would be no question of withholding communion; nor should we set back Catholic Anglicans who come to share our faith. But we have come a long way. If we say that the Universal Church of Christ perfectly subsists in our Catholic Church, there should be no limit to our capacity to embrace diversity in our unity.
It is painfully obvious, however, that corporate reunion for some Anglicans leaves most out of the equation. No one joining the ordinariates can turn their backs and be glad of this. Becoming Catholics they make the teaching on the Church in Lumen Gentium and its inevitable orientation towards visible unity their own. Lest they be signs of contradiction to this, it must become their special duty to redouble the charity that binds all those with an Anglican patrimony and energetically assist the Catholic bishops in their concerted efforts with the Anglican Communion on mission to an ever more secularised society, that the world may believe. | <urn:uuid:21c7919a-8fed-4be5-9c82-866486f6cc91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecatholicleague.blogspot.jp/2011/01/coming-into-communion.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966007 | 1,764 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Iddir's Beyond Funeral
Iddirs, traditional burial associations, are the most dominant form of community based organisation in Ethiopia, and an important part of the social fabric in the communities where we work. ACORD believes that development interventions in Ethiopia are most successful and sustainable when Iddirs are engaged as partners. Social movements must have at their core an issue which is of common interest to the community. In Ethiopia, a highly religious society, this is burial.
Realising the potential role that they can play in development ACORD has been working with Iddir's associations in Dire Dawa, Shashamene and Addis Ababa since the mid 1990's. These strengthened community based organisations have demonstrated a growing interest in engaging in diverse development activities, going beyond their traditional funeral role.
Case Study: Iddirs in Development
Peace, Love and Pottery Association, Addis Ababa.
Photo: ACORD / Nicola Bevan
ACORD has been working with nearly a thousand Iddirs covering 163,000 households in Dire Dawa, Addis Ababa and Shashamene since 1995. ACORD provides trainings to Iddirs on leadership, governance, bookkeeping and financial transparency, project management and advocacy. The emerging ambition of Iddirs has signalled the need for umbrella organisations many of which have formed with support from ACORD and are engaging in activities from micro-credit operations to HIV/AIDS awareness and support.
Tesfa Social and Development Association (TSDA) was established in Addis Ababa in September 2000. Initially this association had just 3 members set up to help members who had fallen behind with their social contributions. Today, the association has grown to 83 members and is providing much needed services in the community including, education, health care & support, nutritional support, home and community based care for bedridden people living with HIV and AIDS and the elderly. The savings and credit service has 1.5 million Birr loan portfolio (equivalent to £76,553) and provides loan and saving services to elderly people, women and unemployed youth who are able and determined to work and improve their lives.
ACORD in Shashamene supported the establishment of the first microfinance institution that is now owned and managed solely by its members (approximately 65 Iddirs). The SEYA MFI microfinance institution in Shashemene, started in 2001 and today has 4 branches, 4000 active clients and an outstanding loan portfolio of 11 million, equivalent to £395,000.
Similar successes have been witnessed by the Iddirs' cooperative Selamina Fikir Yeshekla Sira Association or Peace, Love, and Pottery Association in Gulele sub city, Addis Ababa. The association was established in January 2004 and currently has 46 members with a particular interest in pottery. In traditional Ethiopian society people working in such areas were highly discriminated against. Until recently these groups were not allowed to marry into other societal groups.
Since 2005 ACORD has helped the group to organise themselves into a producer's co-operative and obtain a license and premises from the cooperative promotion office. In addition to this ACORD has organized training and workshops for the group in the areas of principles of cooperatives, entrepreneurship, leadership and management, record keeping, gender & HIV/AIDS.
After the formal establishment of the cooperative, the group obtained a premises from the sub city with a monthly rent of 240 Birr. To assist the efforts of the association and improve the livelihoods of the members, ACORD has supported them with Birr 40,000 in a form of grant to establish a credit scheme. According to the group members, the different trainings and the financial support from ACORD has helped them to increase production and subsequently their income. They have also been able to have constant access to the required raw materials ensuring that there are no gaps in production.
Currently all of the members have bought moulding equipment. The cost of each machine is 700 Birr. The group members proved that the equipment saves labour and time and improves the shape and the texture of the product.
The women are proud and confident in their work.
Photo: ACORD / Kristin Seljeflot
Bizualem is 24 years old and married. She dropped out of school and joined the pottery business when she was only 10. She acquired the skill from her neighbours hiding herself from her parents. Bizualem was the first person in the group to use the moulding equipment. She was paying 20.00 birr per month for the rent of the machine. Consequently she was able to attract customers and earn 600 birr per month. Bizualem now has bought the machine for herself taking 1000 birr loan from the credit scheme. Her monthly income has increased from 600 to 1,200.00 (Equivalent to £45 a month). Bizualem is continuously improving the quality and design of her products. More importantly she handles her customers properly. Therefore Bizualem is considered as a role model in the association.
Bizualem and the rest of the association members want to produce quality products and supply the local and foreign markets. However to fully realize their vision they believe that they have to further improve their skills through training and procure equipment such as a kiln and mixer.
In 2011, members of the association are undergoing an advanced training (provided by ACORD) and facilitated by the Vision on Ethiopia Training Centre. Two groups will be trained over eight weeks to produce high quality products for the local and international market. | <urn:uuid:147ba056-25d7-4557-97ee-6fe701207cc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.acordinternational.org/acord/en/our-work/a/livelihoods/urban-livelihood-development/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972208 | 1,137 | 1.632813 | 2 |
CINCINNATI - Duke Energy customers had another opportunity to voice their opinions on a proposed rate increase Wednesday evening at a public meeting held at Union Township Civic Center Hall.
If approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, the rate hike would increase customers’ gas bills by $10.25 (6 percent) per month and electric bills by $6.50 (5 percent) per month. Duke wants to use some of the money to clean up old gas plant sites.
"What we've asked for is for the commission to rule on monies that we've already spent on improving our infrastructure in the state of Ohio to get our energy out to our customers. It's what we call a distribution rate case, one that we haven't had in the state of Ohio since 2007," said Duke Energy spokesperson Sally Thelen before the meeting.
Duke says the current rate hike proposal does not include money for the streetcar. The city and Duke are debating in court for who pays for moving utility lines. Duke has asked PUCO for permission to charge Cincinnati for moving the lines.
One Duke Energy customer is concerned the rate increase would set a precedent for future issues.
"We have a fear that this would encourage other cities and municipalities to the extent that they have projects and have high costs of relocating facilities, and if this goes through, it will probably encourage other cities and municipalities to do the same thing, and that is to hide some of the costs by getting the utility company to pass it on to the electricity users rather than taxpayers to directly fund it," said Eastern Hills Community Tea Party member Jay Groenke.
You can share your opinion with the PUCO at one of the two remaining public hearings:
Monday, Feb. 25 - 6:30 p.m.
City Building, City Council Chambers
1 Donham Plaza, Middletown, 45042
Thursday, Feb. 28 - 12:30 p.m.
Cincinnati City Hall, Council Chambers
801 Plum Street, Cincinnati, 45202
Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:03b23fe2-19d5-4049-9e83-0d33dd075a72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcpo.com/dpp/news/local_news/second-public-hearing-on-proposed-duke-rate-hike-wednesday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953818 | 442 | 1.546875 | 2 |
In this economy, when money is so tight, it's more important than ever to use your purchasing power wisely and support companies that embrace your own philosophies. At StyleSubstanceSoul.com, we feel strongly about shopping with a conscience, and we have scoured the web for companies that are eco-friendly and socially-conscious, or that re-use, recycle or give back in some way. Here are some great independent shops featuring unique, handmade and one-of-a-kind gifts, so you can look good, feel good and do good:
- Beads for Learning bracelets from The Leakey Collection (yes, that Leakey) make a perfect teacher gift or stocking stuffer. Maasai artistans use remnants of native Zulugrass to design vivid, one-of-a-kind strands which can be wrapped around the wrist three or four times, creating a rainbow of hope. 100 percent of profits go toward paying teachers' salaries in rural Kenya.
- Purchase with Purpose at iSanctuary, where one-of-a-kind jewelry is made by survivors of human trafficking -- who also benefit from sales. Each piece is unique -- from dramatic chandelier earrings to stunning rings and necklaces inspired by bespoke designer Tamsin Francesca.
- Candles are an important part of the holidays, and glassybaby really illuminates their impact. Their gorgeous pieces, handmade in a Seattle glassblowing studio, can be used as cups and vases but show off their true beauty most clearly when holding candles. Lee Rhodes founded glassybaby after discovering the healing power of candlelight during her own battle with cancer. Determined to spread that light of hope, she has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to helping cancer patients through sales of glassybaby.
- Bracelets from Formerly Flip Flops are, well, just that! UniquEco, an award-winning African company, transforms dirty old flip flops into conversation-starting bracelets, keeping them from clogging up landfills while creating a sustainable economy in a remote village in Nairobi. Buy an armful of bracelets for yourself, your daughters, your mom, your friends, teachers, hostesses, everyone you know!
- Why give one pair of earrings as a gift when you can give hundreds? With the Bling Bling Bling set from Switch Gear, your lucky friend/sister/daughter/mom can combine hoops and drops with her choice of glass, sterling, brass, silver pewter, vintage brass and steel flowers to create her own jewelry box-ful of designer pieces. And we do mean designer pieces. Creator Lisa Monahan's work has been exhibited in prestigious galleries and shops, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. She has also made an art out of charitable giving, donating a portion of all proceeds to help support survivors of domestic violence.
- If the medium is the message, we'll take Yali's "Carry On" any day. This great-looking tote, designed by 20-year-old cancer survivor Yali Derman, is intended to symbolize "how patients carry on even in the face of medical baggage" -- and it does so with aplomb. The silk screen peacock features 18 vibrant colors and is a powerful representation of renewal and new beginnings. Proceeds benefit K.I.D.S.S. for Kids Affiliated Organization of Children's Memorial Hospital of Chicago.
- Deeply moved by an awareness of the global fight against HIV/AIDS, visual artist Julie Weaverling has created "The Inspire" series of encaustic paintings as a way to contribute to the cause. Positive messages like Imagine, Love, Peace, Joy, Hope, and Dream are carved into layers of encaustic and accompanied by a Braille translation to "feel" the inspiration.50 from every painting goes directly to KeepAChildAlive.org.
- There's nothing more special than giving a gift from your travels, and Ten Thousand Villages offers you an opportunity to shop in a global bazaar without ever leaving your couch. A mecca for handcrafted products and the artisans who create them, it is one of the oldest and largest fair trade organizations, and has won numerous awards for its commitment to social and environmental responsibility.
- 'Tis the season for chapped lips and cheeks, so throw a tub of CHAPSTUFF by Mayron's Goods into every stocking, every Hanukkah gift and into your own purse. Actress Melanie Mayron and her pharmaceutical father have created a concoction of organic and essential oils which protects and heals dry skin caused by cold, wind, desert and daily life. A portion of sales goes to Women's Health Research in honor of Melanie's mom, who is a breast cancer survivor.
