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Matthew Hudson | December 1, 2008
Whatever you do, do not give in to resistance! Many times companies invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to change their culture, but they change their plan so many times that by the time they hit the finish line, it has moved two miles away. And suddenly, guess what? You are now ready for another culture change!
When we were helping a conference center put in a service culture, one of the ideas was to change the nametags of everyone to include their nicknames. We briefly mentioned this example in the “Casting” chapter.
In the travel industry, it is very common to place your hometown on the bottom of your nametag or the number of years you have been with the hotel. If you travel at all, you have seen this many times. This company wanted to do something really unique with this idea by adding the employee’s nickname on their nametag.
Two months after the nametags were passed out (in a very nice ceremony, we might add), there were two cast members that became very vocal about the nametags. So management decided to hold a meeting and vote on the nametags.
Before we go any further, some background that you need here is the response from the customer to the new nametags. It was wonderful. When a letter was sent in praising employees, the customer always mentioned them by his or her nickname instead of their real name. One manager told the story of running into someone at a convention and that person was not sure what her real name was, but he sure remembered “Sweet Pea”—her nickname! So the idea was working wonderfully. The problem was that there were a few “vocalizers” who personally did not care for the new nametag.
The vote caused confusion among the employees. It divided them. Obviously, the resistant third voted against them, the supportive third were all for them, but the third on the fence were afraid where to put their support. The result, management changed back to the old nametags. The damage? The people started commenting to us (including one of the customers) how different thing were since they took the new nametags away. The regular customers had noticed a positive difference in the service of the conference center employees since their last visit.
The nametags were a visible sign of the new culture. Everyday, each person was reminded that they were supposed to think and act differently now. Unfortunately, with this reneging of the plan, this company has set its culture change back by six months. “Come on. All this over a nametag?” you say. “I don’t know about that!” Well, it’s true.
tune in next time to see how we analyzed this situation… | <urn:uuid:a2dff6d3-ec9b-4db5-95fa-04606619d921> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.penumbramd.com/2008/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987044 | 600 | 1.570313 | 2 |
You expect Democrats to accuse former businessman Mitt Romney of “putting profits over people — making a buck or a few million of them no matter what it took or who it hurt,” as Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse did in releasing a new Web video.
But it’s sad to see the economic ignorance displayed by Romney’s Republican rivals. Rick Tyler, long the closest aide to Newt Gingrich who is now running the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, declares, “His business success comes from raiding and destroy businesses — putting people out of work, stealing their health care.” The PAC’s ad calls Romney “a predatory corporate raider.”
Gingrich himself says that Romney’s work buying and selling companies at the investment firm Bain Capital was comparable to “rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company.”
Rick Perry ran TV ads in Iowa saying that Romney “made millions buying companies and laying off workers.”
Somehow the candidates of the party that claims to defend free enterprise and a dynamic economy are railing against economic change in action.
“Somehow the candidates of the party that claims to defend free enterprise and a dynamic economy are railing against economic change in action.”
In a growing economy, companies succeed and fail every day. Technology changes. Consumer tastes change. New competitors offer a better product or a better price. Raw materials or labor becomes too expensive. Some companies just aren’t viable, and some investments turn out to have been mistaken.
That’s what the “creative destruction” of a market economy is all about. Companies constantly seek to serve consumers better. And often one company’s success means that other companies fail. Manufacturers of obsolete products often go out of business. Jobs and investments are lost, but what’s the alternative? Should we be keeping the firms that once made horse-drawn buggies, gramophones, and slide rules in business? No, we understand that the process of economic change makes us all better off, even though there can be short-term pain for the owners and employees of failed firms.
Republicans are supposed to know all this. That’s why they proclaim their devotion to free markets and oppose industrial policy, government subsidies, bailouts, and other schemes to override the market process and keep current firms in business even when they’re no longer meeting consumers’ needs.
But when a businessman runs for president, all bets are off. Republicans let fly with the same denunciations of normal business practices that Democrats do.
Think back to the 2008 campaign when Romney first ran for president. During a Republican debate at the Reagan Library on May 3, 2007, Sen. John McCain derided Romney’s leadership ability, saying, “I led … out of patriotism, not for profit.” Challenged on his statement, McCain elaborated that Romney “managed companies, and he bought, and he sold, and sometimes people lost their jobs. That’s the nature of that business.” He could have been channeling Barack Obama.
There are plenty of good criticisms of Mitt Romney. His health care mandate in Massachusetts was a model for President Obama’s national mandate. No one knows what he really thinks about abortion and same-sex marriage, after he dramatically changed his positions at age 57 as he prepared to run for president. He wants to increase military spending by $2 trillion. Many of his foreign policy advisers helped to get us into the disastrous Iraq war.
But the fact that sometimes he closed companies and laid off workers is not a good reason to criticize him. We’d never get new companies like Staples, Domino’s, Bright Horizons, and Sports Authority — companies that Romney helped fund and nurture at Bain Capital — if investment capital was locked into existing companies.
And sometimes, as the movie “Other People’s Money” demonstrated, it takes a “predatory corporate raider” to go in and shake up a company, moving the land, labor, and capital to places where they can be more productive.
Republicans should stop attacking Romney for his role in the dynamic market process and spend more time explaining how they would limit government and improve the environment for business and economic growth. | <urn:uuid:1453efab-472f-42ea-b4fc-b33e8fb17fa3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/what-happened-gops-freemarket-principles | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961238 | 900 | 1.539063 | 2 |
710 Franklin Street,
1 person favorited this theater
The Florida Theatre was a small non-descript theatre sandwiched between the Citizens Bank Building on the left and O'Falks Department Store on the right. Although an old photo of the building is dated 1924, I hesitate to give an exact year of opening without doing some additional research.
Here’s an interesting anecdote: when the theatre first opened it was called the Florida Theatre. Years later the name was changed to the Franklin Theatre, and by the early-1940’s, the name was changed back to the Florida Theatre. Hence the saying I heard someone say years ago: remember when the Florida Theatre was called the Florida Theatre?! The 1941 and 1943 editions of Film Daily Yearbook lists the Florida Theatre with 853 seats and operated by Paramount Pictures Inc. through their subsidiary E.J. Sparks. The 1950 edition of F.D.Y. lists 900 seats. By the 1950’s it came under the ownership of ABC Florida State Theatres. The Florida Theatre was remodeled in 1947, to the plans of Jacksonville bassed architectural firm Kemp, Bunch & Jackson.
A friend tells me he spent many Saturday afternoons seated in the last row of the balcony up against the projection booth watching B-westerns. Many Saturday matinees featured 3 extra cartoons in addition to the daily features. In the early 1960’s admission was 20 cents for kids, and 60 cents for adults (same as the Ritz Theatre in Ybor City).
I vividly recall my first visit to the Florida Theatre in 1960. The double feature that day was "The Mummy" (the 1959 color version with Christopher Lee) and a western called "Money, Women, and Guns". But it was "The Mummy" that I was really anxious to see. My father drove a friend and I down to the Florida Theatre and we stood in front of the theatre looking at the poster for "The Mummy" while I begged my father to let me go in. He was concerned it might be too scary for two 10-year-old kids, and that I’d surely have trouble sleeping at night. After what seemed like ages I finally managed to convince him, and my friend & I bought our tickets and headed for the balcony. When the lights went down and the film began our hands went up over our eyes – it was scary as heck! And of course I couldn’t sleep that night.
Although it was fairly neat and clean the lobby was rather drab looking. As best as I can recall the walls were plain, sans any fancy decoration or artwork. I do remember the red carpet was showing some signs of wear. There were no doors at the auditorium entrances, only a curtain on a swinging rod that was swung open during intermission and closed while the show was in progress. Of course this did very little in preventing outside noise from the lobby or Franklin Street from entering the auditorium.
The side walls in the auditorium were painted light brown from bottom to midway up, and light beige from midpoint upwards. In the early "silent film" days the Florida Theatre had a proscenium and a small stage. The stage was hidden from view with the arrival of sound when a larger screen and speakers were installed within the proscenium.
Towards the later-1950’s a new wider screen replaced the older one. This new screen stretched from the edge of the left exit doorway, and across the front of the proscenium to the edge of the right exit doorway giving the Florida Theatre a CinemaScope capability. This screen was totally bare – no main curtain nor side curtains. And of course the proscenium was forever hidden from view.
In February of 1962, Florida State Theatres announced that the Florida Theatre had been selected as the theatre that will feature the exclusive west coast engagement of "West Side Story" which had just won 10 Academy Awards. The film had been booked for an April opening at the Florida Theatre. It was also announced that the Florida Theatre will close for remodeling soon, and will convert to a new policy of playing first run features along with the Tampa Theatre and Palace Theatre.
So in preparation for the big event the Florida Theatre closed for renovations. The drab lobby was completely redone giving it a bright, modern retro-1960’s look. Gone was the worn red carpet now replaced by a newly-tiled floor. Silver and blue wallpaper covered the lobby walls, and shiny new doors with circular viewports were installed at both auditorium entrances which effectively blocked out lobby and street noise.
The theater entrance was restructured with a new box office built inside the newly designed foyer against the right side wall. A large mirror covered the wall opposite the box office along with four new poster display cases that now featured "West Side Story" posters and color photos from the film. Bright lights hidden underneath glass panels below the marquee illuminated the foyer and entrance area tremendously.
There were only a few improvements made in the auditorium. Aside from new carpeting and a brand new screen, all seats on the main level had been re-upholstered with new red fabric. A dark blue waterfall curtain was installed in front of the screen (the waterfall design is a curtain that forms loops at the bottom and rises/decends) giving the Florida a small touch of elegance. The side walls of the auditorium remained exactly as they were. There were no changes made to the balcony or balcony seats.
A few weeks before "West Side Story" opened, ads began appearing in the local newspapers announcing that reservations to see the film at the New Florida Theater were now being accepted. Tickets could be purchased either by mail or at the box office in advance. This was all new for local filmgoers who had never heard of having to make reservations or purchasing tickets in advance just to see a movie. Admission increased drastically as well. The 20-cent and 60-cent admission was history.
Tickets for "West Side Story" were $1.50 to $2.25 for all ages. There was no reduced admission for students and children. The difference in price was based on seat location (main level, lodge, or balcony) and day and time of showing. The film was shown twice daily (matinees 2:00 evenings 8:30). When the special roadshow engagement ended admission reverted back to popular prices. I do recall children’s admission was 50-cents for just about all attractions thereafter. Not certain about students and adults but more than likely it was 75-cents for students and $1.00 to $1.25 for adults.
"West Side Story" ran for nearly three months and was followed by several big attractions over the next few years. Among the many notable films opening first-run at the Florida were:
“State Fair”, “The Pink Panther”, “Irma La Douce”, “Mutiny on the Bounty”, “Blood Feast”, “Tom Jones”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?”, “Fun In Acapulco”, “Viva Las Vegas”, “The Longest Day”, “Torn Curtain”, “Hawaii”, “Romeo & Juliet”, “Wait Until Dark”, “Funny Girl”, “Rosemary’s Baby”, “Planet of the Apes”, “Woodstock”, “Five Easy Pieces”, “A Clockwork Orange”.
Around or about 1974 the Florida Theatre began featuring black exploitation films and second-run double features, and not long afterwards the theatre closed its doors. The building remained locked until one day in the late-1970’s when a small crew of men arrived in two tractor trailer trucks and began stripping the theater. I stood across the street and watched as they hauled out all projection equipment, speakers, curtain, refreshment center appliances and counters, etc. and loaded all equipment unto both tractor trailers. A friend who was a former union operator told me the equipment was probably being driven to Florida State Theatres warehouse in Jacksonville and placed in storage until needed at another theatre.
The building sat vacant for a time and was finally demolished around 1978. Today the TECO building sits on the site. The front brick plaza directly outside the TECO lobby entrance is the exact spot where the Florida stood.
Here’s a practically unknown secret: before the Florida Theatre had an air conditioning unit of its own, it received cool air from the Tampa Theatre via pipes that ran underneath Franklin Street. As the Florida Theatre stood directly across Franklin Street from the Tampa Theatre, the pipes were connected to the Tampa’s unit and ran into the side wall of the Florida Theatre building. Thus, the Tampa Theatre supplied air conditioning to two theaters.
I do miss the Florida Theatre. The picture was always bright and well focused on the screen and the sound was consistantly sharp and clear and remained at a good level. And since the theatre was small the screen always appeared to be much larger than it actually was no matter where you were seated.
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater | <urn:uuid:40ab7691-625f-41ab-b3af-259e7f68175c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/30137 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976553 | 1,929 | 1.5 | 2 |
Ginny: Like black people, in a way
I’ve seen many comments where Ginny lovers (I saw How to kill a Mockingbird yesterday so saying Ginny-lovers is a very funny pun) have tried to explain away the horrible “crime” of disliking the aforementioned character.
Even if for a few of you, Ginny Weasley, a secondary character in a children series, is a representative of the most important human values in your systems; it doesn’t follow that the rest of the readers will give such an importance to said character.…Was it because she is commonplace? Because she is like just any average person? No pretty, no smart (no Hermione for sure!), not rich, nor popular?
So, we come down to the point of the identification /projection issue. This people who didn’t identify with the “instant millionaire fantasy” may have found themselves not invested emotionally in any character, and even in some cases they were feeling more identified with Hermione.
Unfortunately literary and media stereotypes do exist. Cataloguing a character as belonging to a certain stereotype is something rather normal to do in the frame of in-depth analysis.
Bonus features in the comments:
analectic: My theory is that Ginny is the Boba Fett of the HP world. Because pre-OotP, there were only a few tantalising tidbits about her so Ginny could be whatever you wanted her to be. Suddenly in the last two books she gets all this exposure and the preconceptions get fused with all the new info, rather than sparking a new analysis of the character.
darynthe, in a response to a comment: Wow, that explanation you heard that it is Ok to bash real people but fictional characters are off limits is mind boogling. But then again I suppose you can stretch words and logic to fit almost anything you want to. This is why I often think that problems shouldn’t be solved by mere logic, they should be addressed first and foremost by principle, especially the Golden Rule.
Apparently, the internet is no longer serious business once you make an ass of yourself.
This is very ironic from people who makes icons about harmonians mocking them as they were african slaves opressed in North America
Legal Disclaimer - Site Map | <urn:uuid:379731d0-b353-4b82-8bc4-99f5fbb871ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.journalfen.net/community/hp_cornfield/16617.html?thread=4407785 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955486 | 478 | 1.617188 | 2 |
On Friday, three winners of the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up! design competition were announced following deliberation by a jury of sustainable stormwater infrastructure industry insiders at Drexel University on Thursday. Created by the Philadelphia Water Department, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Community Design Collaborative, the competition called for creative and sustainable solutions for Philadelphia’s stormwater management. Architects, landscape architects, engineers, and other professionals formed 28 teams to provide innovative means for urban infrastructure to transform the city. From nine finalists, three winners were selected, each responding to a different urban context (industrial, commercial, and neighborhood) and cashing in on the $10,000 prize. | <urn:uuid:fb57b600-e337-438a-9c65-948bfdde7c15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/tag/infill-philadelphia-soak-it-up | 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 | 0.956732 | 142 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Andy: I had Mr. Mozart to keep me company…[points and taps his head.] It was in here. [gestures over his heart] And in here. That’s the beauty of music. They can’t get that from you. Haven’t you ever felt that way about music?
Red: Well… I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it, though. Didn’t make too much sense in here.
Andy: No, here’s where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don’t forget.
Andy: That there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s… there’s somethin’ inside that they can’t get to; that they can’t touch. It’s yours.
Create your music, listen to it, believe in it. The temptation to judge and offend is most likely because we’re unsatisfied and not enjoying our own song, and this helps in understanding why some people act certain ways.
And I guess when we truly know who we are and what we want, whatever society say or do will never matter anymore. | <urn:uuid:ea86b1f0-934c-4f01-aeab-6e3fa767cb2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kuchikuchi.wordpress.com/tag/the-shawsank-redemption/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957751 | 260 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Senate Validates E-Signatures
|June 16, 2000|
By Jim Abrams
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON ?? Congress cleared a path for the exploding growth of electronic commerce by passing legislation that will give a signature or record sent through cyberspace the same legal validity as a pen-and-paper document.
Under the legislation (S. 761) approved 87-0 by the Senate Friday, businesses could seal multimillion-dollar deals with the click of a mouse and consumers could complete a home mortgage or buy a car without ever setting foot in an office.
The bill, some two years in the making, passed the House Wednesday by 426-4. President Clinton strongly endorses the measure, saying it would "encourage the information technology revolution."
While e-commerce is expected to triple over the next three years to some $1.6 trillion a year, there has been no nationwide framework for giving an electronic signature the same legal status as a paper document. A consumer can get a quote for an insurance policy over the Internet, but he still has to sign on the dotted line to get the policy.
"This legislation will eliminate the single most significant vulnerability of electronic commerce, which is the fear that everything it revolves around ... could be rendered invalid solely by virtue of their being in electronic form," said Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., a key supporter of the measure.
Both the House and Senate passed electronic signature bills last year, but reaching a compromise proved elusive, partly because of concerns from the White House and some consumer groups that it would expose consumers to abuses. The worry was that businesses could send e-mail notices of rate hikes or recalls to customers without the computer skills or technology to get the information.
The business community, said Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., saw the legislation as "a chance to save billions and billions of dollars and thousands of hours" devoted to record keeping. But consumer groups were "extremely frightened" by the possibilities for abuse.
The final bill makes clear that consumers must "opt in" to electronic signature agreements and must consent to receiving records and documents electronically rather than with paper. Businesses must confirm that customers have the necessary hardware and software to receive electronic documents.
Notices of termination, such as health insurance lapses, electricity cut-offs or evictions, would still have to be delivered by paper.
The bill does not define how online transactions will take place. The two involved parties can reach agreement on a contract format or they can go through a growing number of third parties offering software verifying the authenticity of electronic signatures.
Supporters said the impact of the legislation will be felt well beyond American shores. "The rest of the world watches us and follows our example and what we have produced here is a charter for the next growth phase of e-commerce," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Under the measure, the Commerce Secretary is directed to promote the use and acceptance of electronic signatures and records worldwide. | <urn:uuid:36d68ed7-0fae-4b96-9809-33d88dacf852> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alta.org/washington/news.cfm?newsID=550 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952323 | 611 | 1.5 | 2 |
OFFICE OF CITIZEN SERVICES AND COMMUNICATIONS
GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
MARCH 24, 2004
Good Afternoon, Chairman Putnam, Vice-Chairman Miller, and members of the subcommittee. I am M.J. Jameson, Associate Administrator for the General Services Administration’s (GSA’s) Office of Citizen Services and Communications. Thank you for inviting me to testify at today’s hearing on: “Electronic Government: A Progress Report on the Successes and Challenges of Government-wide Information Technology Solutions.”
I am here to discuss USA Services, the E-Government initiative assigned to GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Communications. I would like to say at the outset that we appreciate the strong support this subcommittee and full Committee Chairman Tom Davis have shown for USA Services. It is also important to acknowledge the encouragement and guidance we have received from the Office of Management and Budget and our own Administrator of General Services, Stephen A. Perry.
President Bush articulated his plan to harness Internet technology on behalf of citizens in his February 2002 budget request to Congress. The idea of using Internet technology to make government more citizen centric has been fully embraced by Administrator Perry. This concept is part of the President’s Management Agenda, an aggressive government reform strategy designed by the Administration. In his Management Agenda, the President promised to use the Internet “to empower citizens, allowing them to request customized information from Washington when they need it, not just when Washington wants to give it to them. True reform involves not just giving people information, but giving citizens the freedom to act upon it.”
The broad objective was – and remains – championing citizen-centered government that will result in major improvements in the Federal Government’s value to the citizen. USA Services is helping to make this a reality by supporting many objectives of the President’s program to strengthen E-Government.
The mission of USA Services is to present citizens with a single “front door” to government, allowing them to receive accurate, timely, and consistent answers and information. USA Services also helps other E-Gov initiatives and Federal agencies better respond to citizen inquiries.
USA Services is managed by the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications, established in June 2002 to streamline and modernize access to government information and services. USA Services was built from the following operational units that now reside within OCSC: FirstGov.gov, the National Contact Center (better known as 1-800-FED-INFO), and the Pueblo, Colorado, publication distribution facility. This structure allows citizens to access government more efficiently, effectively, and more easily than ever before. It also permits entry through the citizen’s channel of choice: the Internet, telephone, e-mail, or publications. With USA Services, we are answering the President’s challenge to help citizens find information and obtain services organized according to their needs, and not according to the divisions created by the government’s organizational chart.
Citizens in search of information can log on to FirstGov.gov, where they are linked to and able to search more than 24 million Federal and state government pages that offer easy-to-understand information and services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This year, we expect to top 190 million page views.
With FirstGov.gov, we also have the capacity to help those who need assistance with difficult questions. For example, citizens can send us an E-mail by clicking on an Uncle Sam icon, and we respond within two business days. This year we project that we will respond to more than 150,000 emails, which is more than twice the amount received last year.
We also serve citizens through more traditional means, such as 1-800-FED-INFO, the National Contact Center, where we answer telephone questions from citizens on behalf of all Federal agencies. During FY03, citizens called 1-800-FED-INFO nearly two million times. This fiscal year, we anticipate more than 2.5 million calls. We answer questions such as, “How do I get a passport?” And, “Where can I apply for Federal grants and benefits?” And, “How do I apply for a Federal job?”
The third communications channel is the Publications Center. “Pueblo, Colorado 81009” is one of the best known addresses in the country. Pueblo is a one-stop shopping center for Federal consumer publications. Whether citizens order publications by mail, phone, or on-line, their orders are filled at the Pueblo distribution facility. Since the beginning of the print program in the early 1970s, we have distributed over 336 million publications to citizens. Three of the most popular publications are: Making a Will; Losing Weight; and the Consumer Action Handbook.
USA Services – Assisting Federal Agencies
Mr. Chairman, the USA Services initiative also supports the President’s directive to ignite a culture change in government – one that shifts the focus away from agency needs and more toward citizen needs.
As the lead in this effort, GSA is looking after citizen interests by helping our fellow agencies in two ways: First, when an agency gets a phone call or E-mail that should go to another agency, we take care of the misdirected communication.
Citizens often don’t know which agency to call or E-mail with their questions or problems. When they reach the wrong agency, we can either give them the information, or – if the question is more complex – direct them to the right office.
USA Services currently has 14 agencies signed up to send us these misdirected calls and E-mails. Our goal is 20 partners by the end of FY 2004. Ultimately, we would like to have the entire government on board. This is a free service for the agencies, as it is a part of OCSC’s core mission to help Federal agencies better serve the public.
In some cases, agencies come to us for an even higher level of support. USA Services personnel can respond to citizens’ frequently asked questions with information that’s been cleared through agency experts. We call this our Tier 1 service. This not only helps the citizen, it helps the agencies as well by saving time and money, and by allowing agency personnel to concentrate on their core missions. This is a reimbursable service that we provide to six agencies. Our goal is 10 Tier One partners by the end of FY 2004 and 15 by the end of FY 2005.
FirstGov.Gov – The Flagship
Mr. Chairman, I’d like to say a bit more about FirstGov.gov, the cornerstone of USA Services. In the simplest terms, FirstGov has taught us that it makes a lot more sense to go online than to waste time standing in line when working with government. It swaps red tape for a red carpet.
FirstGov helps citizens navigate through the bureaucracy without having to know organizational structure, program names or the acronyms of government agencies. It provides citizens, businesses, Federal employees, government organizations and the media with an easy, one-stop place to find government services and information.
In the past, citizen interaction with Federal agencies and state and local governments could be hit-or-miss. A mail or phone inquiry might mean the letter writer or the phone caller would be passed from office to office. There was no guarantee that the citizen’s question would be answered, a frustrating and time-consuming exercise for all. With FirstGov that is no longer the case.
Mr. Chairman, reaction to FirstGov shows citizens appreciate being able to access government on their terms. A partial list of accomplishments includes the following:
o Innovations in American Government Award, the “Oscar” of government, given by the Ford Foundation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in partnership with the Council for Excellence in Government -- May 2003.
o Featured as a model for collaboration in “New Models of Collaboration: A Guide for Managers,” a study conducted by the Center for Technology in Government, State University of New York at Albany -- February 2004.
o Selected among EContent 100 by E-Content Magazine – December 2003.
o Rated #1 in Web-Quality & E-Government Readiness in the United Nations "World Public Sector Report 2003 - E-Government at the Crossroads” -- November 2003.
o Rated #1 in Overall Federal e-Government by the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University -- September 2003.
o PC Magazines Top 100 Classic Sites – March 2003.
Mr. Chairman, President George W. Bush has challenged us with an aggressive reform agenda and we at GSA are working to implement programs that will keep us moving forward. USA Services and FirstGov.gov are critical to our efforts.
The Office of Management and Budget has been instrumental in the progress we’ve achieved so far. This year OMB also directed agencies in the FY05 Passback language and guidance to sign USA Services Working Agreements for our misdirect program and to evaluate our Tier 1 services for citizen inquiries.
I know that I speak for Administrator Perry as well as myself when I say the bottom line is two-fold: the demand for citizen services is headed up, and we in government are actively and aggressively taking advantage of the technology at our disposal. A dramatic change is underway, one that scientists, sociologists and historians may not fully appreciate for decades to come.
I am proud to be part of that change, and again, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. | <urn:uuid:00afbca6-a14e-4f92-9109-4e1e456d011e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gsa.gov/portal/content/101463 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945244 | 2,037 | 1.617188 | 2 |
We are looking for moms with children age 5-12 who like to spend time in the kitchen cooking healthy meals with your kids
for this fun, new blogging opportunity. If you meet this requirement, please read on!
With such busy schedules, families are constantly challenged to find enough quality time to spend together. This year, Uncle Ben’s is encouraging families to get in the kitchen to cook and eat together
to connect, one meal at a time. As a strong supporter of healthy eating and family togetherness, Uncle Ben’s is also helping parents establish healthy beginnings in their children’s lives.
How can something so tiny cause a huge change in the way we eat? Studies show that when you begin preparing your meal with rice, you end up with a meal that's better for you.
Plus, beginning your meal with Uncle Ben’s rice opens your plate up to better eating because rice attracts colorful vegetables, savory spices and leaner cuts of meat that the whole family loves!
To empower and encouage parents to connect with their kids, one meal at a time, Uncle Ben’s has launched an exciting national contest called Ben’s Beginners!
By entering the contest, you could win $20,000, along with a $50,000 grant
towards a cafeteria makeover for your child’s school. In addition, you will have a chance to appear on The Rachael Ray show
! Uncle Ben’s is calling for parents with children ages 5-12 to submit a 2-3 minute video
of you cooking a rice-based dish with your children. For more info on the contest, please check out Ben’s Beginners on Facebook! In honor of the Ben’s Beginner’s contest, we’ve teamed up with Uncle Ben’s to bring you this fun new blogging program! We want to hear all about your tips for cooking healthy meals with kids!
How do you make healthy meal choices for your family? Do you like to cook with rice? How do you get your kids involved in planning and preparing a healthy meal? What do your kids love to cook and eat? In your post, we encourage you to help spread the word about the Ben’s Beginners contest to your readers, and share your tips for cooking healthy meals with kids in an original post of at least 400 words.
When you’re done with your post, we encourage you to give a shot at winning the $20,000 prize and share your videos with us and Uncle Ben’s! We're looking for quality over speed, so please read on. Posting Guidelines
We are looking for one hundred creative, original and authentic blog submissions of high quality from moms with children age 5-12.
Create an original post on your blog, in 400 words
or more (using your own words), sharing the news about the Ben’s Beginners Cooking Contest and telling us about your tips for cooking healthy meals with kids
. Include a thoughtful introduction, original content within the body of your post, and a conclusion. Check your spelling and grammar. You must also include the disclosure statement that is below in your post and install the campaign widget in the sidebar of your blog. Then follow the rest of the requirements below. We will review every post and the first 100 qualifying submissions will receive 6,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points!
Highlights from your posts, tweets and tips will be collected and featured on the Ben’s Beginners hub page at http://BensBeginners.socialmoms.com
, and distributed across the web for all to see. The blogging program starts on January 30, 2012 and the submission window closes at 11:59pm PST on February 26, 2012. We will contact the qualifying bloggers on or about March 5, 2012. Full terms and conditions are posted for your review at http://BensBeginners.socialmoms.com/terms
. Rewards for Participating:
The first 100 qualifying participants will receive a 6,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points! See Terms and Conditions
To participate, we ask that you:
- Create an original blog post on your blog, in 400 words or more, sharing the news about the Ben's Beginners cooking contest and your tips for cooking healthy meals with kids. We are specifically looking for moms with children age 5-12 to participate. Please include a thoughtful introduction and conclusion in addition to the main body of your essay. Give it plenty of thought, and include content that your readers would like to hear about and can connect with! Short or poorly written posts will not be accepted. Copying and pasting does not count. Blank posts submitted to create a blog link on the discussion page will be disqualified. Don't copy another blogger's post or ideas. Plagiarism is grounds for immediate disqualification.
- Participants must include the following disclosure as a footnote of their post:
“I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Uncle Ben’s blogging program, for 6,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points. For more information on how you can participate, click here.” (make sure you link to http://BensBeginners.socialmoms.com/about)
- Install the campaign widget in the side bar of your blog and keep it posted until February 26, 2012.
Get Widget Here
- Install the “Like” Box in your blog post
Grab Like Box Code Here
- Log on to your Twitter account, www.twitter.com, and send a tweet including a link to your blog post with the hashtag #BensBeginners
- Return to www.SocialMoms.net and post a comment on this discussion page in the comments section below, including an active link to your blog post and a direct link to your Twitter tweet. (You can click on the date/time link below your tweet to get the direct link to your tweet.)
No purchase required to participate. You must be a legal resident of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia, have a personal blog and be a registered user of the www.socialmoms.net
websites to participate and at least 18 years of age or older at time of submission. See Terms and Conditions
. Please see SocialMoms FAQs for more information on blogging programs
. About Uncle Ben’s
Uncle Ben’s®, the number one rice brand in America, is proud to offer a wide range of rice dishes with flavors and textures that will help bring more to your meals, both for convenient side dishes and savory main courses. Uncle Ben’s® offers a wide variety of white, whole grain brown, and flavored rices in cook times ranging from 30 minutes to 90 seconds, as well as rice for food service operations such as restaurants, schools and hospitals. The first mass-produced parboiled rice, Uncle Ben’s® is the top-selling branded rice in the United States and products can be found in more than 100 countries worldwide. Uncle Ben’s® Brand products are manufactured by Mars Food NA, part of Mars, Incorporated. For more information, visit www.UncleBens.com
. More info on Uncle Ben’s
: http://www.unclebens.com/ Uncle Ben’s on Facebook Check out recipe ideas from Uncle Ben’s. | <urn:uuid:74ec27b2-19ee-4295-b864-475cf725680d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.socialmoms.net/forum/topics/uncle-bens-bens-beginners-cooking-contest?commentId=2291408%3AComment%3A1851991&xg_source=activity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932286 | 1,542 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Instead of closing the other two prisons, [State Rep. Jerry] Madden said budget writers agreed to leave them open and to set aside about $15 million for prison officials to lease additional beds if needed over the next two years.Disappointing. Savings from prison closures should go to diversion programming, not private prisons. The goal should be to reduce incarceration levels, not to plan for failure. While Whitmire and Madden say diversion funding was kept at "acceptable levels," in this writer's view even the Senate's more generous diversion budget is too niggardly given LBB's projections. The better strategy, building on what was done in 2007, would have been to double down on community corrections funding (which is a lot cheaper per offender than prisons) and closing more prison units.
“I don’t think we’ll need the additional beds, but it’s a precaution,” said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston.
Both Madden and Whitmire said funding for Texas’ prison treatment and rehabilitation programs have been funded at acceptable levels, meaning that additional convicts would be successfully diverted from state lockups onto parole and into community-based rehab programs that are much less expensive than incarceration in a state prison.
But guess what? Since they're underfunding big chunks of the budget, the state will face a similar fiscal crisis or worse in 2013, creating even more pressure to cut incarceration costs after ducking the issue this time around. Indeed, having set the precedent of closing a prison for the first time in Texas history, perhaps by then the political will may exist to follow through on what was started in '07. Either way, the same structural pressures for reform still exist; these issues aren't likely to recede any time soon.
Here's the LBB's line-item comparison (pdf) of Article V (Public Safety) from the House and Senate budgets, and here's a comparison (pdf) of the different riders in the two bills. Since the final version has not been approved, documentation reflecting the changes discussed by Ward have not yet been posted online. | <urn:uuid:fdb1c393-fc9e-4372-95c4-5c3cf114da60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2011/05/lege-sends-savings-from-prison-closure.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958264 | 434 | 1.5625 | 2 |
(a) Upon arrival in any port or place within the U.S., including, for purposes of this section, the U.S. Virgin Islands, of any vessel from a foreign port or place, any foreign vessel from a port or place within the U.S., or any vessel of the U.S. carrying foreign merchandise for which entry has not been made, the master of the vessel must immediately report that arrival to the nearest CBP facility or other location designated by the port director. The report of arrival, except as supplemented in local instructions issued by the port director and made available to interested parties by posting in CBP offices, publication in a newspaper of general circulation, and other appropriate means, may be made by any means of communication to the port director or to a CBP officer assigned to board the vessel. The CBP officer may require the production of any documents or papers deemed necessary for the proper inspection/examination of the vessel, cargo, passenger, or crew.
(b) For purposes of this part, “foreign port or place” includes a hovering vessel, as defined in 19 U.S.C. 1401(k), and any point in customs waters beyond the territorial sea or on the high seas at which a vessel arriving in a port or place in the U.S. has received merchandise.
(c) In the case of certain vessels arriving either in distress or for the limited purpose of taking on certain supplies and departing within a 24-hour time period without having landed or taken on any passengers or other merchandise (see section 441(4 ), Tariff Act of 1930, as amended), the report must be filed by either the master, owner, or agent, and must be in the form and give the information required by that statute, except that the report need not be under oath. A derelict vessel will be considered one in distress and any person bringing it into port must report its arrival.
(d) The report of baggage and merchandise required to be made by certain passenger vessels making three or more trips a week between U.S. and foreign ports and vessels used exclusively as ferryboats carrying passengers, baggage, or merchandise (see section 441(2 ), Tariff Act of 1930, as amended), is in addition to the required report of arrival, and must be made within 24 hours of arrival.
[T.D. 93-96, 58 FR 67315, Dec. 21, 1993, as amended by T.D. 94-44, 59 FR 23795, May 9, 1994; CBP Dec. 10-33, 75 FR 69585, Nov. 15, 2010]
Title 19 published on 2012-04-01
The following are only the Rules published in the Federal Register after the published date of Title 19.
For a complete list of all Rules, Proposed Rules, and Notices view the Rulemaking tab.
This is a list of United States Code sections, Statutes at Large, Public Laws, and Presidential Documents, which provide rulemaking authority for this CFR Part. | <urn:uuid:1cdfa67c-c317-44f8-9e2b-10a03bd1a50c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/19/4.2?quicktabs_7=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946723 | 626 | 1.625 | 2 |
When news happens, text BONEWS and your photos to 80360 or phone 01204 537274
Benefit reforms 'risk backfiring'
Low income families could be pushed further into financial difficulties and debt by a shift to monthly benefit payments under Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms, a think tank has warned.
Attempts as part of the new Universal Credit system to encourage claimants to budget properly and make their own rental payments risk "backfiring", the Social Market Foundation said. It called for the introduction of an online budgeting tool allowing claimants to set the frequency of payments themselves and allocate income to different items of expenditure.
Under the Universal Credit there will be one single monthly benefit payment - rather than weekly or fortnightly as at present - and social tenants will have to pay landlords themselves. The Government says it will be "flexible" with those who struggle to manage their money.
