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P.S.8 provides art education to the students through a wide variety of arts disciplines throughout the year. Along with a full-time art and music teacher, we also provide our students with dance and art residency programs through American Ballroom Theater Dancing Classrooms, Society for the Educational Arts (SEA), and with LEAP - Learning through an Expanded Arts Program. These 10-12 week dance programs give students dance and movement classes that exposes them to a variety of dance genres.
This year our school started Music and the Brain which provided the school with keyboards for piano lessons to all our kindergarten, first and second grade classes. Our students also participate and attend yearly concerts with Carnegie Hall and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Arts opportunities such as Dare Dance, Arts Club, and a beginner’s band class are offered to students in our after school program in partnership with the Children’s Aid Society. Our goal here at P.S. 8 has always been to provide as much experience and exposure in the arts to our school community. | <urn:uuid:93a5dcfa-237f-4526-a0f4-37c38f509976> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/06/M008/TopLinks/Projectarts.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968496 | 209 | 1.617188 | 2 |
In the days that followed I did very little. I kind of tidied my house. I swept the floor and I cleaned the window. There wasn’t much else to do. I think that my little house was once intended for animals. The floor was made of stone as was the bed. But I had a mattress and I had a two burner gas cooker, a chair and a window. It had a sink and an outside toilet. I liked the simplicity. It was all that I needed and most of all it was incredibly cheap. I guess it may have been a good price for the landlord, but I didn’t argue. It cost too little to argue.
Staying in Myrtos was very good indeed. It was more than good. I had traveled a lot of miles to get there and I wanted – needed a rest. As the days went by I learned more Greek. I found out where the fournos (bakery) was and I bought what I needed from the little shop there. I never argued about prices and I lived my life, day to day, and it was a good life. I made some friends in the village, sure we could not communicate well, but we did a good job. Then the soldiers came.
They weren’t a bad bunch, the soldiers. They were just about all Greek lads doing their national service – or at least the Greek version of national service. Their job was to build the road to Myrtos, and if that was ever finished, to continue on up the mountain to the west.
It didn’t make that much difference to Myrtos. Their mobile base was about four miles away but they did work hard. I say hard, not well. I am not completely sure that there was anyone with them that was a civil engineer. Someone who knew how to build roads. Not that it really mattered, they built the road anyway. Athens had decided to build a road around Crete and the young soldiers were there to see it built. Strangely enough it was a good road. I watched them building the road from Irapetra and they had big tractors and asphalt machines and a will to succeed. They also enjoyed a drink and a dance and all went very well.
I did like Myrtos. I was the only non Greek person there and for six weeks, all was bliss. People would leave and arrive in pick-up trucks that ferried them to and from the greenhouses. There wasn’t a great deal of meat to be seen but this was certainly salad city. Greek feta cheese and graviera were the most common, Graviera is made from sheep’s milk in village co-ops and is a firm cheese like its namesake gruyere. I was often invited to meals at people’s houses. Then I used to get meatballs in gravy mostly, or chicken and salad and cakes. These meals somehow used to last for hours and into the night. I was learning Greek as fast as I could and I could now get by. I didn’t have any way of understanding tenses but the words I needed I remembered and I presented them fairly well. At least the Greeks could understand me. Some school kids used to try out their English on me. They were pretty good too.
I learned what little Greek I knew by listening carefully and trying to make the sentence that I wanted. If I got it wrong – which was most of the time – people would correct me. Slowly the sentences I made got better and the misunderstandings became fewer. I was learning dhimotiki, the Greek spoken by the people of Greece. To read the shop signs I had to learn a little kathourevesa, cleaned Greek. Everybody calls the bakery the ‘fournos’ meaning oven and bread ‘psomi.’ But the written name of the bakers shop is Artopoleion from the katherevousa word ‘artos’ meaning bread. But this only applies to the shop signs so I wouldn’t bother too much with that aspect of language. Just learn to speak the most common words that everybody speaks and you get the hang of it. Eventually.
There was the dance too. Not so much in the kafeneon, but when we had a sort of party or I went out to a meal. There would be the meal, of course, that lasted for hours. Lots of talk, I didn’t understand all of it, and there would be drinks. A lot of drinks but Greeks handled drink very well. I rarely saw any drunkenness in my whole time in Crete and never any hangovers – perhaps they hid them well, but that wasn’t my impression. Yet it was the dancing that defined the men. Mostly after, but often in the middle of a conversation a man would get up to dance. Sometimes there was music, but not always. It was an expression of his soul – of his being. And this was not odd or strange to the company, but perfectly normal.
There was more than one dance, and no two men danced exactly the same. They would get up and stand tall, lift their arms upward and drop almost to the ground. Rise and stretch again, turn around and drop once more. There would be foot movements as well but mostly it was this slow dance that held the attention. Sometimes they would stretch their arms outward and with foot movements drift sideways and back. It was fascinating. In party type moments maybe two or three men would dance together in a line with arms on each others shoulders with fast matching foot movements and then together drop to a crouch and up again and around. Others would crouch on one knee and clap in time to the music. Often shouting as well, such as “woopah” and “ya.”
Often this dancing would become faster and the men were obviously stretched by all of the movements, but then they would slow again and with enormous grace, continue to move around, dropping and rising as if it was all they had. I asked what it was, this dance, but the answer was always “parea mou” – my parea – my innermost feelings of this moment. To Greeks, this parea was an almost sacred thing. Not religious, but bound up in their way of life, their history and heritage as well as their own personality.
It is one thing to learn Greek, but to learn this untaught dance was something else. They looked at me sometimes to see if I too would dance, but I never did. I could not. Not yet anyway, probably not ever, but maybe I could learn. After all I felt deep down that I understood why they danced. What it meant to them and it was a lot, a huge amount of feeling passed from parea into movement and thus to dance. Another aspect of Greek life that I was beginning to feel as well. The dancing would come later, I hoped.
Much as I would have loved to stay in Myrtos for ever, I knew that I would have to get going. I could take the bus back to Irapetra and explore the east of the island, but someone in the village had told me of this mysterious town called Viannos to the west of Myrtos ‘high in the hills overlooking the sea.’ There was no road west from Myrtos but my map showed a semi coastal path along to the west that passed below Ano Viannos. Full of the joys and energy of youth, along with some Greek which I had learned in Myrtos, I decided to give it a go. I could sleep almost anywhere in this stunning weather and if it became impossible, I could come back to Myrtos.
That evening most of the village, the men anyway, turned out to wish me well and there was a lot of drink starting with beer and finishing with raki, the locally made clear spirit. Stories were told of shepherds who lived in the hills and how they singlehandedly fought the Germans and the Turks. You will find them, I was told, but I had my doubts. In the morning I was all packed up and ready to leave when I found outside my door bags of tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese and sausage. Another gift from my friends that I was unable to answer other than with thanks. I packed most of it into my rucksack and ate the rest and set off to the west. | <urn:uuid:f43d9f04-d307-4b92-9df5-18457141362a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crete.wordpress.com/early-days-in-the-island-of-crete/early-days-chapter-03/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992965 | 1,757 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Thursday, April 26. 2012
With a significant portion of employees not getting more than six hours of sleep per night, they could be setting themselves up for major health issues, according to a report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
More than 40 percent of those who work night shifts do not sleep enough, and 29 percent of day shift workers said the same, the report said, according to HealthDay. Of those who work in transportation and warehouses during the nighttime don't sleep well. Those who don't sleep well put themselves at a higher risk of stroke, heart attack and depression.
"Despite these consequences, many people still don't find the time for adequate sleep, with many having trouble with insomnia and not seeking proper help," said Shelby Freedman Harris, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at Montefiore Medical Center, according to the news source.
Those who have trouble sleeping may want to consult a physician for solutions to the problem. If the person lacks a sufficient healthcare policy, it may help to look for one with affordable health insurance rates online.
Wednesday, April 25. 2012
While many Americans feel that the Medicare program may need to be reformed, a large portion of these people don't want to foot the bill, according to Harris Interactive and HealthDay.
More than 80 percent of consumers think that Medicare needs reforms in order for it to continue to be reasonable. Furthermore, 51 percent think that drastic changes are needed to the program. However, 53 percent don't want higher taxes and 60 percent are against direct contributions to lower costs.
"There's a clear majority who think there is a problem that needs to be addressed, but [people also believe] if the changes are going to cost me money in terms of higher co-pays, higher deductibles or higher taxes, no thank you," said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Poll.
If a consumer feels they are financially-strapped due to excess Medicare payments or high taxes, it may benefit them to look for a private healthcare plan. There may be several affordable health insurance rates available, and all a person needs to do is compare health insurance quotes.
With close to one-third of American children dealing with weight problems, many parents are not prioritizing this issue, according to the YMCA of the USA.
The organization's Family Health Snapshot found that 21 percent of parents note their child's physical health as a top priority, which was low, but on par with the 20 percent who prioritized education. In addition, 40 percent of parents said they could encourage their children to take part in more physical activity.
"Summer weight gain and summer learning loss often go unnoticed, but they impact many of today's youth," said Dr. Matt Longjohn, senior director of chronic disease prevention for Y-USA. "Some studies have shown that children's BMI increases nearly twice as fast during the summer than during the school year."
Parents who are concerned about their children's weight issues may want to consult their family physician. If the person does not have a health insurance policy, it may benefit them to compare health insurance quotes online to find a plan that is right for everyone.
Tuesday, April 24. 2012
The Employee Benefits Research Institute recently noted in a report that a sizable portion of Americans have lost healthcare policies due to their companies no longer willing to pay some of the costs.
Approximately 72 percent of employers offered their workers some type of health insurance plan in 2002, according to the report. However, this declined to 67.5 percent in 2010.
"The majority of uninsured workers report that they are not covered by health benefits because their employers did not offer coverage," said Paul Fronstin, senior research associate with EBRI. "In 2010, 58.2 percent of uninsured workers reported that they worked for employers that did not offer health benefits to any employees This is up from 53.1 percent in 1997."
Consumers who have been shut out of the option to have some type of affordable plan from their employer may want to look for alternatives. By checking online to discover health insurance quotes within their budget, it may be possible for consumers to find quality coverage.
Monday, April 23. 2012
A large portion of elderly caregivers noted that their work has affected their health negatively, according to a report completed jointly by Harris Interactive and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Close to 90 percent of those caregivers polled noted that they experienced a heightened amount of stress from doing the job. In addition, 72 percent said that the work has hurt their health, and 60 percent noted a lack of proper sleep because of it. More than 50 percent said that their job as a caregiver forced them to lose focus on their own health issues, as well as other family needs.
"This age of instant information is a boon and a challenge for caregivers," said Dr. Glen Stream, president of the AAFP. "Caregiving can be a challenge as new health issues develop and a loved one's needs change."
Those who are feeling the stress from providing care to a loved one may want to make sure their healthcare policy is as good as possible. By examining health insurance quotes, a person can compare different options and find a plan with affordable health insurance rates. | <urn:uuid:ac47089a-8d67-4cef-b166-8c8d261ca251> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jlbghealth.com/blog/archives/2012/04/P2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976501 | 1,071 | 1.71875 | 2 |
NerdKit Gaming: Part 2
If you were interested in my last bit of alternative code-geekery, you may also be interested to hear that I’ve pushed that NerdKit Gaming code farther. If you browse the github repository now, you’ll find that the game also includes a highscore board, saved in EEPROM so it persists across reboot. It also features a power-saving mode that kicks in if you don’t touch any buttons for about a minute. Key-repeat now also allows the player to hold a button down, instead of pressing it repeatedly, in order to move the cursor multiple spaces.
You may remember that I left of my last blog post noting that there wasn’t much left for the game until I could find a way to slim down the code to fit new things. So what allowed these new features to fit?
Well, I did find ways to slim down the code: I was right about making the game state global. But, I also re-learned a lesson that is at the core of hacking: check your base assumptions before fiddling with unknowns. In this case, my base assumption was the Makefile I imported from an earlier NerdKits project. While making the game state global saved a little better than 1k of space, changing the Makefile such that unused debugging utilities, such as uart, printf, scanf weren’t linked in saved about 6k.
In that learning, I also found that attempting to out-guess gcc’s “space” optimization is a losing game. Making the game state global had a positive effect on space, but making the button state global had a negative effect. Changing integer types would help in one place, but hurt in others. I’m not intimately familiar with the rules of that optimizer, so it felt like spining a wheel of chance choosing which thing to prod next.
You may notice that I ultimately returned the game state to a local variable, passed in and out of each function that needed it. The reason for this was testability. It’s simply easier to test something that doesn’t depend on global state. Once I had a bug that required running a few specific game states through these functions repeatedly, it just made sense to pay the price in program space in order to be able to write unit tests to cover some behaviors.
So now what’s next? This time, it’s not much until I buy a new battery. So much reloading and testing finally drained the original 9V. Once power is restored, I’ll probably dig into some new peripheral … maybe something USB? | <urn:uuid:7979ed53-a14d-43c0-af5a-c78134ae7fc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.beerriot.com/2011/03/04/nerdkit-gaming-part-2/?like=1&_wpnonce=97316b2dc0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958128 | 554 | 1.640625 | 2 |
When I heard last year that the Olsen twins would be releasing a book chronicling their fashion influences, my mind immediately flashed towards the Paris Hilton-penned Confessions of an Heiress – after all, it seemed like another set of tabloid darlings were trying to add “author” to their resumés. But, to their credit, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s coffee table book, Influence, is not another collection of gaudy images depicting Chihuahuas in pink tutus. True, neither one of the Olsen twins is a particularly innovative writer, but the content of the book is mostly made up with of the words of others, composed largely of in-depth interviews with a total of twenty fashion designers, models, photographers, artists and editors.
What Mary-Kate and Ashley lack in writing skill, they more than make up for with their eye for talent and knack for asking intelligent interview questions that other publications seem to gloss over. Granted, the artists they talk to are interesting enough on their own, including the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Terry Richardson and Peter Beard, but the interviews cut to the core of their work, focusing on the entire span of each career from their origins to the struggles faced along the way. They are accompanied by richly detailed visuals, including a 1976 Newsweek cover featuring Diane Von Furstenburg and a letter Diana Vreeland wrote to journalist Bob Colacello concerning a magazine article about Josephine Baker. | <urn:uuid:137eec3c-9003-4d3d-ad8d-7174956ed707> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wornjournal.com/blog/tag/celebrity-stalking/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963052 | 302 | 1.625 | 2 |
The number of mobile camera phones in use will top 1 billion this year, reflecting their tremendous growth rate since they hit the market around seven years ago, according to a new market evaluation.
Sales shot up from about 3 million camera phones in 2001 to 500 million last year, according to figures released by Strategy Analytics. The growth will likely start to level off now, however, said Neil Mawton, an associate director at the market research company.
Instead, people will upgrade existing camera phones, with manufacturers trying to entice them with high-end features that will dwarf what was available a few years ago, Mawton said. They will offer cameras with improved zoom capabilities, autofocus, better flashes and faster shutter speeds.
"In a way, they [mobile manufacturers] are copying the digital still camera market," Mawton said.
Changes will also come inside the phones. The industry has typically used CCD (charged coupling device) sensors for taking digital photos, but that technology is ceding ground to a cheaper technology, CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor).
CCD sensors are more expensive and less durable, but provide a higher image quality. But CMOS chips are cheaper, more durable, and have become more reliable, Mawton said. More suppliers make CMOS sensors than CCDs.
Not all phones will have cameras, as there will still be demand for phones in the $30 to $40 (£15 to £20) range, Mawton said. Phones in those price ranges will be "camera-free for a good few years”, he said. | <urn:uuid:fa01aefb-14b6-4395-a61f-ff8f6a9b655c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/mobile-phone/9830/camera-phones-to-bit-1bn-mark/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958683 | 326 | 1.59375 | 2 |
CHATHAM — Faced with a potential 125 percent increase in fees to dispose of trash, Chatham officials are exploring options for reducing the amount of waste sent to the SEMASS Resource Recovery Facility.
"As costs go up, in fuel or tipping fees, it gives us the opportunity to review what we do in regards to efficiency, not just for SEMASS, but for other recommendations that will help," said Jeff Colby, department of public works superintendent.
The town's solid waste advisory task force recommended two options to selectmen at their meeting this week: One idea was to increase recycling from the current 35 percent level to 71 percent, which would significantly reduce the solid waste going to SEMASS in Rochester. The increased recycling would eliminate the need to raise the $110 transfer station sticker price by $24, which would be needed to cover the projected $214,000 SEMASS increase. The ultimate goal, task force members Luther Bates and Darren Saletta told the board, would be to get to a 90 percent recycling rate, as Nantucket has done. That would result in a $28 decrease from the current sticker price.
The second option — pay-as-you-throw — is taking root in other Cape towns as they face the end of a 20-year SEMASS contract and the prospect of renegotiating a new one at much higher rates. Chatham is considering that model, in which households would be charged a reduced sticker fee but also would be charged for each bag of waste deposited at the transfer station. The idea is that households will minimize the per-bag fees by recycling more. Out of 351 Massachusetts towns and cities, 137 use the pay/throw program. Sandwich started back in 2011; Chatham, Brewster, Wellfleet and Barnstable are now considering it.
"We thought it would be successful, and the recycling has been a little higher than we had anticipated," said Paul Tilton, Sandwich's department of public works director.
According to figures collected from towns by the Chatham task force, Sandwich increased its recycling rate from 18 to 37 percent and saved itself $120,000 in SEMASS fees. Residents pay $1.20 for a 30- to 33-gallon bag and 60 cents for a 15-gallon bag.
Nantucket achieved its high recycling rate by requiring that all trash coming into its transfer station be in clear plastic bags to make it easier for inspectors. Private haulers who pick up at homes and businesses also must use clear plastic bags and pick up recyclables in a separate truck. There are penalties and the threat of having a load rejected if it doesn't comply with the law. Plus, Nantucket has a large machine that shreds and biodegrades household waste that helps boost the recycling rate. But the program also runs a multimillion deficit each year; they are now considering a pay/throw program to help with costs.
Chatham would need additional enforcement, including one or two employees checking trash bags as they are dropped off, as well as a recycling education and marketing campaign to boost its recycling rate, Saletta told selectmen.
But the big problem may be in getting compliance from private trash haulers who now bring in much of the trash that comes into the Chatham transfer station.
Colby wasn't encouraged that few of the haulers are taking advantage of a pilot program that allows them to drop off their unsorted recyclables.
"My biggest concern is about (private hauler compliance) as we move forward," Colby said. Some nearby communities have stopped receiving loads from haulers because of what are perceived as poor recycling efforts.
Tilton said enforcement is always difficult, but higher fees from SEMASS will trickle down to private haulers and their customers.
"They will get the message as the price goes up," Tilton said.
Nauset Disposal site services manager Erik Oliver said his company is on board with recycling.
"We inform everybody that there is a waste ban in the state and recycling is required," Oliver said.
The company provides separate containers for trash and recyclables as well as separate pick-ups with no additional charge. With the fees for disposing of trash much higher than that for recycling, he said his customers, especially small businesses, have been doing a lot more recycling to reduce costs. | <urn:uuid:a3a5eda1-6582-42d3-bab4-04dd54755cf2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130223/NEWS/302230326 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974538 | 883 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Last month, singer-songwriter James Taylor joined the long line of legacy acts that have sued their former record labels for withholding royalty payments, among other financial oversights. According to a 2007 audit, Warner Bros. Records underpaid Taylor by nearly $1,700,000 between the years of 2004 and 2007.
This kind of financial dispute is hardly new. The Temptations and Sister Sledge filed similar complaints (against Warner and Universal Music Group, respectively) earlier this year. The debate about whether artists should receive compensation as a “sale” or “license” for digital downloads has also garnered attention as a result of Eminem’s audit of his former label, Aftermath Records, wherein he argued that he should have been paid his licensing royalty rate of 50 percent — instead of his sales royalty rate of 12 percent — for digital downloads in the early days of iTunes.
The musicians that I represent aren’t being offered multi-million dollar record deals that land them on the cover of Rolling Stone or in a mansion atop the Hollywood hills. Quite frankly, I’m not sure those deals exist other than in an idealized memory of what the record industry looked like in its days of excessive hedonism. So where does that leave work-a-day musicians – the ones that actually make music for a living? read more
Big news for anyone who’s been following the termination of transfer issue: a California judge has ruled in favor of Victor Willis, original singer of the Village People, in his battle with the publishing companies that administer rights for the Village People’s catalog. Last year, Willis had filed to terminate rights to his share of “YMCA” and thirty-two other songs that he co-wrote, and publishers responded by claiming he lacked legal standing to do so without having his co-authors on board. Judge Barry Ted Moskovitz disagreed, writing: read more
Next year, a time bomb embedded in the Copyright Act of 1976 starts to detonate, as valuable copyrights fall back into the hands of artists who decide that they would prefer to own their songs, rather than allowing their label and publisher to keep selling them… read more
Let's get out our time machine and set the coordinates for 2013. Why that date? Because that's when a lot of creators will see copyrights that they signed away in 1978 revert back to them.
This is a big deal for musicians and songwriters who decades ago assigned their rights to a label or a publisher. With their songs back under their control, artists could license them directly to TV and movies, re-release albums on their own imprints, or even re-transfer their stuff to a label or publisher in a more lucrative deal. read more
Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling provides a comprehensive, interdisiplinary look at the issues at the intersection of culture, creativity, compensation and technology. Co-authored by Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, with contributions by Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson, the book includes interviews with over one hundred stakeholders in the sampling culture — from samplers, to attorneys, to license clearance experts, managers and record label owners. It examines the analog history of sampling, bringing an informed economic and legal analysis of the sample license clearance process in line with how the system works. In the final chapters, the authors examine a handful of proposals that would streamline the licensing process, but each “solution” has its own costs. Is it possible for society to achieve a balance that allows creativity to flourish but also fairly compensates original creators?
Creative License will be published by Duke University Press in 2011. | <urn:uuid:6f6bcda0-148f-4bb5-b263-be9ebd6374d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.futureofmusic.org/issues/artist-compensation/contracts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965174 | 757 | 1.53125 | 2 |
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) - During the first debate, President Barack Obama never mentioned Mitt Romney's videotaped remarks that 47 percent of Americans are dependent on the government. This time it was his closing argument.
Obama brought it up during the final question of the second debate, preventing Romney from answering.
More: Jim Davis and Paula Dockery discuss the second presidential debate, a 'town hall' style meeting, between President Barack Obama and former governor Mitt Romney. Watch in the video player above.
Asked about public misperceptions of their candidacies, Romney said Obama's campaign tried to turn him into something he's not.
Romney said -- quote -- "I care about 100 percent of the American people."
Obama responded that when Romney said "behind closed doors" that 47 percent of the country considered themselves victims, "think about who he was talking about."
The president said that group included the elderly receiving Social Security, veterans, students and soldiers. He said: "If they succeed, I believe this country succeeds."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Top Political News
Doctors and insurance companies are increasingly using a tape measure instead of a scale to determine the obesity risk of Americans. | <urn:uuid:1200b5e3-2f62-4067-a599-38ec61cee130> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/political/obama-strikes-on-romneys-47-percent-comment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960366 | 266 | 1.585938 | 2 |
It also calls for reducing the Navy’s active carrier fleet from the Panetta-endorsed 11, to 10, as the cost of operating flat-tops and buying new ones continues to escalate.
The center’s report also calls for delaying until 2021 procurement of one of the Army’s most cherished procurement prizes [-] the $40 billion Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) to replace the M2/M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
“The Bradley remains the pre-eminent infantry fighting vehicle in the world with no looming challenger, while the current requirements for the GCV are both unnecessary and expensive,” the report says.
Other outside experts have called on the Pentagon to put off the Ground Combat Vehicle.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a centrist group that advises Congress, called for delaying the vehicle while soldiers wear out current equipment. The Army could use the time to develop better protective systems against improvements in enemy armor-piercing weapons.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, told The Washington Times in April that now is not the time to fund the GCV.
“Given the financial situation the country is in right now, my personal opinion is that modernization should wait, and we should spend the money on personnel cost and readiness, and not on modernization,” he said.
Both the House and Senate Armed Services committees this month approved full funding for GCV development in their versions of the 2013 budget bill.
Quadrennial defense review
The law calls for more than $500 billion in additional automatic defense cuts, starting Jan. 1, unless Congress can reach a deal on reducing the deficit. Several experts say those reductions, known as sequestration, will happen because Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on taxes and entitlement reforms.
The Center for New American Security does not endorse the automatic cuts, saying no more than $550 billion should be taken from the military budget.
James Carafano, a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said Ms. Flournoy two years ago presented a strategy known as the quadrennial defense review that called for far more forces than the new defense budget or her think tank advocates today.
“This proposal follows very similar logic to other reports that we’ve seen from progressive think tanks,” Mr. Carafano said. “What no one has been able to square the circle and explain is, how we had a [review] that nobody had a problem with and it calls for substantially more forces than these guys call for.”View Entire Story
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World's Ugliest Dog Contest
Spelling Bee finale
Marines train Afghan soldiers
Rolling Thunder 2013
Benghazi: The anatomy of a scandal | <urn:uuid:d76de099-d3b0-4474-9aca-d4d14ffbe197> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/25/ex-obama-aides-think-tank-hits-defense-budget/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93215 | 641 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The Prince of Wales is said to have raised his fears of "unintended consequences" of the government rushing to change the laws of succession to the throne.
In a private meeting with Richard Heaton, permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, Charles reportedly voiced concerns over what would happen if his grandchild, due next year, were to marry a Roman Catholic.
The succession to the crown bill, which will change the ancient laws governing the royal line of succession to ensure the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's first child would succeed to the throne regardless of gender, has been published and is expected to be fast-tracked through parliament at the earliest opportunity.
The planned reforms, presented by the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, would also allow the couple's first-born to marry a Catholic – though not to be one, without having to renounce the right to succeed.
Sources told the Daily Mail Charles outlined to Heaton concerns that the move, which he is said to support in principle, could damage the relationship between church and state.
Echoing concerns raised previously by constitutional experts and theologians, Charles reportedly raised the issue of what would happen if his grandchild's future spouse were Catholic and insisted any children be raised as Catholics. This would either bar their child from the throne or compromise the monarch's role as supreme governor of the Church of England.
Canon law does not stipulate that children from a marriage between a non-Catholic and Catholic must be raised in the Catholic faith. But the Catholic must make a declaration "that I will sincerely undertake that I will do all that I can within the unity of our partnership to have all the children of our marriage baptised and brought up in the Catholic church".
The Mail reports that Charles was told during the meeting that any issue could be resolved by negotiations with the Vatican as and when the matter arose. It says Charles found this answer unsatisfactory and unconvincing.
He is also reportedly concerned about the lack of detailed consultation over the bill, which was announced on the day the Duchess of Cambridge made news of her pregnancy public. The paper said it was thought the Queen had not been informed of the decision to legislate until very soon before the bill was published, and her son and grandson appeared not to have been consulted at all, "which rankled with the Prince of Wales".
Charles is also said to have raised concerns over the effects of the proposed abolition of primogeniture, where a male sibling takes precedence over an older female, on other dukedoms and on the hereditary peerage in the UK.
Neither the Cabinet Office nor Charles's official office would comment on details of any meeting. A Clarence House spokesman said it was a matter for government. | <urn:uuid:221f9004-55b2-4f2b-9d55-0f9758f4423d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/07/prince-charles-worried-succession-laws | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982251 | 554 | 1.65625 | 2 |
WASHINGTON-Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) recently introduced legislation to establish an intergovernmental committee with the aim of bolstering financial education opportunities and improving consumers' financial decision-making. He said that currently there is little coordination and excessive duplication within the government and outside of it on financial literacy efforts, as well as a lack of a comprehensive strategy. The legislation would create an interagency committee within Treasury, working in conjunction with Treasury's Office of Financial Education. The Treasury Secretary would chair the committee. The committee would be responsible for developing a national strategy within 12 months to promote financial literacy; review financial education efforts throughout the government; coordinate and promote public and private financial literacy efforts; and submit an annual report on the state of financial education. "The lack of financial education affects Americans of every age and background. Inadequate knowledge of financial issues leaves our consumers vulnerable to exploitation, with unintended and unwanted consequences for them and their families," Sarbanes commented. Senator Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) co-sponsored the bill. The Senate Banking Committee was gearing up last week for its final round of hearings on Fair Credit Reporting Act preemption extensions, one of which covers consumer awareness and understanding of the credit granting process.
Sarbanes Introduces Financial Literacy Legislation
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Has housing turned the corner for good?
The June 2011 Case-Shiller Index reading posted strong numbers across the board, with each of the index’s 20 tracked markets showing home price improvement from May.
Some markets — Chicago and Minneapolis — rose as much as 3.2 percent.
The rise in values is nothing about which to get overly excited, however. The Case-Shiller Index is just re-reporting what multiple data sets have already shown about the summer housing market; that it was stronger than the spring market, and that a recovery is underway, but occurring locally, at different rates.
For example, the June 2011 Case-Shiller Index shows the following :
- Denver, Dallas, Washington D.C., and the “California Cities” bottomed in 2009. Each has shown steady improvement since.
- None of the Case-Shiller cities showed negative growth between May and June 2011.
- 12 of Case-Shiller’s tracked cities have improved over 3 consecutive months.
In isolation, these statistics appear promising, but it’s important to remember that the Case-Shiller Index is a backward-looking data set, focusing on just a portion of the national housing economy.
As an illustration, the Case-Shiller Index’s “national report” only includes data from 20 cities nationwide. They’re not the 20 biggest cities, either. Smaller metropolitan areas such as Minneapolis (#48) and Tampa (#51) are included.
Larger ones including Houston (#4), Philadelphia (#5) and San Jose (#10) are not.
In addition, the Case-Shiller index fails to track sales of condominiums, multi-unit homes and new construction. In some markets, including Chicago, these excluded home type can represent a large share of the overall market.
The Case-Shiller Index is a fine data set for policy makers and economists. It describes the broader housing market and shows long-term trends. For the individual home buyer in DC , however, it’s much less useful. More than “broad data”, you want focused data that’s current and relevant.
For up-to-date Washington Stats, visit our Research Section for interactive housing reports and neighborhood charts. | <urn:uuid:89eacc23-5f31-4b66-b169-9f39ef02368b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://msqrealty.com/2011/09/case-shiller-june-2011/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938827 | 473 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Trauma recovery is tricky; however, there are several key principles that can help make the process safe and effective. This book gives self help readers, therapy clients and therapists alike the skills to understand and implement eight keys to successful trauma healing: mindful identification of what is helpful, recognising survival, having the option to not remember, creating a supportive inner dialogue, forgiving yourself for not being able to stop the trauma, understanding and sharing shame, finding your own recovery pace, mobilising your body, and helping others. This is not another book promoting a new method or type of treatment; rather it is a necessary adjunct to self-help and professional recovery programmes. After reading this book, readers will be able to recognise their own individual needs and evaluate whether those needs are being met. They will have the tools necessary to put themselves in the driver's seat, navigating their own safe road to recovery. | <urn:uuid:b9e26239-fee5-4d92-8c70-616f37b8363c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amazon.co.uk/Keys-Safe-Trauma-Recovery-Take-charge/dp/0393706052 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959476 | 179 | 1.78125 | 2 |
As mentioned in the previous post, there are five types of special powers in BRP; magic, sorcery, mutations, psychic abilities and super powers. Of these, you might think of magic as the default, since it is the only one that uses the basic d100 resolution machanic. It is also the one that most closely resembles the standard D&D style of magic. If you want to cast spells that burn or freeze your target, or turn you invisible or heal wounds, you use the magic system. In keeping with the d100 mechanics, successful casting of a magic spell requires a roll. Spells are treated like skills and in order to be proficient, a lot of skill points must be invested. As such, a typical magician will only have a small repertoire of spells that he is really adept at casting. It is also possible for a non-magician character to cast spells, but such a character would not be permitted to use professional skill points to improve his spells and would, therefore, be far more limited in his spellcasting abilities.