- Piece by Piece offers workshops in underserved neighborhoods in Los Angeles, where professional artists teach residents-in-need to handcraft beautiful picture frames, vases, mirrors and other objets d'art from mosaics. Using mostly recycled materials including glass, broken tile and china, the new artists receive a significant portion of the proceeds from the sales of their work, empowering them and helping them to support themselves.
- You might not be caught dead wearing Christmas sweaters but Green 3 has reclaimed them, cut them up, and mixed and matched them to create a Christmas sweater skirt to die for! All Green 3 items made from reclaimed materials are always first quality and completely laundered prior to cutting and sewing.
- We love shopping at Uncommon Goods because they always have an eclectic selection of recycled, handmade and environmentally-friendly items that land us at the top of the Best Gift Givers list -- plus they give back to the charity of our choice. Personally, we'd like one of everything in their Stocking Stuffers section, but the stand-out hostess gift is the Corkcicle, which is so cool, it gives us the chills!
- The weather outside may be frightful but your décor can still be beach house-delightful with coastal-themed home decor from Wabisabi Green. Eco-friendly linens, made from recycled fabrics, can turn a table into a work of art, with napkins and placemats in cheery, sophisticated motifs featuring sassy seahorses, rock shrimp and blooming botanicals.
- Most women don't travel light. We need a bag that can hold everything from a cell phone to a laptop and a water bottle -- with the occasional umbrella and shoes thrown in. The Shusokumb (pronounced shu-sock'-em for Shoes, Socks, Umbrella) is a compartmentalized tote with lots of pockets, and its sleek, vertical design makes it easy for commuting or traveling.2 from each sale goes to Zero: The Project to End Prostrate Cancer.
- When it comes to beautiful shapes and colors, it's hard to beat Mother Nature - or Raindrops, an earthy collection of finely-crafted jewelry and ceramics inspired by the shapes, materials and hues found all around us. Designer Elena Miller sculpts each piece by hand for a distinctive and timeless sense of style. Originally from Russia, Elena donates part of her online sales to The Harbor, an organization that educates teenage orphans in St. Petersburg.
- Through Bubola Love, Micaela Passeri empowers women to become confident, feel beautiful and accept themselves. Her "Love You Revolution" movement challenges every woman to find love within, a powerful philosophy which the "I Love Who I Am" shirt represents beautifully. Micaela also creates positive t-shirts for children, and donates to Agape International Spiritual Center's Youth Programs.
- Show someone you believe in them with the "Believe" Heart Necklace from heart-ist Debbie Marie Arambula. The solid sterling silver "Believe" pendant was inspired by her "Believe" Heart Art painting which was unveiled in March at Race for the Cure at Dodger Stadium. A portion of proceeds will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
- Help your kids - or co-workers - stop trashing their lunch with Green To Go's great-looking reusable sandwich and snack bags which keep plastic baggies out of landfills and oceans. Green To Go features a wide assortment of earth-friendly lunchware, including bamboo utensil sets, stainless steel food containers and trashless lunch box kits. These timely gifts will be used over and over and over again.
- Ssubi beads and bags are handmade by patients of the Bishop Asili Health Center in Uganda. Using colorful recycled paper and natural fabrics, these artisans are working hard to transform their lives. Ssubi fills in the gaps by supporting projects that are less likely to be funded by large international organizations. Proceeds from the sale of beads and bags are reinvested in Ssubi's ongoing programs.
- A treble clef intertwined around a cross, the CrossClef will resonate with a Christian music lover, choir member or worship director. The design, which celebrates the connection between music and God, was created to honor the late Chuck Risser, and a portion of proceeds are donated to programs that help the needy and/or support music education.
- Clairvoyant Beauty has developed a cult-like following since actress/activist Lexie Masterson founded the luxury line of natural, hand-crafted anti-aging products -- one that's likely to grow dramatically with the launch of Clairvoyant, a crisp floral-citrus fragrance designed for layering. Lexie's mission is to nurture inner beauty through products made with the finest natural and organic ingredients while improving the world through environmentally safe practices and social responsibility.
Follow Lois Alter Mark on Twitter: | <urn:uuid:75747768-a50d-4645-92ca-cb9be9f2b555> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lois-alter-mark/shop-with-a-conscience-th_b_1149757.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939102 | 2,026 | 1.796875 | 2 |
By Amy Sung
About Elizabeth Stephenson: Elizabeth Stephenson is Principal in McKinsey & Company’s Strategy Practice. She also co-founded and helps lead McKinsey’s Global Forces service-line, a center focused on emerging future trends. Before that, Elizabeth was the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Real Age: Are you as Young as You Can Be? She subsequently helped found online health publisher, RealAge.com
Most businesses are pretty pessimistic, worried about what’s going to happened next, where is the economy going, but many in the audience at today’s lunch keynote were fairly optimistic. So, too, is Elizabeth Stephenson, who spoke about the five crucibles of innovation that will shape the coming decade.
“You can predict general macroeconomic trends relatively well, and the one fact we can predict with accuracy, it’s actually overwhelmingly positive,” she said. “The next decade will see more people exit poverty than ever. Global real per capita income will be 40% higher than 2020 than in 200 emerging markets will see real per capita income double.
“Innovation and imagination is going to be unleashed – there will be enormous amounts of change,” Stephenson adds, emphasizing how far we’ve come since 20 years ago, when the World Wide Web was an academic white paper, and how far we have yet to go to adapt to and improve the economy. “More than 50% of chief executives believe that in the next 10 years, their business model will undergo fundamental transformation; this decade really is the decade of innovation.”