Research by the Social Market Foundation, entitled Sink or Swim: the Impact of Universal Credit, found that most low income households were opposed to the moves, expressing fears that they would not be able to budget properly and could end up in rent arrears and facing eviction.
Nigel Keohane, the think tank's deputy director and co-author of the report, said: "The Government's laudable aim that Universal Credit should prepare families for work, boost their resilience to financial shocks, and simplify the system is at risk of backfiring.
"By moving to a single monthly payment for all benefits, the Government is removing the markers and aids that families currently rely on to budget effectively. Our research shows that this will throw people in at the deep end leaving them either to sink or swim. This laissez-faire approach will create real problems not only for families themselves, but also for public service organisations, such as social landlords and childcare providers, that families will end up owing money to."
Dr Keohane doubted whether plans by the Government to provide special arrangements for certain vulnerable individuals was adequate. "Instead of mandating monthly payments and centrally planning which families to exempt, the Government should allow low income families to take the decision themselves through an online budgeting tool," he said. "This would allow the reforms to work with the grain of wider government objectives like personal responsibility and increased financial capability rather than working against them as the current system seems set to do."
A Department for Work and Pensions spokeswoman said: "Universal Credit will be paid monthly because most people in work are paid that way and the system should help people get used to the patterns of working life. But we will make sure that no one falls through the cracks, and we are working with local authorities and the financial industry on how best to support individuals. We have always said we would be flexible with people who might struggle to manage their money."
Asked about reports of unease within Whitehall about the prospects of a successful introduction of Universal Credit, Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman said: "Universal Credit is on track and on budget. We are bringing it in to replace the current system and it will make it a simpler welfare system and it will make sure that work pays.
"There is a big implementation programme under way. Clearly it is a very large, complicated project and we will manage it accordingly. Any large IT project involves some risks and you have to make sure you have the processes in place to manage those risks. We believe we do. This is an absolutely vital part of our welfare reform agenda and we are fully committed to it." | <urn:uuid:2c70c5db-d129-4932-bb3d-499764a379cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prestwichandwhitefieldguide.co.uk/uk_national_news/9932347.Benefit_reforms__risk_backfiring_/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964923 | 719 | 1.84375 | 2 |
As The Bay Citizen reported last week, a total of 1,733 complaints against taxi drivers were registered with San Francisco's 311 complaint line last fiscal year. That represents a 13 percent increase in gripes over the previous fiscal year and it's nearly double the 900-complaint goal of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which regulates taxis.
Taxis infested with bed bugs, drivers falling asleep at the wheel, rude behavior and difficulty getting a cab also were among the complaints....(T)wo friends were upset when a driver offered them a 10 percent discount if they made out in front of him....
Fifteen people complained that cabs wouldn’t pick them up because they were African American. On Halloween evening in 2011, a black woman called to complain that a Yellow Cab driver pointed to a white woman standing nearby and said, “I want her and not you.” After she complained, the driver used a racial slur, she said.
These are serious complaints, to be sure. But San Francisco cab drivers and others in the taxi industry say the number of grievances reflects a small percentage of the total fares carried by the city's taxis. Jim Gillespie, the general manager of the Yellow Cab Cooperative in San Francisco, wrote in a recent email that his company alone gives an estimated 20,000 rides daily. Athan Rebelos, the general manager of DeSoto cab, said his company provided a total of 1.46 million rides in 2012. And DeSoto and Yellow are just two of the 29 taxi companies licensed to operate in San Francisco, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency.
Rebelos put it this way: “Most cab rides are a nonevent.” Of course, not every bad experience in a San Francisco cab generates a call to 311. And there's no doubt we've all had memorable rides in which the cab driver has mistaken Lombard Street for the Autobahn or interpreted our one-word response to "How's it going?" as an invitation to expound at length on his views on municipal government or fly fishing.
But it's a two-way street, as they say in the biz. Just as passengers have to deal with cab drivers, drivers have to deal with passengers -- and there are a lot more of us than there are of them.
So we decided to get the other side of the story, speaking with drivers and other in the industry insiders about what passengers might do to ensure they have a better experience while riding in a San Francisco cab. Based on those interviews, we’ve put together five tips for the conscientious cab customer.
1. Don't be a bossypants
Barking orders or talking down to your driver is not going to help.
“A lot of people get in and assume you’re an idiot,” noted Barry Korengold, who said he’s been driving a taxi in the Bay Area for more than 30 years. "If they expect to get bad service, they’re probably going to get bad service."
Korengold and others emphasized that passengers should understand that driving a cab is hard work and at times dangerous.
"Drivers, they’re out there working the street and it’s a real tough situation. You're dealing with pimps, drug dealers and CEOs all in a matter of minutes," Rebelos said.
Some drivers also are angry that San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency has closed the waiting list for new taxi medallions. And they're upset about the growth of ride-sharing services, which the taxi industry considers unfair competition.
"There aren’t too many happy cab drivers in San Francisco given what’s going on," noted Brad Newsham, who said he's been driving a cab in San Francisco since 1985. Newsham detailed some of his frustrations in a 2010 San Francisco magazine article that you can read here. "I am frankly aghast."
If you're someone who might occasionally want to brighten to cab driver's day, try offering a compliment when you receive good service, Rebelos said.
"When they get a good driver, let that driver know how happy you are," he said.
2. Hailing 101
A busy street might not always be the best place to hail a cab, Korengold said. Often, cab drivers can be found on less-busy streets because they're avoiding traffic. And when hailing a cab, hopeful passengers should be sure to stand in an area where they can be safely picked up.
Bossiness in cab hailing will not work in your favor, Korengold said.
"If they’re standing in the middle of the lane so you can’t go by them, what does that say about their personality?" he said. "People snap their fingers and point to the ground, I’m not pulling over for that."
Korengold offered these tips for flagging down a cab:
"Don't just put your arm up once and take it down. Cabdrivers are constantly looking all around, and may not have noticed you raise your arm. Leave it up there so when the drivers sees you, he knows you want a cab. It's known as 'the Statue of Liberty pose.' I've seen many people giving me a blank stare as if they may be wondering why I'm not stopping, but if I don't see them put their arm up, there's no reason for me to stop. If I'm empty, I would be glad to pick them up.
"If you are eating a slice of pizza, hotdog or burrito, finish it before trying to hail a cab. Most cabdrivers do not want a stinky pizza or other food eaten in the cab, that will most likely have parts of it dropping off, or your hands leaving grease on the door handles. I see this all the time and will not pick people up eating their pizza or burritos."
3. Don't take it out on the wrong cab
"A lot of times I have to pass people by because I’m heading to a radio call," noted John Han, who said he's been driving a cab in San Francisco for about 10 years. "It looks as if I'm ignoring them. It looks like I'm just driving by. I’m not ignoring them."
Passengers who feel they've been ignored might feel the urge to express frustration to the driver of the next cab that picks them up.
"I’m constantly having people get in my cab and people tell me about this terrible cab driver they had," Korengold said. "I’m like, wait a minute, let me tell you about this terrible passenger I had."
"Nobody wants to have an angry person in their cab."
4. Know your intersections
"All I ask of my passengers is that they give me a street and a cross street," Han said. "Don’t say they’re going to this or that club."
"Be as clear as you can at the beginning and go from there," added Newsham.
5. A polite 'shut up' is acceptable
“If you don’t want to have an interaction, tell them they need to be quiet,” Newsham said. “That’s a fairly effective tactic.”
There you go. Happy riding. And don't forget to check for your wallet, cellphone and keys before you leave a cab. That might help as well....
Have you had a memorable experience in a Bay Area cab? We want to hear your positive stories as well as your horror tales, and also your tips for ensuring a smooth cab ride.
Leave a comment at the bottom of this post or call 1-866-588-8883. | <urn:uuid:046fecca-b16c-43de-9d35-3a41b735aaad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/01/08/how-to-get-a-cab-and-4-other-tips-from-san-francisco-cab-drivers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969138 | 1,623 | 1.539063 | 2 |
July 8, 2002
You are right in calling AB 2958 a shameful outrage, but you glossed over another disturbing fact ("Pull In Phone Monopoly... ," editorial, July 1). When it came time for the Assembly to vote, only one member, Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside), wondered about the validity of a bill that is backed by SBC Communications--which, we found, underreported its net income by $2 billion between 1997 and 1999 alone (that translates to $350 million due to customers under profit-sharing)--and is opposed by numerous consumer groups throughout the state.
April 29, 2013 |
SACRAMENTO - California's $8-an-hour minimum wage needs to go up, says Watsonville Democratic Assemblyman Luis Alejo. And he may be getting the votes he needs to make it happen. But don't count on it; Alejo has tried this before. Alejo is the author of AB 10, which would give the Golden State its first minimum wage increase since 2008. The bill would raise it 25 cents an hour next year, 50 cents in 2015 and an additional 50 cents to $9.25 an hour in 2016. In 2017 and annually thereafter, hourly pay would be adjusted upward automatically, based on the state's inflation rate. | <urn:uuid:38587de1-90e1-45dd-bed3-afbb2b5226e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/ab/featured/4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956323 | 265 | 1.773438 | 2 |
With the advent of the Selphyl System, finding the perfect filler to repair the damage caused by aging may have become easier, especially for those afraid of allergic reaction or rejection. Since Selphyl is made from blood taken from one’s own body, it almost never initiates a negative reaction. Besides this attribute, Selphyl is also non-invasive, and the recovery period takes just days.
The Selphyl System proceeds in three steps. Using a syringe, the specialist first withdraws a small amount of blood from a vein. Next, the blood is processed using centrifugal force and a catalyst to force the red and white blood cells to break away from the platelets and fibrin. The platelets and fibrin are then combined with a substance to turn them into a glutinous material to be injected under the skin.
One of the advantages of Selphyl is its ability to stay fluid and extend throughout the area of concern, releasing protein along the way. This protein activates the growth of new cells and forms underlying collagen to make the treated area appear much fuller. This is the reason Selphyl is used to successfully treat aging skin so well. Selphyl is also valuable in the repair of acne damage and scars left from surgery.
While Selphyl is safe for all skin types, the manufacturers do warn against its use on patients with a low platelet count. They also suggest that Selphyl is not the best option if a client is on aspirin therapy or other medication which keeps the blood thin. Also, those with chronic infections should stay away from any procedure which might allow an entrance for bacteria, including Selphyl.
Insurance carriers do not typically provide coverage for Selphyl. Results are evident in just weeks but are also progressive, and last longer than some other dermal fillers. The Selphyl System has received authorization from the FDA as a safe method for aesthetic improvement of aging skin. | <urn:uuid:420749fa-3ce7-4f71-8ff2-934a92acf346> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dermanetwork.org/procedure/selphyl/ma/andover | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953058 | 399 | 1.78125 | 2 |
I was a typical adolescent female in that I tended to develop rabid crushes on males who were safely unreachable. I was somewhat atypical in that the guys I crushed on were dead. Dead poets, dead novelists, dead philosophers – if they were eloquent, handsome, and deceased, they were crush-worthy, in my feverish teenage mind. In seventh grade I carried around a postcard with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s portrait on it, mooning over the introspective sensuality of his face. Later I replaced my
But it was also Albert himself who drew me. Those keen dark eyes, that shock of glossy black hair, the lips twisted wryly around a cigarette. I’ve always thought of him as the “warm, fuzzy Existentialist,” not only because he was such a dedicated humanitarian, but because I had a much stronger desire to cuddle up with Camus naked.
I hadn't only discovered Camus – I had discovered Existentialism, with its stark metaphysical landscape, its rigorous standards of personal responsibility, its exploration of the alienated soul. I didn’t throb as fiercely for Camus’ French compatriot Jean-Paul Sartre, though Sartre’s vertiginous vision of human existence did and does make my flesh tingle.
Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth. – Jean-Paul Sartre
And I have to pay homage to Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who preceded the Frenchies in chronology and thought. He was known as the “father of Existentialism,” which makes sense, because he set a precedent for hotness in that school of philosophy.
Here is such a definition of truth: An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person. – Soren Kierkegaard
My crushes on brooding Existentialist men continued into college. I was a French major, and since the study of French literature and philosophy are intimately intertwined, I got heavy doses of both. Actually, I got most of my philosophy at the university pub, where I would seek out some messy-haired misfit sitting alone at a table in the corner, a draft beer in one hand and a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus or Being and Nothingness in the other, an unfiltered Camel spinning a vertical skein of smoke in an ashtray beside him. I’d wander over to his table, as if pulled by the centrifugal force of his intellectual intensity, and if my confidence were fortified by enough cheap wine, I’d try to impress him by tossing out a reference to Heidegger (mispronouncing the German philosopher's name in the process). If I weren’t drunk enough, I’d simply sit at an adjacent table and watch my outcast brood.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. – Albert Camus
Brooding. Now we're getting to the hot, steamy core of my obsession. I’ve always been deeply attracted to intensity in men – physical, emotional, intellectual. Nothing turns me on more than a man of conviction, one who’s fully engaged in life. I love guys who not only read and write and contemplate with passion, but who propel those thoughts into action. Camus was active in the French Resistance during WWII. Andre Malraux was also in the Resistance, was passionate about the arts, and served as
Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act. – Andre Malraux
But before a man’s thoughts explode into action, I wanna watch some brain cells smolder. He can brood about the absurdity of life, about the ultimate isolation of the individual, about the problem of moral responsibility, or about whether his boxer shorts are clean enough to wear on a first date: doesn’t matter to me, as long as he’s deliciously troubled. Just contemplating those pouting lips, that hooded gaze, makes me burn with the desire to tear off his clothes and invade his alienated state. And as he plunges naked into the abyss of being, I want him to plunge straight into my eager, open . . . . uh, library.
To prove that I’ve gained sexual confidence over the years, I’ll post drool-inspiring photos of a few men who are still unattainable to me, but sexily, broodingly alive. Okay, maybe they’re not pondering the question of whether existence precedes essence, but whatever they’re thinking about (probably not my nude body, but one can always dream), they look damn good doing it.
Rufus Sewell, looking gorgeous in black and white
while trying to make rational sense of human experience
Christian Bale, attempting to reconcile the
absurdity of life with his own smoldering hotness
Jake Gyllenhaal, undoubtedly contemplating
the slavery of the human condition
Who are your favorite brooding, troubled hotties? | <urn:uuid:911e46d0-7e39-48a0-b608-b8bb3ad52c46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lustbites.blogspot.com/2007/09/being-and-nakedness-crushing-on.html?showComment=1189636200000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968825 | 1,163 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Video from Gateway Pundit.
Story from the Wall Street Journal.
Democratic lawmakers fled the state in an effort to torpedo a closely watched vote on what would be the nation’s first major overhaul of union laws in years, as government workers flooded the statehouse for a third day seeking to block passage of the bill.
Surrounded by thousands of tightly packed protesters, including teachers who had been encouraged by union leaders to show up in force, state senators gathered around 11 a.m. to vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to limit collective-bargaining rights for most state employees.
The governor’s proposal, part of a bill aimed at overcoming a $137 million deficit in the current budget and a projected $3.6 billion hole in the next two years, would allow collective bargaining on wages, but not pensions and health care. Workers would be required to pay more for both.
But a roll call revealed that the 14 Senate Democrats were absent, leaving the chamber short of the 20 votes needed to conduct business.
[...]Late Thursday, Gov. Walker, who could hear chanting every time he opened his office door, blasted the Democrats’ move as a “stunt” and urged them to return to vote on what he called as a “bold political move but a modest, modest proposal” that would preserve benefits for public employees that remained “better than what most people are getting across the state.”
The extraordinary scene was being followed in statehouses across the country, as a test case of both union clout and the political will of newly elected legislators. Wisconsin was at the front edge of voter discontent in 2010, with voters agitated about public spending electing Gov. Walker to succeed Democrat Jim Doyle and handing both houses of the legislature to the GOP.
[...]If the governor’s efforts succeed, other states are expected to try to follow, as governors grapple with deepening deficits. Many new governors in both parties have blamed the states’ fiscal crisis in part on what they say are overly generous benefits and pension obligations granted over many years to organized government workers.
Proposals similar to Gov. Walker’s have been made in New Jersey and Ohio. In Columbus, Ohio, thousands gathered Thursday to protest a Republican proposal that would eliminate collective-bargaining rights for many of that state’s 400,000 public-sector workers.
[...]Gov. Walker first introduced his “budget repair” bill just a week ago, setting off the firestorm that has swept the Capitol. Besides limiting collective-bargaining right for most workers—excepting police, firefighters and others involved in public safety—it would require government workers, who currently contribute little or nothing to their pensions, to contribute 5.8% of their pay to pensions, and pay at least 12.6% of health-care premiums, up from an average of 6%.
In exchange, Gov. Walker has pledged no layoffs or furloughs for the state’s 170,000 public employees. He has said 5,500 state jobs and 5,000 local jobs would be saved under his plan, which would save $30 million in the current budget and $300 million in the two-year budget that begins July 1.
The lawmakers are required by law to report to their posts to vote on all legislation, which is why the police were dispatched to locate them.
Here’s what the fuss is about:
Public Sector Benefits
And Gov. Walker is not the only one trying to stop the massive transfers of wealth from the productive private sector to non-productive public sector.
Lawmakers around the country are looking at new ways to prevent budget disasters by changing the rules for overburdened state employee pension funds. But they are meeting stiff resistance from public employee unions.
Two Arizona state lawmakers this week, including the speaker of the House, introduced their plan to salvage the state’s budget by significantly changing the public retirement system.
Following the lead of Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., a pair of New Jersey assemblymen on Monday put forth their legislative solution to make solvent a fund that’s $54 billion in the red.
Also on Monday, in his first budget address as governor, Florida’s Rick Scott announced his effort to “stabilize and secure” government employee pensions.
The moves are part of a larger battle over pension reform between conservative budget hawks and government worker unions.
The national debt is currently over 14 trillion, and scheduled to be at 26 trillion by 2021.
Michelle Malkin has a breakdown of teacher salaries and benefits here.
Filed under: News, Benefits, Big Labor, Budget Deficit, Chris Christie, Costs, Education, Health-care, Labor Union, Pension, Public Sector, Rick Scott, Salary, School, Scott Walker, Spending, State Spending, Union, Wages, Welfare | <urn:uuid:77ad0da2-4069-4eb0-80dc-604a0fe63544> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/tag/big-labor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968208 | 1,015 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Our evaluation suggests any decision regarding the use of A-CVCs in ICU patients is uncertain. The findings from the first analysis, which do not consider uncertainty, concur with existing economic evidence [6
]. This shows that, for all four types of antimicrobial catheter, health gains will be accompanied by cost savings. Given the assumption of a low attributable mortality and a low rate of infection, expected health gains are minimal and the decision is driven by the change in costs. Most of these costs represent the value of obtaining increased capacity within the ICU, rather than cash savings. Nevertheless, the results of the first analysis imply a decision not to adopt these catheters will harm patients by reducing their health status and increasing their risk of mortality and, simultaneously, waste resources within the healthcare system.
Our second analysis, using PSA, introduces the uncertainty associated with the decision. Based on current information, the MR catheters are the optimal decision because they return the highest net monetary benefits relative to all other catheter types. However, the probability of error in this conclusion is high, at 62%. Our third analysis shows that MR catheters remain the optimal decision across a range of scenarios and quantifies how uncertainty in this decision varies. Uncertainty is lower for scenarios where decision makers believe that attributable mortality is high, where they value bed days highly, or where the starting infection rate is high. This finding fits with conclusions from a recent meta-analysis that suggests that antimicrobial catheters will return a higher treatment benefit when infection rates are high [40
], and provides support for current guidelines which recommend reserving their use for settings with high infection rates [9
]. However, even in these scenarios the probability that this conclusion is wrong, and the MR catheters are not optimal, does not reduce below 46%.
Interpreting the results of cost effectiveness analyses under uncertainty requires decision makers to think beyond conventional error rates as used in statistical analysis. Decision makers looking to maximize health returns from their budget should choose between these catheters by selecting the option with the highest monetary net benefits. Given the current evidence, MR catheters should be chosen even if the probability of error in this conclusion exceeds the standard level of 5% used to define statistical significance. The justification is that a decision not to use them in favor of uncoated catheters would impose economic costs, arising from average monetary net benefits foregone, of AUD $948 per catheter [41
] (AUD $391,612 minus AUD $390,664). This conclusion should lead to rapid and sustained uptake of the technology [5
], yet their use appears to be limited despite earlier estimates of these catheters being cost effective [6
]. We suggest that uncertainty over this cost effectiveness evidence may be partly responsible.
Studies have shown that decision makers are heavily influenced by uncertainty [35
]. Presenting decision makers with an estimate of uncertainty in the results of an economic evaluation is important for the following reasons: it makes the current state of knowledge about the decision explicit and quantifies confidence (or lack of) in conclusions; it allows them to weigh the cost effectiveness results against other relevant considerations in the adoption decision including their own attitude to risk; and it provides an indication of the value of conducting further research to reduce uncertainty.
Two aspects to uncertainty are important: the probability of making the wrong choice and the potential consequences of getting it wrong. Both elements are required; a decision with a 5% probability of being wrong may still be perceived as uncertain if the consequences are very large. Decision makers tend to be risk averse. Rather than being focused solely on maximizing health returns, they are also concerned with interventions that have the potential to result in harmful outcomes. If there is no potential for harm then decision makers may be happy to accept a new intervention with a high but uncertain benefit. But where the potential for harm is perceived to be high, an existing intervention with a lower benefit may be preferred. Antimicrobial catheters are perceived to carry a risk of a number of negative outcomes that are likely to deter from their introduction, including the potential for a loss of focus on hygiene procedures. There has also been discussion [43
] that MR catheters may select for resistant organisms, with higher morbidity and costs [44
]. This negative could outweigh potential short-term benefits from these catheters [45
]. An absence of clear evidence [46
] makes it difficult to quantitatively incorporate this risk into an economic evaluation [47
] but it is an important consideration in the adoption decision.
Decision makers deciding whether to use antimicrobial catheters also have a second choice: whether to collect more information to reduce uncertainty in their choice [48
]. Value of information analysis [41
] can be used to estimate the expected monetary net benefits arising from collecting new information and compare this to the anticipated research costs to indicate whether the research is justifiable. It has been suggested further trials of antimicrobial catheters should be undertaken [43
]. Due to the relative rarity of infection these will require a large sample size and the involvement of multiple institutions [43
], making them an expensive proposition. Estimating the expected monetary net benefits from a trial would indicate if this is the best way to spend research dollars.
Some important sources of uncertainty have been explored in these analyses, but there are other uncertain elements in this decision that have not been explicitly examined. There is evidence the relative effectiveness of A-CVCs, as compared to uncoated catheters, varies according to duration of catheterization [49
] and causative organism [50
], and there have been reports of toxicity associated with use of particular types of catheter [13
]. However, a lack of data about these concerns both generally, and in relation to each specific coating, meant we were unable to model their impact. If these aspects reduce the effectiveness of any of the catheter types then its cost effectiveness would also be reduced. Alternatively there may be specific subgroups of patients for whom the cost effectiveness of these catheters can be determined with greater certainty. We did not test assumptions about life expectancy and quality of life in ICU survivors, although these will not alter conclusions about which catheter is optimal as all types will be affected equally.
This evaluation, like those reported in earlier studies, is based on a simplified version of a complex decision. It did not include intangible benefits to reduced infection rates, including the increases to clinical morale and public confidence in the healthcare system demonstrated by the national campaigns to reduce rates of CR-BSI [2
] and forming part of the rationale for the introduction of the Deficit Reduction Act [4
]. Decision makers often consider a wider range of outcomes when deciding on the adoption of a new technology [35
] and clearly the economic value in reducing infection rates goes beyond the capacity released within hospitals. Valuing these intangible outcomes may improve the representation of the economics of preventing infection, but it would be difficult to achieve. It has been suggested that MR-coated catheters are difficult to insert [6
], making them unpopular amongst clinicians, but data comparing failure rates for insertion are not available in order to incorporate this cost. Finally, recent research has shown that improving catheter care by intervention 'bundles' is a highly effective way to reduce rates of CR-BSI [51
]. In an evaluation comparing 'bundles' with antimicrobial catheters, it may be that the former would dominate. This is not evaluated here and deserves rigorous exploration rather than hypothesizing. | <urn:uuid:acde4f8c-ef2c-48b0-8318-8a11056ef36a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC2689469/?lang=en-ca | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947398 | 1,546 | 1.820313 | 2 |
News from Naselle:
The following Naselle Middle School students were selected as students of the quarter by their teachers. Each quarter, one student from each grade in grades 6-12 is selected for academic excellence, outstanding citizenship, and personal achievement. In the 8th grade, Brittany Waltemate was selected for academic excellence, Emily Gjovik for outstanding citizenship, and Jared Davis for personal achievement. In the 7th grade, Jake Clark was chosen for academic excellence, Taylor Eaton for outstanding citizenship, and Allyn Bauer for personal achievement. 6th graders selected were Isabel Zimmerman for academic excellence, Alexis Nortrup for outstanding citizenship, and Dante Hernandez for personal achievement. Congratulations to these students.
Look out the window just about anywhere in the Pacific Northwest and it’s teaming with wildlife, and if you are a critter, the Columbia River’s ecosystem is one of the most happening habitats around! Nate Sandel from the Astoria Maritime Museum showed Naselle 1st graders how all creatures in the Columbia River ecosystem are interconnected through the use of food webs. Some animals that were discussed were deer, elk, great blue heron, eagle, coyotes, beaver, seals, sea lions, muskrat, nutria, river otters, and raccoons. The program addressed classifying, cycles, food chains, and diversity/interdependence. The students were thrilled with the hands-on experience of eggs (replicas), skeletons, and pelts.
Naselle students will be rehearsing this coming week for the performance of “King Arthur’s Quest” which will take place on March 12. What a job, doing auditions, having rehearsals and a performance all in the span of one week. Talented teachers and performers; that would be the Missoula Children’s Theatre at the Naselle School District putting together another awesome performance for all of us to enjoy.
The Naselle Booster Club will hold its regular meeting on March 8 at 6:30 p.m.
Family Story Time at the Naselle Timberland Library for children age six and younger and their families; all ages are welcome. Join in a program of stories, rhymes, songs and movement games, on Tuesdays from 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. until March 20.
Naselle Timberland Library presents Bookish Pets: A Photo Contest, until March 31. Do you have a pet that sits on your lap while you read or loves it when you read aloud? Make your pets part of your Family Read-Aloud this year! Bring in a photo of your pet and enter the library’s photo contest. Photos will be displayed and winners will be announced on April 1. This Read-Aloud event is part of a Timberland Regional Library district wide program. For more information call (360) 484-3877.
Other news from the Westend:
One of the loveliest ladies I’ve ever met will be honored on Sunday at the United Methodist Church in Grays River at about noon. Jenny Pearson will hopefully be on hand to greet well wishers who will help her celebrate her 97th birthday (a little late, I’m told). The fete had originally been set for last week, but the weather didn’t cooperate, so it was moved to this weekend. Stop in and say hi, and let her know how much we miss her smiling face and happy attitude as well as her outgoing, caring personality.
I hope you have your ticket for the American Legion Crab and Oyster Feed, sponsored by Deep River Post #111. This Saturday, the 5th at the Rosburg Hall starting at 6 p.m. Starting will be the crab dinner with all the trimmings, plus all you can eat steamed oysters, a huge raffle, and then dancing the night away. This is the best crab feed around, bar none. Tickets are only $25 if there are any more available.
Proceeds from this event go to local scholarships, veterans' needs, and other charities. Hope to see you there.
The Grays River Habitat Enhancement District will hold its regular monthly meeting on March 9 in the Grays River Grange Hall at 6 p.m. Property owners are encouraged to attend these open public meetings. Refreshments will be served.
The seventh annual Wahkiakum Food and Farm Summit will take place on Saturday, March 19th in Cathlamet at the J.A. Wendt Elementary school multi purpose room from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sponsored by the Wahkiakum WSU Extension Service and Master Gardeners, this event will feature workshops for urban and rural growers. The keynote speaker will be Ed Hume, well known television gardening personality, author and radio personality. For more information on the program please contact Carrie Kennedy, WSU Wahkiakum County Extension Director at 360 795-3278.
Teresa Search is clearing out her inventory of antiques and collectibles this weekend at Johnson Park. The sale will take place on Friday and Saturday in the cafeteria at Johnson Park, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. If you are looking for something unique, come check it out. Rain or shine. Watch for the signs on the highway, pointing you in the right direction.
The Rosburg Store is expanding its inventory of groceries. They are in process of installing new shelving and will be stocking more items. If you have a suggestion, let them know what you want and they will try to accommodate you. It’s so nice to have them open again.
The Wednesday Senior Lunch Bunch that meets at the Rosburg Hall will enjoy Pat Potter’s delicious version of goulash, veggies, hot rolls and dessert on the 9th. Join your neighbors and have a super lunch.
The Rosburg Senior Community Lunches are served on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the same location and are sponsored by CAP. This community is so fortunate to have these two venues every week, where our seniors can have a social outing, a healthy meal, and lots of folks to share it with. Thank you, CAP and Pat Potter and all the volunteers who help make these meals possible.
Birthdays being celebrated this coming week: Karen Wirkkala, Sunday Busse, Wendy Strange, Michael Phipps, Grace Mattson, Melanie Bloom, Dustin Eaton, Matt Scrabeck, Bob Larson, Lorne Wirkkala, Anita Raistakka, Tucker Bennett, Ron Malerich, Daniel Forbes, Mary Wirkkala, Pat Rugg, Diane Pratt, Kari Johnson, Baylee Clark, Brad Lanz, Wayne Blake, Sandra Carlson and Darlene Bjornsgard. Happy Birthday to all of the celebrants.
Happy Anniversary wishes go out to the following couples this week: Marco and Lisa Columbo, Roy and Shirley Herrold, Rokey and Lori Scott and David and Gail Magnuson.
Our house is beginning to look more like a home. The drywall is in and our inspection went well. Now they have to do the taping and then we can put the radiant heat wires in the ceilings to be covered by a special plaster technique. Fortunately, Del was a journeyman plasterer a few years ago (well, maybe more than a few) so he will be doing some of that. Then flooring, cabinets, etc. Hopefully not too much longer!
Down River Dispatches News of Western Wahkiakum County and Naselle by Trudy Fredrickson, 465-2960 [email protected] | <urn:uuid:2f6f980e-a68b-4406-af34-826902fdc539> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.waheagle.com/down-river-dispatches/article.exm/2011-03-03_veterans__crab_and_oyster_feed_saturday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938469 | 1,590 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Who will win the India-Pakistan clash?
India's rivalry with Pakistan goes well beyond sports, and a memorable page will be written in the history books of both nations Wednesday during their Cricket World Cup semifinal in Mohali. Peter Della Penna explains why Pakistan won't back down going into the lion's den, while Amar Shah writes why India will show no mercy against its archnemesis.
Why Pakistan will win
Perhaps the only sports team with a bigger chip on its shoulder in the past month than Virginia Commonwealth University's men's basketball team is the Pakistan cricket squad. Both have managed to silence critics with phenomenal performances to reach the semifinals of their respective tournaments.
Ali versus Frazier? Ohio State versus Michigan? Giants versus Eagles? Nah. None of these compare to India versus Pakistan. Here are a few facts to shed some more light on the fiercest rivalry in sports.
• In 1947, India and Pakistan split apart, resulting in partition. Thirteen million people were displaced. Over a million died.
• India and Pakistan have had a number of wars and conflicts over the disputed area of Kashmir. Each claims a part of the territory.
• In 1998, both countries conducted nuclear tests.
• In November 2008, Pakistani militants killed 166 people in Mumbai terrorist attacks. Both countries called off diplomatic talks. India canceled an upcoming cricket tour with Pakistan and banned Pakistani players from playing in the Indian Premier League for the past two years.
• India and Pakistan played their first match in 1952.
• Pakistan is 69-46 against India in One Day International matches.
• In their most recent World Cup encounter, in 2003, India won by six wickets, even after chasing by 273 runs. Sachin Tendulkar led India with 98 runs.
Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi displays the charisma and crazy antics of Dennis Rodman, not to mention the same kind of world-class talent. He's leading the World Cup with 21 wickets, and despite not performing yet with the bat, he has done so in the past when the occasion called for it. In the 2009 World Twenty20 in England, Afridi scored back-to-back half-centuries in the semifinal and final to guide Pakistan to the title.
Even though only one Pakistani batsman has scored more than 200 runs during the tournament, there have been nine 50s scored among seven different players. If one player fails, the next man is capable of picking up the slack, from Mohammad Hafeez to Umar Akmal. While India is a team of batting stars, Pakistan has achieved success through team chemistry. On paper, India has the power to outmuscle Pakistan. On the pitch, it could be a different story.
The biggest mark against Pakistan is its fielding. However, it's been surprisingly solid since a disastrous display against New Zealand. Besides, any fielding unit would look all-world standing next to India's group of Keystone Kops impersonators.
Pakistan is riding high after ending Australia's 34-match World Cup unbeaten streak. It slayed Sri Lanka in Colombo during the group stage, so it should not feel intimidated going up against India in Mohali either.
Until Sunday, no team had ever won five games to get to the Final Four, but VCU managed to do it. Pakistan has never beaten India in a World Cup before now, but this month in the world of sports has shown that history books can be tossed out the window. On Wednesday, legions of faithful supporters will be shouting "Pakistan Zindabad!" from the rooftops, and "Inshallah" they will be victorious over India.
-- Della Penna
Why India will win
"War minus the nuclear weapons."
"Clash of titans."
"Mother of all Matches."
Pick your superlative. Each rings true. On Wednesday, India and Pakistan square off in Mohali in the ICC Cricket World Cup semifinal, and the world's most intense sporting rivalry will have one intriguing battle in the tournament's penultimate match. Hundreds of millions across the subcontinent are expected to tune in to what will be the most-watched cricket match in history.
The diplomatic and cultural storylines are obvious. India and Pakistan split during partition in 1947. They're nuclear rivals who have gone to war three times. It will be the first time Pakistan has played on Indian soil since the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008. And this week, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani accepted an invitation from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to watch the match.
But the real drama will happen in the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, where tickets are selling for over $2,000. Coming off a monumental victory against former champs Australia, the Indians are riding a rush of momentum that should propel them to victory against their archnemesis.
The Pakistanis have performed admirably so far, considering the drama they've been through, with a match-fixing scandals and the banishment of some of their best players. With a dismantling of the West Indies in the quarterfinal, captain Shahid Afridi and his bowling platoon are in top form. Afridi leads the tournament with 21 wickets, and with legendary bowler Shoaib Akhtar, known as the "Rawalpindi Express," rumored to be added to the lineup, Pakistan has a bowler who can give India fits. But the men in green are no match for India's dominant batting squad.
Led by a triptych of legends -- Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh -- India's heavy hitters are capable of demolishing any bowling attack. Singh, the prodigal son who returns to the place of his birth, has been the Kemba Walker of willow, winning man of the match four times, including a century over the West Indies. He's done it as a bowler, too, recording 11 wickets.
India's weakness had been its bowling, but it proved doubters wrong with its performance against the Aussies, led by Zaheer Khan. India will face a Pakistani batting order that doesn't even have a top-25 run-scorer in the tournament. India is 4-0 versus Pakistan in World Cup matches and also has home-field advantage on its side. Come Wednesday, here's the only superlative that matters: India victors. Jai Ho!
Peter Della Penna is an American-born and -raised cricket journalist who writes for ESPNcricinfo.com and DreamCricket.com. His work has also appeared in "The Wisden Cricketer" and the Wisden Cricketers Almanack.
Amar Shah is a writer and producer living in Los Angeles. He's currently developing a romantic-comedy screenplay set in the world of cricket. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter.
