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WASHINGTON (WP) -- When the House returns today from a weeklong recess, members and staffers will see something that hasn't been in the Capitol for four years: polystyrene.
In the first move toward phasing out part of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's "Green the Capitol" program, plastic foam cups have been reintroduced as an option for coffee drinkers in the Capitol Carry-Out, the building's mini-cafeteria.
The basement eatery had been part of the California Democrat's "Greening" program since 2007, when Democrats took control of the House. The program brought climate-friendly changes to the Capitol.
But the $475,000 composting program in the House-side cafeterias stirred a lot of controversy. Designed to cut down on waste, the program instituted the use of biodegradable utensils and trays made of cornstarch -- an idea that led to take-away boxes that leaked, spoons that melted and forks that broke when stuck into so much as a chicken tender. | <urn:uuid:3b7b4915-187f-4c2e-bbc3-0f2d8e672ebb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.southbendtribune.com/2011-02-28/news/29162530_1_composting-program-capitol-forks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939947 | 212 | 1.757813 | 2 |
He started with the lawyers. "Why do they all have the same biography?" he wondered. "We take it for granted that there's this guy in New York who's the corporate lawyer, right? I just was curious: Why is it all the same guy?" It takes a special kind of brain to be curious about New York City lawyers. Such a brain belongs to Malcolm Gladwell, 45, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, the founding documents of the now best-selling genre of pop economics, which together have sold more than 4.5 million copies.
Slender, with elfin cheekbones and a distinctive bloom of spirally brown hair, Gladwell is one of those clever people who actually looks clever. His curiosity about high-achieving lawyers was the germ of his third book, Outliers, which will be published Nov. 18. It's a book about exceptional people: smart people, rich people, successful people, people who operate at the extreme outer edge of what is statistically possible. Robert Oppenheimer. Bill Gates. The Beatles. And yes, fancy lawyers.
Gladwell's goal is to adjust our understanding of how people like that get to where they are. Instead of the Horatio Alger story of success a gifted child who through heroic striving within a meritocratic system becomes a successful (rich, famous, fill in your life goal here) adult Outliers tells a story about the context in which success takes place: family, culture, friendship, childhood, accidents of birth and history and geography. "It's not enough to ask what successful people are like," Gladwell writes. "It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't." Outliers is, in its genteel Gladwellian way, a frontal assault on the great American myth of the self-made man. (And they mostly are men. There aren't a lot of women outliers in Outliers.)
In some ways, Gladwell himself is, if not an outlier, then at least an outsider. He is both the son of a Jamaican woman in overwhelmingly white Canada and an academic kid from a working-class town (Elmira, Ont.). But the outsider had an in: his father, a mathematician, brought him into the rarefied world of the university. That context is not unconnected to his later success. "As a kid, 11 or something, we would go to his office, and I would wander round," he says. "I got that sense that everybody was so friendly, and their doors were open. I sort of fell in love with libraries at the same time." Now Gladwell, a New Yorker staff writer, specializes in milling crunchy academic material psychology experiments, sociological studies, law articles, statistical surveys of plane crashes and classical musicians and hockey players into prose so silky and accessible, it passes directly into the popular imagination in the form of memes. The most obvious candidate for memification in Outliers is a little gem Gladwell calls the 10,000-Hour Rule. Studies suggest that the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent. It's simply practice, 10,000 hours of it 20 hours a week for 10 years.
Outliers is a more personal book than its predecessors are. If you hold it up to the light, at the right angle, you can read it as a coded autobiography: a successful man trying to figure out his own context, how success happened to him and what it means. Gladwell is asking, as he puts it over lunch, "whether successful people deserve the praise we heap on them." | <urn:uuid:9462df51-3da2-4a48-93a2-dd856a511d55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858880,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97094 | 754 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Mid Autumn Festival (or Moon Festival) is a Chinese traditional holiday celebrating the middle of Autumn (it has a story behind it which I won't attempt to elaborate here... wikipedia to the rescue) , and is considered one of the most important festivals of the year. I always found it somewhat like Thanksgiving - because both happen in the fall, and both are a time of year where family gather for a meal and enjoy quality time together. After dinner, families usually go to a nearby park or rooftop to gaze at the big round moon, share fruits and mooncakes, and play with lanterns. With the quiet evening and beautiful lanterns, Mid Autumn is always a relaxing and serene night.
The Mid Autumn Festival is coming up next week, so I went lantern hunting around traditional Chinese paper stores this weekend. Think Chinese version of Papyrus (or Paperchase, if you're from the UK). Modern day manufacturers sell plastic blow up lanterns, but I always find the traditional ones prettiest and most festive.
All the choices....!
[This bunny design has been an all-time favorite for generations. Looks kind of creepy but always makes me think of how back in the day kids used to find joy in such simple toys. No iPad, no iPhone, just pure imagination and creativity.]
[Making a tough choice. Goldfish, butterfly or bunny?]
I finally went with the good old miniature bunny lantern, made with the most delicate cellophane sheets. It's going to look so pretty in the dark all lit up!
The weekend is never long enough, but I'm going to be staring at this cute lantern for the coming week, looking forward to Mid Autumn fun next weekend. :) | <urn:uuid:2d8ed967-e4cd-4a8e-ad9b-81068804138c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blushandbrunch.com/2012/09/light-up-with-lanterns.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942924 | 348 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Here’s a statistic that may surprise you, especially given today’s economic climate: in 25% of households, women are earning more than their male counter-parts. This could also be especially due to today’s economy given that the men in these households may be out of work while their wives and partners remain employed. According to a New York Times study done early in the recession, as companies from Citibank to GM announced massive layoffs, 82 percent of the people getting laid off have been men. It won’t be long before women become the majority of the American workforce. And the pendulum is swinging again, re-writing gender roles and our relationship to money.
Typically, as men have been the breadwinners, they find themselves more defined by money and their earning power. But as the statistics above show, we need to change the way we look at male-female power dynamics. We need a new way to navigate the shift in power due to male-female role reversal and the resulting power dynamic that now faces both couples and singles.
Finances have long been at the root of much relational difficulty, and with this shift, it’s becoming even more important to identify your money patterns and define what areas of your relationship tend toward Financial Infidelity. This is a form of cheating that’s often so subtle, people don’t know they’re engaging in it, yet it can be just as devastating as a physical affair.
In my book, Financial Infidelity, I define this type of infidelity as going behind your partner’s back when it comes to your finances. What this looks like in practice varies for each couple; for couples who are on a tight budget it can mean withdrawing $20 extra at the grocery store and using it for something personal. Or it can be as dramatic as not telling your significant other about a work bonus with the idea of keeping it for yourself. I call this the “money mistress.”
Of course there are many other ways this can manifest itself and a lot of it has to do with how our relationships toward money were cultivated in our early years. This is where what I call “Financial Imago” comes in. “Imago” is a term that references the unconscious image you’ve created which defines the type of partner you’re looking for.
Coined by Harville Hendrix, the term is the Latin word for “image.” As you transition through life changes with your significant other, a big part of making that transition successfully comes from the way you deal with financial stressors as a couple. In order to do this, you have to understand the ways you’re both prone to deal with money – and you have to have a road map for how you WANT to deal with money.
To do this successfully, I suggest engaging in Smart Heart Dialogue. with my patients, the power of non-judgmental communication, or what I call “Smart Heart Dialogue.” This type of communication is even more important now, when egos are fragile, stress abounds, and tempers are short. It’s important that each person give the other a place in which they can be honest and – just as importantly – a place where each person knows the other is going to take their honesty to heart. What good is a conversation if no change comes from the concerns voiced?
But as with any significant change – whether culturally or within your own relationship – tradition, habits and patterns are heard to break so be sensitive and tread lightly.
For more about Imago and the other techniques mentioned in this article, visit http://www.doctorbonnie.com.
Also be sure to catch Dr. Bonnie’s advice on the Today Show: | <urn:uuid:e992290a-3749-4390-9c22-bc548476e963> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://doctorbonnie.com/?p=571 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965733 | 783 | 1.59375 | 2 |
May 3, 2000
The Rt. Hon. Donald McKinnon
The Commonwealth Secretariat
Pall Mall, London
VIA FAX: +44.20.7839.9081
Dear Mr. McKinnon,
On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express its concerns about press freedom violations in Malaysia and Sierra Leone, which have been Commonwealth member states since 1957 and 1961, respectively. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that the leaders of these Commonwealth countries rank among CPJ's "10 worst enemies of the press" for 2000.
Last year, Sierra Leone became the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, with a total of 10 journalists killed in the line of duty. Throughout the country's eight-year civil war, rebel leader Foday Sankoh and his Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels viewed journalists as enemies. When RUF forces invaded the capital Freetown in January 1999, rebels executed at least eight journalists, some along with their families. The offices of several news organizations were also destroyed.
Sierra Leone's elected government has also repeatedly infringed on journalists' rights to reports the news. Of the ten journalists killed in Sierra Leone last year, one died after being denied medical treatment while in government custody. In August 1999, the authorities tabled a new bill to regulate print media, which contained a proposal for a three-member media council, appointed by the president, with powers to suspend or revoke media licenses as well as impose heavy fines for alleged "press crimes."
In Malaysia, the draconian Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984, which requires all publications to obtain licenses that can be revoked at will by the Minister for Home Affairs, remains a major obstacle to the full exercise of freedom of expression and the press. The minister's decisions to ban newspapers are final, and there is no judicial review.
This anti-media bill is often used by the dominant United Malay National Organization (UMNO) of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to suppress dissenting views. For Malaysian readers of the mainstream press, the result is a daily diet of self-censored news. UMNO and its allies in the ruling Barisan National coalition directly own or control all major newspapers, radio and television stations, making it virtually impossible for alternative voices to reach the public.
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is also one of CPJ's "ten worst enemies of the press" as his government continues to display total contempt for Malaysia's small opposition media. Five newspapers were threatened with closure last year. The most popular of these, Harakah, was restricted to publishing only twice monthly-and its editor and publisher were arrested on sedition charges. Recently, Malaysian authorities warned that they "may have to be given the right to enforce regulations on the contents of the Internet."
While 1999 marked a milestone in Commonwealth history as the organization turned 50, it was one the gloomiest years for freedom of expression and the press, two of the most vital benchmarks of democracy. CPJ urges you to consider the press freedom records of Commonwealth member states in determining whether a particular country should remain a member in good standing. We also urge you to ensure that the 1971 Singapore Declaration of Principles and the 1991 Harare Declaration, which both emphasize the inviolability of press freedom, are upheld and honored by all Commonwealth member states.
We await your comments on this important matter.
Ann K. Cooper | <urn:uuid:73eeb829-5070-42f5-b074-e2e5480d90fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cpj.org/2000/05/commonwealth-cpj-protests-conditions-in-sierra-leo.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95546 | 713 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The October issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal (http://www.ddj.com/) contains an
article by me, "Implementing operator->* for Smart Pointers." I just
received my issue in the mail today, so it should be generally available
now or quite soon. This is the introductory paragraph:
When I wrote More Effective C++ in 1995, one of the topics I examined was
smart pointers. As a result, I get a fair number of questions about them,
and one of the most interesting recent questions came from Andrei
Alexandrescu. He asked, "Shouldn't a really smart smart pointer overload
operator->*? I've never seen it done." I hadn't seen it done, either, so
I set out to do it. The result is instructive, I think, and for more than
just operator->*; it also involves insights into interesting and useful
applications of templates.
I wasn't thrilled when DDJ insisted on moving all my code examples into
separate listings, because I think it makes the article harder to read.
At some point in the future, I hope to make an HTML version of the article
available at my web site, and that version of the article would have the
code examples mixed in with the descriptive text (which is how I originally
wrote the article). If/when such a version is available, I'll let you
I hope you like the article. | <urn:uuid:9cdb86d3-9bff-47ac-913d-d0f05169a91b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/1999/09/my-ddj-article-on-operator.html | 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 | 0.939939 | 307 | 1.625 | 2 |
In a little-noticed speech on Friday, the NYT's Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president for digital operations, laid out a bold and disturbing new plan for the company's future -- one that involves the NYT leveraging every bit of information about its readers it can get its hands on.
Nisenholtz's remarks -- delivered at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and transcribed by Paid Content -- made clear that as the NYT moves toward a paid website model, it also plans to use personal data about its readers to transform the user experience.
Nisenholtz declared that the future of the NYT lays in "the emotional connection that our users have with us" -- a relationship he described as "the essential moat around which our defenses are based."
In other words, it's the information that the NYT has about you, the users of its website -- gathered as part of a registration process it began when it launched nytimes.com in 1996, with more personal data to come when we all start paying -- that will enable the paper to transform a reader's use of the site into an interactive experience.
Armed with personal data about you, the website will one day perhaps answer your questions, offer you games, connect you to other readers, or send advertising your way -- just as Facebook has so successfully begun to do.
Nisenholtz revealed that Sheryl Sandberg, the number-two executive at Facebook -- and who he described as "the Queen of user engagement" -- visited the NYT heaquarters a few weeks ago for meetings to discuss Facebook's success in connecting with its 400 million worldwide users.
It's clear that Nisenholtz has become obsessed with Facebook's success at establishing the power of identity. To Nisenholtz, the Facebook phenomenon represents a fundamental shift from the anonymity that has dominated the Internet for much of its early history.
"Identity is, in my view, a fundamental building block for engagement," Nisenholtz said. "I think Facebook has now proven it to be true."
Nisenholtz's speech suggests a future in which the NYT readers become, more than ever before, a basic part of the paper's portfolio -- meaning the eventual impossibility of privacy for anyone who logs onto the NYT website.
Naturally, Nisenholtz paints a rosy picture of an "interactive" future modeled on Facebook -- but his words carry an ominous tone that suggests that NYT readers may one day be bombarded with advertising and emails aimed directly at them. That "interactive" aspect will be based on their usage of the site, with no mention of privacy protections.
"I’ve always thought that among our most leverageable assets is our audience," Niesenholtz said. "I’m referring to our audience as knowledgeable participants in the life of our web site. This creates the essential emotional bond that will lead to real engagement in an interactive setting.... We couldn’t scale it, but Facebook has."
Nisenholtz seems infatuated with all aspects of Facebook, which he described as "an exercise of one's ego online."
"As I’m sure you all know, the usage statistics on Facebook are off the charts," the NYT's digital chief nearly drooled to the Wharton audience, "in part, because of real identity, the exercise of oneself in the digital realm."
And in case there's any confusion, Nisenholtz doesn't just mean the value of Facebook knowing your name and email address. He means the fact that Facebook knows "a lot" about you -- where you live, who your friends are, where you went to school, where you work, and to which groups you belong.
"At the heart of this kind of knowledge sharing is identity," Nisenholtz explained. "I don’t just mean real names, although that helps. I mean a track record based on a lot of input." (Emphasis ours.)
Nisenholtz noted that the NYT's acquisition in 1999 of Abuzz -- a Massachusetts-based software maker that was supposed to help the paper connect information to readers -- didn't quite accomplish its mission.
"We couldn't scale" the emotional connection between readers and the NYT with Abuzz, Nisenholtz said. "But Facebook has."
The core message of Nisenholtz's remarks seemed to be that the financially-strapped NYT needs an interactive network with its readers to survive.
"A site like nytimes.com must fully transform from a broadcast news experience, to an interactive network," he declared. "It must transition from being on the web, to being of the web."