Five crucibles of innovation will drive this change, Stephenson said, moving us from an economy by developed world markets and the rise of the emerging markets. These five crucibles are the great re-balancing, the productivity imperative, the market state, pricing the planet and the global grid.
“There are negative scenarios across all, but also a lot of hope,” she said. “Does the economy stand still, do we accept things to be as they always have been, or do we innovate?”
For details on Stephenson’s five crucibles of innovation, check out her Power Point presentation.
By Amy Sung | <urn:uuid:d86317f9-0377-48c1-90a3-533cff06fe65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.globalspaandwellnesssummit.org/tag/elizabeth-stephenson/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9447 | 468 | 1.695313 | 2 |
It was the second national-security revelation to come to light in the two days after President Barack Obama won re-election. On Wednesday, the Pentagon acknowledged that Iranian fighter planes had fired on an unmanned reconnaissance drone five days before the election....Let's reorganize those facts:
Mr. Petraeus was scheduled to testify before the Senate intelligence committee next week. Michael Morell, who was named acting director of the CIA after Mr. Petraeus's resignation, will appear instead....
Administration officials said the White House was briefed on the affair Wednesday by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Mr. Obama was informed Thursday by his staff and met with Mr. Petraeus that day. Mr. Petraeus then offered to resign. The announcement came Friday afternoon....
The computer investigation began late this spring, according to a person familiar with the investigation. Mr. Petraeus wasn't interviewed by the FBI until recently....
He presided over a moderation of the CIA's controversial drone program to take into greater account diplomatic sensitivities, a shift that sometimes put him at odds with the head of the agency's Counterterrorism Center.
1. Drones. Petraeus had moderated the drone program to make it more diplomacy-sensitive, the head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center was not happy with that, and Iran fired on a drone 5 days before the election.
2. Benghazi. Petraeus was about to represent the CIA in testimony before Congress and now he will not.
3. The gmail account. This problem dates back to last spring, but Petraeus was only interviewed about it recently, the White House was briefed on Wednesday and Petraeus was confronted and pushed/fell into resignation in the next 2 days.
Given the timing of these 3 sets of facts, it's hard to believe Petraeus left because of the affair or the problem with his gmail. It seems much more likely to have to do with the drones or Benghazi.
By the way, who is the head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center?
Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington — the principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign and the leader of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In many ways, he has also been the driving force of the Obama administration’s embrace of targeted killing as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism efforts.
Colleagues describe Roger as a collection of contradictions. A chain-smoker who spends countless hours on a treadmill. Notoriously surly yet able to win over enough support from subordinates and bosses to hold on to his job. He presides over a campaign that has killed thousands of Islamist militants and angered millions of Muslims, but he is himself a convert to Islam.
His defenders don’t even try to make him sound likable. Instead, they emphasize his operational talents, encyclopedic understanding of the enemy and tireless work ethic.
“Irascible is the nicest way I would describe him,” said a former high-ranking CIA official who supervised the counterterrorism chief. “But his range of experience and relationships have made him about as close to indispensable as you could think.”
Critics are less equivocal. “He’s sandpaper” and “not at all a team player,” said a former senior U.S. military official who worked closely with the CIA. Like others, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the director of CTC — as the center is known — remains undercover. | <urn:uuid:d46f6c41-176b-4fe3-b66a-e3667834f60c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://althouse.blogspot.com/2012/11/petraeus-fell-because-of-affair-drone.html?showComment=1352558279189 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976865 | 720 | 1.523438 | 2 |
February 14, 2013
The British Poultry Council has handed out 15 scholarships to scholars at Harper Adams University.
The recipients received their awards during the university’s annual Development Trust Scholarship Presentation, which has held yesterday in the Queen Mother Hall on campus.
During the day, a total of 99 awards were presented to students totalling £225,000.
Before the official presentation, all recipients of British Poultry Council scholarships, who will receive two payments of £3,500 over two academic years, met with their sponsors at a lunchtime reception in the university’s Regional Food Academy.
The British Poultry Council is aiming to encourage more young adults into the Poultry sector and as such offered the scholarships to second year degree students and first year FdSc students studying agriculture and food production. A condition of the scholarship is that the recipient must undertake their placement year with the awarding firm.
John Reed, Chairman of the British Poultry Council said:
“I’m delighted to be here today with our young scholars. The British poultry industry is committed to investing in people; we want to recruit and train the new generation of poultry people and I’m confident many scholars will develop a successful career in poultry. Our on-going collaboration with Harper Adams University will help foster skills and talents and ensure a bright future for the industry.”
One of the recipients was Samantha Glew, from Nottingham, who is studying BSc/BSc Honours Bioveterinary Science and was awarded a British Poultry Council Scholarship from Aviagen. The 20-year-old said:
“I would to thank Aviagen Ltd for the opportunity that I have been given to work with them for my placement year. I am extremely excited about the potential to work abroad, explore the company and expand my knowledge and experience to an extent I hadn’t imagined I would be doing so during placement.”
Matthew Morrow, from Aughnacloy, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, is studying an FdSc in Agriculture and was awarded a British Poultry Scholarship by Bernard Matthews Foods. The 18-year-old said:
“I am delighted to gain a scholarship with Bernard Matthews. This has allowed me the opportunity to gain experience in a modern and progressive company in an industry that is constantly developing. The scholarship funds have reduced financial stress and will allow me to concentrate more on my course and develop the skills for a successful career in the Poultry industry.”