Follow Peter on Twitter @PeterDellaPenna
• Work has appeared in Slam, The Wall Street Journal, Cricinfo, Sports Illustrated For Kids and The Orlando Sentinel
• Produced for SportsCenter, The Best Damn Sports Show Period and several other TV shows
ESPN TOP HEADLINES
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- Sources: Clips' meeting with Scott goes well | <urn:uuid:a8733c85-17d1-4c81-be4c-3f1ea7fd00f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sports.espn.go.com/extra/cricket/columns/story?columnist=della_penna_peter&id=6269040 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952964 | 1,536 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Based on the information given the following would be the norm. It still amazes me how many mistakes I see with this. I am assuming that we are talking only about the Triodian Period.
Which day's saints does your priest commemorate at the following services:
A. Compline, Monday, 7:00 p.m., Monday or Tuesday?
First off it should be Great Compline that is celebrated. There is no daily saints commemorated during this service. This service is after Vespers so it is part of the Tuesday cycle.
B. Presanctified Liturgy, Wednesday, 5:00 p.m., Wednesday or Thursday?
Presanctified Liturgy is Lenten Daily Vespers with communion so it starts the Thursday cycle. If 9th Hour is celebrated before hand then it would close the Wednesday commemoration.
C. Salutations to the Theotokos, Friday, 7:00 p.m., Friday or Saturday?
This service is Small Compline and is part of the Saturday cycle. This is not a Lenten service since it is part of the Saturday cycle. This is why the troparian of St. Theodore is sung at the firsts one since he is the major commemoration of the 1st Saturday of Lent. | <urn:uuid:468ff8a4-4a06-4960-8555-1dedcd9ec818> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.orthodoxchristianity.net/forum/index.php?topic=34775.msg549761 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949256 | 264 | 1.773438 | 2 |
|SGA launches Textbook Exchange website|
|Written by Drew Zimmerman, Daily Vidette Senior Staff|
|Monday, 13 February 2012 13:30|
The Student Government Association has launched its Textbook Exchange website in an effort to promote an easier and more affordable means of buying and selling textbooks.
“It allows students to sell and buy books directly to and from each other, [as] opposed to selling and buying to a book store. It cuts out the middle man,” Trevor Kramer, SGA secretary of information technology, said.
The website is a joint initiative between SGA and Barnes and Noble, both of whom wanted to offer a formal and safe way for students to buy and sell books online, according to Zach Owens, SGA student body president.
“We wanted to create this resource because students have become increasingly price-sensitive due to economic conditions, and the prices of textbooks are getting more and more expensive. Oftentimes students sell back at the fraction of the cost they originally bought the book, and that’s only if the book store is buying back.
“Books go out of print and change editions, even very little and ‘new edition’ is still slapped on the textbook, so students are informally trading textbooks to maximize the value and minimize the hurt on their wallet,” Owens said.
The website requires students to log in with their ULID to ensure that the security and protection of the students is the most important priority, Owens added.
Students who are logged in can make postings and sell their own textbooks, according to the website.
Book searches can be filtered by class schedule and course offerings. There is also an arbitrary section search by ISBN number, which can be used to both search for and sell other books.
Postings are open for one month and list the name of the seller, the condition of the book, the seller’s comments, and the last time the book was used.
Recent sales are also listed as well as how much each textbook would cost the buyer.
“The students who are buying and selling the books will agree on the price,” Kramer said.
Textbook Exchange also provides a feedback page for students to leave comments on the site’s effectiveness and how SGA can improve their efficiency.
To build awareness for cheaper textbook shopping, Owens said that SGA has lobbied legislators for passage of affordability measures such as the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. They have also worked with the faculty for students to get book lists on time.
“However, hosting a textbook exchange website is the way we can help ISU students get the cheapest books possible,” Owens said.
SGA is planning a large marketing campaign at the end of the spring semester to encourage students to take advantage of the new resource.
“This is one of the biggest accomplishments of SGA, so we hope to build awareness among the student body about this resource to encourage use,” Owens said. | <urn:uuid:9e55d8fb-97d7-4a55-81be-787c80c2c222> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.videtteonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36088:sga-launches-textbook-exchange-website&catid=35:newscampus&Itemid=53 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958532 | 617 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Rev. 24 Sept. 2007, Gen. 80
DESCENDANTS OF ROBERT GRAVE AND MARGARET LANCASTER OF KESWICK, CUMBERLAND
Robert Grave (1) was born about 1811 in Keswick, Cumberland. He married Margaret ‑‑‑‑‑‑, probably Margaret Lancaster. The IGI lists a marriage of a Robert Grave to Margaret Lancaster on 15 Aug. 1833 in St. Andrew, Penrith, Cumberland. He was shown as a baker on the marriage certificate of his son William. The baptisms listed below are from the IGI, with the first 2 being at Crosthwaite, Cumberland, and the next 2 at Keswick, Cumberland. They were in the 1841 and 1851 censuses for Crosthwaite, Keswick, Cumberland. He was a baker in 1841 and a pencil maker in 1851. All their children were born in Keswick, Cumberland.
In 1851, William Grave, 42, grocer, was living next to him, with wife Sarah, 45, children John, 17, Mary, 15, Ann, 12, William, 9, and Thomas, 5, and mother Grace, widow, 74, formerly bread baker. It seems likely that Robert and William were brothers, and both may have been sons of Simeon Grave and Grace Thwaite of genealogy 377. (R‑1)
Children - Grave
2. John Grave, b.c. 1837.
2. William Grave, b.c. 1839, bapt. 20 Jan. 1839, m. Mary Anne Smith, 1859 (St. Matthew Parish Church, Manchester, Lancashire). Her father was Henry Smith, Inspector.
3. Mary Grave, b. 1841, bapt. 1 Aug. 1841.
4. Grace Grave, b. 1845, bapt. 28 Aug. 1845.
5. Margaret Grave, b.c. 1848, bapt. 24 Feb. 1848.
Return to Alphabetical Ancestor Listing
Return to Main Page | <urn:uuid:771a9e9a-f857-424b-91b0-5d95170c16c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gravesfa.org/gen080.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936651 | 440 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Cheryl Goldsleger, "Recent Work," Apr. 30-June 11, 2005, at Rosenberg + Kaufman Fine Art, 115 Wooster Street, New York, N.Y. 10012
One can still find wonderful art in Soho galleries -- Chelsea hardly has it all -- and one of the recent wonders was Cheryl Goldslegers exhibition at Rosenberg and Kaufman Fine Art on Wooster Street. Rosenberg and Kaufman is an old-time and still very good gallery on the fourth floor of a historic loft building. The climb up the narrow staircase is worth the effort: Goldslegers new paintings are materially satisfying as well as intellectually sophisticated.
Theyre a homage to unheralded women architects, but their exquisite art is not simply a platform for their feminist message. Indeed, its embedded in the encaustic and resin medium, as though preserved forever in precious if clouded amber. Theres an air of nostalgia about the paintings, but the medium keeps the message fresh, if only because its own troubled character suggests that the message is in trouble.
Goldsleger became known for her early architectural imagery -- dense diagrams of labyrinthine structures, implying that there is no way out, making them claustrophobically intimate. There is a more discreet sense of entanglement in later, strictly geometrical works, in which concentric circles and rectangles interact. It all looks logical, but its ingeniously illogical: lost in the maze of Goldslegers abstract constructions, and sinking into her murky surface, one experiences an absurd anxiety, suggesting that the constructions are metaphors for a self at risk.
Certainly the architecture of Margaret Hicks -- she was the first woman architect to have a design published (1878) -- and of Margareet Duinker, a 20th-century architect, is at risk of disappearing into oblivion. Goldsleger uses the plans of their buildings (among others), several of which were actually built, at once apotheosizing and memorializing them -- resurrecting and then entombing them in her art. She restores our sense of the importance of the achievement of these female architects -- all the more impressive because architecture was once a male preserve -- even as she mourns for them, and especially for their failed dream of a communal architecture.
Indeed, as Goldslegers choice of designs suggests, she believes that women understand the communal possibilities of architecture better than men, who tend to make more stand-alone buildings symbolizing the heroically isolated and socially alienated individual. Every design Goldsleger uses has a socially utopian -- dare one say socialist? -- purpose, suggesting that female architects had more idealistic hopes for modern architecture than male architects.
Here is a list of the plans Goldsleger uses (sometimes with modification): Hicks Workmans Cottage design (1878); the designs for the Kitchenless Houses of Alice Constance Austin (1914, in Llano del Rio, Ca.) and Marie Stevens Howland (1885, Pacific Colony Block Design); Duinkers abstract design for the pragmatic, modular, ultra-modern house, with adjustable walls, that still stands on Wagenaar Street in Amsterdam; Eleanor Raymonds design for the Solar House in Dover, Mass. (built in 1948); and Sophia Haydens design for Woman House at the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
Each and every one of these designs suggests that modern women architects attempted to give abstract modern architecture a seriously human, more sociable connotation than it usually has. Several worked for famous male architects, such as Le Corbusier, but the implication is that the male architects wanted to build monumental trans-human structures -- structures that could triumphantly trash and devalue traditional architecture -- rather than structures that addressed basic ordinary human needs.
A building is a symbol of the body and self, Sigmund Freud tells us, and Goldslegers paintings suggest that the modern person has a problematic sense of his or her body and is too self-involved to be stably balanced. While her homogeneous grid suggests a certain passive equilibrium, her oddly agitated surface -- somewhat melancholy however inwardly luminous (the encaustic and resin trap and blur the light), and sometimes overlaid with ghostly drawings of architectural structures (raising the surface in even more nervous relief) -- is inwardly unstable. It seems about to collapse and obscure the design -- perhaps, after all, were looking at premature burial, indeed, architecture about to be buried alive rather than embalmed for posterity -- as though confirming that they belong to the past.
Indeed, what makes Goldslegers paintings and drawings distinctive and uncanny is that they are haunted by the living past -- they are about the return of the repressed, the specifically female as well as broadly humanly repressed -- suggesting that historical rumination is the only way to have an artistic future these post-heroic post-avant-garde days. | <urn:uuid:92dfa1c2-bbee-4ef4-aa98-342b630d7601> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/kuspit/kuspit7-5-05.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949583 | 1,012 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are warning area residents about buying counterfeit goods for the holidays, stating if the price seems too good to be true, it's probably a pirated product.
ICE's Operation Holiday Hoax launched its third year on Nov. 26, and is expected to end Dec. 26. The nationwide operation targets vendors at stores, flea markets and swap meets selling counterfeit products, including sports jerseys, DVDs, purses, shoes, perfumes, holiday lights and electronics.
In El Paso, at least one roadside vendor so far has been arrested and reportedly admitted to selling counterfeit goods, said Dennis Ulrich, the special agent in charge of ICE in El Paso. The vendor faces fines and possible prison time if convicted.
Last year, law enforcement officials in El Paso seized 1,422 counterfeit and pirated items worth an estimated $245,000.
"Intellectual property (theft) is not a victimless crime," Ulrich said during a news conference Monday morning. "The victims are American businesses, trademark and copyright holders and the people who make legitimate products and sell them. When (intellectual property) rights are violated, American jobs are lost, business profits are stolen and ultimately the consumer is cheated.
Ulrich said U.S. officials are working with officials in Mexico to help curb the amount of counterfeit goods brought into the U.S. through Mexico. However, most of the products are manufactured overseas.
Ulrich said consumers can protect themselves by examining the name-brand products sold at flea markets and swap meets. If the quality and substance seem poor, it is most likely counterfeit.
"If it's too good to be true, something must be wrong," Ulrich said. "It's most likely not a real product."
Adriana M. Chávez may be reached at [email protected]; 546-6117. Follow her on Twitter @AChavezEPTimes | <urn:uuid:e6eb4a1b-1e0f-48a8-8510-cd28ccc5b093> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_22165106/public-urged-watch-counterfeit-products?source=most_viewed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950754 | 401 | 1.523438 | 2 |
10:07 PM, Feb 28, 2011 • By JAMIE M. FLY
Americans looking for strong, assertive leadership have had to look abroad for an adequate response to Muammar Qaddafi’s brutal crackdown in Libya. That’s because the Obama administration’s response to the conflict has been weak and confused.
Today, for instance, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking about Libya in Geneva, said that “nothing is off the table.” But back in Washington, briefing reporters after President Obama met with U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon, U.N. ambassador Susan Rice said that “It’s quite premature,” when asked about the prospect of a no-fly zone or other military action.
The Obama administration’s unwillingness to press for a no-fly zone, to use the threat of military force as a deterrent, or even to lead evacuation efforts, has been disappointing. Indeed, no one seems really sure where the United States stands on anything Libya related. Luckily, our European allies have picked up some slack.
In a rather Churchillian statement to the House of Commons today, British prime minister David Cameron updated Parliament on British evacuation efforts and said that he was instructing the British military to work with allies on plans for a “military no-fly zone.” Over the weekend, British forces endured small arms fire to rescue hundreds of U.K. citizens and foreign nationals from remote locations in Libya. Cameron described Britain’s “leading role in coordinating the international evacuation effort” from a temporary headquarters in Malta commanded by a senior military officer. He went on to put events in Libya into a broader context, declaring this “a precious moment of opportunity” that occurs “once in a generation.”
He ended by saying:
As Qaddafi’s forces attempt to surround opposition strongholds and reports of additional atrocities and more bombings by Libyan planes continue, let’s hope that the Obama administration will be shamed by the initiative of our allies and finally begin to lead, both in Libya as well as in the broader effort to assist those in the Middle East who seek freedom. | <urn:uuid:e735eefd-3788-42e3-b7d9-e2711426b01b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rule-brittania_552661.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946766 | 453 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Crime in the city dropped for the 10th consecutive year in 2012, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Charlie Beck announced Monday.
The Devonshire Divison is among the top performing police districts showing a decline in crime. It ranks second in cutting violent crime, and ninth in limiting property crime. [See the listings in the adjacent photo box.]
The pair attributed the 1.4 percent reduction in crime from 2011 to continued police hiring despite the city's large budget deficit. Villaraigosa said he would keep police hiring as a top priority in the city's next budget, his last as mayor. Villaraigosa will be termed out of office and replaced by a new mayor July 1.
"Cities in California that have stopped hiring (officers) or cut back on their police force have seen crime spikes. In L.A., we've seen crime continue its long downward trend," Villaraigosa said. "We continued hiring police officers even as we weathered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
The mayor made expanding the police force a campaign promise when he won election in 2005. That year, sworn police officers numbered 9,284, according to department statistics. Today the force sits at 10,023 officers. Since 2005, the number of violent and property crimes dropped a total 27.2 percent, according to the department.
Villaraigosa said he hoped the next mayor would commit to expanding the police force further.
The number of homicides in the city remained below 300 for the third year in a row in 2012, down from 1,096 murders a year two decades ago.
The overall decrease in crime included a small increase in property crimes, which Beck attributed to a spike in thefts of electronic devices like cell phones and computers.
The officials said the drop in crime last year gave Los Angeles the lowest per capita crime rate of any city over 2 million people -- lower than Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia and New York City.
Beck used the morning news conference, the last such announcement Beck and Villaraigosa will make together, to praise the mayor's focus on reducing gang crime. He cited a 47.5 percent reduction in gang crime since Villaraigosa took office and a record-low 152 gang homicides in 2012. "That is the lowest number of gang homicides in decades. Our level of gang crime, while still unacceptable, still requires much much work, has been changed forever," Beck said. "It wasn't very long ago that we were the homicide capital of the nation and the undisputed, undisputed source of gang misery worldwide. Because of this mayor, we've changed that. Now we're the source of the solution." | <urn:uuid:188a845d-77c0-4c44-8a2b-08f66f5c2e32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://northridge.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/l-a-crime-drops-for-10th-consecutive-year | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959262 | 548 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Asterisk on OpenWRT January 7. 2005
I have been using for my long-distance at home a VoIP connection provided by Vonage. The school had been paying for the service which gave me free long-distance. Fortunately the school finally wised up and cancelled their Vonage service (vonage is a horrible horrible VoIP company) but this left me with no long-distance (other than my .10 a min lan long-distance). The school (Brian Capouch) has been big in the VoIP scene and had switched to a company called NuFone. This company works great with the Asterisk open source PBX software and so I decided to setup my own PBX in my house! Asterisk requires a linux machine to work which since I didn't want to have a full machine up and running 24hrs a day just for a few phone calls, OpenWRT+Asterisk seemed like the best solution. OpenWRT is a linux distro that runs on the Linksys WRT-G/GS wireless G routers. These OpenWRT routers are fully functional linux installs without all the hassle or electrical cost of a full machine running.
I've since setup some pretty cool things with more on the way with Asterisk. I can now call (using a sip phone on campus) x7106 and it will ring my house internet. I can also call (from the house) any long-distance number and have it use the SJC NuFone account to place the call.
Here is how (how-to) I got it to work
Update 2005-03-10: A new and more verbose version of this entry can be found at Asterisk on OpenWRT part 2.
The first thing I needed to do was install the OpenWRT firmware. I didn't take the time (or bandwidth) to compile it myself. I just used the snapshot for the gs version of OpenWRT (I have the GS hardware). There is a wonderful howto
I actually first tried to turn the OpenWRT router into a simple bridge but ran into some problems being able to use the package tools as well as the WAN port on the machine. I ended up converting my entire network address space to handle the new router instead of using OpenWRT as a bridge (my internal IP addresses were the same as the routers external IP address... you can very well "route" with the same network on both sides of a router).
Once I got the machine setup and talking on the internet (and routing my traffic) I started the process of installing Asterisk.
The first thing I did was add the following line to my /etc/ipkg.conf file:
src local http://188.8.131.52/ipkg
src nico http://nthill.free.fr/openwrt/ipkg/stable
src nico-t http://nthill.free.fr/openwrt/ipkg/testing
src ab0oo http://www.wildcatwireless.net/wrt54g
The first "local" package line comes from Brian Capouch. He is really big into Asterisk and has created a OpenWRT package of the Asterisk-cvs branch. I used the cvs version for my install instead of the default "asterisk" package that comes from nthill.free.fr.
The second thing was to install 'asterisk-cvs' and 'asterisk-sounds' The package manager installs a few other packages that are needed for asterisk. There is the ability to install other modules for asterisk but I didn't/don't need them.
This is where the documentation for what I was doing was absent. I had never worked with asterisk let alone asterisk on openwrt. There were a few things I needed to change to the asterisk install to get it up and running. The first thing was to not load some of the modules that were not installed on the machine. I had to change/put the following in my /etc/asterisk/modules.conf file:
; Asterisk configuration file
; Module Loader configuration file
; If you want, load the GTK console right away.
; Don't load the KDE console since
; it's not as sophisticated right now.
noload => pbx_gtkconsole.so
;load => pbx_gtkconsole.so
noload => pbx_kdeconsole.so
noload => pbx_dundi.so
; Intercom application is obsoleted by
; chan_oss. Don't load it.
noload => app_intercom.so
; Explicitly load the chan_modem.so early on to be sure
; it loads before any of the chan_modem* 's afte rit
; load => chan_modem.so
noload => res_musiconhold.so
noload => chan_modem.so
noload => cdr_pgsql.so
noload => cdr_mysql.so
; Load either OSS or ALSA, not both
; By default, load OSS only (automatically) and do not load ALSA
noload => chan_alsa.so
;noload => chan_oss.so
; Module names listed in "global" section will have symbols globally
; exported to modules loaded after them.
After I got the modules all squared away, I needed to setup my IAX configuration to talk to SJC (so they could talk to me too). I edited the /etc/asterisk/iax.conf file to accomplish that. The next thing I did was to get my ATA 186 SIP phone talking to my new Asterisk server. That was really simple. I just needed to edit my /etc/asterisk/sip.conf file to talk to the ATA. Changing those two files doesn't do much for actually making calls. The next thing I had to do (and what took me all day) was to edit my /etc/asterisk/extenstions.conf file. With the help of the BC over my shoulder, I was able to get the asterisk server to use NuFone as well as have the on campus asterisk server to be able to dial my asterisk server which in turn rings my ATA.
There is so much more I want to get setup with that box but what does one do when they run a phone company?... I have that many possibilities!
Sorry, this is the sort of basic doubts I have. Can you help me out in designing the full system. thanks
(Just as a linux router, not necessarily for VoIP at this point..)
I believe it has a 4MB ROM and a 8 or 16MB RAM.
As far as the voicemail is concerned. I think the problem has to do with the wrt not being able to handle the compression that takes place when saving a sound file. Another problem with the vociemail on these boxes is the fact that if the box loses power you lose all of your voicemail. There are a few ways around this problem but I found the simplest solution is to foward the call to a place that can handle voicemail. Another way would be to mount an nfs share (I haven't tried this yet so it's only a guess) and save the voicemails there.
Thanks for the great comment Callis!!
When I moved to Mexico, I only had 2 machines to utilized for work. So I am unable to do a full * deployment. All I am looking to do is simple calls via FWD and Broadvoice. Easier to have the devices do the trancoding, and fortunately, I have a [B]Cisco 6970[/B], and several [B]SIPURA 2000[/B].
Although, I have an old [B]Netwinder 2100[/B], which is MIPS based, so I am going to see if I can load the asterisk image on there and see if that will work. The beauty of that is that it has 128M RAM and a 10G hard drive.
The NLSU2 it's a Network Attached Storage device equipped with:
- an Intel IXP420 network processor at 133 Mhz (and can be set for 266MHz operation using a simple modification),
- 8MB of flash memory,
- 32MB of SDRAM
- 1 FastEthernet port
- 2 USB 2.0 ports
You can use it with an USB Flash disk or an external USB hard drive
and have much more space to install packages and even have a swap partition on the HD.
Regarding Asterisk, I'm using the unslung version as a home PBX for more than 6 months and it works fine with G711 and GSM codecs.
Voicemail also works perfect, including sending the messages in email.
I use a Sipura SPA 3000 as phone adapter and gateway to PSTN.
This seems really cool that you can run asterisk off a WRT54gs box. Has anybody tried the G711u codec and does it work off this box? The reason I ask, I use VOIPSTUNT to make free calls worldwide but I think they only support G711u not GSM.
Does the IVR / Auto attendant / Hold music features still work?
I'm correctly new to Linux / Asterisk. Current playing around with Asterisk@home 2.5 image installed in VMWARE.. pretty cool for practice and no major timing issues. Call quality is pretty good to.. Running off my XP PC Pentium 4 - 1400 with 256mb / SDRAM. (128mb xp / 128mb Asterisk server)
I currently have WRT54G version 2.0 - would it work on this? I guess not because of 4mb flash?
Just want to wish you a very happy birthday--one day late. Hope you had a great weekend and that your work goes well this coming week. Take time to enjoy all the pleasures of NYC--you seem like a big city kind of guy. | <urn:uuid:9d584300-f929-4def-aaf2-71ac911b3cf8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lestblood.imagodirt.net/archives/83-Asterisk-on-OpenWRT.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932838 | 2,158 | 1.726563 | 2 |
'Movember' about more than men's facial hairJIMMY BELLAMY: Normally, I advise against it. Just as Liberace’s impressive ability to wear sequin capes didn’t guarantee you can do the same, not everyone can look good with a mustache. But for one month, I strongly encourage maximum participation.
By: Jimmy Bellamy, Duluth News Tribune
Normally, I advise against it.
Just as Liberace’s impressive ability to wear sequin capes didn’t guarantee you can do the same, not everyone can look good with a mustache.
But for one month, I strongly encourage maximum participation.
Born out of an idea by a group of friends in Australia in 2003, “Movember” is a mustache-growing (spelled “moustache” outside the U.S., hence “mo”) campaign to raise awareness and money for men’s health during November, according to movember.com, its official website. The campaign especially targets prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.
“I think it’s a good way to bring attention to the issue,” Duluth native Aaron Ballantine, a two-time Movember participant, said. “Often times, people look at me and say, ‘You’re a clean-cut kid with a big mustache.’ It always gives me an opportunity to educate someone.”
The usually clean-shaven 26-year-old gives up his baby face one month a year for a personal reason.
“One of my good buddies lost his dad to prostate cancer,” he said, “so it’s close to heart.”
Today the movement has grown into a well-groomed worldwide phenomenon and spawned similar trends such as “No-shave November” and “Novembeard,” which aren’t necessarily aimed at a specific cause.
My approach to wearing a mustache has been the same as my take on bangs on women and bowties — even if you look good with them, you’d look better without. So rather than stop at a mustache, I prefer to grow a beard, neck hair and all.
There is, however, the occasional man who represents all that is great about the mustache. Northland residents don’t need to look far for their spokesman.
Former longtime WDIO-TV news anchor Dennis Anderson has done more for the mustache than actors Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott combined. Anderson’s bushy lip-warmer looks as if it were sculpted by Michelangelo himself.
A more appropriate month might be “Manuary,” one of my colleagues suggested. But November as the facial-hair-growing month gives some Minnesota and Wisconsin deer hunters an ally against the wind and cold during firearms season.
So grow that mustache or beard, and do it for a good cause. It beats a sequin cape.
Jimmy Bellamy is a News Tribune columnist and multimedia editor. Contact him at (218) 723-5390 or [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:1966080a-a34b-4774-b9ce-4bac7cb3198c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/214705/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951306 | 668 | 1.625 | 2 |
Director's Report to the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse
FY 2002 APPROPRIATIONS
The House and Senate cleared the $123.8 billion FY 2002 Labor/HHS/Education spending bill before the end of the first session of the 107th Congress. The House voted 393-30 to adopt the conference report on the bill (HR 3061) on December 19; the following day, the Senate voted 90-7 to adopt the report. The President signed the bill into law on January 10, 2002 [P.L. 107-116]. The bill authorizes $54.2 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), a $5 billion increase over FY 2001. The bill also authorizes $12 billion for the Labor Department and $48.9 billion for the Education Department.
NIH received the largest portion of the DHHS increase, with $23.285 billion, nearly $3 billion more than the FY 2001 NIH funding level. The NIH total actually comes to $22.888 billion after funding for other programs such as Global AIDS and evaluation taps are subtracted. The conference agreement provides a 14.7% increase for the NIH overall. Most institutes received increases between 12% and 14%. NIDA received $888.1 million, a 13.7% increase over FY 2001.
Conferees split the difference on funding the NIH. The Senate bill would have appropriated about $23.7 billion while the House bill would have appropriated about $22.9 billion. The conference committee blocked an attempt by Senate conferees to attach a provision that would expand insurance coverage for mental illness.
FY 2002 funding for programs of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in the Labor/HHS/Education bill included the Substance Abuse Block Grant at $1.725 billion, an increase of $60 billion over FY 2001; for the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) of $198 million, an increase of $23 million; and for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) of $291.5 million, an increase of $35.5 million.
The Treasury Postal Appropriations Act included FY 2002 funding for the National Anti-Drug Media Campaign at $180 million, a reduction of $5 million from FY 2001; and funding for the Drug Free Communities Act (DCFA) of $50.6 million, an increase of $10.6 million over last year.
Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control Hearing Looking the Other Way: Rave Promoters and Club Drugs December 4, 2001
On December 4, the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control (Senators Joseph Biden [D-DE] and Charles Grassley [R-IA], Co-Chairs) held a hearing to examine the use of club and rave drugs. In his opening statement, Senator Biden explained that over the past two years the drug Caucus has held several hearings on the trafficking and use of the drug ecstasy. He said the December 4th hearing was held to take an in-depth look at the phenomenon of the all-night dance parties called raves and discuss events at the federal, state and local level to crack down on rave promoters.
Dr. Glen Hanson, Acting Director, NIDA, joined Asa Hutchinson, Administrator, Drug Enforcement Agency, on the first panel. Dr. Hanson presented some of the latest scientific information about a diverse group of compounds commonly referred to as club drugs. Drugs such as MDMA, methamphetamine, Ketamine, Rohypnol, and GHB are reportedly being used at alarming rates among adolescents and young adults in a wide variety of social settings including raves. Dr. Hanson testified that substantial scientific evidence demonstrates that these drugs are not benign and harmless, as they are often perceived by some users or sometimes portrayed in the popular media. In fact, the scientific evidence is clear. These drugs can have short and long-term detrimental health consequences to both the user and to society in general. Dr. Hanson stated that NIDA would continue to support and disseminate the results of research to prevent and treat drug abuse and addiction, and to help everyone make more informed decisions about these and other substances of abuse. The text of Dr. Hansons formal statement can be found on the NIDA website at www.drugabuse.gov.
OxyContin Hearing Before Senate HELP Committee
Prescription drug abuse and misuse is an important emerging public health problem, and one of particular concern to Members of Congress. NIDA was invited to testify at a hearing in September 2001 before the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee on Abuse of OxyContin, an opioid analgesic prescribed for pain. The hearing, twice postponed, was rescheduled for February 12, 2002. The new focus of the hearing is to address treatment options in rural areas as well as allegations that there has been inappropriate promotion of the drug by the manufacturer. NIDA was asked to submit testimony for the record.
BILLS OF INTEREST
(To view the actual text of any bill, go to http://thomas.loc.gov and enter the bill number in the bill search.)
President Signs Drug Free Communities Act Reauthorization Bill
On December 14, the President signed into law the Drug Free Communities Support Act Reauthorization Bill (HR 2291), which became Public Law, P.L. 107-82. The law reauthorizes for five years the Drug Free Communities Support Program, and authorizes a total of $345 million over that period. Enacted in 1997, the Drug Free Communities Act (P.L. 105-20) established a program of direct grants to community organizations that demonstrate a comprehensive, long-term commitment to reduce drug use among youngsters. The measure also authorizes grants that may be provided to community anti-drug coalitions beyond the terms of their initial grants, and mentoring grants that may be used by coalitions to support the development of other anti-drug groups. The law also establishes a National Community Anti-drug Coalition Institute that will provide education and training for community coalition leaders; develop standards and mechanisms to evaluate the success of coalitions receiving funding; and translate research findings into information that coalitions can use.
HR 1 "No Child Left Behind" - Education Bill Becomes Law
After many months of conference between the House and the Senate, the Education Bill (HR 1) passed both Houses of Congress and was cleared for the President on December 18, 2001 (Congressional Record p. S13422). The final language does not require "prior written consent" as a standard for school-based research, as provided for by the Tiahrt amendment in the House version of the bill. However, Local Education Agencies (LEAs) can do so if they choose, which may impact multi-site school-based research studies.
Among other provisions, the bill preserves the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities (SDFSC) program as a separate authority. The final bill specifies that any program or activity funded through the SDFSC program must meet the following "Principles of Effectiveness," which were codified in the bill: (1) be based upon an assessment of objective data about community needs for the activities; (2) be based upon performance measures established by the LEA; (3) be based upon "scientifically based research" that provides evidence that the program or activity will be effective (there is a waiver for innovative programs with a likelihood of success); (4) be periodically evaluated with the results used to improve the program or activity; (5) be based upon an analysis of risk factors and protective factors; and (6) include consultation with parents.
A SDFSC Advisory Committee is established to consult with the Secretary of Education. The Committee shall be composed of representatives from the Department of Education; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the National Institute on Drug Abuse; the National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse; the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention; the Center for Mental Health Services; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the Office of National Drug Control Policy; State and local governments, including education agencies; and researchers and expert practitioners.
S. 304 - the Drug Abuse Education, Prevention, and Treatment Act of 2001
On November 29, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary [Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Chairman] ordered reported S. 304, the Drug Abuse Education, Prevention, and Treatment Act of 2001, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. The amended legislation is aimed at reducing illegal drug use and trafficking and helping to provide appropriate drug education, prevention, and treatment programs. S. 304 as amended contains a provision requiring the HHS Secretary to enter into a contract with the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study to determine if combining NIDA and NIAAA into a National Institute on Addiction would 1) strengthen the scientific research efforts on substance abuse at the NIH and 2) be more economically efficient. The bill also calls for the expansion of drug abuse prevention and treatment research at NIDA. In addition, S. 304 contains provisions requiring that the Directors of NIAAA and NIDA, in conjunction with the Administrator of SAMHSA, 1) ensure results of all current substance abuse research that is set aside for services (and other appropriate research with practical consequences) is widely disseminated to treatment, prevention, and general practitioners in an easily understandable format, 2) ensure the implementation of best practices based on the research, and 3) make technical assistance available to CSAT and CSAP to assist alcohol and drug treatment and prevention practitioners, including general practitioners, to make permanent changes in treatment and prevention activities through the use of successful models. The bill, as amended, omits authorization levels. At the end of the session, the text of S 304 was swept into the Department of Justice Reauthorization bill (HR2215). That measure, as amended, passed in the Senate by unanimous consent on December 20, 2001 (Congressional Record p. S14075).
SENATE CONFIRMED DRUG CZAR NOMINEE
On December 5th the Senate confirmed by voice vote John P. Walters as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The Senate Judiciary Committee had approved Walters nomination on November 8th on a vote of 14-5.
[Office of the Director][Report Index][Next Report Section] | <urn:uuid:7c7922b6-3dd1-4e7e-9591-5b02fe4699ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archives.drugabuse.gov/DirReports/DirRep202/DirectorReport10.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944857 | 2,125 | 1.554688 | 2 |
One word: Apple.
If there is any proof needed that brick and mortar retail is here to stay, one just needs to look at the Apple Retail Store. As Kim Bashkin of Business Insider highlighted in a recent post, “[the Apple Store] has been widely touted as a major step forward for brick-and-mortar retail. But it’s not just the design that has made it so successful – it’s the entire customer experience.”
In a recent Pando Daily interview, Marc Andreessen predicted the death of traditional retail, and is quoted as saying, “Retail guys are going to go out of business and ecommerce will become the place everyone buys. You are not going to have a choice.”
I agree traditional retail is going away, but it will not be completely replaced by ecommerce. Traditional retail will be evolved. E-commerce will still be around, but it will continue to be a supplement to the traditional shopping experience.
While online technology is making discovery shopping more fun and serendipitous, it cannot replace the real life experience of trying products out, shopping with friends and the immediate access to purchases.
A true key to the Apple Store’s success includes the use of mobile technology, the in-store layout and especially the knowledgeable, friendly customer service representatives ready to give personalized attention. Consumers literally wait in line for this experience.
Recent data by Dimensional Research revealed that 91 percent of consumers shop in a physical store as a result of an online experience such as an email promotion, online coupon or online newspaper circular. Respondents who prefer to shop in a physical store cited getting answers to questions, seeing the item before purchase, ease of making a return and merchant relationships as the top drivers.
Two key points I made in a previous blog post are truer than ever:
- Shopping is supposed to be fun and all about discovery not price comparison and search.
- Mobile changes everything, and a tablet on your couch is an even bigger deal.
Truly Evolving Retail
Heesun Lee’s recent CNBC article highlights how mobile technology is evolving how we shop in brick-and-mortar stores. “Retailers from Bed, Bath & Beyond are investing in new e-commerce technology that encourages consumers — often with smartphones in hand — to shop strategically for deals inside physical stores. Retailers see enormous potential in marrying the physical-store experience with our growing dependence on smartphones.”
While the rising trend of “showrooming” is threatening in-store purchases, retailers like Target are evolving to overcome this obstacle by announcing a new price match policy to match top online retailers’ prices year round.
In a recent Washington Post article on a new Pew Internet and American Life Project report, online sales are rising at a brisk pace, but brick-and-mortar retailers’ efforts to keep even the most Web-savvy shoppers in stores is having some early success. Almost half of the people who comparison shopped with their phones, 46 percent, still ended up at the cash register, an 11-point increase from 2011.
As Mobile Marketer’s Chanel Tode points out, “mobile also presents significant opportunities for retailers to communicate more directly with shoppers in a way that is meaningful and relevant to them, to drive in-store traffic and loyalty as well as to learn more than ever about customers.”
According to the National Retail Federation’s 2013 economic forecast, retail industry sales will continue to increase 3.4 percent, and Labor Department figures show the retail industry led in US job growth last month, with employers adding 32,600 new jobs. While the brick-and-mortar retailers have taken a few blows with ecommerce sales, many are adjusting their playbook with new technology-based strategies, and are coming back into the field to fight like the multi-trillion dollar champion industry they are. | <urn:uuid:42f729df-1716-42f6-89f7-a45b4bae96ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/02/22/why-bricks-and-mortars-will-live-forever/?angle=silicon | 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 | 0.941528 | 810 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Cooling Out in the Community College: What is the Effect of Academic Advising on Students’ Chances of Success?