Of course, Nisenholtz couched his plans in the context of information sharing, and the idea that readers will benefit from sharing knowledge with the NYT that serves their interests.
But the senior NYT executive's fascination with "fun" social-media sites like FourSquare -- built around the idea of knowing exactly who its members are, where they are, and what they're consuming -- suggest a more troubling dimension to all this interactivity, and what it means for user privacy.
In other words, do you like the idea of the NYT knowing where you're having dinner?
That isn't Nisenholtz's plan, of course. He envisions a user-friendly relationship that services the NYT reader, by providing content in bold new ways.
But it's hard to misread these concluding words from Nisenholtz's speech on Friday:
"We have an opportunity to redefine the essential relationship that we have with our users—and change the contract we have with them—from one that is loose, free and casual, to one of real emotional commitment."
Is the NYT reader ready for an emotional commitment to the NYT? One that involves giving up the "loose, free and casual" nature of its relationship to date?
Nisenholtz apparently thinks so. We're not so sure. | <urn:uuid:2dcc7d9a-e0e4-4911-a068-78eccb881e03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nytpick.com/2010/05/brave-new-world-top-nyt-executive.html?showComment=1272899628120 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962187 | 1,235 | 1.65625 | 2 |
CHESTERFIELD, N.H. -- A 300-acre swath of land in Chesterfield was recently conserved and set aside for timber harvesting and recreational uses.
"This property can draw recreationists from beyond the region," said Ryan Owens, the executive director of the Monadnock Conservancy in Keene. "It's a great place to go for a hike."
Most importantly, he said, the conservation easement protects the headwaters of the California Brook, a major tributary of the Ashuelot River.
The parcel, formerly known as the Colony property, is now part of the 3,500-acre California Brook Natural Area and includes 30 acres of wetlands and a small heron rookery, as well as mature stands of hemlock and hardwood timber.
Now known as the California Brook Headwaters, the easement greatly expands the Conservancy's efforts to establish a protected greenway corridor between Keene and Pisgah State Park.
"This is the centerpiece of a project that began in the late 1990s," said Tom Duston, chairman of the Chesterfield Conservation Committee.
The Colony property had been in the Colony family of Harrisville since about 1904, he said.
The parcel, now owned by Forecastle Timber, is less than a mile south of Route 9, on the border of Keene and Chesterfield, and is accessed by Lincoln Road or Atherton Hill Road.
While the property doesn't border Pisgah State Park, the Conservancy is currently working on an easement on the Yankee Arrowhead property,
The easements are all part of a grander project creating a trail network in the Monadnock Region, said Owens.
"We've been working on it for years and we will continue to work on it," said Owens. "This property fits a pretty key gap in that corridor."
On Oct. 20, there will be an official opening of a trail connecting the Horatio Colony Preserve on Daniels Hill Road in Keene with Pisgah State Park, said Duston. The trail is on land that has been preserved in Keene, Swanzey and Chesterfield and on several Class 6 roads, he said.
Using that trail and the recently completed trail between Mount Wantastiquet, in Hinsdale, and Pisgah, a hiker could conceivably walk between Keene and Brattleboro in a day or two.
The walk from Keene to Pisgah is a nice level hike, said Duston, but between Pisgah and Hinsdale there are some significant "ups and downs."
"The trail is on almost all preserved lands with a couple of small private parcels," he said.
The Colony property is the second easement Forecastle has negotiated with the Conservancy. In 2006, it sold the easement on a property that borders Swanzey just south of the Headwaters parcel.
Phil Blake, a partner in Forecastle Timber, said he bought the two properties mainly as an investment interest.
"But my partner and I really appreciate and enjoy the beauty of the forests in New Hampshire," he said, from his office in Wisconsin.
Blake said he visits New Hampshire on a regular basis, especially to hike around the countryside.
He was particularly enchanted by the two parcels his company purchased in Chesterfield.
"It's really very pretty," said Blake.
A forester is in the process of creating a management plan for the parcel, which will dictate the harvesting schedule, he said.
"He'll do an inventory and based on that we'll project timber stand by timber stand what makes sense going forward," said Blake.
The land also will remain open for hunting, he said.
"We have no problem with uses that don't detract from the quality of the land and the timber," said Blake.
Soon, said Owens, people will be able to hike or ski between Brattleboro and Mount Monadnock.
Purchase of easements by the Conservancy is part of a plan that includes the proposed Wantastiquet to Monadnock Trail and the Metacomet-Monadnock-Sunapee-Mattabesett Trail.
"The Wantastiquet to Monadnock Trail is part of a greater vision that is still some years to fruition and the Keene to Monadnock trail is going to take more work," said Owens. "It's primarily working with landowners, but to pull it off it requires the support, both financially and politically, of the community."
Over its 23 years, the Monadnock Conservancy has protected about 17,000 acres in 35 towns between the Connecticut River to the eastern side of Mount Monadnock.
Forecastle and the Conservancy worked with a a diverse set of supporters to accomplish the Colony easement, including the town of Chesterfield, which appropriated $100,000 from its Conservation Fund for the easement purchase.
"When lands go out of current use, for example when a farm is sold for development, 10 percent of the new value of the property goes into the town's conservation fund," said Duston.
In addition, the N.H. Department of Environmental Services' Aquatic Resource Mitigation grant fund, an anonymous family foundation and the N.H. Land and Community Heritage Investment Program assisted in the process.
Transaction funding for the project was provided by the Quabbin to Cardigan Partnership, a public/private effort to protect the Monadnock Highlands of western New Hampshire and north central Massachusetts.
To learn more about the Quabbin to Cardigan Partnership , visit ww.q2cpartnership.org.
For more information on the conservancy, call 603-357-0600 or visit www.MonadnockConservancy.org.
Bob Audette can be reached at [email protected], or at 802-254-2311, ext. 160. Follow Bob on Twitter @audette.reformer. | <urn:uuid:4fda7fb4-ef4c-4e74-bf6a-9cc8c51fb193> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reformer.com/ci_21333009/conservation-area-increases-by-300-acres?source=most_emailed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958035 | 1,245 | 1.65625 | 2 |
CounterPunch, November 7, 2011
In the struggle against global laissez faire capitalism that has brought the current economic collapse, protesters won an important victory last week in Britain, while stalemate continued in Greece. The alliance between the church, the main financial district called the City of London and Mayor Boris Johnson against the Occupy London protest crumbled. They had threatened legal action to remove peaceful demonstrators occupying an area near the London Stock Exchange for several weeks.
Legal moves against the protesters might lead to police action and violence. In particular, the readiness of St Paul’s Cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of London, to go to High Court split the church. Senior priests began to resign, signaling a crisis for the British establishment. Facing a growing sense of disquiet over possible use of force to remove peaceful demonstrators, the Corporation of London and St Paul’s Cathedral dropped the threat of immediate legal action.
In Greece, Prime Minister George Papandreou threw down the gauntlet to the two most powerful member-states of the European Union––Germany and France. To salvage the Greek economy and the European currency, they had agreed to finance a huge rescue plan, involving the International Monetary Fund and other sources, only days before. In the face of widespread demonstrations against draconian cuts in wages and public services, and rumors of a possible military coup, the Greek prime minister announced a referendum on the European Union rescue package.
Initially, the Greek cabinet gave its backing to the referendum plan, but the leaders of other EU member-states were furious. Deep political splits began to appear in Greece’s body politic. Germany and France have a lot to lose if Greece should default on its massive debt. Any government in Athens must have the people’s mandate to implement draconian austerity measures. Already, Greek people have started to take matters in own their hands.
Timing was of essence for Prime Minister Papandreou. First he agreed on a mega rescue deal with other European partners. When such a deal looked certain, he returned home and announced his referendum plan. European leaders, opposition politicians in Greece, even in his own Socialist Party, were surprised and angry. What might have been a straightforward move to secure a people’s mandate, if the timing was right, seemed to be an opportunistic attempt to save his government.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, leading paymaster of the euro bailout package, bluntly told Papandreou to accept the rescue deal with all conditions attached––or get out. Such warnings were bound to cause widespread offense in Greece, not least because the country had been under German occupation during the Second War. At the G20 summit in the French Mediterranean city of Cannes, European leaders waited to welcome the Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, hoping that China would contribute to the euro bailout.
Hu’s response: “To resolve the eurozone’s debt crisis, Europe still needs to rely on itself.” The Chinese are shrewd investors.
How did we get to this point? The question is posed frequently, though rarely answered truthfully.
The current globalization phase, beginning at the end of the Cold War around 1990, extended the markets across state boundaries. The movement of money, goods and services on a massive scale across national boundaries required regulations, but they also had to be relaxed in ways not seen before, to facilitate the ease of transfer. The Nobel Prize winning Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz points out that the ‘driver’ behind this phase of globalization is corporate interests.
Many transnational corporations are bigger than most national economies. Powerful corporations export not only goods and services, but also a certain culture of borrowing, cheap labor and money. Corporate interests are fundamentally linked to consumption, for profits are driven by consumption.
Corporate investments have flown to destinations of cheap labor and weak unions––China and Southeast Asia, India, Turkey, Southern European countries and South America. Factories in the United States and Western Europe have closed, new plants have spread in Asia and South America. Acceleration in this phenomenon in the last two decades has resulted in massive job losses in the industrialized world. Most products bought by Western consumers now come from the emerging economies.
Corporate profits have steadily grown, but the overall purchasing power of Western consumers has declined to alarming levels, caused by rising unemployment and shrinking incomes of those still in work. Government revenues, too, have been declining in the West, which has demonstrated a propensity to spend enormous sums of money on wars abroad and to cut public services at home.
For too long, consumers and governments tried to maintain the status quo by borrowing money at artificially low interest rates and cheap goods manufactured abroad. Loans secured on the real state to finance the lifestyle in the West sent property prices sky high. The crash had to come.
The case of the Greek tragedy is stark, but Greece is not alone. For a long time, its people have not been paying taxes they should have been paying. The country has been borrowing to maintain living standards, pay wages of government employees, to hold events like the Athens Olympics in 2004. The party had to be over one day–and that day has come. Less than a quarter century after long celebrations of victory over communism began in the West, capitalism has flopped. | <urn:uuid:7cb9b56e-1629-44d0-8215-cbf24aa77954> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://deepaktripathi.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964153 | 1,076 | 1.601563 | 2 |
LAUGHTER definitely is the BEST MEDICINE
Susan Brown, a member of the World Laughter Movement, has a passion for sharing laughter with ´The World´ and is currently on a world crusade promoting laughter along with its health benefits.
Recently, she was awarded International Laughter Ambassador by Dr. Madan Kataria, from India (the Giggling Guru) himself, for her contribution in sharing the amazing benefits of laughter with the world. Dr. Kataria, pioneered ‘laughter yoga’ in 1995 and in 2004, trained Susan to teach others to use these UNIQUE TECHNIQUES on how to laugh WITHOUT JOKES or HUMOUR or even if you don’t feel like laughing…….(we fake ‘it’ till we make ‘it’)…because the brain doesn’t distinguish the difference….the results are the same..
Susan believes that the whole world needs “lightening-up” as there is so much depression and stress persistently in our lives. It effects all ages. All walks of life. laughter brings harmony and joy to ALL who are willing to allow themselves to laugh and the results of ´ laughter ´ are astounding.
2009 AIM International Womens Day Debate Second negative speaker: Sue Brown, Director of Lets Laugh Debating “that youth and exuberance outmanage maturity and savvy”
Check out some of our Laughter Club images here.[singlepic=38,320,240,,right]
Research indicates that laughter produces natural killer cells which ´eat tumors´ and that 20 seconds of laughter equals one minute of rowing. Laughter and sex are the two things that gives our body a total jogging inside… an euphoria which effects the whole body in a most positive way..
Susan believes that through laughter …you can clear a path to open up the “joy in you”…so your life becomes so much more happier. “When you´re laughing, you actually set off this euphoria in your whole body” Susan said. “You´re unable to think of the past or the future. You are totally focused in THE MOMENT. At first, people are a little intimidated but once they get started they don’t want to stop…because laughter is so contagious.
Susan started her ´ laughter movement´ February 2003 after war broke out. “There was so much ´fear´ in the air that I decided to change it so people could get harmony to embrace their ‘joy’ and enjoy life”. There are thousands of ‘laughter clubs’ throughout the world and is spreading to more and more countries at a rapid rate.
As laughter becomes more and more popular Susan is noticing how accepting it is becoming.
LAUGHTER CAN HELP YOU
- privately….….for ‘one on one’ consultations
- as an ice breaker for special events.
- key speaker to energize corporate events
- council our kids who have suicidal tendencies who have lost direction and feel worthless
- educate at schools & colleges to make learning ‘FUN’
- entertain at private ‘laughter parties’ for social functions.
- brighten and energize the ‘aged care’ program
- take laughter into our workplace for better communication and productivity
- invest in ’ Certified Laughter Training Courses’ so you can make laughter your business too..and/or enhance your existing business. (the more the merrier!)
- participate in ‘on-line laughter coaching’ program.
- share laughter at charities to help fun raising.
- ‘laugh in the park’ together for contagious, uniting group laughter
Susan even was asked to perform at a WAKE where everyone ´CELEBRATED´ the fun times they had had with their Dad.
“The energy was electric. “When everyone laughs together the energy is absolutely awesome. One feels so enthusiastic! It is through the EYE CONTACT that converts laughter into ´the real belly laugh´ and the laughter and energy just flows naturally and you laugh your blues away”.
Susan has released her first instructional CD guide on how to ‘add more laughter into your life’ WITHOUT JOKES along with the benefits of laughter to the body, the brain and YOUR LIFE, entitled “Lets Laugh”.
We ALL have the gift of laughter within us…….it’s just we need to learn to
LET IT OUT more…… so we can receive the wonderful health benefits it gives us.
LAUGHTER IS TRULY OUR BEST MEDICINE! | <urn:uuid:d8bc45c3-9030-4c36-bc97-84c014d4e363> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://letslaugh.net/about-me/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944405 | 972 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Hiring Vets: The Golden Gate to a New Era
Posted by Paul Rieckhoff on October 5
“If you can save a life in Afghanistan, you can save a life in an ambulance in Wyoming. If you can oversee millions of dollars of assets in Iraq, you can help a business balance its books here at home,” President Obama said in August when announcing his veteran jobs initiative.
The President is absolutely right, the skills and experiences learned in the military by service members are assets that can benefit the civilian job market in a variety of ways. But still, the average unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans so far in 2011 still sits at an unacceptable 12.1 percent. Confusion over how to translate those military skills into descriptions civilian employers understand is part of the problem, as are misperceptions of who modern veterans are in the national consciousness.
The reality is that vets are hard-working, technologically-savvy leaders. This is something that forward-looking companies like Southwest Airlines, Bechtel and Tesla already understand. They are setting a trend by committing to hiring new veterans, strengthening their ranks for decades to come.
Since we can't rely on Washington alone to solve this veteran unemployment problem, we’re hitting the road, hosting Smart Job Fairs across the country. This is a part of our Clinton Global Initiative America jobs partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And San Francisco will host the first of these jobs fairs on Thursday, coinciding with Fleet Week.
This Smart Job Fair couldn’t come at a more crucial time for northern California vets. Local organizations, like Swords to Plowshares, Project Hired, the Salvation Army, Goodwill Industries and the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, will be there as well – showing Bay Area vets that they’ve got their back. This shows tremendous progress towards San Francisco’s goal to become “the most vet-friendly city in the country,” something former Mayor Gavin Newsom told me personally last year.