British Poultry Council Scholarships were presented as follows:
Samantha Glew – BSc/BSc Honours Bioveterinary Science
Hannah Battersby – BSc/BSc Honours Bioveterinary Science
Bernard Matthews Foods
Henry Goodman – BSc/BSc Honours Agriculture
Matthew Morrow – FdSc Agriculture
Cargill Meats Europe
Kenna Murdoch – BSc/BSc Honours Agriculture with Marketing
Charlotte Morris – BSc/BSc Honours Agri-food Marketing with Business Studies
Edward Bufton – BSc/BSc Honours Agriculture with Farm Business Management
Christian White – FdSc Agriculture
Michelle Evans – BSc/BSc Honours Food Nutrition and Well-being
Eleanor Kane – BSc/BSc Honours Agriculture with Animal Science
Stephanie Charlton – BSc/BSc Honours Agriculture with Animal Science
Alys Davies – BSc/BSc Honours Food Nutrition and Well-being
Sarah Hardman – BSc/BSc Honours Agriculture
Amy Sharpe – BSc/BSc Honours Agriculture
P D Hook
Thomas Wareham – FdSc Agriculture (Extended) | <urn:uuid:30fd14f0-760c-4a59-aa28-de8d41947678> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britishpoultry.org.uk/?page_id=1477 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940179 | 768 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Valerie Plame Wilson suddenly went from being a CIA covert operations officer to a household name in the summer of 2003, when the Bush administration outed her to the press in retribution for her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, dismantling its shaky claims about Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions. After unwillingly becoming a public figure, Plame laid low for a couple of years. But now she's lent her expertise as an expert on nuclear proliferation to Countdown to Zero, the new documentary from the makers of An Inconvenient Truth that aims to jumpstart a post-Cold War movement to ban the bomb. (See David Corn's recent article on the making of the film.) The film will leave you wondering why one of the world's 23,000 nuclear bombs hasn't already gone off—and how much longer it is until one does. (One expert explains that smuggling nuclear material into the U.S. is as simple as hiding it in a box of kitty litter.) Plame Wilson talked to Mother Jones about appearing in the film, how we can tackle a problem so big, and the upcoming movie about her, in which Naomi Watts plays the reluctant celebrity spy.
Mother Jones: At the CIA, you specialized in nuclear counterproliferation; Countdown to Zero is largely about how easy it would be to buy, steal, or build a nuclear weapon. Did you learn anything new from the film?
Valerie Plame Wilson: I've seen it several times now, and I was surprised at points. They talk about the flight over the Carolinas in the early '60s where a plane crashed with a nuclear weapon on board. I didn't know about that. I was not familiar with that incident in NORAD where the $1computer chip made everyone think it was the real thing instead of a training exercise. As the film talks about, there's always the potential for accident, miscalculation, or madness. Along with the terrorist threat, those are, unfortunately, very real possibilities.
MJ: The movie identifies the three main nuclear threats as madness, accident, and miscalculation. Which do you think is the greatest?
VPW: I would not want to assign numbers to any one of them. Ask BP executives how often low-probability events happen. I think really the only rational, sane way of proceeding is to set as your objective zero [nuclear weapons] and move toward that.
MJ: One of the things that really struck me is the wide range of people interviewed—you've got liberals like President Jimmy Carter, you've got conservatives like former Secretary of State James Baker. Is nuclear proliferation really a non-partisan issue?
VPW: I think it is; it certainly should be. I think Lucy Walker, the director, went to great lengths to demonstrate that. As you noted, you have people of all political stripes who speak in the film. The well-known liberal, Ronald Reagan, started this. And I think that's a really poignant scene with Gorbachev's interview, speaking about his 1986 meeting in Reykjavik with Reagan. These were two men who genuinely wanted to see a world free of nuclear weapons,and they genuinely wanted to achieve it. Gorbachev speaks with tears in his eyes with great sadness about what they weren't able to accomplish. These two men really wanted to do that.
MJ: You've said that you don't think it's possible for the United State to keep nuclear weapons and not expect other countries to also seek them. Why is that? And why does mutually assured destruction no longer apply?
VPW: Because the Cold War has ended. It's very simple. We are no longer living in a bipolar world. The chances that we will go to war with Russia are pretty much ended. Mutually Assured Destruction was a doctrine that worked very well for decades as a deterrent, but the world has fundamentally changed. These emergent terrorist threats and the spread of nuclear technology and materials have made it much more likely that terrorists will get their hands on a nuclear weapon and that just changes the whole calculus. I love the quote at the end of the movie by Rev. Richard Cizik: "If you've never changed your mind about anything, then pinch yourself, you might be dead." The world has changed and we need to start talking about this.
MJ: With the movie, were you worried about the problem seeming too big, too inevitable—about leaving people feeling less empowered?
VPW: The point was not to scare people into inaction. It is one of the pretty overwhelming and intimidating subjects that you kind of want to dive under the covers and not think about. But I think that the film does leave you with a sense that there is a way ahead. None of us involved in the film would have done it if we didn't think that we couldn't actually make a difference. I truly believe that we are such a great country and our greatness comes from having held out dreams to the rest of the world and say, here's where we're going to go. Whether it's the Marshall Plan or applying civil rights to all our citizens, or getting the first man on the moon. Here's our challenge, which is truly existential in nature, for this century. Here's what we're going to do. We are ultimately going to head to zero. It's inspiring and it's obviously a challenge.
There's a big social action campaign that has been constructed around the film and your readers can go to GlobalZero.org or TakePart.com. So when they come out in the sunlight after seeing the movie and are blinking and going, Geez, they can actually do something. You can go to these sites, you can petition your senator to ratify the START treaty, you can sign the Global Zero Declaration.