Abstract Burton Clark’s proposition concerning the cooling out of underprepared students in community colleges has a controversial history and remains a point of contention. Central to Clark’s description of the cooling out process is the academic counselor, whose job it is to dissuade underprepared students from goals perceived to be overambitious and ease these students into lesser, presumably better-fitting academic trajectories. In this study, I test a number of hypotheses concerning the effect of advising on students’ chances of attaining their goals. I seek to determine what effect advising has on students’ attainment, and whether this effect is dependent upon students’ academic preparation, students’ race/ethnicity, the racial/ethnic composition of the college, or the representation of underprepared students in the college. I use hierarchical discrete-time event history analysis to analyze data that address two subsets of the Fall 1995 cohort of first-time freshmen who enrolled in any of California’s 107 semester-based community colleges. I find that advising is actively beneficial to students’ chances of success, and all the more so for students who face academic deficiencies, which contradicts deductions drawn from Clark’s description of the active role of counselors in the cooling out process. | <urn:uuid:5b79837a-b2d8-4d07-a739-346b4ac7ac26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.citeulike.org/user/etaylor/article/3630130 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931429 | 281 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The GAO makes this explicit in its evaluation of the USPS' finances:
The USPS has had long-term plans to address its deficit, which include moving to five-day delivery, eliminating up to 55,000 jobs, and closing processing facilities. Unfortunately, it's largely workers' unions and members of Congress themselves standing in the way of modernization and reform.
The National Association of Letter Carriers, one of the major postal unions and an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, has been steadfast in its opposition to the most viable postal reforms and incredibly effective in lobbying on Capitol Hill to resist reform. Just after Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe announced USPS' plans to move to five-day delivery, the NALC went on a blitz, getting members of Congress on the record and touting the introduction of a bill from Democrat Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Patrick Leahy, and Ron Wyden that would allow Congress to override the USPS' attempts to modernize. The Democrats would maintain six-day delivery, refuse the closure of redundant postal facilities, and alter the accounting of USPS' retirement benefits to make it look like the Postal Service is in better shape than it is.
The GAO's report should cause these Democrats to reconsider. It's obvious that the NALC is just looking to protect jobs for their union members despite the drain on the Postal Service, but the Democrats should be better.
As AEI scholar Richard Geddes testified to Congress yesterday, the Postal Service defaulted on over $11 billion of retiree benefits last year. Though the USPS is not designed to be an on-budget federal government operation, taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook. The USPS monopoly has actually been one of the major impediments to reform, Geddes says.
Postal laws should be reformed to allow the Postal Service to use its most valuable asset – the network that gives it the ability to deliver mail to every address on a regular basis – in new and innovative ways to meet existing demand and to offer new delivery products.
There's value in the Postal Service, but its current structure is what lands it on this GAO "high risk" list for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. There's a lot that needs to be done and, to its credit, the USPS management has seemed so far committed to emerging from its fiscal nadir as a better organization. Even if the USPS doesn't follow the wave of sweeping privatization going on in other countries, there's a laundry list of necessary reforms. The people who are in charge of its stewardship should know better and heed the GAO's report. | <urn:uuid:49cf3e3d-5256-4093-bad9-f01bffa10415> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2013/02/14/gao-post-office-is-high-risk-area-of-government-mismanagement-n1512495/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961335 | 537 | 1.601563 | 2 |
No one seems to understand why iced coffee costs so much more than the regular stuff. Sure, some theories exist: that it's more labor-intensive, that plastic cups are more expensive than paper ones. But on an unseasonably warm spring day recently—when people were lined up out the door of the Starbucks across from my office, waiting to buy iced coffees that cost 30 percent more than hot ones—another idea occurred to me. Namely, that coffee chains and convenience stores had converged on a simple truth: Like flip-flops and sundresses, iced coffee is one of the undeniable pleasures of summer. And regardless of how high the price, people will just pay more for it.
Well, coffee barons, your days of ripping us off are officially over. Making iced coffee from scratch requires less effort than brewing it hot, and if you do it right, you'll produce a smoother, richer, less bitter concoction than anything you'll find in stores. The secret is to steep low and slow: Put your coffee grounds into a stainless-steel pot or a French press and leave them in cold water overnight. The coffee flavor seeps into the cold water, so you get none of the bitterness that often accompanies brewing beans at high temperatures. You end up with a concentrated mixture so dark and potent it's practically opaque. If you make a large batch of the concentrate, you can leave some at home for the mornings and take a pitcher with you to work, where you'll be the envy of co-workers still paying that extra cash for inferior brew.
Here's how I do it:
• Pour about a third of a pound of freshly ground coffee into a 48-ounce French press.* (This makes a much stronger coffee concentrate than some recipes, but I prefer it that way; you can always weaken a strong concentrate by adding water.)
• Fill the press with cold water and stir to wet the coffee grounds.
• Place the French-press lid over the coffee (don't press the plunger) and leave at room temperature for at least 12 hours. The longer you leave it, the stronger the brew.
• Press down the plunger, pour the concentrated coffee into a pitcher, and place in the refrigerator.
• Dilute each serving of coffee 1-to-1 with ice-cold water (use more water if the coffee's too strong), pour over ice, and serve with milk and sugar.
* If you don't have a large French press, just put the coffee in a stainless-steel pot and pour the water over it. Use half a pound of coffee to half a gallon (64 ounces) of water. After 12 to 24 hours, pour the concentrate between 2 pots, dumping out the residual grounds after each pour until there's very little sediment remaining. Then, to remove the finest grounds, pour the coffee through cheesecloth or a sieve before it goes into the fridge. | <urn:uuid:2c220020-cee9-4c43-ab1d-efc033e2b89c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gq.com/how-to/eat-and-drink/200906/how-to-make-iced-coffee-at-home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94919 | 601 | 1.695313 | 2 |
“This mark of the beast has to go,” Cambridge, Massachusetts activist Daniel DeGuglielmo explained to me. “It’s white supremacy.”
The demonic insignia in question is the official seal of Massachusetts, appearing above state buildings as a seemingly innocuous blue coat of arms amidst a sea, suspiciously, of white. As outlined in the interfaith minister’s $24 million pro se lawsuit against the Commonwealth, the milquetoast blue emblem upon closer inspection reveals words and images destined to run afoul of the denizen of the bluest city in the bluest state.
The seal appears most conspicuously on the state flag. An arguably bellicose and barely visible motto tells everyone with 20/10 vision who understands Latin: “By the Sword We Seek Peace, But Peace Only under Liberty.” The central graphic features a bow-and-arrow-bearing Native American. Above is a sword gripped by a muscular arm, allegedly Miles Standish’s. DeGuglielmo dubs the soldier who accompanied the Pilgrims a “rowdy,” a “murderer,” and “vile.” He notes that the arm is “in the cutting position—it’s ready to strike.” And with a Native American, even if a not-so-defenseless one, beneath the sword, the implication, notes DeGuglielmo, is ominous. “Is it right for the flag of the state of Massachusetts to have an arm and the sword of a murderer?”
DeGuglielmo filed suit in December and received a hearing in a Suffolk County court in early January. He expects his next hearing to determine whether the case will go to trial. One significant hurdle may involve standing. The plaintiff is neither a resident of Suffolk County nor an American Indian, at least in a legal sense. “All my studies and all my interactions with Native Americans produce a spirituality within myself that is Native American Indian,” DeGuglielmo explains. He cites the environmentalism and spirituality of indigenous people as tenets that his soul has embraced. “I am a Native American Indian,” he insists. He likens becoming an Indian to converting to Catholicism. “I am an Italian,” he concedes. “But we’re born here in the Americas.” And as an Indian, the flag imagery can’t help but incense. “They’re my people.”
DeGuglielmo’s suit seeks $24 million for his Sunshine of the America’s Foundation. “I will never accept one cent to my foundation for personal gain,” he notes. Instead, he envisions the bulk of the settlement funding American Indian art programs for high schools and an intercity, Native-themed, cultural exchange. Several hundred thousand dollars of the settlement would purchase new flags for the Commonwealth’s 351 cities and towns.
Pages: 1 2 | <urn:uuid:b06da4b2-294e-46b3-9612-90aea3bf9490> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-flynn/ma-state-seal-a-symbol-of-white-supremacy/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93687 | 638 | 1.8125 | 2 |
I'm embarrassed to say I missed a great opportunity. While selling honey at the farmer's market, a customer says, "So I hear the bees are dying and in short supply. What can the average consumer do to help the bees?"
I stammered and rattled on about living more "green," using less pesticides, asking what's in the food we buy and the water we drink and moving toward products that use the least amounts of chemicals, and buying products that don't threaten bees by polluting our environment.
He was satisfied, but I felt my response was lame. How would some of you answer that question? And is there anything the average consumer can do to directly help the bees? The more I think about it, the less I think I know.
Somewhat jokingly, people tell me they want to help the bees by buying a jar of my locally-produced honey. I find such magnaminity only really helps me. | <urn:uuid:e992112e-e8fd-4ad7-be55-396b1e044f4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?222689-Customer-question-missed-opportunity&p=355564 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98429 | 194 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Learn about the Strong Start Campaign.
Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act Competition
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) has issued a Request for Applications to support District of Columbia public charter schools, charter support organizations, and District of Columbia-based non-profit organizations representing and/or partnering with a DC public charter school. The purpose of the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act Competition is to improve school performance and educational outcomes and to provide facility funding in order to increase the number of high-quality public charter school seats.
[XLS] This document is presented as Microsoft Excel. If you are unable to open the document, download the viewer. | <urn:uuid:11fbc004-fc68-4654-a16f-b2e7f3691652> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://osse.dc.gov/publication/scholarships-opportunity-andresultssoaractcompetition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938295 | 145 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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The design of most distributed consensus protocols does not take into account the fact that, over time, the different processes running the protocol are subject to a varying availability of processing and communication resources. Because of that, performance bottlenecks are possible to arise in those executions on which a process that plays a key role in the protocol is executing on a slower processor, or experiences long delays in the communication with other processes. In a previous work we have proposed the abstraction of a slowness oracle that allows a class of consensus protocols, designed for the asynchronous distributed system augmented with unreliable failure detectors, to adapt themselves to this varying availability of resources, minimizing performance bottlenecks. We analyse the performance of several implementations of such adaptive consensus protocols. Their performance is compared against that of a nonadaptive protocol via both simulated scenarios as well as experiments conducted at our laboratory. From the results attained, we conclude that the more accurate is the slowness oracle the better is the performance of the adaptive protocols that uses it. Nevertheless, even very naive implementations of a slowness oracle are sufficient to yield better performance when system load is not homogeneous.
Date of Conference: 23-24 March 2004 | <urn:uuid:92966326-fded-4c83-ba83-ce2850c52212> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&tp=&arnumber=1284052&contentType=Conference+Publications&sortType%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND(p_IS_Number%3A28651) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941474 | 247 | 1.835938 | 2 |
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AWADmail Issue 132August 22, 2004
A Weekly Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages
From: Anu Garg (garg AT wordsmith.org)
English, in Anyone's Language:
Also, see this interesting new project:
From: Dale Roberts (drobertsATcasarino.com)
Ted Cox; 'Scrubs' Hospitalized After Jumping Shark; Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, Illinois); May 7, 2002.
From: Kelly Bowman (bowmankATatt.net)
Just remember, in case of Latin spam - caveat emptor.
From: Cooper Griggs (cooperisATyahoo.com)
I thought I could recommend a (free, open source, multi-platform) program that I use: Popfile.
It's the best filtering tool I've ever used, and I've tried more than a few.
From: Liane Berkowitz (lianeberkowitzATnoos.fr)
Your piece on "spam" made me think of something I heard on the radio the other day. As you probably know, the French-speaking Canadians are very much against the introduction of more and more English words into the language... so they constantly come up with FABULOUS new French words to counter the English ones.
An excellent example for this is the mot-valise (don't know how to say it in English... when two words form one) pourriel = spam. Pourri in French means rotten, spoiled and Courriel is the French version for e-mail!
From: Chris Handley (chandleyATcs.otago.ac.nz)
I agree with you about spam, but sending the spammers to Mars is too expensive. A friend of mine who is helping write the NZ legislation to deal with this, says, quite bluntly: "Two hundred bullets would eliminate 90% of the world's spam overnight."
From: Shelley Poplak (shelleyATtamarindretreat.com)
This brings to mind the word stet which is used by proofreaders to signify I decided that the original is actually OK and I've changed my mind after all so just ignore this comment.
It reminds me of my time in an editorial department with a rather stuffy supervisor who had a copy of Fowler's Modern English Usage and a Rolodex full of correct usage tips which he wielded like legal precedents in a courtroom drama when challenged. But he also had a poster on the wall which read something like The greatest human passion is neither love nor hate, but the need to alter other people's copy. And the word alter was crossed out and change included, then the word change was replaced for amend and amend for revise etc etc.
It was a humbling reminder to allow others their freedom of expression.
From: Diana Phillips (dianamarkATjuno.com)
At one time, a dozen years after studying high school and college Spanish, I went to Venezuela to live due to my husband's work. For a while I was too embarrassed to try using my rusty Spanish with inadequate vocabulary. However, one cannot live that way and I soon found a solution. With a good background in Latin, I was able to function by tying Spanish endings to Latin roots.
From: Denis Shedd (qrATpipeline.com)
Although rendered almost obsolete by the digital age, the word "stat" has been used by the graphic arts community for decades to define a high-resolution photographic print (usually black and white, no grays) of artwork, halftones ("veloxes," a truly outdated word) or contact prints made from lithographic film. In my business, I hear the word used and on occasion, I confess to using it myself. It may be one of those anachronisms our industry will never be rid of.
From: Yosef Bar-On (jobaronATgalon.org.il)
The old WW2 paratrooper's gag goes, "The more firma, the less terra!"
From: Elizabeth Creith (hedgehog.ceramicsATsympatico.ca)
Many years ago when I lived in Toronto, I had friends who owned a cat they called Ceteris Paribus. They explained the term to me, and I was delighted with the name, because it reminded me of Kipling's Cat Who Walked by Himself, and all places (and, presumably, things) were alike to him.
From: Arrigo Mongini (arrigo.monginiATverizon.net)
The opposite of ceteris paribus is mutatis mutandis, which means "those things having been changed that are to be changed". While this is also an expression used by economists, I have always been amused by the fact that the Italian word for underwear is "mutande" (which is derived from the same Latin verb "mutare", to change). So I always think of mutatis mutandis as a change of underwear.
From: Brian N. Larson (blarsonATlarsonlegal.com)
I had a historical (and hysterical) linguistics professor in college who was fond of "ceteris paribus". He combined it with a clause in English: "Ceteris paribus, and they never are." Is there an expression for expressions making use of mixed tongues? ( It's macaronic. -Anu )
While I'm at it, this professor also introduced me to an expression that is rich with irony (or at least the potential for it) when used to describe the English language as the world's common commercial language: "Lingua franca" - an expression in the Latin language (or so I believed then), denoting the French (or "Frankish" or European) language, applied to the English language. Each language involved in this expression has been a lingua franca in some way or at some time; with the exception of English, they have all been eclipsed in that role. Of course, English may be facing the same fate - anyone know how to say "lingua franca" in Mandarin?
For a long time, I thought lingua franca was Latin, but have since come to learn/believe it is of Italian origin.
From: David A. Tozier (wryrytrATjuno.com)
In this day of polarized dichotomous extremism in reporting, it would be refreshing (indeed) to be informed via a "via media" media! However, such staff writers/editors/publishers would be accused of their being radically centrist. If they strained to present a balanced approach, wags would deem them to be vacillators!
From: Tara Housman (dross984ATearthlink.net)
Thank you SO much for your A.Word.A.Day mailings. They're delightful, informative, and most welcome....usually.
Today, though, you've helped to whittle away my edge in future Scrabble games with friends. Qua is one of my favorite words to keep in my quiver, in case I need a way to dump the Q-tile in a three-letter space.
Could you promise me one thing, though? Please wait at least a year (preferably longer!) before you feature the word "qat" in A.Word.A.Day, okay?
What word has st in the middle, in the beginning, and the ending? (Hint: it anagrams to 'Kind ants'.)
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© 2013 Wordsmith | <urn:uuid:b769a00a-8039-449f-8d63-9793c0f2ad1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wordsmith.org/awad/awadmail132.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937866 | 1,630 | 1.648438 | 2 |
- Nov 17, 2006
Taking Advantage of the New Laws
As always, the devil is in the details, and numerous technical requirements must be met to utilize the new retirement laws effectively. For example, with regard to the IRA rollover law for non-spouses, a non-spouse who inherits a 401(k) plan may not roll the money into an IRA in his or her name alone. The account must be designated as an inherited IRA and titled accordingly: "Fred Flintstone, deceased, IRA for the benefit of Pebbles Flintstone" is one example. This type of long title can save you the excise tax that would be tacked on if the IRA’s title didn’t include the name of the deceased original IRA holder along with the beneficiary's name.
The Pension Protection Act of 2006 also took some of the uncertainty away from Roth 401(k), a hybrid retirement vehicle that was introduced in 1998 but set to expire in 2010. Under the new law, this retirement savings program has been made permanent. The conventional Roth IRA that permits tax-free growth and withdrawal of funds has some income eligibility limits; in 2006, those limits are $110,000 of adjusted gross income for unmarried individuals and $160,000 for married taxpayers. However, the Roth 401(k) has no such income eligibility limits. This change presents a tremendous opportunity for people who would otherwise not be eligible for a Roth IRA to take advantage of the wonders of tax-free compound growth through a Roth 401(k) at work.
In all, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 contains more than twenty opportunities for retirement savings. There’s something for everyone, but not everything will be appropriate for everyone. Headlines never tell the whole story, and with retirement planning the important word is "planning." Although some of these changes in the law seem simple, they all have conditions, advantages, and disadvantages. Make sure that you fully understand any retirement vehicle you may be considering, but don’t delay. The sooner you plan, the sooner you save. | <urn:uuid:c42e37a7-fd08-49fd-9545-53b06be7bb42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ftpress.com/articles/article.aspx?p=668013&seqNum=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955716 | 421 | 1.578125 | 2 |
39% of Ukrainian kiosks, shops and other outlets that have the right to sell tobacco products, including selling contraband cigarettes from Russia and Moldova, as well as counterfeit tobacco products.
This was reported by the State Inspectorate for Consumer Protection (Derzhspozhyvstandart).
As part of the study was to selectively checked 842 retail facility, which is the right of retail trade in cigarettes in the 24 regions of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Kyiv and Sevastopol. The range of 330 tested sites were found illegal cigarettes.
As noted in the press service of Derzhspozhivstandart, the prices at which such cigarettes are sold, the price significantly lower than for legal tobacco products.
According to a study, the number of outlets that sell illegal tobacco products in 2011 increased significantly. For comparison, a similar study Derzhspozhivstandart at the end of 2010 showed that illegal cigarettes sold at that time only 23% of tested outlets.
The most strained situation with the sale of illegal cigarettes in 2011, was formed in Rivne, Odessa and Kiev.
In the capital, 75% of the scanned objects traded in illegal tobacco products (mainly smuggling from Russia and Moldova, as well as cigarettes from shops Duty-Free). In the Odessa region trade and smuggling forgery fixed at 56% of sites.
As previously reported, in Ukraine, 16.5 million people smoke. Legal cigarette production in Ukraine has decreased in 2010 to 22% for 6 months. 2011 - another 11%. In Ukraine, the highest in the CIS excise tax rate: 60% of the value packs of cigarettes are excise duty and VAT. | <urn:uuid:26d9cab7-6807-4a20-87a3-6f0f435c6179> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allloans.biz/derzhspozhyvstandart-said-about-the-growth-of/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95746 | 346 | 1.507813 | 2 |
(AP) A U.S. safety agency has cleared the 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee after an investigation into possible engine fires.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating 107,000 of the SUVs in July after getting complaints about power steering hoses coming loose and leaking fluid onto the engines. But the agency closed the probe last month and said the problem didn't pose a serious safety risk.
During the investigation, the agency found 24 cases in which hoses had blown off their fittings. The problem was traced to a defect inside the hose that was fixed at the factory shortly after the SUVs went into production. The agency says none of the leaks caused crashes or fires, and it's unlikely that leaking fluid would reach any ignition sources. All the problems occurred within seven months of when the SUVs were sold, and all were fixed under warranty by Chrysler, which makes Jeeps.
All of the problems happened in Grand Cherokees made between Nov. 22, 2011 and Dec. 23, 2011.
There have been no reports of loss of steering control, crashes or injuries as a result of this condition, NHTSA said in documents posted on its website Tuesday. There is no indication of loss of motive power or unreasonable safety risk associated with the alleged defect.
NHTSA said that changes by the company that makes the hoses have eliminated the likelihood that the hoses will come loose. Still, the agency said it will continue to monitor the vehicles.
The investigation found five reports of engine fires, but NHTSA determined that all were caused by other factors. | <urn:uuid:a3229179-6603-40cc-8fa7-48fbe0d46ed9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://timesleader.com/stories/Jeep-Grand-Cherokee-cleared-in-fire-probe,249094?category_id=103&list_type=most_viewed&town_id=1&sub_type=stories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979523 | 320 | 1.640625 | 2 |
This month we welcome a terrific new cohort of future environmental leaders to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies: an exceptionally talented class of 143 students from 31 U.S. states and territories and 24 countries. They will take much away from their years at Yale but they will give much too. The special quality of our school is created in large part by the diverse experiences and global perspectives of our remarkable students. We are inspired by their passion, strengthened by their energy and enlightened by their insights.
The students entering the Class of 2014 will graduate into a world where environmental concerns have never been more salient. Increasing demands on the Earth’s resources, the continuing loss of biological diversity, the degradation of ecosystem services and new kinds of pollution, as well as climate change, are all impediments to creating a more just, secure and sustainable world. The magnitude of these challenges requires environmental leaders with vision who can “think like a mountain” and who will take the long view.
During their time at Yale our students will be taught by a diverse and accomplished faculty and they will learn from an extraordinary community of peers, mentors, alumni and staff. These relationships and interactions among them will help our students excel, both academically and professionally. With an eye to coming decades each one of them is a wonderful investment in our collective future. We expect much of them, but we also know from the history of F&ES alumni that they will deliver. | <urn:uuid:5387c25b-874e-4892-aa61-76cfca4e5129> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/dean-crane-welcomes-the-class-of-2014/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964865 | 292 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Come on ... give it a chance!
There are many adventures in life that come with some risk. Sky diving, zip lining, travel to some foreign countries and race car driving come to mind. Yet, there is one adventure that is not only risk free, but ultimately can be a huge eye opener, and that is food. Short of eating a poisonous mushroom or Japanese Fugu (the puffer fish, which only a few sushi chefs in the world are licensed to prepare because it is highly toxic and potentially fatal if incorrectly prepared), eating food has no risk. The worst thing that could happen is that you don’t like something, but the potential reward of discovering something new and delicious to eat far outweighs that risk.
Jeff and I find this to be the most wonderful kind of adventure. In fact, the first thing either of us does when we are planning an evening out or a future trip somewhere is to research the food and restaurants we want to try. We both live by the motto that there is no such thing as bad food, just bad preparation of a food and therefore it is always worth giving something a second or third go around. We always say, taste first, ask later. Often one’s perceptions get in the way of the potential enjoyment of a new food because of a bad past experience or preconceived notions. What you don’t know can’t hurt you sounds cliché, but it sure does work when it comes to food.
Sure, I draw the line at a few things; for example, domesticated animals are a taboo food to me, but by and large, I will try anything. Hey, maybe elephant grubs are tasty? How would I know since I never had one before, right? Next time I am in Papua, New Guinea, I’ll be sure to remember that. I’m sure there are some cultures that would view moldy cow’s milk as pretty gross too, but blue cheese can be a revelation in the right context. Don’t knock it until you try it.
If you have any technical difficulties, either with your username and password or with the payment options, please contact us by e-mail at [email protected] | <urn:uuid:fcc93b57-c531-4d86-baa7-8b75e0dae739> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bcrnews.com/2012/11/01/come-on-give-it-a-chance/c1mu02z/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969642 | 460 | 1.632813 | 2 |
NOAA Administrator Visited LSU for Input and Opinions
Jane Lubchenco visited with faculty and students, toured lab space on Sept. 29
BATON ROUGE – Undersecretary of Commerce Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, spent several hours with LSU faculty and students on Sept. 29 as part of a tour of the Gulf Coast region in reaction to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
“Dr. Lubchenco came to visit our faculty and tour our facilities because she knows about LSU’s extensive capabilities to understand and respond to the situation in the Gulf,” said Christopher D’Elia, dean of LSU’s School of the Coast & Environment, or SCE. “It’s here at LSU. We have some of the best, brightest and most active researchers in the country focusing on the Gulf of Mexico right now. They have broad experience with the impacts of oil and gas industry and know the region intimately.”
Due to her busy schedule, Lubchenco was only able to spend a relatively brief amount of time on campus, but the majority of that time was spent in discussion with a large group of LSU faculty members currently engaged in oil-related research. She then moved on to visit several SCE labs and also the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program before leaving.
“Dr. Lubchenco’s visit further reinforces NOAA’s commitment to science-based management,” said Chuck Wilson, executive director of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program and professor in LSU’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences. “She has traveled to the Gulf numerous times over the past several months to hear from impacted stakeholders and to engage regional scientists in charting oil spill recovery and determination of long term impacts. It meant a great deal to Louisiana Sea Grant to have her visit and personally express her appreciation of our oil spill responses efforts.”
Since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy began, LSU has been sought after by federal agencies, research institutions and media outlets for information about the disaster. Having the current NOAA administrator come to meet with faculty was another great acknowledgment of the university’s research prowess.
“It says an enormous amount about the stature of LSU’s School of the Coast & Environment, and LSU as a whole, to have such a high-ranking official come to campus,” said D’Elia. “We appreciate Dr. Lubchenco’s time and consideration, and hope that we have the opportunity to discuss such research matters again with her and other officials involved in cleaning up and restoring the Gulf.” | <urn:uuid:3aa1c96d-3cd1-4480-9004-8c52d6eb5c61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lsu.edu/ur/ocur/lsunews/MediaCenter/News/2010/10/item20032.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962104 | 549 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Obama's health care plan?will cost more than just money
The people who support Obamacare and fawn over all of the "wonderful" benefits it will supposedly offer should realize that it is, in fact, the first step on the way to a single-payer, government-only health system. What's wrong with a single-payer system, you say? Let me count the ways.
A single-payer system where the government plan is regarded as an entitlement encourages over-usage. If I think it's free, why should I inhibit my own use of the system? It is not free. Someone pays for it.
If people regard it as free, they will abuse it. This guarantees a disconnect between who uses the plan and who pays for it. Demand will increase dramatically and costs will escalate. Massachusetts is a prime example.
Given increased demand and limited ability to pay for it, the only thing government can do is to ration health care. Limiting services, restricting technology, demanding greater waiting times and gatekeepers all suffice to raise access barriers to health care. While this is not something anyone wants, how can a single-payer system not restrict utilization arbitrarily? The government will be forced to reduce the cost by rationing health care or by increasing taxes or both. Single-payer does not increase access. It limits access.
Rationing is economic central planning, and quite frankly, centralized economic planning has been a disaster where it has been tried in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe.
More specific to single-payer, rationing takes place on one side and demand increases on the other. The result is increased wait times for necessary technology. Why do so many Canadians come here for tests and treatment? It is because they have to wait in a rationed system. Americans take it for granted that an MRI can be scheduled in a couple of days or within a week. The Fraser Institute Access to Technology study concluded that on a per capita basis, Canada has thousands fewer MRIs and CAT Scans than are available in America. No wonder wait times are worse in Canada. There is simply less medical capacity by design.
Michael J. Beyer
Elections should return?to America's core values
The nation has just celebrated the 236th anniversary of its experiment in democracy. We have been reminded once again of the importance of the democratic process and the power of each person's vote in shaping our common life. Yet over the past several years, we have see the democratic process undermined by laws and court rulings that have expanded the influence of corporations in elections campaigns.
At a cost of over $4 billion, the 2010 mid-term elections were the most expensive ever. We are well on our way to witnessing that amount greatly surpassed by this year's election cycle.
The January 2010 ruling of the Supreme Court in the Citizens United v. FEC case opened the floodgates for campaign spending in election campaigns. The court ruled that private business including for-profit corporations have a right to spend an unlimited amount of money to support or defeat candidates. Rather than pursuing public policy that serves the common good.
Candidates are forced to chase money.
No matter what issues you care about or where you are on the political spectrum, campaign financing has a fundamental influence on the public policy process, impacting who is at the table when policy decisions are made and in whose interests those decisions are made.
Elections that are dominated by money interests rather than by the needs of the nation do not reflect the values of our country. We are or should be a participatory democracy. Let your voices be heard.
Judith M. Metzger
Writer should relax?about same-sex marriage
The July 2 letter, "Bloomberg's statement makes no sense at all" had me puzzled as it, in fact, made no sense either.
Is the writer angry at Mayor Bloomberg? Upset he may no longer be able to purchase super-sized sodas? Riled about same-sex marriage? Jealous he can't marry his sister? All of the above?
After twice reading his letter, I surmise his anger is directed at same-sex marriage. I think.
If so, allow me to remind the writer that the law permitting same-sex marriage has been in effect for one year, and heterosexual couples are still getting married. Each Sunday I read The Buffalo News and, sure enough, there are plenty of nice straight couples exchanging vows.
Same-sex marriage hasn't affected their opposite-sex marriages one iota! The law simply allows a loving gay couple the opportunity to make a legal commitment to each other.
So, may I suggest the writer kick back with a large soda perhaps something stronger and relax. It's all good.
Tragic accident shows?the need for better signs
On June 9, I was out walking about 7:30 p.m. in my neighborhood and came to the intersection of Maple Road and Oakbrook Drive. A police car was at the intersection rerouting traffic off Maple Road. I looked east and saw many police cars with their lights flashing and walked over to see what was happening. The ambulances had just left. In talking with bystanders, I learned that two young girls had been hit by a car while crossing Maple Road.
Upon further questioning, I learned that one of the girls was Erin Suszynski. Erin's mother has been a lifelong friend to my daughter, Laura Pedersen. As I looked around, I noticed that on the north side of Culpepper Drive and Maple Road there is a playground and an elementary school nearby; on the south side is a huge residential area with many children.
It is my opinion that either a crosswalk with a traffic light or a pedestrian bridge should be at this intersection for the safety of the children. Maple Road is a very dangerous road with heavy traffic making it almost impossible to cross.
Erin was taken to Women and Children's Hospital and put on life support. She quietly passed away on June 20, with her parents at her side. I feel her life could have been saved if some safety measures had been in place.
NFTA should better enforce?its honor system' for riders
Donn Esmonde's July 1 column makes some interesting points about Buffalo's long-maligned light rail rapid transit system. The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus will certainly increase ridership. The move of the University at Buffalo medical school, in addition to other expansion, will mean many more people commuting.
The result will obviously be increased ridership on Metro Rail. But let's look at a real issue everybody should pay to ride. And payment is virtually on the "honor system." This is not rocket science. Simply ensure that everyone pays to ride. How the NFTA accomplishes this is up to them. | <urn:uuid:1b215ff4-d405-4ab1-bb67-68255148a3c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120709/OPINION02/307099980/1122 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969199 | 1,387 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Posted at: 02/07/2013 4:16 PM
Updated at: 02/08/2013 7:51 AM
By: Tom Hauser
Governor Dayton devoted only two lines of a 12-page "State of the State" speech to the issue of gay marriage, but it was enough to put that issue squarely on the legislative agenda this session.
"I believe that every Minnesotan should have the freedom to marry legally the person she or he loves, whether of the same or other sex," the governor said in his speech, prompting a standing ovation from Democratic lawmakers.
However, it won't be easy to change the state's law banning gay marriage.
Some Democrats who serve in socially conservative rural areas might find it difficult to vote to legalize gay marriage.
More broadly, a majority of Minnesotans oppose the idea, according to our latest KSTP/SurveyUSA poll. In that poll, 54 percent of Minnesotans surveyed say they oppose changing the law, while 42 percent support the idea. The poll has a margin of error of +-4.5 percent. | <urn:uuid:011866ef-74db-4314-89d0-dfd80b6bf1f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hbispace.com/printStory/kstc45/index.cfm?id=2924525 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94355 | 230 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Survey: Harsh Duty Cabling & Connectors
Engineers voice their opinions in a Control Engineering-Molex Inc. survey about the criticality of harsh duty cabling and connectors as they relate to production failures, equipment downtime, and industrial network connectivity.
David Greenfield, Control Engineering
Cables and connectors are an integral feature of any technology, consumer or industrial. Whether they are being used to connect the internal components of capital equipment, or connecting a separate piece of equipment into a larger system array, their use is unavoidable. Typically, such integral technologies are often the main topic of conversation in the industries in which they typically are used. Cables and connectors, however, have more often been relegated to utilitarian points of discussion.
Though cables and connectors may never be viewed as being as sexy as the newest industrial computing and networking technologies, three major issues across manufacturing are working to bring cables and connectors increasingly into the limelight. Those issues are:
Equipment suitability to different environments as manufacturers diversify their production processes;
Efforts to further reduce equipment downtime to avoid unnecessary repair costs; and
Increasing levels of equipment connectivity to enterprise networks to deliver real-time production data.
To better understand the realities impacting the decisions around the purchase and use of cables and connectors in the current manufacturing environment, Control Engineering and Molex partnered to collect insight from end-users, OEMs (equipment manufacturers), engineering consultants, and system integrators. The survey, conducted in early December 2009, received nearly 300 responses providing an array of response from a variety of manufacturing industries.
The largest groupings of respondents came from the capital equipment/machinery/OEM (23%), electronics (11%), metals and mining (10%), food and beverage (8%), chemicals (7%), automotive (7%), and petrochemical (7%) manufacturing industries.
Principal respondents were end users, providing 48% of responses. OEMs (25%), engineering consultants (15%), and system integrators (12%) represented the remaining survey respondents. Most of these respondents (48%) handle the purchase of cable and connectors for use on all equipment within their purview. Only 18% had never directly purchased such products. Nearly all respondents (80%) work in harsh environment production areas and 80% said that they had experienced equipment downtime as a direct result of harsh environment conditions.
In those cases where equipment downtime was encountered due to harsh environment, 21% of respondents indicated that the cause was due to cabling/connector issues. Though the majority of downtime experienced was due to equipment failures (61%), cabling was the number two cause of downtime—nearly double the amount of maintenance issues and more than three times as much as network failures.
The clear message delivered by responses to this portion of the survey is that, regardless of manufacturing industry application, if the environment is harsh, the importance of selecting suitable cabling and connectors is a critical factor to production uptime.
A number of respondents took the opportunity provided by the survey to note their use of harsh duty Ethernet cabling and connectors. Following are comments from two respondents:
“We changed our entire enterprise network over to an Ethernet control network that is owned by engineering, not IT. We are using harsh duty cabling and harsh duty industrial Ethernet switches.”
“[We are] experimenting with industrial Ethernet cabling (hardened connectors with positive connector locks).”
These comments related to Ethernet and its most common RJ-45 connection mark some of the most recent harsh duty cabling and connection issues to be faced by manufacturers. Whether it’s mandated by corporate and supply chain directives to gather more real-time capable-to-promise/deliver data or part of an initiative to collect more plant floor-related OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) and production metrics, the fact is that more and more plant floor equipment is being connected to the manufacturing enterprise network. In addition, as Ethernet continues to prove its suitability in industrial networking environments, the wide familiarity Ethernet technology enjoys among engineers and IT professionals only helps to fuel its broader use and acceptance.