Veterans will attend the Smart Job Fair free of charge (they can register here) and will have access to top-of-the-line resources like resume reviews and interview skills workshops. They’ll also receive a certificate for business apparel to assist in their job hunt (enough for a free suit!). And employers will learn ways they can help bridge the military-civilian divide and hire the New Greatest Generation.
Events like these show what can happen when the private sector, government and nonprofits come together to get things done. More vets in the workplace means a stronger, more adaptable workforce – and a stronger, more adaptable America.
A Golden Gate to a new era, starting in San Francisco.
Paul Rieckhoff is the Founder and Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and the author of Chasing Ghosts.
IAVA has helped thousands of veterans. Here are some of their stories:
On Sunday, March 18th, IAVA Founder and Executive Director Paul Rieckhoff and…
On August 5th, IAVA Member Veterans joined President Obama at the Navy Yard… | <urn:uuid:6fa389c5-1aed-4695-8a55-185e778961f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://iava.org/blog/hiring-vets-golden-gate-new-era | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941244 | 649 | 1.71875 | 2 |
My friend told me that you could create games in blender and it has an game engine in it. Now I want to do some simple things with blender such as rolling ball, the topic now in this question. ...
How can I speed up hobbyist animation-rendering project? It would be cool to see things faster, I use tools such as Blender. | <urn:uuid:1cc130ce-6299-4743-908d-8dd082287ee4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://avp.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blender+linux | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969932 | 74 | 1.5 | 2 |
WHO WE ARE
The Pipeline Crisis initiative is a collaborative of private sector participants, working in partnership with non-profit and social service professionals, academicians, philanthropic organizations and government to improve opportunities for young Black men by addressing the social and economic obstacles to their success.
- Our Approach To These Problems Is Three-Fold
- Program Development And Support
- Research & Identification Of Winning Strategies
First, we think “winning strategies” are proven strategies, so our policy and program initiatives must be grounded in evidence.
Second, we are not social scientists, and we will not seek to displace or duplicate work already done by experts and professionals in these fields, many of whom have joined us in our efforts.
Third, we have resisted the call to narrow our focus and search for the “silver bullet”. The problems confronting young Black men are too complex to succumb to a single solution.
Fourth, we have not chosen between a local or national focus. Our natural center of gravity is New York, and there are serious challenges here. Local solutions, however, can be applied to national problems, and national problems are often played out on the local level. | <urn:uuid:86100027-eafa-4cc2-bf4f-0dd5c5aec338> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pipelinecrisis.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940345 | 240 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Video: Nug Pushes the Boundary Between Vandalism and Abstract Expressionism
This article was posted by Senior Editor 1 year, 2 months, 4 weeks, 1 day, 18 hours, 57 minutes ago.
Nug’s gestures in his latest video are primarily contained to canvas. But that wasn’t the case in his more widely known video video from 2008 “Territorial Pissing” posted below.
Tell ‘em Wikipedia:
Nug is a Swedish graffiti artist. He has been active in the Stockholm area and been called one of the worst Graffiti vandals in Sweden but his works have also been shown at places like the art fair Market.
Nug studied art at the art college Konstfack where he earned a Master of Arts degree in 2008. His degree project, presented in 2008, was called “Territorial Pissing”, a film showing a masked man spraying a subway car and the stockholm station entrance, where he broke in to make one of the scenes in “Territorial Pissing”. The project attracted attention when it was exhibited by an art gallery in February 2009, and led to widespread criticism of Konstfack. The criminal investigation against Nug was dropped in April 2009 because it was not clear if he is the masked man in the film.
Konstfack has stated that regardless of the criminal nature of the project, basic administrative law regulations do not permit his degree to be revoked but the school is investigating if they made any errors when they let him use this work for graduation. | <urn:uuid:5a5e9cb1-09c2-4b78-9964-1adcc5152a8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.12ozprophet.com/news/video-nug-pushes-the-boundary-between-vandalism-and-abstract-expressionism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97401 | 328 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Recently I came upon a problem, which you guys must have already faced with is embedding a flash movie on to your site while supporting the web standards. While validating the site I got 7 validation errors and all of them was because I had embedded a Flash Movie to my site.
While searching for the fix, I came on to http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay/ whose solution really worked fine for me and I am really thankful to them. The solution is real easy and you can try for yourself following the steps mentioned below.
- First of all create a container flash file, exactly of the same height and width for the movie file you want to embed on your site. For example, if you want to embed a flash banner to your site and its width is 400px and height is 250px, your container movie’s width and height would be of 400px and 250px, respectively.Name the file c.fla. You can name it something else too; just for my convenience I am naming it c.fla
- on the first frame of the movie c.fla, write a script for calling your flash movie on to it, which will be something like the below:
where banner.swf is your flash movie that you want to embed on your site.
- Now publish your container movie which in my case will be c.swf
- Now search for your flash embedded code that will be similar to the following:
- Now we will edit this code a little so that we get our desired result. Search for the code written between the <object>…</object> tags, which will be similar to-
- Edit the code to be something like below:
- Be sure to remove the <embed> … </embed> tags and whatever is between them. Your final code should be something like the below mentioned:
- Now you are ready to publish your site. Save the file and upload it along with the container movie that you created, in this case c.swf
- Check for validation. | <urn:uuid:3ee1ecc7-c0e8-406d-b949-00bcffa78f99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bikasnath.com/?tag=web-standards | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933754 | 429 | 1.796875 | 2 |
There are a number of ways to brew with actual coffee:
- Add hot or cold brewed coffee to the beer
- Soak coffee grounds in the beer (usually at flameout, or in secondary)
For both techniques the coffee can be added at various points in the brewing cycle: at the end of the boil, after fermentation has finished, or at bottling/kegging time.
Opinions vary on which method of extraction produces the best flavor. If you add grounds, I'd probably avoid mashing or boiling them and either add them at flameout, or in the fermenter. The advantage to adding them in the fermenter is you can taste the beer until it has the amount of coffee flavor you want, then rack it to another vessel or bottle it. If you brew the coffee, you can add a bit at a time and taste it until you have the amount you want.
I made a coffee porter by cold brewing about 20 oz of coffee (about 1/2 cup of ground coffee soaked in cold water for 36 hours) and adding it with the priming sugar at bottling time. The coffee flavor was noticeable but not overwhelming. Depending on the type of beer, more could be used. Head retention was not affected. | <urn:uuid:a2027b10-a6d2-4ff3-b1e6-79169e75daa7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://homebrew.stackexchange.com/questions/8000/most-feasible-method-to-add-grains-of-coffee-in-porter-style?answertab=votes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958569 | 256 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Pop open a bottle of your favorite spirits. It’s time to celebrate. Liquor sales rose by 4% last year, and growth was particularly strong in terms of exports of American spirits (up 16.5%) and sales in the pricey “super premium” category of vodka (up 15.9%). Liquor also posted slight gains in market share against beer, indicating that consumers feel good enough about the economy to splurge on upscale beverages.
When rough economic times arrive, consumers tend to scale back on all sorts of purchases, including big-ticket items like cars. At the same time, there’s a corresponding uptick in other purchases, such as fast food, lottery tickets, donuts, and condoms.
How does alcohol figure into the mix? By most accounts, during recessions, alcohol sales don’t suffer. After all, tough times unfortunately bring with them an excuse for some to turn to the bottle. But an economic downturn is usually accompanied by a shift in what kinds of booze people drink. For instance, while $20 and $30 bottles of wine were popular in the carefree pre-recession times when homes seemed to increase in value 20% annually, once the housing market collapsed and unemployment soared over 10%, the $9 to $12 bottle became the fastest-growing segment in the wine market.
The trend for cheaper mind-altering substances goes beyond alcohol. By some account, cocaine sales plummeted during the recession era because it was easier, and much less expensive, for addicts to turn to prescription drugs and other cheaper narcotics.
Using last year’s rise in liquor sales as an indicator, good times appear to be coming back. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) has just released 2011 sales data, and consumers seem to now have more money to spend on quality hooch.
Last year, liquor sales hit $19.9 billion, up 4% from 2010. Top-shelf brands performed particularly well, rising 8.9% as a group, with revenues increasing 15.9% for “super premium” vodkas and 11.4% for top-quality bourbons and whiskeys.
David Ozgo, chief economist for DISCUS, says that the rebound constitutes “a classic pattern we see during a recovery.” Speaking with the San Francisco Chronicle, he explained:
“During a recession, we see consumers go to value brands,” he said, adding that even though the employment rate is still lagging, people are feeling more confident and are willing to spend.
The broad shift from cheapo to top-shelf liquor, then, bodes well not only for bars, liquor stores, and spirits manufacturers, but for the economy as a whole. | <urn:uuid:22ec14ab-6e07-4b64-9536-0653e57e3741> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://business.time.com/2012/01/31/cheers-increase-in-liquor-sales-bodes-well-for-economic-recovery/ | 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 | 0.954533 | 573 | 1.570313 | 2 |
19 tourists killed in Egyptian hot air balloon crash
A hot air balloon has exploded and plunged to Earth at Egypt's ancient temple city of Luxor during a sunrise flight, killing up to 19 tourists.
The balloon carrying 21 people was flying at 300 metres when it caught fire, a security official said.
Security services cordoned off the scene of the crash in Luxor's dense sugar cane fields, as police and residents inspected the charred remains of the balloon.
The balloon had been floating over the west bank of Luxor, one of Egypt's most renowned archaeological sites and home to the famous Valley of the Kings and the grand Temple of Hatshepsut, when it exploded.
An Egyptian security official said 19 tourists from Hong Kong, Japan, Britain, France and Hungary had died in the crash.
An employee at the company operating the balloon, Sky Cruise, said the pilot and one tourist survived by jumping out of the basket before it hit the ground.
Both were taken to hospital.
"This is terrible, just terrible," the employee said, declining to give her name.
"We don't yet know what happened exactly or what went wrong."
Luxor governor Ezzat Saad imposed an immediate ban on all hot air balloon flights in the province as prime minister Hesham Qandeel ordered an investigation into the accident.
Two French tourists were confirmed dead, the French foreign ministry said.
"I can confirm that sadly two of our citizens died in this accident," French foreign ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said in Paris.
"We are in contact with their families."
A British tour company said that two of its guests had also died in the crash.
"We can confirm that two of our guests are in local hospitals, but tragically two of our guests have died in the hot air balloon incident in Luxor, Egypt this morning," the company said in a statement.
The British Foreign Office would not confirm the death toll, saying only that "we believe a small number of British nationals are involved in an incident in Luxor this morning", and that consular staff were offering assistance.
Nine people from Hong Kong and two Japanese were thought to be among those killed.
"We believe that there is a high possibility that nine of our customers have died," said Raymond Ng, general manager of travel agency Kuoni, which organised the Hong Kong tourists' tour.
The five women and four men were aged between 33 and 62, Mr Ng told a news conference in Hong Kong.
He said their relatives were to fly to Cairo, accompanied by three Kuoni staff.
The Japanese embassy in Cairo said it was trying to confirm the reports that Japanese nationals died in the accident.
In 2009, 13 foreign tourists were injured when their hot air balloon hit a phone mast and crashed at Luxor.
Sources at the time said the balloon was overcrowded.
The crash comes amid widespread anger over safety standards in Egypt following several deadly transport and construction accidents. | <urn:uuid:bc5d196e-5fcd-4316-a59e-c38b5e0a2099> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-26/19-tourists-killed-in-egyptian-hot-air-balloon-crash/4541394 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982576 | 609 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Detroit Finds Small Is Beautiful as Compact Buyers Return
When the engine blew on his eight- year-old Toyota Matrix last year, Shane Wilson needed a new car fast and wanted something good on gas. He shopped the usual suspects: small Honda and Toyota models he’d owned in the past. Then he surprised himself by buying a Chevrolet Cruze.
“I thought American cars were pretty horrid and that they tended to fall apart,” said Wilson, 36, an accounts manager for the Internal Revenue Service in Seattle. “But the Cruze was fun to drive and the interior was light-years better than American cars used to be.”
Small cars, once the Achilles’ heel of U.S. automakers, are becoming a strength. Sales of General Motors Co. (GM)’s Chevy Cruze compact are up 10 percent this year, while Ford Motor Co. (F)’s Focus compact sales have soared 90 percent. Last year, GM, Ford and Chrysler Group LLC’s share of the compact and subcompact market in the U.S. rose to a four-year high of 26 percent, from 20 percent in 2010, according to researcher LMC Automotive.
After losing a generation of car buyers to Japanese automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp. (7203), U.S.-based companies are building their comebacks on cars they once dismissed and discounted in favor of high-profit sport-utility vehicles. Small cars from Detroit are no longer utilitarian econoboxes. They have high style and high-tech features, such as voice-activated stereos, previously found only on bigger, more expensive models.
“Remember when smaller cars used to be cheap and cheerful?” Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally asked reporters March 6 at the Geneva motor show. “Now the consumers want the finest quality, the finest fuel efficiency, safety and design.”
While SUVs and pickups still have higher profit margins, Detroit has discovered that small cars are the foundation of a successful automaker. Since compacts are often a buyer’s first car, they represent the initial step in building brand loyalty. Toyota, Honda Motor Co. (7267) and other Japanese companies used small cars as their wedge into the U.S. market in the 1970s, while GM, Ford and Chrysler spent more development dollars on bigger models that burned more fuel.
The weakness of that strategy was exposed in 2008 when the average U.S. price of unleaded gasoline peaked at $4.11 a gallon. The lack of competitive compacts accelerated the collapse of U.S. automakers. Ford posted a record loss of $14.8 billion for 2008, and GM and Chrysler entered bankruptcy the following year.
“That was a defining moment for Detroit,” said Jessica Caldwell, director of industry analysis at auto researcher Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California. “That really pointed out the weaknesses in their small-car lineups and it hit home that they needed strong models throughout their portfolio.”
As U.S. fuel prices return to those levels, small-car sales are rising, too. Compacts and subcompacts will account for 19 percent of U.S. auto sales this year, up from 13 percent in 2005, LMC forecasts. Regular unleaded gasoline averaged $3.80 a gallon on March 11, up 8.3 percent from a month ago, according to AAA.
Without the Cruze and Sonic subcompact that have debuted over last two years, GM wouldn’t weather the rising gas prices as well, said Don Johnson, the automaker’s U.S. sales chief.
“We wouldn’t be in as good a shape as we are today,” Johnson told analysts and reporters on a March 6 conference call. “Cruze continues to be a more and more important part of our portfolio.”
U.S. automakers see rising fuel prices as an opportunity to poach car buyers from Toyota and Honda, which have just fully restocked showrooms after natural disasters in Asia cut inventory in 2011.
‘More Competitive Models’
“With more competitive models from the Detroit brands, they’re positioned to benefit from the rise in gas prices,” said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of forecasting at LMC in Troy, Michigan. “Who would have thought that?”
Some of Detroit’s competitors acknowledge the change.
“The steady increase in gas prices over the last few years has forced many competitors to finally get serious about cars again and, for the first time ever, some of them are bringing credible small cars to market,” John Mendel, executive vice president of U.S. sales for Honda, said in an e-mail.