MJ: What works better for tracking down nuclear weapons in places like Iran, people on the ground or technology, like satellites for example?
VPW: You have to use everything at your disposal. There's all manner of collecting intelligence. One is not necessarily better than the other, but having been an operations officer I think human intelligence is the only one that will actually tell you intent. You cannot get that from other sources. But you need to use everything. Not for a minute is anybody suggesting that Iran, or North Korea for that matter, will fall in line because we're leading by example. We're not proposing to do this unilaterally, and neither do we believe that it should be a double standard, that only certain countries should have nuclear weapons.
MJ: You mention "judging intent." You're convinced that Al Qaeda and Bin Laden would set off a nuclear bomb in the U.S. if they could.
VPW: Well, I think there's no question. We know prior to 9/11 that Bin Laden and his deputy Al-Zawahiri were actively seeking nuclear weapons. We know they want the technology, we know they want the material, we know they have the will. As the film points out, you can buy a bomb, steal a bomb, or build a bomb. They're actively seeking to most likely to do the first two.
MJ: One thing that I found particularly chilling in the film was the statement from one commentator, who said, essentially, that a single blast in the United States would be the end of civil liberties, because everyone would want the government to step in and do everything they could to prevent another bomb going off. Does that ring true to you?
VPW: I think a nuclear detonation is society-altering in ways that other attacks, even as horrific as 9/11, are not. This isn't because we have power-hungry political leaders, but I think it might be demanded by the people themselves out of fear. I agree with you, that it was one of the most chilling statements to me. It was General Tommy Franks who talked about a nuclear detonation being the end of civilian government as we know it. I think he spoke about it in Cigar Aficionado, believe it or not.
MJ: This movie puts a lot of faith in the ability of public opinion to enact changes within government. You've worked in one of those big government organizations. From your experience there, how much impact does the public really have?
VPW: There is a scene in the film where President Kennedy was talking to rapturous crowds about nuclear defense and they're going crazy [in support of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty]. And he quipped, "If I'd known this was so popular I would have done it a long time ago.” While it's our highest political leaders who ultimately put their signatures on these things, it is driven by the people. If we've learned anything from the last eight years with the debacle in Iraq, it's that we must hold our government to account for their words and deeds. You've seen the whole Washington Post series on the intelligence community and that it's bloated—that's all true, I'm sorry to say, and all very disturbing. But I don't lose faith in the American people.
MJ: You used to be a covert CIA officer, and now there are movies being made about you, songs being written, you're being interviewed all the time. Which is more glamorous, the life of a spy of or the life of a media star?
VPW: I would much prefer to be overseas in a covert capacity working on these issues, but that is hypothetical. That is no longer open to me. So if I can use my voice in this manner, and talk about something that I care about, then I feel fortunate. It's easier than having been through the mill that my husband and I went through. We have remade our lives outside Washington. We're now in Santa Fe and we've rebuilt them, personally and professionally. It's certainly nothing that I anticipated.
MJ: Some of our readers want to know what they can expect from Fair Game, the movie adaptation of your story?
VPW: Naomi Watts and Sean Penn give a really powerful performance—no surprise there. I think it's an accurate portrayal of what we went through. It tells the story of speaking truth to power and the consequences thereof. | <urn:uuid:a145a080-8075-4a40-a67a-8c3b107f9177> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2010/07/valerie-plame-wilson-nuclear-nukes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979095 | 2,094 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Five years ago, Pervez Musharraf, then the President of Pakistan, demanded the resignation of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, a major thorn in Musharraf’s side.
Perhaps Musharraf thought he could get away with the power play, since ordinary citizens generally do not concern themselves much with the question of who staffs the judiciary. But lawyers care. And Musharraf’s move spawned an unprecedented phenomenon: a mass uprising with the legal sector, featuring rallies and demonstrations across the country, tens-of-thousands strong, led by staid-seeming men in black suits and white shirts. The hero of that uprising, a constitutional lawyer named Aitzaz Ahsan, might even be seen as a Pakistani stepfather of events that arose a few years later in North Africa. In a 2008 New York Times article, James Traub called Ahsan’s campaign “perhaps the most consequential outpouring of liberal, democratic energy in the Islamic world in recent years.”
“When, eight weeks after the drama, Ahsan drove Chaudhry from Islamabad to Lahore, tens of thousands of people lined the streets,” Traub writes “The 150-mile trip took 26 hours, and every minute was covered live on television … For the next three months, he and Chaudhry crisscrossed the country by car, with Ahsan addressing the delirious crowds.”
I recite all this to remind the editors at the Globe & Mail what an actual “legal uprising” looks like. Given the lead headline on the front page of today’s printed Globe (“Minister faces legal uprising over Conrad Black visa: More join challenge to Jason Kenney on his possible role in residency permit for then-jailed businessman”), I’d say they need some education on the matter. The Globe‘s breathless language summons to mind images of revolutionarily-minded Canadian lawyers barricading themselves in the nation’s courthouses, and declaring themselves sovereign stewards of the breakaway Free People’s Republic of Law School Graduates. If a letter from a few cranky activists constitutes an “uprising,” then I guess the letters page of the National Post is home to a dozen uprisings every month.
The most torqued words here are “possible role” — since the article cites no evidence of any role whatsoever. Based on the evidentiary record, the article might as well question Kenney’s “possible role” in the discovery of the Higgs Boson. The entire basis of the article is a single “open letter” signed by a bunch of immigration lawyers who airily suspect Kenney’s involvement in the Black case.