Survey data reveals that only 23% of respondents “never” connect equipment in harsh duty areas to the enterprise network. Considering that less than 10 years ago many engineers were still suspect about Ethernet’s suitability for industrial use, to find that nearly 80% of respondents now at least “sometimes” connect harsh duty equipment to an enterprise network spotlights a major shift in industrial networking technology attitudes and application. It also serves to elevate the importance of cables and connectors in the wider industrial equipment discussion.
Yet the data from the survey still shows a great deal of education on the importance of proper cabling and connector decisions is needed. Only 30% of respondents believe that the harsh environment in which they operate is a “critical” factor in their network connection choices. A nearly identical percentage claims it has “no” impact on their decision.
OEM and user perspectives
An additional component to this joint Control Engineering -Molex project involved interviewing attendees at the 2009 SPS/IPC/Drives show held in Nuremberg, Germany, in November 2009. Attendees were asked about their preferences related to cable/connector specifications on equipment used in harsh duty areas and about the trends they see impacting these technologies.
As both an OEM and end-user of industrial equipment in harsh environments, Marc-Christian Witt, managing director of Witt Elektronik in Neuhausen, Germany, said that when Witt Elektronik purchases capital equipment for production use, they appreciate when the proper cabling is provided by the equipment producer. He added that Witt Elektronik also works to provide the right cabling on the equipment it produces for customers based on application.
Speaking from a contract manufacturer and system integrator perspective, Thomas Dosch, distribution sales manager for Lacon in Karlsfeld, Germany, concurred with Witt, saying that he would prefer the cabling Lacon uses for projects to be specified by a cabling expert for the application. “In this way, we receive the cabling tested and certified and it is easier for us to implement it,” he said.
Andreas Vogt, vice president of engineering for Molex, noted that he is familiar with the preferences Witt and Dosch expressed and added that Molex sees customers’ cabling and connector specification preferences varying, depending on the size of company. “The bigger customers definitely prefer to do the specifications themselves,” Vogt said. “The smaller customers expect us to be the provider of the solution, as they tend to be looking for someone to solve their problem rather than just provide cables and connectors.”
In terms of trends, Witt said that he sees the fast-growing alternative energy industries having a big impact on the development and use of harsh duty cables and connectors. In the near-term, Witt said he expects to see more specifications related to cabling coming from customers in the wind and solar energy industries.
Elisabeth Eckstein, a purchaser for LTN Servotechnik in Otterfing, Germany, also commented on interest LTN is seeing for harsh duty cables and connectors from the new energy sectors, wind energy in particular. “We currently have a project ongoing in wind power, for which we have specified the appropriate cabling and connectors because the slip ring has to operate in the extreme environments (to which wind turbines are exposed).”
Vogt added that, overall, he is seeing more and more control “moving out of the cabinet” and is therefore bringing cables, connectors, and distribution blocks more directly into harsh duty environments.
Reach David Greenfield, editorial director, at [email protected]
Several respondents to the joint Control Engineering -Molex harsh duty cabling and connectors survey provided examples of how and where they are using harsh duty cabling and connectors to address specific equipment reliability issues in the environment in which the equipment operates. Following are a few of the verbatim comments received from respondents:
“[We need] connectors suitable for use in a weak chlorine vapor atmosphere (fumes from 12% bleach solution). This causes long-term degradation of exposed metals, such as connectors, in the electrical equipment.”
“We use all kinds of sensors in an acidic, caustic and heavily washed down environment. Most of the wiring is protected by rigid conduit, but at the final connection point, wire is exposed and we use NEMA 4X type connectors.”
“We need to accomplish standards related to Div I Class II, and sometimes the corrosion issues could cause failures on devices connected on it.”
“[We build] sub-sea equipment [used in depths up] to 6,000 m depth. [This involves] connecting video (both coaxial and fiber optic), Ethernet, twisted pair, and high voltage [cables running up] to 4600 V ac and 6000 V dc.”
“Dust metal shavings and conductive debris gets in connectors.”
“Chemicals involved with cleaning (CIP systems) require cabinet connectors for cabling suitable for alkaline/acid wash down. All connections are sealed and cabinets pressurized.”
“[Cables used in our equipment are] submerged in hydraulic oil between -40 °C and 125 °C and must survive lots of mechanical abuse, abrasion, and bending.”
“We connect the Ethernet connections to portable equipment in a heavy washdown environment.”
“Safety system [installation] means working in harsh areas requiring IP67 or better on RJ-45 and networks.” | <urn:uuid:534e8ac9-a418-4e20-add9-b2cb083a84a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.controleng.com/index.php?id=483&cHash=081010&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=9873 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944975 | 2,004 | 1.703125 | 2 |
West African Film Series
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Sponsored By: The Dorsky Museum
Location: Lecture Center 104
Contact: Amy Pickering, x3844, [email protected]
Web Site: www.newpaltz.edu/museum
Kick-off of a West African bi-weekly film series in conjunction with the exhibitions "Photo-Rapide: Francois Deschamps" and "Malian Portrait Photography." Manthia Diawara, Professor of Comparative Literature and Africana Studies at NYU presents his film, "Bamako Sigi-Kan." Set in Bamako, capital of Mali, this unconventional documentary tells the story of the return of the director to his hometown to see how his childhood friends are coping with globalization. Full of nostalgia, he has also brought along an African American photographer friend, for whom he plays the role of a tour guide. Together, they are confronted with the everyday reality of the city, and the changes brought on by structural adjustment and other World Bank policies. The director is surprised to find that his childhood buddies have different, and often contradictory, views on globalization. | <urn:uuid:9a2ef52a-40a0-40a1-bee9-c5394c2397cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newpaltz.edu/events/event_view.php?event_id=109241 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944421 | 243 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Neighbors encouraged by changes to Reading Viaduct in Philadelphia
April 6, 2012By Emma Jacobs
Shrubs and grass have grown up over the railroad ties on the Reading Viaduct; but now those tracks are coming up.
Neighbors of this spur of abandoned elevated railway through central Philadelphia see the change as a sign of progress toward their vision of transformed urban green space.
Sarah McEneaney has given more tours than she can count of the tracks. Severed electric lines hang from the catenaries overhead. She points out how some of the hammered iron pegs that fasten the remaining rails have come loose.
McEneaney explains crews in trucks began arriving with equipment last month to remove the tracks.
"They brought a dumpster which is full of rails," McEneaney points out as she waves to a neighbor.
Reading International, which owns the elevated track, has been in talks with the city about how to handle the railway. McEneaney thinks the city has been issuing more code violations to encourage Reading to maintain the property.
Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger says Reading began taking up the tracks on its own. Track removal must come before any environmental remediation.
McEneaney's friend, John Struble say they're encouraged to see changes on the viaduct.
"To me it's just opening up a clean slate and I think it's fantastic," says Struble.
The two list possibilities for the elevated line, which they envision becoming a linear public park.
"Public art, dog park, bike lane," suggests McEneaney. "Roller coaster."
The project has inspired opposition from some other neighbors, who argue it could up the price of housing.
McEneaney says the project is important for a neighborhood that lacks access to public space. | <urn:uuid:ed3920cc-b23c-4f93-baec-0017b517ae35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/health-science/item/36474-04ejdig | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966155 | 376 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Huntington firm has China ties
International trade in Castle Country extends beyond the imports on the shelves of the "big box" retail stores. It reaches into a small manufacturing and mine supply company on the outskirts of Huntington as well.
For the past 14 years, Genco Mine Service has been importing basic military vehicles from China and customizing them for use in American mines. "The Chinese manufacture them to our specifications, then they're shipped to the Port of Oakland, then Salt Lake and then to Huntington," explained Glenn Sebring, co-founder of Genco.
He said he travels to Beijing to meet with his suppliers about once a year. He used to travel quite a bit in this country to meet potential customers but that is not as necessary as it once was because now the customers are coming to Huntington. That's the benefit of 32 years worth of reliable service, he said.
"When someone comes in to work here, I let them know that if the customer isn't happy, then I'm not happy," he stated. And since the company serves customers in many time zones, and those mines often have multiple shifts, it means that "we have to be ready to support what we sell 24 hours a day."
The product line at Genco is strictly utilitarian, not glamorous. Its vehicles are custom-designed to transport miners and equipment in different environments - underground coal, underground hard rock, surface mining. Some are low-slung without cabs, some are hard-top models. The low profile models are more suitable for mines in the East or Midwest, where coal seams are lower than in Utah, Sebring explained.
Although the the hard-top models are designed for different passenger or freight loads, they all have the same doors. The company found out from experience that it could keep its spare parts inventory lower, and thereby cut costs, if it standardized the doors and designed the chassis around them, Sebring said.
Sebring got into mining when he decided his first career as a Spanish teacher was not for him. It turned out that Genco, which he helped to create in 1978, was more to his liking. | <urn:uuid:9fdb8f3e-67ea-426c-b8cd-783a7bacda9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunadvocate.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=19524 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981335 | 436 | 1.617188 | 2 |
One of the hardest things a caregiver will ever
have to do is to know when it’s time for their loved one to go into
a long-term care facility. Often, caregivers will go long past the
point of when they should have incorporated help from the outside.
Sometimes, it’s their own fear of failing as a caregiver and the
fear of letting someone down that stands between themselves, their
loved ones, and an improved quality of life for both. Identifying
some of the following may help make the decision process a little
easier, and define certain things a little more clearly for you. A
long-term care facility may be needed if: your relative’s condition
keeps getting worse and is becoming too much for you to handle on
your own; no matter how hard you try to give care to your loved one,
it’s just not enough; you feel as if you are the only one around who
is having to care for someone who is ill or elderly; you’re not
receiving any type of respite, and it doesn’t look like anything can
be arranged for you to get much-needed time away or rest;
relationships with other family members are breaking down because of
the time you must dedicate to caring for one person; your caregiving
responsibilities are beginning to greatly interfere with your work
and personal life; you have feelings of guilt when it comes to
taking care of yourself; your coping skills are beginning to include
self-destructive behavior, such as eating too much or too little,
increased drug use or alcohol use, or losing emotional control too
often; you rarely experience any moments of happiness, but have too
many real moments of exhaustion, anger, and resentment; you hold
your feelings in, never allowing them to be shared with a friend or
with a professional. As a caregiver, you may very well have
experienced many, if not all of these things from time-to-time, or
you may now be starting to experience these things constantly. In
order to conquer your fears of placing a loved one into a long-term
care facility, you need to understand more about some of the
facilities nearest to you.
For example, in Miami-Dade County, there exists
an innovative concept to the traditional nursing home or a long-term
care facility. The Hebrew Homes Health Network provides seven
different state-of-the-art residences located throughout different
neighborhoods in Miami. People are given the individualized care
that they need by a professionally trained staff which concentrates
on the specific medical, social, and dietary needs of the residents.
Also, the cleanliness of a facility is one of the more crucial areas
of importance and concern to the caregiver and to the health and
well-being of a resident, and this is why all seven facilities of
the Hebrew Homes Health Network take cleanliness very seriously.
What makes these residences so innovative is that they strongly
encourage continued involvement of family members and friends of
those residing in one of the homes. Compassionate, caring staff
members work closely with family members, and are always available
to meet with them, even when it’s not “regular” business hours.
There are also “Family Night” activities held monthly, as well as
holiday celebrations that include all family and friends of the
residents. William Zubkoff, PhD., M.P.H. and president of Hebrew
Homes Health Network states, “We are dedicated to our mission to
provide the highest quality and most compassionate long-term and
rehabilitative care and service, meeting the needs of our residents,
our families and our employees with compassion, dignity and love. We
will continuously strive, as a team, to improve our network by
developing the most effective systems to provide cutting-edge elder
As a caregiver, you may wonder how to go about
finding what’s available to your loved one in and around the area in
which they live, and how to decide upon what type of facility will
be best for them. A few people you may want to ask are: your family
physician; hospital discharge planners; social workers; home
healthcare nurses; friends and/or neighbors who have been through
similar experiences; your religious leader; geriatric screening
programs through a local hospital or community center; and finally,
government agencies such as the federal Area Agencies on Aging, or
local social services or family services groups. If there is a
professional familiar with your loved one’s condition, ask them
about what kind of facility would be best in matching and meeting
particular needs. These people may be able to help you base a
decision upon specific medical considerations and information, such
as conditions like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, mental health and
awareness of the person, and their physical and mobility factors.
When deciding on a few places to check out, first call them and ask
if there is a waiting list for the facility, what the cost might be,
and what types of insurance or supplements, if any, are accepted.
The answers you receive from these phone calls should help you
narrow down your list of possible places. When you’ve selected a few
places, make sure you ask even more questions to help you better
assess the quality of each facility. Also, listen to your “gut”
feelings when you begin each tour, and it may be helpful to bring
along a friend or other family member in order to get some other
forms of input regarding each facility. Some general questions to
ask each place can include:
Location - is the facility
conveniently located to where you live? Will it be easy for you to
get to in order to visit? Is public transportation available nearby?
Appearance/Atmosphere - are the
kitchen, day rooms and bedrooms clean? Is there good natural and
artificial lighting? How is the temperature? Are there
any unpleasant odors? Does the facility meet your standards of
cleanliness? Is the facility wheelchair and walker friendly?
Are there handrails to help with walking?
Menus - is the menu varied and
nutritious? Will the facility accommodate special dietary needs? Is
food available throughout the day? Are people allowed to snack? Are
mealtimes flexible and varied? How is the food? Visit facilities at
mealtime. Does the food look appetizing? Do residents appear to be
enjoying their meals? Is there adequate assistance and supervision
for those residents who need it? Ask if you can sample the food.
What do you think of it?
Bathrooms - are they private?
Are they clean? Are they easy to find? Are they close to where your
loved one will be? Do they have grab bars and other safety devices
Alzheimer’s-friendly – if your
loved one has Alzheimer’s, is the staff specially trained to care
for someone with this condition or other forms of dementia? Is there
a separate unit for Alzheimer’s residents? Are Alzheimer residents
able to wander safely indoors and outside?
Resident-to-staff ratio - What
is the resident-to-staff ratio? How many residents have Alzheimer’s
disease? Does the staff provide enough care throughout the disease
process, no matter what the disease and/or condition?
Interaction - do all staff
interact with residents on a regular basis, and in a friendly and
Activities – are there
meaningful activities for groups and individuals? Are there
therapeutic activities, like music, pet, or plant therapy? Are there
opportunities for your loved one to socialize? Are the routines
flexible and offer variety?
Visiting – when are you allowed
to visit? Can you have privacy with the resident when visiting? Can
you take the resident on outings, such as to a park, a restaurant,
or to a family function?
Behavior Management - how are
different types of behaviors handled? Are restraints used? (Physical
restraints like straps, chemical restraints like sedatives, or
restraints to the environment, like a locked door.) Don’t be afraid
to ask what portion of the residents has to be “medicated” or have
to have physical restraints; also, try noticing these things
Safety - are there smoke
detectors? Are there slip-proof mats in the baths, grab rails, bed
Medical Care - can you continue
to use members of your loved one’s healthcare team? Is there a
doctor always available or on call in case of emergencies? How often
does a doctor visit? Can you meet the doctor?
Philosophy of Care - does the
facility focus on the needs of the individual resident? Can
flexibility in routines be accommodated? Are there regular care
planning meetings regarding your loved one? Will these meetings
include you and other family members as well?
Individualized Care - is
consideration given to individual cultural, religious or spiritual
needs? Are other languages spoken? Is the facility “home-like”?
Atmosphere - what is the
atmosphere like? Are residents up and about? Are they socializing
with one another? Is the staff actively engaged with residents?
Does staff treat residents with respect?
Outdoor Areas - is there a nice
spacious outdoor area for residents? Is there a covered
outdoor area in case of rain?
Another great way to obtain information is to
speak directly to the residents. Ask them how they like living
there, and let them know that you are considering the facility for a
family member. Larger facilities may offer an opportunity for you to
speak with residents in a more private setting, enabling you to get
more candid answers and information. You may find residents at
smaller facilities to be a little less comfortable speaking about
their experiences, since they have less privacy; if this is the
case, don’t push the issue. After you’ve had the “official” tour,
you may want to walk around the facility by yourself, unaccompanied.
Just remember not to enter any of the residents’ rooms or areas
without receiving permission first. When making your final decision,
take into consideration not only the services your loved one will
need right now, but what they may need in the way of care further
down the line. Make sure the facility you decide upon has services
that you may also need in the future. Before making your decision,
carefully review the entire admissions packet, especially the
section that covers fees and services with a complete schedule. Will
Medicare be accepted? Will Medicare be willing to cover the chosen
facility? Will Medicaid be accepted if personal funds run out? Even
after doing all your homework and visiting several facilities, you
may not find exactly what you’re looking for; however, keep your
options open and flexible. You can help promote quality-of-care for
your loved one by staying actively connected to them as much as
possible, no matter what type of facility is decided upon.
Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter | <urn:uuid:9173ee20-b65f-4648-aee9-e082a9d05563> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://caregiver.com/articles/print/choosing_well_ltc_facilities.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944104 | 2,410 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Yesterday, I gave a talk at Google on common crypto flaws, with a focus on web-based applications. Like my previous talk, the goal was to convince developers that the most prevalent crypto libraries are too low-level, so they should reexamine their design if it requires a custom crypto protocol.
Designing a crypto protocol is extremely costly due to the careful review that is required and the huge potential damage if a flaw is found. Instead of incurring that cost, it’s often better to keep state on the server or use well-reviewed libraries that provide SSL or GPG interfaces. There are no flaws in the crypto you avoid implementing.
I hope you enjoy the video below. Slides are also posted here. | <urn:uuid:9ad97fc8-efbc-4966-bfcd-c602a977442d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rdist.root.org/2009/08/06/google-tech-talk-on-common-crypto-flaws/ | 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 | 0.96096 | 149 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Health Plan Information - Community Integrated Service Networks
Community Integrated Service Network (CISN) is defined as a formal arrangement licensed by the Commissioner of Health for providing prepaid health services to enrolled populations of 50,000 or fewer enrollees. At the present time there are no CISNs in Minnesota. CISNs are licensed pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, chapter 62N and Minnesota Rules, part 4685.
Currently there are no CISNs licensed in the State of Minnesota.
For more information on CISNs, contact us at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:5e0190d3-8341-4301-b181-209b4f10bf7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.health.state.mn.us/hmo/cisn.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931203 | 116 | 1.695313 | 2 |
KATHRYN SNYDER ’16 is a northeast Indiana native who has worked as a pharmacy
technician in both the retail and hospital settings. She has high expectations.
Hong Dao ’16 comes from a family of pharmacists and knows her way around the retail
side of the profession. She thrives on multi-tasking.
Jacob D. Clendenen ’16 is older than most MU students, with nearly 15 years in
community pharmacy and a family of his own. His sights are on pharmacy management
that nurtures patient care.
Andrea Hopper ’16 is a product of Manchester’s pre-pharmacy undergraduate program.
Her Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree in four years will set her on track for more
study, residencies and research.
Manchester’s first 64 pharmacy students comprise the
most-diverse class in its history. Many – as state and
area economic development leaders hoped for – are
Hoosiers. Yet 16 other states across the nation also
are home to these students.
- 44 percent are Asian, African-American,
Latino or Pacific Islander
- 20 to 41 is their age range, averaging a mature
(or swiftly maturing) 25
- 56 percent are women
- 71 percent have degrees already (two have
- 7 are former Manchester University students
“As the first pharmacy class at Manchester, you will
set the bar,” Indiana Sen. Ron Grooms, a registered
pharmacist and former drugstore owner, challenged
MU’s first pharmacy students at an August ceremony
that set them on their four-year path to a Doctor of
Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree.
“The pharmacy profession is watching,” Sen. Grooms
said. “Employers, graduate schools and residency
programs will compare the first Manchester graduates
to graduates from Butler, Purdue and other colleges of
pharmacy across the country.”
Jacob Clendenen faces the challenge with the
confidence of experience in the field. He is a pharmacy
tech trainer for CVS. “I am looking forward to being
and setting an example for future classes in the role of
pharmacy,” says the Fort Wayne resident, who with
his wife is raising a 6½-year-old and a 5-year-old.
Right now, the students spend most of their school
day in the classroom or lab on the new Fort Wayne
campus – learning the basics, getting comfortable
with their faculty mentors and study teams, and
learning how to study at the graduate level.
They are intense, very intense.
“I spend all my free time studying. It has taken over
my life,” says Class President Kathryn Snyder. But
don’t think for a minute that she is complaining.
“Everything I learn is relevant to patient care. To be a
competent pharmacist, it’s important to learn and
retain as much information as I can.”
Classes in pharmaceutics, communications in
pharmacy practice, biomedical sciences, drug
information and labs fill this semester. Later
curriculums cover patient safety, gastrointestinal care,
nutrition and much more.
Gradually, their lessons will become more personal,
with interactions and experiences with patients.
“Experientials” is what pharmacy students and
faculty call these very structured internships under
the guidance of scores and scores of area pharmacy
They’ll begin in the community pharmacy setting this
winter, but throughout their MU careers, they’ll also
have opportunities in managed care, marketing,
distribution, research, poison control and toxicology, organizations, government agencies, home infusion,
administration, radiopharmaceuticals, and, of course,
“Our graduates are going to have real-life
experiences,” says Tracy Brooks, assistant professor
of pharmacy practice whose expertise (and clinical
practice) is in hospice and palliative care. “They will
be learning how to talk with patients, how to interact
That’s important in this new age of pharmacy. In
“real life,” Brooks, for example, uses her
pharmaceutical expertise to manage the challenging
symptoms of end-of-life: the nausea, the depression,
the insomnia, the pain, the anorexia, the anxiety.
Her day begins with 7 a.m. rounds at Parkview
Regional Medical Center, visible from the College of
Pharmacy. She serves on palliative care teams that set
goals for care. She has conversations with patients
and their families about “where do we go from
here,” and assists them with their decisions.
Then, she’s on the MU campus, teaching cultural
communication, non-verbal communication, and that
“you can make a difference not only in how people
live, but in how they die. Here’s how.”
“We are learning in a format that has patient care at
the center,” says Snyder, who has retail and hospital
pharmacy technician experience and is “leaning
toward” intensive care practice. “We are learning
now information that would be reserved for the
second or third years in other (Pharm.D.) programs.
We are building our skills from the beginning.”
“I am most excited for next year, when we will be in a
hospital setting. That is where I probably will end up
after pharmacy school,” says Hopper, but she’s
keeping an open mind. She likes the process: “I think
it helps expose me to other atmospheres that a
pharmacist can be a part of, and who knows, maybe I
will just fall in love with something else!”
While students are adapting to the intensity and rigor
of professional doctoral-level study, their teachers are
facing daunting challenges, too: a new generation of
technically advanced – and demanding – students.
And, much smaller classrooms and lecture halls than
these faculty members studied in at their alma maters.
Manchester’s pharmacy program is designed for an
optimum class of 70 students, with its largest lecture
hall totaling 140 seats. “At Purdue, we had 700
students in our pre-pharmacy class,” recalls Brooks.
“This building has already proven to be an
exceptional working and learning environment,” says
Whitney Caudill, associate dean for administration
and finance who also teaches pharmacy law and
ethics. “The building design gives our students
classrooms designed specifically for integrated and
collaborative learning, study and working together
on projects in teams.”
Dao is a big fan of MU’s pharmacy technology on
the Fort Wayne campus. “It is the most efficient way
to learn,” she says. “We submit our papers online
and take our exams on our laptops.” And really
great: “We get to find out how we did on an exam
“These students are different from many
undergraduate students,” says Greg Hetrick ’05,
director of student services. “Most are extremely
driven. They have lots of deadlines, assessments. We
have a lot of leaders. They have lots of opportunities
to get involved.”
Dao is a great example. “The majority of the time,
what I’m doing is pharmacy study, eat, sleep and
repeat. On the other hand, the weekend is when I get
to practice my pharmacy skills. The weekend is
when I go to work at a retail pharmacy.”
She’s also a leader. Every Friday, she sends out
“weekly academic updates,” reminding her
classmates of what assignments are due when.
MU Pharmacy faculty members are just as intense as
their students about their expectations and
intentions. They are focused on making sure their
- tested and proven in pharmacy practice
- exhibiting strong values and ethics
- envisioning opportunities in the pharmacy
- prepared to assess and improve pharmacy
- passionate about helping people be healthier
- ready to deal with diversities
- committed to service
While the current students, faculty and staff are
settling in, recruiting is well under way to build the
next class of Pharm.D. students, says Hetrick. The
task is dramatically different for the next class, as are
the applicants. “For the current class, we were
recruiting without students, without a building,
With a new $20 million building designed for
pharmacy study, a full class of students (many are
recruiting ambassadors) and classes in session,
applicants don’t need to imagine an MU College of
Pharmacy like the Class of 2016 did.
All is changed, and it shows. “We’re ahead of pace
on applications,” says Hetrick. Faculty members are
evaluating the applications, with the first interview
evaluations to begin this month. “We are confident
we will fill our next class of 70 students,” says
Hetrick, who cut his enrollment incisors recruiting
students for the Manchester undergraduate program.
Qualified Manchester pre-pharmacy students get a
guaranteed interview with the College of Pharmacy
enrollment team. While 11 percent of this Pharm.D.
class is from MU, that percentage may increase.
Currently, about 75 students are enrolled in or have
indicated plans to enroll in pre-pharmacy
undergraduate study at Manchester’s North
Manchester campus, says Registrar Lila VanLue ’79 Hammer.
While MU’s program receives considerable attention
in northeast Indiana health care circles and media,
faculty members are making new friends and
This fall, the College of Pharmacy hosted a diabetes
and blood pressure awareness “brown bag,” one of
several health care events for the local community,
supported by a grant from the Edward D. and Ione
Auer Foundation, says Ahmed Abdelmageed, associate
director of experiential education. “We conducted our
first event at the Universal Education Foundation, a
local nonprofit organization that caters to a variety of ethnic backgrounds that practice the Islamic faith.”
Seven students participated, mentored by pharmacy
practice faculty Dustin Linn, who also is on the critical
care team of Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne, and
Tom Smith, a psychiatric pharmacist on the Parkview
Behavioral Health team.
Pharmacy faculty members also are serving on
community teams. Özlem Ersin and Tracy Brooks, for
example, co-chair an Allen County Health
Department subcommittee focused on helping to curb
prescription drug abuse in the county.
Many are “on call” as media sources about pharmacy
– from helping TV viewers understand the significance
of recent Opana narcotics robberies to appearances on
a popular NPR affiliate about health issues.
“Our science and clinical faculty are doing research
with faculty at other institutions in the region and
with clinical practitioners at regional hospitals and
medical groups,” says Dave McFadden ’82, executive
vice president and dean of the College of Pharmacy.
“We are connecting with programs and care providers
that serve needy populations.”
Manchester’s Drug Information Center fields inquiries from area
health care providers, particularly those who will provide
experiential rotations, says Rob Beckett, drug information specialist
and clinical assistant professor of pharmacy. The queries are right
up his alley: A local chain retailer wants to know the effects of
different dosages of the same kind of medication and hospitals are
asking the Center to review patient medications.
While students use the Center now for their own studies and
fledgling research, in time they will partner in the drug research
with Beckett or another faculty member.
“I wanted to be part of the first class,” says Snyder. “It gave me a
chance to build more personal relationships with staff and faculty.
There are more resources available when only 64 students are in a
building. It also gives me a chance to have an input in my
education, because we are constantly evaluating our program and
we get to see the change we ask for. It’s not a program that is set in
its ways. It will adapt to meet the needs of students,” she says.
“Plus, because this is a new program, everyone has high
expectations. I rise to the occasion when expectations are higher.”
Read all about it: MU pharmacy research
“I JUST WANTED TO SHARE the good news with you,
that I had the research from my graduate work
recently accepted for publication …”
It’s a common thread in e-mails at the College of
Pharmacy: this one from Mary Kiersma, director of
assessment. Her peer-reviewed article, “A Graduate
Student Mentoring Program to Develop Interest in
Research,” recently was published in American
Journal of Pharmaceutical Education.
The journal Neurotoxicology plans to publish a
research article of Swati Betharia, assistant professor
of pharmaceutical sciences. She wrote to her MU
colleagues: “I’d like to thank you for your
encouragement and support to all our research
faculty. Hopefully, in the near future we will be able
to produce many more publications based directly
on research here ...”
That’s the plan, and why Manchester designed great
research facilities into its pharmacy campus.
“We have ample and significant laboratory space to
conduct basic and applied biomedical science
MU toxicology specialist Sidhartha Ray, who has 28
years of academic experience and national awards in
pharmacy research and teaching.
Ahmed Abdelmageed, associate director of
experiential education, created a webinar, “Islam and
Caring for the Muslim Patient,” for the American
Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.
The August issue of Pharmacotherapy contains
research by Trent Towne, associate professor of
pharmacy practice (infectious deseases).
Rob Beckett, who manages the MU Drug Information
Center, co-authored research calling for pharmacist
oversight in managing inpatient medications. The
article appeared in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy.
The Drug Information Center fields research requests
about patient medication and drugs from northeast
Indiana health care practices. Its primary users are
MU College of Pharmacy faculty and students. | <urn:uuid:3c97db79-32e3-480b-a52e-bb95b5b62f7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.manchester.edu/oca/alumni/publications/manchestermagazine/Fall_12/pharmacy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931546 | 3,176 | 1.554688 | 2 |
David Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbrodwin.
The economic policies of the GOP have come under sharp attack from a surprising direction. These policies (let's call them "GOPonomics") have come been challenged by former leaders of President Ronald Reagan's economic team. They've also been challenged by executives at the pinnacle of major financial services companies. These new critics reject the core principles of GOPonomics: that tax cuts are always good, regardless of the circumstances, and that regulation is always bad.
David Stockman is one of the new conservative critics of GOPonomics. Stockman led the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan, and was Reagan's champion for the "supply side economics." He fought hard for Reagan's tax cuts, believing they would reduce the deficit by stimulating rapid growth. But, in an op-ed last Sunday in the New York Times, Stockman blasted GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, saying that despite "sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking big government" it would in fact "do nothing to reverse the nation's economic decline." Stockman noted that Ryan's budget promises to offset reduced tax rates at the top by closing preferences and loopholes elsewhere, but he said the plan can't be implemented. The only changes big enough to matter are politically impossible. They involve entrenched special interests like defense contractors and sacred cows like the home mortgage deduction. As a result, the plan is an "empty sermon … devoid of credible math or hard policy choices."
Another champion of Reaganomics brought similar charges. Bruce Bartlett held senior economics policy positions in both the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, and was a senior fellow at the reliably conservative Heritage Foundation. Bartlett has criticized Republicans who give lip service to small government while enacting popular but wildly expensive new programs. (The Medicare prescription drug legislation is an example.) Recently, Bartlett challenged GOP opposition to allow tax rates at the top brackets to return to where they were (39.6 percent) before the George W. Bush tax cuts. Bartlett reminds us that the economy grew robustly under the higher Clinton-era tax rates, and the federal government ran surpluses. He concludes that while higher taxes don't promote growth they "play a very big role in reducing the budget deficit and are not necessarily a drag" on growth. Tax cuts, he says, can be either good or bad depending on circumstances, notably the level of federal debt and the stage of the business cycle (growth or recession).
While Stockman and Bartlett challenge GOPonomics on taxes, executives at leading financial services companies reassess GOPonomics doctrine on regulation. Sanford Weill, the former chairman and CEO of Citigroup, stunned Squawk Box viewers by arguing that the deregulation of the financial industry went too far. In essence, he called for a return of the Glass–Steagall Act, which split banks from other financial institutions and barred speculation with federal-insured deposits. "I'm suggesting that [big banks] be broken up," he said, "so that the taxpayer will never be at risk, the depositors won't be at risk, the leverage of the banks will be something reasonable, and the investment banks can do trading, [without being] subject to a Volker rule." (To be fair, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed under President Clinton, but the ongoing attack on regulation a core principle of GOPonomics.)
Meanwhile, John Bogle, the founder and genius behind Vanguard's mutual fund empire recently called for reforms long-resisted by Wall Street: a fiduciary standard for money managers, a short-term transaction tax, lower leverage, greater transparency, and tougher punishment for financial crimes.
Why are Reagan-era conservatives and financial industry executives challenging GOPonomics? Their arguments flow from a consistent and principled conservatism in economic matters. They reject the phony conservatism that masks cronyism and corruption. A principled conservative approach to the economy involves three big ideas:
Companies must live or die according to their effectiveness in the market, without exception. That's why true conservatives oppose letting companies hide behind legislation to avoid competition and insulate themselves from failure. A true conservative must oppose the practice of spreading weapons-procurement pork across 50 states to make programs unkillable; oppose federal subsidies to agriculture and energy industries; and oppose legislation that exempts pharmaceutical companies from negotiating prices when it sells to the Medicare and Medicaid.
Regulations are acceptable when needed to enforce market discipline. True conservatives prefer not to regulate business at all—but they recognize that sometimes regulations like Glass-Steagall are needed to prevent failed businesses from dumping losses on taxpayers. Moral hazard matters for CEOs and directors just as it does for home mortgage borrowers.
As a nation, just as for a household, economic success requires that we live within our means, and not take what we can't or won't pay for. If we're going to cut taxes, we have to be willing to cut government services. If we're unwilling to cut services we shouldn't cut taxes. To do otherwise simply drives up the deficit and hurts the economy.
Many who call themselves conservative would disagree with these three ideas, as would those who call themselves progressive. These conservative principles don't address sustainability, particularly where externalities are involved. And they don't allow for investing to increase the productivity of future generations. But even so, principled conservative ideas about the economy offer some improvements over today's compromised, coddled, and anticompetitive markets.
The opinions reflected in this blog do not necessarily reflect official positions of the nonpartisan American Sustainable Business Council or its Action Fund.
- Read Matthew Mitchell: Obama and the GOP Both Hypocrites on Special Interests
- Check out Intelligence on Twitter at @EconomicIntel.
- Check out U.S. News Weekly: an insider's guide to politics and policy. | <urn:uuid:d9b30173-6c46-4d5d-94ce-094bfbeadd6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/16/reagan-era-conservatives-reject-economics-of-todays-gop | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944899 | 1,210 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The Warmack Branch presents an African American Heritage Celebration from 2 to 3 pm on Saturday, February 16. The event will feature a special performance by the Ayubu Kamau Kings & Queens African Drum & Dance. The Ayubu Kamau Kings and Queens is a performing arts and youth empowerment organization centered in the education and preservation of African centered performing arts, history, culture and it's contributions to the world. The Warmack Branch is located at 760 Bardin Rd.
The Main Library presents author Warren Landrum and History in the Telling:Poems Celebrating Black History Month, a free program at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, February 19. Since moving from the steel-mill town of East Chicago, Indiana to Grand Prairie, Warren Landrum has become active in many aspects of the community. He has served on the boards of several difference organizations such as Keep Grand Prairie Beautiful, the YMCA, and the public library.
He will be reading from his book of poetry The Heart and Soul of a Black Man, and his work Let’s Go Home to Indiana Harbor - Reflections from Mid-Town America.
"I am excited and honored to be sharing my work during Black History Month. I take great pride in taking every opportunity to lift up the accomplishments of my people, or to serve as a potential role-model for a child who may have never met an actual Black author."
The Main Library is located at 901 Conover Drive. During February, the Main Library hosts an exhibit on the life of Frederick Douglass. Made possible by Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the exhibition explores slavery and abolition through the life of one of the most famous men in nineteenth-century America.
On Tuesday, February 26, the Bowles Branch Library presents a free program presented by Baba Kwasi and the Ayubu Kamau Kings & Queens African Drum & Dance. At 5 pm they present "The Oldest Drum Beat in the World", a magical journey through African History with songs, African drumming, and storytelling. An array of African drums and percussion instruments will be set up and used to demonstrate the universal power of sound, vibration, movement and the roles that music and dance play in daily life.