As car buyers return to showrooms, they’re finding significantly better fuel economy in the new models from U.S. automakers. The Cruze, Ford Focus and Fiesta are each rated to get 40 miles (64 kilometers) per gallon or better in highway driving.
“As fuel prices went higher in February, so too did small car sales,” said Erich Merkle, sales analyst for Ford, where Focus sales more than doubled last month.
Car dealer Gordon Stewart can’t keep a small car in stock at his four Chevrolet outlets and it reminds him of how models sell at his Toyota outlet.
“If I could get the inventory, I’d double my small-car sales tomorrow,” said Stewart, whose Gordon Stewart Chevrolet Inc. is based in Tampa, Florida, and who has Chevy stores in Georgia, Florida and Michigan and a Toyota showroom in Alabama. “People used to come in looking for the big SUV, but now I sell almost two cars for every truck. It’s much more like my Toyota store.”
The primary attribute of Chevy’s old Cavalier compact was its rock-bottom price, Stewart said. Now the Cruze and Sonic sell on style and performance.
“We sold the Cavalier in volume because of price,” Stewart said. “We’re selling the Cruze because the styling is so hot.”
Looking to Japanese
U.S. small cars still haven’t caught up to Japanese models in quality rankings. Japanese automakers held the top five spots last month in Consumer Reports automaker report cards, a measure of reliability, performance, comfort and utility. the publication selected Toyota models as the top pick in five of 10 categories, including family sedan (Camry hybrid) and green car (Prius).
“People still look to Japanese automakers when they shop for small cars,” said Edmunds’ Caldwell. “A Toyota Corolla is something they know.” The Corolla trails only Honda’s Civic as the top-selling compact in the U.S. so far this year.
Among U.S. automakers, Chrysler has the longest way to go to become competitive in small cars, Caldwell said. Next month, Chrysler begins producing the Dodge Dart compact, based on a design from Turin-based Fiat SpA (F), which controls the U.S. automaker. Sergio Marchionne, CEO of both companies, has called Chrysler’s current small car, the Dodge Caliber, an “abomination.”
Chrysler acknowledged it remains dependent on SUVs and light trucks in a March 6 regulatory filing.
Even with its recent small-car gains, Chrysler’s sales are dominated by sport-utility vehicles, pickups and larger minivans, the company said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company delivered 552,000 SUVs in the U.S. last year compared with 354,000 cars. It sold 244,000 pickups, compared with 52,000 small cars.
GM, Ford and Chrysler are steadily changing that equation, said LMC’s Schuster. They also are finding ways to make money on small cars, which were loss leaders before they cut costs and added features to justify increased prices.
“They’re getting the recipe right,” Schuster said. “It’s a night-and-day difference between where Detroit is today and where they were back in 2008 when rising gas prices caught them off-guard.”
New Cruze owner Wilson says he has been surprised by the 34 mpg he’s averaging and that for $15,096, he got a base-model small car with satellite radio, a six-speed manual transmission and a black-and-cream interior that looks “rich.”
No one was more surprised, though, than Wilson’s friends when he pulled up for the first time in an American small car.
“They were like, ‘Really, a Chevy?’” Wilson said. “Then some of them had a chance to drive it and they were like, ‘OK, this is pretty decent. This is not what we’re used to.’”
To contact the reporter on this story: Keith Naughton in Southfield, Michigan at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jamie Butters at [email protected]
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions. | <urn:uuid:e54ff1e3-5488-4261-bbc0-213f77dfa68b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-13/detroit-finds-small-is-beautiful-as-compact-buyers-return.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957521 | 2,013 | 1.5 | 2 |
God Kept His Promise
Long ago the prophet, God=s messenger Isaiah wrote: AWho has believed our report?@ He wrote when few people were listening to God=s Word. He wrote about the time when the Saviour would come. How did he know about the coming Saviour? God showed him what to write. He wrote about how the Saviour would have to suffer and bleed and die and rise again from the dead. Few people listened. Few people believed what Isaiah wrote. AWho has believed our report?@ The most important story in all the world, a true story and few believed it. Who has believed our report? (Have you?) Even though people didn=t believe, God still kept His Word. Just because people say they don=t believe God does not make God a liar. No, God is true. His Word is true. He cannot lie. AForever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.@ God=s Word is sure, unchanging, firm like a solid rock. Heaven and earth will pass away, but God=s word will remain the same forever and ever and ever. It pays to believe God=s Word. But Isaiah wrote: AWho has believed?@ (Have you?). In the fullness of time, the Bible tells us when the time was exactly rightBGod always know the right timeBwhen the time was exactly right, God sent His Son into the world. He caused Him to be born as a little baby. He named Him Jesus which means Saviour. Because few believed God=s report, few were expecting Him. But some did expect Him and to them He sent the Good News: AUnto you is born this day . . . a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.@ The shepherds came and believed. Wise men came later and believed. Wise men and women, wise boys and girls, still seek Him out and believe on Him. ANeither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.@ Do you believe God=s report? Have you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as your only God and Saviour from sin?
Part Two, Jesus Is Crucified
Part Three, The Lord Is Risen Indeed!
If I can be of help to you in knowing the Lord or if you would like to write me a note write to: | <urn:uuid:8f8d2470-524a-42d9-9a37-51fb40d92ebf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bibleline.org/easter-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974703 | 500 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Released: August 2, 2007
A Summer of Discontent with Washington
Clinton Widens Lead, Giuliani Slips
Summary of Findings
As official Washington winds down for its summer holiday, all three branches of government are coming under fire from the American public. Just 29% approve of the way President Bush is handling his job, and only slightly more, 33%, approve of the job performance of the Democratic leaders of Congress. Even the U.S. Supreme Court is not immune from the current round of public disaffection: The court’s favorable rating has fallen from 72% in January to 57% currently.
Opinion of all three institutions divides predictably along party lines — but even partisans offer comparatively modest support for both the President and the Democratic Congressional leadership. Bush’s approval rating stands at only 69% among Republicans and the Democratic leaders can claim just a 62% approval score among Democrats. In contrast, sizable majorities of independents disapprove of the job performance of the President and of Capitol Hill’s leadership.
Opinions about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are somewhat more positive than opinions of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The public divides about evenly on Pelosi: 35% approve of her job performance as Speaker, 37% disapprove and 28% cannot rate her. Reid is less well known and less well regarded — 21% approve of his performance as majority leader, 33% disapprove and 46% express no opinion.
The Democratic leadership is criticized as often by congressional critics for “not doing enough” as it is for “doing the wrong things.” Republicans cite the latter, while roughly equal proportions of political independents are concerned about one or the other. Democrats themselves criticize their leaders for not achieving enough.
While there is substantial criticism of the Democratic leadership, fully half of the public (50%) continues to say it is happy that the Democrats control Congress, according to the latest nationwide Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey of 1,503 randomly selected adults conducted July 25-29. But, as many as 60% had said they were happy with impending Democratic control of the Congress in November, following the midterm elections.
Declining contentment with Democratic control of Congress tracks with ebbing confidence that Democratic leaders will be successful in passing legislation. Right after the election, 59% of the public thought they would be successful in doing so. That percentage dipped to 54% in March, and stands at just 43% in the current poll.
The Supreme Court’s ratings have slumped across the board since January, but the declines have been greater among Democrats and independents than among Republicans, who still have largely positive views of that institution. Fewer than half of Democrats (48%) now say they have a positive opinion of the court, down from 67% in January. Ratings also fell among independents over this period (from 74% to 58%). Most Republicans continue to hold a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court — but it, too, has slipped since the beginning of the year (from 81% to 72%).
Slightly more than one-in-three (36%) Americans say that President Bush has made the Supreme Court more conservative through his appointments to the bench, but a 41% plurality believes that he has not changed the balance of the court. Opinion about the ideological composition of the courts is highly dependent on a citizen’s ideological perspective.
Most liberals (55%) see the current court as conservative, and most say Bush has moved it farther to the right. The other side sees it quite differently. Only 24% of conservatives themselves think the Court is conservative, and just 30% think the Bush appointments have made the court more conservative. Opinions of political moderates fall between these two extremes.
Campaign Backlash Brewing?
Fewer than one-in-three citizens (30%) have given a lot of thought to the candidates running for president. That percentage has not changed markedly in recent months even though a large share of the public says they been paying at least some attention to campaign news generally1 and to the televised debates, specifically.
A backlash to the campaign may be part of the reason why there has been little increase in the public’s consideration of the candidates, even as many people are being exposed to the race. When Pew’s respondents were asked to come up with one word to describe the campaign, 52% gave a negative answer, 19% a positive one, and 10% offered a neutral phrase. Too early was the most frequently volunteered negative phrase, followed by confusing and long. Interesting was the most-cited positive word or phrase, followed by okay.
Democrats are slightly more attentive to the presidential campaign, and more often say they have given a lot of thought to the candidates than do Republicans. They also are more positive about the campaign than are Republicans. GOP malaise over the campaign is underscored by the fact that equal proportions of independents and Republicans have given a lot of thought to the candidates, a change in the typical pattern that finds independents to be the least engaged in the presidential campaign.
Debates Well Regarded
Possible backlash notwithstanding, the new survey finds as many as 40% of respondents say they have seen any of the debates. This is twice the percentage that recalled watching a debate between presidential candidates in January 2004, significantly later in the campaign cycle. And the debates get good reviews: About two-thirds (66%) report that they have been helpful in deciding whom to support and 47% say they have been fun to watch. Many more Democrats than Republicans say the debates have been helpful (81% to 55%) and fun (58% to 41%.)
By four-to-one (68% to 17%) the American public prefers debates that have regular people asking questions of the candidates over debates with journalists asking the questions. While the recent CNN/YouTube-sponsored debate that featured self-recorded questions submitted over the internet garnered substantial attention, most Americans did not judge the debate as substantially better than others they have seen.
Clinton Widens Lead, Giuliani Slips
Hillary Clinton now holds a nearly two-to-one lead over Barack Obama. The current survey finds 40% of registered Democrats and independents who lean Democratic say they would most like to see her nominated as their party’s presidential candidate. Obama is the choice of 21% while Al Gore is favored by 12% and John Edwards by 11%. Pew’s April survey had found Clinton with a more modest 34% to 24% lead over the Illinois senator. Over this period, support for the former first lady has increased most among independent Democrats, liberals and moderates, college graduates, middle-aged and older voters.
On the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani remains the top choice for the presidential nomination among 27% of all registered Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. The poll finds 18% favoring Fred Thompson, 16% John McCain and 10% Mitt Romney. Since April, Giuliani support has declined (32% to 27%) as has McCain’s (23% to 16%) while Thompson has gained significantly (10% to 18%.). Thompson has caught up to Giuliani among independents who lean Republican, as Giuliani’s support has fallen by half. But Giuliani remains the frontrunner among those who identify as Republicans, with no overall change in his support since April.
Iraq Not Shaping Candidate Preferences–So Far
At this early stage in the campaign, the poll finds little connection between candidate preferences and opinions about Iraq. Republicans who say they want the next Republican president to take a different course on Iraq than President Bush’s have similar views about the Republican field as those who do not want change. On the Democratic side, those who want Democratic Congressional leaders to challenge Bush more on Iraq hold the same candidate preferences as those who do not favor a more aggressive approach.
Contention Continues Over Iraq
Opinions about the war in Iraq remain entrenched as Washington braces for a new round of reports on the war scheduled for release in early September. By 63% to 29% the public wants their congressional representative to vote for a bill that calls for withdrawal from Iraq next year. And there continues to be considerable public reluctance to compromise. On balance, supporters of a timeline say they want their representatives to insist on that position rather than working on a compromise with President Bush. Opponents of the timeline are equally adamant: Most do not want President Bush to compromise with Democratic leaders.
The poll finds little change in basic opinions about Iraq from earlier in the year: a 53% majority believes the U.S. made the wrong decision in going to war and 59% thinks the war is not going well. By a margin of 49% to 43% the public now concludes the U.S. will fail rather than succeed in achieving its goals in Iraq. Democrats and Republicans express fundamentally different opinions on all of these points, and political independents come closer to the views of Democrats than to Republicans.
Public confidence in the Iraqi government, already low in previous years, has continued to fall. Nearly nine-in-ten say the government of Iraq is doing only a fair job (44%) or a poor job (40%) of running the country. A majority of Americans now believe that the people of Iraq do not support America’s policies. | <urn:uuid:def4b68e-ca5d-422b-9410-39036b64c582> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.people-press.org/2007/08/02/a-summer-of-discontent-with-washington/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969157 | 1,883 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Sometimes reality has a way of getting in the way of your campaign promises.
Despite his earlier rhetoric about ending the conflicts initiated by George W. Bush, and just a couple of weeks after collecting his Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama gave the order for a military strike which was carried out against al-Qaeda terrorists in Yemen yesterday, in a major escalation of his administration’s campaign against that group. This according to a report by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman.
What the President is coming to realize after being in office for nearly a year, is that Islamic terrorists view him no differently than they did his predecessor; when they are routed from one place, they re-group, hydra-like, in another, and they are plotting, always plotting. Yesterday’s action against a pair of suspected al-Qaeda training camps, Goodman’s report continues, was an attempt to pre-empt “an imminent attack against a US asset [that] was being planned.”
If Goodman’s report is correct about Al-Qaeda’s plans for “an imminent attack,” then the President had no choice but to attack first.
Democracy Now!’s report glosses over that fact, and does not allude to the dangers of al-Qaeda’s regrouping in Yemen at all, in order to focus the bulk of its report on unsubstantiated claims of alleged civilian casualties in the operation. The important part of the story has become little more than a footnote, while the main focus becomes the typical attempt by that network to work an anti-American element into the piece, which by now has become an Amy Goodman/Democracy Now! trademark.
Quoting from an ABC News report which provided the bulk of Goodman’s source material, Democracy Now!’s version emphasized the supposed death toll of civilians, gleaned from information supplied either by al-Qaeda itself, or an anonymous “human rights activist in Yemen”:
A human rights activist in Yemen said twenty-three children and seventeen women were among the sixty-four people killed.
Goodman’s report almost leaves the reader with the impression that the main goal of the action taken by the United States was to hit as many civilian targets as possible. That type of reporting is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous.
Al-Qaeda has been re-grouping in Yemen since losing their bases in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, and it has been coordinating attacks against Yemen’s neighbors and its government.
Richard Barrett, the coordinator of the United Nations Taliban al-Qaeda Sanctions Monitoring Committee, concurs:
I think many of the key people have moved to Yemen. If they [al-Qaeda] can go to Yemen just as easily or easier and get training there and come out again, all your efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan are a waste of time.
That’s why we need to keep up the pressure, and that’s why we need to continue hitting al-Qaeda wherever they turn up.
And that’s what Goodman just doesn’t get.
- Home for the Holidays: Obama Frees 12 More Gitmo Terrorists
- Obama Fiddles While the Iranians Build the Bomb
- Americans Kill Bloodthirsty Savage; Amy Goodman Laments his "Assassination" | <urn:uuid:92e3ac30-7ae0-4572-9bd8-b80e12ba32a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frontpagemag.com/2009/claude-cartaginese/obama-opens-up-another-front/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974662 | 692 | 1.695313 | 2 |
|"Is it sawgger or just something else?"|
Swagger is the ability to walk into a room and captivate everyone in it without saying a word. Having the ability to raise eye brows from curious onlookers, get dap from cats for no apparent reason while women keep a close eye just because. It's an aire that can't be explained, you either have it or you don't. In sports they call it the "The It Factor".