In a typical heroic-level campaign, a magician will start out knowing six spells. While it is possible to learn new spells, the magician will never be as adept with these new spells as he is with the original ones. Spells must be memorized, but once they are, they can be cast as often desired or until the magician runs out of power points. A magician can memorize a number of spells equal to half his INT, although if he has more spells than that in his grimoire (i.e. spellbook), he may cast them directly from the book. Variables such as damage and area of affect are determined by the level of the spell which is a function of the amount of power points invested into the spell. For example, a Fire 1 spell does 1d6 points of fire damage and costs 3 power points, while a Fire 4 spell does 4d6 points and cost 12 power points. Needless to say, players with D&D experience may find BRP spells somewhat underwhelming at first, but given that a typical character will start with 10-12 hp and probably never see an increase in that number, one can see that spells can be quite lethal.
Sorcery is handled differently from magic. Originating with the Elric! and Stormbringer games to model the distinctive Moorcock style of magic, sorcery spells are generally weaker than magic spells, but do not require an activation roll. The more powerful sorcery spells are those that summon demons and elementals, in keeping with the dark fantasy genre that spawned these rules. It should be noted that sorcery is rare in any game in which it is used. A character requires a POW of 16 to even cast sorcery spells. This requires some pretty good rolls or, at the very least, decent rolls combined with a redistribution of stats.
Mutations are, as you might expect, handled quite differently from magic or sorcery. They typically involve physical changes to the body, giving the character enhanced (or diminished) abilities or even new abilities such as flight or poison attacks. Mutations are rolled randomly and may be beneficial or harmful. When an adverse mutation is rolled, it may be avoided by a Luck roll (5 x POW). If successful, the character is entitled to a reroll. Any time a Luck roll is failed, the character is stuck with the negative result. Needless to say, mutations are a mixed blessing.
Psychic abilities are handled in much the same way as magic spells. They are learned like skills and require a successful activation roll. Characters normally use personal rather than professional skill points to improve psychic abilities, so the number of abilities a character can be good at is quite limited, although GMs are advised that some settings may allow the use of professional skill points, creating, in effect, a professional telepath. The abilities themselves include all the standard sci-fi tropes such as telekinesis, mind control, precognition and pyrokinesis.
Finally, there are super powers. Personally, I am thoroughly indifferent to just about everything associated with the superhero genre. Combine that with the fact that the super power rules are the most complicated set of rules for any of the powers in BRP and suffice to say, I just couldn't bring myself to fully absorb them. It appears a roll is required to activate some super powers, although they do not work like skills, so it is not entirely clear how the success number is derived. The number and relative power of super powers are based on a number called the Character Point Budget derived from the character's unmodified stats and the power level of the campaign. There is a large variety of super powers to chose from, although they do not seem any more powerful than the other types of powers available in the game. This is probably a good thing since it allows cross-genre campaigns without fear of super-powered characters dominating the mutants, psychics and sorcerers.
That is all for now. I will look at combat next time.
The Race Against The Machines
3 hours ago | <urn:uuid:39fbafbd-75e0-45b5-9463-4bb8023bb2f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rollforinitiative.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958688 | 1,028 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The nation’s consumer financial watchdog is preparing restrictions on prepaid debit cards, a largely unregulated product that is flourishing even amid concerns about high fees and poor disclosures.
On Wednesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to introduce a preliminary rule for prepaid products — the first of its kind. The bureau, which is expected to complete an overhaul in the next year, will also hold a hearing on Wednesday in Durham, N.C., that will feature testimony from consumer advocates and some of the card industry’s biggest players.
Until now, prepaid cards have escaped the regulations passed after the financial crisis. As new rules have targeted credit cards and traditional debit cards, a number of banks barreled into the prepaid market.
While the consumer bureau’s new effort would not rein in most fees that come with the cards, like a $5 monthly maintenance fee, it would require companies to reimburse consumers for unauthorized charges.
Card providers argue that they offer a competitive price and help consumers control their spending. But some federal regulators and consumer advocates worry that companies are steering low-income consumers into a relatively expensive product rather than plain vanilla checking accounts.
“The people who use prepaid cards are, in many instances, the most vulnerable among us,” Richard Cordray, the consumer bureau’s director, said in a statement, adding that “right now prepaid cards have far fewer regulatory protections” than traditional banking products.
David Newville, policy manager with the Center for Financial Services Innovation, said the proposed regulations would provide much needed transparency.
They are “what we would like to see,” he said.
The new oversight would coincide with a boom in the prepaid business. In 2009, borrowers had roughly $29 billion worth of prepaid cards, according to the Mercator Advisory Group, which provides research for the payments industry. By 2013, the volume of money on prepaid cards is expected to swell to $90 billion.
As big banks clamor for customers, they are muscling their way into the market, which until a few years ago was largely the terrain of less traditional financial firms like Green Dot and NetSpend. They also would be subject to the new rule.
In March, Wells Fargo introduced a reloadable prepaid card. And, Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., unveiled a prepaid card aimed at borrowers who typically do not have a traditional bank account.
JPMorgan announced earlier this month that it would start offering prepaid cards. Branded as “Liquid,” the card carries a $4.95 monthly maintenance fee but does not charge customers to add money.
The banks were drawn, in part, because prepaid cards were largely untouched by the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul law and other recent crackdowns that have siphoned billions of dollars in income from debit and credit card fees.
The law exempted prepaid cards from the so-called Durbin Amendment, allowing banks to impose high fees on merchants when consumers make a purchase with a prepaid card.
Advocacy groups have questioned whether card issuers clearly explain to cardholders the fees that come with the product, including charges to activate the card, load money on it, check a balance at cash machines and speak to customer service.
Some consumer advocates say the fees erode the money loaded onto the cards. Wells Fargo, for example, charges $3 for customers to withdraw money using a bank teller and $5 to replace a lost card.
A study by Pew, a nonprofit research group, also indicated that some customers were unaware their prepaid cards are not necessarily protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The bureau’s new proposal would not address that issue.
But under the bureau’s so-called advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, the agency is seeking to apply a longstanding federal rule for debit and gift cards to prepaid products. The rule, known as Regulation E, requires companies to reimburse customers for unauthorized transactions that pop up when a prepaid card is lost or stolen.
Consumer advocates including Adam Rust of Reinvestment Partners cheered the bureau’s plan.
“This is why we have a C.F.P.B.,” said Mr. Rust, who will join Visa and NetSpend executives among panelists at Wednesday’s hearing. “We don’t have basic protections in place for these cards.”
Two of Britain’s largest banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and the Lloyds Banking Group, outlined plans on Wednesday to increase their capital reserves.
The European Union inched closer to ending bank secrecy, as Austria agreed to adopt new rules for sharing account holders’ information under certain conditions.
The São Paulo stock exchange is trying to accommodate high-speed traders, even as regulators around the world are skeptical of the sector.
A deeper look at tornadoes in a changing climate.
Why do communities fail to secure the buildings that house their children against momentous hazards?
There are affordable ways to live more safely in tornado zones.
Dan Bartlett, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, will succeed Leslie Dach, a former Clinton White House staffer, as executive vice president of corporate affairs.
The agreement is subject to court approval. Penguin settled a similar claim with the Justice Department in December.
The sitcom, which is likely to have additional episodes produced, has Mr. Crystal playing a once-great comic who tries to revive his career.
A federal judge’s ruling could halt the resale of digital music as well as other digital good like e-books.
A world-renowned physicist meets a gorgeous model online. They plan their perfect life together. But first, she asks, would he be so kind as to deliver a special package to her?
The Winklevoss brothers have moved on from their battle with Mark Zuckerberg and are more active than ever.
A small experiment finds that family members are more comfortable with the phrase “allow a natural death.”
An important new study suggests that statins, the cholesterol-lowering medications that are the most prescribed drugs in the world, may block some of the fitness benefits of exercise, one of the surest ways to improve health.
While a recent article by Angelina Jolie about her mastectomy and reconstruction raised awareness, it may have left the impression that the surgeries are quick and easy procedures, some doctors fear.
Jamie Dimon’s victory in a JPMorgan Chase shareholder vote was aided by months of lobbying. | Timothy D. Cook mollified lawmakers who had been furious over Apple’s taxes. | After Warren E. Buffett, will Berkshire Hathaway be able to negotiate such sweet deals? | A lawyer for Rajat K. Gupta argued that wiretap evidence should not have been admitted.
Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon, and receive breaking news alerts throughout the day. | <urn:uuid:cea9a8d7-81f0-450c-a0fe-20bbbc6e17b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/new-rules-for-prepaid-debit-cards/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962185 | 1,416 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Tucked in the Victorian seaport of Eureka, California, the Carter House has grown into an enclave of intimate accommodations, including a hotel along with several houses and cottages. The hotel’s full-service Restaurant 301, opened in 1987, has brought a gourmet feast to California’s redwood kingdom. And, while a passion for using only the highest quality organic food and fresh herbs is one secret behind the success of this award-winning restaurant, the sizeable garden — which continues to serve as a valuable resource for Carter cuisine — is another. “Back then we were harvesting things like lemon verbena, arugula, edible flowers and other exotic finds that you just couldn’t get anywhere else,” Mark says.
Today, that patch of herbs has evolved into an extensive kitchen garden of more than 300 varieties of herbs, greens, vegetables, fruits and edible flowers. And, thanks to the mild Northern California climate, the flourishing garden supplies the restaurant’s talented chefs with an impressive variety of fresh herbs and produce nearly year-round. Tender herbs like lemon verbena, scented geraniums and specialty sages grow as perennial favorites. Lavender, rosemary, thyme and fennel also thrive in abundance along with an assortment of edible flowers and culinary newcomers like borage and tuberous geraniums. “So few herbs really dry and taste well,” says head chef Matthew Szymanski, who uses fresh herbs whenever possible.
Though the region’s bounty of seasonal foods — from organic produce to fresh seafood, chanterelle mushrooms picked from the nearby ancient redwood forest and local artisan cheeses — are also featured on the menu, the Carter House garden has become a defining element in much of the restaurant’s skillfully rendered cuisine. Assistant chefs go out to the garden each afternoon with scissors and basket in hand, carefully selecting the finest herbs, greens and vegetables for a distinctive freshness and flavor that receives plenty of appreciative notice from dinner guests.
Even with an established foundation of perennial herbs and fruits, the garden is in a continual state of change as annual vegetables and herbs are planted and harvested, according to season. The menu reflects this garden-to-table approach from lamb ravioli with lavender and rosemary butter or honey-cured salmon with garden-fresh fennel cucumber salad to a simply sumptuous nasturtium-garnished squash soup or a lemon-scented geranium sorbet.
As an added treasure, the 10,000- square-foot English-style showcase garden is as appealing to the eye, and nose, as it is to the palate. Given a warm summer’s day or a gentle breeze, the faint bouquet of herbs often greets you before you even enter the garden. Once inside, your gaze is captured by fragrant wisteria and honeysuckle clambering over a kiwi-engulfed arbor.
Brick pathways flanked by herbs such as rosemary, lavender, santolina and Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha) reveal the abundant wealth of a true kitchen garden. Fruit abounds: cherry, plum, fig and apple trees, as well as blueberry bushes and alpine strawberries, also known as fraises des bois.
Raised beds house a variety of vegetables, including fava and runner beans, yellow beets, artichokes and signature gourmet greens. Culinary flowers interplay in the company of herbs and vegetables as well, such as colorful calendulas, peppery nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) and borage along with bee balm (Monarda didyma), violas and dianthus. Naturally there’s a cornucopia of essential culinary herbs — standards like parsley, sage, rosemary, basil and thyme, for instance — as well as the more distinctive French tarragon, lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) and cucumber-flavored salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor).
Francine Slaughter, the master gardener who oversees the garden and tends the densely planted beds, utilizes the garden’s greenhouse for growing annual herb and vegetable starts from seed. Through a combination of careful planning, trellising and variety selection, the garden packs a wealth of produce into a small space. Slaughter also relies on slow-released organic fertilizers and compost to revitalize the soil and meet the demands of a garden that’s continually producing.
Demands aside, the Carter House kitchen garden has grown into more than just a source of fresh ingredients and unexpected flavors. From garden to table, this aromatic oasis has become a source of inspiration and enjoyment for visitors and guests alike.
The Carter House garden is available for viewing at any time, and individual and group tours can also be arranged, with prime viewing from April through October. The Carter House and Restaurant 301 are located at the corner of Third and L streets in Eureka, California. For more information about Restaurant 301 or Carter House reservations, call (800) 404-1390 or visit their website at www.carterhouse.com.
Kris Wetherbee is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The Herb Companion. She lives in the hills of western Oregon with her husband, photographer Rick Wetherbee. | <urn:uuid:0eb2edca-de39-4cc3-9413-919a39cd2acb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherearthliving.com/gardening/here-there-garden-to-table-at-the-carter-house.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930453 | 1,113 | 1.570313 | 2 |
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“Letter V.—TO W. W. PHELPS, ESQ.” Oliver Cowdery to W. W. Phelps. Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate (Kirtland, Ohio) 1, no. 6 (March 1835): 95–96.
LETTER V.—TO W. W. PHELPS, ESQ.
Dear Brother: Yours of 6th ult. is received and published in this No. It contains so many questions, that I have thought I would let every man answer for himself; as it would occupy a larger space to answer all of them than would be proper to devote at this time. When I look at the world as it is, and view men as they are, I am not much surprised that they oppose the truth as many, perhaps, and indeed, the more I see the less I marvel on this subject. To talk of heavenly communications, angels’ visits, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, now, since the apostles have fallen asleep, and men interpret the word of God without the aid of either the Spirit or angels, is a novel thing among the wise, and a piece of blasphemy among the craft-men. But so it is, and it is wisdom that it should be so, because the Holy Spirit does not dwell in unholy temples, nor angels reveal the great work of God to hypocrites. You will notice in my last, on rehearsing the words of the angel, where he communicated to our brother—that his sins were forgiven, and that he was called of the Lord to bring to light, by the gift of inspiration, this important intelligence, an item like the following—“God has chosen the foolish things of the world, and things which are despised, God has chosen;” &c. This, I conceive to be an important item—Not many mighty and noble, were called in ancient times, because they always knew so much that God could not teach them; and a man that would listen to the voice of the Lord and follow the teachings of heaven, always was despised, and considered to be of the foolish class—Paul proves this fact, when he says, “We are made as the filth of the world—the off-scouring of all things unto this day.” I am aware, that a rehearsal of visions of angels at this day, is as inconsistent with a portion of mankind as it formerly was, after all the boast of this wise generation in the knowledge of the truth; but there is a uniformity so complete, that on the reflection, one is led to rejoice that it is so. In my last I gave an imperfect description of the angel, and was obliged to do so, for the reason, that my pen would fail to describe an angel in his glory, or the glory of God. I also gave a few sentences which he uttered on the subject of the gathering of Israel, &c. Since writing the former, I have thought it would, perhaps, be interesting to give something more full on this important subject, as well as a revelation of the gospel. That these holy personages should feel a deep interest in the accomplishment of the glorious purposes of the Lord, in his work in the last days, is consistent, when we view critically, what is recorded of their sayings in the holy Scriptures. You will remember to have read in Daniel—“And at that time, [the last days] shall Michael stand up, the great prince, who stands for the children of thy people;” and also in Revelations—“I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the prophets.” Please compare these sayings with that singular expression in Heb. “Are they [angels] not all ministering Spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” And then let me ask nine questions: first, Are the angels now in glory, the former prophets and servants of God? Secondly: Are they brethren of those who keep his commandments on earth? and thirdly, have brethren & fleshly kindred, in the kingdom of God, feelings of respect and condescension enough to speak to each other, though one may be iu heaven and the other on the earth? Fourthly: If angels are ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation, will they not minister for those heirs? and fifthly, if they do, will any one know it? Sixthly: Will Michael, the archangel, the great prince, stand up in the last days for Israel? Seventhly; will he defend them from their enemies? Eightly will he lead them, as they were once lead; and ninthly, if so, will he be seen? These questions I leave without answering, because the reasoning is so plain, and so many might be brought, that, they must be at hand in the heart and mind of every saint. But to the gospel, and then to the gathering. The great plan of redemption being prepared before the fall of man, and the salvation of the human family being as precious in the sight of the Lord at one time as at another, before the Messiah came in the flesh and was crucified, as after the gospel was preached, and many were found obedient to the same. This gospel being the same from the beginning, its ordinances were also unchangeable. Men were commanded to repent and be baptized by water in the name of the Lord: and were then blessed with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit being thus given, men were enabled to look forward to the time of the coming of the Son of Man, and to rejoice in that day, because through that sacrifice they looked for a remission of their sins, and for their redemption. Had it not been for this plan of salvation, which God devised before the fall, man must have remained miserable forever, after transgressing the first commandment, because in consequence of that transgression he had rendered himself unworthy the presence of his Maker. He being therefore cast out, the gospel was preached, and this hope of eternal life was set before Him, by the ministering of angels who delivered it as they were commanded. Not only did the ancients look forward to the time of the coming of the Messiah in the flesh, with delight, but there was another day for which they sought and for which they prayed. Knowing, as they did, that the fall had brought upon them death, and that man was sensual and evil, they longed for a day when the earth might again rest, and appear as in the beginning— when evil might be unknown upon its face, and all creation enjoy one undisturbed peace for a thousand years. This being sought for in faith, it pleased the Lord to covenant with them to roll on his purposes until he should bring it to pass—and though many generations were to be gathered to their fathers, yet the righteous, those who should, in their lives, embrace the gospel, and live obedient to its requirements, rise and inherit it during this reign of peace. From time to time the faithful servants of the Lord have endeavored to raise up a people who should be found worthy to inherit this rest, (for it was called the rest of the righteous or the day of the Lord’s rest, prepared for the righteous;) but were not able to sanctify them that they could endure the presence of the Lord, excepting Enoch, who, with his people, for their righteousness, were taken into heaven, with a promise that they should yet see that day when the whole earth should be covered with glory. Moses labored diligently to effect this object, but in consequence of the transgressions and rebellions of the children of Israel, God swore in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest; and in consequence of this decree, and their transgressions since, they have been scattered to the four winds, and are thus to remain till the Lord gathers them in by his own power. To a remnant of them the gospel was preached by the Messiah in person, but they rejected his voice, though it was raised daily among them. The apostles continued to hold forth the same; after the crucifixion & resurrection of the Lord Jesus, until they would hear it no longer; and then they were commanded to turn to the Gentiles. They however labored faithfully to turn that people from error; that they might be the happy partakers of mercy, and save themselves from the impending storm that hung over them. They were commanded to preach Jesus Christ night and day—to preach through him the resurrection from the dead—to declare that all who would embrace the gospel, repent, and be baptized for the remission of their sins, should be saved—to declare that this was the only sure foundation on which they could build and be safe—that God had again visited his people in consequence of his covenant with their fathers, and that if they would they might be the first who should receive these glad things, and have the unspeakable joy of carrying the same to all people; for before the day of rest comes, it must go to all nations, kindreds and tongues. But in consequence of their rejecting the gospel, the Lord suffered them to be again scattered; their land to be wasted and their beautiful city to be trodden down of the Gentiles, until their time should be fulfilled. In the last days, to fulfill the promises to the ancient prophets, when the Lord is to pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, he has determind to bring to light his gospel, to the Gentiles, that it may go to the house of Israel. This gospel has been perverted and men have wandered in darkness. That commission given to the apostles at Jerusalem, so easy to be understood, has been hid from the world, because of evil, and the honest have been lead by the designing, till there are none to be found who are practising the ordinances of the gospel, as they were anciently delivered. But the time has now arrived, in which, according to his covenants, the Lord will manifest to the faithful that he is the same to-day and forever, and that the cup of suffering of his people, the house of Israel, is nearly fulfilled; and that the way may be prepared before their face he will bring to the knowledge of the people the gospel as it was preached by his servants on this land, and manifest to the obedient the truth of the same, by the power of the Holy Spirit; for the time is near when his sons and daughters will prophesy, old men dream dreams, and young men see visions, and those who are thus favored will be such as embrace the gospel as it was delivered in old times, and they shall be blessed with signs following. Farther on the subject of the gathering of Israel.—This was perfectly understood by all the ancient prophets. Moses prophesied of the affliction which should come upon that people even after the coming of the Messiah, where he said: and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do evil in the sight of the Lord,to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands. Connecting this with a prophecy in the song which follows; which was given to Moses in the tabernacle—remembering the expression—“in the latter days”—where the Lord foretels all their evil, and their being received to mercy, to such as seek the peace of Israel much instruction may be gained. It is as follows:— “I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend my arrows upon them. They shall be hurnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling with the man of gray hairs.” But after all this, he will judge their enemies and avenge them of theirs; for he says: “If I whet my glittering sword, and my hand take hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to my enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh.” After all this—after Israel has been restored, and afflicted and his enemies have also been chastised, the Lord says: “Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land and to his people.” I will give a further detail of the promises to Israel, hereafter, as rehearsed by the angel. Accept assurance of my esteem as ever.
|Abstract||Letter from Oliver Cowdery to W. W. Phelps. Cowdery continues his history of the beginnings of the church.|
|Publisher Original||F. G. Williams and Co.|
|Digital Publisher||Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University|
|Owning Institution||Brigham Young University|
|Subject||Book of Mormon--History;|
|Geographic Place Name||Kirtland (Ohio);|
|Keywords||Smith, Joseph, 1805-1844; Phelps, William Wines, 1792-1872; Cowdery, Oliver; angels; plan of salvation; Messiah;|
|Source||Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate (Kirtland, Ohio) 1, no. 6 (March 1835) : 95-96.|
|Related Works||See HBLL Digital Collections, http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/NCMP1820-1846,7072.|
|Language||English; eng; en;|
|Patron Usage Instructions||http://www.lib.byu.edu/genericnote_copyright.html|
|Copyright status/owner||Public Domain, Courtesy Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University|
|Conversion specifications||E-Image Data Scanpro 1000; 600dpi; pdf|
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Tuesday, November 13, 2012
The bird clawed its prey at a playground and park in the heart of Somerville.
Somerville Patch reader Sarah Hassan recently captured these amazing photos of a hawk with a dead rat in its talons. Hassan said in an email she took the photos at about 5:15 p.m. on Oct. 24 when she was at Edward Leathers Community Park with her mother. Edward Leathers Park, not far from City Hall, Somerville High School and the library, has a play area for children, a dog run, and space for people to sit on benches and walk. Hassan said she and her mother saw the hawk when it suddenly flew out of some bushes with the rat. When someone passed by the bird, it flew off, she said. She also took photos of the blood splotches left behind by the kill.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Somerville, New York, Chicago and Baltimore all experienced increased rodent sightings in 2012, according to Somerville's ResiStat blog.
In case you missed it (as I did), a September post on the city's ResiStat blog confirms what many already observed on their own: There seems to be more rats than usual in Somerville this year. The ResiStat blog says the city's 311 system received about 52 percent more calls about rodent sightings in 2012 than in 2011. It compared Somerville's data to data from other cities, namely Chicago, New York and Baltimore, and found those areas also saw a spike in rodent sightings. The ResiStat blog suggests the mild winter we all had in 2012 is to blame. The blog post also includes some information about what Somerville is doing about the rodent problem, a map of rodent sightings and a link to the city's new rodent webpage.
Friday, June 15, 2012
One section of Somerville has set up a neighborhood watch group to monitor the rodents, said an alderman.
Several members of the Somerville Board of Aldermen vented anger about the rat problem in parts of the city, and they put the blame at the feet of absentee landlords. The city's Inspectional Services Division was also a target of their frustration. Ward 2 Alderman Maryann Heuston sparked the string of angry statements with an order that the Inspectional Services Division deal with a "greatly increased rodent infestation" around Lincoln Park. "The neighbors have actually sort of got their own neighborhood watch group going. Imagine a neighborhood watch group for rodents rather than criminals," Heuston said. The alderman said she put together a "detailed plan" about what she wants from Inspectional Services, implying the division's response …
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Also, home sales were down in Somerville and a man came to speak about rats.
Wal-Mart Wal-Mart's plan to open a grocery store in Somerville's Assembly Square continued to spark interest this week when Somerville's mayor, Joeseph Curtatone, indicated he was against the plan. Later in the week, Curtatone published an opinion piece in Somerville News indicating there were benefits and drawbacks to the plan, and he wanted to start a conversation about it. Maxwell's Green The $52.5 million residential development near the Lowell Street bridge, which will contain 184 units of rental housing and is known as MaxPac, announced it had secured financing from Sovereign Bank and that construction at the site had begun in earnest. The developers have hired J. Derenzo Company as a subcontractor. That drew a mixed reaction from at…
Friday, July 29, 2011
Robert Corrigan, a rat expert form New York, said it takes coordination to defeat the rodents.
"A bunch of rats in a sewer: That, to me, is interesting," said Robert "Bobby" Corrigan to the crowd gathered at city hall Thursday night. "At night, if you follow me around, I'm usually in some alleyway" looking for rats, he said. Corrigan spoke at a special meeting of the board of aldermen's committee on health and public safety. With a Ph.D. in the field of rodents and a resume that includes tackling New York City's rat problem, Corrigan acknowledged most people don't share his fascination with the rodents. After all, this is a man who slept with rats in a barn, even spreading peanut butter on his body in an attempt to draw the animals close enough to photograph. They weren't interested. Rats not interested in peanut butter? It's one of… | <urn:uuid:c762cee4-8668-48bd-8279-bcb8bba400a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://somerville.patch.com/topics/Rats | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974381 | 932 | 1.695313 | 2 |
This workshop has been cancelled.
Have you ever wanted to be in a rock band and play a live gig? Join Maria Sarro and her Beyond Rock Staff to unleash your inner musician and discover what it’s like to play in a real rock or pop band.
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Write songs, jam out, and grow as a musician—and as a person—in this fun-filled week of music. Thursday night, your band has the opportunity to “gig” at a concert for the Omega community. In addition to playing music with your band, you are invited to perform original and acoustic numbers in smaller groups.
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Young Residential Architects Invade Mongolia
The Chinese tycoon Cai Jiang has enlisted 100 of the world’s most promising emerging architects to design a villa each for his new real estate development in Inner Mongolia, in the desert near the city of Ordos, some 400 miles west of Beijing. As part of a larger effort to establish an independent urban district on the outskirts of Ordos, he also has plans to build cultural venues and administrative buildings designed by celebrated architects.
Jiang assembled an impressive group of advisors to help realize his goals. Jacques Herzog, a partner in Switzerland-based Herzog & de Meuron, consulted in the selection of the 100 young architects. Ai Wei Wei, an artist and principal of Beijing-based FAKE Design, oversaw the master plan and the project’s conceptual framework. And Xu Tiantian, of the firm DnA Beijing, designed an art museum, which opened in 2007.
The master plan sets aside 100 residential lots, each of which will accommodate an approximately 10,000 square-foot, single-family house intended for buyers with disposable income and an appetite for contemporary arts. Although Jiang has provided a specific program—including the number of bedrooms per house, Western-style kitchens, quarters for housekeepers, and indoor pools—designers are free to experiment within those guidelines.
Among the 23 American architects are WORKac, Teddy Cruz, LTL, nARCHITECTS, MOS, and Lyn Rice. Designers hailing from 26 other countries include Norway-based Jensen Skodvin; Alejandro Aravena, from Chile; Black Lines on White Paper, from Johannesburg, South Africa; and the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.
The so-called Ordos 100 will be executed in two stages. The first group of 28 participants traveled to the site in January, while the second group will make their way to Mongolia in early April. They will be accompanied by the first group, who will present their schematic designs and, four weeks later, complete design development drawings. Chinese architects will generate construction documents and Jiang’s organization anticipates that construction on the first houses will finish by late 2008.
Based on what you have seen and read about this project, how would you grade it? Use the stars below to indicate your assessment, five stars being the highest rating.
New York City–based Lyn Rice, who visited the site in January, has great optimism for the project’s potential. “Before we met, there were two big fears: that this could turn into a bunch of architects trying to out-form-make the other, and that it could become a new type of gated community,” he explains. “But these are thoughtful architects who are doing thoughtful projects, and none of us wants to see competitive form-making.” And, addressing the second concern, Rice says that the architects and developers agreed to not build any perimeter barriers in order to maintain a sense of openness. “This is something that belongs very much in the realm of experiment. It’s going to be an especially interesting record of contemporary architecture.”
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Spa Week Provides Affordable, Lifelong Wellness for Body and Mind
National Event’s $50 spa and wellness services aid in overall health and well-being now and in the future
a fast paced society where deadlines, demands and frustrations seem to
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In 2004, Spa Week
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Moving into its 17th installation, Spa Week’s Fall 2012 Event will take place from October 15th – 21st when
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In order to receive exclusive information on spa and wellness locations and their $50 services, spa-goers should register on SpaWeek.com as
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Spa visits improve overall health in many ways, from the physical to
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About Spa Week Media Group, Ltd.
Read more »
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the country and on SpaWeek.com, it’s never been more convenient to give the gift of wellness. | <urn:uuid:f06b9235-10e9-4ddd-9f63-08074c0b4c9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stylemtv.com/articles/index-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938264 | 1,128 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Gergana Koleva, Contributor
I write about the intersection of consumer fraud and the health system
HCA Holdings, the hospital operator being investigated for performing unnecessary heart procedures and billing Medicare for it, has issued a second statement in anticipation of a critical news story by the New York Times that examines the company’s emergency room procedures.
The notice, posted on the HCA website, says the newspaper has raised questions about the adoption of a set of guidelines for evaluating and managing patients at emergency rooms, including how various procedures and the time spent diagnosing and caring for patients are coded for the purpose of reimbursement. The guidelines are developed by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and are widely accepted in the U.S. as the standard for classifying emergency visits.
For example, the ACEP recommendations about managing emergency patients with acute heart failure spell out several non-invasive approaches, such as the use of nasal or face masks to restore oxygen, or temporary intubation to improve heart rate and blood pressure.
A diagnosis of acute heart failure syndrome is ripe for medical abuse in the form of subsequent procedures: last week, the Times published a meticulously researched front-page story on needless, risky, and costly invasive cardiac procedures, such as stent insertions, performed at HCA’s Florida facilities.
According to the guidelines for managing acute heart failure in an emergency setting (available as a PDF on the ACEP website), approximately 80% of patients who are hospitalized for the condition nationwide are admitted through emergency departments.
HCA seems to be pre-emptively positioning itself amid such statistics when it claims that about half of its 163 hospitals have adopted systems to determine when patients seen at its ERs actually need emergency care.
Yet, the company says of the 6,143,500 emergency visits its affiliated hospitals saw in 2011, only 80,000 — or about one in 100 — were deemed not to have an emergency condition. Since that ratio includes both hospitals that are using the improved systems and those that aren’t, it’s anybody’s guess what the numbers really mean.
The updated statement also says the newspaper has inquired about rates of pressure ulcers at HCA’s facilities, which it asserts are below national averages. Revealing the names of three of its major investors – Bain Capital, KKR, and the Frist Family – the company claims it has provided more than $47 billion worth of charity, discounted, or uncompensated care since 2006. | <urn:uuid:71b8c5e3-9040-4d5c-a771-c1ea65109951> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/gerganakoleva/2012/08/13/hospital-chain-hca-defends-er-practices-in-second-week-of-scrutiny/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954206 | 515 | 1.546875 | 2 |
MILLEDGEVILLE — New census numbers legally require the City of Milledgeville to alter its six voting districts based on new population shifts. City Council began the process in January, opening a 30-day window to come up with sufficiently altered district blocks.