The Bowles Branch is located inside the Bowles Life Center at 2750 Graham St. For more information, call 972-237-7540. | <urn:uuid:8647b1da-87f0-4d42-a47a-f8dc2e4c25e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gptx.org/index.aspx?recordid=3793&page=276 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943259 | 490 | 1.695313 | 2 |
I've just got my translator's copies through the post this afternoon, so it's time to draw the translation to the attention of potential readers, as I imagine it will not be as visible in bookshops in the USA and the UK as many crime novels from northern climes:
Mati Unt - "Brecht at Night"
The novel is a postmodernist one, constructed on the principle of synchronicity. Bertolt Brecht is living in relative comfort in Helsinki in 1940, along with his wife and mistress, after fleeing Nazi Germany and living first in Denmark, now moving on to Finland. His ultimate goal is to travel to the USA by the Trans-Siberian Railway. Meanwhile, a mere 80 kilometres away across the Gulf of Finland, Estonia is being occupied by the Soviet Union. The style is typical for Mati Unt: a large number of short fictional or semi-fictional excerpts, interspersed in this case with poems by Brecht and real Soviet documents pertaining to the occupation. This ties in with the earlier blog articles here about the book of essays about the 1940 and 1949 deportations.
The two excerpts below are something of a contrast and highlight the synchronicity of events.
The first is from the narrative part of the novel. It depicts Brecht's inability to understand the Finnish and Estonian way of life. In it he is speaking to Hella Wuolijoki, the Estonian-born Finnish playwright with whom he cooperated on his Puntila play.
The second excerpt is a small part of one of those documentary inserts, in this case a real article, published by former Estonian KGB agent Vladimir Pool in the Estonian daily Postimees in 1991, and which lists the names and fates of all the members of the Estonian government and the members of parliament. It is written is a sober, factual style, and therefore contrasts starkly with Unt's zany rendering of the way the very bourgeois Brecht perceives Helsinki. This second excerpt describes the fate of the President of Estonia, Konstantin P?ts and that of his son Viktor.
In the published version, Brecht will be called just that. In my manuscript, I stuck to the way that Unt called him BB, which has overtones of "baby". He is indeed rather helpless, and his women have to help him. The italicised parts in the two excerpts are part of the novel. Hella is Hella Wuolijoki, Helene is Brecht's wife, and Grete his mistress.
BRECHT AT NIGHT
by Mati Unt
BUT NOW IT?S HELLA?S TURN
The next evening Hella is present again. BB was a little befuddled the previous day. It was, after all, his first day in the mists, the North and the night. BB has talked so much about this that his senses have become dulled.
The world outside has not managed to impinge, and his inner world is in a flurry, has changed into politics, philosophy and goodness knows what else.
"Hella, I have to admit that I?ve still not had a walk round your city," admits BB. "I?ve stayed in my room ."
"Take it easy," says Hella in a motherly way.
BB looks at her and thinks that she has a face, yes, a face like the Moon, but that her body is pretty massive too. For some reason it arouses a measure of unease in BB.
"Please sit down, I mean: sit down would you," he says and sees in his mind?s eye how the iron bedstead of the Hospiz sinks under Hella?s weight. But not all the way. Hella is large, but doesn?t weigh an awful lot. The bedsprings creak, but the piece of furniture is far from collapsing. BB would like now to ask Hella how much she weighs. Below the hundred kilo mark, at any rate.
Naturally, he doesn?t ask.
A long pause ensues. I know, thinks BB, that Grete is where she usually is, but where is Helene? She isn?t in her room. She?s in the communal kitchen making coffee. She has popped out for a moment. As for the weather, it?s like it was yesterday. Otherwise, there?s very little to be seen in the sky round here. The part he can see is colorless, in other words, gray.
The pause continues for so long that Brecht is tempted to term it the general pause.
In theater terms, this means a long pause, an impossibly long pause. With such a pause, a great artist proves to himself, the audience, and the critics how ridiculous it is to keep silent for so long. He has a thousand little ploys up his sleeve, facial expressions or slight gestures, with which he can surprise his audience. He draws it out as long as he possibly can. He senses when the audience is growing bored. There is no need to even start coughing. A maestro knows by telepathy when to cut the silence and return to the author?s text. He starts speaking again. The scene continues as if nothing had happened. This is what Hella is doing right now, someone whose plays, which always have a pause at some point or other, are very popular in Finland.
Hella appears to have laid the golden egg.
"Ich liebte eine Deutsche," she then says, "as a young girl I fell in love with a German".
"Oh yes?" says BB cautiously. He is not prepared to enter into intimate relations with Hella. I can?t do everything here under the sun, thinks BB. And Hella is too rotund for BB. Should be bonier, I suppose.
His wife Helene comes in. Grete may soon come and do some stenography, as canonical BB treatment demands.
Hella, who is quite healthy and normal, can see that the woman sitting there scribbling under the palm is ill.
When Grete was 17 years old, a gypsy woman foretold that she would live to the age of 33. Strangely enough, that is what happened: 1908 + 33 = 1941
Hella doesn?t know that Grete is busy stenographing. She thinks that the consumptive woman is doodling. Many people do when listening to a lecture or are thinking third thoughts in some second place.
"You haven?t asked why I said Ich liebte eine Deutsche says Hella, growing a tad nervous."
"Well, why did you?" says BB with the required enthusiasm.
"Our major author Tammsaare wrote a novel with that title."
"Oh did he?"
"I understand," says BB, suppressing a yawn.
In fact, BB doesn?t think anything at first. Fine, this "Tammisaari" wrote some novel or other. So what? I suppose those Finns read everything ever written. Something is being written everywhere. This has been caused by the growth of literacy. Literacy pops up all over the place. They all start writing in the end. Once you?ve mastered the alphabet, you start writing. Why shouldn?t "Tammisaari" start writing if he really wants to? It?d enrich culture in general, or some global model or other.
BB maybe doesn?t know about Whorf and Sapir?s theories, which were expounded at about the same time. What can be said about them (in very simplified form) is this: they thought that language determined thought, maybe even behavior. According to this theory, every nation that has its own language has a correspondingly idiosyncratic way of thinking. And it is pleasant to think that in accordance with this theory the Estonians (like the Hopi Indians) are enriching the kaleidoscope of the world.
If it needs enriching, and if this world is necessary in the first place.
If BB had known these theories, he would no doubt have found fault with them. But he doesn?t know them! So he doesn?t find fault with them. He thinks: well, OK. "Tammisaari" fell in love with a German. Many people have fallen in love. And some have even fallen in love with Germans, thinks BB. So, love in what way?
BB poses this question.
"Tammsaare?s novel is about a neurasthenic... and masochistic person, but what is happening to me is positively romantic."
"Are neurasthenia and a romantic disposition opposites?" he asks, just in case.
"I dunno," says Hella, casually.
"Do tell," requests Helene.
Hella smooths her dress over her belly and begins:
"Anyway, I was a schoolgirl and read so much that I became an?mic."
WHERE DID THEY ALL VANISH TO?
On 30th July 1940, P?ts, along with his son Viktor (the latter was a member of the Riigikogu and thus belonged to the group of government officials), and his daughter-in-law Helgi were sent to the city of Ufa, Russia, by way of an administrative disciplinary order. The domestic servant Olga T?nder traveled along with them of her own free will. On 26th June 1941, all the P?tses were arrested and were taken to the internal penitentiary of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic which was run by the People?s Commissar for Security and located in the city of Ufa. Konstantin P?ts was incriminated for crimes as set out in Paragraph 58-3, Clause 4 of the Criminal Codex. The President tried on a number of occasions obtain permission to have himself and his family sent abroad. He was also very concerned about the state of health of his grandson, and made the proposal that he himself could be exchanged for Th?lmann or R?kosi, but his proposal was refused. The small boy died.
On 14th September 1942, the President was taken, along with his son Viktor, to Moscow, so that investigations could continue and they could be interrogated by the Special Chamber Commission. After the interrogations had taken place, he was sent for a while to the internal penitentiary in the city of Kirov, and on 24th March 1943, without any decision by the courts, he was put on forced medication, in the closed psychiatric hospital in Kazan (Tatarstan). At a special session of the Special Chamber Commission on 29th April 1952, his case was reviewed and he was again subjected to forced medication. By this time, P?ts had spent 9 years in a closed psychiatric hospital under a special r?gime, and his son Viktor was no longer in the land of the living. He had been arrested at the Ivanovo Prison and death had followed on 4th March 1952 in the Butyrka Prison in Moscow.
The organs of the People?s Commissioner of the Interior had wanted to recruit Viktor P?ts as his assistant and use him in some scheme or other. But Viktor's proud and unwavering nature did not allow him to make compromises, and so he paid for this with his life.
In June 1941, shortly following his arrest and his being sent to the Pensa Prison, Viktor P?ts had been affected so badly by the illegal judgement that he tried to take his own life, by hitting his head repeatedly against the wall of his cell.
Next in line after the Sverdlovsk oblast regarding these grim statistics comes the Vyatka (Kirov) Oblast. In the city of Kirov itself the following were shot: Hugo-Bernhard Raham?gi and Aleksander Ossipov (as mentioned above), plus members of the Riigikogu Johan Uuemaa (10th April 1942) and Aleksander Saar (1st August 1942). In the Vyatka camps the following government officials died of dystrophy, tuberculosis and other serious diseases, which the prisoners, whose morale had been smashed and were weak on account of hunger, so they could no longer cope with work in the forest : Prime-Minister Kaarel-August Eenpalu (27th January 1942); the Archbishop of the Estonian Roman Catholic Church Eduard Profittlich (22nd February 1942); the General-Chief-of-Staff of the Estonian armed forces, Major-General Juhan T?rvand (12th May 1942); ministers Mihkel Pung (11th October 1941), Karl Terras (25th December 1942), Karl-August Baars (27th February 1942), August J?rimaa (15th June 1942), Aleksander Jaanson (2nd October 1942), Karl Johannes Viirma (11th November 1942), Karl Ibsberg (27th June 1943); members of the Riigikogu Jaan P?dra (4th February 1942), Joakim Puhk (14th September 1942) and Johannes Orasmaa (24th May 1943), plus Hendrik Lauri as mentioned above, who had been sentenced to be shot when already dead.
Translated from Estonian by Eric Dickens
The pedantic listing of dates of death simply adds to the horror of the cold statistics. This excerpt lasts several pages. It is a strange feeling for the translator to copy these names and dates over into what is otherwise a wacky, tongue-in-cheek text. This is one of the better instances of committed postmodernism, as some postmodernist novels distort the boundaries between reality and fiction. Mati Unt, by contrast highlights them, while maintaining the right to humour. | <urn:uuid:3ccc9e1a-4f8a-42ee-ab23-a35a0e7e9adf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/showthread.php/16484-Mati-Unt-Brecht-At-Night?p=51594 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978129 | 2,877 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Bhide's book presents authentic Indian flavors in refreshing, modern ways. She often blends traditional Eastern and Western flavors creating unique, contemporary Indian dishes that are sure to inspire. The recipes tend to be short and straight forward, many ideal for easy mid-week meals. There are several vegetarian options and many meat dishes could easily be made vegetarian. The 100+ recipes are divided into the following categories: chutneys and marinades; modern drinks; appetizers, snacks, and salads; vegetables, beans, and lentiles; poultry, meat, and eggs; fish and shellfsih; rice and breads; and desserts. For each recipe, Bhide gives cooking tips and/or serving suggestions, and she personalizes the book by including several engaging stories about her family life. By the book's end, Bhide feels like a friend.
Saffron-Cardamom Macaroons; I will post this recipe in the near future.
I highly recommend reading Bhide's introduction prior to starting in on the recipes. In the section "The Modern Spice Pantry, she provides an extensive list of Indian spices and ingredients, such as tandoori masala, paneer, tamarind paste, and fenugreek seeds. She defines them, explains how to store them, and where to buy them, including online sites. If you do this step first, it'll make the actually cooking a breeze. It also helps to read "Monica's Kitchen Rules," which address issues such as the best cookware for Indian cooking (nonstick) and ingredient substitutions (coriander seeds, for example, are not a good substitute for fresh coriander leaves).
As for photos, the few that are included are beautiful. My only regret is that there weren't more.
Here are the recipes I made and my thoughts about them:
Pomegranate Chutney is made from pureed pomegranate seeds seasoned simply with lemon juice, ginger, chaat masala, and light brown sugar. This colorful chutney takes minutes to make and is wonderfully versatile. The sweet-tart flavors pairs well with chicken, pork, and, my favorite, sauteed shrimp.
Green Beans Subzi consists of green beans (I used fresh) and potatoes sauteed with garlic, tomato, and spices, including cumin seeds, and turmeric. This dish is easy to prepare and makes green beans and potatoes a lot more exciting than usual. The flavors are bold without being overwhelming, which makes this an ideal side dish for chicken, fish, pork, or beef.
Monica's Tomato and Coconut Fish Curry: Bhide's recipe introduction enticed me to make this one. She writes, "I have been cooking [this] for as long as I can remember. It is a favorite with adults and kids alike. My dad once told me it was his favorite. I cannot tell you how happy I was, since he has such discerning tastes." I'm with Monica's dad on this one: this recipe was my favorite as well. Catfish stars in this dish and is elevated to something special. The fish is gently cooked in a tomato-coconut milk bath that is seasoned liberally with spices such as mustard seeds, curry leaves, ginger, and turmeric. It's a perfect mid-week meal, since it's inexpensive, fast, and easy. I served it atop brown basmati rice. Although Bhide says one pound of catfish fillets serves 4, Jeff and I nearly finished it all.
Saffron-Cardamom Macaroons: I'm a sucker for macaroons and baked goods laced with cardamom, so it didn't take me long to make these cookies. They were amazingly fragrant and very sweet. I think they'd make a lovely holiday gift since they're both unusual and travel well.
Modern Spice will definitely secure a spot on my cookbook shelf; in fact, I already have a few more recipes marked to try soon. I hope you'll be making some of Bhide's recipes as well.
Now for the exciting part! Two lucky Food Blogga readers will receive a complimentary copy of Monica Bhide's Modern Spice cookbook. Here's how to enter for your chance to win:
Just leave a comment below telling us about your favorite Indian dish. That's it. The deadline for entries is next Monday, November 9th, 11:50 pm PST. Winners will be selected randomly and announced on the 10th. Each winner must provide her or his full name and mailing address to receive the cookbook. Good luck!
Monica's Tomato and Coconut Fish Curry
Recipe from Modern Spice
Prep/Cook Time: 40 minutes
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoons black mustard seeds
10 fresh curry leaves
1 inch piece peeled fresh ginger, grated
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small green serrano chile, chopped
1 large tomato, chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon red chile powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pound catfish fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 of a 13.5 ounce can coconut milk (3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons)
1. In a large skillet heat the olive over medium heat. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the mustard seeds. As soon as they crackle, add the curry leaves, ginger, garlic, and green chile. Saute for a few seconds to combine.
2. Add the tomato. Cook gently for 10-12 minutes, until the tomato is soft and the oil begins to leave the side of the mixture. You can add some water if the tomatoo begins to stick. I sometimes add a quarter-cup of water and cover the pan for 5-6 minutes. This helps cook the tomatoes faster. Then I uncover it and continue to cook until all the water evaporates.
3. Stir in the turmeric, chile powder, and salt. Cook for 1 minute.
4. Stir in the fish and cook 5 minutes.
5. Add the coconut milk. Let the mixture come to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the fish is tender. Serve immediately.
Monica Bhide was born in India and moved to the U.S. in 1991. She resides in Washington D.C. She is the author of The Everything Indian Cookbook and The Spice is Right and also writes a blog called A Life of Spice. Click here to view a short trailer about Bhide and Modern Spice narrated by the author. | <urn:uuid:bd45f316-2f82-45c7-99b6-bdc5e9d1eb96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://foodblogga.blogspot.com/2009/11/modern-spice-cookbook-review-and.html?showComment=1257357853649 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957574 | 1,355 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Oct 19 2008 by Phil Doherty, Sunday Sun
A WHO’S WHO of Britain’s top doctors has been reported to the General Medical Council over claims they failed to address health issues regarding the triple jab.
It marks a dramatic twist to the debate about the alleged link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism.
Those reported to the GMC include Professor David Salisbury, the Department of Health’s director of immunisation, and the Government’s chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson.
Also on the list is Mr Donaldson’s predecessor, Sir Kenneth Calman, who until recently was Vice Chancellor of Durham University.
The complaint has been brought by grandfather Bill Walsh, whose grandson is alleged to have developed autism and bowel problems after he received the MMR jab.
Mr Walsh said: “I brought this complaint because many children are suffering a life of pain.”
The action comes as the GMC is conducting an ongoing disciplinary hearing into Doctor Andrew Wakefield and two colleagues who suggested the MMR jab could be linked to autism.
Dr Wakefield, Professor Simon Murch and Professor John Walker- Smith face claims the research they conducted on the children breached ethical codes.
Mr Walsh of Glasgow, Scotland, said: “I am concerned about what I believe is the absence of proper tests since 1998 when Andrew Wakefield first raised concerns about the MMR jab.
“The complaint is as rigorous as possible so it makes it so much more difficult for them to try to close it down.
“There cannot be one rule for Andrew Wakefield and another for those in powerful positions.”
The full list includes Professor Sir David Hull, Professor Michael Langman and Professor Andrew Hall of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Also reported to the GMC are Professor Sir Alisdair Breckenridge, Professor Gordon Duff and Professor Colin Blakemore, all of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency.
The complaint said they ignored Dr Wakefield’s work, which claimed certain groups of children are damaged by the MMR jab, because of fears it would undermine the immunisation programme.
It also alleged the programme had been undermined by bad judgments and by the use of scientific studies of the general population to support the safety of the MMR jab, instead of studies of vulnerable groups as identified by Dr Wakefield.
It goes on to claim this has contributed to the spiralling numbers of autistic children — by not addressing the issue — and as a result, children were given unethical and unnecessary treatments.
A GMC spokesman said: “We do not comment on investigations as we have a duty of confidentiality to all parties involved.”
A Department of Health spokesmand said none of those named would comment, but added: “These allegations are completely without substance. They come from an individual who has pursued a long-standing campaign against MMR.” | <urn:uuid:b87e0e31-73e6-44ee-8581-c93b8e79882e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whale.to/vaccine/grandad_jabs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958397 | 611 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Honeymoons Lead to Upgrades in Western Vermont
For homeowners who are hesitant to make energy efficiency upgrades, offering them a honeymoon might just be the motivation they need. NeighborWorks of Western Vermont (NWWVT) created a "honeymoon period" for its loan payments and has seen success by allowing homeowners to experience six months of comfort and energy savings before they begin making loan payments.
The honeymoon period concept is pretty simple. First, NWWVT loans funds directly to a homeowner to pay for the upgrade. The homeowner enjoys six months of energy savings without making any loan payments or accruing any interest. Then, the homeowner begins paying off the loan to NWWVT in the seventh month at a low interest rate.
"We believe clients view this [lag time] as an added bonus to the other benefits they are experiencing [with energy efficiency upgrades]" says Mary Cohen, NWWVT Director of Homeowner Services, "and it may play a role in their decision to ultimately get the work done."
NWWVT did experience some initial challenges while setting up the payment holiday, due to their lack of experience with consumer lending and with setting up a deferred timeframe in their system. Overcoming these obstacles has been worth it, though. NWWVT says they haven't noticed any downsides to the program, but they advise other programs to consider the honeymoon period timeframe before launching the offer. "Homeowners like to take advantage in the fall when they will experience the benefits without having to pay for it—until their taxes come in." says Cohen.
Due to its success, NWWVT says that it will offer the honeymoon period for the duration of its grant and most likely beyond, which is welcome news for homeowners in an economy where every dollar counts.
This blog originally appeared as part of DOE's Better Buildings Neighborhood Progam. You can visit their website and read related stories here.
Enter your comments in the box below:
(Please note that all blog entries and comments are subject to review prior to posting.) | <urn:uuid:5a6135c8-199a-4c68-a00b-781a96f09a7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homeenergy.org/show/blog/id/279/nav/blog/page/6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963216 | 417 | 1.578125 | 2 |
County clerks making sure your vote counts
What's being done in Deschutes County for ballot safety?
After allegations of ballot tampering arose in Clackamas County, the Deschutes County clerk explained Monday what's being done to make sure a similar incident doesn't happen here.
Voters lined up to drop off their ballots in Bend on Election Eve.
"We're very busy," county clerk Nancy Blankenship said. "We've been busy since the moment we opened, and before that, we had phone calls and people waiting even before we opened."
Blankenship said almost 100,000 voters are registered in Deschutes County this election season and about 30 percent of them wait until the last minute to vote.
Once people drop off ballots, signatures are verified on the envelope, the election board reviews the ballot, and it's finally scanned by machines called tabulators.
But once a ballot reaches the counting room, how do voters know it's safe?
In Clackamas County this weekend, an election worker was accused of tampering with ballots, filling in Republican candidates on spaces voters left blank.
"I can't also talk about how she was caught, but I can tell you she was caught because of the security measures we have in place," said Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown.
In Deschutes County, they're working to make sure similar troubles don't happen here.
"My reaction was the same -- I can't believe it's happening," Blankenship said. "But you know, the great news is, the process worked. The person was identified and no longer working, the Department of Justice is investigating, and it's going to be something that will impact this person for the rest of their life."
Each group counting the ballots is made up of five people from different parties.
"So you have four other people that are watching you, so that's one of the safeguards," Blankenship said. "Then we have seven boards working, with two election supervisors overseeing the process."
Blankenship said if registered voters still haven't received a ballot, it could be because people have moved and the office doesn't have updated information. Those people must visit the county clerks office to make the changes. Another reminder: People need to sign the back of the envelopes on their ballots.
Copyright 2012 KTVZ. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:53de9b27-602a-4d64-bf4e-5708ec8ad3cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ktvz.com/news/County-clerks-making-sure-your-vote-counts/-/413192/17280424/-/view/print/-/jfge5e/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981076 | 503 | 1.578125 | 2 |
HAYWARD, Calif. — A five-axis 3D, robotic production laser currently in use at Inland Metal Technologies has simplified and reduced the cost of cutting tubes used in electronic equipment frames. The SG-U44 Mazak laser has added precision, repeatability, and speed to the complex process of cutting tubes that are later welded into metal frames for the semiconductor, large server, or flat panel testing systems markets.
“This is a tube laser, which is a little different from a standard laser cutting device,” said Stan Sutton, president of Inland Metal Technologies. “It has a five-axis cutting head, so it can wrap itself around a tube to cut whatever holes or features are necessary.”
The round or rectangular tubing is welded into a framework that requires a high level of precision, which Sutton said is very difficult to obtain unless the components are accurately cut. “What the laser allows us to do is design in features that allow the assembly and welding to be very precise for the various frame components,” he explains. “Ordinarily, this laser cutting would have to come from a much slower machining process. Now, we can do it much faster on the laser with a fully-articulated robot that moves around to cut these features. Even a one-off part will be a very precision part.”
Inland Metal Technologies’ core competency is precision metal fabrication, but the contract manufacturer also provides metal stamping, CNC machining, value-added assembly and testing, and quick-turn prototyping for a vast variety of high-tech clients. The company’s hallmark, however, is management of the entire manufacturing process for its clients.
We’re very diverse in our ability to serve our customers,” Sutton says. “We’ve found over the years that as customers became more dependent on moving their required contracting to sub-tier suppliers, we had to be more competent in various levels of performance. Included in that are such varied processes as supply chain management, where we take on the entire project for a customer. This is where they want us to buy, develop, look for better sources, and then put all of the parts together in an assembly project.”
Inland Metal (www.inlandmetal.com), based in Hayward, Calif., has been in business since 1964. Throughout its history, the company has had many opportunities to facilitate critical projects. “We’ve made fuel tanks for refueling systems for C-130 cargo aircraft, a 40-foot-long tank inside the aircraft so it can be refueled in-flight,” Sutton remembers. “Recently, we worked with Bloom Energy to redesign a few of their higher cost parts to squeeze out some of the added costs. These are internal components for a fuel cell that converts natural gas to electricity on-site. These tanks are about the size of a small car, like a Volkswagen.
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Back to Homepage | <urn:uuid:ccbef68e-ddf9-4567-9b8b-daea3ec0816b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.d2pmagazine.com/DeptArticle.aspx?ArticleId=1005 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959895 | 625 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Video: Winter wears on.
Your views: No snow day for Flint
Subject: snow days. Today is one for most kids in the area. Lucky little rats. Remember snow days?
Remember the magic of them? Christmas is the only day of the year more exciting to a kid than a snow day. Heck, they may be better than Christmas because snow days are an unexpected joy, like getting the last Ding Dong in the box.
My youngest asked this morning before I left whether I got the day off, too.
Little dude, I wish. School days rocked.
I remember suddenly caring about the evening news when I heard the adults say, "Hmm, snow's coming. Maybe a snow day tomorrow."
I remember lying in bed sending mental rays in the general direction of the superintendent of schools, telling him over and over, "Snow day, snow day, snow day, pleeeease give us a snow day." (My dad, possessing a sense of humor similar to mine, once told me -- and I believed him, but only sorta, in that kid kinda way -- that sending thoughts to the superintendent wouldn't do any good because superintendents wear special mental ray deflector helmets made of salad colanders and tin-foil. If they didn't, their brains would explode.)
I remember my mom coming into the pre-dawn darkness of my room to whisper, "No school today, go back to sleep."
Go back to sleep? Are you kidding. It's a snow day! Teens may sleep in. Kids do not. They leap from bed and race to the TV to make sure it's for real. What's the crawl say? What's the crawl say? There it is. Official word: No school! Whoo-hooo!
Then it's onto business: snowball fights, hot chocolate, game shows, board games, wrestling. Rinse, repeat. Oh man, snow days are the best.
Adults should have them.No kidding. Adults should have them. Society would be better off. Americans are workaholics. All the studies say so. Americans work more hours and take less vacation than nearly any society in the world. We're also among the most stressed creatures on the planet.
You know what cuts stress? Hope. Can you imagine how different your winter mindset would be if there were some government agency that had the power -- nay, the obligation -- to declare snow days for adults?
You'd find yourself in bed at night shooting mental rays at whomever heads the agency and hoping that deflector helmets don't really exist.
And for that moment, you would feel young again. | <urn:uuid:80a1ea64-2780-402f-9bbe-2ca81cb4968b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mlive.com/flintjournal/aheller/2008/02/snow_days_for_adults_an_idea_w.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949617 | 549 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Judge Richard Posner, who recently threw out an entire patent lawsuit involving Apple and Motorola, has been nothing if not outspoken on the wildly busy US patent litigation system. In an interview published today by Reuters, he calls patent litigants animals struggling for survival and suggests that some industries—perhaps including software—shouldn't have patent protection at all.
"It's a constant struggle for survival," Posner told Reuters in his chambers at the US Court of Appeals in Chicago. "As in any jungle, the animals will use all the means at their disposal, all their teeth and claws that are permitted by the ecosystem."
While Posner said the pharmaceutical industry has a decent claim to patents because of the huge investment it takes to create drugs, he added that advances in software and other industries are less costly. The benefit companies get from being first to market would exist even if software patents didn't. Smartphones are particularly problematic because they have thousands of patented components and features, he said.
"It's not clear that we really need patents in most industries," he said. "You just have this proliferation of patents. It's a problem."
Although Posner serves on the Court of Appeals, he volunteered to oversee the Apple/Motorola case in the lower US District Court. With Apple and Motorola seeking injunctions against each other, he canceled a jury trial and then threw the case out entirely after criticizing both companies for trying to block sales of competing products.
Posner is unusually outspoken among judges. His latest interview gives some insight into why technology companies don't relish the thought of appearing in front of him in patent cases—unless they're the ones being sued. | <urn:uuid:1f3261d1-e8d1-4946-9110-c596ecbfe55a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/judge-who-threw-out-applemoto-case-calls-patent-litigants-animals/?comments=1&post=23026850 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973239 | 338 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Schools in Canada have also banned shorts, Halloween and rainbows
Hormones may be starting to rage in students of middle school age, but one principal in New Jersey is telling his 900 students there is to be no more hugging.
Principal Tyler Blackmore announced that Matawan-Aberdeen Middle School is a "no hugging school" after "incidents of unsuitable, physical interactions," reports the Associated Press.
"First, I heard over the loudspeaker: 'We are a no hugging school,'" said student John Carelli to CBS 2. He added that the principal said "This is our new rule."
While students are upset with the new rule, parents don't seem happy either. Some parents are calling it "stupid" and "silly" as well as saying "I don't know what the big deal is."
CBS 2 reports on Wednesday night many parents received the following message from the principal:
"Hugging can be inappropriate and we want to make sure that there's no inappropriate physical contact. We certainly do not have a policy against hugging nor do we intend to [neither] have we suspended students for hugging."
The message also said the rule's goal is to keep students focused on academics.
While the hugging ban seems strange, it is definitely not the only strange thing a school has banned.
On the day the hugging ban was instituted in New Jersey, a Catholic school in the greater Toronto area banned shorts. For most of the year, students at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School in Pickering have to wear uniforms. On some days, known as "civilian" or "civvies," they could wear whatever they wanted. That is until vice-principal Paul Perron announced the war on shorts, khakis or ankle socks, reports the Toronto Star. With the high-temperatures on Thursday, many showed up in shorts, were called to the office and, in all, 63 were sent home to change.
In January, a middle school in the suburbs of Philadelphia banned the wearing of fuzzy open-top boots, which included the popular Ugg brand. The school did this because students were stashing their cellphones in the boots.
In October, Halloween was banned at an elementary school in Hamilton, Ont. The principal sent home two letters in the weeks leading up to the holiday explaining that students weren't allowed to wear costumes since celebrating takes away from "instructional time in the classroom," reports the Toronto Sun. The principal also said it created "safety and security" concerns as parents would be in the school taking pictures without permission. Students were also not allowed to bring in candy.
And in June, Catholic schools in the Dufferin-Peel board, just outside Toronto, banned rainbows. This came at a time when an unofficial gay-straight alliance at St. Joseph Catholic School in Mississauga wanted to display the rainbows at its information booth during an anti-homophobia event.
As for the middle school students in New Jersey, the superintendent says despite the rule, students caught hugging will not be suspended. With all the confusion over the rule, students plan to keep their hugging off school grounds. | <urn:uuid:17c33816-5aaf-48d7-bd43-f33157656daf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-buzz/hugging-banned-principal-jersey-middle-school-161113677.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979623 | 652 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Strangely enough, the same thought had occurred to many other people in Jersey – when the full horror dawned on them - of the prospect of all meaningful power in Jersey residing in the hands of Chief Minister Philip Bailhache - and Bailiff William Bailhache.And although things are bad enough now – given Jersey’s politicised prosecution system and judiciary – just how much worse would they be – if the island was taken down the path of full independence – to become the personal fiefdom of the Bailhache Brothers – and their heirs and successors?
Before I went in to court this Monday – fully expecting to be imprisoned as a result of William Bailhache’s malicious prosecution – this is what I said.
One of the most powerful considerations that finally persuaded me to become a candidate is the very strong belief that the community needs to know just what are the major policies we are being asked to vote for.
Philip Bailhache – with the support of his brother, William Bailhache - goes into this election with an agenda of taking Jersey into full independence from the United Kingdom.
If it were to occur – it would be a change of seismic proportions and seriousness for this community.
I remain – as I always have been – absolutely opposed to any such move.
As it is, the interests of the great majority of decent, yet powerless islanders are not adequately protected from the defective and unlawful conduct of Jersey’s self-protecting public authorities. How much worse would be the unaccountability of the States of Jersey, if there were no external oversight at all?
Given the uncritical and deferential nature of Jersey’s political culture – in the absence of my candidacy, it is very probable that Philip Bailhache would go through this election campaign – his true agenda un-articulated – his views not criticised - and his dangerous ambitions un-challenged.
Let there be no mistake as to the gravity of these issues. Can it be right for a man who plainly harbours ambitions to become Chief Minister – and who would lead Jersey down the path of becoming some kind of micro-state – to gain political endorsement for an elected Office that would enable him to carry forward such plans – without the full knowledge and informed approval of the voting public?
Rather than sleep-walking into having a government that would break our historic connections with Britain, the community needs to fully understand - and be clear-sighted about – the implications of no longer being politically protected by the United Kingdom.
We must have an informed debate concerning the issues that arise.
Do the people of Jersey wish to give up being in monetary union with the British pound? What is the alternative? We are too small to credibly float our own currency. Do islanders want to join the Euro? Are the people of Jersey ready and willing to become a full member of the EU, like Malta?
Do we want to give-up our British Passports?
Are we so confident in the performance and standards of the States of Jersey – that we would be happy to trust them making and enacting all our laws – without the oversight of Her Majesty in Council?
All of these – and other questions – must be fully and thoroughly debated through the election process.
It may well be, of course, that – when fully informed – the voting public of Jersey would support the plans and ambitions of Philip and William Bailhache. If so, then that is democracy. But it is my duty to ensure that the public come to any such decision, on the basis of an open and accountable and informed election.
As we approach such debates, we’d be well advised to remember those wise words of Jefferson.
Our vigilance has slipped – and the threats to our freedom “hide in plain sight”. | <urn:uuid:621f8a68-60b0-4bc1-82ae-6327a894df31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.com/2011/08/price-of-freedom-is-eternal-vigilance.html?showComment=1312916183947 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97255 | 788 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Hayden The prohibition of the medical marijuana industry in Hayden passed without a comment Thursday evening. No members from the public spoke, and no members of the board added to the ongoing conversation about the prohibition of medical marijuana industry in the town during a Town Council meeting.
Hayden is the first municipality in the region to place an outright ban on the medical marijuana industry, even as other areas of Routt County are limiting the number or location of businesses.
The measure dictates that “medical marijuana industry is strictly prohibited within the town of Hayden.” Council members unanimously approved the measure, proposed by council member Tim Redmond, in about a minute.
After the meeting, Mayor Lorraine Johnson said it was clear from previous meetings that residents were not interested in having a medical marijuana industry in Hayden. She said the meeting hall was filled with people who wanted to speak against a possible rezoning to allow a dispensary in the downtown area.
“It’s been very adamant from the town, they don’t want any type of dispensaries, cultivation, none of it,” she said.
Although other towns have considered the dispensaries because of the projected revenue they could bring in from taxes, that wasn’t part of the conversation in Hayden.
“We never really went into the discussion of revenue because it was point-blank told to us the town doesn’t want it,” she said.
Council member Tom Rogalski said it’s also because medical marijuana still is against federal law.
In forming the ordinance the town referred to the “White Paper on Marijuana Dispensaries” created by the California Police Chiefs Association’s Task Force on Marijuana Dispensaries.
Johnson said the town also could be held liable if the federal government ever stepped in.
The personal use and personal cultivation of medical marijuana by medical marijuana cardholders still is allowed in Hayden — the state law did not allow municipalities to rule on personal use.
The Town Council defined medical marijuana industry to include medical marijuana centers — formerly known as dispensaries, medical marijuana-infused product manufacturers and growing operations. The prohibition of those specific industries is granted to municipalities under Colorado Medical Marijuana Code.
The short Town Council motion followed several months of discussion. The Town Council in May voted unanimously to not amend the town’s land-use code to specifically allow medical marijuana dispensaries, and the current action specifically prohibits the industry. The council’s first hearing of the ordinance banning marijuana businesses was July 16. Before this ordinance, the business was implicitly not allowed by the land-use code.
In other action
■ The board also created a town manager search committee to narrow the field of 30 applicants to about 10 to bring to the board. According to a rough schedule, the panel of residents will bring its top 10 applicants to the board in early September. The board will further narrow the field to three to five candidates and aims to get a new manager in the position by mid-November.