As I’ve written in the past, there is nothing particularly suspicious about Black’s entry into Canada earlier this year. That notorious criminal Lindsay Lohan also was admitted into Canada on a temporary-residency permit recently. Was there also a “legal uprising” over that? (I’m scanning the back issues of the Globe to see if they covered it. But oddly, I can’t find anything.)
It’s no surprise why the immigration bar is mad at Kenney. When the Liberals were in power, our immigration and refugee policies, shot through with Bleak House-style bureaucracy and endless appeals, were basically make-work projects for the folks in black robes. Any effort to trim this mess back was met with howls of lawyerly outrage, which Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin duly heeded in the name of ethno-politics. Jason Kenney has begun the long and difficult task of reforming all this. And the legal establishment isn’t happy about it.
If lawyers want to write open letters, let them do so to their collective hearts’ content. But don’t call it an “uprising.” When you abuse the truth, not to mention the English language, all you do is give Conrad Black a big fat target for his next column.
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Do you have an opinion to share with other readers? Then send us a letter. | <urn:uuid:1bb61535-bff5-4a85-ae43-29a754a704a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/02/jonathan-kay-the-immigration-bars-cranky-globe-enabled-campaign-against-conrad-black/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941792 | 890 | 1.625 | 2 |
CHARLES CITY, Iowa — First Wesleyan Church is about as far away as you can imagine from the brightly-lit debate halls and smart-alecky pundits who have bedeviled Gov. Rick Perry of Texas on his long slide from Republican presidential frontrunner.
Here, though, on this Sunday morning, Mr. Perry seemed to find his most comfortable place, amid folks who clap approvingly when someone praises a diminution of the church-state separation, and who cites Old Testament scripture to back up his argument.
As the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses near, Mr. Perry has grown more focused on his “outsider,” anti-Washington, and some critics say, anti-gay message. And a growing part of his stump speech, one tailored to the evangelicals who make up a large part of the rural population he is canvassing during a nearly nonstop three week bus tour on the back roads of Iowa, emphasizes his argument that faith should be more a part of public life and government.
“In the world today we often get told, particularly people of faith, that you leave your faith at the door, or on the steps of the public arena, don’t bring your faith into school, don’t bring your faith into the council meeting, don’t bring your faith into the capitol,” Mr. Perry told the parishioners here, as he walked back and forth in front of them, talking into a microphone. “That separation of church and state that we have been led to believe is some clear, hard line.”
He continued: “Isaiah was talking about taking your values into the public arena. As a matter of fact, you are biblically charged to take your values into the public arena.”
He condemned what he called the “politically-correct police who say you can’t bring your faith into the public arena.”
“You will be criticized, but do not be intimidated.”
He concluded: “Somebody’s values are going to decide the issues of the day, whatever they may be. Somebody’s values are going to be installed, if you will. The question is going to be, whose values? Is it going to be those of us of faith, or is it going to be somebody else’s values?” | <urn:uuid:a38910fd-776f-4d6e-87d5-c42fbaaea604> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/at-an-iowa-church-perry-takes-on-the-role-of-faith-in-government/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958654 | 495 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Yep, I was a young kid when the Beatles came out with “When I’m 64,” and now I’m almost there. Let’s take a second and think about some of the changes in our lifetimes.
Drive-in movies… where did they go? Can you believe that, at one time, all gas stations were full service, and someone really did wash your windows and check your oil every single time you filled up? Remember when the first family on the block got a color TV? Remember when party lines were telephone numbers shared by multiple homes, and you never knew when someone might be listening in on your conversation… and that was a bad thing? What happened to eight track tapes and record albums, or heck, even VHS tapes? I even remember a time without microwave ovens! Or consider all the differences in surgery today compared to just a few years ago; the advances in technology have made a staggering, and very positive, difference for patients.
If you have a 3, 4, or 5 year old child or grandchild, take a look at their toys and compare them to when you were a child.
A few months ago, a very nice woman and a great parent said to me, “Dr. Nine, I’m not ready for all this technology you are bringing to the District.” I responded, “I’m aware that you may not be ready, but your kids are.”
With few exceptions, if our kids don’t graduate with the abilities to think critically and be technologically proficient, they are destined to be second class citizens. Thanks to the FUSD community’s support for education, our children have those opportunities.
As FUSD has begun to move to the forefront in Arizona in digital education, it hasn’t come without some pain. While, in the big picture, things have moved along better than I expected, we have had some significant glitches and received some justifiable criticism. We “problem find” to the best of our ability before we implement new programs, but no one can anticipate everything. So we absolutely take responsibility for the missteps, learn from our mistakes, reset the compass points and move forward with “KIDS FIRST” forever in our sights. While some might want other districts to take the lead and work out the problems before implementing change, if you really believe in doing what is best for kids, then you lead the way.
A number of years ago, I had a boss who constantly stated, “Change is the only constant!” When you think about it, that’s obvious. Heck, every second time I visit Costco, I find something that is really cool, and I say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Even so, it is true that people are resistant to change; especially if they are good at what they do. If you are a teacher, and kids like you, your peers like you, your parents like you, and your administrators like you, then you feel pretty good about yourself, so why would you want to change? You probably wouldn’t.
Most teachers are teachers because they were good at being taught. They were taught in college much like they were taught in high school. They’ve been teaching the same way they were taught and have been successful. Now, in FUSD, we are saying we have to do it differently if we are to reach all our kids. If I’m a teacher, that could feel very uncomfortable.
Education in America virtually hasn’t changed in 150 years, but our kids of today are growing up in a vastly different world; a world that demands that how we educate must change if our students are to reach their potential.