Monday’s work session reviewed Council members’ diligence adjusting the numbers toward a suggested deviation range. After a few more tweaks Council agreed on a map version for public hearing.
Two public hearings must occur before the redistricting blueprint is voted on and sent to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for approval.
Middle Georgia Regional Commission (MGRC) representative Nick Kouloungis used population block software to assist the city.
The MGRC goal for Milledgeville is a collective district deviation range of 10 percent. The range started more than 70 percent using the 2010 census numbers minus the correctional population.
Except District 6, the other five districts, minus institutionalized and correctional populations, were all at least 25 percent above or below the optimal target population, according to the MGRC.
The current version has the six districts falling at an 8.81 percent deviation range from the target population of 2,748 per district. Districts 1, 3 and 5 are primarily minority under the current setup.
Milledgeville traditionally maintains three primarily minority districts.
Though not official yet, Councilwoman Denese Shinholster, District 3, said the map was agreeable for Council.
“I think everyone knew the new census had shifted the figures around some. We all worked together to get it done,” Shinholster said. “It was a smooth process, and I think everyone is pleased. We stuck with the plan and the deviation as the basis for what we needed to do.”
Phillip Joiner, District 4, and Dr. Collinda Lee, District 1, were both near 1,000 people over the ideal deviation before the process began. They had no issues with the give and take.
Lee enjoyed her first redistricting experience and thinks Council has come to a consensus.
“As a whole, we did well. We got a lot accomplished,” Lee said.
The DOJ must approve any redistricted map proposal using the one person, one vote rule and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a rubric.
Joiner applauded his fellow Council members for making good compromises to get every district as equal as possible.
“There were changes that had to be made based on what DOJ requires. We had to make some sweeping changes to be compliant with the law,” Joiner said. “It’s like a big puzzle. Six of us put it together.”
Council will bring the map to a public hearing Friday and vote for final passage of the new ordinance in the next regular Council meeting.
Once submitted, the Justice Department has 60 days to comment and review the districts. Having any changes settled long before the next election is important, so the local board of registrars has ample opportunity to realign the districts and place people in the proper voter roles.
“We tried to keep it as minimal as possible, so it would be less work for the registrars’ office,” Shinholster said.
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What a joy it would be to walk around in a world where everyone dressed as if they were Anna Piaggi. It would be terribly disorienting, but great fun: A carnival and a costume party, all rolled into one.
Piaggi, an Italian Vogue editor who died at the age of 81 Tuesday, leaves behind a wardrobe of more than 2,000 dresses and a rich legacy as the most eccentric dresser of the fashion establishment. Her hair was blue, her hats were too big or too small, her neck was always elegantly draped in collars of neon-dyed fur, and her canes were colored to clash. Either nothing matched, or it matched too much. She dressed as though every outing in every outfit was performance art.
Piaggi’s style may not make sense to much of the world, but to photographers and designers, she was a muse of the highest order. Karl Lagerfeld sketched 10 years’ worth of Piaggi in her outfits in his journal. Milliner Stephen Jones considered her his muse, as did shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, and she regularly wore designs by both. She was an inspiration to New York Times street style photographer Bill Cunningham, and was featured in his documentary “Bill Cunningham New York.”
Cunningham photographed Piaggi throughout her career, but one of his finest tributes to her was not an image, but words: In 1994, he wrote, ”Fashion, which often parades as art, can genuinely be called an art form as seen on Ms. Piaggi. She creates her own special environment, and it's not meant to be imitated.”
So even though a world of Piaggi-alikes would be a marvel, it would be a poor tribute to a fashion icon who was truly one-of-a-kind. We’re not as brave as she is, anyway. Piaggi didn't just wear her imaginative get-ups to Fashion Week — she wore them everywhere. The office. The bank. And, as she told Paper Magazine, “Also for the supermarket. My life is quite normal. But I enjoy dressing all the time.” | <urn:uuid:7967a2b3-fb84-474b-8d95-ca9c6c22fb8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/anna-piaggi-dies-fashion-world-mourns-eccentric-muse/2012/08/07/46973a86-e0b1-11e1-a421-8bf0f0e5aa11_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990253 | 460 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Over the next two to three years, 30% of data centers will be using converged infrastructure for enterprise servers. With established vendors foraying into it, converged infrastructure or fiber-based architecture is becoming increasingly popular. However, most organizations fail to figure out if converged infrastructure really fits
Converged infrastructure incorporates powerful server capabilities as well as networking features in a single virtual server configuration. Thus, resources are not connected to a single machine, and tasks are undertaken at the hardware or fabric level. Converged infrastructure is an integration of component technology to create a pool of resources. Three key reasons, which make this technology lucrative for data centers include:
- Commitment by major vendors. Cisco (UCS) and HP already have this technology in place.
- Support towards increased trends in virtual machine mobility across network and storage, along with boosting the input and output.
- Access to internal cloud infrastructure.
The reasons for not considering converged infrastructure are equally compelling. The primary cause is vendor lock-in, which is a chief information officer’s nightmare. Also, since it is not a tried and tested technology, it may add more complexity to the existing data center infrastructure. Considering the Indian market’s price sensitivity, it might be difficult for organizations to invest in converged infrastructure. It could be a challenge for data centers to spin their design around converged infrastructure and if it proves to be highly complex, the users could lose interest at the consolidation level itself. Despite these limitations, Gartner is of the opinion that organizations should try converged infrastructure, as it might just prove to be the right thing for them. | <urn:uuid:89bb7870-c932-4b8d-91f2-a3c4db278bd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.in/news/2240025347/Converged-infrastructure-from-Gartners-perspective | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941305 | 332 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide
Noam Chomsky has not just been watching the Occupy movement. A veteran of the civil rights, anti-war, and anti-intervention movements of the 1960s through the 1980s, he’s given lectures at Occupy Boston and talked with occupiers across the US. His new book, Occupy, published in the Occupied Media Pamphlet Series by Zuccotti Park Press brings together several of those lectures, a speech on “occupying foreign policy” and a brief tribute to his friend and co-agitator Howard Zinn.
From his speeches, and in this conversation, it’s clear that the emeritus MIT professor and author is as impressed by the spontaneous, cooperative communities some Occupy encampments created, as he is by the movement’s political impact.
We’re a nation whose leaders are pursuing policies that amount to economic “suicide” Chomsky says. But there are glimmers of possibility – in worker co-operatives, and other spaces where people get a taste of a different way of living.
We talked in his office, for Free Speech TV on April 24.
LF: Let’s start with the big picture. How do you describe the situation we’re in, historically?
NC: There is either a crisis or a return to the norm of stagnation. One view is the norm is stagnation and occasionally you get out of it. The other is that the norm is growth and occasionally you can get into stagnation. You can debate that but it’s a period of close to global stagnation. In the major state capitalists economies, Europe and the US, it’s low growth and stagnation and a very sharp income differentiation a shift — a striking shift — from production to financialization.
The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it’s austerity in the midst of recession and that’s guaranteed to be a disaster. There’s some resistance to that now. In the US, it’s essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration. It’s a subtext of what happened in Cartagena [Colombia] last week with the conflict over the drug war. Latin America wants to decriminalize at least marijuana (maybe more or course;) the US wants to maintain it. An interesting story. There seems to me no easy way out of this….
LF: And politically…?
NC: Again there are differences. In Europe there’s an dangerous growth of ultra xenophobia which is pretty threatening to any one who remembers the history of Europe… and an attack on the remnants of the welfare state. It’s hard to interpret the austerity-in-the-midst-of-
In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it’s been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it’s over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas. It was understood by the ad industry in 2008 -- they gave Barack Obama their marketing award of the year. This year it’s barely a pretense.
The Republican Party has pretty much abandoned any pretense of being a traditional political party. It’s in lockstep obedience to the very rich, the super rich and the corporate sector. They can’t get votes that way so they have to mobilize a different constituency. It’s always been there, but it’s rarely been mobilized politically. They call it the religious right, but basically it’s the extreme religious population. The US is off the spectrum in religious commitment. It’s been increasing since 1980 but now it’s a major part of the voting base of the Republican Party so that means committing to anti-abortion positions, opposing women’s rights… The US is a country [in which] eighty percent of the population thinks the Bible was written by god. About half think every word is literally true. So it’s had to appeal to that – and to the nativist population, the people that are frightened, have always been… It’s a very frightened country and that’s increasing now with the recognition that the white population is going to be a minority pretty soon, “they’ve taken our country from us.” That’s the Republicans. There are no more moderate Republicans. They are now the centrist Democrats. Of course the Democrats are drifting to the Right right after them. The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues and that’s not their concern. | <urn:uuid:7156b018-9864-4336-8269-aeda1be333c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alternet.org/story/155281/noam_chomsky_on_america's_economic_suicide?page=0%25252C1%252C2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952146 | 992 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Me + No Meat= More Love
Vegan: a LIFESTYLE that consist of NOT consuming, wearing & using animal products in ANY way; a herbivore.
Example: vegans do not eat honey because it comes from another animal.
Vegetarian: a DIET that consist of not eating meat or fish.
I am a new VEGETARIAN and hope to become VEGAN one day. (I LOVE cheese toooo much!)
I am definitely happy but life has been a constant struggle. I love chicken& I love fish BUT I also love living. There is NO doubt about it! Eating too many of these things could cause some serious health problems like diabetes and numerous heart conditions. I have a long history in my family of diseases (diabetes etc) that can be controlled by what you eat.
A few years ago, the 16 year old me tried to become a vegetarian. I wasn’t driven nor had reasons to become a vegetarian… I just thought it was cool (ooo yeaaaa). My vegetarian lifestyle lasted 1 month! I was tempted by a dirty hot dog vendor and I gave in… as you can tell, I wasn’t serious about it.
To do ANYTHING in life you have to be driven! If you’re not driven, you will give into anything that will drive you off the path that you “think” you want to go. When facing temptation goals/morals and everything you “thought” you wanted can quickly vanish! When you know what you want and what you will do to achieve it, it’s a bit harder to give in!
My vegetarian transition began when I came to Taiwan. Long story super short, the way food is handled, prepared and displayed here disgust me. When you go into many food spots, the meat is dead hanging from a rack near the cash register. I mean like A WHOLE CHICKEN!!! PIG!!! DUCK!!! WHATEVER!!!!! With many of these places being outside in extremely hot/humid weather, the areas around these places smell HORRIBLE!
I told myself that I would not eat meat until I return to New York. Since my scary encounter with Taiwanese meat, I have been eating at local vegetarian/vegan restaurants. In many of these VV (vegetarian/ vegan) restaurants, television programs talking about the benefits of living a VV lifestyle are broadcast while you eat. Some of the obvious benefits include weight loss, better skin and better health. Some benefits that aren’t as well known include better mental health, increase in energy, HORMONE FREE FOOD and a healthier earth! I didn’t realize that meat consumption plays such a huge role in the deterioration of the earth but it does.
PLUS- Why not save animals? :]
I have always known the chicken thigh that was on my plate belonged to a body that breathed and walked. Until seeing it killed/ displayed so grossly, I probably wouldn’t have cared.
I must admit… I do sometimes miss meat. I already miss thanksgiving turkey and it is only May. Sometimes I get tempted to eat meat but think about it and realize I can’t. I can’t eat it because now it grosses me out to see it on a plate.
Any who, long blog super short, below are some resources for people who want to live a VV life but just aren’t inspired enough to give the chicken leg up! I went cold turkey(haha) but I think all who are thinking about becoming VV should go to a doctor(before starting anything!!!), take vitamins regularly and make sure you eat foods that will make up for not eating meat.
I haven’t any changes YET (health etc) but I am not looking for any. It is too soon to be expecting huge changes.
Peta.org > more reason on why this lifestyle is better… incredible short films. I recommend the 1 about fur factories in China. I could barely get through it.
Vegstarterpack.com >website give you free stuff to help you start off | <urn:uuid:65c8b8d5-98c2-49b5-98cb-bdaf0f05e885> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eyeandi.org/sayitloudmagblog/?p=1179 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959786 | 864 | 1.523438 | 2 |
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Carl Sagan’s personal archive — a comprehensive collection of papers contained within 798 boxes — was delivered to the Library of Congress recently for sorting… thanks in no small part to “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane. (Yes, you read that right.)
According to an article in the Washington Post yesterday by Joel Achenbach — who also got a chance to browse through several of the boxes — MacFarlane provided an “undisclosed sum of money” to the Library to purchase the collection from Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan, who had kept the papers preserved in storage at their home in Ithaca, NY.
As briefly reported in a previous article here on Universe Today, MacFarlane has been working to bring Sagan’s Cosmos series back to television, with Neil deGrasse Tyson reprising Sagan’s role. In fact it was Tyson who introduced MacFarlane to Druyan, and apparently got a peek at the astrophysicist’s impressive collection of papers, which “ranges from childhood report cards to college term papers to eloquent letters written just before his untimely death in 1996 at age 62.”
“He wasn’t a pack rat at all,” Druyan said. “But I think he had a sense of his place in cultural history. I think he knew he was corresponding with the great and the near-great both inside and outside of science.”
Also noted in the article are “files labeled F/C, for ‘fissured ceramics,’ Sagan’s code name for letters from crackpots.” How very Sagan.
The collection is spread out across tables inside a vast room in the Library of Congress’ Madison Building for organization, a process expected to take several months. The Library will announce its acquisition later today.
As a fan of Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Neil Tyson and Seth MacFarlane… there’s really nothing to not like about this! | <urn:uuid:be0ef36d-3f64-4c92-8aa6-7234434ded64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.universetoday.com/96002/library-of-congress-acquires-sagans-personal-collection-thanks-to-seth-macfarlane/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957645 | 441 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Trumpet player, vocalist, arranger and composer. Started his career in his teens playing with latin musicians that some years later became Aces of the latin music scene such as Eddie Palmieri, Pete Rodriguez "El Conde", Joe Quijano and many others. His first recording experience came with the orchestra of Pete Rodriguez the King Of Boogaloo, first as "La Magnífica" and later as Pete Rodriguez Y Su Conjunto. This combo recorded in 1966 his song Micaela, a huge hit for the King. When the boogaloo was over, Pabon left Pete Rodriguez and founded his own orchestra: La Protesta, with some dissatisfied musicians from the orchestras of some top latin artist such as Willie Colon, Ricardo Rey and Pete Rodriguez himself and released several LPs in the 1970s. | <urn:uuid:8890bbdb-e642-4384-91ab-2b92cadc5b1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jango.com/music/T+Pabon/_full_bio | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979953 | 174 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn shut down the former program after The Associated Press reported that 1,745 inmates—some convicted of violent crimes—had been released within weeks or even days of their arrival at the penitentiary.
One of those men was convicted for brutally attacking a woman in 2008. After getting six months shaved off his sentence under the program and spending a year in jail, he spent just 14 days in prison—and was arrested the next day on suspicion of assault.
The end of the program caused the prison population to swell by more than 4,000 inmates, and there are now more than 49,000 people in prisons designed to hold 33,000. The new program is aimed at easing the problem, the way early-out programs were previously used for decades to manage the population.
But unlike in the old program, inmates must serve at least 60 days of their sentence before being released. The new law also allows the prison director to decide early release eligibility on a range of factors, including a past record of violence, something the department had said court rulings previously prohibited.
The Illinois Department of Corrections has started reviewing records of potentially eligible inmates.
The previous program allowed an inmate to get up to six months' sentence credit for good behavior. The AP found that some inmates served as few as eight days because the Corrections Department secretly waived a minimum 60-day penitentiary stay to move inmates out faster.
The General Assembly has since put that two-month requirement into law.
Lawmakers approved the new early release program last spring, and Quinn signed it into law. But it wasn't until this week that a legislative committee approved rules for the program. The Corrections Department may proceed after the rules are officially filed with the secretary of state in the coming weeks.
"The department is committed to the responsible implementation of sentence credit as safety and security remains the top priority," Solano said.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union representing most of the Corrections Department's 11,000 employees, agrees that if done properly, good-behavior incentives such as shaving time off sentences are sound management functions.
But AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall said the union remains cautious.
He noted that even as the inmate population grows, Quinn is closing two prisons the governor says are too costly to operate. The high-security "supermax" prison in Tamms closed on Jan. 4, and officials are planning to soon close the Dwight women's facility and shift inmates among three existing prisons.
AFSCME has opposed Quinn on closures, as well as reducing employee headcount and penitentiary crowding.
"Given the Quinn administration's record of reckless closures, employee layoffs, inattention to overcrowding and its previous early release fiasco, we are extremely cautious about the prospect of a good-time program implemented by this administration," Lindall said. | <urn:uuid:3bcd198f-cb6d-46e7-a2f6-86e3a72840dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/usnews/ci_22349940/illinois-prisons-plan-new-early-release-effort | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967244 | 584 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Ugly, decaying bus-stop benches are an epidemic in South Jeffco, and the county is planning to address the problem by revamping its advertising-vendor policy, officials said at an Aug. 2 meeting with the county commissioners.
The benches at RTD stops, most of which consist of concrete slabs with inexpensive wood, are currently maintained by multiple contractors that pay a fee to the county in exchange for selling advertising on the benches. Still, the county itself is currently responsible for following up on complaints received about languishing benches, a task officials said is a strain on resources.
Consequently, blighted benches are a common sight, officials said. Lamination atop the large wooden backs on which advertising is displayed often peels at the edges following months of exposure to sun and rain. And some of the benches fall apart completely, sitting in disrepair until maintenance workers get around to replacing them.
“We don’t have time to go out and monitor our benches,” said transportation and engineering department director Kevin French. “We respond to (damaged benches) on an as-needed basis.”
By moving from a multiple-vendor system to single contracts for all bus benches and shelters in unincorporated Jeffco, the structures would be consistently maintained, French said. And by increasing requirements placed on the vendor, the county’s 500 benches and shelters could be more uniform in appearance and quality.
“If we’re going to have public transportation, we should clean up these sites as much as possible,” French said.
“This isn’t a new concept. This is something that’s already occurring in Jefferson County,” he said of local municipalities that in recent years have made requirements more stringent for vendors.
Following a bid process, the county is likely to see many if not all of its current benches swapped with higher-quality replacements — possibly metal structures that include armrests, a feature designed to prevent people from lying down on the benches and sleeping.
In addition, requirements could be changed to let benches be placed on sidewalks in certain locations. Though numerous benches currently sit on sidewalks due to space constraints, such placement is technically prohibited.
Currently, the county collects only $20,000 per year in fees from the program, though that amount could increase under a new policy. The existing system resembles a lottery, in which 12 different contractors compete for bus-stop sites as they become available.
Under a new permitting process, a vendor would be locked into a contract with the county for a minimum of five years. The county may consider two separate vendors — one to provide and maintain benches and another for bus-stop shelters. A company would be required to provide the structures and inspect them weekly.
The vendors that currently service the benches and shelters would not have their existing permits renewed.
“Our goal is to have this in place by Jan. 1, before we are up for renewal on any of our current permits,” French said.
Additional upgrades to the new benches and shelters could also include recycling bins or bicycle racks. | <urn:uuid:3cffb281-c0fd-4bb5-a1ff-b41dbd5f9830> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.columbinecourier.com/content/county-zeroes-blighted-bus-benches?quicktabs_2=1&mini=calendar-date%2F2012-12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963981 | 640 | 1.554688 | 2 |
GRAND JUNCTION — In a town-hall meeting marked by civility and a loudly applauding crowd, President Barack Obama touted health care reform as a way to lower the massive federal deficit — a message that struck a chord in a conservative, mostly Republican area of western Colorado.
"If you are tired of this crazy spending in Washington, then you more than anyone should want to reform the health care system," Obama said to rousing applause as he closed a 90-minute speech and question-and-answer session before an estimated 1,600 people in a high- school gymnasium.
While he reassured the mostly supportive crowd about his intentions in overhauling health care, Obama also took some shots at those who have mired talk of health
- Watch Sen. Michael Bennet's town hall meetings Friday in Frisco and Edwards.
- Watch the video taken at President Obama's town hall meeting.
- View photos of President Obama's town hall meeting.
- View photos of protesters at President Obama's town hall meeting.
- Watch Rep. Mike Coffman's town hall meeting Friday in Littleton.
Some of that shouted controversy was taking place outside Central High School while he was speaking.
"I don't want government bureaucrats meddling in your health care, but the point is, I don't want insurance companies' bureaucrats meddling in your health care either," he said to a loud burst of applause.
Obama said the same criticisms were leveled at President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was trying to pass the measure that created Social Security and at Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson when they were pushing for the creation of Medicare.
"These have always boiled down to a contest between hope and fear," he said.
His talk echoed many of the points he hit this past week in town-hall meetings in Belgrade, Mont., and Portsmouth, N.H.: With health care reform, everyone will have insurance.
Reform will prohibit insurers from denying coverage because of medical history. Insurance companies won't be able to cancel insurance because of illness.
Those with insurance they like won't be moved out of their current plans or away from their doctors. And a public option won't compete unfairly with private insurers.
He also touted
Obama came to Grand Junction at the invitation of U.S. Rep. John Salazar, because of all the attention Grand Junction has been getting for a collaborative health care system that has been three decades in the making.
But the physicians and other health care officials who have helped to keep that system operating in Mesa County were not able to speak with Obama directly about their success.
Five local health care providers and Dr. Ben Vernon of Denver, president of the Colorado Medical Society, had been told to keep their cellphones at the ready for instructions prior to or following Obama's appearance, but they did not receive a call.
Steve Hurd, director of the Marillac Clinic for the low-income and uninsured in Mesa County, said in spite of no chance to talk face-to-face, he was happy with what he heard.
"I think he has a grasp of the conundrum," he said. "You have to improve quality while reducing costs."
But Bernadette Brooks, a Grand Junction nurse, and her husband, Dr. Robert Brooks, a cardiac and thoracic surgeon, said they were disappointed in Obama's talk.
"Where was any reference to patient responsibility for their own health?" Bernadette, a Republican, said she wanted to ask the president.
Colorado Senate Republican Caucus chairman Mike Kopp, of Littleton, was quick to issue a criticism
"The president came to power amid a lot of high hopes and goodwill, so he and his allies in Congress must have been surprised by the growing public outcry over Democratic plans for massive federal intervention into our nation's health care. With so many Americans unnerved by Obama's so-called public option, it is all the more troubling that our own governor would so openly embrace the president's wrongheaded agenda."
Gov. Bill Ritter appeared at the town-hall meeting but did not address the crowd. Among those who did get to speak was Zach Lahn, a University of Colorado student, who asked, "How in the world can private insurance compete with public?"
Obama said the opposition has fixated on the public option but is erroneously painting it as a government takeover of the health care system.
Obama pointed to the example of the U.S. Postal Service and its private competitors. "FedEx and UPS are doing a lot better than the post office."
Obama headed to the Grand Canyon following his Grand Junction stop amid a stump tour on health care that is also part family vacation.
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or [email protected] | <urn:uuid:ac9b8df5-c37f-424a-819e-bab4d83c144a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13132468?source=pkg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978638 | 988 | 1.515625 | 2 |
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18 Jan 2013
Journalist Casualties: 1
Media Staff Casualties: 0
Under Investigation: 0
Original headline: Belgian journalist Yves Debay killed in Syria: Aleppo Info. Center
Belgian soldier-turned-war correspondent Yves Debay was killed while covering fighting between Syrian opposition forces and the regime's army in Syria's economic hub city of Aleppo, the Information Center of Aleppo reported early Friday, according to Al Arabiya television.
In 1957, Debay enlisted in the Belgian army in a reconnaissance unit. Two years later he was reportedly promoted to a tank commander.
In 1985 he laid down his arms and carried the pen, making a documentary on the French Army in 1986. He reportedly then became a correspondent for the newly-established Raids magazine for which he covered the Lebanese civil war, the two Gulf wars, the war in Yugoslavia and 201 war in Afghanistan.
In 2005 he established Assault magazine in France.
The Committee to Protect Journalists declared Syria to be one of the world’s deadliest places for journalists.
One of the most memorable and acclaimed international reporter, who died earlier this year while reporting on the regime’s execution of airstrikes and shelling, was Marie Colvin.
Colvin, who was on an assignment in Homs for Sunday Times, was amongst two other foreign journalists who were struck by Syrian forces during combat. The two other foreign journalists murdered were French photojournalist Rémi Ochlik and Japanese reporter Mika Yamamoto.
>> Read the original article here
Source: Al Arabiya | <urn:uuid:355a46dc-8f65-45cd-9346-b0794e08f6fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newssafety.org/casualty_news.php?id=964 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950446 | 328 | 1.507813 | 2 |
FACE YOUR FEARS
It may sound
paradoxical. But the way to be truly free from anxiety is to
adopt an "I don't care" attitude. When you're
not emotionally attached to, say, what someone else thinks about
you. Then you're untouchable! And it's liberating!
So, instead of seeking approval from others, adopt the attitude
are lucky to be around you. In other words,
success is not to be pursued; it's to be
attracted by the kind of person you become. -Face Your Fears, Live Your Dreams! | <urn:uuid:2597a0b5-253e-4370-b4b8-fc952a4fad52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.faceyourfears.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934249 | 127 | 1.578125 | 2 |
A State Department cable released this week by WikiLeaks has revived a lingering debate about whether the 9/11 hijackers may have had a covert “support network” within the United States that was never fully identified by the FBI before its members fled the country.
The February 2010 cable, sent from the U.S. Embassy in Qatar to the State Department, asked that the Department of Homeland Security place a United Arab Emirates citizen on the terrorism “watch list” because of suspected links to the 9/11 attacks. The cable states that the suspect, identified as Mohammed Al-Mansoori, was being investigated by the FBI because he had associated with three Qatari men who had flown out of the U.S. on the eve of the attacks after allegedly spending time casing the World Trade Center and the White House.
The cable was generated by fresh intelligence that the Qataris were planning to return to the U.S. just last year, law enforcement officials told NBC News, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Qataris later abandoned their plans, but the new information prompted the U.S. Embassy in Doha to alert Homeland Security officials to the fact that their U.A.E. associate should be added to the watch-list "as an individual who may pose a threat to civil aviation in the U.S. and abroad," the cable states.
Plot to build 'Hiroshima light switch' weapon foiled: Feds
Two upstate New York men, one of them said to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, plotted to build a truck-mounted, industria...
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U.S. law enforcement officials stressed Wednesday that there was no active investigation of the Qataris and Mansoori. They said that the information about the four men was just one of many leads that were thoroughly investigated at the time and never led to terrorism charges. No evidence has since emerged in detainee interrogations or elsewhere linking Mansoori or the three Qataris -- identified in the cable as Meshal Al Hajri, Fhad Abdulla and Ali Al Fehaid -- to the 9/11 plot, one senior official said.
'This adds to the concerns'
Eleanor Hill, the former staff director for the congressional joint inquiry that investigated the 9/11 attacks in 2002, said the State Department cable reinforces questions that she and others had at the time about the thoroughness of the FBI’s investigation..
“This adds to the concerns that we had eight years ago,” she said. “One of the issues we had was did all the (the hijackers) just show up here or was there in fact a support network that was helping them” prepare for the attacks?
Hill said she doesn’t specifically recall receiving information about the Qataris or Mansoori. But she pointed out that the congressional inquiry ultimately concluded that such a support network had existed, helping the hijackers open up bank accounts, find housing, obtain drivers’ licenses and otherwise prepare for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
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The FBI “kept focusing on whether these people knew about the plot or the attacks,” said Hill. “But our view was, they didn’t need to know about the plots and attacks. The issue was, were they sent to the country and told to help” the hijackers. Given al-Qaida’s penchant for secrecy and compartmentalization, it was likely the members of the network were never told the ultimate purpose of their mission, she added.
The 9/11 commission raised similar questions in its 2004 report, particularly focusing on several associates of two of the 9/11 hijackers in Southern California. (One of them was Anwar Awlaki, a radical imam later deported who has since resurfaced as a major recruiter for al-Qaida in Yemen and a top target of U.S. counterterrorism efforts.)
But asked specifically about the Qataris and Mansoori, Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 commission’s executive director, said in an email: “In 2004, the commission did not have information reliably linking these people to the 9/11 plot. As best we can remember, we were aware of a lead with some of these elements. At that time it had been further investigated and, from what we could learn, it had not panned out.”
The broader issue of a possible support network, which is likely to get more attention as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches later this year, surfaced this week when the London Daily Telegraph published the WikiLeaks-obtained cable, which was sent last February from the U.S. Embassy in Doha.
The “priority” cable requests that Mansoori be added to a watch list as an individual “who may pose a threat to civil aviation.” It identifies him as an individual who is “currently under investigation by the FBI” for “aiding people who entered the U.S. before the (9/11) attacks to conduct surveillance of possible targets and providing other support to the hijackers.”
The cable further identifies the three Qataris as men who flew to the U.S. on Aug. 15, 2001, and then visited the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty, the White House and various areas in Virginia. The men flew to Los Angeles on Aug. 24, where their activities raised the suspicion of hotel staff, the cable states: They paid for their room in cash and requested that it not be cleaned. “Hotel cleaning staff grew suspicious of the men because they noticed pilot type uniforms, several laptops and several cardboard boxes” addressed to various countries in the Middle East as well as Afghanistan, it said. The men also had a smashed cellular phone in the room and computer printouts listing pilot names, airlines, flight numbers and flight times, according to the cable.
“A subsequent FBI investigation revealed that the men’s plane tickets were paid for and their hotel reservations in Los Angeles, Ca. were made by a convicted terrorist,” the cable states. The investigation also revealed that the men spent a week in California, with Mansoori traveling to different destinations in California.
The Qataris were initially booked to fly from Los Angeles back to Washington on Sept. 10, 2001, on an American Airlines flight, but never boarded. (That same plane was hijacked the next day by the 9/11 hijackers and crashed into the Pentagon.) Instead, the Qataris boarded another flight on Sept. 10 from Los Angeles to London. They then flew home to Qatar two days later.
Current and former FBI officials involved in the 9/11 investigation said the bureau was flooded with hundreds of leads after the attacks that ultimately went nowhere. The case of the Qataris falls into that category, they said.
But FBI officials were unable to explain why the cable, sent in February 2010, would have described Mansoori as being “currently under investigation” or say who the “convicted terrorist” was who paid for the Qatari’s plane's tickets.
The cable's author, however, may not have had his facts entirely correct. News reports in 2002 and 2003 identified a Qatari terror suspect who lived in Chesapeake, Va. Fahed Alhajri, a sportscaster for Qatari television who left the country in 2003after being convicted in a student visa fraud scheme. Alhajri, who initially aroused suspicion when he was discovered to have had photos of Osama bin Laden and the World Trade Center in his apartment, as well as a datebook with only one entry -- on Sept. 11.Story: Report: Army was warned about Manning's state of mind
Convicted of visa fraud, not terrorism
According to the reports, he also had paid for the Los Angeles hotel room and plane fare of his brother -- Meshal Alhajri, one of the Qataris identified in the cable -- and two friends, according to the reports. But a May 2003 Philadelphia Inquirer story -- and court records – show that Fahed Alhajri was convicted of visa fraud, not terrorism.
A senior U.S. law enforcement official said that the counterterrorism division of the FBI has requested that officials responsible for the 9/11 probe review the matter. The bureau’s response may be hampered by the fact that most of the agents involved in the initial probe have left the agency, the official said.
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The official also said that, unlike the Qataris, Mansoori remained in the U.S. and was questioned by the FBI in the course of a years-long investigation into his activities. Although the bureau never developed sufficient information to charge him, he was deported by U.S. officials several years after the attacks. “I don’t think people were in love with him,” the official said, implying that the FBI continued to have suspicions about him.