■ Finance Director Lisa Dowling told the board that only one food stand at the Routt County Fair has applied for a sales tax stamp. She said she or someone else would go to the stalls and ask them to pay the $25 fee and submit the required paperwork. | <urn:uuid:062194f0-503a-46c1-b2c3-aaf0c5df3bf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.steamboattoday.com/news/2010/aug/20/hayden-bans-medical-marijuana-shops/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969773 | 667 | 1.617188 | 2 |
MSc/PgDip Audio Acoustics
- Part-time study available
- Distance Learning
- International students can apply
The majority of teaching and learning takes place through tutorial and seminar groups. Assessment is generally in the form of assignments, which improve problem solving and other skills as well as providing a strong background in the subject area.
Distance learning and attending students benefit from the supply of a range of high-quality teaching materials, text books and software. Interaction with students is face-to-face wherever practical, but we also use web-based learning support packages (databases of materials, discussion boards etc) to support the whole cohort.
- Taught modules are assessed through assignments
- The project is assessed through a dissertation
Trevor Cox is Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford and President of the Institute of Acoustics (IOA).
One major strand of his research is room acoustics for intelligible speech and quality music production and reproduction. Trevor’s diffuser designs can be found in rooms around the world. He has co-authored a research book entitled “acoustic absorbers and diffusers”. He was award the IOA’s Tyndall Medal in 2004.
Trevor has a long track record of communicating acoustic engineering to the public and has been involved in engagement projects worth over £1M. He was given the IOA award for promoting acoustics to the public in 2009. Trevor has presented sixteen science documentaries for BBC radio including: Life’s soundtrack, Save our Sounds and Science vs the Strad. | <urn:uuid:509a0d9b-33cb-4032-88b1-215bff7dac4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.salford.ac.uk/courses/audio-acoustics?mode=te | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945977 | 333 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Massachusetts Health Council Mission Statement
Over the past 90 years, the Massachusetts Health Council has served the residents of the Commonwealth through our commitment to improving and protecting health. Since
its inception, the Council has helped shape public policy in fulfillment of its mission. The Council has historically taken a leadership role in promoting sound public health policy. We focus our attention
on prevention and wellness, access to care, health care quality, health care cost, and such important issues as the enhancement of the public health infrastructure and disparities in the access to and
delivery of health care.
We are committed to guiding the dialogue with policy makers, researchers, advocates, providers, corporations and all those who join with us to improve health. We must
continue our drive to reach each and every stakeholder in the health care system and bring them to the table, joining our efforts to improve and protect health. When organizations bond together as one voice,
much can be accomplished. Cooperative action continues to be the call of the Massachusetts Health Council. The organizations of the Massachusetts Health Council have come together in an ever greater capacity
to create coalitions promoting and protecting the health of our residents.
Goals and Objectives
More than ever before, prevention is being recognized as the solution to the
massive problems in the health care system. We have been working hard to promote prevention on two fronts, with two captive audiences – school children and the workforce. There are close to 1 million public
and charter school children K-12 and over 3 million employed Massachusetts residents. If we can reach out to these groups to foster an understanding and effort for individuals to become healthier, we will
win an important battle against illness. This is a MA Health Council priority. The increasing costs of health care will not only negatively impact health care reform and the economy of Massachusetts, but
also the well-being and security of all the residents of the Commonwealth. Our commitment to continue our role as collaborator and convener is ever stronger and we will continue to bring all the stakeholders
to the table to participate in our discussions on the critical health issues that affect all of us. | <urn:uuid:ccb50dfd-b7ff-4224-891d-14553bf5749e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mahealthcouncil.org/mission-statement.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95061 | 428 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Rothschild Bank Wades Into Indonesian Deal Row
The investment bank founded by the venerable Rothschild dynasty is wading in to a bitter City row, in which the billionaire financier Nat Rothschild is a key player.
I understand that Rothschild has been appointed to advise the independent directors of Bumi, an Indonesian coal-mining venture, on an offer from the south-east Asian country's Bakrie family.
The appointment effectively puts Mr Rothschild and the bank of the same name on varying sides of the proposed deal - a rare situation that will surprise many in the City.
Rothschild's recruitment was rubber-stamped in the last 24 hours by Julian Horn-Smith, Bumi's senior independent director. It comes amid a bitter and protracted row between the Bakries and Mr Rothschild over governance at the company.
The importance of Mr Rothschild's involvement in Bumi and the current dispute lies in the fact that he effectively founded the company by persuading the Bakries to inject their coal assets into a cash shell listed by the financier in London in 2010.
It was not the only such venture founded by Mr Rothschild: another saw him buy a sizeable oil business in Kurdistan in partnership with Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP.
Other executives have also brought vehicles like this one to the London market, promising investors the chance to access new opportunities to deploy their cash, and giving companies the chance to tap the City's liquid pool of capital.
However, the share prices of these cash shells have largely performed dismally for outside investors, while at the same time handsomely rewarding those involved in their establishment.
Mr Rothschild is now being asked by the Bakries to surrender bonus shares currently worth approximately £40m because the deal to which they were tied is now being unwound.
The role of Rothschild, the investment bank, will be to provide a fairness opinion to judge whether the independent board members should accept the offer from the Bakries.
Bumi and Rothschild declined to comment. | <urn:uuid:75939496-00ee-4c9f-afa8-278746ceb2c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.orange.co.uk/article/news/rothschild_bank_wades_into_investment_deal_row | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97251 | 406 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The York Art Gallery has impressive collections of paintings, decorative arts, studio pottery and works on paper. Our collection of 1,000 paintings is exceptional for its range in covering the history of Western European painting. We have continental paintings from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Strengths include gold-ground panels from 14th century Italy, painted as part of church altarpieces, 17th century Dutch morality paintings, and 19th century French painting by artists working before and at the same time as the Impressionists. Our British paintings, dating from Elizabethan times to the present day, include a particularly good collection of 17th and 18th century portraits, a group of Victorian narrative paintings, and early 20th century paintings by the artists of the Camden Town Group working around Walter Sickert. The collection also includes works by York artist William Etty and York-born Victorian artist Albert Moore. Our Decorative Arts collection of more than 3,000 pieces contains a wide variety of ceramics, glassware and other items. The substantial collection of ceramics from Yorkshire potteries, dating from the 1600s until the 1900s, includes Rockingham, Creamware, Delft Ware and items from Yorkshire country potteries. Most of these pieces are domestic items such as teapots and sets, dinner services and tableware. Our ceramics collection also includes tiles, drug jars, Toby jugs and other novelty items. We also have a large collection of Chinese and Korean pottery, dating from 1700 until 1900, mostly consisting of plates, bowls and vases. A large number of 18th and 19th century glasses, pewter, copper, silverware and clocks from York makers complete this fascinating collection.
Open daily 10am - 5pm
Nobody has written any comments or reviews yet. Why not be the first to have your say? | <urn:uuid:2268876a-37bd-4eb5-9a65-5a344e3d8794> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.visitmuseums.com/museum/york-art-gallery-york-united-kingdom-273 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963731 | 380 | 1.78125 | 2 |
(Washington) - Members of the United States Helsinki Commission today issued statements on the most recent developments in the case of Slobodan Milosevic.
“I am pleased to hear reports that Slobodan Milosevic is being put in the custody of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, located in The Hague,” said Chairman Campbell. “The Helsinki Commission has, from the beginning of the Yugoslav conflict of the 1990s, supported the creation and operation of the Tribunal in response to the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide associated with that conflict.”
“While many factors and players were involved in the former Yugoslavia’s violent demise, without doubt Milosevic was primarily responsible for turning the situation into an ethnic cleansing campaign in which hundreds of thousands were killed, tens of thousands raped or subjected to other forms of torture and millions displaced,” Campbell added.
“I hope that Milosevic’s delivery to The Hague will lead to the apprehension and surrender of others indicted by the Tribunal, many known or believed still to be in Serbia,” said Co-Chairman Smith. “This process will give victims the satisfaction of justice served. It will also give the people of Serbia, who have recently learned with revulsion of the atrocities for which the Milosevic regime was responsible, a chance to put the legacy of hate behind them. For tyrants around the world, it will be a deterring example that there is accountability for the massive and criminal violation of human rights.”
“The United States Congress can be proud of the role it has played in this ongoing struggle for justice in the Balkans,” said Ranking Member Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD). “Often against the advice of the foreign policy establishment, there has been bipartisan support for creating an international tribunal which would hold those guilty of egregious crimes accountable for their acts, and for ensuring that cooperation with the tribunal remained a central part of U.S. policy toward the region.”
“We must keep in mind that several other indicted persons remain at large, including Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for the Srebrenica massacre and those responsible for the Vukovar massacre,” said Helsinki Commission Member Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD). “They played a direct role in atrocities, and the delivery of Milosovic will hopefully build momentum for their apprehension as well.”
Milosevic was indicted in May 1999 on charges of “crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war.” | <urn:uuid:fc60e735-9113-493d-a0fd-d1b27986aa36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContentRecords.ViewDetail&ContentRecord_id=155&ContentType=P&ContentRecordType=P&UserGroup_id=59®ion_id=59&year=0&month=0&Subaction=PressReleases&CFID=9640293&CFTOKEN=26477506 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970635 | 544 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Survivors celebrate life after breast cancer
October 8, 2008 · Updated 5:59 PM
It was a windy day in June and Barbara Purdom struggled to hold down her feathery pink boa.
Wrapped in a robe, she walked out on the dock in her bare feet. The six-year breast cancer survivor dropped her robe and wearing nothing but the boa, lowered herself onto a pink flamingo paddle boat adrift Lake Sammamish.
“It’s a celebration of life,” the Federal Way resident said of the Angel Care Breast Cancer Foundation’s 7th calendar that features 12 volunteers — all breast cancer survivors, including herself on the pink flamingo.
Last Thursday, the featured survivors gathered at Parkplace Books in Kirkland to celebrate the foundation’s 7th calendar kick off. The nonprofit organization provides volunteers to help people recently diagnosed with breast cancer and give them encouragement and hope.
Purdom, who is featured in the calendar for the month of July, was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer six years ago after a mammogram revealed a lump.
“I bawled for a while,” she recalled. “A year before, the lump wasn’t there. If I hadn’t of had the mammogram, I wouldn’t have known.”
Then came the chemotherapy and radiation, followed by a lumpectomy.
“Then you just come out on the other end,” she said.
She has posed for the calendar for her fifth year in a row to show women that there’s life after breast cancer. Also, it’s to let women know they’re still beautiful.
“Some people think that losing a breast takes away their beauty. I think you gain more inner beauty. What’s to be afraid of? You can go out and do anything after breast cancer.”
Purdom found out about the Angel Care foundation one day after radiation when she saw a flier in her doctor’s office.
Since then, she has helped nearly 10 women with breast cancer go through the same thing she went through. Purdom spoke of one 86-year-old woman she accompanied to the women’s first breast cancer surgery.
“People asked, ‘is this your granddaughter?’ and she said, ‘No, this is my angel.’”
Issaquah resident Pamela Travis is the angel for the month of May, featured in a garden “green Earth” pose. This was her sixth time in the calendar.
Travis was diagnosed with breast cancer in her early 30s and since then has had four reoccurrences, which is very rare.
The first time, she had radiation and a lumpectomy on her left breast. Subsequent recurrences of breast cancer called for the removal of both of her breasts. Each time, she found the lump during a breast self examination (BSE).
“I strongly advocate that women do a regular BSE.”
She’s helped more than a dozen women since volunteering for Angel Care.
“It’s really worthwhile having somebody who’s gone through the same thing as you.”
When she was first diagnosed, she had to search for someone who could help her.
“It’s a scary thing to go through. When you’re diagnosed, when you’re younger, it’s more earth shattering,” she said. She had two young kids at the time.
Last year, Travis had planned to have the photo shoot for the calendar at her home, so her husband, Doug, painted the doorsteps with a new white coat.
“It was a cheap excuse to get the stairs painted, “ he laughed, adding that they ended up shooting at a different location. This year was her nicest pose, he said, “it was like she was popping out of the woods.”
Pamela Travis said she wants people diagnosed with breast cancer to realize that the diagnosis is not a death sentence and it has made her see life differently.
Redmond resident and 15-year breast cancer survivor Jan Harris founded the Angel Care Foundation in 1997 to provide one-on-one emotional care to the newly diagnosed across the Puget Sound (and Idaho).
The calendars, which tastefully feature survivors wearing nothing much other than angel wings and cost $15, are to inspire breast cancer survivors, Harris said.
“You won’t see scars, except for the man (Bruce Young of Beaux Arts Village). You can’t tell who’s had a lumpectomy or mastectomy. It’s to tell people to get out, live life and have fun doing it,” said Harris, who is also featured in the calendar for the month of June.
75-year-old Bobbie DeCoster, of Kenmore, a 15-year breast cancer survivor, has been featured in the calendar for the month of December since the very first one.
She recalled the first photo shoot, which was taken at her home in the middle of July. Her former husband didn’t know what she was up to and look puzzled when she crawled into the attic and came down with Christmas paraphernalia.
This year, DeCoster was featured in a 1965 cherry red Ford Mustang convertible, quite fitting for the hair-in-the-wind kind of gal she is.
She was living in China as a teacher when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993. She had come home for New Year’s break, when her daughter informed her that there was a postcard in the mail reminding DeCoster of her mammogram.
“How lucky was I to come home at that time and get a mammogram?” She said.
When she found out she had breast cancer she was mad and scared that she was going to die. She had a lumpectomy and endured 35 rounds of radiation treatment.
Now, she can tell women, “Hey, I had cancer 15 years ago. You have a long time to look forward to,” she said. | <urn:uuid:faebe453-d1c5-47f7-b353-43ffc8ab4a2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.issaquahreporter.com/community/30661754.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979165 | 1,307 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The Wikipedia online encyclopedia defines ''gold rush'' as "a period of feverish migration … into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold." By that definition, compliance is the gold rush of the first part of the 21st century.
Tech companies have jumped into the breech to sell you solutions to your compliance problems. Type compliance at Bitpipe.com and get a list of 335 advisory white papers, many of which are SOX-related, from a who's-who of the top vendors in the industry. One company offers a self-administered test that is supposed to tell you in five minutes how vulnerable you are to regulatory compliance failures. Google's search results page on compliance can't accommodate all the ads from tech firms.
Network vendors will tell you that compliance is a network reliability and security problem. Information security vendors say you should get your identity management act together.
And the audit companies, whose shoddy work created the need for Section 404 in the first place, are only too eager now to sell you their solutions for prices beginning in the low six figures.
I don't mean to imply that vendors don't have useful tools to help you get compliant. But the IT industry sees technology as a hammer and every problem as a nail. There's no mention of software or hardware in Section 404. In fact, most experts agree that the last thing you should do is go out and buy technology. You need to get your processes and objectives in place first.
Start by understanding the requirements of Section 404. SearchSMB.com has an excellent IT Management Guide on Compliance, aimed at small and midsized companies. SearchCIO.com has an informative Executive Guide to SOX. The IT Compliance Institute is a rich source of news and advice on the topic. Compliance Pipeline has good content just for IT professionals.
Then get a committee together. If you're the CIO, you'd better be on it because your neck is on the line. Now may be the time to bring in a consultant but devote your time to analyzing what the law actually requires and where your shortfalls are. And while you're at it, identify any other compliance problems you need to address. Gartner just issued a report saying it can cost 10 times as much to address various compliance issues piecemeal as it does to tackle them at once.
When it comes to technology, the key is setting priorities. Once you know what you have to fix, then go back and start reading those white papers. Consult documents from several vendors so that the competing marketing messages cancel each other out.
Focus on fixing your processes. The best email archiving software in the world won't work if your employees are using instant messaging. Consult colleagues at other companies who are further along in their compliance efforts and find out where the gotchas are.
Document your shortfalls and the steps you plan to take to address them. They'll come in handy if the regulators come knocking. Then, and only then, seek technology solutions from vendors. But don't let marketing messages define your compliance priorities.
Paul Gillin is a technology writer and consultant and former editor-in-chief of TechTarget. His website is www.gillin.com. | <urn:uuid:3b092846-344f-4926-8497-f2a89030184a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/news/1158613/Compliance-Know-your-priorities | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951689 | 656 | 1.578125 | 2 |
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Factors influencing pregnant adolescents' decisions for abortion or motherhood
Factors influential in determining the decisions of 50 adolescents to terminate or continue pregnancy were explored via a structured interview and questionnaire at the time of pregnancy testing. Follow-up data were obtained in order to assess whether actual behavioral outcome was consistent with stated intention. The relationship between the adolescents' intention, attitudes, and beliefs about motherhood and abortion were analyzed in terms of the Ajzen-Fishbein Theory of Reasoned Action (1980). Demographic and psychosocial characteristics were also assessed as factors influencing decision outcome. Via qualitative analysis of individual case examples, the intersection of the pregnancy outcome decision with the adolescent developmental tasks of separation and identity consolidation was examined.^ Results revealed a highly significant, positive relationship between stated intention to abort or continue pregnancy and behavioral outcome. There were differential attitudes and beliefs between those planning to abort and those planning to continue pregnancy. Adolescents choosing abortion viewed themselves as less likely to experience guilt, more likely to finish school easily, be independent, and preserve peace in their families. In contrast, those intending to continue pregnancy wanted to take on the responsibility of parenting. They believed motherhood would result in having someone to love and care for, enable them to become closer to their boyfriends, and would impact only minimally on daily freedom and future plans.^ Of several sociodemographic and psychosocial variables examined in this study, presence of family conflict was a significant factor in the prediction of intention, as determined by a series of stepwise logistic regression analyses. A significantly greater number of subjects intending to continue pregnancy came from families characterized by highly conflictual relationships.^ Qualitative investigation revealed that the choice of motherhood could be seen as a solution to the adolescent developmental tasks of separation and identity consolidation. Family stability or conflict emerged as an important context within which the developmental process of separation and identity consolidation impacted on the pregnancy outcome decision. ^
Bonnie Schwartz Garfield,
"Factors influencing pregnant adolescents' decisions for abortion or motherhood"
(January 1, 1988).
Electronic Doctoral Dissertations for UMass Amherst. | <urn:uuid:489a046d-56a1-45f9-b9a7-bfc745958fa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8813223/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937336 | 524 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Online Railway Reservation
Lifeline Express train
Lifeline express is the mobile hospital train managed and run by the Impact India Foundation in association with the Indian Railways and Health Ministry funded by the international charitable resources, Impact UK, Indian corporate houses and individuals. It as well is known as Jeevan Rekha Express in Hindi.
Two trains fulfill the purpose of Lifeline Express. Every train is particularly planned with air-conditioned coaches, numerous patient wards, power generators, pantry car, one surgical operation theatre along with three operating tables, a sterilizing room and store-room for medical needs and lodging for medical staff. The train is not less than a small hospital with all the necessary amenities on board to treat the patience.
The train is good for those people who stay in remote areas as this train moves through different remote parts of the country which lacks appropriate medical facilities. Not only that this train also operates in disaster and natural calamity affected areas helping the needier. The train hospital as well carries with a mission to defeat “avoidable disabilities” together with some forms of deafness, blindness physical handicaps and more. The train includes staff of neurosurgeons, dentists, anesthetists and other medical specialists to help the patience suffering from a range of sickness.
Beside India the similar Lifeline Express operates in Bangladesh, China, Zimbabwe and in more countries. The survey depicts that more than 400,000 Indians of the remote and remotest place have benefitted from it so far. The main benefit of this train is that people don’t have to go to the hospital but the hospital itself comes near to them. A 20-person medical team is always there on the train, working 15 hours a day creating a role model for the humanities.
At present Lifeline express is in its 20th year and gradually expanding more and more reaching to the most remote, poor and backward parts of the country providing the best medical facilities. If you are not confrontationed with the Lifeline Express then just hold your nerve because very soon it will be at your door step. | <urn:uuid:0d64e8fe-0175-42f6-b7b9-27b55339d00b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.railwaystimetable.in/lifeline-express.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957306 | 432 | 1.773438 | 2 |
He’s one of the greatest Lord of the Rings illustrators ever. It all began with a sketchpad,
some oil pastels and a bit of inspiration…
In 1976, John Howe made a startling discovery. “My goodness, this is just extraordinary,” he thought. “You can do pictures of The Lord of the Rings and get them published and maybe get paid.”
In his teens at the time, he’d picked up a JRR Tolkien Lord of the Rings calendar illustrated by The Brothers Hildebrandt and was doing his own pastel versions of the images. Like the Hobbits in Tolkien’s epic stories, little did he realise at the outset the scale of the journey he was embarking on.
Not only did John become one of the most famous Lord of the Rings illustrators around, but by 1999 he found himself in New Zealand working on the biggest fantasy project ever embarked upon – Peter Jackson’s movie version of the trilogy. “It was a unique experience – very exciting, lots of fun, loads of hard work – in New Zealand,” says John. “And very, very different to work with a huge team of talented people on a colossal project. There it was really like being a small cog in a huge machine to help make it all trundle forward until the final movie.”Location, location, location
Working alongside Alan Lee, John’s role was to sketch locations according to briefs from Peter Jackson. These would be reviewed with the director and then translated into maquettes. After testing with a lipstick camera, they’d then either be built as life-sized sets, or as physical or digital miniatures – sometimes as all three.
Two of his favourite experiences working on the films were the trips to Matamata, where Hobbiton was built, and to the hill near Christchurch where they created Edoras, the capital of Rohan. “You spend quite a while thinking about these places, what they might look like, and then you’re suddenly faced with the actual physical location and everything just sort of clicks into place,” says John. “It was really quite extraordinary when we arrived in a potential site for Hobbiton, we just sat down and started sketching things because it all seemed fit. Adjusting weeks of fictitious architectural tinkering and drawing-board wishful thinking to the lay of actual land projects you even deeper into the culture and design you’ve created. It’s a crucial step to making it feel real.”Living history
Working on the films has been one of the biggest projects in John’s career – the pinnacle perhaps of his long standing relationship with Tolkien’s works. In the 80s and 90s he worked on numerous illustrations for the same series of calendars he recreated as a teenager. The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion and Numenor have all received John’s watercolour and ink treatment, as have board games, card sets and maps of Middle-earth. Part of his dedication to JRR Tolkien comes through his respect for the author’s style.
“Tolkien has a truly astonishing gift for not really describing situations in minute visual detail, relying instead on the emotions of the characters in those situations. So you’re very much more free to depict whatever image it stirs up in you. I find his historical interest actually implies a similar approach for the visual aspects. It should feel real, as if it is in a parallel history of some kind,” explains John.
To John, it’s almost as though Tolkien is recording the history of Middle-earth. This gives it more gravity than other fantasy work, which doesn’t have the historical element and to John feels a touch flimsy.
Perhaps the appeal of the writer’s authentic style is charged further by John’s general love of history. He has a great appreciation for archaeology, and collects and makes swords, shields and other implements from the medieval period. A member of the Companie of Saynt George, a living history group, he’s not one to shy away from historical accuracy.
The Companie has a strict approach. It’s focused on the period from the 1450s to 1475, and close attention is paid to detail. Stitching, the cloth, the leather… When John finds himself in the midst of an accurately recreated medieval camp it’s as though he can be in one of his pictures.
“We don’t wear cloaks any more, we don’t wear hose, or leather boots, we don’t wear chain-mail or armour. To render it properly it’s useful to know how it functions,” he says. “How it wears, what boots look like if you walked a whole day
in the dust, how you have to wear a sword in order to walk comfortably, all of those things are little tiny helpmates to give you a little more access to something convincing.”Architecture
There’s a similar level of dedication where architecture is concerned. One of John’s favourite periods is the Carolingian – the 800s, when Charlemagne reigned and when dragons were very much alive and well, in European folklore at least. He also appreciates castles, Romanesque sculpture, Armenian, Abyssinian and Moorish architecture and just about anything right up to the 1930s. Exploring Gothic cathedrals always feeds his imagination.
“If I have a fantasy image to do and I need to draw a window, I want to have at the disposal of my imagination every window that’s ever been built from every period in the entire world. I don’t want to be stuck with a shortcut for windows. You see so many illustrations where you have a castle in the background and the illustrator has put in windows, but they’re windows from a house, because that’s what he knows,” says John.
Using accuracy in the details to suspend disbelief, John effectively enhances the fantastical and unreal elements of his pictures. Since his childhood when he consumed paperbacks in order to see the artwork of Frank Frazetta, he’s been inspired by fantasy art and book covers were a major early influence for him. During his career he’s worked on plenty of books and their jackets including Myth and Magic in 2001, and A Diversity of Dragons, which was done with Anne McCaffrey.
By the time you read this, another two books by John will be at your disposal. Firstly his Fantasy Art Workshop (see box, page 68) and secondly a classical, illustrated version of Beowulf, published
by Templar. “I can’t say enough about Beowulf. It’s just such a grim, relentless, extraordinary tale of disaster and woe,” enthuses John.
John’s journey started with a simple desire to do a Lord of the Rings calendar, and when we ask him if he’d still like to do one, he answers in the affirmative. “I’d like to do one, I would indeed,” he says slowly. There’s something just a little Hobbit-esque about that… | <urn:uuid:05b9f02e-efc1-4155-9cf4-9d74c0c73906> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754331466992788/john-howe.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966721 | 1,529 | 1.820313 | 2 |
CLEVELAND -- Charles Mooney School in Cleveland's Old Brooklyn neighborhood is determined to change its reputation.
On the last state report card, it was in academic emergency. Out of 15 standards, Mooney failed to meet a single one, and its reputation may be even worse.
"I've heard that we are the armpit of the area. That is not true," says Brynn Morgan, the Mooney principal.
Back in the 1990s, there were high-profile incidents of fights and weapons being brought to Charles Mooney.
"Maybe you saw something on the news in the past. That was the past. I welcome people come in see us, see us now," says Teacher Marc Pohlman.
About 500 students go to Mooney. It is a pre-k to 8th grade school, located in a blue-collar neighborhood, with its share of poverty and empty storefronts.
This is Brynn Morgan's first job as a head principal, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
"When I signed my contract, I signed it stating that if I don't improve academics, I could lose my job," says Morgan.
This school, like so many other urban schools, not only needs to improve student grades and test scores, but there are many neighborhood challenges from poverty that impact the school's performance.
The challenges are many, but so is the will among the principal, teachers and students.
WKYC is donating $1000 to Charles Mooney School, and our partner the Ohio Lottery is matching that donation.
If you would like to help, go to: | <urn:uuid:48413591-748d-4035-94c5-dabd0d1000e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wkyc.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=281775 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97957 | 332 | 1.835938 | 2 |
1Malaysia Map was developed for the use of the public. Its purpose is to attract the general public and give an understanding on what GIS can do. Public users can search for places of interest such as shop, petrol station, hotel, bank, market and other places, access imagery and vector maps from BING and make interactive search through this application. Currently, the search for places of interest ( POI) can be done in the area of Kuala Lumpur and this is open to all users . Click here
to access this application. | <urn:uuid:b3dc755a-4455-4b14-8b1f-85f6483071cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mygeoportal.gov.my/en/node/2163 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941508 | 110 | 1.609375 | 2 |
While 100,000 people had their water supply restored on Sunday, 400,000 still had no water, he said.
Separately, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimated that the overall physical damage so far amounted to about $1.9bn (£1.4bn).
The UN has asked Israel to open Gaza's borders to allow in construction materials, but so far only basic humanitarian supplies have been let in.
Meanwhile, Arab foreign ministers meeting in Kuwait have failed to issue a statement on the Gaza situation because they disagreed over who was to blame for the conflict.
Egypt said Hamas had invited the attacks, while Syria said Israel should be declared a terrorist entity.
Palestinian medical sources say at least 1,300 Palestinians were killed, nearly a third of them children, and 5,500 injured during the conflict. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. | <urn:uuid:e249e1cb-244e-40fc-8c06-21dea0964e7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7839863.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966511 | 251 | 1.828125 | 2 |
NORM 7 Symposium, Beijing, China, April 2013
|NORM (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material) Symposia Series is one of the conferences that the IAEA officially supports has been organising every three years in the recent past. This conference series was first hosted in Europe and is now being held in other parts of the world. Its focus is to provide for harmonization of radiation protection in industries and work activities related to naturally occurring radioactive materials. The first symposium in the series was held in Amsterdam in 1997 and then successively Krefeld, Germany (NORM II), Brussels, Belgium (NORM III) in 2001, Szczyrk, Poland (NORM IV), in 2004, Seville, Spain (NORM V), in 2007 and the sixth (NORM VI) in Marrakesh, Morocco in 2010. The NORM symposia reflects the growing interest within regions in the management of exposure to NORM. The close involvement of the IAEA in most of these symposia is demonstrated through it's publication of the Proceedings of the Szczyrk symposium - published as IAEA-TECDOC-1472, while the Seville and Marrakesh symposia were published in the IAEA Proceedings Series. National regulatory bodies, technical and research organizations, industrial organizations from phosphate industry, titanium industry, mining industry (coal, uranium and metal), rare earth industry, metal production industries have been either involved in the past conferences relevant to the topic or possibly be involved in future conferences for coherence and harmonization of radiation protection in the NORM sector. The Seventh International Symposium on NORM will be organised by the China Institute of Atomic Energy with co-organization by the China Atomic Energy Authority, National Nuclear Safety Administration, China Society of Radiation Protection, Tsinghua University, China University of Geosciences and University of South China in cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency, in Beijing, April 22-26, 2013. more|
Transboundary movement of scrap metal – IAEA experts meet to develop non-binding legal instrument
|In order to address growing international concern with problems related to radioactive material that is inadvertently present in scrap metal, the International Conference on Control and Management of Radioactive Material Inadvertently Incorporated into Scrap Metal was convened in Tarragona, Spain in February 2009. The participants at this conference recognized “the potential benefit that would result from establishing some form of binding international agreement between governments to unify the approach to trans-border issues concerning scrap metal containing radioactive material.” In response the IAEA Secretariat held two Open-ended meetings where a draft Code of Conduct on the Transboundary Movement of Radioactive Material Inadvertently Incorporated into Scrap Metal and Semi-Finished Products of the Metal Recycling Industries was developed. This draft Code was subsequently circulated to Member States and their comments solicited. A third Open-ended meeting on the development of the document will be held in Vienna on 25 February to 1 March 2013, where the draft Code will be finalized in anticipation of its later consideration by the policy-making organs of the IAEA. more|
Establishing a Regulatory Infrastructure for Safety and Security of Sources in the Republic of Togo
From 27 to 29 August 2012 the IAEA, together with international experts from Mauritania, Tunisia and Morocco, conducted an advisory mission in the Republic of Togo. The IAEA mission was hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Republic of Togo.
The main objective of the mission was to assess the current status and provide assistance in support of the establishment of a regulatory infrastructure for safety and security of radiation sources in the Republic of Togo.
The mission provided an opportunity to familiarize the Togolese participants with the IAEA Safety Standards and Nuclear Security Series publications related to the establishment of a regulatory infrastructure, and to identify national actions to improve the control of radiation sources.
The advisory mission was well-received. Six Ministers and their representatives, as well as numerous technical specialists from sectors such as foreign affairs, health, environment, industry, higher education and research, public security and protection, defence, customs, the army, and the medical sector participated in various meetings of the mission.
Regional Workshop on Establishing a Regulatory Infrastructure for Safety and Security of Sources in the Carribean Region
From 11 to 15 June, 2012, under a cooperation agreement with the European Union, the IAEA organized a regional workshop in Kingston, Jamaica to assess the current status and provide assistance to selected States of the Caribbean Region in support to the establishing and improving their regulatory infrastructure for radiation safety and security of radioactive sources.
The workshop was attended by 58 participants from 14 States (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago), the majority of them being non IAEA Member states.
The workshop was conducted by the IAEA staff from the Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste safety and the Office of Nuclear Security, together with representatives from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and external experts from Cuba and Canada.
The workshop provided the opportunity to familiarize participants with IAEA Safety and Security standards and guidelines related to the establishment of a regulatory framework, and to identify actions, at the regional and national levels to improve the control of radiation sources.
Management and Regulatory Oversight of Uranium Legacy Sites: Perspectives from Regulators and Operators
|The IAEA will conduct a joint scientific visit and International Workshop on ‘Management and Regulatory Oversight of Uranium Legacy Sites: Perspectives from Regulators and Operators’, at Grand Junction, Colorado USA on 13 to 24 August 2012. Prior to the Workshop, technical visits to projects in the region, addressing uranium milling operations, remediation and post closure care of uranium legacy sites will take place on 13-20 August.
The purpose of the Workshop is to exchange information and examples on regulatory framework and implementation of remediation of uranium production legacy sites, including post-remediation long-term care programs. The sites included in the technical visit consist of a privately owned active uranium milling facility at White Mesa, Utah, a United States Department of Energy (USDOE) Environmental Management (EM) uranium mill tailings remediation project (UMTRA) in Moab, Utah; and several remediated former mill sites under the USDOE Legacy Management Program (LM). During the two-week event the following topics will include but not be limited to: Regulatory Framework for remediation; Roles and responsibilities of Regulators and Operators; Environmental Impact Assessments; Remediation design planning and Implementation; Radiation Protection; Environmental Monitoring Long term surveillance and maintenance.
Approximately 36 persons from 33 Member States are expected to attend, as well as representative(s) from the USDOE, United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC), United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and IAEA. This event was supported under the auspices of the International Forum for the Regulatory Supervision of Legacy Sites (RSLS).
The IAEA, together with the Government of the United States and the European Union, and in cooperation with the Government of Namibia, hosted a Regional seminar on “Good Practices in the Processing and Control of Uranium Ore Concentrate”. The seminar took place in Windhoek, Namibia on 23-27 April 2012.
Uranium ore concentrate is the key material for civilian nuclear energy production and for the growth of civilian nuclear energy worldwide and Namibia is a leading supplier of this material. The Seminar targeted to promote a regional dialogue between industry and regulators on the management of uranium.
Twenty-two countries and 15 commercial nuclear enterprises were represented at the Seminar, including some of the largest uranium producing countries and nuclear companies in the world. The objectives of the seminar were to provide a forum to discuss and document good practices in key areas of uranium ore processing. These areas were addressed by four working groups on regulatory development, process monitoring, nuclear security and transport and export issues. The seminar was structured to allow for the sharing of international, regulatory and industry perspectives as well as to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
In the framework of the Seminar the participants visited the Rössing, the world's longest running open pit uranium mine and the third largest producer of uranium oxide globally, which enabled seminar delegates to view first-hand the processing and control of ore concentrates. The recommendations driven at the seminar encourage Member States of the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa (FHRBA) to make efforts to ensure harmonization of requirements for safety, security and safeguards to the extent possible, with assistance from the IAEA in developing capacity building in SSS in the Uranium production cycle.
|The IAEA held a Second Open-ended Meeting of Technical and Legal Experts to Develop a Nonbinding Instrument on the Transboundary Movement of Scrap Metal that may Inadvertently Contain Radioactive Material. The meeting convened in Vienna, Austria, from 30 January to 3 February 2012. The purpose of the meeting was to finalize the text of a draft non-binding Code of Conduct that was developed at the first open-ended meeting on this topic, held in Vienna from 6 to 8 July 2011. more| | <urn:uuid:05b7802a-8714-4513-a477-1c26d6aaa51d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www-ns.iaea.org/home/rw/news.asp?s=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932859 | 1,953 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Dan McQuillan, Associate Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics
Northfield, VT 05663
dmcquill [at] norwich.edu
There is a menu on the bottom of the above picture of Norwich University. Please explore various pages of this site by clicking on the menu tabs. In addition, several “blogroll” links are on the upper right side of this page, including links to papers in the journal Discrete Mathematics, as well as a link to a preprint on ArXiv.org on the Witt Ring and the Witt Cancellation Theorem.
Mathematics is a human activity; as such it is always changing and always exciting. It has a rich history and strong personalities. It is certainly a subject where we continuously learn more by re-examining what was done in the past. We are often looking for another perspective to deepen our understanding. I sincerely hope that you enjoy this article, partly on the Witt Cancellation Theorem, and partly a survey article, but also a tribute to many great mathematical personalities responsible for the birth of the algebraic theory of quadratic forms. We thank and honor a few of the founders, including Ernst Witt, Emmy Noether, and Leonard Dickson. We also celebrate the 75th birthday of a pioneering paper of Witt with a brief overview of recent spectacular work which is still building on his original creation of the the algebraic theory of quadratic forms.