It has nothing to do with your style of dress whether you wear suits, jeans or sweat suits. It comes down to the presence of a man. Now my problem is with people that use the term "Swagger" to describe cats that either don't have it or people that are on another level. There are three categories of men; Gimmicks, Swaggers and Role Players.
We don't have to spend much time on the gimmicks because they are just what it says. These are the guys that show up looking like their trying too hard to have some swagger. They aren't authentic because it comes across as being manufactured or fake. They're always dressed up in what I call a costume trying to look like someone famous that they saw on TV. For example, the millions of duns trying to look like Allen Iverson or dress like Kanye West or act like Jordan. Total Gimmicks!
Now the next two categories are very similar and if you aren't paying attention you'll confuse the two. They look the same, walk the same, come across the same way. They even smell the same bruh! However, the difference between the two is MONEY.
"Swaggers" are those guys that walk into a room and the atmosphere changes. Boyz are walking up to them and giving them all kinds of love whether they know them or not. Women want to know who they are and ask their friends or themselves, why don't I know him? They've got "The It Factor" straight up. A flair that can't be taught and everything about them is authentic, no gimmicks or costumes needed, they are the real deal. The question is, can you change the atmosphere in the room when nobody knows your name? That's "Swagger".
However, when you're worth several hundred million dollars, like some of these boyz are, it's not swagger at that point, it's money. Now they needed swagger to become the multimillionaire but at this point they've graduated to "Role Player" status.
When I hear women say that Barack's got swagger I laugh because he's the most powerful dun in the world. If you can't walk in the room and change the atmosphere with all of that power then you need to turn in your Role Player ID. So at this point I'll just hold on to all of this "Swagger" that I've got until graduation day!
Holla At Ya Boy!
Get @ me on Twitter:@jaygravesreport | <urn:uuid:b2113b9c-b704-45a2-84de-473e192aa288> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.barbershopsports.net/2011/04/real-definition-of-swagger.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973007 | 618 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Media Contact: Jan Wenzel, 874-2116
Visiting lecturer to speak at URI
on personal identity in multi-national,
KINGSTON, R.I. -- November 13, 2002 -- A visiting scholar to the University of Rhode Island will explore the complexities of a personal sense of identity in families of multi-national, and multi-language background, as well as the sense of being a member of a minority in various majority cultures.
Joseph "Pepe" Schraibman, a distinguished scholar of Cuban and Latin American Jewish culture at Washington University in St. Louis, will speak at URIs Multicultural Center on Monday, Dec. 2 at 3:30 p.m. His talk is free and open to the public.
Schraibman was born in Cuba into a Central European Ashkenazi Jewish family whose first language was Yiddish, not Spanish. The family emigrated to the U. S. in the late 1940s. His rich family history has given Schraibman a complex sense of personal identity in which European/Latin American/ and United States cultures are interwoven.
Schraibman has written extensively about the Spanish novelist Benito Perez Galdos, one of late 19th century Spains most prolific authors. His recent work has focused on the role of women in maintaining clandestine Jewish culture during the times of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions.
The visit is sponsored by the Honors Divisions Visiting Scholar Program, the Spanish Section of the Department of Modern Languages, and URI Hillel. | <urn:uuid:304f7736-c8df-4cde-ab93-c2bbd0c9aa2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/html/02-1113-01.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951482 | 319 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Michael Stein and Ellen Oliver
Posted by mikegen48 on July 29, 2012
Michael Stein was born in 1793 in Virginia. He died about 1851 in Pennsylvania.
Michael married Ellen Oliver about 1815 in Virginia. Ellen was born about 1793 in Virginia. She died in 1849 in Pennsylvania.
They had the following children:
Michael Stein was born during 1817 in Virginia.
Martin Stein was born in 1817 in Virginia. He died about 1897 in Virginia.
Barbara Stein was born on 28 Sep 1819 in Surry County, Virginia.
Harriet Stein was born circa 1822 in Virginia. She died on 21 Feb 1908 in Virginia.
Alexander Stein was born in 1825 in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. He died about 1897 in Surry County, Virginia.
Thomas Stein was born in 1828 in Pennsylvania. He died in 1880 in Virginia.
Amanda Stein was born circa 1831 in Pennsylvania. She died during 1885 in Virginia.
Henrietta Laura Stein was born in 1834 in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. She died on 23 Oct 1915 in Mercer County, Ohio. | <urn:uuid:a6a83940-6d15-492f-bc17-e6ce1066f777> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mikegen48.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/michael-stein-and-ellen-oliver/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=3fdfac1636 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.99466 | 237 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Harvesting the Heart
Harvesting the Heart explores the story of a young woman overcome by the demands of having a family. Written with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincing in its depiction of emotional pain, love and vulnerability, Harvesting the Heart recalls the writing of Alice Hoffman and Sue Miller.
Paige has only a few vivid memories of her mother, who left when she was five. Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother's absence, and shameful memories of her past, makes her doubt both her maternal ability and her sense of self-worth.
Out of Paige's struggle to find wholeness by searching for her mother and facing her own insecurities, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled with richly drawn characters. Any mother or child cannot help but relate to the issues and emotions explored within this powerful and moving book.
'Jodi Picoult explores the fragile ground of ambivalent motherhood in her lush second novel.'
- The New York Times Book Review
'Reminiscent of Sue Miller's The Good Mother, Harvesting the Heart has a voice all its own.'
- Chicago Tribune
Buy the book
Also available as an ebook - find out more about Allen & Unwin ebooks | <urn:uuid:9f16ce19-f863-4e0e-a3e4-75fad57f4566> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jodipicoult.com.au/harvestingheart.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953708 | 282 | 1.648438 | 2 |
It is equally not permitted for anyone to appropriate or to alienate the villages which I have dedicated to these gods, to sell them or to devote them to some other purpose, or in any way to injure those villages; or to reduce the income from them, which I have dedicated to the gods as an inviolable possession.
Nor shall anyone go unpunished who shall devise in his mind against our honor some other scheme of violence or of disparaging or suspending the sacrifices and festal assemblies which I have established. Whoever shall presume to rescind or to injure or guilefully to misinterpret the just tenor of this regulation or the heroic honors which an immortal judgment has sanctioned, him the wrath of the daemons and of all the gods shall pursue, both himself and his descendants, irreconcilably, with every kind of punishment.
Inscription V : King Antiochos I Theos
A noble example of piety, which it is a matter of sacred duty to offer to gods and ancestors, I have set before the eyes of my children and grandchildren, as through many other, so too through this work; and I believe that they will emulate this fair example by continually increasing the honors appropriate to their line and, like me, in their riper years adding greatly to their personal fame.
For those who do so I pray that all the ancestral gods, from Persia and Macedonia and from the native hearth of Kommagene, may continue to be gracious to them in all clemency. And whoever, in the long time to come, takes over this reign as king or dynast, may he, if he observes this law and guards my honor, enjoy, through my intercession, the favor of the deified ancestors and all the gods. But if he, in his folly of mind, undertakes measures contrary to the honor of the gods, may he, even without my curse, suffer the full wrath of the gods. | <urn:uuid:364163cb-f98c-4b4a-a677-d9068e71365d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nemrud.nl/index.php/tourist-information/the-nomos/king-antiochos-i-theos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964844 | 394 | 1.742188 | 2 |
From the Director
Library news and happenings.
Personal Property Tax: A Critical Source of Library Funding
Several weeks ago, I wrote about library funding threats with the proposal to eliminate personal property tax. The issue continues to receive media attention across the state but most of the coverage does not mention that personal property tax (PPT) is a critical source of local library funding.
The legislature will take up this issue in January. The library community is committed to informing our legislators and our patrons of the importance of this revenue source and what it would mean if it was eliminated and not replaced.
Personal property tax is a tax paid by businesses, not individuals or homeowners. It is based on the tangible or physical assets of a business such as office furniture, computers, industrial machinery and equipment, copy and fax machines. It is not a tax on land and buildings.
About 10%, $1.2 million, of our revenue is from personal property tax. If PPT was eliminated and not replaced by a guaranteed, stable funding source for libraries, KPL would be forced to make significant reductions in our programs and services, in addition to those we have already made. We would further reduce services hours at all locations, eliminate adult programming and reduce youth programming, have fewer public computers , buy fewer new materials…..basically all services would be reduced, with some eliminated.
KPL, like most libraries, is increasingly busy. Our circulation is up 31% in the first six months of the year; computer use, patron assistance, attendance at events – all up.
The library community is advocating “replace, don’t erase” the personal property tax. If eliminated, it needs to be replaced. Our board of trustees has adopted a resolution supporting that approach.
Please ask your state representative or senator to fully replace the tax, consider writing a letter to the editor, and share this library threat with others.
Replace Don't Erase | <urn:uuid:365867b3-5364-4ce0-a32b-f1621df1aa23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kpl.gov/director/blog/default.aspx?id=33711 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952694 | 395 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Benedict resignation renews calls for African pope
LAGOS (AFP) – Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation has sparked calls for his successor to come from Africa, home to the world’s fastest-growing population and the front line of key issues facing the Roman Catholic Church.
Around 15 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics live in Africa and the percentage has expanded significantly in recent years in comparison to other parts of the world.
Much of the Catholic Church’s recent growth has come in the developing world, with the most rapid expansions in Africa and Southeast Asia.
Names such as Ghana’s Peter Turkson and Nigerian John Onaiyekan have been mentioned as potential papal material, as has Francis Arinze, also from Nigeria and considered a possibility when Benedict was elected, but who is now 80.
Some analysts see the issue as one of justice since Africa has contributed to the Catholic Church to such a large degree, as well as a reflection of a changing world.
“I think that, with the black community’s representation in the larger Catholic community, it is legitimate that we have a black pope,” said Rene Legre Hokou, head of the Ivory Coast League of Human Rights.
“An African pope could give more vitality to the Catholic Church in the black world. It would demonstrate the universal character of the religion.”
A number of African Catholic Church members had a mixed view however, saying they would like to see a fellow African elected pope, but wanted the most qualified person, no matter where he is from.
Pat Utomi, a prominent Catholic in Nigeria who is an economist and former presidential candidate, said he would take pride in seeing an African elected, “but we must take that away.”
“I think what matters is the right person with the vision for the moment,” Utomi said.
At the same time, he said Africa in several ways was representative of major challenges facing the Church, particularly its relationship with an evangelical movement with explosive growth on the continent as well as with Islam.
“I think in some ways a John Paul II was a response to the Soviet Union,” Utomi said. “In some ways the challenge of the Church must be to reach an accommodation … an understanding with Islam and the Pentecostal movement.”
Africans have flocked to evangelical religions, with many seeing them as more relevant to their daily lives, posing a challenge to the Catholic Church.
Also in countries like Nigeria, roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south, religious and ethnic tensions have led to violence.
Onaiyekan, nominated as a cardinal in October and also the archbishop of the Nigerian capital Abuja, has made efforts to foster unity between Christians and Muslims in his country.
“It would take a skilled leader of the church — in the kind of way that a John Paul II reached out to the Eastern church, to the Orthodox churches of the east,” Utomi said.
Vatican watchers say the college of cardinals may seize the moment to elect a Latin-American, African or Asian pope.
Others say 85-year-old Benedict — who is resigning for age reasons — may call on the cardinals to elect someone younger, who is less likely to suffer failing health early in his mandate.
Benedict visited Africa twice, most recently the West African nation of Benin in 2011, while before that Angola and Cameroon in 2009. His Benin visit came 150 years after what is considered the evangelisation of the country by missionaries.
Archbishop of Lagos Alfred Adewale Martins said Benedict should be lauded for his efforts in Africa.
“I believe he is one man that we should be grateful to God for the attitude to the church in general and also the solicitude that he has demonstrated in very many ways to the church in Africa in particular,” said Martins.
But Benedict’s outreach on the continent notwithstanding, there were still doubts over whether an African would be put at the head of the Vatican.
At Saint Antonio da Polana Church in the Mozambique capital Maputo after Benedict’s announcement, parishioner Zeb Renardo said he did not think the time had come.
“I will say categorically that I doubt we will have an African pope,” he said. “I think the moment hasn’t come for us to see an African pope.”
But the rector at Ivory Coast’s Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, a semi-replica of St. Peter’s in Rome and the largest Christian shrine in Africa, said “why not a non-Western pope?”
“The world is now multi-colour,” Polish priest Stanislaw Skuza said. | <urn:uuid:fa5e3b09-aa57-48f1-a03c-024bf9c6fdb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ghanamma.com/2013/02/benedict-resignation-renews-calls-for-african-pope/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974037 | 1,028 | 1.65625 | 2 |
ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly a quarter of patients taking erlotinib (Tarceva®) for treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) did not receive the recommended pharmacogenomic (PGx) testing prior to the start of treatment, according to a new study by pharmacy benefit manager Prime Therapeutics (Prime), in collaboration with Jonas de Souza, MD, Instructor of Medicine, Section of Hematology/Oncology, University of Chicago Medical Center. The study will be presented December 1, 2012, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Quality Care Symposium in San Diego.
Guidelines released by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) in March 2011 and ASCO in April 2011 recommend PGx testing for tumor epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation in NSCLC patients. The Tarceva (erlotinib) prescribing information shows erlotinib to be effective in treating NSCLC. Patients who had a negative EGFR mutation test did not receive a significant benefit in progression free survival or overall survival.
In the study, researchers reviewed medical claims for nearly 3.4 million members from four Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans to identify patients receiving erlotinib. Researchers then reviewed claims for any current procedure terminology (CPT) code indicating PGx testing in the prior 24 months. From January 1, 2011, to June 30, 2011, 125 members received erlotinib. More than 81 percent of erlotinib claims were for lung cancer, over 14 percent were for pancreatic cancer and 4 percent were for other cancers. They found 60 patients (48 percent) were new erlotinib users and 47 had a lung cancer diagnosis. Of those, 36 (76.5 percent) had a PGx CPT code claim, ranging from four days to 22 months prior.
"Understanding mutations in the cancer can help us better understand the effectiveness of treatments and develop care management programs that will have the greatest impact on the patient," said Pat Gleason, PharmD, FCCP, BCPS, director of health outcomes with Prime. "Simplifying medical coding for pharmacogenomics testing and greater use of guidelines will help us continue to improve care for lung cancer patients."
About Prime Therapeutics
At Prime Therapeutics, people are at the center of all we do and every decision we make. As a leader in pharmacy benefit management, Prime is dedicated to making it easier for our members to obtain more affordable medicines. We leverage our unique connections to deliver programs that lead to the best health outcomes.
Prime's integrated pharmacy benefit management services include claims processing, benefit plan design, network management, clinical program consultation, rebate management, formulary administration, mail-service pharmacy and specialty pharmacy.
Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., Prime Therapeutics serves nearly 20 million people and is collectively owned by 13 Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans, subsidiaries or affiliates of those Plans. Prime has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation by Inc. 5000 and as a most engaged workplace by Achievers.
For more information, visit www.primetherapeutics.com or follow @Prime_PBM on Twitter.