After the State Department cable last year, it was “safe to say” he was added to the U.S. government’s watch-list, the official said.
The three Qataris, however, have never been questioned by the FBI, the official added.
© 2013 NBCNews.com Reprints | <urn:uuid:901a9a43-fd0f-4992-a211-5152fe827ae8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.today.com/id/41400106/ns/us_news-security/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970804 | 2,181 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Before Getting Started With HCG Protocol
Once you have decided to lose weight with HCG, you have to make sure that your endeavor may produce some fruitful results. Focus, Planning
and Preparation are the three things that you need to do before you start HCG diet.
Do Some Research
Prior to start your course, you have to carry out a detailed research to know all about HCG. You are advised to study the "Pounds and Inches", by Dr. A.T.W Simeons. Moreover, there are numerous websites which can guide you in this matter.
Order Homeopthic HCG Diet Drops
There are three important aspects that need to be considered before ordering HCG Diet Drops :
- Make sure the HCG drops are produced in US
- Produced in FDA approved lab settings
- Should have HCG in stock
Find Out How Much HCG You Need To Order
You would generally require 3oz of HCG Diet drops per person for successfully finishing one round of HCG Diet plan which would last for 44 days including the three phases.
Get Mentally Prepared
Losing weight has been a dream for you. You have to be mentally prepared for all kinds of effort that you need to put to get a good looking figure. You have to be ready for the Very Low Calorie Diet that you have to take with the HCG doses. You have to throw away all the unaccepted edibles that contribute in the weight gain.
Prepare Your Diet Plan
You need a diet plan for the VLCD period. You may consult a professional dietician who can help you to formulate the diet plan. You have the option of buying HCG cook books, where you may find number of recipes for the different phases of HCG course.
Buy A Digital Food Scale Or Postal Scale For Precise Measurement Of Food
You need to measure your daily intake of calorie. For that, you may go for buying a digital food scale or postal scale, which would help you to measure the calorie amount in various edibles. Prepare a diary, where you can record the daily diet intake.
Bring A Weight Measuring Machine
You also need to measure your weight everyday and record it. For this purpose, you have to bring a weight measuring machine.
Change The Cosmetics Brand
You may be using some personal care products like moisturizer, conditioner, shampoo etc. which contain fat or oils. In this case, you have to substitute them with oil free water based products.
Forget About Taking Alcohols
If you are habituated of taking alcohols or other intoxicants, you have to promise yourself that you are going to avoid these at least during the HCG intake period. You throw away the stock from your refrigerator. You have to be enough self-determined to do this.
Don’t Be Worried, Be Cheerful
Don’t be tensed thinking about the hardship of the diet course. Be cheerful and think how life will be beautiful after losing the extra pounds. You can go for buying some new clothes, which you always wanted to wear but could not due to your extra fat. When you will see the things, it is sure that your enthusiasm will go up high.
The diet drops have proved to be revolutionary in treating obesity. People have recorded up to 20 pounds of weight using the diet course. Without hampering your normal life, it can help you to gain a body shape that you always wished for. Any one above the age of 16 and attained the puberty stage can take these Homeopathic Sublingual Drops. | <urn:uuid:97e52109-bb9a-4c7d-a2d7-1f21542d1d49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenhcg.com/how-to-get-started-on-hcg-diet.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942506 | 743 | 1.601563 | 2 |
There are resources all around us, if you have a little imagination to find them. When most people look at a vacant lot, they see unusable space. We see a place that can be transformed into a summer day camp environment that can change lives. With a small amount of space and some materials to make it our own, we can give urban youth the support they need. We will take an area of land that is currently not meeting its full potential as a usable space, and transform it into a community PLACE — Parks, Learning, and Community Enhancement.
We believe that every kid should be able to go to camp. The opportunities for growth and social development are endless in a mere five days at day camp — but often this is a luxury many families can't afford. TCC's newest initiative, Neighborhood PLACE, would provide as many low-income families as possible with free childcare and the ability to build their own communities within specific Portland neighborhoods.
TCC will bring its professional camp staff to partner with various neighborhood associations in the Portland Metro area, searching for underutilized or unused spaces that could be transformed into a community place. In addition to providing a thoughtful curriculum for neighborhood youth, we will encourage the participants to decide how to improve their own communities — through a beautification project that could include landscaping, gardening, and artwork. Not only do we hope to impact the families of kids in our Neighborhood PLACE camps, we want to leave a positive mark on all of the communities we encounter. By beautifying the vacant lots and other unused space as a part of the day camp curriculum, we will be helping the neighborhood improve itself.
Once we have beautified our space, we would implement a day camp program that would use Portland, Oregon as the backdrop - utilizing the city and surrounding landscape to engage kids in a unique day camp program. Everything about traditional summer camps would stay the same — only maximized. With a thoughtful curriculum, we believe we can make day camp a meaningful tool for exploration and community building.
- July 8 - 12, 2013 @ Hotel deLuxe Community Event Space
- July 29 - August 2, 2013 @ Warner Pacific College
- August 5 - 9, 2013 @ Kingsley Park
Please consider making a donation through our Neighborhood PLACE paypal today. Every dollar earned will go directly towards sending a child to camp. With your support, we can make Portland a better PLACE to live — one neighborhood at a time! | <urn:uuid:b7ffa603-7073-46cb-bd00-97bd48159842> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tsuga.org/neighborhood/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956724 | 500 | 1.71875 | 2 |
WE EXPECT TO SEE ART IMITATING LIFE, but art intersecting life is another matter altogether. Otherwise jaded urban residents will still sometimes stop to observe performance art as they encounter it in city streets and subways, but this experience is less common for many others who are limited to seeing only the familiar expressions of street musicians and conventionally placed municipally commissioned murals. But if you happened to be driving by Waterburg Plaza in Trumansburg on Friday at dusk, you would have been privy to a large-scale installation by an exciting regionally-based interdisciplinary artist who used the 1840s Waterburg Chapel as her most recent “canvas” or “screen,” on which she projected a startling loop of images designed to distort over the facade.
The intention of interruption is clear, and most welcome and refreshing in a busy culture of on-the-go daily activity. In the last few years, Brummund has done a series of time-based drawings that transform the appearance of an otherwise familiar piece of architecture. For these projects, she enlarges a sketch of a building’s façade and then applies it in individual sheets to cover the entire exterior surface of the building. The inevitable peeling away of these sheets as they float off the building is then videotaped, and the building in its original form is again revealed, so there is a very literal movement from reality to fantastic imaginative vision and back again.
In 2008, Brummond worked with a barn in Groton on a time-based drawing project called Storm Road, and more recently, in August she completed a similar installation at the Visual Studies Workshop Gallery in Rochester. On her blog, Brummund noted that while the Rochester installation was going up, many different kinds of people who passed by were overcome with curiosity and paused to “stop and talk art” as they processed the unusual scene.
“I’m still thinking about that phrase ‘I just had to stop…,’” Brummund writes. “When was the last time I just had to stop and find out what was going on in my neighborhood? in any neighborhood? for something that wasn’t dealing with my property?”
Now Brummund is experimenting with digital projections rather than applied sketches, and the Waterburg Chapel project was the third of its kind. For a November 2009 project at Casa Poli in central Chile, Brummund said the location of the site was on a cliff, where the steep drop-off and strong winds precluded a paper-based installation. Instead, she used video projections on the exterior. “It’s a pretty new series in the sense that I’ve only been doing these for a year,” she said. I’ve created a few, but I have more in mind for this series.”
For the Waterburg Chapel, “I wanted to do a project on Greek revival because it was so prevalent in the US for ideological reasons,” Brummund said. “and because it was easy to build and make look good. The style spread, and it was no longer about philosophy and ideas. So that was interesting, how the style lost meaning along the way.”
Brummund looked at architectural plans and historical images from the US and Europe in gathering material, as well as photographs of the site itself. Recognizable regional buildings that bore marks of the high Greek revival style were incorporated and projected onto the chapel façade, along with other photographic combinations and collages.
In making decisions about the order of images, Brummund said, “I am thinking conceptually, telling a story, or having a discussion, looking at the aesthetic play between one or two (images). You want your hand to be out of it as much as possible … I’m not trying to overwork it, but just see how the building distorts it.”
About 100 people came out to the Friday night showing, Brummond said, and the reactions ranged from those who were particularly interested in the history of the site and the building to those primarily intrigued with matters of form such as how the columns of the projection lined up with the chapel’s. The historical dialogue surrounding the site invites contemplation; while not a lot is known about the congregation of the chapel, Brummund said, the site is noteworthy for being the first place in Ulysses to have an electric lightbulb, as well as a stop on the underground railroad. The chapel was in complete disrepair when it was restored by artist Paul Chambers in 1999; since then, Chambers has also restored the adjacent buggy barn with the help of a preservation award from Historic Ithaca.
What I found most surprising was the way the Waterburg Chapel itself seemed to entirely recede from my perspective as I watched the series of images, which were in turns pleasing, intriguing, recognizable, abstract. Dusk darkened the skies with smoky grays and deep navy blues, which set off the cream and yellow tones of the surrounding goldenrod and Queen Anne’s Lace and enhanced the drama of the visual experience. The images depicted sketched columns, photographed fields, simulated trees, checkered patterns, lines that faded in and out, shapes that blacked out one by one, and shapes that tilted and then uprighted themselves; each slide seemed to tell a multitude of stories, four or five seconds at a time.
Brummund’s time-based drawings have been called “puzzling,” and this description applies to the video projections as well. The impressive scale and apparent technical simplicity of these works evoke simultaneous sensations of familiar and unfamiliar. “You have to piece it together,” Brummund said. “The images don’t always clearly make sense. There’s a visual puzzle to think through and put together. There’s enough dissonance (for the viewer) to want to ask, to want to bother to be engaged, to figure it out, to connect the pieces that aren’t there.”
A video of Karen Brummund’s installation will be shown for Historic Ithaca’s History Cafe on Local Greek Revival, to take place on October 21st at 5:30pm at The History Center.
Danielle Winterton is a fiction writer, frequent contributor to and editor of The Ithaca Post, and co-founding editor of Essays & Fictions. | <urn:uuid:bd44a744-5adc-4687-a06d-a47a1490f684> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theithacapost.com/2010/09/20/chapel-reimagined/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967283 | 1,347 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Tempe, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/23/2012 -- Phone Services, a website that provides information on the country’s Lifeline Assistance program, recently launched its user-friendly and easy-to-navigate site with the aim of spreading the word about government assisted cell phone service and destroying public misconceptions about this helpful service.
The new website, www.phoneservices.us, is devoted to helping cash-strapped Americans learn more about free government cell phones and the programs that make them possible: the Lifeline Assistance and Link Up government mandated programs. These free cell phone programs can be play a vital role in getting out of work Americans the jobs they so desperately need, states the Phone Services website.
As the economy continues to struggle and the unemployment rate remains high, millions of Americans are still out of work. Times are tough for many families, and most have had to cut back on necessities in order to make ends meet. But as anybody who has ever been stranded on the side of the road with car trouble, missed a call from their child’s school telling them their son or daughter was ill, or was unable to connect with a potential employer to get a new job, in this day and age cell phones are not just a “luxury”—they are definitely a “necessity.”
Thanks to the federally mandated Lifeline Assistance and Link Up programs, people who participate in a qualifying government assistance program or live below the poverty line can now have access to a free basic cell phone and up to 250 free cell phone minutes a month.
As an article on the newly launched Phone Services website explained, while the idea of getting a free cell phone may seem too good to be true, it is a reality for the millions of low income and unemployed Americans people struggling to make ends meet. The website is devoted to getting the word out about this amazing program.
“On the Phone Services website visitors can find comprehensive information on the many free cell phone carriers operating in the United States,” an article on the website notes, adding that the Phone Services website also provides details on the best regional free cell phone providers and eligibility criteria for each free cell phone carrier.
“If you want to find out if free cell phone service is available in your state, we have a list of states where free cell phone service is available and step by step instructions for qualifying for service in your state. This really takes the guess work out of choosing the best carrier in your state and qualifying for service.”
The four largest free government cell phone providers currently involved in the helpful Lifeline Assistance program include Assurance Wireless, Budget Wireless, Reachout Wireless and Safelink Wireless. Phone Services has a complete write up on each carrier and detailed instructions for qualifying for service for each one.
Before people apply for free cell phone service, it is advised that visitors take the time to browse through the many helpful articles on the Phone Services website to determine which free cell phone service will meet their needs the best. Depending on which state an applicant resides in, he or she may have one or more options that are available. In these cases, it is best to know the options ahead of time. Not all carriers offer the same services and depending on the person’s phone usage, one carrier may be better than others.
About Phone Services
Phone Services was launched in 2012 with the goal of providing the most detailed information about the nation’s Lifeline Assistance program. The Lifeline Assistance program is a valuable service that can help struggling families make ends meet. For more information, please visit http://www.phoneservices.us
Copyright © 2005-2013 - SBWire, The Small Business Newswire - All Rights Reserved - Important Disclaimer
Contact Us: 888-4-SBWIRE (US) - 920-321-1250 (International) | <urn:uuid:c8cd690b-5d9b-4aed-ab99-5a66111b99ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/free-government-cell-phones-program-is-explained-in-helpful-detail-in-new-phone-services-website-174439.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930902 | 797 | 1.6875 | 2 |
20 Sided Dice, D20
D20, twenty sided dice. These dice are the darling of the RPG industry, ever since the original Dungeons & Dragons was published in 1974. As the basis of D&D and also subsequent role playing games using the D20 system, the 20 sided dice has a commanding place in the world of gaming dice. This category includes standard icosahedron shaped 20 sided dice, as well as crystal shaped D20s, double D20s, giant metal D20s, and more. | <urn:uuid:575c053c-4190-469f-9574-1712603ac772> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gmdice.com/dice/d20?color=53&material=49&style=38 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973829 | 107 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A lot of the old uses for a spare computer (like experimenting with alternate OSs, running test web server, ...) can be done in VMs these days if your main machine is powerful enough (though you obviously don't get to practise dealing with the same hardware issues in the VM environment that you would installing a test OS on bare hardware).
There are some tasks that you don't want on aVM on your main machine though, as they want to be running 24/7, don't want to be disrupted by games and other high power stuff running on the host, and you don't want them affect said high-power stuff either. Things this might count for are running it as a shared file server, a small public web server (assuming your Internet link is such that this is practical) or home mail server.
If the machine is of the same era as your main machine (or others that you have around) then maybe its most practical use for you is as a spare parts service!
Or if you don't already have a good backup arrangement in place for your work files you could perhaps setup an online backup system in it so help safeguard you important files from destruction if, for instance, the hardrives normally holding that data die.
If you don't find a use for it yourself you could try the local school or charity option, though many will not take electrical items (at least officially) because the safety tests that might be required to perform before using it (in a school) or passing it on (via a charity shop or other scheme) might make using it more hassle/expense than it is worth to them.
Another option is freecycle - if your area has a group then someone on there will happily collect it from you. Don't be surprised to see it on eBay or similar afterwards though! Some people get quite annoyed when this happens but I personally don't care - I put things on freecycle to avoid them going into landfill rather than having any human interest in what it gets used for other than landfill (and if it was worth (to me) the hassle selling it, I'd have done that myself). Not wishing to accuse some people on my local freecycle group of not telling the truth, but the massive amount of elderly grandmothers in my area whose TV's apparently blew up the very weekend I listed my old one on freecycle would otherwise suggest there is a major problem with the local electricity supply.
The final option you suggested yourself: recycling. If you take this route make sure the place you send it to recycles the machines in an environmentally friendly way rather than risking its burned remains choking up some river once the rearer metals have been extracted by wage slaves who have to drink from that river.
One very important point before passing the machine on in any way: make sure that any sensitive data (stored passwords, banking details, work related documents they may have composed on the machine, your friends contact details, porn collection, and so on) is properly erased beforehand. A simple "write over with zeros" pass should be sufficient in most cases (who is going to care to use expensive and/or time consuming forensic tests to read the previous data from the zeroed disk?) but you can go much further if you think greater paranoia is warranted. | <urn:uuid:c0627edf-0fdc-43ea-8de2-49a42d18dcfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://superuser.com/questions/32605/what-could-i-do-with-a-spare-computer/32618 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965642 | 670 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Though there are natural methods to improve people’s vision, some of them do not believe. However, those methods can really work. If people do not use such methods but wear glasses, they will suffer from sight loss gradually. The reason is glasses will make eye lazy. On the contrary, doing some natural eye exercises each day can help people a lot in their vision improvement. Here is going to introduce one particular method- palming.
This method is widely employed and welcomed by many people who have some eye problems. This can help relax people’s visual system. Whiling palming, all lights should be blocked out. For people who have bad vision, they will see some colored pictures in their eyes though with their eye closed. This proves that their eyes are greatly strained. How does palming help relax people’s eye? The heat from hands works.
Here are the specific steps of palming. It is good to turn off all lights in a quiet room before palming. Then sit down with relaxation. After that rub hands to warmth. Ultimately, palm the eyes with elbows lying on some objects.
Generally, people should palm their eyes each day if they want to enhance their vision quickly. Just remember, be calm and relaxed whiling palming. People can sit or palm as they like. For example, people can do some mini-palm.
If you want to know more about Vision knowledge, then feel free to visit http://blog.firmoo.com/eye-health
Firmoo.com is the fastest growing online community selling affordable yet high quality prescription eyeglasses, prescription sunglasses and other eyewear. Firmoo’s return and refund policy makes your purchase with Firmoo risk-free. Firmoo offers single vision and bifocal spectacles (the upper part above the middle line is for seeing far) as well as trifocal glasses and progressive glasses to fashion- and budget-conscious customers.
- How long does it take for eye exercises to work ?
- Can eye exercises cure myopia?
- Can eye exercises cure astigmatism?
- Can eye exercises cure presbyopia?
- Are there eye exercises to improve presbyopia?
- What are exercises to enhance peripheral vision?
- What are eye exercises to reduce wrinkles?
- What are eye exercises to make my eyes bigger?
- What are good eye exercises for treating droopy eyelids?
- Are there any good eye exercises for diplopia double vision? | <urn:uuid:c97c5391-ef2e-4fbf-9a28-4f71b07d80ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theeyecareblog.com/eye-exercises-can-really-work.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950282 | 517 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Every building doesn't need to be the same
Bruce DePuyt and I talked Tuesday about the Babe's project, a planned 55-65-unit apartment building one block from Tenleytown Metro which will not have underground parking and whose residents will not be able to get resident parking stickers.
A lot of people are nervous about this proposal, but it really should be a no-brainer. The Office of Planning report said that there are 560 parking spaces available for rent nearby. In just the garage at Cityline at Tenley (the building with the Container Store), there are 110-120 spaces going unused each night, and 50 during the day.
That means that even if almost everyone brought a car and just rented a space, everything would be fine. There's a strange legacy assumption that everyone who parks would need to either park in their own building or on the street, but there are actually a lot of garages in Tenleytown.
Plus, Douglas Development is explicitly planning to market the building to people who don't want to have cars. The Container Store at Cityline only sells containers. That doesn't make it a bad store because it doesn't also sell furniture or clothing. If you want containers, go there. If not, shop somewhere else. Likewise, there's nothing wrong with having a building for people mostly without cars, and other buildings and houses and neighborhoods can serve people with different needs.
Bruce was worried that someone with a car would want to buy a unit from an initial owner (actually, it's an apartment building, not condos, but I forgot to mention that on the segment). Regardless, I pointed out that some apartments in some buildings have decks, or more bathrooms, and others don't. People choose where to live based on the available amenities, and not every apartment, condo or house has to serve every need for every person.
This is a simple economic concept, but it seems to escape many people, like Councilmember Jack Evans (ward 2), who was on the show before me. Bruce asked Evans about the proposal. Evans made the odd argument that a building designed for people to ride transit one block from the Tenleytown Metro is a bad idea because there isn't a Metro station in his own neighborhood of Georgetown.
I think it's a major mistake to do that in the District of Columbia. The reason being that the Metro system, the bus system does not work well enough to get people around in the city. I live in Georgetown. There is no Metro. For me to get around I'm taking buses, transferring, it takes me a long time to get anywhere.This thinking reflects one of the most common cognitive errors we see in policy debates. People extrapolate their own experiences to everyone else. If I need to drive, everyone must. If I need a certain size apartment, everyone must. Therefore, the government must force the market to build those things.
We don't all need the same type of housing. Some people do need, or want, large suburban houses with big yards and 4 bedrooms and 2-car garages. We have a lot of those. Other people would rather save money and time and buy or rent a small unit without parking if it lets them live near the Metro.
Our zoning need not force everything into a single mold. That's what 1960s planners tried to do, and we know it was a failure. With the agreement to withhold residential parking permits to residents of this building, there's no way it can negatively effect anyone else. That means there's no reason to forbid Douglas from constructing the apartments they think the market demands.
- Bikeshare is a gateway to private biking, not competition
- Short-term Washingtonians deserve a voice, too
- Judge denies injunction against closing schools
- Long-term closures: A solution to single-tracking?
- Public land deals have both benefits and pitfalls
- PG planners propose bold new smart growth future
- Metro policy for refunds after delays falls short, riders say | <urn:uuid:aa7cc6d0-f1c8-46d4-ac9c-7a935956328e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/16722/every-building-doesnt-need-to-be-the-same/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974931 | 817 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Dow Corning Achieves 100 Percent Improvement in Data Restoration Time
- Published on Friday, October 26, 2007
- Written by Stanley G. Pope
The limiting factor in the usefulness of a disaster recovery plan is speed; maximizing the speed of backup procedures and minimizing data restoration time is the name of the game. The cost benefits of optimizing these parameters are really incalculable since the whole purpose of the plan is to allow business critical functions to continue with as short an interruption as possible – despite operation-disrupting events.
The importance of fast VM system restoration was brought home to Dow Corning recently during a hotsite test when the company tried, but failed, to complete a partial system restoration of the equivalent of 120 single volumes of data in a 32-hour window. Had the restoration not been under test conditions, a wide variety of business critical business operations running on the VM system would simply not have been available for an extended period of time. The result could have been severe.
Dow Corning installed its VM system in 1983, and since that time applications and users have steadily increased. The system now runs on an IBM 3090-400 and supports 6000 users worldwide.
The hotsite test underscored the firms dependence on the VM systems as well as the need for an improved backup and restore system. Company officials responded by implementing Syncsort/BACKUP (Syback).
Officials initially obtained the product on a trial basis just one month before the next hotsite test. Yet even with that restricted time period, officials were able to shorten the restoration process to just three hours and 25 minutes – an improvement of almost 1000 percent, due primarily to an enormous improvement in physical restoration time. Where the previous product required 3.6 hours to physically restore the 11 volumes , the company needed to IPL the basic system. The new system completed the same process two and one-half times faster – in just 1.5 hours.
Because it took so long to physically restore files with the former system, the company depended on logical backups. But logical restores are much slower to complete than physical restores – even with the fastest system – because they are done on a minidisk by mindisk basis. To restore a system from logical backups requires restoring minidisks individually by manually entering separate restore commands for each minidisk from a hard copy file listing. Physical restores, by comparison, are done cylinder by cylinder and require no file catalogue.
To restore all data to the point of a disaster (daily sync-point) with the former product would have taken weeks – and would have cost the company dearly. The goal of the new business continuation plan (BCP) is complete restoration to the daily sync-point in just 16 hours.
Company officials are confident of achieving this goal because of the speed with which the new system completes physical restores as well as its streamlined logical backup and restore process. In a benchmark test, the former product took 25 minutes to logically back up a user volume comprised of 200-300 minidisks. The new system, by comparison, took half that time.
This fast logical backup time enables the company to improve its daily backup procedures as well. In the past, each daily incremental backup only included data created since the previous daily incremental. While this saved backup time, it greatly slowed restoration because as many as five tapes may be required to complete a daily sync-point restoration.
To further optimize restoration speed, the new system supports up to 10 tape drives simultaneously and features non-specific tape mounts. With an automatic tape loader – each of which support 10 tapes – on each of our 10 tape drives, this means that restoring all 220 tapes used for weekly physical backups only requires that the operator make sure the loaders are filled with tapes.
The cost benefits of optimizing backup and restore procedures are incalculable. Virtually all companies depend on their data resources and should implement business continuation, or disaster recovery plans.
Stanley G. Pope is VM system programmer with Dow Corning Corporation in Midland, Michigan.
This article adapted from Vol. 6 #2. | <urn:uuid:4ed3afc3-53cb-4a66-8809-19479ad5c1a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drj.com/drj-world-archives/data-processing-recovery/dow-corning-achieves-100-percent-improvement-in-data-restoration-time.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949744 | 832 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Here's a quick and easy resolution that you can tick off quickly: sign the petition for the early release of the 1926 census.
But the 100-year-rule was not introduced until many years after the census so, according to those campaigning for its release (myself included), there would be no broken promises or breach of confidentiality involved in releasing the records now.
A compromise solution – of redacting information (ie witholding data) for those born within the last 100 years – is a sensible way forward. This was the basis on which the 1911 census in England and Wales was released early. There wasn't even a murmur of discontent about it, and there wouldn't be in Ireland, either.
To read Steven C Smyrl's full argument in the Irish Times go to www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0103/1224286666643.html.
And then sign the petition! | <urn:uuid:1400828f-d044-4f52-ba8c-f332d3e733be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://irish-genealogy-news.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-year-resolutions-3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964566 | 194 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Posted by Taupe on December 17, 2007
Darby and Joan. Searching, I find your site has no official entry, but has an archived reference to a 1735 ballad. And there's nothing to explain its path into my own reading, apparently to describe an old, comfortable-together couple. What's its history between 1735 and recent times? Did someone popularize it? Is or was it a common phrase? | <urn:uuid:3f886403-5e68-4f69-9134-04084e02e0e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/56/messages/610.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98158 | 88 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Most people who accelerate their mortgage make one extra payment a year. Maybe two. Or they refinance a thirty-year mortgage at fifteen years. Yahoo! Canada has a story of one couple who paid off their $220,000 mortgage in three years.
How did they do it?
When I finally finished my master’s degree in 2000, we had a total debt of $52,000 from my student loans. This is when we made the decision that changed everything. With my new degree, I quickly found a job that paid well, but we decided that rather than rewarding ourselves for all those years of hard work, we would continue living like impoverished students for a few more years. In exchange, we figured we’d get a head start on the rest of our lives.
They worked hard. He clocked 90-100 hours/week at four jobs. She tutored and taught piano outside her regular job as a teacher. They did not change their lifestyle from that which they’d been living as students. They practiced extreme frugality. As a result, they were soon netting over $80,000/year after taxes.
Now this couple owns two cars and a home and are debt-free. Every cent they earn can be put toward retirement, charity, and other goals.
I am in awe.
The couple admits that this sort of choice probably isn’t appealing to everyone:
Let me make it clear that I wouldn’t recommend the number of hours that I worked for most people. But was it worth it for me? Absolutely. It’s been challenging and tiring, but exciting and rewarding too. Right now, I wouldn’t change anything for the world.
The article offers tips for those who might want to make a similar choice:
- Start early. Remember that compound returns favor the young, and that it never gets easier than now.
- Set concrete goals. Know why you’re making sacrifices, and have the courage to work toward them.
- Live on what you were making five years ago. Or ten years ago. You used to get along just fine on a smaller income, right? If you have the ability to revert to that standard of living, you can save a fortune.
- Pay off your mortgage faster. Choose one of the many ways to do this and stick to it.
I’m not ready for such extreme personal finance, but it’s inspiring to read about others who have made these sorts of Herculean efforts.
GRS is committed to helping our readers save and achieve your financial goals.Savings interest rates may be low, but that’s all the more reason to shop for the best rate.Find the highest savings interest rate from Ally Bank, Capital One 360, Everbank, and more.
SEARCH FOR RECENT ARTICLES | <urn:uuid:2ac67fa5-f2c8-4d74-894d-49d902a19683> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2006/08/03/extreme-personal-finance-how-to-pay-off-your-mortgage-in-three-years/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976458 | 594 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Campaign against Campus Alcohol Abuse Funded
The State University of New York (SUNY) has received a $100,000 grant to begin a campaign against alcohol abuse on campuses. The money will be used to help fund a director of alcohol and drug prevention to lead the campaign.
The director will help campuses develop individualized plans to combat the problem through education, enforcement, treatment, non-alcohol events and other strategies. The director will also identify successful programs and share information about them with other campuses.
"It is our goal to assist campuses in the development and implementation of programs and policies that are effective and responsive to changes in student populations over time," said SUNY Chancellor Robert King.
Research has demonstrated dramatic drops in the consumption of alcohol on American college campuses. However, the rate of heavy drinking (including so-called binge drinking) remains unacceptably high.
"I am encouraged by SUNY's efforts to face this difficult issue head-on, and excited to support its efforts statewide," said former U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari, a graduate of the state University at Albany and chairwoman of The Century Council, the group that provided the $100,000.
The Century Group, a nonprofit education agency funded by liquor producers, has invested over $130 million since 1991 to fight drunk driving and underage drinking.
- SUNY launches campaign against campus alcohol abuse. Newsday, October 20, 2004; Century Council Kicks-off National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week; Alcohol Education Programs in Full Swing on Campuses Across the Country, Century Council press release, October 18, 2004; Ertelt, Paul. SUNY gets $100K grant to fight drinking. Oneonta Daily Star, October 21, 2004.
filed under: College
Need help with an alcohol or drug problem?
Someone at the highly effective St. Jude program can help you. | <urn:uuid:3454a992-b1a0-4270-b2ae-06588206de29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/InTheNews/UnderageDrinking/1100888197.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958282 | 386 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Facebook, Social Media and the Decision Makers of Tomorrow
[By Tony Popowski]
I’ll never forget it – It was the year 2004 and I was a freshman at Villanova University. It was a bright and sunny day outside and I had just gotten back to my room from history class. I walked by my roommate who was furiously tapping his controller playing the videogame Halo and sat down at my desk with a brain exhausted from analyzing 16th century Chinese civilization. I proceeded to open my computer and checked my email. At the top of my Inbox was a message with the subject line “Facebook.” I opened up the email and read:
We cordially invite you to join a new social networking site called Facebook. Facebook allows you to upload personal information into your profile and connect with your classmates and friends. You can update your connections with…
Okay, so that might be a little paraphrased, but you get the idea. Fast-forward to 2010: everyday when I get up in the morning, I check my Facebook Page. When I make plans for the weekend, I message my friends on Facebook. If I want to know when someone’s birthday, I check Facebook. Admittedly, I also use Facebook to find out who’s dating who (or who’s breaking up). Finally, if I want to know more about a particular subject or information about a company, I look for their Facebook page… and if a company doesn’t have a Facebook page, I wonder why.
The other day, I was at a networking event telling this same story. Bradley, an older businessman not too keen on social media, said:
Well you’re young. You’re not a decision maker, so why should I care if you’re on Facebook or not? I don’t get this social media fad… it just doesn’t apply to business.
Unfortunately, this is a very common attitude I see. However, I was more than happy to respond. I said:
Bradley, I completely understand your concern. However, I want you to take three things into consideration before we discuss this issue further:
• Facebook isn’t for college students anymore. Facebook has over 500,000,000 users now (that’s bigger than the populations of Japan, Russia, Nigeria and Turkey combined). Over 60% of those users are 26 and older. Not only is that number continuously rising, but the fastest growing age bracket of Facebook is people ages 55 and higher. In fact, new Facebook profiles for women ages 55 and older grew 175% in the past two years. (Yes, I talk about these stats so often I actually do know them by heart).