I am exceptionally thankful for the vast majority of FUSD’s teachers who have accepted the fact that “change is the only constant” and have adapted to new expectations. It is rewarding for our kids to see the renewed excitement in veteran teachers who have discovered new techniques that allow their students to explore curriculum in very motivating ways.
Yes, change is risky, but necessary. FUSD has changed, and will continue to change, because that is what is best for our kids.
Just as medical doctors are utilizing new tools and techniques to save lives and improve the quality of life, our teachers are utilizing new educational tools and techniques to better educate a greater percentage of our kids while teaching them more conceptually than ever before.
Our teachers have had to move very much outside of their comfort zone to adapt to these changes, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate them taking that risk. If you happen to see a teacher this summer, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell them that yourself. I’d really appreciate that a lot. Your child’s teacher will, too! | <urn:uuid:03ae5a84-2304-4633-9ca4-8bdf110fa743> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://santanvalley.com/florence-unified/item/3405-change-you-may-not-be-ready-but-your-kids-are | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978948 | 1,017 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Fractional resurfacing affords unique therapeutic outcomes
|Roy G. Geronemus, M.D.
An early adopter of laser technology, Roy Geronemus, M.D., director of the Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York, has become a champion of the many medical and cosmetic treatments afforded to patients by laser devices.
One novel concept — fractional resurfacing — was developed in response to complications and prolonged healing associated with non-fractional resurfacing for cosmetic conditions. During the Plenary Session Friday, he discussed how the technique provides unique therapeutic outcomes for a variety of clinical conditions, giving attendees a better understanding of the indications and benefits of ablative and non-ablative fractional resurfacing.
Results of fractional resurfacing studies show promise
In his talk, "Non-Ablative and Ablative Fractional Resurfacing: Cosmetic and Medical Indications," Dr. Geronemus examined several research studies. In one study of 961 patients receiving fractional laser photothermolysis, 7.6 percent developed complications, of which 1.87 percent of cases were acneiform eruptions and 1.77 percent were herpes simplex virus outbreaks.
In another study, investigators looked at the influence of non-ablative fractional resurfacing in eyelid tightening and eyelid aperture. The degree of improvement was up to 25 percent for 28 percent of patients; 25-50 percent for 26.9 percent of patients; 50-75 percent for 25.8 percent of patients, and 75-100 percent for 19.4 percent of patients.
Study confirms success of a non-invasive treatment
A longtime researcher, Dr. Geronemus, clinical professor of dermatology at New York University Medical Center, has conducted research on the non-invasive treatment of actinic keratoseswith a 1927nm fractionated thulium laser. He treated 25 subjects with multiple facial AKs with up to four treatments every two to six weeks. Patients were given a topical anesthesia lasting one hour. The percentage of AK clearance was 62.7 percent, 84.3 percent and 88.5 percent after the first, second, and third treatment, respectively. At the time of follow-up, AK clearance was 90.6 percent, 84 percent, and 85.1 percent after one month, three months and six months, respectively.
The treatment of actinic keratoses is unique because of the sustained benefit, minimal downtime, and high patient acceptance. He noted that the procedure was well tolerated by patients, leaving no incidents of scarring or infections. Erythema and peeling lasted between four and five days, and patients on average reported pain scores at 2.71 (on a scale of 10).
Fractional resurfacing an effective option
"Ablative fractional and non-ablative fractional resurfacing provide safe and effective treatment for a variety of scars, including acne, surgical and traumatic scars, as well as for wrinkles, skin laxity, photodamage and enhancement of tattoo removal in conjunction with q-switched lasers," Dr. Geronemus said.
"The treatment of scarring is as good or better than other non-fractional techniques with good therapeutic outcomes and minimal risks of additional scarring or pigmentary change," said Dr. Geronemus, who also described the differences in wavelength, lesion depth, spot size, delivery system, and density coverage of a number of fractional ablative devices. | <urn:uuid:16585681-5313-4cb8-8c23-a808e1bf75cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aadmeetingnews.org/Highlight.aspx?id=3421&p=299 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944123 | 721 | 1.601563 | 2 |
President Barack Obama still has rock star appeal. And on Wednesday, he got the star treatment as he toured Master Lock in Milwaukee, which sits in the middle of the hood, and touted the company's successes. Master Lock should be applauded because the company is creating jobs by "insourcing."
On the drive to Master Lock, there are a lot of good things to see. I saw a woman walking, holding the hands of two young children. I saw a man working under the hood of his car. I passed Milwaukee College Preparatory School. And I witnessed men trying to put a little change in their pockets by taking cans and other metals in for recycling.
When you look closer, you can see that it's also a neighborhood in need of family-supporting jobs. There were a number of boarded-up houses and people at home at a time when you would expect them to be at work.
In his speech to Master Lock workers, Obama admitted that many Americans are still hurting from one of the worst economic crises in three generations.
"We have a long way to go before everyone who wants a good job can find one, before middle-class Americans regain the sense of security that's been slipping away since long before the recession hit," Obama said.
Obama said that during the past 23 months, businesses have added nearly 3.7 million new jobs - but there are still too many people out of work.
And while Obama declared that manufacturing is back, to be honest with you, there are a lot of people living within eyeshot of Master Lock who lack the skills to even get in the company's doors.
What do we do about them?
Do we just say, "You had your chance for a free education and you blew it, so, tough"?
If this is a country where, as Obama says, "We look out for one another," then we can't just turn our backs on people who need support.
It's a complicated issue, I know, but it's one worthy of discussion. | <urn:uuid:dfc5c0a1-965c-494d-8f57-e43aa4bb5040> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/a-glaring-need-for-jobs-in-central-city-3o47muf-139479918.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983589 | 414 | 1.578125 | 2 |
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