The slides for my talk, “Vertex-magic Graphs,” given during the spring meeting of the Northeastern section of the Mathematical Association of America on June 11, 2011, can be found here. These slides have also been placed on the selected preprints page, found under the “publications” tab on the menu.
Click here for updates on our top performances in the Putnam competition!
A short 9 minute talk has been placed on the Talks on video page, where comments are welcome. I may produce more videos, or refine the current one. This video is about planarity and crossing numbers of graphs, and specifically about drawings of complete graphs, and it is intended as a companion to paper on a parity theorem for drawings of complete graphs and complete bipartite graphs. A direct link to the same talk on youtube is also provided on the blogroll. I’ve also added a link to another fun video by Ján Mináč and Leslie Hallock, entitled, How Mathematics Could Save Romeo and Juliet. | <urn:uuid:f5cf6e25-22ed-4571-ad02-b02ae7dfe242> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://voices.norwich.edu/daniel-mcquillan/2011/02/10/hello-world/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947007 | 515 | 1.742188 | 2 |
The idea of the Point of the Week posts is to stimulate discussion of the manipulation and application of a specific PP in actual combat. The PP's are workable within all MA systems and their study will greatly enhance the effectiveness of ALL arts. However, you must first have an advanced understanding of your art before you begin looking at PP's! Here
is a basic guide to PP attacks. Please pay close attention to the Safety section.Stomach 9/ST9 or Ren Ying (Man's Welcome)
This weeks point is Stomach 9 or ST9 for short. It is located on the earth meridian and is of Yang polarity according to TCM theory. It is located in the neck here.
This point is listed in the Bubushi's list of 36 Vital Points, and is probably one of the most dangerous places to strike in the entire human body. Striking
I am not normally an alarmist, but this point is extremely dangerous, and MUST be trained using extreme caution. Before we go into how to attack I'd like to cover the affect of attacking this point will have on the body.
Leaving pressure points aside and without blinding you with medical terminology, I'll briefly describe will happens when this point is attacked. This is where the carotid sinus nerve lives. By attacking this point you artificially trigger a carotid sinus reflex. Naturally this reflex is a trigger in response to high blood pressure and will result in bradycardia (the heart rate dropping below 60 beats per minute) and a drop of blood pressure. Paramedics use a technique called a "Carotid Massage" where gentle pressure is applied to this point for a period of 5 seconds on each side of the neck once a minute. This is used to help regulate dangerously high blood pressure by dilating the blood vessels and thus lowering the blood pressure. It doesn't take a genius to work out the effect of over stimulation.
Other dangers associated with this point include the potential rupturing of the carotid artery or trachea (windpipe) which could easily lead to death.
With an understanding of the dangers of using this point, we will now look at how to attack it. This point will respond to either pressing or sharp striking directly into the neck at a 90 degree angle towards the spine.
To strike this point to cause maximum damage will require a sharp narrow weapon such as a spear hand or single knuckle strike. This method of striking should only be used into extreme life or death circumstances due to the high risk of death with a relatively low impact trauma.
This point will respond well to a large blunt impact, such as a forearm smash, which will cause extreme internal shock and disorientation. Again, caution must be used to avoid accidental damage to the trachea.
A far more humane and safer method of attack to this point is by pressing into this point using the fingers. This will cause intense localised pain and if squeezed for a prolonged period of time will lower the blood pressure to the point of unconsciousness and eventually death. Pressing in and up towards the back of the skull will cause the recipient to raise up on the balls of their feet away from the pain. Pressing in and down towards the floor will drop them.Applications
Obviously the ways in which this point could be struck are endless. The following applications are not exhaustive, they are simply presented to stimulate thought and provide possible applications.
I will not cover the obvious striking applications of this point; any experienced Martial Artist worth their salt knows how to use a spear hand.
The pressing method of attack on this point makes it ideal to use in close quarter combat. From a clinch, if you can reach in and pinch this point it will create intense pain and thus movement. Holding on will eventually render the attacker unconscious.
Again from the clinch driving the fingers into this point create extreme pain. Combined with the directional information mentioned above make this extremely effective when attempting to create movement.
The last application I'll cover is using the Karate Jodan Uke or head block. Driving a Jodan Uke straight into this point is extremely effective at delivering shock into your opponent, and combined with a hikite on a attackers punching hand will add hugely to the overall effect of the strike.
Again, please please take the time to understand the effects of this point and appreciate how dangerous it is. For those who use this point in KO demo's please take a moment to read this article
by Erle Montaigue and scroll down to the comments by Professor McCleod. The whole article is interesting, but the commentary on ST9 should definitely be read! | <urn:uuid:f87f3b77-51e9-450e-9a7b-e84211cd8505> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=187455 | 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 | 0.930048 | 949 | 1.609375 | 2 |
- Home » Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Videos » Baby Boomers report positive outlook for the future
- Baby Boomers report positive outlook for the future
- December 23, 2010 4:04 PM
On the eve of their 65th birthday, the first generation of Baby Boomers say they are satisfied with their life choices and remain optimistic about the years to come, according to a recent AARP survey.
While the boomers, born in 1946, are approaching retirement age, more than 34 percent are still in the workforce. Of those still employed or looking for work, 29 percent said the earliest they expect to retire is by age 70, and four-in-ten (40 percent) reported that they, “plan to work until [they] drop.”
“Some are staying on the job to shore up their nest eggs; others just can’t imagine life without work,” said AARP executive president Steve Cone.
Today’s Baby Boomers are considered to be more active than the generations before them. The AARP survey reported that in their retirement years, Boomers have no plans of slowing down or getting bored. In fact, 84 percent of the Boomers surveyed plan to take better care of their health, while 81 percent plan to spend more time with loved ones, and 74 percent plan to set aside more time to do the things they always wanted to do. Those plans include traveling more (61 percent), volunteering (54 percent), and taking classes to learn something new (44 percent).
Boomers reported that their health and personal finances are the most predominant concerns in their lives. Thirty percent of the Boomers surveyed said their health and finances are in worse shape than they previously expected. However, even with the recent recession, they feel hopeful about what the next five years will bring.
Thousands of baby boomers will turn 65 every year with a new life expectancy of 75.65 years for men and 80.69 years for women, according to 2010 estimates by the CIA World Factbook. Life insurance is one of the more feasible purchases that can prevent a loved one from struggling financially when a spouse dies. In addition to this, some whole life insurance products provide a cash value component that can help baby boomers save up money for their retirement years.
- Category: Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Videos
Life Insurance Quotes
Leave a Reply | <urn:uuid:57aef72a-68e3-4646-8d20-b2516b7cf65b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lifequotes.com/articles/lifeinsurance/baby-boomers-report-positive-outlook-for-the-future/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956974 | 489 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Yesterday we reported that, for reasons that we couldn’t entirely understand, Anonymous had released its own Linux distribution.
Not long after, one of the active Anonymous Twitter accounts tweeted that the operating system is in fact fake, and is “wrapped in Trojans”.
The Anon OS is fake it is wrapped in trojans. RT
— AnonOps (@anonops) March 15, 2012
The OS has been downloaded over 20,000 times in less than four days, and while a couple of the comments on SourceFourge indicate that it is fake, it still has a user rating of 62%, with 37 users giving it the thumbs up.
Seeing lots of news about just-released purported “Anonymous OS.” BE CAREFUL! Remember the Zeus Trojan incident w/Slowloris recently!
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) March 15, 2012
Whoever is behind the OS has shot back with a post, saying:
The #anonops on their twitter account say “That Anonymous-OS is wrapped in trojans.”
Please people… in our world, in Linux and opensource world, there is not virus.
If any user believe that Anonymous-OS “is wrapped in trojans” or “backdoored OS by any Law enforcement Company or Hacker” please don’t download it!
But don’t mislead the world that Linux is dangerous and has trojans!
It’s also worth noting that in the original post announcing the OS, the well-known Anonymous slogan has seen a slight change (emphasis is our own):
We are Anonymous.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Don’t expect us, we are already here!
The departure from the typical Anonymous sign off could be an indication that there is definitely more here than meets the eye.
UPDATE: SourceForge has posted an official response to the project, detailing that it is a security risk and has been taken down. Here are some highlights from the post, bolded by us:
SourceForge, and the Open Source community as a whole, values transparency, particularly where issues of security are involved. This project isn’t transparent with regard to what’s in it. It is critical that security-related software be completely open to peer review (i.e., by providing source code), so that risks may be assessed along with benefits. That is not available in this case, and the result is that people are taking a substantial risk in downloading and installing this distribution.
Furthermore, by taking an intentionally misleading name, this project has attempted to capitalize on the press surrounding a well-known movement in order to push downloads of a project that is less than a week old.
We have therefore decided to take this download offline and suspend this project until we have more information that might lead us to think differently.
Either way, whether fake or not, as we advised earlier, it’s definitely not worth taking the risk of downloading the OS, no matter how curious you happen to be. | <urn:uuid:493734b6-4d60-4312-b8cf-3ef44de32019> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/03/15/anonymous-claims-that-the-operating-system-anonymous-os-is-fake/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953138 | 641 | 1.65625 | 2 |
It's easy to get excited when some games make the transition to virtual play. Others seem so, well, dull that you wonder why the concept was even developed.
So, we were skeptical when given the chance to try "Elite Darts" by Patch Products. Darts seemed less than exhilarating, and we had difficulty picturing how it could be even remotely engaging on a computer.
Well, we were wrong.
The first exposure some of us had to darts as kids was with a board set up in the basement, where we could throw the steel-tip spears without our parents worrying that we would destroy something valuable. Indeed, one of the scenarios in Elite Darts has the board hung over the basement washing machine. The three other locales are an English pub, a sports bar and, our favorite, the pool hall.
The practice mode is the best place to learn how to throw a dart. You must first position your hand represented by a transparent, ghostlike appendage, then lock the position in by clicking and holding the left mouse button. Players then move the mouse forward and backward to determine the speed and trajectory of the dart.
To fire the dart, release the mouse button. At first it was all we could do to get a dart to hit the board, much less a specific number or the bull's-eye. In time, we found that focus combined with force landed the most accurate shots. The skills needed to succeed were reminiscent of those used to accurately swing a club in computer golf games.
Once you get the hang of pitching a dart, you can choose to play Cricket, '01 Games or Baseball. In Cricket, competitors must make three "hits" on every number between 15 and 20, plus three bull's-eyes. In all '01 Games, you must score a three-digit point total ending in 1, such as 101, 501 or 901.
Baseball consists of scoring "runs" by landing your dart on the number that corresponds to the inning you are playing. Up to four people can compete at once, either in person, modem-to-modem or at the MSN Gaming Zone Internet site: www.zone.msn.com.
We found the hybrid software to be well-designed and enjoyed the bright, sharp graphics and realistic, fluid play. The options were easy to access and the controls were responsive.
Although called suitable for all ages, the game requires a degree of dexterity that might be difficult for young children to master. The instructions were complete, but long. The tutorial movie was simple and helpful in illustrating the basic techniques.
PC users require: Pentium 75 MHz, 8 MB RAM, 15 MB free hard drive space. (The manufacturer suggests Pentium 166 MHz, 16 MB RAM, 70 MB free hard drive space).
Mac users require: System 7.x or better, Power PC, 8 MB RAM, 15 MB free hard drive space. (The manufacturer suggests 16 MB RAM, 70 MB free hard drive space).
"Elite Darts" has a suggested retail price of $19.99.
Information: 800-524-4263 or http://patchproducts.com.
Pub Date: 05/31/99 | <urn:uuid:047929c7-ae9b-4765-878e-6e8b085116a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-05-31/entertainment/9905310182_1_throw-a-dart-elite-darts-16-mb-ram | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958123 | 660 | 1.789063 | 2 |
|Posted by Shiela on October 12, 19100 at 11:41:04:|
When we moved our house onto the current foundation,
we installed hotwater heating pipes into the concrete floor. We are now in the position to install the heating
system to heat the floor with hot water. The problem I am facing, is how big of a hot water tank
is needed to heat 1200 square feet, on three circuits, efficiently.
We currently have 2 - 38 gallon hot water tanks for our use now, and I am looking to buy a third one
|Replies to this post|
|There are none.| | <urn:uuid:7d24c9a8-0403-411c-80b8-6fef07f31ffd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://terrylove.com/wwwboard/messages/13222.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949299 | 132 | 1.585938 | 2 |
KFC Corporation became the world's first brand visible from outer space by unveiling a record-breaking 87,500 square feet, updated Colonel Sanders logo in the Area 51 desert. The event marks the official debut of a massive global re-image campaign that will contemporize 14,000-plus KFC restaurants in over 80 countries over the next few years.
KFC's new fresh look updates one of the most recognized, respected and beloved brand icons in the world and spans all visual elements from logo to restaurant design, advertising, packaging, uniforms and more.
The new logo depicts Colonel Sanders with his signature string tie, but for the first time, replaces his classic white, double-breasted suit with a red apron. The apron symbolizes the home-style culinary heritage of the brand and reminds customers that KFC is always in the kitchen cooking delicious, high-quality, freshly prepared chicken by hand, just the way Colonel Sanders did 50 years ago.
"The Colonel is truly a global icon and we want everyone in the universe to see KFC's new look of the future," said Gregg Dedrick, president of KFC Corp. "KFC is boldly going where no brand has gone before as Colonel Sanders takes one small step for humankind, but one giant leap for fried chicken."
The giant Colonel Sanders logo was built off The World's Only Extraterrestrial Highway in Rachel, Nevada, also known as the "UFO Capital of the World," and the epicenter of inter-galactic communication.
"If there are extraterrestrials in outer space, KFC wants to become their restaurant of choice. For now, we'll be very content satisfying the entire human population with our Finger Lickin' Good Chicken. Besides, who knows if extraterrestrials even have fingers? If we hear back from a life form in space today - whether NASA astronauts or a signal from some life form on Mars - we'll send up some Original Recipe Chicken," said Dedrick.
Earthlings can join in the fun by visiting www.kfc.com to see the huge logo and have a chance to win by spotting the Colonel's secret message hidden within the Area 51 desert logo. The first 10,000 sharp-eyed KFC fans to correctly identify the secret message and post the answer at www.kfc.com will win a certificate for a free KFC Snacker sandwich.
The Colonel's Top Secret Mission
The massive logo, which was referred to as the "Face from Space" by the project team, is so large it dwarfs one of America's largest and most famous landmarks - Mt. Rushmore. The huge carved faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would all fit easily in the "Face from Space." There would even be enough room left over for a fifth presidential face in the Colonel Sanders logo!
It took a team of nearly 50 designers, engineers, scientists (including astrophysicists), architects and other professionals working nearly three months to conceive, create and execute building the world's largest logo.
The "Face from Space" took more than 3,000 hours to create from inception to launch and was built by Synergy, a leading event company.
The logo consists of 65,000 one-foot by one-foot painted tile pieces that were assembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle: 6,000 red, 14,000 white, 12,000 eggshell, 5,000 beige and 28,000 black.
The logo took 24 days, working around-the-clock, to manufacture and ultimately produce. It then took six days on site to construct the logo, during which time the logo design pieces were kept hidden and under cover from identified and unidentified flying objects.
Area 51's secretive nature and link to classified aircraft research and reports of unusual phenomena, have led it to become the centerpiece of modern UFO and conspiracy theory. Other key activities associated with Area 51 include rumors of meetings with extraterrestrials, the development of time travel technology and the storage, examination and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft (including material supposedly recovered at Roswell, NM).
Due to the unprecedented nature of the project, the team endured numerous twists and turns along the way including a freak torrential downpour that rendered the original site inaccessible. The first location was in the flatlands of Utah near the home of the very first KFC restaurant.
A state-of-the-art GEO satellite captured the image of the logo as it circled the earth at an altitude of 423 miles. To see an image of the logo go www.kfc.com This is only the fourth time in more than 50 years that the logo has changed. | <urn:uuid:77b22157-af2f-46f9-a316-55462da865fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.collectspace.com/cgi-bin/postings.cgi?action=reply&forum=Free+Space&number=3&topic=003539.cgi&TopicSubject=Advertising+for+astronauts&replyto=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956218 | 955 | 1.546875 | 2 |
As right wing pundits denounce the betrayal of those who died on 9/11 and demand an end to any consideration of allowing Muslims to construct a new mosque where a current mosque exists, this explosion of anger and hate sends a message throughout the world. In Afghanistan, General David Petraeus argues the United States cares about Muslims and is able to differentiate between terrorists, who are a tiny minority, and the vast majority of peaceful Muslim citizens. Of course, he now has to explain to people who are told by the Taliban and al-Qaeda that Americans despise the Muslim people. A carefully orchestrated program of hatred has been initiated by Fox News and the Republican Party for one reason– destroy the Democratic party and persuade Americans that President Obama is a secret Muslim agent of al-Qaeda. Yesterday, newspapers in Indonesia, Kuwait, Egypt, and a dozen other Muslim nations reported how Muslims are being depicted in the US media and Congress. How does a Muslim react to Newt Gingrich comparing Muslims to Nazi, Germany, or ministers who refer to their religion as one centered in hate and intolerance.
This outpouring of of invective is rather strange coming from Christians who were responsible for the murder of six million Jews during WWII, the murder of over fifty million in their conquest of the New World, their destruction of Indian people in the American west, and one could throw in a few Inquisitions. The message from American leaders is coming across –do not trust Muslims. If a Muslim in Saudi Arabia commits a crime, then all Muslims in the world are equally guilty. If one used this logic regarding Germans, then the obvious conclusion is: since the German nation killed six million Jews and over thirty million other people during WWII, including gays, lesbians and Roma, every single person in the USA of German heritage is also guilty of these crimes. I can not understand how we allow the German language to be taught in schools!
Just remember, the only good German is a dead one. | <urn:uuid:a527c434-01ad-4fb3-8b66-c0708b9dba72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theimpudentobserver.com/world-news/mosque-issue-angers-muslim/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968158 | 390 | 1.570313 | 2 |
December 14, 2011
Social Media Policies In The Workplace Can Impact Professional Health
Usage of the internet outside the scope of daily work flow is a question employers can evaluate prior to executing a plan for marketing. A stance on where, how, and why employees interact with one another and also with the larger population of internet users over open communication platforms during the course of their job performance might require the involvement of hiring managers prior to the creation of a job description.
Employees, interviewees, and HR resources are not necessarily on the same page during the process of evaluating for placement of interested potential. Vacillation on subjects of boundaries according to where the employer requires or requests input from their contingent as employed, and where an employer decides separation from the job and the profession, or the professional as employed, can impact not only the business of an organization, but the occupational health of the employable professional. Regardless of opinion as to employee behavior online, an employer who does not currently require firm understanding of when and how work dictates the use of social interests online, and when the use is separate from work so that rather than speaking and acting as or for the company, instead an employee should be speaking and acting alone, might precipitate the need for a general use policy which clearly identifies use within the scope of employment.
A policy or employment guideline could include the idea that speaking under the context of being an employee and an expert on any opinion of the employer, on any issue, is either understood as acceptable, or it is not. Jeremy T. Simons, Esq, an attorney blogger, suggests “There are some reports by national news media outlets that employers are requiring potential employees to disclose their social media account names and passwords as part of the employment screening process.” He questions this employment practice as overstepping a potential boundary, “how far can an employer base its initial employment decision or its continued employment status on the employee’s personal life and decisions?” Suggesting that employers may someday use relevant personal habits and opinions an employee or professional decides to make public to communities or networks of potential common interest with the employer, an offense, and one that is cause for termination.
Careful consideration given to online activities keeps connections healthy and might be the difference between staying employed, and employing a remedy.
Author: admin | Share:
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- Research: YouTube beats Facebook with consumers | <urn:uuid:e4459ea1-613a-4b62-b11a-a9561c1c598b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://technoratimedia.com/2011/12/social-media-policies-in-the-workplace-can-impact-professional-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949173 | 542 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Bafana Bafana playing for the youth
Bafana Bafana's multitude of fans will be baying for victory over Uruguay in Pretoria in Tuesday morning's (AEST) World Cup group match on a public holiday that commemorates much darker times.
The hope and elation of this great festival of football could hardly be further removed from the events of June 16, 1976 - the first day of the Soweto Uprising.
On that day, students attended a demonstration against the compulsory learning of Afrikaans, the tongue Desmond Tutu described as "the language of the oppressor".
Police lines blocked the way to the original venue, Orlando Stadium, and the students went instead to an area near Orlando High School.
At that site police opened fire and in the ensuing chaos 23 people died.
Police and military personnel swarmed over Soweto over the next few days. Gunfire and riots left hundreds dead and many more injured.
Those events were crucial to the political movement, which eventually forced the overthrow of the apartheid regime.
The anniversary of that first fateful day of the uprising is now celebrated as Youth Day.
South Africa captain Aaron Mokoena says the players are very conscious of the context of the Uruguay encounter.
"Tomorrow is a very important day for South Africa," he said.
"Especially for the youth. We've really got to win the game. Having a game on June 16 means a lot and it will be brilliant to win."
South Africa coach Carlos Alberto Parreira has his mind firmly set on the football tasks of scoring goals and restricting the forward threat of Uruguay's Diego Forlan, but he too is aware of the public's fervent hopes on an important anniversary.
"The whole country is expecting us to deliver," he said. | <urn:uuid:dfc5d903-ec03-48aa-8308-d2d3532bca85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-16/bafana-bafana-playing-for-the-youth/869958 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961649 | 370 | 1.742188 | 2 |
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List: Posted: 02/16/11
Is your cellphone starting to look a little battered around the edges? Do you have multiple old phones that are doing little more than taking up space or collecting dust? If so, you may want to consider recycling them. Don’t take them to the recycle center, however, as believe it or not you can actually trade them in for cash by using a cellphone recycling envelope.
The components in cell phones are notoriously bad for the environment, and many old phones can even be donated to other countries or to people who are less fortunate, but many people never think to recycle. In order to encourage this, many countries now offer ways to recycle your old phone for money. In the United States, there is a program and website for a company called Cell for Cash that will recycle your phone AND give you money for it.
So if you have an old cell phone or two in your drawer at home that isn’t doing anything, you may want to think about whether you are willing to recycle it. You'll be doing a world of good for someone less fortunate with yourself, and having a little extra 'pocket money' from recycling your old phone can help you do good things for yourself - such as helping to pay your current cellphone bill.
Find your unlocked cell phones at UStronics.com. Your source for unlocked phones, cellular phones, gsm phones, unlocked cell phones and satellite phones at best prices and quick service. So avail the advantage of our limited offers at UStronics.com.
The material in this article is for informational purposes only. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Local.com. See Additional Information | <urn:uuid:0e7f47a4-20a0-4e69-85f0-435301d2512e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.local.com/topics/finance/how-tonbspmake-moneynbspby-recycling-your-old-cell-phone-1400.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946137 | 415 | 1.671875 | 2 |
People who feel strongly about a possible war with Iraq, turned out in droves Saturday. Those who are opposed to military action, stood shoulder to shoulder with those who support it.
"Mostly I'm here to give support to our international friends, who are at the United Nations speaking against the war," Joan Wolf, who traveled from La Crosse said. "I feel powerless in my own country. I can't [even] stop my own president."
"I'm here to support President Bush and the things this country's fought for and believed all my life," said Dan Southworth, a Vietnam veteran from Aniwa.
Saturday's anti-war peace rally had the potential to be anything, but. Both sides, however, chose to respect the other's freedom of speech, and were able to speak their minds without tempers flaring.
Wausau police say there were no arrests during Saturday's rally, and the event went without any major incidents. | <urn:uuid:c115f3e3-5f7f-4267-8986-0981e42a1eca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wsaw.com/news/headlines/222161.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985518 | 198 | 1.625 | 2 |
Adobe and Microsoft today each issued updates to address critical security flaws in their software. Adobe’s patch plugs at least five holes in its Shockwave Player, while Microsoft has released a bundle of seven updates to correct 23 vulnerabilities in Windows and other products.
Microsoft’s May patch batch includes fixes for vulnerabilities that could be exploited via Web browsing, file-sharing, or email. Eight of the 23 flaws earned Microsoft’s “critical” rating, meaning no user interaction is required for vulnerable systems to be hacked. At least three of the flaws were publicly disclosed before today.
According to Microsoft, the two updates are the most dire: The first is one related to a critical flaw in Microsoft Word (MS12-029); the second is an unusually ambitious update that addresses flaws present in Microsoft Office, Windows, .NET Framework and Silverlight. In a blog post published today, Microsoft explained why it chose to patch all of these seemingly disparate products all in one go. But the short version is that Microsoft is addressing the ghost of Duqu, a sophisticated malware family discovered last year that was designed to attack industrial control systems and is thought to be related to the infamous Stuxnet worm. A patch Microsoft issued last year addressed the underlying Windows vulnerability exploited by Duqu, but the company found that the same vulnerable code resided in a slew of other Microsoft applications. | <urn:uuid:0b3f6142-c1ed-491b-9558-e62a11c684fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://krebsonsecurity.com/category/security-tools/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94124 | 279 | 1.695313 | 2 |
A years-long squabble that was holding up nearly $75 million in federal stimulus funds has been resolved, just weeks before a deadline that would cost Northern Virginia the money and scuttle 11 miles of high-speed rail near Quantico.
The Federal Railroad Administration plans to release $74.8 million this week to build a third track from Arkendale in Stafford County to Powell's Creek in Prince William County, according to the office of Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.
The segment eventually will be part of a longer high-speed rail line, but also will relieve a key chokepoint for Amtrak, freight trains and Virginia Railway Express. VRE commuter trains won't travel any faster than their current top speeds of 79 mph because of the closeness of their stops, but Amtrak trains will be able to travel much faster down the new track. That means fewer slowdowns from trains getting backed up, but also more capacity.
"We won't get into each other's way," said VRE spokesman Mark Roeber.
Officials have forecasted that the project overall will reduce passenger trip time by four minutes and increase on-time performance by 2 percent along the line, while reducing the number of auto trips by nearly 146,000 along the Interstate 95 corridor.
The stimulus award was given in January 2010 but got bogged down in a stalemate among Virginia, freight company CSX and the Federal Railroad Administration.
The fight hinged on what on-time performance standards the trains on the line should face and when they should take effect: when the segment is finished or when the entire track from Fredericksburg to Washington is complete.
But the fight cut close to the wire. If it hadn't been resolved by Sept. 30, the money would have been lost, returned to the pool of stimulus funds.
Now, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, instead of VRE, is managing the project, after brokering the deal between federal officials and CSX, Roeber said.
Ironically, the project initially won stimulus funds because it was "shovel ready," with all engineering and design work complete.
It is not clear when work will begin, but it needs to finish by September 2017. | <urn:uuid:4a44ced6-9832-4dab-8a2d-d1b450f3cbbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/squabble-resolved-blocking-northern-virginia-75m-high-speed-rail-stimulus-project/article/2508061 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968534 | 455 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Export Basics helps you assess your export readiness, understand what you need to know and consider before pursuing an international sales strategy, and, when you are ready, develop and implement your export strategy.
The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) have been separated into the following categories:
See the questions below for more generalized information.
There are many ways to become involved in exporting, from filling orders for domestic buyers (such as export trading companies that then export the product) to exporting products yourself. However you choose to export, the development of a detailed and thorough strategy is an important part of the planning process. Steps in developing a strategy include:
The Trade Information Center (TIC) trade specialists can help your company analyze its export potential. The Export Basics section of the website is also available to help you better understand the export process and evaluate your company’s export-readiness.
A freight forwarder is a person who is hired to move shipments between foreign and domestic locations, or a portion of the way. Freight forwarders handle many of the formalities involved in exporting and importing such shipments. Additional information about finding a freight forwarder.
Export.gov offers a subscription service, through govDelivery, that sends out an e-mail when there have been changes on the website. Subscribing is easy and there are links to sign up on the major web pages within the website, such as theExport.gov home page. The sign up process includes entering an e-mail address and selecting which sections you wish to subscribe to. When changes have been made to those areas, an e-mail will be sent, including a link to the changes page and some links to other areas on the website that may be useful. If you have any questions regarding the subscription process, please complete the website feedback form and we will contact you. | <urn:uuid:c909d5e5-4484-4c48-b985-6da04c8f5491> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://export.gov/faq/eg_main_017487.asp | 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 | 0.947989 | 375 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Saturday was one of those almost but not quite days for the Campbell County boys soccer team. Top-ranked and consensus favorite to win the Class 4A state soccer tournament, the Camels fell just …
RAWLINS, Wyo. — Traveling almost 250 miles a day to drive their two sons to and from school was not a feasible option for the Heward family.
Hanna Elk Mountain Medicine Bow Junior Senior High School staff and administration worked with the Hewards to provide a virtual school option.
"These students live roughly 60 miles from here," HEM Principal Dale Kari said. "To try to keep (the students) in our school system, the staff looked at how we could help them."
HEM decided to offer the program for Timothy and Logan Heward in early August, Kari said.
"The core teachers are working to make sure they get the education they need instead of losing them from our district," said HEM English teacher Sarah Jones, who also teaches the virtual students.
"We want to make sure they are working with teachers they know and teachers they can contact if they need help," she said.
Typically the program Odysseyware is used for credit recovery in summer school programs, but HEM is altering it to meet the school's and family's needs, Jones tells the Rawlins Daily Times (http://bit.ly/QvA3XJ).
"The kids are definitely challenged with this program, as well as the teachers doing it," Jones said.
The math teacher, for example, uses other online programs in addition to the Odysseyware program to teach them the lessons, she said.
Malea Heward said her boys don't mind the change, although they miss their friends. The biggest difference is the amount of reading required to be a virtual student, she said.
The online program offers core classes in math, history, language arts, and science. It also covers physical education, Kari said.
HEM teachers set aside a class period to work with their virtual students, Kari said.
One of the useful features of the program is that teachers can easily customize projects and curriculum, Kari said.
Some teachers have made adjustments to help meet current curriculum, like specific science experiments, he said.
Customization has been especially helpful for agriculture classes offered at HEM, something the program doesn't cover, Kari said.
Teachers can email their virtual students to explain questions about the curriculum.
It's a learning curve both students and teachers have had to overcome, Heward said.
"This is the first time for teachers and our boys," she said. "They're learning )the program as well as we are."
One problem the school and students face is Internet bandwidth availability.
Some days it's slow to get an email response from teachers because of connection problems, Heward said.
"Because we're so rural it's been hard even getting the Internet out here," she said.
If the boys can't connect one day, they have to spend the next day catching up on their classwork, Heward said.
Principal Kari agrees that bandwidth is a problem.
As technology gets better, the possibilities will expand, Kari said. In the future there might be a point where web cameras can be set up in the classrooms so kids can partake in discussion, he said.
"If we ever got the bandwidth for our school and other places, we could eventually be able to be a part of class via technology," Kari said. | <urn:uuid:df79f227-be76-440f-81c3-1cb80bcd1a5e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gillettenewsrecord.com/stories/Carbon-Co-school-provides-virtual-school-option-,81472?category_id=82&list_type=most_viewed&sub_type=stories,maps | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973008 | 726 | 1.648438 | 2 |
June 04, 2012
The following is an excerpt from Portraits spring 2012 issue: "Electing The Fifth Abbot" by Laura (Rossi) Lemire '06. The full story is available on the Portraits blog.
On June 5, 2012, an important period of monastic and college leadership comes to an end. Abbot Matthew Leavy, O.S.B., will step down as abbot of Saint Anselm Abbey and chancellor of the college. He was elected by his confreres in March 1986, just over 26 years ago, making him one of the longest serving abbots in the Benedictine Order worldwide.
Undertaking the Care of Souls
The abbot of Saint Anselm Abbey plays many roles, including spiritual leader, steward, teacher, shepherd, father, administrator, and chancellor of Saint Anselm College. In the monastery, he is believed to hold the place of Christ, and is responsible for every member of the community.
As the monks at Saint Anselm Abbey prepare for a new leader, they consider the spiritual qualities of an abbot and what it means for their future. Fr. Peter Guerin, O.S.B., participant in three past abbatial elections, emphasizes the seriousness of the matter.
"Every abbot has a strong influence on the monastic observance of the community and on the individual lives of his monks, an influence that outlasts his abbatial service," he says. "For example, Abbot Bertrand provided a strong monastic foundation in forming our community that has had lasting effects on our basic values."
However, the monks have the luxury of time for this fifth election. In 1963, 1972 and 1986, the monks had only weeks to accept and prepare for the election. Now, Abbot Matthew's January announcement of his retirement allows the community to consider and pray for the kind of abbot they need at this point in their history.
The elected abbot brings a different personality and style. "It affects the life of the community in a day-to-day way," says Father Jonathan DeFelice, O.S.B., president of the college.
Marking the Ballot: an act of Faith
The Abbey has 28 community members, 25 of whom will vote on 21 possible candidates. There are several requirements one must meet to be elected. Candidates must be an ordained priest, be at least 30 years old, and have been in solemn vows for at least seven years. A monk who does not meet the requirements can be postulated-meaning his selection would be sent to the Vatican for approval. Bishop Joseph and two junior monks will not participate in the voting.
On June 5, the election session begins. There are up to six ballots. The first three require a two-thirds vote, and the final three a 50%-plus-one vote. The two elected "tellers" publicly count the secret ballots. If there is not a clear majority reached by the sixth ballot, the Abbot President chooses an interim administrator who can be in place for as long as three years.
If there is a clear majority, and the elected monk accepts the honor, then the Abbot President immediately confirms him. "It takes an act of faith and in that moment, he will be the abbot," says Father Jonathan.
The group then proceeds to the Abbey Church for a simple prayer service of thanksgiving. The church bells peal throughout campus and the community joins to welcome the abbey's new abbot and the college's new chancellor. | <urn:uuid:aac7a095-b488-4d4d-9e60-5744d27915ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.anselm.edu/News/Abbatial-Election-Preview.htm | 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 | 0.966946 | 729 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Apple's MacBook Air range has moved exclusively to solid-state storage with the launch of two new models.
CEO Steve Jobs said Apple has taken what it learned from the tablet market and applied it to the ultra-thin laptop. "What would happen if a MacBook met an iPad?" asked Jobs.
The two new devices, one 13.3in and a smaller 11.6in, only have Flash storage to keep them lighter, allow for instant-on access, and extend the battery life. The larger edition offers a claimed seven hours using wireless, and a whopping 30 days on standby.
"Just as interesting as what it's got, is what it doesn't have," Jobs said. "There's no optical drive, and there is no hard drive. We have gone to Flash storage, complete solid-state storage."
"We think it's the future of notebooks," he said. "It's like nothing we've ever created before."
The device has a aluminium unibody construction, with the larger one weighing in at 2.9 pounds and the smaller one only 2.3 pounds. The new 13.3in MacBook Air features a full-sized keyboard and full-sized glass trackpad. At it's thickest point,it is 0.68in; at it's thinnest, it's 0.11in.
"We've taken everything we know about miniaturisation from iPods, iPads and iPhones and applied it to the Mac," Jobs said.
The 13.3in LED backlit display features 1,440 x 900 pixels - more than the 15in MacBook Pro - while the 11.6in edition has an 1,266 x 768 pixel display. Both run a Core 2 Duo Processor and Nvidia GeForce graphics.
The smaller version will start from $1199 for a 64GB, 1.4GHz edition, rising to$1499 for a 128GB version. The 13in version, with a 1.86GHz processor and 128GB of storage, starts at $1599, while the 256GB version will cost $1949.
Both will be available starting today.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk | <urn:uuid:66248f21-5cb1-44b4-8cec-97d57dfefd8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/235955,apple-kills-off-hard-disks-in-macbook-air.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940569 | 446 | 1.5 | 2 |
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