• It is true that I’m not the decision maker in my company, but does that mean I don’t have any influence? If I learn about something that I believe is going to cut costs or help our team improve, I am going to tell my Director. She, the decision maker, values my opinion. Think about commercials for children’s toys. They’re very flashy and fun and appeal directly to children (influencers), not parents (decision makers). While children don’t buy the toys directly, they run up to their parents and scream, “I WANT A NEW NINJA TURTLE TOY!” The same thinking applies.
• Finally, the most important point, I’m not the decision maker today – but I will be in the future. My generation lived through the technology boom. I made up my first screen name when I was 10 and haven’t turned back since. Facebook and social media is a daily routine for me and everyone else I know.
I concluded by asking Bradley, “What is your business going to do in ten years when I, both the decision maker and an active social media user, buy into your competitor’s brand through Facebook and social networking sites while you’re not on there?”
Needless to say, Bradley didn’t have a response. I could tell that what I said resonated with him, which is great. It’s important to remember that business is constantly changing, especially marketing and sales. Keeping an open mind and trying new techniques like Facebook and social media will help you connect with your target market, the influencers of your target market and your future target market.
Facebook Press Room Statistics
Dispelling the Youth Myth - Five Useful Facebook Demographic Statistics
SFN Report: Women 55 and Older - Fastest Growing Facebook Demographic | <urn:uuid:e64981fb-6359-4253-a4d5-c1f0c8190190> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.grmwebsite.com/blog/bid/42322/Facebook-Social-Media-and-the-Decision-Makers-of-Tomorrow | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947932 | 959 | 1.75 | 2 |
GlobalGiving is a website which allows people to invest in worthy causes by donating money. It’s a charitable website but unlike other charities you can actually decide what the money goes towards. Almost all of the projects that you can fund are situated in developing countries. You can search for projects based on where they are or the type of project. There is a hierarchy on the site where project leaders can post their own projects. They need to create a description detailing what they need and they can then receive donations. It’s possible for users to bid on as many projects as you want. You don’t need to sign up for an account to use the site; you can donate money without needing to sign up. If you do decide to sign up then this will make it much easier to donate to projects in the future.
Global giving was founded by Dennis Whittle and Mari Kuraishi. The company is based in Washington DC in USA.
There are many different ways that you can donate money to worthy causes however most of these are regular charities. This means that it’s not possible to decide exactly what the money is spent on. Thanks to global giving it is possible to decide exactly which projects you want to donate to. It is changing the way that people donate money to worthwhile causes. It is also making giving money much more helpful because most of the money is supposed to get to the project country within 60 days. It’s also worthwhile knowing that you are funding the actual project rather than the overheads for the charity in question.
The website isn’t quite as attractive as many other sites but that doesn’t mean that it’s any less user friendly. All of the projects are split into sections. You can either browse the projects based on the type of project, or the location of the project. You can then search using keywords to find the types of project you are interested in. Once you have found a worthy cause it’s just a matter of entering your payment details. You can also gift the donation to someone else or have it in their memory.
You can search through the projects without signing up; even if you want to donate then you don’t actually need to register for an account. By creating an account you can save all of your details which will make it much easier to donate in the future. Creating an account isn’t very difficult and doesn’t take long at all and it’s a very simple process. As soon as you have registered you will then be signed into your account and no activation is required.
GlobalGiving is a charitable website and so is completely free to use. By the look of things all of the money gets donated to the project. It’s not quite clear how the website itself makes money.
GlobalGiving is aimed at people who like donating money to worthy causes but don’t like conventional charities. The problem with conventional charities is that you can’t normally decide what the money gets donated to. A lot of the money that’s donated also goes towards the running of the charity however this isn’t the case with globalgiving. | <urn:uuid:5fd6072c-bd3e-4004-b240-9d5b285114c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://globalgiving.appappeal.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966942 | 649 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Bigots, as this Observer article indicates
, can get support from other bigots as well, and it's disturbing as can be:
One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving, the controversial historian who for years denied the Holocaust took place.
Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as Britain's largest Muslim civil rights group, sent money to Irving and urged Islamic websites to ask visitors to make donations to his fighting fund.
Bukhari contacted the discredited historian, sentenced this year to three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial, after reading his website. He headed his mail to Irving with a quotation attributed to the philosopher John Locke: 'All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to stand idle.'
In one email Bukhari tells Irving: 'You may feel like you are on your own but rest assured many people are with you in your fight for the Truth.' Bukhari pledges to make a donation of £60 to Irving's fighting fund and says that he has asked 'a few of my colleagues to send some in too'. He also offers to send Irving a book, They Dare to Speak Out, by Paul Findley, a former US Senator, who has attacked his country's close relationship with Israel. Bukhari says Findley 'has suffered like you in trying to expose certain falsehoods perpetrated by the Jews'.
In a follow-up letter, Bukhari writes: 'Here is the cheque I promised. Good luck, if there is any other way I can help please don't hestitate to call me. I have also asked many Muslim websites to create links to your own and ask for donations.'
Bukhari confirmed sending the letters in 2000. 'I had a lot of sympathy for anyone who opposed Israel,' Bukhari told The Observer said. 'I wrote letters to anyone who was tough against the Israelis - David Irving, Paul Findley, the PLO."I don't feel I have done anything wrong, to be honest. At the time I was of the belief he [Irving] was anti-Zionist, being smeared for nothing more then being anti-Zionist.
'The pro-Israeli lobby often accused people of anti-Semitism and smear tactics against groups and individuals is well known. I condemn anti-Semitism as strongly as I condemn Zionism (in my opinion they are both racist ideologies). I also believe that anyone who denies the Holocaust is wrong (I don't think they should be put behind bars for it though).'
One has to wonder how many more bigots will be dishing out support for other bigots as well. The one spoken about above is certainly one real cretin. Read the above and the article in full and you'll notice that Bukhari is trying to weasel out of the blame in classic taqqiya
fashion. This is one truly disgusting man. | <urn:uuid:73fcc78e-e19b-45fe-8e42-4ff4edaf59d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2006/11/british-muslim-activist-sent-funds-to.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982657 | 609 | 1.578125 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (WUSA) -- 46 days until Christmas and I know you are starting to pull together your holiday shopping list.
Shopping online has become a favorite way to snag a great deal, but not all internet merchants are created equal. Low prices can blind consumers from spotting fakes.
Americans love deals on designer items and scammers know it. Clothing, shoes and handbags are among the most popular items for counterfeiters, so do some homework before you buy.
Before you go ahead and jump on that deal, check out a merchant -- especially one you're unfamiliar with -- ahead of time. Go online, put the merchants name in a search engine, and the words "rip-off" and "complaint" and see what other people that have dealt with them are saying.
Some other tips:
- Look for security features like a seal of a sticker a real manufacturer will add. It's hard to reproduce.
- Some major labels offer advice on avoiding counterfeits on their company websites, so browse their sites first.
- Beware of low prices simply too good to be true.
- Use a credit card for purchases, which can offer greater protection than a debit card in the event of fraud.
If you do get duped, don't try to resell the merchandise. Even if you tell somebody, this isn't a real "whatever" handbag but it's still a great bag, you're still liable. You could really get in trouble, you could really get prosecuted. So don't resell it. | <urn:uuid:a1e9163a-8678-4f0a-9539-afd08dccce6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wusa9.com/consumer/article/228704/37/How-To-Avoid-Counterfeit-Products-While-Online-Shopping | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954218 | 314 | 1.796875 | 2 |
By CARL SMITH
Starkville School District trustees will hold a second reading of a new Internet policy aimed at safeguarding students from inappropriate content and educating all age groups about proper online behavior at their 6 p.m. meeting on June 5.
The board will discuss the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in June and is expected to implement any changes necessary to its current policy to adhere to the act. SSD Director of Technology David Hill said the only difference between the district’s current Internet usage policy and the incoming CIPA adjustment is a district-led teaching aspect aimed at educating students to proper Internet behavior and cyberbullying.
School districts which fall under CIPA guidelines may not receive E-rate discounts until they are certified under the policy. CIPA states schools must block or filter Internet access to obscene materials or those which are illegal or harmful to minors. Schools must also adopt policies to monitor students’ on-campus Internet usage and activities.
SSD Assistant Superintendent Walter Gonsoulin estimates E-rate funding pays 80 percent of district Internet services and other technology expenses.
“In the previous years, all we had to do was have a filter in place which prevented (viewing) unauthorized materials (and) sharing of personal information,” Hill said. “Because the Internet is so broad … kids are now coming in contact with anybody. There’s no 100 percent (Internet) filter. (CIPA) gives them a mechanism … (so) students can proactively handle (inappropriate) situations.”
While CIPA guidelines only affect students, faculty and staff using school district Internet access, Hill said associated educational efforts will focus on proper Internet behaviors during on- and off-campus usage.
School districts around the state are working with the Mississippi Educational Technology Leaders Association to develop age-appropriate videos which will educate students on proper Internet behavior, he said. The videos will be available for students in the fall.
“The real issue is the school district can only monitor Internet activity while at school. We know cyberbullying happens outside (of school district facilities). We want to educate kids on how to react to this whether they’re at school or home,” Hill said. “We’ll put information out as we can. It’s educational for parents to look at this information and discuss it with their children. Cyberbullying is something new to all of us. Parents and the community need to be aware of these activities.”
While SSD filters its Internet access to students, faculty and staff, administrators can grant more access to employees who provide a legitimate research or educational need.
“It’s a good policy, and I think it’s something that will be extremely beneficial to the students, faculty and the community,” Hill said.
Trustees will also hold a second reading of the district’s new building-naming policy in their June meeting. In April, board members expressed a need for building-naming guidelines after Starkville High School athletic director Stan Miller approached the district about renaming its baseball field after retiring coach Danny Carlisle. The board unanimously approved the name change without a formal policy on the matter.
The proposed building-naming policy states any motion by the board to name a facility in honor of someone must have unanimous support for approval. The policy also states the individual must have made major contributions to the school system through either financial support, work which led to the improvement of school facilities, the advancement of student learning, enhancement of instruction or by bringing acclaim or distinction to the district.
“School facilities named for a person will retain that person’s name as part of the building’s name for as long as the facility is used for instructional purposes by the school district,” the policy states. “Exceptions to this stipulation may be made by the board at its discretion.”
SSD administrators said the general public is invited to attend the meeting and ask questions about either potential policy. | <urn:uuid:0105e40f-c3a0-465b-a53c-637c735d8073> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://starkvilledailynews.com/print/10145?quicktabs_4=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952111 | 840 | 1.8125 | 2 |
VOL. 127 | NO. 206 | Monday, October 22, 2012
A story from The Memphis News
On newsstands throughout the city
By Bill Dries
The Soulsville arrows beneath the Bellevue Boulevard railroad overpasses near Walker Avenue point north and south. It is the first indication that you are in an area where several possibilities can coexist.
The arrows and painted portraits of Stax and Hi Records legends on the concrete walls of the underpass are showing some wear. And in a way, they look better as the brighter colors fade and blend with the walls. Soulsville is part of the northern end of South Memphis, where the line that separated black and white began in the Memphis of an earlier time. It’s where the line was enforced. And it is where it crumbled with a profound cultural impact.
These days, Soulsville is a set of projects, some across the street from each other with others a block away in a part of South Memphis with a heavy concentration of history, poverty, ambition and creativity spanning generations and fainter racial lines. The giant milk bottle atop the old decaying dairy building on North Bellevue Boulevard near Walker Avenue was one of the last reminders of a thoroughfare that once bustled with commerce. It was lifted in September from atop the badly neglected building for restoration and a new home at the Children’s Museum of Memphis.
The neon sign of a strutting pig at Bellevue and McLemore was gone with the rest of Leonard’s Pit Barbecue, including the silver dollars in the floor, in 1991. It was not too long after the Stax Records building had been demolished farther west on East McLemore Avenue. The demolition of the historic music studios more than 20 years ago was the lighting of a long civic fuse that has led the multipart redevelopment of what is now called the Soulsville area to a critical juncture.
“Soulsville” was a slogan on the old Stax marquee at the height of the record label’s fortunes. A replica of the Stax building was completed and opened as the Stax Museum of American Soul Music in 2002. It includes a charter school and a music academy.
“It wasn’t just to pay homage to history. It was to be able to create the next generation of musicians, the next generation of leaders,” said Mark Wender, the CEO of the Soulsville Foundation. “We want to be financially independent and be able to serve many more children. There’s a tremendous need for it.”
Within sight of Stax, land has been cleared for a new residence hall for LeMoyne-Owen College. The college of more than 1,000 students has doubled its enrollment in six years.
The collection of crumbling buildings and overgrown lots across McLemore, once the first sight that greeted visitors who emerged from the front doors of the museum, has been replaced by the brick consistency of the Soulsville Towne Center.
The center, 68,000 square feet of mixed-use space in two buildings, is the project of the LeMoyne-Owen College Community Development Corp.
“Two things I’ve learned,” said CDC director Jeffrey Higgs. “Nobody wants to be first and I know more about the grocery business than I ever wanted to know.”
Higgs is cautiously optimistic after having a supermarket anchor tenant for the part of the retail center built on what was the site of the old Jones Big Star grocery store. That was in 2008 just before the recession.
“The bottom fell out of everything,” Higgs said. “We lost our grocery tenant. We lost some of our other tenants. What we’ve been doing is working very hard to bring tenants in.”
What Higgs still hopes will be a supermarket is now called The Magnet and will be the site of a yearlong residency by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, which will perform six times in the neighborhood.
And in a matter of weeks, Higgs, now toughened by the uncertainties of the past, believes he will have a restaurant.
“We’re working with a food service group to bring a restaurant in,” Higgs said cautiously without revealing any brand names. “They are out of Georgia and they do food service for schools and places all over the country. … That is important because there’s just no food over here. There’s the Four Way Grill and that’s about it.”
Existing tenants include the education advocacy group Stand For Children, a pediatrics clinic operated by the Memphis Health Center, and the offices of the Royal Phoenix Hotel group, which is still trying to get a luxury hotel built by FedExForum.
Meanwhile, across McLemore, Wender is about to start construction on an all-purpose building that will include a place for Music Academy and charter school students to eat lunch, take gym classes and have assemblies.
“The talent has not gone anywhere. It’s still here,” Wender said. “We’re trying to nurture and grow that talent to be the place that people can receive a world-class education and have opportunity to be the next American Idol. But we don’t care if they become the next American Idol. We want to make sure that they are successful in life. That’s our goal.”
The museum’s exhibits include a map of the Soulsville neighborhood that shows where much of the talent that made Memphis music internationally known lived in the area. The charter school has a 100 percent graduation rate with all of its students attending college. Every senior at the music academy has been accepted to college.
“It’s an evolving process,” he said. “At some point, people may look at this neighborhood as being the center for education reform in the United States just like it was the center of the greatest music ever produced.”
“The talent has not gone anywhere. It’s still here. We’re trying to nurture and grow that talent to be the place that people can receive a world-class education and have opportunity to be the next American Idol. But we don’t care if they become the next American Idol. We want to make sure that they are successful in life. That’s our goal.”
– Mark Wender
CEO, Soulsville Foundation
The plans are about more than bringing visitors to the area. It was five years ago that Reginald Milton, the executive director of the South Memphis Alliance, excitedly approached city Housing and Community Development Director Robert Lipscomb.
“Robert, I’ve got a great idea,” Milton told Lipscomb. “It’s a laundromat.”
The laundromat is across Bellevue from the old dairy. As the milk bottle was moved in September, workers in the laundromat were working in the shadow of the media attention that the moving icon got.
The alliance, which is the building’s next-door neighbor, didn’t like plans for a nightclub in the building. The organization is, at its root, a social services agency that works with the state Department of Children’s Services.
“How do you provide preventive services to people who don’t know they need the services?” was the question Milton was pondering again when the laundromat came to mind. “What we decided to do was go where they are and guess where we found them? – at laundromats. … They are in a good mood and they are conducive to preventive services.”
The Assisi Foundation of Memphis Inc. and the city, with federal funding, helped with $1 million to bring in new equipment and create a space for the different agencies in the laundromat.
The new 25,000-square-foot center that the Alliance plans to build on the dairy land with a $6 million capital campaign is to house several nonprofit agencies. But the structure has another purpose – part of an eastern gateway to Soulsville.
It will indicate there is more to come with a turn west onto Walker or McLemore avenues. And the city is putting up the money for the dairy demolition toward that goal.
“It’s important to get people to turn that corner,” Milton said. “And they won’t do so if they see blight on the main street.”
Farther south on Bellevue, the city of Memphis is working with another nonprofit on improvements to Jesse Turner Park, specifically the baseball fields that border the street including a spring and summer baseball league program.
LeMoyne-Owen College is marking the 150th anniversary of the city’s only historically black college. The college has called Walker Avenue its campus since 1917, and college president Johnnie Watson seldom acknowledges borders between the college and the surrounding neighborhood when he talks about the campus.
“I want this campus to be accessible to the community. If they have barriers in the way they don’t come to get services,” he said, noting that senior citizens in the nearby College Park residential area eat at the college cafeteria. The prices work for them as well as the college’s bottom line.
“They are part of us,” Watson said the week after the campus hosted the first concert of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s season and drew a capacity crowd. Watson talked to several long time-Memphians in the audience who had never been on the campus, some admitting they didn’t think the area was safe.
“This is a historically black college located in the heart of South Memphis. People would be surprised at how safe this campus is,” Watson said, adding that he is anything but naïve about the perception and past reality. “The word has obviously gotten out. You can’t put a foot on this campus without being on camera. … We have round-the-clock security.”
Higgs also works on preconceived ideas.
“I run into people today who don’t know that LeMoyne Gardens was torn down,” he said of what was arguably the most feared public housing development in the city that was demolished in the late 1990s and replaced with the College Park mixed-use, mixed-income area.
“I understand people have their biases and are a little apprehensive,” Higgs said. “I wouldn’t be in a city and not know what’s going on.” | <urn:uuid:5107730b-1989-4736-affe-e2955085907a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2012/oct/22/soul-map/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967416 | 2,227 | 1.773438 | 2 |
An Interview with Jack Hart, Author of Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction
Jack Hart is a former managing editor and writing coach at the Oregonian. He is the author of A Writer’s Coach: An Editor's Guide to Words That Work, and his most recent book, Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011.
Q: You have worked with many writers and journalists over the years. What do you think is the biggest change they have faced in the last twenty years?
A: Unquestionably, it’s the growth of the Internet, which has affected both writing and the marketing of writing. Daily journalists, for example, often file multiple breaking-news reports online as they work their way toward a more complete print or broadcast report. (That’s great for news junkies, but it’s distracting for journalists, and it cuts down on reporting time.) Freelancers query by e-mail, rather than with polished hard-copy proposals. (That can speed things up, but it can also detract from depth and thoughtfulness.) And journalists often produce for online presentation in multiple media, including print, audio, video, and still photography (which brings more creative skills into play, but dilutes the focus on good writing).
Q: What hasn’t changed?
A: The value of good writing and savvy storytelling.
Q: What compelled you to write Storycraft, and how did you go about getting it published?
A: This is the book I wish I’d had when I first tackled nonfiction narrative. I spent decades acquiring the storytelling skills the book explains, and I wanted to make acquiring them easier for other writers and editors than it was for me.
I sold the book by writing an extensive, detailed proposal that included the standard proposal topics—the core idea, the target market, the competition, sample chapters, and so on. Then my agent presented it to publishers appropriate to the topic. My connection with the University of Chicago Press and my UCP editor, Paul Schellinger, was the happy result.
Q: As a reader and an editor, what elements do you think are most necessary to a compelling story?
A: Sympathetic protagonists, challenging complications, universal themes, lively action lines, and intriguing settings.
Q: You’ve noted “an explosion” of narrative nonfiction in the past twenty or so years—what cultural forces led to the popularity of this form?
A: The growth of worldwide communication networks and the proliferation of media nourished a hunger for stories based in reality, a trend reflected in everything from reality TV to Facebook to docu-drama to serious book-length nonfiction. At the same time, writers helped feed that hunger by developing increasingly sophisticated skills for telling nonfiction stories. They now compete successfully with fiction writers in terms of literary technique. And the fact that their stories are true gives them an unbeatable advantage.
Q: In Storycraft you largely discuss examples of long-form journalism; do you think the tenets you prescribe for narrative nonfiction have applications in other forms of writing, such as memoir or fiction?
A: Absolutely. Story theory is universal. Learn the basics, and you can apply them to any form of storytelling.
Q: What is the best writing or editing advice that you have ever received?
A: The best editing advice taught me that good editors collaborate with writers, working as partners striving for common goals rather than as bosses and employees. The best writing advice taught me to eliminate every word and every detail that failed to advance the story in an essential way.
Q: What advice can you give writers who want to get their work published?
A: Plan thoroughly, thinking about your purpose, audience, and market before you begin writing. Then communicate those goals clearly to potential publishers. | <urn:uuid:df083a22-4561-4698-a7bf-d2fd98312676> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/shopTalk/12OctShopTalk.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959461 | 808 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Field Hockey- One of the Best Sports Out there.. For the Absoulute Hottest!! Girls!!
A sport that takes speed, endurance and perseverance, to score a goal, YES!!.. IT IS HOCKEY!!.. just on the FIELD.. (FIELD HOCKEY), WITH SIMILAR rules..WITH similar sticks, and no the Girls are NOT Lesbians..THEY work hard and during conditioning they practice every single minute of every single day..
For Field Hockey Players there is NO OFF SEASON
Field Hockey players are #1, and it is ONE of the BEST SPORTS out there!!
So if you date a Field Hockey player (girl) DON'T ever let her go!!
AND AGAIN THE GIRLS ARE NOT LESBIANS.. THEY'RE STRAIGHT!!
AND JV. AND VARSITY FIELD HOCKEY ARE AWESOME !!
Hockey has long been the domain of Asian countries. European and North American countries have never been too keen on that sport, although some European countries do indulge in the game. For those of you who do not know much about the game, it comprises two teams of eleven players each. There is a small hard disc known as the puck, which the players have to manoeuvre into the opponent's goal post using their hockey sticks. The goalkeeper has to try his best to save the goal and thereby prevent the opponent team from scoring. Each team has the objective of making the maximum number of goals within a specified time limit, which is the duration of the match.
Kinds of HOCKEY:
Hockey today, is just not restricted to the regular game played on a grassy field or an artificial tuft. There are various kinds or versions of hockey that people play these days. The other types of hockey, which are quite popular, are.
• Ice hockey
• Roller hockey
|Field Hockey images|
Definitely one of the coolest sports ever. Played by the most in-shape, athletic, and determined girls. Involves a stick (wood or composite), a cork and plastic ball, and a goal cage. Played with sometimes 7, sometimes 11 players of the field including the goalkeeper.
The goalkeeper has got to be the bravest, awesomest, hottest girl ever to stand in goal like that and let heavy balls be shot at her. Simply awesome.
Stupid person 1: woah, what's that sport called? it looks soo awesome. they're uniforms kick ass!
Stupid person 2: dude, i have no idea, but those are some pretty hot determined looking girls over there.
Awesome Educated person: Dumbasses, that's just the best sport in the world right there, with the hottest, awesomest girls ever created. Damn.
** All in awe**
Kick ass sport played mainly by girls (in America) who aren't afraid to run around in skirts and get hit by field hockey sticks.
NOT played by all lesbians. In fact, all the girls i know who play it have sexy boyfriends.
Let's go play some field hockey.
A game in which 11 players on each team play for two 35 minute halfs. similar in many ways to soccer. ecept players cannot kick the ball. sticks are used (similar to ice hockey sticks)
ball often travelover 90mph and serious injuries can occur quite often.
not many people seem to understand the sport even though, it is for both men and women and is actually to worlds second most played sport.
err... a game of hockey!!
The most grueling, intense, rigorous sport ever created. 11 girls fight as hard as they can, run as fast as they can, and get past as many defenders as they can before driving the orange ball into the cage (aka- goal). It is extremely demanding, yet extremely rewarding.
rage in the cage
The Stonington High School FIELD HOCKEY team has been ECC champs for 13 (going on 14) consecutive seasons.
Background - A sport played widely in Europe and Asia since the late 18th/early 19th century. More dominantly played by females in America, it is a sport played by both men and women. As the years passed, the equipment for this sport has evolved greatly. Known simply as 'hockey' in countries other than America, field hockey is often denounced as a 'girly sport', a predominanly lesbian sport, or as not really hockey. However, none of this is true. It is an olympic sport, and is among the top 5 most played sports in the world.
The Game - The game consists of two teams of 11 (including a goalie), trying to get the ball into the opposite goalcage. There are two 35-minute halves in collegiate and international play, and two 30-minute halves in varsity high school play. Field hockey is known to have alot of fouls, but most are called just to keep the game safe. Many different types of hits are allowed, such as drives, pushes, flicks, scoops, drags, chokes, slaps, and chips.
Equipment - The sticks are flat on one side, which is the only side you may hit the small, hard, plastic ball with. The stick may be composed of wood or of composite material, usually a combination of glassfibre, carbon, and aramide.
Field hockey is a very fun and competitive sport.
A difficult, physically exhuasting sport played by aggressive and determined girls and sometimes guys. There are usually 11 players on the field (right back, center back, left back, right mid, center mid, left mid, right wing, right link, left link, left wing and goalie.) The point of the game is to drive the plastic/cork ball into the opposing teams' goal. Those who say field hockey isn't a real sport, you are truly ignorant. You must be able to endure the constant sprinting and be able to stop, dribble, slap, push and drive the ball for long distances. You must be able to endure the constant pain of places where you've been hitten by a stick or ball and sprains. Field Hockey players DO NOT play because we want to feel important, nor is it for the entertainment of male watchers. Players play for the love of the game, which is the only way you can stand 6 month hockey season (pre-season starting in June and the season ending in November.) The game has nothing to do with sexuallity, out of the 50 some people on my team, every single one of us is straight. Although it is true that many Field Hockey players wear skirts to play, some wear shorts, meaning the game has nothing to do with wanting to see other girls in short skirts. If anybody disrespecting Field Hockey played for just one game, you would be amazed by people who can stand it for a whole season.
Stephaine: What are you doing after school?
Julia: I've got field hockey practice for the next three hours.
Stephanie: Man, you still play that? It was so hard I had to quit during pre-season. You must really love the sport, I respect that.
THE most awesome sport in the entire world. Honestly. No lesbians on either of my teams, its not that common. 11 players on a side. Have amazing lower body strength due to hardcore conditioning. Bend over often. Play low and are good with their stick skills. Use one side of our sticks which are either wood or composite. Every year there is a festival at either Palm Springs, Ca or West Palm Beach, FL. This is where every college coach goes to watch and recruit. In palm beach, there were 28 full size (100yds long, 65 yds wide) fields on 6 polo fields. It was the best experience ever.
There is also another form of hockey-which is indoor.
Indoor is much better than outdoor. Playing very very low requires lots of leg and butt muscles, leading to a very nice ass that is fondly referred to as a hockey butt. Moving on, Indoor is much cooler. There is also a national tournament at the end of the indoor season...like the outdoor one, but not as fun. There is U12, U14, U16, and U19 for my club team, but also U21 and i think there are younger than 12 teams too.
Field hockey is a huge sport in Europe, but it is gaining popularity in America too. Only the cool kids play field hockey. It takes more finesse to play hockey than it does to play the retarded sport of lacrosse.
Jeff- Dude, Do you realize that every girlfriend you have had is a field hockey player?
Spencer- Well, If you wore a skirt and had an amazing ass and leaned over all the time, I'd do you too | <urn:uuid:a242c91f-26c1-45fc-9728-dc736e496556> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Field%20Hockey&defid=4233568 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968333 | 1,850 | 1.671875 | 2 |
December 29, 2005
Kudos to Darcy Vebber for her evocative account of childhood Christmases in the Arizona desert and her spiritual journey to Judaism as an adult ("A Midnight Clear," Dec. 23), particularly fitting this year, when Christmas Day and the first night of Chanukah happen to coincide. The "surrender of her past," as she terms it, is described with poetic grace and an open heart exquisitely attuned to the feelings that underlie most religious experience: "the longing for peace and the connection to something holy."
Throughout the essay, Vebber touches on what was left behind -- her family names, her Christian identity -- without regret while retaining a deep acknowledgment of the power of Christmas and the early, indelible imprint it made (and continues to make) on her sense of the sacred.
The author's words remind us, most especially in a world so torn by sectarian religious violence, that true Holiness knows neither dogma nor denomination. That the manifestation of the Divine in the material world, whether it be to Moses on Sinai or to the Apostles in the thrall of Pentecost or to Mohammed rapt in the Ghar-i-Hira -- to each of us everyday when we look into the eyes of our fellow human beings, is an expression of transcendent, unconditional love, not of the rigid intolerance, ignorance, hatred and paranoia that only serve to limit the Infinite and threaten to fracture the world community beyond repair. Amen to Vebber's midnight clarity.
Stop the Fighting
The Dec. 23 issue containing letters from rabbis attacking each other hits the nail right on the head. Not one word focused on the importance of Israel in maintaining Jewish identity. After 57 years, many American Jewish leaders still don't get it. Rabbinic dictates do not exclusively define Jewish identity to millions of American Jews. If they did, there wouldn't be a need to change the rules to allow sexual orientation or ability to pay synagogue dues to become a basis to join a synagogue.
Myles L. Berman
As an Orthodox Jew active in the Modern Orthodox community, several adjectives come to mind after reading the Orthodox Union leadership's criticism of Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky's call for greater dialogue with non-Orthodox Jews ("Orthodoxy Has Chance to Reshape Role," Dec. 9). These include ironic, baffling and disingenuous.
Ironic because the night the letter appeared, all three synagogue rabbis on a panel at the OU Regional Convention supported such dialogue. Baffling because I wonder what all the fuss is about. Is the OU concerned that after engaging in such dialogue Orthodox Jews will abandon Orthodoxy? If so, we have a lot more to worry about than dialogue. Are we concerned about legitimizing non-halachic Judaism? Frankly, non-Orthodox Judaism, composed of 90 percent of American Jewry, doesn't need our legitimization.
Finally, the whole "slippery slope" argument is disingenuous. Halachic Judaism has remained vital precisely because it has adapted over time. From Hillel's prozbul to the incorporation of bat mitzvah ceremonies, halachic Judaism has always sought to come to grips with the issues of the day. The greatness of halachic Judaism is its struggle with the tension between the demands of a changing society and those of halacha. Unfortunately, what those who invoke "slippery slope" often really are doing is trying to alleviate the neck aches caused by looking over their shoulders, worried about what the more right-wing Orthodox will think.
Robert M. Smith
I have liked several of Orit Arfa's columns and disagreed with some. Overall, I regard her as a writer who sides with the traditional Jews who support Israel 100 percent.
So I was concerned about this column ("The Married Charedi and Me," Dec. 23).
If you think about it, what does this piece really serve? Wouldn't it have been possible to speak to the young man about how to meaningfully reconnect his soul to the tradition -- get marriage counseling, anything but encourage his slide into the soulless secular world.
It is painfully ironic that this column appears during Chanukah time when the real battle of Chanukah was not only against the Syrian Greeks, but against the Hellenized Jews who wanted to live secular lives focused on the body and not on the soul.
Tom Tugend's article on the film "Munich" says both too much and too little ("Judgment on 'Munich," Dec. 16). Why present as a negative someone else's view that "Munich" is really about America's response to Sept. 11? Of course it is and more. All good drama is universal at heart. "The Merchant of Venice" does not survive because we are desperate to understand the Venetian merchant oligarchy; it survives because the drama provides insights for audiences today. "Munich's" exploration of what vengeance does to one's soul and civilization is a universal topic, worthy of discussion. All other questions ignore the purpose of art and send the debate to dead ends, devaluing the movie and its potential contribution to our lives.