SOURCE Prime Therapeutics | <urn:uuid:fba5d809-2b82-4a37-b24e-dcd3a35f0c5e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biospace.com/News/prime-therapeutics-release-study-indicates-a/281006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930956 | 691 | 1.742188 | 2 |
A Caesar salad is a salad made with romaine lettuce and croutons dressed with parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, and black pepper. Some of the most common changes to the salad include: grilled poultry (most often chicken), meat, shellfish, or fish, capers, Romano cheese, anchovies, and bacon.
The salad is said to have been made and named for Caesar Cardini. Cardini was an Italian immigrant who had restaurants in Mexico and the United States. Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana.
- "Cesar Cardini, Creator of Salad, Dies at 60". Los Angeles Times. November 5, 1956. "Caesar Cardini, 60, credited with the invention of the Caesar salad, died [...]" | <urn:uuid:c0fda996-f223-40f4-8cfe-ba26433d8219> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_salad | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952947 | 173 | 1.71875 | 2 |
As I perused the eco friendly informational display booths of organizations such as the Appalachian Mountain Club and Mass Energy at Earth Night 2010 in Boston, a vibrant object in the corner of the room caught my eye. As I looked closer, I realized it was a stool, full of vividly interspersed color that resembled modern art more than a piece of furniture. I was immediately drawn to the object and decided to admire it up close. I quickly realized this was no ordinary stool, but a stool made out of old magazines.
Luckily, the artist that designed this piece, Cameron, caught me ogling and came up to talk to me. He explained that the stools are constructed from old rolled up magazines that are held together by rubber bands and fit into a square resin mold. The stool stands on legs made of steel rods that are also adorned with magazines, providing not only style but extra support. Cameron is a sculptor for an organization called Artists for Humanity (AFH). Founded in 1990, AFH was created to provide Continue reading | <urn:uuid:28f189f7-97b6-4f8e-8c46-7aeac17cdd69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://igoroamandreport.wordpress.com/tag/trash-to-art/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977146 | 209 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Most Active Stories
Mon January 28, 2013
Boy Scouts Considering Lifting Ban On Gay Scouts, Leaders
Originally published on Mon January 28, 2013 4:35 pm
The Boy Scouts of America are considering lifting a national ban on gay scouts and leaders, the organizations spokesman announced.
"If this policy shift is approved by the national board meeting at their scheduled meeting next week, it will be a sharp reversal of the Scouts' decade's old national policy banning homosexuals.
"'The policy change under discussion would allow the religious, civic, or educational organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting to determine how to address this issue,' BSA spokesman Deron Smith said in a statement to USA TODAY."
It was just in July of last year that the Scouts reaffirmed their ban on openly gay scouts and leaders. At the time, Scouts spokesman Deron Smith said the organization decided that was "absolutely the best policy."
NBC News, which broke the story, says the Scouts are "close to ending ban on gay members, leaders."
The network reports that by allowing each local organization to select their own policy it would also allow sponsors and parents "to choose a local unit which best meets the needs of their organization's mission, principles or religious beliefs."
In a statement, GLAAD, the LGBT advocacy organization, welcomed the development.
"The Boy Scouts of America have heard from scouts, corporations and millions of Americans that discriminating against gay scouts and scout leaders is wrong," GLAAD President Herndon Graddick said in a statement.
Zach Wahls, Eagle Scout and founder of Scouts for Equality, said that the potential move would be "an incredible step forward in the right direction." | <urn:uuid:757c0d6b-e105-421d-8990-73c0535c7110> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kunm.org/post/boy-scouts-considering-lifting-ban-gay-scouts-leaders | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960129 | 344 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Health policy makers and clinicians often face similar decision-making challenges. The issues are turbulent, characterised by high risk and complexity, often involve value conflicts and occur in settings of rapid change. Policy makers' decisions are under increasing scrutiny for their use of evidence, with many health policies reflecting political influence rather than rigorous analysis. The evidence-based policy movement offers a range of accounts for this. We argue that advocacy in three critical areas helps explain when evidence is used in the policy making process and then contrast the impacts of advocacy for evidence use in two nutrition policy cases. | <urn:uuid:fc1adbf7-43e8-4e09-b51d-38e5fdcd3411> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30047278 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947917 | 113 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Rosanne Roberts routinely drove more than two hours round trip from her home in Santa Fe, N.M. to Albuquerque to conduct mock job interviews with women transitioning from welfare to the workforce.
She was one of more than 53 volunteers donating their time through the Human Resource Management Association of New Mexico (HRMA), a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) chapter, to help clients of TeamWorks become job ready.
TeamWorks is a government-funded program under the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women. TeamWorks serves single-parent women who are heads of households and who are eligible to receive assistance from the state’s Temporary Aid to Needy Families program.
Clients attend a seven-week program to learn such things as how to complete job applications, write cover letters, and dress for and conduct themselves in interviews. Eight to 10 women per month graduate from the course.
Roberts conducted individual mock job interviews with four or five women every other month for 18 months.
“I saw a good majority of them kind of hanging their heads” at the start of the 30-minute interview, typically not recognizing personal achievements such as supervising the night shift at a convenience store, Roberts said.
Often by interview’s end, Roberts saw the glimmer of a transformation among the 20-something women who, she said, had gotten off to a bad start in life.
Roberts has since moved two hours away from Albuquerque, preventing her from continuing her volunteer work with a program she found rewarding personally and professionally.
“For an HR person, you talk about what skills you want to use in volunteering: This is our gift,” said the business owner who has worked as a recruiter since 1982 and as a trainer and workplace skills coach since 1991.
“We can help people get jobs. This is why I believe so much in this kind of thing.”
‘Opportunity Waiting to Happen’
HRMA’s involvement with TeamWorks reflects a goal of HRMA’s 2008 board for the chapter to become more involved in local workforce development, said Denise Montoya, SPHR. Montoya is the HRMA president-elect and college relations director for the SHRM New Mexico State Council. She is employed as the HR consulting and staff employment director for the University of New Mexico.
The 2008 Leadership Albuquerque class—a Chamber of Commerce group of aspiring leaders—approached the HRMA board about partnering with it to teach TeamWorks clients workforce readiness skills. The chapter’s president-elect, Patty Longdon, PHR, met with TeamWorks’ director, employment liaison and instructors to map out the chapter’s role.
Board members piloted the chapter initiative in March 2008. They designed and taught 90-minute training courses—based on the TeamWorks curriculum—on resume-writing and interview skills and created a guide to use in mock interviews.
By May 2008 the board opened the program to the rest of the members, who may volunteer several times a month in the TeamWorks classrooms.
“It was an opportunity waiting to happen,” Montoya said. The project resonates with HRMA members because “it speaks to the profession of HR,” she said. “Giving back to women, helping to prepare people for the workforce,” is something HR “is passionate about” and believes in.
By the end of summer 2008, HRMA’s board agreed to continue its involvement and expand its role. In 2009 it established a board position—vice president of community relations—that Montoya filled initially. In it, she recruited more monthly volunteers, set up electronic communication tools to coordinate volunteers, developed marketing materials, established metrics and created a formal two-week unpaid internship program for graduating participants.
One woman’s internship at Sysco New Mexico LLC—where Longdon is senior director of HR—led to a full-time job there as mailroom clerk/receptionist in 2009. She later was promoted to accounts payable clerk.
“These women were exposed to skills, talent and expertise of the many HR professionals” who volunteered with the program, Longdon said in a SHRM webinar series about the program. The internship, she added, allows them “to gain some real-world job insight and experience.”
HRMA won a SHRM Pinnacle Award in November 2009 for its work.
“This program not only makes a difference in our local community but also serves as HR examples for organizations around the country,” Longdon told members in the chapter’s November 2009 newsletter in announcing the win.
Impressed with HRMA’s involvement with TeamWorks, Goodwill Industries and the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions approached the chapter in fall 2009 and asked it to supply similar training for returning veterans re-entering the workforce in the greater Albuquerque area.
The Job Club launched in November 2009. Additionally, HRMA plans to continue its involvement with TeamWorks and has provided it with letters of support as the program faces an uncertain future in a tough economy, Montoya said.
Replicating the Program
Montoya advises other chapters looking to initiate a similar project to practice process improvement.
“Review materials so [they’re] fresh,” she said, whether updating course materials or using new technology to make it easier to collect metrics or communicate with volunteers. “Every year you have to take a fresh perspective.”
Cost is minimal for the chapter, she said, because the chapter-created class materials are HRMA-branded PowerPoint presentations and a booklet with questions and feedback guidelines to use in mock interviews.
“The key to minimizing the cost is automation,” Montoya said. She emphasized the importance of giving volunteers notice to allow adequate preparation time. Volunteers commit to about 2.5 hours per month; that includes a minimum of one-hour round-trip travel to class and 90 minutes teaching a class or conducting mock interviews.
HRMA volunteers donated 237 hours, including travel time, from May 2008 through August 2008. That volunteer time is valued at more than $4,800, according to the chapter, which based the figure on the Independent Sector Research’s estimate of the then-dollar value of a volunteer’s time in New Mexico.
“It’s an opportunity for everyone involved to win,” Montoya said. “TeamWorks gets free trainers—experts in their field—to help develop these women. The volunteers get personal satisfaction; they get the opportunity to give back to their local community. The participants get the expertise of HR professionals.
“Everybody wins. It’s great exposure for the HR organization. It’s great marketing for everybody involved,” she added. “There’s a lot of opportunity for everybody to … gain something in this kind of involvement.”
Kathy Gurchiek is associate editor for HR News.
Celebrated Program Hones Leadership Skills in Austin, HR News, March 16, 2010
Local Career Programs for Military Personnel Set for Nationwide Splash, HR News, March 3, 2010
New Orleans SHRM Chapter Boosts Talent Retention, Job Growth HR News, Feb. 17, 2010
Award-Winning Chapter Program Prepares Students for Jobs, HR News, Feb. 2, 2010
HR Reaches Out to Unemployed on Telethon, HR News, Jan. 20, 2010
HRMA and TeamWorks Partnership, SHRM Volunteer Resources
SHRM Pinnacle Awards Program Frequently Asked Questions, SHRM Volunteer Resources | <urn:uuid:2c7e8b64-5820-4f1a-9676-83ada25ae4f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shrm.org/about/news/Pages/WelfareToWork.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939394 | 1,580 | 1.664063 | 2 |
With the Republicans taking control of the House in January, it becomes more critical than ever that the ethanol tax measures that expire at the end of this year are extended in the lame duck session of Congress that will start next week. However, it is not clear whether Congress during the lame duck session will be able to extend the tax measures because there isn’t full agreement between Democrats and Republicans on how to extend the measures and since the Republicans still have filibuster power in the Senate to block legislation they don’t like. If the tax measures are not extended, the impact on the ethanol industry could be significant.
If there is no longer a 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol on Jan 1, then ethanol exports from Brazil will be more economically viable and could slowly supplant U.S. corn-based ethanol. If there is no longer a 45-cent excise tax credit for blenders, then ethanol loses that 45-cent price advantage and becomes less economically attractive relative to gasoline. That would likely result in a substantial decline in discretionary blending demand for ethanol, causing downward pressure on ethanol prices. The federal government’s Renewable Fuel Standard will remain in place and that requires that blenders to use 13.95 billion gallons of ethanol in 2011. However, the RFS requirement can also be satisfied with some of the 2 billion gallons worth of RIN credits that are overhanging the market rather than physical ethanol, meaning spot demand for ethanol may well fall substantially if the 45-cent tax credit expires.
Ethanol Market Action -- December CBOT Ethanol futures prices last week extended the 4-month rally to post a new 2-1/4 year high and close up 10.4 cents (+4.6%) at $2.346 per gallon. Bullish factors included the 5.9% rally in gasoline prices, the 1.0% rally in corn prices, optimism about the economy and fuel demand with QE2 and stronger-than-expected economic data, and broad strength in commodity prices with the weakness in the dollar. The weekly EIA report was supportive with ethanol production in the week ended Oct 29 at 865,000 barrels/day, down 1.7% w/w and down 1.8% from the Oct 15 record high of 881,000 bpd. Inventories rose slightly by 0.2% to 16.349 million bbl, but were still 18% below the July 2 record high.
Ethanol/Gasoline -- December gasoline futures prices last week rallied to a new 6-month high and closed the week up 12.06 cents (+5.9%) at $2.18 per gallon. Bullish factors included general commodity strength, the Saudi oil minister’s apparent upward revision in his target range to $70-90 from $70-80, and the 2.0% decline in U.S. gasoline inventories to 214.942 million bbl, which was only 4.9% above the 5-year seasonal average, the lowest figure since August. Dec ethanol last week closed at a 16.6 cent premium to gasoline, although ethanol remains 28 cents cheaper than gasoline after the 45-cent ethanol tax credit.
Ethanol/Corn -- December corn futures prices last Thursday posted a new 2-year high but settled back on Friday to close the week up 5.75 cents (+1.0%) at $5.8775 per bushel. Corn prices last week benefited from the general strength in commodity prices and from the ongoing tight corn supply situation. The Dec ethanol-corn crush margin last week rose by 8.3 cents to 24.7 cents/gallon. Including DDG, the Sep corn for ethanol crush margin rose by 8.3 cents to 59.8 cents/gallon.
- Nov 9: USDA WASDE Crop Supply-Demand
- Nov 10: EIA Weekly Petroleum Status Report
- Nov 29: EIA Sep Monthly Ethanol Report
- Mid-Dec: EPA’s E15 decision expected for 2001-06 model vehicles.
Read the full PDF report here.
Disclosure: No positions. | <urn:uuid:6627e41d-f73f-4753-a030-04ddf7b31a01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingalpha.com/article/235515-extension-of-ethanol-tax-measures-now-in-the-hands-of-lame-duck-session?source=nasdaq | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936506 | 844 | 1.539063 | 2 |
There are currently no matches for "Advanced Geriatric Abdominal Exercises with Weight Plate".
Advanced Geriatric Abdominal Exercises with Weight Plate
The abdominal muscles (abs) provide movement and support to your core area. The deeper and closer to the spine the particular abdominal muscle is, the more effect over body posture it will have, and this often contributes significantly to a healthy back.
Use the exercises below to strengthen your upper abs.
A weight plate is a single solid piece of metal without rotating parts. Weight plates typically range between 1lb and 55lb. A bumper plate is a weight plate that is coated in rubber so that it can be dropped on the floor safely during exercises like the deadlift, snatch and jerk.
No Exercises were found under this search filter.
Please change your "Find Exercises" options >> | <urn:uuid:326de70d-c7ab-4882-a5f6-244636e554ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trainwithmeonline.com/Exercises/Geriatric/Advanced/Abdominal/Weight-Plate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94325 | 176 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Arlington Hotel Co. v. Fant - 278 U.S. 439 (1929)
U.S. Supreme Court
Arlington Hotel Co. v. Fant, 278 U.S. 439 (1929)
Arlington Hotel Co. v. Fant
Argued January 17, 1929
Decided February 18, 1929
278 U.S. 439
Land in Arkansas on which there are hot springs valuable for the curative powers of their waters was reserved from private appropriation by Act of Congress, passed in 1832 while Arkansas was a territory. A portion of it, which embraced the springs, was permanently reserved, in charge of the Interior Department, by an Act of Congress, passed.after Arkansas had been admitted to statehood, and upon this portion, an Army and Navy Hospital, since maintained, was established by authority of Congress. Thereafter, exclusive jurisdiction over land of the permanent reservation, including the hospital and a contiguous parcel on which a hotel was being operated under lease from the United States, was ceded to the United States by the state legislature and accepted by Congress, reserving to the state power to serve civil and criminal process on the ceded tract and the right to tax, as private property, all structures or other property in private ownership there. The hotel was destroyed by fire; property of the hotel guests was consumed, and the question arose whether the landlord was liable to them as insurer,
according to the law of Arkansas as it existed at the time of the cession, or only for negligence, according to that law as altered by an Arkansas statute after the cession.