I wonder how Steven Spielberg would react to a film that portrayed Nazi concentration camp officers as reluctant soldiers merely following orders, despite the bouts of conscience and inner turmoil in their hearts. The Shoah Foundation creator would, I assume, walk out of the theater in disgust.
The problem with "Munich" is that it takes an actual historical event -- one which continues to have a powerful impact on Israelis and Jews around the world -- and twists the facts for a political agenda. While we should feel pride at Israel's response to the Munich massacre, carrying on the tradition of "Never Again," Spielberg inaccurately portrays the Israeli heroes of the story as guilt-ridden and doubting the justness of their mission. He disappoints us, choosing to cast his lot with the rest of the radical Hollywood left by trying to draw a moral equivalent between terrorism and the forces that seek to destroy it. By doing so, he insults the integrity of those brave people who have fought and continue to fight terror, as well as the memory of its victims.
In an article on Steven Spielberg's new film "Munich," you quote Spielberg as stating that he objects to the "tit-for-tat" cycle of Arab attacks on Israel, Israeli responses and Arab counter-responses. Spielberg misunderstands what's going on. The "cycle of violence" exists only because the Arabs' numbers and territory are too vast for Israel to conquer and occupy as the World War II allies did to Germany and Japan. The Arab states dropped the regular-warfare option some years ago, finding it ineffective. They turned to the political offensive (delegitimizing Israel and offering it a "peace process"), which is aided by their Islamic and leftist allies, and the terrorist option, which is subsidized by Arab and Islamic states and wealthy sympathizers. The means have changed, but the goal (destroying Israel) has not.
In the obituary for Rabbi Jacob Ott (Dec. 23), it should have been noted in the headline that he died at age 86. Also, he died on Dec. 17 and retired in 1994. The Journal regrets the errors.
People who write well are to be admired. For this, I do appreciate Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky's article ("Orthodoxy Has Chance to Reshape Role," Dec. 9) about interfaithing with non-Orthodox groups. How wonderful it is that these outside groups are adapting some Orthodox ideas and examples. What Rabbi Kanefsky doesn't say, and has no intention of doing, is adapting any non-Orthodox ideas. In the words he doesn't write is the implicit fact that these ideals and tenets are non-negotiable. As with many Orthodox, the only correct way to be a Jew is his way. Read his words and listen to his remarks from his pulpit. This rabbi is not interfaithing. He is just proselytizing,
The OU is a commercial organization that strongly competes for kashrut business with other Jews and wants to be the last word on Torah.
Sadly, it was totally silent while Jews were expelled from their homes on God-given Jewish land. Once the expulsion was complete, the OU sent e-mails asking for money to help the settlers.
It is perfectly rational to place more trust in a local rabbi, such as Rabbi Kanefsky than in a commercial organization that stood idle while birthright land of the Jews was transferred to terrorists.
Last week, five Jewish members of the Israel Defense Forces were injured by terrorist shrapnel fired from the land formerly occupied by the Jewish settlers and there is no peace from the expropriated land.
"Each generation gets farther and farther from the Torah," taught a local rabbi and it has never been more true. | <urn:uuid:896586bb-c56b-425f-b605-3c094ec88b4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/print/letters_20051230 | 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 | 0.960234 | 1,839 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Striking down the individual mandate leaves only one of two options: adopt a system in which government pays for health care, or do nothing.
Mar 30, 2012
The solution of any geometric problem begins with an assumption, and the assumption in this week’s political geometry is that the Supreme Court will overturn the Affordable Care Act that first opponents, then the rest of us, have come to call Obamacare. This may or may not come to pass. Judicial history is rife with Supreme Court oral arguments that seem to go one way only for the decision to go another. The great irony of Obamacare, of course, is that its most controversial provision, and the thing about it that has rallied conservatives against it, was itself a conservative article of faith for the past two decades right up to the moment that Barack Obama embraced it; and the thing about it that has rallied conservatives against it is the notion—originally advanced as a response to Clintoncare by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and then championed until as recently as three years ago by Republicans, including former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former speaker Newt Gingrich—that the government could and should compel individuals to take responsibility for buying their own health insurance. The right liked this idea precisely because it put the financial onus of health care on individuals rather than where President Bill Clinton believed it belonged: on the businesses that employ individuals. | <urn:uuid:bce81e0f-446d-466e-826b-811360fba761> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prospect.org/social-tags/anthony-kennedy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968573 | 276 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Great excellence, in human art as in human character, has from the beginning of things been even more uniform than mediocrity, by virtue of the closeness of its approach to Nature.
Francis T. Palgrave
The Golden Treasury
Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language
Selected and Arranged with Notes by Francis Turner Palgrave
Thomas Palgrave describes his Golden Treasury: This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others in the attempt made to include in it all the best original lyrical pieces and songs in our language, by writers not living, and none besides the best. The Editor will regard as his fittest readers those who love poetry so well, that he can offer them nothing not already known and valued. | <urn:uuid:ab121675-148d-4add-a6e2-3774ce7eada5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bartleby.net/106/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966468 | 157 | 1.835938 | 2 |
I am going to see a horse today that has been a real challenge to type in terms of her temperament or personality. Tess is a warmblood mare who as a baby was rejected by her dam. She was allowed to nurse briefly but got no real mothering and the mare would bite at her if she came too close. I don’t know how much this experience affected Tess but she is very hard for me to type. She was bred as a 3 year old and had a foal and she was a good mother to the foal. She was worried about the foal and a bit over protective but if I talked to her calmly I could handle the foal.
After the foal was weaned, Tess was started in jumping training and she seemed very confused as to what her job was. She was spooky and fearful with very little self confidence. Tess did not grasp lessons quickly and seemed to shut down when asked to try harder. This behavior led me to type her as a Metal horse temperament. After a period of good work, Tess again regressed in her training and became much more difficult and excitable. On examination she seemed to have some hormonal imbalances which we addressed with herbs and turn out to let her rest physically and emotionally. I begin to wonder if I had mistyped Tess and she was more a Water horse temperament. If she was a Water horse temperament it would explain why she seemed intimidated by the training. Water horse temperaments are timid and easily overwhelmed if asked to do more than they are ready for.
Tess is back in training now and she is lucky to have a trainer who is wanting badly to help her be successful. I will evaluate her today to see if the hormonal issues are resolved. Generally a Metal horse temperament will work despite discomfort so if the hormone issues are clear and Tess goes back to good work I will probably retype her as a Water horse temperament. It is very possible that the shut down, slow learning behavior she exhibited early in training was a personality trait she developed from lack of any good mothering early in her life coupled with having the responsibility of raising a foal when she was still young. If Tess is indeed a Water horse temperament she should thrive with someone who will take the time to gain her trust and bond with her.
LeLearn more on the Horse Harmony Website
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See What Others Are Saying About Horse Personality Types and Temperaments
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Introduction to the Horse Harmony Personality Types and Temperament System
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You must be logged in to post a comment. | <urn:uuid:be9ba12b-1f3e-46b0-b5e6-4683a88f1038> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.horseharmony.com/a-hard-to-type-horse-temperament/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986944 | 536 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Paintless dent repair (PDR) can go hand in hand with paint touchup because many dings and dents that can be repaired by PDR can have chipped and cracked paint.
However, PDR is a skill that must be learned and then perfected. This means no less than 14 days of hands-on training and then intensive daily practice. I compare PDR with learning to play the piano. Depending on your aptitude and willingness to work, you might be able to learn the basics of piano in 14 days, but you are far from being able to play in a band or even at the local bar. It takes practice, practice, practice.
If you plan to add PDR to your in-house services, you must be able to give the proposed technician the time to perfect the skill before setting him loose on vehicles. And, PDR requires a definite aptitude. The person must have good eyesight, have patience, be a perfectionist and take pride in his or her work.
They must also be someone you can count on being with the company for several years. Because, if they leave you, you are out of the PDR business.
If you are considering PDR, I suggest you either do it yourself or place an advertisement in the paper looking for paintless dent repair technicians. You can offer good pay and bonuses. Many people out there have been trained in PDR that may not be working at it any longer or are working for a PDR company that is not paying them well and would welcome an opportunity with your company.
With such a person in hand, you can save yourself a lot of money in training costs. Moreover, you have the security of knowing that there are people in the market you can hire should this person resign or be terminated.
Pricing for PDR tool systems without training can range from a few hundred dollars to about $3,000. Pricing is based on the number of tools you purchase and the accessories included with the tool kit. Training for two weeks can cost up to $10,000. | <urn:uuid:9fef64dd-2e79-4051-b320-c7c42320e8d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.carwash.com/articles/print/87015-the-art-of-pdr-paintless-dent-repair | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974423 | 424 | 1.539063 | 2 |
A hacker may have done the industry, and perhaps the country, a favor on Monday, Feb. 11. That’s the day someone hacked and took control of the CAP EAS system at KRTV Great Falls, MT. The station aired what would have appeared as a standard EAS test or alert, beginning with the familiar and purposely annoying header tones and a top-of-screen crawl. What followed next was an audio message saying “Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living. Follow the messages on screen that will be updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous.”
On Tuesday, Feb. 12, the FCC issued the following advisory to EAS participants, and manufacturers of EAS insertion equipment distributed the advisory to known customers and those who registered for e-mail from CAP EAS encoding/decoding equipment manufacturers, or have requested support from CAP EAS encoding/decoding equipment manufacturers in the past:
From the FCC, February 12, 2013. Urgent Advisory: Immediate actions to be taken regarding CAP EAS device security.
All EAS Participants are required to take immediate action to secure their CAP EAS equipment, including resetting passwords and ensuring CAP EAS equipment is secured behind properly configured firewalls and other defensive measures. All CAP EAS equipment manufacturer models are included in this advisory.
All Broadcast and Cable EAS Participants are urged to take the following actions immediately
1. EAS Participants must change all passwords on their CAP EAS equipment from default factory settings, including administrator and user accounts.
2. EAS Participants are also urged to ensure that their firewalls and other solutions are properly configured and up-to-date.
3. EAS Participants are further advised to examine their CAP EAS equipment to ensure that no unauthorized alerts or messages have been set (queued) for future transmission.
4. If you are unable to reset the default passwords on your equipment, you may consider disconnecting your device’s Ethernet connection until those settings have been updated.
5. EAS Participants that have questions about securing their equipment should consult their equipment manufacturer.
Later the same day, probably not coincidentally, President Obama issued an executive order and a related presidential policy directive to strengthen America’s cyber security. | <urn:uuid:de473371-d78c-4f94-8dab-80615c948115> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://broadcastengineering.com/psipeasipaws/cap-eas-hack-attack | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957357 | 490 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Federal Reserve Seeks to Protect U.S. Bailout Secrets
(Bloomberg) The Federal Reserve asked a U.S. appeals court to block a ruling that for the first time would force the central bank to reveal secret identities of financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest government bailout in U.S. history.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan will decide whether the Fed must release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion U.S. loan program launched after the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. In August, a federal judge ordered that the information be released, responding to a request by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
“This case is about the identity of the borrower,” said Matthew Collette, a lawyer for the government, in oral arguments today. “This is the equivalent of saying ‘I want all the loan applications that were submitted.’”
Bloomberg argues that the public has the right to know basic information about the “unprecedented and highly controversial use” of public money. Banks and the Fed warn that bailed-out lenders may be hurt if the documents are made public, causing a run or a sell-off by investors. Disclosure may hamstring the Fed’s ability to deal with another crisis, they also argued. The lower court agreed with Bloomberg.
‘Right to Know’
“The question is at what point does the government get so involved in the life of the institution that the public has a right to know?” said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Davis isn’t involved in the lawsuit.
The ruling by the three-judge appeals panel may not come for months and is unlikely to be the final word. The loser may seek a rehearing or appeal to the full appeals court and eventually petition the U.S. Supreme Court, said Anne Weismann, chief lawyer for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington advocacy group that supports Bloomberg’s lawsuit.
New York-based Bloomberg, majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sued in November 2008 after the Fed refused to name the firms it lent to or disclose the amounts or assets used as collateral under its lending programs. Most were put in place in response to the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
‘Almost Two Years’
“Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public’s right to learn basic information,”Thomas Golden, an attorney for the company with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, wrote in court filings. He said the Fed may be trying “to draw out the proceedings long enough so that the information Bloomberg seeks is no longer of interest.”
The Fed’s balance sheet debt doubled after lending standards were relaxed following Lehman’s failure on Sept. 15, 2008. That year, the Fed began extending credit directly to companies that weren’t banks for the first time since the 1930s. Total central bank lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time on Nov. 6, 2008, reaching $2.14 trillion on Sept. 23, 2009.
The lawsuit, brought under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, came as President Barack Obama criticized the previous administration’s handling of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed by Congress in October 2008. Obama has said funds were spent by the administration of former President George W. Bush with little accountability or transparency.
Press and Public
FOIA requires federal agencies to make government documents available to the press and public.
In her Aug. 24 ruling, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in New York said loan records are covered by FOIA and rejected the Fed’s claim that their disclosure might harm banks and shareholders. An exception to the statute that protects trade secrets and privileged or confidential financial data didn’t apply because there’s no proof banks would suffer, she said.
The central bank “speculates on how a borrower might enter a downward spiral of financial instability if its participation in the Federal Reserve lending programs were to be disclosed,” Preska, the chief judge of the Manhattan federal court, said in her 47-page ruling. “Conjecture, without evidence of imminent harm, simply fails to meet the board’s burden” of proof.
In its appeal, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System argued that disclosure of “highly sensitive” documents, including 231 pages of daily lending reports, threatens to stigmatize lenders and cause them “severe and irreparable competitive injury.”
‘Confidentiality is Essential’
“Confidentiality is essential to the success of the board’s statutory mission to maintain the health of the nation’s financial system and conduct monetary policy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Tony West and Fed lawyer Richard Ashton wrote in a legal brief to the appeals court.
“The board’s ability to administer lending programs crucial to maintaining national financial and economic stability will be severely undermined” if lenders won’t come to the regional Federal Reserve Banks “for their funding needs, particularly in time of economic crisis,” they said.
Historically, the type of government documents sought in the case has been protected from public disclosure because they might reveal competitive trade secrets, Davis said. Laws governing such disclosures may be due for a change, he said, following the far-reaching U.S. bailout.
“If you are in need of a bailout and turn to the federal government and say, ‘help,’ with that comes some requirements in terms of transparency,” Davis said.
Joined in Bid
The Fed is joined in its bid to overturn Preska’s order by the Clearing House Association LLC, an industry-owned group in New York that processes payments between banks. The group assailed the judge’s decision for what it said were legal errors, such as applying the wrong standard in weighing the exception to FOIA.
The group includes ABN Amro Bank NV, a unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, Bank of America Corp., The Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co., US Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co.
Preska allowed the association to join the case so that it could directly participate in the appeal. More than a dozen other groups or companies filed amicus, or friend-of-the-court, briefs, including the American Society of News Editors and individual news organizations.
The judge postponed the application of her ruling to allow the appeals court to consider the case.
Also today, the same appeals court was to hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by News Corp. unit Fox News Network seeking similar documents. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York sided with the Fed in that case and refused to order the agency to release the documents.
The case is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 09-04083, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York).
To contact the reporters on this story: Thom Weidlich in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan at [email protected] and;David Glovin in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:a824be1a-8339-447e-a3b2-98bf08c8f474> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.federaljack.com/?p=13587 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941239 | 1,580 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Penn State produces many talented students, from football stars to CEOs of major companies. Not as well known are the school's talented musicians and music writers.
At 8 p.m. in Esber Recital Hall, experience Musica Nova.
Musica Nova is a concert of new music performed by the Penn State School of Music. Music composition students have written all the music that is going to be performed in the concert.
“The music is by the composition students here and was chosen after discussion between the composers and Professor Paul Barsom, the composition professor [at Penn State],” said Josh Laughner, a sophomore studying music composition and chemistry. “Together, we decide which pieces are ready to be performed and which can be rehearsed to our performance standard in time for the concert."
Two pieces are being performed that have been written by students. Laughner wrote “Tesseract Dances,” which takes an intellectual look into dance music.
The other piece is named “Tuseey Ridge” and was written by Matthew Leschinski and will be performed by the Penn State Saxophone Quartet. It is an exploration of contrasts within music.
Both composers have been working for months on their pieces, they are excited to sit back and watch their music be performed by other students.
"Musica Nova isn't your usual ‘classical music’ concert,” said Matthew Leschinski, Penn State graduate student studying music composition. “People should come with open minds, ready to be challenged by new musical ideas and approaches. This isn't Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart."
The concert has free admission and is going to be on tonight and Thursday at 8 p.m. at Esber Recital Hall. | <urn:uuid:85e6eac3-5451-4a07-9b8a-796739ad4044> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.altoona.com/news/print.php?article=368057 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977158 | 368 | 1.546875 | 2 |
By Julia Einstein, Assistant Director of Family and Studio Learning
School vacation week is the perfect time for families to discover new adventures in their own backyard. From Neo-Classicial sculptures to Impressionist paintings of Europe, let the PMA take your family on a worldly tour—all without leaving the museum!
Family Voices Cell Phone Tour
To get the most out of your family’s visit, make sure you have your cellphone with you! With a quick call, you and your child can listen to audio tours of other children with their parents discussing works in the museum’s collection. Designed to encourage you and your family into the conversation. Bring art to life and dial in some fun!
Stop and Look Stations
Stop and Look Stations, encourage your child to take the lead! Located throughout the galleries, each station is equipped with audio iPods, cards with questions and facts about artwork, and interactive learning tools. Families with children of all ages will experience an array of perspectives for a variety of learning styles. Enjoy a take-away card to continue the conversation at home.
PMA Family Space
This brand new activity room is located in the Federal-era McLellan House. Throughout the year, different artists will curate new, artful activities for you family in the space. Draw a family portrait or sit at the writing desk and share your museum experience. Look at art, read, draw, and play together!
A clean plate is the best kind of happy meal! We’ve added new, kid-friendly items to our menu for a delicious break from your museum visit. Peanut butter and jelly, ham and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, and macaroni and cheese are great options for lunch, while we also have apples with peanut butter, Stonyfield yogurt, and Aurora Provision’s snack mix for a lighter treat. Questions about the menu or an item you’d like to see? Ask our staff, we’re happy to help however we can! | <urn:uuid:3ee50449-1faf-4948-a13b-0c1c3da291a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.portlandmuseum.org/about/blog/?m=201301 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938103 | 413 | 1.671875 | 2 |
On March 4, 2011, a patient with a history of mental illness locked herself and a nurse inside the emergency room at the Veterans Affairs Department’s White River Junction Medical Center in Vermont. She held a scalpel to the nurse’s neck before being disarmed by VA police, according to court documents.
On Jan. 12, Jennifer Beidler pled guilty to felony assault and was sentenced to two years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Vermont.
VA leads all agencies in workplace violence, with 23 percent of employees saying they witnessed at least one act of violence at work over a two-year period, according to the newly released results of a Merit Systems Protection Board survey.
Governmentwide, roughly 13 percent of employees say they have witnessed workplace violence in the two years between 2008 and 2010, according to the survey.
The survey was conducted in 2010 and generated responses from 42,000 federal employees at 30 agencies. But MSPB only released the results last week as part of a study on federal workplace violence.
The latest national survey on workplace violence was done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2005. In that, 5 percent of private-sector employees said they witnessed at least one violent incident in their workplace in the last 12 months. For state government employees, the figure was 32 percent, and for local government employees, 15 percent.
The MSPB study is significant because so few are done on federal workplace violence in particular, but also because the findings may surprise many that workplace violence is as prevalent as it is in the federal government.
One of the more surprising findings was the source of the violence — about 54 percent of incidents witnessed governmentwide were caused by current or former co-workers.
“The results of our survey of federal employees indicate that when an incident of physical assault, threat of assault, harassment, intimidation or bullying occurs in a federal workplace, it is most likely caused by current or former Federal employees rather than customers, criminals or those who have a personal relationship with an employee,” MSPB Chairman Susan Grundmann said in a letter to Congress and the administration that accompanied the new report.
She said agencies should make sure their violence-prevention programs address violence caused by co-workers.
In this respect, VA bucks the governmentwide trend: 54 percent of violent incidents witnessed were committed by customers and visitors, while 33 percent were by employees, according to MSPB. Governmentwide, the percentage of violent incidents committed by customers and visitors is far less, about 34 percent.
The remaining 12 percent of workplace violence incidents were committed by relatives of federal employees or by criminals, according to the report.
The report estimates that a quarter of all incidents cited resulted in either injury or property damage, although it did not attempt to tally individual incidents.
According to federal employees and organizations, federal workplace policies and procedures are not up to the task of addressing violence committed by co-workers.
One Interior Department employee, who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution, said a co-worker yelled at him and has treated others abusively, but management has made no effort to discipline him. He said his managers thought the burden of proof was too high to initiate the disciplinary process, and he was told to just keep his distance.
“I have felt uncomfortable in my workplace ever since and now work behind a closed and locked door,” he said.
With the stress of budget cuts, the threat of furloughs, frozen pay scales and increased workloads, “we are left with a lot of tension which could ultimately create violent incidents in the workplace,” said Jon Adler, national president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.
“We may be seeing an epidemic of short fuses created by Congress’ inability to properly fund agencies and protect pay for federal law enforcement,” he said.
Law enforcement officers lack programs to help them cope with increased stress and workplace violence, Adler said. Law enforcement agencies should create peer groups where officers can talk out their problems and share their frustrations within a safe environment, he said.
Charletta McNeil, president of American Federation of Government Employees Union Local 32 at the Office of Personnel Management, agreed that agencies need to address workplace violence.
“I don’t think there are a lot of federal agencies with policies in place with real teeth,” she said.
OPM takes swift action to make sure employees feel safe, she said, but all agencies should revisit their policies to make sure violent or bullying employees are properly disciplined.
Georgia Thomas, vice president of diversity for Federally Employed Women, said employees and not just managers should be trained in conflict resolution to learn to defuse tense situations that could result in violence.
Employees have the expectation that they will be safe in the workplace and agencies need to do a better job of educating employees about workplace harassment and violence policies, she said.
VA spokeswoman Josephine Schuda said the department will not tolerate any kind of aggression. Its facilities are required to have procedures in place to prevent and respond to workplace violence.
“VA leaders consider all employee concerns as legitimate and take action to investigate the report and intercede to resolve the issue,” Schuda said.
The report recommends that agencies:
Establish programs that outline responsibilities to prevent or respond to workplace violence and ensure that agency components can work together if violence occurs.
Collect data on the prevalence and nature of violence in their organizations in order to develop more effective prevention programs. The data should include the type of violence as well as demographic information.
Bring together managers, supervisors and human resources officers to help foster a culture of openness and tolerance of people and ideas in order to reduce violence. | <urn:uuid:9d65f3ca-dcf7-49fe-83cd-4ea334de1959> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20121007/FACILITIES02/310070007/1-8-feds-witnessed-workplace-violence?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CAdvice%20&%20Opinion%7Cp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971036 | 1,188 | 1.75 | 2 |
Tiwahe Wica Yu Wita Win.
I’ve been thinking lately of my Lakota name. I always want to put it on things, like my cell phone, but I never can because the character allowance is not long enough. It stops at Wit. If I type it in with no spaces, it will stop at: tiwahewichayuwitawi. Which, I guess might be ok. But I know better. It could be seen as acceptable as the shortened version of Win, or properly, Winyan.
I say I know better, because I do. I was taught the proper way to use my Language and why we need to use it that way even though, as the days go by, this concept seems to be slipping away with the ozone.
An elder of mine and I have had many discussions on how our culture has become what I call the “7-11 culture”. Easy, fast, instant gratification. This isn’t right. Our culture has always had its very own language and rules for the language, reasons for WHY words are the way they are. As an alumni of Sinte Gleska University, I will ALWAYS, ALWAYS, be for, use first, and defend (adamantly, if need be), our “true” language. The language that was put into print because of Albert White Hat.
Back to my name. Now, the proper word for Woman is Winyan. Over time it has been acceptable to use Win. However, to use Wi is shortening it for mere convenience. The word Wi has it’s own meaning; namely, the sun.
So knowing that I will not perpetuate the convenience of my culture, I will not allow my name to be bastardized and shortened to Wi. First of all, my name is sacred in the sense that it was given to me by my father. It was picked especially for me, and (to my knowledge) it is directly and correctly translated as is, without any adjustments needing to be made; meaning, he did not have to come up with a Lakota translation for an English word.
I am VERY proud of my name. It envelops completely my journey home and all the stepping stones that were put in place on that journey. It gave me goosebumps when I received it, because I knew what it meant, and flashed on a few specific times in my life when these events had happened, in a life so far away and so foreign from the people whose blood flowed through my veins. It was another confirmation that the spirits had kept their hands in my life, and I had not been tossed carelessly to the greater world beyond.
I am, by no means, a fluent speaker, but I’m a constant student, as are most people, even in the English language. But this is what I know — I am a Lakota Winyan (woman), I am an Ina (mother), a member of the Sicangu Nation, and therefore it is my duty to not let our language get bastardized by the wasicu “scholars” who want to make money of it, and who, by the way, DO NOT send one penny of that money back here to our tribe, our university OR our reservation. Nor can I allow it to drift away on the morning mist. I know that once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. And then we will be no better than common mainstream Americans who once had a culture but don’t know much about it now.
Had I not returned home, I’d have been a Indian with no tribe, no language, no pride. But I have returned and now I have this gorgeous daughter who speaks the language and knows her culture. She will grow up with the ceremonies, the traditions, the everyday, the “this-is-just-what-we-do-because-this-is-who we-are”. She will not know any different. As it should be.
We have had far too many generations of soul-wounded, displaced, lost children who gravitate and latch onto any form of connection (i.e. gangs). The time for that is over. We must do our parts to re-instill the culture in ourselves, our lives, our children, our tribe. Do we have the answers to EVERYTHING? No. But that is what our tiwahe (family), tiyospaye (extended family), and oyate (nation) is for.
“Touching the Sun” Matt McGree @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
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Simply add your email below. A confirmation email will be sent to you. | <urn:uuid:38e66f97-dbfb-4479-afce-05036357fc3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lifeasahuman.com/2010/arts-culture/culture/my-lakota-name/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969565 | 1,014 | 1.796875 | 2 |
CHICAGO (AP) -- A warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accuses a Chicago-area health care system of failing to get the consent of emergency room patients before enrolling them in a clinical study.
The agency criticized Advocate Health Care over a study involving patients who needed intubation, an emergency procedure in which a tube is inserted down the throat to open an airway or give medication. The study was designed to test the effectiveness of a sedative called etomidate.
The Chicago Tribune reported Saturday that the subjects were patients at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
Advocate said in a statement it has "taken immediate steps to ensure this does not occur again" and is confident the matter will soon be resolved with the FDA. | <urn:uuid:8c5d8e5e-d45b-429f-ba2e-af7ce85427da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kmov.com/news/health/FDA-warns-Chicago-area-health-system-over-study-159301155.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953723 | 159 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Wal-Mart sponsored a set of bipartisan post-State of the Union focus groups of “Wal-Mart moms” in in suburban Philadelphia and Kansas City this week. The sessions were conducted by the Democratic firm Momentum Analysis and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies.
According to National Journal, the Wal-Mart mom demographic “refers to mothers who are mostly between the ages of 18-44, mostly white, with two-fifths to half having finished college. Their partisan affiliation tends to be evenly split. As a group, they voted for Obama in 2008, went Republican in 2010, but returned to Obama in 2012. They make up just under a fifth of the voting population.”
Here is what the National Journal reports the mom’s thought about Obama’s minimum wage proposal:
The top worry is that a higher minimum wage could raise consumer prices, such as bread and gas. And, anyway, who can live on $9 an hour? many asked.
Those are two great common sense questions Democrats must answer if they are going to make any political gains with this issue. These Wal-Mart moms also expressed some common sense doubts about Obama’s gun control agenda too:
On gun control, they agreed that background checks could work to prevent violence, but they were also skeptical about additional gun-control regulations.
“It’s not the guns that are killing people; it’s the people that are killing people,” said one Kansas City mother.
For all the talk of a permanent Obama-voter realignment, it seems Democrats are still far from establishing that their liberal policies will actually help anyone. | <urn:uuid:4cae0ed6-49b8-4471-8808-f2ed5d53b67d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/wal-mart-moms-not-buying-obamas-minimum-wage-hike/article/2521696 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968219 | 342 | 1.570313 | 2 |
April 3, 2007 > Reduce College Textbook Costs
Reduce College Textbook Costs
Senator Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro) joined students, faculty, and consumer advocates at California State University, East Bay today to announce legislation that addresses the growing costs of college textbooks.
"Outrageously high textbook prices are an impediment to an affordable education," said Senator Corbett. "Textbook publishers routinely fail to disclose basic information to faculty such as the cost and list of products they offer for sale. We need to address this problem and help our students better afford college."
Senator Corbett introduced SB 832 to require college textbook publishers at all public higher education campuses to provide faculty members with the following information:
A complete list of all of the products they offer for sale;
A list of the wholesale price for each of their products; and
An estimate of the length of time the publisher intends to keep those products on the market.
"College costs are soaring at an alarming rate -- it is time for the textbook publishers to level with its customers. Full and complete disclosure is long overdue," Senator Corbett added. "Just as you know the price of the food you buy at the local supermarket, the same option should be made available to faculty when they select books for their classes."
The legislation comes on the heels of a report released by California Public Research Interest Group (CALPIRG) "Exposing the Textbook Industry: How Publishers' Pricing Tactics Drive Up the Cost of College Textbooks."
The report found that three-fourths (77 percent) of professors surveyed said that textbook sales representatives rarely or never volunteer the price of the books they promote. | <urn:uuid:4346b4d2-1f61-4000-9edd-66420d18f063> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2007-04-03&file=Corbett+textbooks.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943552 | 343 | 1.5625 | 2 |
If there’s one thing the Japanese are known for, it’s excellent electronics manufacturing and Akai is no exception. Founded in 1929 in Tokyo, Japan by Saburo Akai, Akai has been producing hi-fi equipment for over eighty years. Now a subsidiary of Grande Holdings and with its company headquarters located in Singapore, Akai has had a long and proud history of having made some of the world’s best audiotape recorders, cassette decks, tuners, amplifiers, video cassette recorders, loudspeakers, synthesizers, samplers and many more. Akai is credited with being the first to introduce the on-screen display on VCRs in the 1980s.
While Akai’s manufacturing and distribution has lessened due to the digital age, the company still sells well in the areas of video, mobile sound, audio, digital accessories, televisions and home appliances such as vacuum cleaners, water filtration systems, heaters, small kitchen appliances and washing machines. Akai continues to uphold its legacy of making quality equipment and audio-visual products. | <urn:uuid:c123b630-8de8-4983-bdb1-be7575e94c84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.truthstreet.net/akai-heritage-electronic-products/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958524 | 228 | 1.585938 | 2 |
KOMO TV reports
on a drunken Auburn teen who called the cops on herself:
Just after 5 a.m. Monday, state troopers received a call from the young woman, who said she was underage, "very drunk" and staring to lose her vision. She said she was pulled over on the southbound shoulder of State Route 167.
The caller said she'd been unknowingly given alcohol at a party, and that her friends had told her to call police to take her to the hospital. (Listen to the 911 call)
A trooper arrived on the scene and found the bloodshot-eyed driver sitting in the car with a 20-ounce alcoholic energy drink in the cup holder.
The driver told the trooper she'd been sipping on the 12-percent alcohol drink while driving, and that she'd had four more of the same at the party she was coming from. She added that her arm was growing numb.
This unfortunate story drives home a point that we made in last week about the announcement of a federal inquiry into alcoholic energy drinks, which are marketed to young people. Today's Olympian also takes on alcoholic energy drinks:
Under pressure from state attorneys general, the federal Food and Drug Administration has announced plans to crack down on 30 manufacturers of caffeinated alcoholic beverages.
Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, said it’s time for the FDA to look into the safety and legality of the products and pull them from the marketplace if they don’t meet federal standards.
Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna was one of those pushing the federal government to crack down on the super-caffeinated alcoholic concoctions with names such as “Joose” and “Max Fury.” McKenna says the manufacturers market the products to young people. Surveys show that as many as 26 percent of college-age students are consuming the caffeinated alcoholic beverages.
“Alcohol plus caffeine equals a serious health threat, especially for young people,” McKenna said. “The jolt of caffeine or other stimulants masks the feeling of intoxication. Health professionals say that leads to more risk-taking behavior, traffic accidents, violence, sexual assault, and suicide.”
If you'd like to learn more about this subject, check out our most recent press release on AEDs. | <urn:uuid:67fbb2a5-07c2-4148-9ae6-eac8aa49f263> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://atg.wa.gov/InGeneralPost.aspx?id=24804&blogid=4296&blogid=4296 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970529 | 481 | 1.757813 | 2 |
By Ann Saphir
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minnesota (Reuters) - The U.S. central bank's $2.9 trillion portfolio of assets is what is keeping borrowing costs near record lows, not the monthly purchases that many credit with that power, a top Federal Reserve official said on Wednesday.
"We could stop buying and we would still be putting downward pressure on interest rates," Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Narayana Kocherlakota told an audience at a suburban Minneapolis golf course, after a speech in which he called for the Fed to keep rates low until U.S. unemployment reaches the more normal level of 5.5 percent.
"There is this view out there that somehow the flow of purchases is what's keeping the downward pressure on interest rates," he said, adding that rates will not start to rise until investors anticipate the Fed will sell off its assets.
The central bank would also conduct sales in a "responsible" manner that would not cause an undue spike in interest rates, he said.
Kocherlakota has been privately communicating to colleagues his conviction that the Fed needs to provide still more accommodation, he told reporters on Tuesday, but his first public airing of the view was at a different Minneapolis-area country club that day.
The speech immediately marked him as one of the Fed's most dovish policymakers.
The U.S. central bank just last month ramped up its attempts to stimulate the economy by announcing new bond purchases that will swell its balance sheet further. It also vowed to keep rates low until unemployment, now at 7.8 percent and high by historical standards, falls to 6.5 percent, so long as inflation stays muted.
In remarks Tuesday that he reiterated the following day, Kocherlakota called for the Fed to extend that newly minted low-rate pledge, arguing that using a 5.5 percent threshold would put the economy back on track more quickly.
He did not call for more asset purchases, saying he is comfortable with the current pace of bond buying. But he noted that too little is known about the costs of the program compared to the benefits.
The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since December 2008 and has bought some $2.5 trillion in assets since the Great Recession to lower borrowing costs further in an effort to get more Americans back to work.
It is now buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $85 billion a month, on track to adding about $1 trillion to its balance sheet over the year or more that many economists expect the bond-buying program to continue.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; editing by Chizu Nomiyama, G Crosse) | <urn:uuid:59f88b64-3e27-4760-b075-924f672f217d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://radiousa.com/news/articles/2013/jan/16/feds-large-asset-holdings-are-what-push-down-rates-kocherlakota/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976866 | 559 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Resisting the urge to splurge on holiday presents!
I received this terrific little flyer from our local credit union and thought it'd be nice to share it here.
You may still be munching on stuffing and pumpkin pie leftovers. But let's face it, the official holiday shopping season begins the minute Thanksgiving dinner dishes are done.
Feeling the pressure? Don't worry, it's not too late to develop a plan for your holiday spending so you don't find yourself with post-holiday blues when the January bills roll in.
Here are some helpful tips so you can enjoy the holiday season without stress, financial worry or guilt.
Be realistic and have realistic expectations
Determine how much you can realistically spend from your sources of income between now and when your gift exchanges occur. Divide the sum by the number of gifts or people on your list to give you an idea of what you can spend per item or person.
Be cautious with your credit card
It is a convenience tool, however, if used improperly it can blow even the best intended budgets out of the water. If you will be using a credit card to help meet your gift purchasing goals, only spend what you can fully repay within the next three months.
Be wary of hidden expenses while shopping for gifts
When ordering gifts online or by catalog be sure to calculate postage, shipping and handling into your planned expenses. Eating out, travel expense and entertainment during your shopping trip can also quickly crimp your budget.
Be well prepared
Begin by knowing what to buy and where to get it. Stick to your shopping list and don't be tempted by items or activities that will throw off your budget. Know your limitations financially, creatively and physically.
Did you ever stop and add it all up?
The average American will spend $884 on gifts this year and will purchase 20 to 25 gifts. Don't underestimate what you will spend.
And, finally, happy holidays. Remember that the holiday season isn't about gifts in the end...
Send a comment to cricket | <urn:uuid:5fb18045-93b3-4a0a-aa15-06b41d316904> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reallifedebt.com/resisting-the-urge-to-splurge-on-holiday-presents-4615.html | 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 | 0.945086 | 417 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Express yourself! That’s what this page is all about.
Are you a positive person? Are you able to turn any situation around? This is your opportunity to share with others what you’ve done in your life to stay positive and how you managed to keep a positive attitude, no matter what.
You, too, can help make a difference in someone else’s life. We want to hear from you! Share your positivity tips and secrets with us and we’ll share it with the world. Joy should spread…like a wildfire. Email me and I’ll post your story: [email protected]
By Elena Iglesias
October 25, 2011
As I was leaving the hospital, right after a bilateral mastectomy, one of my children gave me a mug full of candies that read: “Celebrate Life!” And that’s what I’ve been doing these past 30 years after I had my breast cancer surgery. For all that happened to me, I could just as well lie down and die. However, life is a challenge that must be met head on, without dismay or trepidation. If a person can do that, he has already defeated fear.
I don’t consider myself to be a special kind of survivor. I believe we all are survivors, as we do not know what tomorrow will bring. The important thing for me to do is celebrate life every day, understanding that death is also part of the natural process of being born into the universe. Through this awareness, one can overcome confusion and panic, which have always claimed more victims than any illness known to mankind.
Life and death are mysteries beyond our understanding and control. I can either accept what is with an open heart or live angry and frustrated. My attitude might not change the final outcome of my life; however, one journey is enough to make me a happy and peaceful person, while the other will paralyze me and prevent me from enjoying the rest of my life. Without an open heart, I may not be able to see the obvious answers to the important questions posed to me.
Years ago, I received a touching e-mail that made me understand all this. It was about a 92-year-old lady whose husband of 70 years passed away, forcing her to move to a nursing home.
”As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I started to paint a visual description of her tiny room… ‘I love it!’ she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year old having just been presented with a new puppy. ‘Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room…. just wait.’
‘That doesn’t have anything to do with it,’ she replied. ‘Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged… it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it… It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away, just for this time in my life…’ “
And the anonymous author of the e-mail added, “There are five simple rules to be happy, whether you live a long or a short life: Free your heart from hatred, free your mind from worries, live simply, give more and expect less”.
In her book, “Heal Your Body,” Louise L. Hay tells us that both the good and the dis-ease in our lives are the results of mental thought patterns, which form our experiences. The author states for example that longstanding resentment, among other emotional wounds, can be a developing cause for cancer, as it was for me 30 years ago.
As Relay for Life approaches each year, I focus not only on “curing or surviving” a tough illness, but also on turning my second chance into a meaningful, fulfilling and loving life. | <urn:uuid:7dbe0dac-a628-4c76-a999-3c43084975a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.positivelypat.com/get-it-off-your-chest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960791 | 910 | 1.664063 | 2 |
DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Steven Kazmierczak had the look of a boyish graduate student — except for the disturbing tattoos that covered his arms. Professors and students knew him as a bright, helpful scholar, but his past included a stint in a mental health center.
The 27-year-old Kazmierczak also had a history of mental illness and had become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped taking his medication, said university Police Chief Donald Grady.
At least since Lizzie Borden allegedly (she was never convicted) took a hachet to her father and step-mother, the American press has fixated on and glamorized snap murders – incidents in which previously unexceptional, seemingly normal individuals suddenly snap and commit acts of uncommon violence and sociopathic savagery.
It would be interesting to study the origins of this kind of killing: have they always existed, or are they a product of modern urban culture? What seems clear is that the public fascination with the phenomena is rooted in the deep-seated fear of the familiar suddenly becoming threatening – the same fear that popularizes movies about alien infections, demonic possession or Stepford Wives.
Except that in this instance the danger is very real and very deadly. Although the statistical probability that someone in your classroom or office will decide to come in strapped like Rambo on any given day is infinitesimal, it is not zero, and that is enough to keep some people awake at night and add to the background level of primal fear, instinctual unease and environmental paranoia already rampant in the atmosphere.
One of the reasons we are increasingly uncomfortable is that, whatever their origins or causes, these berserker attacks seem to be increasing in frequency. Whereas in Lizzie Borden’s time notorious cases arose every decade or so, in the past century, after the state-sponsored killing frenzies of the WWs, sudden, private sector killing sprees seemed to crop up every few years.
Post offices were so often the scenes of such inexplicable massacres the term “going postal” entered into the American lexicon.
Now, hardly a semester goes by without a horrific attack on some campus, in a kind of macabre academic lottery of death.
As a rational academic and a God-fearing sinner, the Dowbrigade has two very different gut feelings about these snap killings.
On the one hand, what we know about the practice of modern pharmaceutical psychology and the chemical causation of psychosis has convinced us that the common clue in all of these cases – “he recently stopped taking his medication” – is the key to the killings.
The human mind, for all its indomitable resiliency and adaptability, can be a fragile vessel. Given the pressures and unnatural postures minds are forced to endure today, and the paucity of spiritual support, it is a wonder more minds do not snap. After tens of thousands of generations of slowly evolving as wandering tribes primarily eking out from nature the resources needed to survive, in less than a hundred generations we have morphed into urban micro-nodes in a global cyber-organic network, completely disconnected from our environment and constantly consuming objects and ideas neither necessary nor necessarily conducive to our survival.
No wonder people snap.
Actually, under normal conditions, people do not snap, even when they go mad. Shakespeare’s glorious descents into madness (think Lear or Macbeth) paint a more typical picture: gradual loss of one’s grasp on reality, hallucinations, especially audio (hearing voices), fixations, increasingly erratic behavior. Traditionally, societies developed a series of mechanisms to deal with these warning signs; talking, praying, sleeping potions, exorcisms, cold baths, sanatoriums in the countryside.
In extreme cases, the mad were locked away in asylums or attics, or simply killed, overtly or through neglect.
But today, modern psychiatry claims to have banished these archaic and inhumane treatments, in favor of scientific therapy, usually a combination of “talk therapy” and medicine. Because time is money, and it takes a lot longer to train and prepare a good shrink than it does to manufacture and market a good pill, these days the emphasis is on the drugs. The interests of the trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry may also play a role in this.
Thanks to modern medicine millions of Americans who would otherwise be neurotic, disruptive or severely disturbed are instead able to lead productive, “normal” lives, working regular jobs, having families, paying taxes and participating in our cultural, economic and political life.
The problem is that these drugs just mask the symptoms of mental illness and bandage over the serious psychological problems which afflict these folks. Many of these walking wounded are seriously psycho, and would normally have ground to a halt or behaved in ways that demanded attention, if not for the drugs.
Think of the mind like a motor. When something goes wrong, a nut comes loose or a wire gets disconnected, it normally rattles around or shuts down until you get it fixed. These powerful pharmaceuticals allow the motor to keep functioning while broken, taking the mind to places that minds do not ordinarily go. Not good places.
One of the side effects of these drugs is that they make many users feel like “zombies”, lethargic with fuzzy thinking and muffled emotions. Imagine not being able to fully wake up, or to sense things with the strength and clarity you used to have.
So they stop taking their medication, and within 72 hours are trapped within a full-blown psychosis, delayed and intensified by the drugs, complete with voices, visions, compulsions and unstoppable urges, previously sealed up like malevolent genies in bottles of capsules, now uncorked.
And this is the rational, scientific explanation. On the other hand, despite an intense antipathy to everything associated with the religious right, the recent spate of snap killings has almost convinced us of the existence and active intervention in the waking world of the Devil – Lucifer, Satan, Mephistopheles, call him what you may.
It is the sheer malevolence of these attacks which points us in that direction, as if the killer had sat down and asked himself “What is the absolute most horrible, sadistic, evil thing I could possibly do?” and “How can I absolutely assure myself of a first-class ticket to hell, and how can I take as many innocents with me?”
It is difficult for us to imagine even the most demented or damaged human being honestly asking those questions, let alone acting on his answers, without some demonic intervention. Crimes of passion, crimes of greed, even crimes of indifference or plain cussedness, all those we can understand in human terms.
To a thinking, feeling human being struggling to fit this phenomena into our world-view, the unexpected, inexplicable evil of these snap attacks, like the miracles and saved souls on the other side of the ledger, require us to look higher, or lower, than the limits of the human soul, for answers. | <urn:uuid:7e77e147-b82e-423e-b5a1-8093494a5983> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dowbrigade/2008/02/18/snap-killings-lottery-of-death/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952704 | 1,475 | 1.65625 | 2 |
618 Ardmore Ave
Pitman, NJ 08071
Learning Stages is a non-profit theater community whose mission is to educate and entertain South Jersey residents through quality performing arts experiences. Since 1991, Learning Stages, formerly known as The Gloucester County Summer Drama Workshop, has been educating children and young adults ages 8 to 24 about the entire theater process. Our niche is a workshop setting where young adults will learn hands-on about how theater works. From backstage to centerstage, Learning Stages has produced and directed 12 mainstage musical productions, two children’s shows, six Daydreamers' workshops and shows (4 public, 2 in collaboration with area non-profits), four evenings of one act plays, and several fundraisers featuring alumni and current members. Learning Stages has educated over 3,000 young adults and their families through the arts and provided quality theatre experiences at affordable prices for thousands of residents. | <urn:uuid:814bf149-3eda-4e6d-b5db-5bf6616a288e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.goodsearch.com/nonprofit/learning-stages.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948875 | 188 | 1.75 | 2 |
Heroes among us
We see them in action quite often. Their pictures appear in the newspaper, we see them on the side of the road. Whether it's responding to a minor fender bender or a major incident, these men and women respond without hesitation, many times without fear for their own lives. They put the lives of those they are rescuing before their own. When asked why they do what they do, often times the response is "it's what we were trained to do, "or "I'm just doing my job."
But what we don't see is how they are affected by some of the tragedies they respond to. This county has seen some devastating rescue efforts in the last couple of years. Most of the time we don't see the tears that the rescuers shed over lost lives. We don't see the anguish on their faces when there isn't any more they can do to save a life.
This isn't merely a thank you to follow in line with the yearly acknowledgment of our hometown heroes. We as residents of Emery County are very proud that we have compassionate, fearless, dedicated men and women who help protect us and come to our aid. Whether they are paid employees or passionate volunteers, they are our heroes.
9-11 Patriotic program
In honor of the victims and survivors of 9-11 the San Rafael studentbody is presenting a patriotic program. They are inviting all local law enforcement, fire fighters, search and rescue, EMTs, highway patrol, Veterans, servicemen in reserve, National Guard and interested citizens to attend the program. The assembly will be on Sept. 9 at 10 a.m. in the San Rafael Junior High gym in Ferron.
There will be a guest speaker, Charles Durrant, a former teacher at the school who has been to Iraq and Afganistan on active duty. The students will be writing the names of the victims of 9-11 on ribbons and they will tie these to the fence.
Visitors to the school will be invited to write a name and participate in this ceremony also. The students will be learning about 9-11 all week. They will watch a movie about 9-11 and learn of the victims. A special flag ceremony will also be presented at the school on Sept. 9. San Rafael invites the entire community to join them for this special memorial service. Call Dianne Butler at the school if you need additional information at 384-2335. | <urn:uuid:7b4f8980-a310-413e-ba12-b7de838471af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecprogress.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=11435 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967107 | 500 | 1.78125 | 2 |
She took the time, and let me make the mistakes, to let me learn why it did make a difference.
Yes Ė this is the easiest way to start off and end your stitching, but have you thought about the biggest thing about a knot: itís a bump. And that bump will show on the right side of your work.
We use knotted stitches on the front of our embroidery to create texture, so it stands to reason that a knot on the back will do the same thing.
Over time, that knot, while it may not look obvious at first, will start to make its presence seen. This is true even if the piece is hanging on the wall. Eventually, you will see on the front of your work a distinct raised area where the knot is.
This is even more obvious on clothing and linen (tablecloths, towels, etc) that you stitch, as these items will be laundered and ironed on a fairly regular basis.
Not only that, but on clothing, the knots will rub against your skin, making it very uncomfortable to wear Ė even if you have put a lining piece over the back of the embroidery on the clothing.
The neatest way to start and end your stitching is to stitch in the end of your threads.
Carry Over Threads
Isnít it fiddly when there is only a few stitches of a colour, and then you have to end that colour and start it again a couple of inches away?
Many embroiderers just finish that area, and then move to the next, leaving a long strand at the back of their stitching. Sometimes, they will stitch over this as the piece progresses, but some donít. Both methods have problems.
The first problem lies in the colour of the thread that you are carrying over. If itís a dark colour and you are stitching on light fabric, then that colour will show through to the front of your stitching, even if you do stitch it down. Not immediately, but over time, a dark line will show on the front of your work.
If you just carry the thread over the back and donít stitch it down, then you have the problem of snagging threads.
If you are going to carry over thread, then as a rule it should be no more than Ĺ inch and should be a light colour and then sewn over. The better way to do it, rather than finish off and start again, is to do the small sections last and then slip the carry over thread under the top stitch at the back, so the carry over thread doesnít show.
Keeping the back of your work neat is as important as keeping the front neat. After all, even if it isnít seen, youíll know! A good craftsperson always makes sure that the bits that arenít seen are as good as the bits that are. Itís keeping to that knowledge that makes you an artisan!
Is there anything that you would particularly like to see an article on? If so, please contact me with your suggestions.
© 2007 Megan McConnell | <urn:uuid:0a8826cf-a4e3-4928-9807-c6712373e179> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art51819.asp | 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 | 0.957305 | 642 | 1.59375 | 2 |
THE TAOISEACH today travels to Brussels to meet with his European counterparts in a summit aimed at creating a permanent financial rescue fund for Europe’s struggling economies.
Brian Cowen, accompanied by European Affairs junior minister Dick Roche, will meet the heads of government from the other 26 EU member states in attempts to negotiate making the Eurpoean Financial Stability Fund – the EU’s current ad hoc financial rescue method – a permanent feature.
The moves come a day after Moody’s indicated it was considering downgrading the rating of Spain’s national bonds – a move that would likely see its own cost of borrowing drive upward and possibly lead the Spanish government to require emergency funding through the EFSF.
Europe faces a race against time to amend its founding treaties and create a permanent bailout fund, however; Angela Merkel is keen to have an official bailout put in place before Germany’s Constitutional Court can rule the current EFSF beyond the scope of the European treaties.
The Irish government remains adamant, however, that any amendment to the current European treaties will not require an Irish referendum – a move that would otherwise put the creation of the fund in genuine risk.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs told TheJournal.ie that a referendum will probably not be required, but the opinion of the Attorney General would form the basis of whether a referendum would ultimately be held.
Although referenda are usually held when European treaties are proposed, the creation of a permanent fund would not result in the transfer of legal competencies from Ireland to Europe, and therefore would not require a vote under the terms of previous Supreme Court rulings. | <urn:uuid:6cc1a3f4-37b2-433e-8229-8361f8070f3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thejournal.ie/european-leaders-meet-to-secure-permanent-bailout-fund-58432-Dec2010/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952754 | 334 | 1.78125 | 2 |
by Cynthia Tintorri, photos by Christopher Post
November 13, 2012
Whether you call it a hurricane or a superstorm, there's no arguing that Sandy left devastation in her wake, taxing the resources of police, fire, electrical and emergency services workers in multiple states. As you might expect, faculty, staff, graduates and students from Northampton Community College's Emergency Medical Services (EMS) program were at the front lines, called to duty to provide care to those in need.
Chris Post, EMS and Emergency Management program manager at NCC, was planning to leave for Texas before the storm hit. Instead of a trip to sunnier climes, he ended up at the heart of the disaster, on Long Island with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during the hurricane.
Tom Barnowski, director of Corporate and Public Safety Education at NCC, was doing duty as Bushkill Township emergency management coordinator.
Don Pond, program manager for Special Projects in Corporate and Public Safety, was activated in Pennsylvania with his unit of the Civil Air Patrol, where he coordinated communications with disaster reconnaissance aircraft.
CJ Sabo '11, a graduate of the EMS program working as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) with St. Luke's Health Network EMS, helped evacuate St. Luke's Hospice and a nursing home in Quakertown, and fielded several 911 calls relating to trauma from falls when power went out in nursing homes and elderly patients were tripping in the dark.
And while CJ can't claim to have delivered the "hurricane baby" -- the first baby born in the new St. Luke's Anderson Campus emergency room -- he did help transport both baby and mom to the Bethlehem hospital, where there is an obstetrics unit.
Scott Cheatham '11, a volunteer with Pennsylvania Water Rescue, was the first on the scene in his neighborhood when an oak tree with about a four-foot diameter trunk fell across the road, taking out his neighbor's cars, front porch, and power and telecom lines. "I did an assessment of the scene to make sure it was safe. No one was injured, thankfully." Scott stayed to relay information to officers arriving at the scene, and waited until the fire department was there before leaving.
Nick Ponnett, a current EMS student who works with the Blue Valley Rescue Squad out of Bangor, reports that he and fellow EMT student Drayce Kern rode along with crews at the squad during the hurricane and did a lot of health and welfare checks on the elderly at their homes and apartments.
Interested in being a first responder? NCC's EMS program at the Center for Business & Industry (CBI) trains individuals in the essential skills to save lives and reduce injuries in the critical first moments after an emergency has occurred. The comprehensive training features hands-on instruction and includes certification examinations where applicable. For more information, visit the CBI Emergency Medicine page.
To review Northampton Community College's guidelines for public comments, click here | <urn:uuid:770c01bc-81e2-4057-aae0-d57bdb178b53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://northampton.edu/Northampton-NOW/Heroes-of-the-Hurricane-NCC-Edition.htm | 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 | 0.967148 | 612 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Today is All Soul’s Day, so I thought I would tell a local ghost story about a poor soul. I am not from Albuquerque, as most readers of my blog know, but my children are authentic Burqueños and when they were Burqueñitas, they brought home a story from school of the Ditch Witch, La Llorona. We live in the valley, a traditionally Hispanic area of Albuquerque that because of this distinction, was allowed to keep the Spanish language programs in the public schools, (thank God), long after it was taken out of the other schools in the city. And with that came the traditional stories as well.
As the story was first told to me by my girls, the Ditch Witch hung out on the ditches looking for her children and would drown kids if she found them up there alone. The legend of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman, is told in various forms all over the Spanish speaking lands of the Americas, but in a nutshell the story is that she was a beautiful woman who fell in love with a man who rejected her, so she drowned her children, killed her self. He may have not wanted a woman with children, or rejected hr for some other reason and her kids caught the backlash, but whatever happened, It didn’t go well for anyone and she was doomed to roam the world looking for her children along the ditches and waterways, weeping and wailing. Also told…she would kidnap children wandering by themselves.
I believe that in Albuquerque this story evolved into the Ditch Witch because of the valley’s vast system of irrigation ditches, also called acequias. The valley of Albuquerque is the land adjacent to the Rio Grande, and it has historically been farmland because of it’s close proximity to this water source. An intricate and widespread irrigation grid was established to handle the needs of the farms with a a system of ditches crisscrossing the valley forming a patchwork quilt of crops. As time goes on and the population increases, the valley struggles to hang on to its agrarian roots while neighborhoods exploded into subdivisions. The ditches prevail and offer up strips of semi-wooded playland for the kids of the valley. The acequias still flow and while there are very few farms using the water now, many residents in the valley refuse to give up their “ditch rights”, so instead of watering their yards and gardens they flood them once a week in the spring and summer months, much to the puzzlement of people not from “round here”.
It is a natural thing that the legend of La Llorona evolved in Albuquerque to be about the Ditch Witch. A story to promote a healthy fear of the ditches for children was needed and she filled the niche. It worked. I never told my kids it wasn’t true. They didn’t go up on the ditch alone either and swore they heard her crying. Today the ditches are used for jogging, shortcuts from one neighborhood to another, as horse trails and as hiking and dog walking paths. There has been some talk of adopting some of them into the city park system, but I doubt that will ever happen. The ditches are owned and maintained by a separate government entity called the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District. They have a lot of clout, answer to no one, and the likelyhood of this ever changing is slim to none. It’s enough to make all of us weep and wail.
I know the best things to do in Albuquerque!
Sarah Dolk, Adobe Nido Bed & Breakfast
Expert on Destination Albuquerque and Central New Mexico! | <urn:uuid:46b841a1-2ecb-4ce7-bd60-0e28579be774> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adobenido.com/blog/2009/albuquerque/all-souls-day-day-of-the-dead-and-la-llorona/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972755 | 758 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Section 161, acts June 14, 1930, ch. 488, §1, 46 Stat. 585; Oct. 15, 1949, ch. 695, §6(a), 63 Stat. 881, established a Bureau of Narcotics in the Department of the Treasury and provided for appointment of a Commissioner of Narcotics for the Bureau with duty of making an annual report to Congress.
Section 162, acts June 14, 1930, ch. 488, §2, 46 Stat. 585; June 26, 1930, ch. 623, §1, 46 Stat. 819; Oct. 27, 1970, Pub. L. 91–513, title III, §1101(a)(4), 84 Stat. 1291, provided for appointment and compensation of a deputy commissioner and other personnel for the Bureau of Narcotics, required the deputy to be an acting Commissioner during absence or disability of the Commissioner or a vacancy in the office, and authorized designation of a member of the Treasury Department as an acting Commissioner in event there is no Commissioner or deputy commissioner.
Section 163, act Mar. 3, 1927, ch. 348, §4(a), 44 Stat. 1382, provided for transfer of control of narcotic drugs to the Secretary of the Treasury from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and his assistants, agents, and inspectors.
Section 164, acts June 14, 1930, ch. 488, §3, 46 Stat. 586; June 26, 1930, ch. 623, §2, 46 Stat. 819; Ex. Ord. No. 6639, Mar. 10, 1934, abolished the Federal Narcotics Control Board and transferred powers of such Board to the Commissioner of Narcotics, authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to confer or impose his duties under section 163 of this title upon the Commissioner or other personnel of the Bureau of Narcotics, continued in effect orders, rules, and regulations in existence on July 1, 1930, until modified, superseded, or repealed by the Commissioner, with approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, and provided for determination before such Bureau of Narcotics of proceedings, investigations, and other matters pending on July 1, 1930 before Bureau of Prohibition or Federal Narcotics Control Board respecting narcotic drug law administration or enforcement. Bureau of Prohibition personnel, records, property, and unexpended balances of appropriations were previously transferred to Bureau of Narcotics as were powers of the Attorney General respecting the Bureau of Prohibition to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
Section 165, act June 14, 1930, ch. 488, §5, 46 Stat. 587, provided for review of decisions of Commissioner of Narcotics by the Secretary of the Treasury.
Functions of the Secretary of the Treasury administered through or respecting the Bureau of Narcotics and all functions of the Bureau, the Commissioner of Narcotics, and the officers, employees and agencies of the Bureau were transferred to the Attorney General and the Bureau and the office of Commissioner of Narcotics were abolished by Reorg. Plan No. 1 of 1968, eff. Apr. 8, 1968, 33 F.R. 5611, 82 Stat. 1367, set out in the Appendix to Title 5, Government Organization and Employees. All positions, personnel, property, records, and unexpended balances of appropriations, allocations, and other funds of the Bureau and the Treasury Department, in connection with functions transferred under this reorganization plan, were transferred to the Justice Department.
The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, including the office of Director thereof, in the Department of Justice was abolished by Reorg. Plan No. 2 of 1973, eff. July 1, 1973, 38 F.R. 15932, 87 Stat. 1091, set out in the Appendix to Title 5, Government Organization and Employees. Reorg. Plan No. 2 of 1973 also created in the Department of Justice a single, comprehensive agency for the enforcement of drug laws to be known as the Drug Enforcement Administration, empowered the Attorney General to authorize the performance by officers, employees, and agencies of the Department of functions transferred to him, and directed the Attorney General to coordinate all drug law enforcement functions to assure maximum cooperation between the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the other units of the Department of Justice involved in drug law enforcement. | <urn:uuid:d2eea0e5-1965-4b22-a802-291c45e64b98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2010-title21/html/USCODE-2010-title21-chap5A.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937852 | 877 | 1.757813 | 2 |
9 October 2006
WFP has welcomed a significant new donation of €5.6 million from the government of Luxembourg. With a total contribution this year of €9.6 million, Luxembourg is one of WFP’s most important donors in the fight against hunger.
29 June 2006
HIV/AIDS is aggravating chronic hunger in southern Africa and despite better harvests across the region, more than three million people will remain short of basic food supplies through to December.
21 April 2006
Following his recent visit to WFP school feeding projects in Mali, Poland's quadruple gold medallist Robert Korzeniowski makes an impassioned plea to his fellow sportsmen to use their international profiles to keep Africa's hungry children on the international agenda
7 April 2006
One of Poland’s most famous athletes, Olympic gold-medallist Robert Korzeniowski starts a three day visit to Mali, where he will witness first-hand how WFP helps children.
4 October 2005
WFP welcomes a donation of US$1.8 million by the Government of Turkey that has been earmarked for six West African countries, all in urgent need of food aid.
5 September 2005
3 August 2005
In a special article for WFP, Desmond Tutu, archbishop emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel prize winne, warns that there are other "Nigers" waiting to happen on the African continent.
- Mali receives pledge of 520 million euros from EU Source: Euronews
- Mali: UN food agency ‘urgently working’ to aid communities despite insecurity Source: UN News Centre
- WFP grants food assistance to one million Malians Source: Afrique Jet
- Head of UN food aid agency urges support for Mali and entire Sahel region Source: UN News Centre
- Mali and Mauritania: War, Drought and School Meals Source: Yahoo! Voices | <urn:uuid:fcc65f35-b43d-437c-bd3c-413ea35b0733> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wfp.org/countries/mali/news?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936183 | 393 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Nursing Program Prerequisites
§ Graduation from high school or satisfactory completion of the GED.
§ The completion of one unit each of algebra, general biology with laboratory, and chemistry with no grade below a “C” before application to the program (deficiencies can be made up through developmental studies or college courses).
§ A 2.5 grade point average (GPA) for high school courses** or a 2.5 curricular GPA for college coursework.
§ College students must be in good standing with the most recently attended institution with a minimum GPA of 2.0.
§ Completion of Nursing Application to VHCC, SWCC or MECC by the date indicated in the college’s catalog for each academic year interested in being considered for the Nursing Program.
§ Satisfactory performance (national percentile score of 45 or higher) on a nursing pre-admission test. An interview with a faculty member may be requested by the student.
§ Completion of college placement tests and prescribed developmental work.
**If the student has completed a minimum of 12 college credits that are included in calculating the curricular GPA (non-development courses), the 2.5 high school GPA requirement will be waived.
Nursing Entrance Test:
A nursing entrance test is required for admission to the nursing program. This is a general, comprehensive assessment tool which can predict an individual’s readiness and capability for successful completion of an educational program designed to prepare registered nurses. The test is used to determine placement in the program and to plan curriculum to meet the academic and social skills of the nursing applicants. Your college will notify the applicant with details about test administration after the application deadline. Only those applicants who have completed the first 5 steps of the application process will be invited to take the nursing entrance test. The required fee must be paid on-line through the testing website prior to taking the test.