1. That the cession of exclusive jurisdiction was valid under Article I, § 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution, because of the federal purpose to which the springs and the hospital were devoted, and properly included the hotel and its site, which offered means whereby the public might be aided by the surplus spring waters not needed by the hospital. Pp. 278 U. S. 449-454.
2. Therefore, the statute of Arkansas modifying the liability of innkeepers, passed after the cession, did not extend over the ceded land on which the hotel was situated. Id.
170 Ark. 440; 176 id. 612, affirmed.
Error to judgments of the Supreme Court of Arkansas sustaining judgments recovered against the Hotel Company by persons who were guests in the hotel and lost their personal property when the hotel burned. | <urn:uuid:423167e2-813b-4546-b6d7-12d7602904b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/278/439/ | 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 | 0.978355 | 500 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras Programs
Academic Year Orchestras
Students 7 and older participate in Symphonette, then progress through Debut and Junior Orchestras, with the most skilled players participating in the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. Students audition for placement according to their skill level. Repertoire for each orchestra is carefully selected to provide an appropriate degree of challenge for its players. Students have frequent opportunities to perform in public and receive regular coaching, weekly rehearsals, and mentorship by professional musicians in a rigorous program with high expectations.
Marrowstone, a residential festival for musicians 13 to 25, is a 2-week program that immerses talented student musicians in intensive study and rewards audiences with concerts of exceptional quality. It takes place on the campus of WWU in Bellingham. Marrowstone-in-the-City is a 2-week, non-residential festival for students 7 to 14. In 2013 there will be two MITC festivals, one in Redmond and one in Shoreline.
SYSO in the Schools
This nationally-acclaimed program provides free instruction from some of the Puget Sound region's finest musicians to students in Seattle-area public schools. It started as the Endangered Instruments Program and continues to help middle school students learn less commonly studied instruments such as oboe, bassoon, French horn, viola and double bass. The program now also includes string instruction for elementary and middle school students.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
In 2008, SYSO received national recognition with a Wallace Excellence Award from The Wallace Foundation. This 4-year, $500,000 grant has funded a major expansion of the SYSO in the Schools program in Seattle - increasing the program's services in schools with high minority populations and providing younger students with weekly group lessons on stringed instruments. A survey of SYSO alumni and ongoing program evaluations show that the organization’s programs “nurture a lifelong love of classical music” and foster “a sense of accomplishment, concentration, teamwork and collaboration skills, and self-expression.” SYSO is also finding success in a series of exciting collaborations with other performing arts groups in the Seattle area - most notably Pacific Northwest Ballet School, 5th Avenue Theatre and the Seattle Opera.
Currently, SYSO’s most significant challenge is to raise the funds required to maintain the services of its expanded SYSO in the Schools program and to enrich the educational offerings and improve the long-term sustainability of the Marrowstone Music Festival. | <urn:uuid:41b9f517-341e-49b9-bff1-50e0d4d61fe3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seattlefoundation.org/npos/Pages/SeattleYouthSymphonyOrchestras.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945619 | 516 | 1.84375 | 2 |
As has been discussed previously on The Source, Metro is preparing to begin latching gates at Red and Purple Line subway stations beginning this summer, with gates at other Metro Rail stations to be latched subsequently. All Metro riders will need to ‘tap’ their TAP cards to get through the gates.
That, of course, is an issue for Metrolink passengers who get free transfers to Metro as part of their fares — Metrolink uses paper tickets, not the plastic “TAP” cards that have become the norm on Metro. In order for Metrolink passengers to get through latched gates, Metrolink and Metro have worked together to develop paper TAP cards for Metrolink customers.
The following has been posted to Metrolink’s website and explains the transition from the current ticketing system to TAP-enabled paper tickets. Bottom line: The TAP-enabled Metrolink tickets for destinations in Los Angeles County (the area served by Metro) will be available through Metrolink ticket machines and for those purchasing Metrolink monthly passes. Metrolink customers will have to ‘tap’ those tickets when using Metro Rail and will continue to show their tickets to bus operators on Metro bus lines.
Many more details below from Metrolink:
Metrolink to provide TAP-enabled tickets
Metrolink and Metro have worked collaboratively to create a Metrolink ticket that is compatible with the Metro TAP system. TAP-enabled tickets will be dispensed from Metrolink Ticket Vending Machines (TVMs) to allow passage through Metro’s turnstiles leading to Metro rails lines and stations.
All Metrolink tickets with Los Angeles County destinations will be TAP-compatible, and all riders will be required to physically tap their tickets at the turnstiles and validators when transferring to a Metro Rail line. When boarding a bus, the current policy of simply showing the bus operator your Metrolink ticket will still be in effect. Tapping is not required on buses. | <urn:uuid:a4a8ef17-f0fb-4c0a-8d9e-d89cdd137930> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesource.metro.net/tag/turnstiles/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936572 | 422 | 1.546875 | 2 |
First Majestic Silver Corp. is giving up concessions in the area, and the government says it will not authorize new mining permits there.
Huichol Indians received backing from a wide variety of Mexican artists, intellectuals and civic groups objecting to mining in the area known as Wirikuta. A protest concert was scheduled for Saturday in Mexico City.
The area involved is home to the Cerro Quemado, a mountain where the Huichol believe the sun was born. The Huichol still conduct ceremonies and make an annual pilgrimage to the Wirikuta reserve near the town of Real de Catorce. | <urn:uuid:f04ca71e-88d1-442e-943a-da4c11e70b84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yorkdispatch.com/nation/ci_20705971/mexico-promises-protect-huichol-indian-lands | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960521 | 127 | 1.71875 | 2 |
BOSTON - Was it a gay rights victory? Or just a temporary delay of the inevitable?
In the aftermath of this week's marathon constitutional convention, it was unclear whether Massachusetts lawmakers would be able to forge a majority in the next few weeks in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The debate is set to resume next month.
San Francisco yesterday, opponents of gay marriage went to court yesterday to stop an extraordinary act of continuing civil disobedience in the city, which has issued more than 150 marriage licenses to gay couples.
Weddings appeared likely to continue through the holiday weekend despite efforts by the Campaign for California Families and the Alliance Defense Fund to obtain a temporary restraining order that would prevent the city from granting more licenses. A Superior Court hearing was scheduled yesterday.
Around the country, gays and lesbians emboldened by San Francisco's move and by the constitutional debate over gay marriage in Massachusetts went to courthouses Thursday and yesterday demanding their own marriage licenses - and getting summarily rejected, since every state in the nation bans gay marriage.
In Massachusetts, the impassioned debate and behind-the-scenes negotiations ended in stalemate as constantly shifting alliances within the polarized 199-member Legislature made it impossible to win a simple majority in favor of an amendment.
Whether the Legislature will reach consensus when it reconvenes March 11 will depend upon what one senator called "the mush in the middle": the lawmakers who are neither squarely for or against a measure that would strip gay couples of the marriage rights granted by the state's highest court.
Over two days, legislators debated 19 hours and rejected three proposed amendments. The amendments' sponsors fell just a few votes shy each time of winning a simple majority.
Lawmakers could not agree on whether to combine a ban on gay marriage with a promise of Vermont-style civil unions for gays, or whether to write the amendment in such a way that it merely held out the possibility of enacting civil unions at some point in the future.
"When it comes to the fundamentals of human rights and beliefs, everything changes," said state Sen. Mark C. Montigny, a Massachusetts Democrat who opposes a constitutional ban.
Opponents of gay marriage remain confident that after the month-long adjournment, lawmakers will agree on a compromise measure that bans gay marriage but offers same-sex couples at least some hope of achieving something like civil unions.
"There is more than a majority who are ready to approve an amendment to the state constitution that protects marriage," said Rep. Philip Travis, a Democrat. "There is a not a majority yet who has agreed on how to word civil unions in Massachusetts. I lost the first battle, but the war is still on."
Gay rights activists are pressing for nothing short of marriage.
For the politicians, one major complicating factor is this: All 200 seats in the Legislature are up for grabs in November.
Scrutiny has been focused on the Massachusetts Legislature since November, when the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled that gays are entitled to marry. That set off a frenzy of activity to try to undo the court ruling by rewriting the state constitution.
But to succeed, the Legislature must pass an amendment with at least 101 votes in two consecutive legislative sessions - this year and in 2005-2006 - before it can be submitted to the voters for ratification in November 2006.
By the time any amendment is ratified, gay marriages will have been legal in Massachusetts for more than two years. Under the court's order, marriages licenses are to be issued to same-sex couples beginning in mid-May. | <urn:uuid:a83cf9e3-1643-4405-9983-8724d3f65163> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.courant.com/news/custom/newsat3/bal-te.marriage14feb14,0,1807747.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956786 | 726 | 1.804688 | 2 |
"Look not to the politicians; look to yourselves." ~ Richard Cobden
The Secrets to Nonviolent Prosperity: The Principles of Liberty
Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
Exclusive to STR
The new book by Trevor Z. Gamble – The Secrets to Nonviolent Prosperity (published in paperback and Kindle editions, 2011) – provides a welcoming introduction to ideas that go a long way toward resolving many of our contemporary problems and the deeper concerns behind them. Like many of us, the author realizes that something is amiss in the world. Then he takes us on a journey to find out what is wrong and how it relates to our understanding (or misunderstanding) of politics, economics, human rights – and ultimately, the idea of freedom itself.
Mr. Gamble opens his book like the 12th Century thinker, Bernard of Chartres, by acknowledging his debt to writers who came before him – political scientists, psychologists, and economists who enabled him, in effect, to stand on their shoulders so that he can see a bit farther than they did. And the first thing he sees is that we can do away with the tiresome convention of thinking about politics in terms of “left” and “right” with all of the name-calling that goes with it. And it’s not enough, says the author, to point to the villains of history to find out why things have gone wrong. After all, every nightmare-toting dictator in the history of the world was able to get there because he (or she) had plenty of followers willing to do the dirty work. In other words, it’s not just them….
In his next chapter, Gamble identifies the concept of “human rights” as a basic source for gaining insights into and unraveling the problems that surround us. He explains and adopts the excellent definition of rights laid out by Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe: self-ownership. Consequently, he defines the most important human right as the right of ownership that one has over one’s own body. Better yet, he explains that it is the only self-evident “right” that we can have, and from it, he deduces our ethical concepts of rights to personal property and the constellation of ideas that come into play with that realization. In doing so, he explores the non-aggression axiom that lies at the basis of all fruitful and peaceful human interactions – stressing, as he does so, the inviolability of all human beings as ends in themselves.
Once he has marked out this intellectual and ethical territory, he goes on to explore topics such as equality, property rights, government entitlements, collectivism, majority-rules politics, the natural environment, Third World poverty, and related issues. This would be a daunting task if he didn’t do two things that make his book particularly enjoyable to read.
· First he enlivens his narrative by breaking it up with fascinating quotations from figures that loom large in literature, politics, and history. What makes his use of these quotations especially useful, however, is how and when he inserts them into the text. These quotes appear in the most unexpected places, and they call a complete halt to our thinking – forcing us to engage our minds and question our assumptions. The reader is continually shocked by the unsavory pedigree of words uttered by a number of “favorite” American icons. At other times, these quotations simply reinforce what Mr. Gamble has attempted to explain. All of them, however, are delightful in the context of the narrative and well worth the price of the book.
· Second, he ends each chapter with a section entitled “I Object!” It’s the author’s way of entering into a dialog with readers who may disagree strongly with the things he has been writing. By including these objections, Mr. Gamble anticipates some of the most common complaints that can be registered against his viewpoint, and he addresses them fairly. This alone sets him apart from writers who are so convinced of their brilliance that they can’t imagine anyone disagreeing with them about anything.
Once we are grounded in the ethics of self-ownership and non-aggression as the bases for constructive human relationships, Mr. Gamble’s remaining chapters address the following topics:
· Money, central banking, hard currency, debt, and the source of inflation and economic manipulation
· Taxes and their meaning in our lives and in our relationship with others
· The real meaning of profits, capitalism, democracy, and the nation-state
· The how and why of bailouts, price fixing, tariffs, innovation, labor unions, Social Security, and tax-funded undertakings
The penultimate chapter is one of my favorites. The author devotes it to dispelling a good number of commonly held myths. Among them are favorites such as the following:
· Self-sufficiency (a favorite of nationalists)
· Local buying (its good and bad points)
· Inequality and its value to us
· The idea that one person’s loss is another’s gain
· Free trade and its imposters
· Employers as tyrants
· The meaning of capitalism vis-à-vis communism
In his final chapter, Mr. Gamble asks a thought-provoking question: what should we do? He clearly wishes to see improvements come quickly, but how are we to accomplish change? Hint: not by depending upon promises by politicians. After exploring a number of different approaches to change, he seems to choose the route that all of us are capable of enacting – changing how we ourselves interact with others and calmly discussing our insights with friends and acquaintances. This is not a call for destroying or compelling or storming or squatting. It is a call to reasoned discussion and an invitation to make changes in our own lives – including how we interact with our own children.
And that brings us back to where we began, doesn’t it? After all, if we can raise a generation of children who have been respected and treated as inviolable human beings, won’t they be able to stand on our shoulders and see even farther than we do? And if you are passionate about human rights and liberty (but find it difficult to express yourself), The Secrets to Nonviolent Prosperity can do your talking for you. Try it, and see for yourself. | <urn:uuid:4bb8966b-ba91-490c-810e-941ce5c2b7fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.strike-the-root.com/secrets-to-nonviolent-prosperity-principles-of-liberty?page=1&mini=calendar%2F2013-03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960786 | 1,324 | 1.820313 | 2 |
So the plan of the working on the business studies coursework can be difficult, but interesting simultaneously.
The most important thing in the beginning is the choice of the topic. Here are some useful advises:
A student can choose any topic connected with business, from such well-known topic as management up to the topic, which can suppose the practical experience, for example, the analysis of the leading companies’ activity.
Still any business studies coursework should be performed clearly and at the proper level for the graduate student.
It is great news that business studies coursework’s level is not as high as in the higher institutions, so the students can use a plenty of materials, and background knowledge will be enough for such writing.
However, when a student chooses the topic, it should be well-thought over, because the student will be working upon this topic and it is worth to find out, what information exactly he or she wants to know more about.
For example, the student can get to know more about how to manage with the personnel, if the topic is management, or how to start up the own business, if the topic will be business or money making and ways to the solutions.
Business studies include several categories, which can be written by the student going this course:
It would be good, if a student performs some pieces of this paper in advance or just according to the educational plan. Anyway, there are some types of the assignments. They are case study, business plan analysis, marketing plan, research analysis and other types.
Our site offers you writing of the business studies coursework on the high level and the shortest terms of the performing the order!