LPN to RN Program Applicants:
Students who are Licensed Practical Nurses (LPN’s) must present proof of licensure as an LPN and have met all prerequisites according to the current college catalog.
Transfer students into the program will be individually evaluated as to appropriate placement into the nursing program. | <urn:uuid:c8ef44a7-587d-4c49-bf17-edb9474b5d33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vhcc2.vhcc.edu/vatnp/prerequisites.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943845 | 461 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Economic pain stresses people and servicesby Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio
The slumping economy is, predictably, straining Minnesota's safety net. The number of people seeking food, shelter, medical care and other necessities is up.
Hopkins, Minn. — Seventy-eight-year old Burnsville resident Joanne Jones lives on Social Security benefits. Jones lost a big portion of her retirement savings when the 2001 dot com bubble burst.
And the drop in real estate values sucked much needed equity out of the townhouse she just sold. Jones signed up for Section 8 housing and for Dakota County Senior Housing.
The waiting list for both is long.
"I'm anywhere from 30-ish to 100 (on the lists)," she says.
That's 30 to 100 people ahead of her also waiting for housing assistance depending on the program.
Forty-year old home remodeler Wilbur Marshall of St. Paul has watched his business shrink to almost nothing. He says his wife and three children are living in a shelter. He spends his days looking for remodeling jobs.
"I just don't have the resources and the help. If I was given that help I would definitely take advantage of it, and there's a lot of things that I would make happen," he says.
Scott Ramsey is also having trouble finding work.
"Being a cook I could normally always find a job, but I just haven't had any luck," he says.
On a recent Sunday night Ramsey is lined up with hundreds of others waiting for a free evening meal at a downtown Minneapolis church.
Ramsey says he isn't destitute, though he receives general assistance welfare because of a medical condition.
He can't afford a place to stay and doesn't want to live in a shelter so he's been living in a tent for six months while he looks for work.
"Even if I had a job I'd have to save money for a whole year in order to get a place so I don't see any end in sight," he says.
Scott Zemke, sitting in his downtown Hopkins office is witnessing sharply higher numbers of people asking for help, all kinds of help.
"We're seeing a lot more people who have never accessed these programs before and who never thought they'd have to access these programs before," he says.
Zemke is director of the Community Action Partnership for Suburban Hennepin County. Requests for heating assistance, he says, are up 30 percent from last year. His office has expanded from one foreclosure counselor to seven in 18 months as demand rises.
Rex Holzemer has a broader view.
Holzemer is a human services program director for Hennepin County, at more than one million people the state's most populous county.
Requests for help, he says, for financial assistance, medical assistance, food support once known as food stamps are all up.
Last year, Hennepin county had 81,000 cases of people getting help, Holzemer says.
"In July of this year we had about 87,000 cases," he says.
Cases often means families, Holzemer says. The 87,000 cases add up to more than 200,000 people, or about one in five Hennepin county residents who receive some kind of public assistance.
However Mary Nelson says that number doesn't tell the full story. Nelson is a human services program director for Ramsey, the state's second most populous county.
A more telling number is how many people ask for help but are turned away because they don't qualify, she says.
"There's a nine percent increase in the number of people requesting assistance from us. I think we continue to see increasing need out there in the community for our services," she says.
The increasing number of people seeking help is outstripping what Minnesota counties can supply. Congress recently approved a bit more heating assistance money.
However, overall, Hennepin County's Rex Holzemer says, the amount of state and federal money for human services has been cut.
"Decreases in the range of 10 to 12 percent in our budget over the last years at the same time as we're trying to address all these case load increases.
Non-profits which supply help are also witnessing sharp increases in requests for help. Minneapolis-based Loaves and Fishes is seeing double digit increases during some months at their dining centers, according to executive Dean Wiegel.
Loaves and Fishes operates eight dining centers, six in Minneapolis and St. Paul and two at suburban locations serving more than 1500 meals each weekday.
Back to the big picture.
There's little argument more money is needed to help people with food, housing and medical care.
However, the real solution is not higher taxes to pay for more social services. The real solution he says is a stronger economy, Scott Zemke says.
"I think the biggest thing is for people to actually be able to work and have a decent paying job with a livable wage, I mean that's the best thing you can do for an individual," he says.
For the moment the declining economy appears to be putting that solution father into the future.
- Morning Edition, 10/09/2008, 7:25 a.m. | <urn:uuid:2c003e63-a406-45d1-abea-02b6b63add50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/08/economic_pain | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977201 | 1,095 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Victims’ vulnerabilities that abusers exploit
We talk a lot on this blog about the many strengths of victims of abuse, and how victims creatively resist abuse. One of the ways we can increase our strengths and be even better at resisting abuse is to be aware of our vulnerabilities. As we work to overcome our vulnerabilities, we make it more difficult for abusers to exploit us. George Simon Junior in his book In Sheep’s Clothing (pages 140-41) lists the vulnerabilities that abusers commonly exploit in their victims: naivete, over-conscientiousness, low self-confidence, over-intellectualization and emotional dependency.
It strikes me that these are the very vulnerabilities that conservative Christianity can inadvertently (?) impart to many of its followers and perhaps most particularly to females.
Naivete. Cotton-wooled in conservative church-going culture, many Christians are naive. They aren’t street wise, they’re unable to recognize and deal with evil people because they’ve been taught to think the best of everybody and to treat everyone as if they are honorable and can be reasoned with. And they’re unlikely to look for wolves in sheep’s clothing in their own little stream of Christianity because the wolves are ‘out there’ in other denominations and other churches, they’re not in our church!
Over-conscientiousness. Christians are taught to be conscientious – to watch their thoughts, feelings and actions so as to avoid sin; to confess and repent when they have sinned; and to put others before themselves. All well and good, but this teaching is often insufficiently balanced by instruction about how to guard against predators and evil-doers, and how not to throw one’s pearls before swine. We are trained to believe that if we continually run on the mouse wheel of do-gooder-ism, everything will come out alright in the end.
Low self-confidence. The legalistic and Pharisaic forms of church culture can make low self-esteem worse by teaching distorted wooden doctrines to regenerate believers: “You are nothing but a depraved sinner; you have no rights; all you deserve is hell,” or, “All sins are equally sinful; therefore your sins are just as bad as the sins of a really malicious, depraved person.”
Over-intellectualization. Simon explains that victims may try too hard to understand the reasons for the abuser’s behaviour in the delusion that uncovering and understanding the manipulator’s behaviour will be sufficient to make things different. The pop-psychology version of this is to try to explain the abuse as the result of things like a rotten childhood, unemployment, mental illness or other health problems. But Christians can add to a bunch of super-spiritual intellectualisations like ‘an attack of the devil’ or ‘lack of bible reading and prayer’ or ‘poor church attendance’ or ‘not being accountable to other men in the church’ (as if the other men would be likely to know how to see through an abuser’s deceits).
Emotional dependency. The false and sub-biblical doctrine in many church cultures breeds emotional dependency. When we are scared into obedience by Pharisaic doctrine, when non-conformity to church culture is equated with disobeying God, it can be a form of traumatic bonding. Two powers wall us in: the abuser and the church. We often find it hard to emotionally depend on God (a healthy form of emotional dependence) when our concept of God is conflated with our experience of Pharisees.
* * *
However this isn’t just a church-bashing post. The vulnerabilities that Simon lists are by no means exclusive to conservative Christian culture. I had a good middle class secular upbringing and got into the drug scene in my late teens, but believe it or not I was still very naive even while living the drug addict lifestyle. I could lie and take advantage of others when I wanted to, but I nevertheless had a naivete about the way the world worked that took years to shed. My naivete led to many embarrassments; I think some people must have thought I was weird or crazy or both, because I had so little understanding.
I can also put my hand up for the other types of vulnerability. I showed over-conscientiousness in both my marriages and had low self-confidence from my teens right up to my mid-forties. In thinking of multiple excuses for my abuser’s behaviour, I certainly over-intellectualised. And in my first marriage I was emotionally dependent because I worried that ending the marriage would mean my reversion to bulimia, the addiction that had dogged me ever since I was eleven. | <urn:uuid:60f9a240-8cd4-42a4-8657-ba58cb164db9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cryingoutforjustice.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/victims-vulnerabilities-that-abusers-exploit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963516 | 990 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Essentially the most well-known diet today would be the HCG Diet when people are looking at how to lose weight fast. Whenever we take those quantity of people looking for hcg as an indication of how popular the dietary plan can be, then it really is definately infamous weight reducing program, and features been for a little bit.
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The hCG diet states rapid and sizeable weight reduction. The main hCG diet methodology will require daily treatments of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG), accompanied by a strict reduction in calorie intake.
Exactly what is Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG)?Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (hCG) is the hormone in the urine from expecting mothers. In any over-the-counter and also other pregnancy testing, hCG in the urine could be the indicator of maternity. Usually the hCG hormonal production helps ensure the main survival of the fetus in the event the mother is actually starving or deprived of cuisine. The unborn child continues to be nutritious and consequently grows utilizing the mother's extra fat as nutriment.
Just how much excess weight will you relinquish within the hCG diet?Promoters from the hCG diet say that dieters can achieve slimming down of one to two lbs a day using this diet plan.
How does the hCG diet operate?The hCG diet works by tricking the dieter's entire body into believing they really are expecting a baby. The dieter will take daily injection therapy involving HCG for only a period of 15 to 40 days, according to the volume of surplus fat they feel the need to get rid of.
In unison, they deprive themself merely by chopping their whole calorie consumption to five-hundred calories each day. Often the 500-calorie weight loss is normally high in fiber content and low in carbohydrates along with fat. Because of the very low energy daily allowance, the particular dieter is advised to avoid most sorts of workout. | <urn:uuid:c69a68ee-28db-4d9c-ae3f-2f12e4c2719d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mrdigitalfood.com/2013_01_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94614 | 1,286 | 1.515625 | 2 |
You might have seen the television ads with the bald guy stating that he can’t repair his hair but that now you can have a fescue lawn that will repair itself. I recently got a PR package from Barenbrug USA, which has done investigations on the fescue, describing the fescue. As a class, they refer to the grass as “RTF” : “Rhizomatous Tall Fescue”. It evidently was developed in New Zealand and is now being grown in Oregon.
Barenbrug named their RTF fescue ‘Labarinth’ but Cascade Seed Company also has one named ‘Ceres’ Torpedo tall fescue which is claimed to have rhizomes as well. Home Depot and K-Mart both sell fescue seed from Barenbrug.
At K-Mart I found bags of WaterSaver fescue from Barenbrug. The 10# bag contained ‘Earthsave’, ‘Wildcat’ and ‘Mohawk’ fescue varieties. Oddly enough, the WaterSaver 5# bag contained ‘Earthsave’, ‘Wildcat’ and ‘Heritage’ fescue varieties. None of these K-Mart varieties are rhizomatous, as far as I can tell.
Home Depot, on the other hand, also sells WaterSaver fescue but the 10# bag contains ‘Labarinth’, ‘TF66′ and ‘Barrera’ varieties. The K-Mart and Home Depot WaterSaver bags are identical as far as I can see. No idea why they all contain different varieties!
For online purchases, try Barenbrug USA.
Notes from Dr Clint Waltz, Extension Turf Specialist:
“As for the difference between Tall Fescue cultivars in the “Water Saver” blend, Barenburg owns the “Water Saver” name and can change the cultivars based on individual performance in different regions of the country. For example, if cultivars A, B, & C perform better in the northeast while X, Y, & Z do better in the southeast they can market it all as “Water Saver” and just change the blend. This allows them to save money in marketing while appealing to the environmental consciousness of the public.
“I’m not familiar with any public / peer reviewed data that shows any of their cultivars to have superior drought tolerance over another. I’ve taken a lot of words to say it’s a marketing strategy. Also, I am unaware of the RTF in the current NTEP trial which contains 160 cultivars (I have this study here on the Griffin Campus). Barenburg and Cascade have entries, some named (no ‘Labarinth’ or ‘Ceres’) and several numbered materials, so if they have an RTF it’s a numbered material.” | <urn:uuid:8f8c101f-33dc-4204-b696-3fe939e8323d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.walterreeves.com/lawn-care/fescue-rtf-water-saver-variety/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935346 | 645 | 1.5625 | 2 |
As an experiment I wanted to see if a web app could be created that would send images from a wi-fi enabled mobile device to a computer. The reason was that the computer could easily serve the web app directly to a user's mobile device and the user could then upload their images to the computer and both operations could be done without needing to download a native app from an application vendor or use a data plan.
The proof-of-concept requirements were fairly broad and simple: serve the necessary files that make up the web app from the computer, allow the user to choose image files, and upload the images to the computer. Serving the files was simple, I created a basic stand-alone server process that could respond to requests for files and also handle the image files that were uploaded to it via XHRs from the device's browser. The user requested the start page by scanning a QR code that launched the browser and navigated to the app's URL. Problems really started with the web browsers available on mobile devices.
The largest problem was the iOS web browser. Prior to recently released iOS 6 the iOS browser didn't allow the user to choose files for upload. The basic HTML "input" element with type "file" was not supported in the browser. It seems hard to believe this was an unintentional oversight on Apple's part. The practical effect was that this forced developers to create native iOS apps rather than allowing them to create a single web app for any mobile device. There will remain a large number of devices running iOS 5 and earlier versions of iOS for years to come. As developers we will be living with a crippled iOS browser for a long time. IE 6 anyone?
The next problem involved displaying thumbnails of multiple images. On my Nexus S phone both the native and Chrome browsers crashed after opening multiple images. Looking at the logs I found that the browsers were running out of memory. I was able to improve the situation considerably, but not entirely fix it, by setting the img element's width and height attributes to the size of the image that actually displayed rather than relying on CSS.
Once that problem was minimized I was able to select images, insert the thumbnails into the DOM and then upload the the files to the computer. Some positives from this experiment: all of the Android browsers had partial support for the File API (notable exception below), data URIs could be used to access the image information in the files, and finally @font-face support so I could use Font Awesome for the images on buttons and menus. Negatives: while the File API's File object is supported Android doesn't have multi-file select functionality for browsers. Each image file had to be chosen one at a time from the Gallery application which became tedious by the second file selection.
I'd like to mention that of the three browsers I used during development only Mozilla's Firefox browser for Android was able to reliably display and upload files. Unfortunately for the proof-of-concept web app it had to run on at least the iOS and Android native browsers. Other browsers like Firefox or Dolphin just don't have a large enough market share to make them an acceptable solution.
Having said that, my experience with the shortcomings of many mobile web browsers has reinforced my belief that Mozilla's mobile browser and Firefox mobile operating system are as important now as Firefox was ten years ago in helping to push innovation forward, especially on mobile devices, and to keep the web open.
Lastly a tool that was indispensable and made development easier and faster was desktop Firefox's Responsive Design View mode. In this mode (available under the "Web Developer" menu) the browser's viewport is resized to emulate various common monitor and mobile device screen dimensions or you can set custom dimensions as needed. Using this I was able to set the browser to the same size as my phone and do most of the development work on my desktop, only using the phone to periodically test functionality. If you need to design a web page that is "responsive" to different size screens or screens that change size, like switching from portrait to landscape then this tool is a must have. | <urn:uuid:f05b1c2c-8e83-4a0f-8057-68ef53e56114> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.subv3rsicon.com/2012/11/mobile-web-app-iOS-Android-Firefox.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964612 | 832 | 1.765625 | 2 |
DWR Halts Helicopter Roundups
The Division of Wildlife Resources has suspended all animal capture operations involving the use of helicopters until a thorough review of its helicopter capture procedures is completed.
This comes after a Dec. 27 helicopter accident that took the lives of a DWR employee and two members of Helicopter Capture Services. The DWR contracted with the private company to capture moose near I-80 in Parleys Canyon east of Salt Lake City. The moose were posing threats to motorists after being pushed close to the freeway by heavy snowfall in higher elevations this winter.
"The safety of those involved in these capture operations is our top priority, and we won't be doing them again until we've reviewed all of our capture procedures," says Alan Clark, Wildlife Section chief for the Division of Wildlife Resources. "Division staff are like an extended family, and we're all suffering from this tragic accident."
The Division will begin its review in mid-January.
Clark says that without the use of helicopters, the Division must rely on other means to remove moose that pose threats to motorists in Parleys Canyon.
If possible, Clark says moose will be tranquilized by division personnel and carried to trailers for transport to a different location.
Division personnel will also try to move moose away from the road by hazing practices, such as firing firecracker shells at them. If these procedures don't address the threat, or aren't practical, moose may be shot by division personnel when need be.
"As was the case last week, we continue to be concerned about the risk moose pose to motorists and will address the problem with the most appropriate approach," Clark says.
"We're urging motorists to slow down and drive cautiously through this area, especially if they're driving at night," Clark continued. "Moose are large animals, but they're dark-colored and are very hard to see at night. Motorists need to slow down and drive cautiously through this area, or in any area of the state where big game animals are close to roads.
"When people see a big game animal near a road, they should visualize that a one-year-old child is standing there and act accordingly," he says. "These animals are just like children in the sense that they don't understand the dangers vehicles pose, and will walk right in front of your car."
Motorists are urged to report animals that may be near roadways to the DWR. | <urn:uuid:167f147c-0b24-47f4-b8c9-1dfe97da272c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunadvocate.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=148&poll=233&vote=results&poll=268&vote=results&poll=269&vote=results | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977033 | 507 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Men help unload cars of people dropping off electronics for recycling at Plymouth Meeting Mall, Saturday, Feb 2, 2013. Photo by Adrianna Hoff/Times Herald Staff.
PLYMOUTH — Plymouth Meeting Mall held an electronics recycling pickup Saturday outside of Whole Foods Market.
Residents had the opportunity to get rid of those old TVs and computers that have been collecting dust at home, and to do it with a clear conscience, without contaminating landfills. Electronics contain more than 1,000 potentially hazardous materials, including solvents and heavy metals, according to eForce Recycling of Philadelphia, which organized the pickup. All material collected Saturday will be reused or recycled, with functional equipment sent to nonprofits or lower-income households, and obsolete equipment dismantled and processed at local facilities, according to eForce. | <urn:uuid:8d5a2413-a8c8-43e7-8532-b71a2b94a164> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesherald.com/article/20130202/NEWS01/130209904&template=printart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939649 | 166 | 1.75 | 2 |
Students to take wide-ranging survey
Students in the fifth, seventh, ninth and 11th grade in the Temecula Valley Unified School District will take the California Healthy Kids Survey this month.
Survey results will provide the district with information on student attitudes toward drug, alcohol and tobacco use.
The survey asks questions about bullying, violence, student perception of campus safety, school and community connection, and other issues facing youths.
A component for military families also will be included.
Students in the fifth grade must have their parents’ permission to take the survey. Students in the upper grades will take the survey unless their parents return a letter requesting that they opt out.
Letters for survey participation will go home this month. Student participation is voluntary and all responses are anonymous.
Results will be available in the spring and will be used to improve programs and identify student health and safety needs.
Superintendent to meet with parents
Temecula Valley Unified School District Superintendent Tim Ritter will hold a parent and community forum at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
The forums are an opportunity for members of the public to meet with Ritter to hear an update about the district and issues it is facing, and to ask him questions.
Another gathering is planned at 6 p.m. March 20.
The forums will be at school district headquarters, 31350 Rancho Vista Road.
Students to present ‘Legally Blonde’
The award-winning Chaparral High School Drama Department will present “Legally Blonde: The Musical” later this month.
Featuring a cast of 43 students, this will be one of the largest musical performances staged at CHS.
Tickets cost $12 for general admission and $10 for students, military and senior citizens 55 and older. Tickets are available at the door or during school hours from the bookkeeping office.
Showtimes are 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and March 1, and 2 p.m. Saturday and March 2 at the school’s performing arts center, 27215 Nicolas Road in Temecula.
For information, call (951) 695-4200.
Bingo games set Saturday at CHS
The Chaparral High School Cheer & Pom parent support group will hold an evening of bingo and raffles to support the school’s cheer program this week.
Bingo players must be 18 or older; no students, regardless of age, are allowed.
The $20 buy-in fee includes admission, the first pack of 10 bingo games and refreshments. Tickets for raffle baskets also will be sold.
Doors open at 5 p.m. and the games will begin at 6 p.m. Saturday at the high school, 27215 Nicolas Road in Temecula.
For information, call (760) 672-5509.
Teachers get grants from foundation
At a recent Temecula Valley Unified School District board meeting, 51 educators were presented with grant money to support programs benefitting students at 19 sites.
The Temecula Valley Foundation for Excellence in Education presented the “mini-grants” with awards ranging in value from $50 to $500, which totaled more than $18,000.
Projects that received funding included: books, educational magazine subscriptions, and pigeon specimens for Temecula Middle School; a digital camera for Jackson Elementary; art supplies for Abby Reinke Elementary; solar-powered experiment supplies for Crowne Hill Elementary; theater supplies for Rancho Elementary; a puppet theater for use by world-language students at Great Oak High School; and percussion mallets for the band program at Chaparral High School.
Teachers submitted grant applications in November and a foundation subcommittee reviewed the requests. The money must be used to support educational opportunities for students and must be spent by March 1. | <urn:uuid:7c1dca7d-02e4-420f-b2b7-cab42bcfc783> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/feb/18/tp-class-notes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939204 | 794 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Linux training is key to advancing your career. The Linux server market is poised to reach $50 billion dollars in three years. The embedded, mobile and netbook markets have exploded recently, resulting in rapid expansion of Linux use in companies previously who used proprietary offerings. When a market grows this quickly, the need for well trained developer talent rises just as precipitously. The freelance marketplace Odesk recently found that Linux related jobs surged from 128 in 2006 to 2014 jobs listed in its service in 2009. The Linux Foundation is meeting this demand with a new Linux training program that will produce developers with unmatched technical skills. | <urn:uuid:d00a740f-e985-40bb-8382-452c1fd568b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linux.com/learn/linux-career-center?start=20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958698 | 122 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Who Was Emily Davison?
By Rose Tremain.
Emily Davison has a small, tragic place in British history as the woman who threw herself in front of the King's horse, Anmer, during the running of the 1913 Epsom Derby.
Why did she do it? With Janet Maw, Nigel Anthony, Miriam Margolyes and Elizabeth Proud.
Director Gordon House | <urn:uuid:62432745-c2c4-42f7-9359-d1c89775436f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/w/wh/who_was_emily_davison_.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932711 | 79 | 1.640625 | 2 |
“Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop. The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell. It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it.”
Many sympathise with the cold panic of information hell that New York Times’ author and correspondent George Packer associates with Twitter, like he describes in his blog post; last but not least the fugatiousness of twitter is something wonderful as well as frightening: nothing seems of value, nothing of lastingness.
“Education needs time – and that is lacking in the Net”, says philosopher Markus Gabriel in an interview on FAZ.net – and on Twitter, on might want to add, is immediate transientness even baked into the system – Twitter’s own search itself does only reach two days back into the past. All the beautiful thoughts sink so quickly into the depth of the time line that we would like to stay; but a storm is blowing from Paradise that drives us irresistibly into the future.
If we regard Twitter as news channel, I can comprehend Parker’s panic very well. Every bit of news that has reached me (by Re-Tweet) for the second time seems outdated, somehow no longer relevant. And how desperate if even the absolute media-mainstream gets replicated by Re-Tweet, like today: “Man Resigns On Twitter per Haiku”.
However just this notice leads us to something in Twitter that is beautiful and valuable: lyrics and aphorism, beauty in linguistic cautiousness. The remarkable with Sun’s CEO’s resigning is not that he proclaimed it by Twitter. Twitter is the most efficient channel for declarations of that kind – that’s all over town, been told by the host of social media experts for years. Remarkable is that Jonathan Schwartz chooses the meter of the Haiku. Brief real poems or exclamations resonating in their syllables are the beauty of Twitter for me. An update like “Mars can be seen all night” might have a factual background in astronomy. But regarded as solitary verse, the six monosyllabic words become a myth in which we get sight of the God of War, victorious over the realm of Neith.
If you do not just see Twitter as a short messaging service but take the metaphor “twitter” serious, the never ending deluge of text looses its terror – it no longer information but becomes in deed music, a stream you may drift away.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh—thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
(Shelley, To a Skylark)
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Next post: Stained Glass → | <urn:uuid:9da12d2d-b0ae-4947-8cea-68fc3b69030a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.slow-media.net/schoenheit-von-vogelsang | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941766 | 654 | 1.585938 | 2 |
CALGARY - The Alberta government has launched an investigation into how members of the Calgary Flames and their families scored swine flu shots at a special clinic as thousands of people waited in line for the vaccine or were turned away.
Alberta Health Minister Ron Liepert said he wants to know if the shots were "inappropriately diverted" to the hockey players while other Albertans stood in line for hours.
"There is only one supplier in the province and that's us," he said. "They would only be diverted with the approval of the chief medical officer of health."
Dr. Andre Corriveau, Alberta's chief medical health officer, said he first learned about the issue through the news media Tuesday and declined to comment due to the investigation.
Ken King, president of the NHL club, said the players and their families received their shots on Friday at a private location. He said the organization contacted Alberta Health Services and requested the clinic based on recommendations from team doctors, the NHL and provincial guidelines in place at the time.
"We thought that we were working within a protocol that Alberta Health Services thought was appropriate," he said.
Players are at a high risk of spreading the virus "due to the fact that they have frequent physical contact, onerous domestic and cross-border travel, extreme exertion and, frankly, are in very close contact with other teams," he said Tuesday.
Part of the consideration was that players are frequently recognized and could have caused a stir at a mass clinic, he said.
"The whole notion of some sort of a sideshow at these clinics, thereby also creating, perhaps, longer lineups and other issues and maybe more complications for other people."
The revelation is one more hit for the Alberta government, which is facing mounting criticism for the way it has managed its swine flu vaccination program.
Initially, anyone who came to one of the mass clinics set up across the province was vaccinated. But that led to huge lineups and the clinics have been closed since the weekend so the plan could be rejigged to focus on high-risk patients.
Starting Thursday, only children between the ages of six months and under five years will be eligible to get the vaccine, followed by pregnant women.
Opposition politicians charged the hockey players were given special treatment because of their star status.
"It's a failure of leadership that we are providing vaccines willy-nilly to whoever has money, to whoever has access, when cancer patients, when chronic lung patients, when pregnant women and their children can't get it," said Alberta Liberal Leader David Swann.
"It's a violation of the basic principles of public health care."
NDP Leader Brian Mason accused the government of paying more attention to its pocketbooks than to Albertans who could die without the vaccine.
"The Calgary Flames owners have an investment to protect and together have donated more than $44,000 to the Progressive Conservative Party since 2004," Mason told the legislature.
"Why has the premier allowed millionaire friends of this PC government to receive preferential treatment over vulnerable Albertans like pregnant women and children under five?"
King said at the time the Flames requested the clinic, many Albertans who had no special risk factors were being vaccinated. He said he never would have expected such treatment under the government's new stricter guidelines.
"We wouldn't do it today because the vaccine wouldn't be available today," he said.
"We went at a time that hundreds of thousands of other Albertans of all risk profiles were getting it, and thought we were within scope.
"Clearly that didn't sit well."
Premier Ed Stelmach said Alberta Health Services will have a full report "very shortly."
In Edmonton, Allan Watt, the Oilers' vice-president of communications, said the team is keeping on top of the players' health but has not made any H1N1 vaccination arrangements for them.
"If a player wants to get a shot he can go to a clinic just like any other person," said Watt.
The NHL said last week that at least three players -- forward Quintin Laing of the Washington Capitals, Edmonton Oilers defenceman Ladislav Smid and Colorado Avalanche goalie Peter Budaj -- had been diagnosed with H1N1.
The league said it had "implemented no specific 'contingency plans' at this point in time" but would be prepared to do so should it become necessary.
-- With files from Jim Macdonald in Edmonton. | <urn:uuid:67ffeb01-6b41-4afe-9aae-2a8aafe029a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tsn.ca/story/print/?id=297102 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9819 | 920 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Disabled Members' Council
The NUJ's Disabled Members' Council exists to highlight the needs of disabled members of the union and to advise and assist all members of the NUJ on disability issues.
The council consists of seven NUJ members who have a disability as defined in the Disability Discrimination Act. It is elected at ADM
, the NUJ's annual conference.
The cornerstone of the work of the Disabled Members Council is the implementation of the social model of disability, which states that disability is caused not so much by a person's impairment, but by the disadvantages or restrictions of activity caused by a society which takes little or no account of those impairments.
Disabled members in the media industry are overwhelmingly concentrated in the lowest paying, low status or freelance jobs. This makes it particularly difficult for them to get time off to attend meetings, or to afford the related costs which disability can bring. The work of the council allows disabled members to draw from each other's strengths in order to maximize their influence over policies and break down the barriers which prevent disabled members from realising their full potential in their union, place of work, and wider society. It also works to promote rights afforded by the Disability Discrimination Act
and other legislation relating to disability interests, and this work is better informed by people with direct experience of disability or impairment.
The DMC recognises the need for true equality in our profession and its work involves monitoring relevant legislation and campaigning for improved access for disabled members. It also highlights to the union any instances of discrimination on the grounds of disability.
As part of the council's work it has produced a Disability Handbook
and helps publish guides
to terminology and other disability related issues. For details of other publications see the MORE INFO section on the left. | <urn:uuid:f992bdec-6cd7-4d77-b0aa-eac996a53553> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=65 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95917 | 362 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Published On Sunday, February 17, 2008. Under: News.According to market research firm In-Stat nearly half of the 800,000 iPhones that have been unlocked for distribution and use outside of the sanctioned Apple networks are believed to be in China. China Mobile, which is the nation’s largest wireless carrier, stated that there were approximately 400,000 unlocked iPhones that were using the carrier’s cellular network service at the end of 2007. This number represents approximately ten percent of all iPhones which were sold at that time. The carrier went on to say that the figure was very surprising and significantly more than what was estimated, although they had no doubt that the iPhone would be much more popular than the iPod in China if and when Apple and China Mobile team up to launch the Chinese version of the iPhone. The surge has been credited to a major difference between the American and Chinese buyers. In the US, most buyers confine their smartphone purchases to those needed for work related purposes. Chinese buyers often use their phones for entertainment or to obtain internet access. Apple’s focus on this last usage pattern for their iPhone makes it a very logical fit for the market, particularly with the interface that the iPhone uses. Contributing to the surge is the fact that Chinese buyers are more likely to spend larger amounts of money on their phone purchases. This is despite earning lower average incomes. One-fifth of all phones sold in China cost no less than 4,000 Yuan Renminbi each, or $533 in US Dollars. Despite attempts by Apple to keep the iPhone unlocking from the public eye with new software and changes to the phone’s bootloader, it has become very apparent that there are entrepreneurs giving the public exactly what they want. Since Apple has signed a revenue-sharing deal with various carrier partners that does not apply if the phone is unlocked from its respective network, this comes as a bit of a lost opportunity for Apple.
Latest news for the Apple iPhone, iTouch, iMac and iPod.
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Tags3g iphone 3g iphone news 3g iphone rumors 3g iphone rumours chinese iphone iphone 2.0 iphone 3g debut iphone china iphone debut iphone in china latest 3g iphone news new iphone next general iphone orange iphone orange to subsidize iphone solar apple products solar iphone solar ipod solar itouch unlocked iphone
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- Official Press Releases | <urn:uuid:65d1033e-638c-4c9f-aa7d-f45637b3eda4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.latestinews.com/tag/chinese-iphone/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937989 | 654 | 1.578125 | 2 |
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