You can fill in the order form and your assignment will be under our thorough control. Our team of the qualified professionals writes any type of the business studies coursework and we make free outline, title page and list of references. Choose us and receive 100% guaranteed best results! | <urn:uuid:a643aee1-4cb7-482c-af6f-1e7c9ca91961> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://custom-essay.ws/blog/business-studies-coursework-writing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946456 | 399 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The National Gallery of Art today announced a new 26-piece exhibition featuring the work of abstract expressionist artist Barnett Newman will be on display from June 10 through Feb. 24, 2013.
In the Tower: Barnett Newman will focus on the artist’s breakthrough work from the mid-1940’s when he sought a more abstract artistic mode and began using vertical “zips” in his canvases. It will feature the most ambitious work of his maturity, the 14-piece “Stations of the Cross” series.
In the Tower is the fifth show in the Tower Gallery that focuses on art developments since mid-century, and is part of the “Modern American Genius” celebration on and off the National Mall this summer. Other exhibts include Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme, running June 2-Sept. 9 at The Phillips Collection and Richard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art June 30-Sept. 23. | <urn:uuid:b868b23a-95e9-4793-9c26-f61b5dc13531> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/national-gallery-to-exhibit-barnett-newman/2012/05/21/gIQAt20HgU_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942124 | 207 | 1.695313 | 2 |
|New outdoor programs now available through CEU include backpacking, snowshoeing, and river running|
When many people think of winter recreation in Carbon County they think of the Carbon County Recreation program. This time of the year the program kicks into high gear and offers a variety of workshops and programs for the winter enthusiast.
Workshops they offer include the free annual avalanche awareness workshop presented in conjunction with the U. S. Forest Service and Utah Avalanche Forecasting Center. This workshop will take place January 24 and 25. It consists of an evening class on Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. at the Price Community Center and an outing on Saturday, Jan. 25 in Huntington Canyon. Organizers of this class remind the community that each year there are deadly avalanche accidents. This class is important for people who enjoy the outdoors on skis, snowshoes and snow boards but it also offers much information for those in snowmobiling sports. Participants must provide their own transportation.
Also county recreation plans three night activities this winter that are termed Full Moon Adventures. A small fee will be charged for each event which covers basic equipment and transportation. Other equipment is the responsibility of the participants. The first event will be snowshoeing, set for January 17th and is not a beginner's class. Participants must be competent on snowshoes.
The second event is a winter backpacking trip on February 15. Again participants must be competent at snowshoeing and be able to carry their own gear. Participants must also understand the rigors and dangers involved in winter backpacking. A preparation class is set for Feb. 13.
A third session has yet to be announced.
A regular snowshoe outing is set for January 11. Fees include transportation and snowshoes. Beginners are welcome
Pool sessions on beginning kayaking is also available this winter.
"You can't run the river without first having a bomber Eskimo roll," says Steve Christensen, who manages the recreation department.
The workshop will consist of one classroom session and four pool sessions. The fee for the class includes admission to the pool, use of the kayak and all the necessary equipment. Classes begin every two weeks.
There is also a kayak practice at the Desert Wave every Friday night from 6 to 7 p.m. but participants must call to make arrangements. | <urn:uuid:fb66985f-5a8f-4f24-83e2-2caaad28fafa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunadvocate.com/print.php?tier=1&article_id=2285 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949912 | 478 | 1.84375 | 2 |
"It's good to have quantity of quality. People act like it's an either/or, I say have both. Have lots of stuff that's the very best. Quantity of quality."
O'Brien may not be the first person you'd turn to for business advice, but he has a point. One of the most often used phrases in the business world is "quality over quantity," reinforcing the idea that it's more important to have quality products or services than to have an abundance of lower-quality items.
O'Brien poses the question, "Why not have both?" Businesses should strive for more products without compromising quality. More customers means bigger profits and a wider audience, and if each customer has a positive experience with what the business is offering, the company will gain an impressive reputation. As a business owner, you shouldn't feel as though having more means less quality, or that having less wil help the quality.
"And really make sure that there's a quality to your quantity. Either way, get the two Qs, that's what I always say."
Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to [email protected]. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email. | <urn:uuid:f61baf3c-b74b-484c-af76-f71f45cca2b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/instant-mba-conan-obrien-says-businesses-should-have-quantity-of-quality-2012-8 | 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 | 0.977107 | 265 | 1.742188 | 2 |
PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania is the type of urban, industrial, ethnic Northeast state that Michael Dukakis is supposed to carry.
But the Democratic nominee is locked in a tight race with Vice President George Bush for Pennsylvania`s 25 electoral votes, which hints at the kind of problems Dukakis is having putting together a winning Democratic coalition nationwide.
The fourth-largest state, Pennsylvania is one that Bush would like to add to his column, but the state is not optional for Dukakis. He has to win it. Democrats concede if they can`t carry a Democratic-leaning, heavily unionized state such as Pennsylvania, they won`t recapture the White House.
As a result, Bush operatives say their objective is to keep the Democrats tied down here as well as to win the state for the vice president.
``Every day Dukakis spends in Pennsyvlania, which was considered a solid Dukakis state, is one less day he spends in Texas, California, Illinois and Ohio,`` said John Denny, executive director of Bush`s Pennsylvania campaign.
As for the Democrats, Lanny Johnson, the Dukakis campaign chief in Pennsylvania, said he always saw the state as a ``1 percent state.`` Recent polls have only reinforced his expectations of a close contest.
``It will be difficult for us to win without Pennsylvania,`` he said.
``But we look at the national campaign to get us even, and our organization should be able to make a 2 to 3 percent difference.``
As in the rest of the nation, Dukakis` wide lead in the summer-private campaign polls showed him ahead in Pennsylvania by about 20 percentage points- evaporated in the coolness of autumn.
A poll taken several weeks ago by Pennsylvanians for Effective Government, a business lobbying group, showed Bush ahead 43.5 percent to 42.8 percent. The poll had an error margin of 3.5 percentage points, which meant the race was virtually even.
While Democrats enjoy a 560,000-vote registration edge, there is a distinctly conservative tilt to the electorate and that has turned
Pennsylvania into a swing state.
The governor is a Democrat, while both senators are Republicans. Democrats control the state House, Republicans the state Senate. The congressional delegation is split 12-11 in favor of the Democrats.
President Reagan won the state both times he ran. Democrats last won in 1976, when Jimmy Carter captured just 51 percent of the vote.
In fact, moderate Republicans such as Atty. Gen. Richard Thornburgh, the former two-term governor, do well here. Bush, running as the moderate alternative to Reagan, won the Pennsylvania GOP primary in 1980.
Bush climbed back into the race in Pennsylvania because his use of the flag and crime to paint Dukakis as a liberal found a receptive audience in the conservative electorate.
In addition, Dukakis` support of gun control and abortion rights-both cutting issues in this state-have hurt the Massachusetts governor among the conservative Reagan Democrats whom he is trying to woo back to the party fold. In the heavily Catholic and normally Democratic coal mining regions of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in the northeast, the business group`s poll showed Bush leading Dukakis 52 to 36 percent. And in heavily Democratic steel territory in the southwest, Dukakis led by only 46 to 43 percent.
On the other hand, Bush`s problem-and Dukakis` major advantage-is that the economic recovery has been very uneven in Pennsylvania.
Statewide employment has dropped dramatically from 11.8 percent in 1983 to 5.3 percent in July. But the recovery has been concentrated in and around Philadelphia, where the service industry is booming, while many steel and coal towns in the northeast and southwest remain depressed.
In the Pittsburgh area, for example, the number of steelworkers has dropped in the last eight years to 24,500 from 72,100. While the state`s labor force hit a near record 5.7 million in August, unemployment was at 9.3 percent in Beaver County along the Ohio border and 11.5 percent in Greene County near West Virginia.
Democrats argue that continued economic hard times will ultimately outweigh the unpopularity of Dukakis` liberal stances on social issues among Reagan Democrats.
``Bush says we`re on the bad side of the issues like abortion and gun control,`` said Bill Batoff, a leading Democratic fundraiser. ``But the swing voters are unemployed in steel towns and coal mines. They`re out of work. They don`t have anything to do but vote.``
The Democratic formula for victory in Pennsylvania is to come out of Philadelphia with a plurality of at least 200,000 votes to offset the GOP vote in the suburbs and the central part of the state. The margin of victory is then supplied by the heavily Democratic vote in the Pittsburgh area.
Democrats say this strategy will work for Dukakis if they can get out the vote in Philadelphia`s black neighborhoods and the depressed towns in the southwestern part of the state.
For the Republicans, they need to maximize their support in Philadelphia suburbs and hold down the Democratic vote in the southwest by emphasizing abortion and gun control and riding the coattails of Sen. John Heinz. The Republican incumbent, a Pittsburgh native, is a heavy favorite for re-election, and his best numbers come from the southwest.
A potential wild card could be former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo. The hard-line former police commissioner is chairman of the Bush campaign in the city and is being counted on to lure working-class Democrats into the Bush camp.
But Rizzo`s blustery style is unpopular in the more genteel suburbs, and Democrats hope he will do more harm than good to the GOP cause.
``If Frank gets too vocal and too visible,`` said one Republican strategist, ``he can cost you votes in the suburbs.`` | <urn:uuid:10a02623-144e-4e64-a3f0-38cacdfbcabc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-10-10/news/8802050858_1_michael-dukakis-democrats-swing-state | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958177 | 1,224 | 1.523438 | 2 |
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Video of the Day - Jellyfish Lake, Palau
Swimming in water filled with millions of jellyfish may be most people's worst nightmare. But for visitors to the Palauan island of Eil Malik, it's the main attraction.
Situated about 500 miles east of the Philippines, Jellyfish Lake is one of 70 marine lakes on Eil Malik that was formed when the ocean receded over 12,000 years ago. After being trapped in this natural basin, the jellyfish that inhabited the lake gradually evolved without the ability to sting since there were no predators sharing the same waters. Now, daring snorklers can fulfill their worst nightmares (or biggest dreams) by swimming among the jellyfish without being stung. However, those with sensitive skin are advised to wear a wetsuit or protective clothing.
This beautiful, dreamy music video comes from photographer/videographer Sarosh Jacob who captured his adventure with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Sigma 15mm fisheye lens, set to Radiohead's "Nude". For more great underwater videos, check out Sarosh's Vimeo page.
What's the most daring adventure you've been on? Share it with us! Upload photos to Gadling's Flickr Pool or leave a comment with a link to your video in the comments below & we may select it as our next Photo/Video of the Day! | <urn:uuid:3ceadf53-e535-41c8-a8ff-4652083bcf91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gadling.com/2011/05/24/video-of-the-day-jellyfish-lake-palau/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951076 | 299 | 1.507813 | 2 |
R. Pariaut, N. S. Moise, B. D. Koetje, J. A. Flanders, S. A. Hemsley, T. B. Farver, R. F. Gilmour, Jr., A. R. M. Gelzer, M. S. Kraus, N. F. Otani, Lidocaine converts acute vagally associated atrial fibrillation to sinus rhythm in German shepherd dogs with inherited arrhythmias, Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine 22, 1274-1282 (2008).
Background: Lidocaine is most frequently used to treat ventricular arrhythmias. However, lidocaine may have an antiarrhythmic effect for certain supraventricular arrhythmias. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that lidocaine would be effective in converting experimentally induced atrial fibrillation (AF) to sinus rhythm and that a decrease in the dominant frequency (DF) and an increase in the organization as judged by the spectral entropy (SE) would occur over the course of the conversion. Animals: Seven German Shepherd (GS) Dogs. Methods: Dogs were anesthetized with fentanyl and pentobarbital. AF was induced with standard pacing protocols while left and right atrial monophasic action potentials (MAP) were recorded. The power spectra from the MAP recordings were analyzed to determine DF and SE during treatment with boluses of 2 mg/kg lidocaine. Results: Lidocaine converted AF to sinus rhythm in all dogs and all episodes (n = 19). Conversion time was 27–87 seconds. After atropine, sustained AF was not induced; however, 5 episodes of atrial tachycardia resulted, and 3 were converted with lidocaine. Frequency domain analysis of 12 conversion sequences showed that left and right DF of the MAP signals decreased from the time of injection to conversion to sinus rhythm (P < .001). Mean SE indicated a gradient between the left and right atria (P = .003) that did not change during conversion. Conclusions and Clinical Importance: Vagally associated AF in GS dogs is terminated with lidocaine. Lidocaine is likely an effective treatment in clinical dogs with vagally associated AF. | <urn:uuid:b2bbeede-41d5-452a-b291-bdc68ba58d1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vet.cornell.edu/biosci/faculty/Otani/abstracts/pariaut_et_al_jvim_2008.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941236 | 473 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The New York EMS story on 9/11 is one of great pre-planning, major command decisions and rigid FDNY EMS adherence to MCI practices on a daily basis that kept hundred of EMS providers out of harm’s way and resulted in many lives being saved. You will read about circumstances that were beyond the control of EMS responders on the scene, particularly as the towers collapsed unexpectedly around them. You will also read about sights and sounds that were beyond imagination and still haunt those who survived to tell their stories to the JEMS editorial team.
For many, it was a decision to turn right vs. left at the last minute that saved their lives. For others, it was a decision to “follow the light” they saw through almost complete darkness that took them out of suffocating atmosphere and into an area where they could finally catch a breath of breathable air. And in one compelling account by former EMS Deputy Chief Zachary Goldfarb, it was his trust in his EMT aide that saved his live and many others. You will learn the inside story of the key operational moves made that day, as well as the awful experiences that responders encountered and continue to carry from 9/11 operations at the World Trade Center. | <urn:uuid:81756532-488e-4457-b2c3-28e23068a8e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jems.com/print/21628 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987139 | 251 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Members of the baby boomer generation are increasing the demand for cosmetic dental procedures because they are looking for teeth that help them look and feel younger, reports the Academy of General Dentistry, an organization of general dentists dedicated to continuing dental education.
"The reason cosmetic dentistry is experiencing a boom is that baby boomers want to preserve their youthful appearance," believes Susan Sup-Barnes, DDS, FAGD, spokesperson for the Academy of General Dentistry. She says that most patients who want to change and improve their smile are in their late thirties to early fifties and have more disposable income.
Dr. Sup-Barnes asks her patients how they rate their smiles on a scale of 1-10. "If they rate their smile a five, I always ask what it would take to get to a higher number," she says. If patients inquire about different procedures, she explains the different cosmetic options available.
There are many cosmetic dentistry treatments available that can help patients look and feel better about their smiles, such as bleaching, bonding and veneering. All of these options help teeth look brighter. Bleaching makes teeth whiter and bonding and veneering can help change a tooth's shape.
"Cosmetic dentistry is popular for the same reasons that plastic surgery is--baby boomers, more than every before, want to stay and look healthy and they are willing to pay for it, especially if it means cheating the fountain of youth," Dr. Sup-Barnes concludes.
Provided by the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) | <urn:uuid:618284b1-684e-40f2-ab06-6b075db9ad00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newschannel10.com/story/1231806/the-fountain-of-dental-youth | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962428 | 324 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Ron Paul - Government is Too Big to Succeed (And More)
Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission kicked off their first round of hearings on the causes of the economic meltdown on Wall Street. The commission is being compared to the the Pecora Commission launched in 1932 to investigate the causes of the Great Depression. The Pecora commission is beloved by those who believe the solution to every problem is more laws because it was used to justify a number of new laws, including Glass-Steagall. Of course, none of those laws addressed the real causes of the Great Depression. It was the introduction of unsound monetary policy and central economic planning pursued by the Federal Reserve that really threw everything off balance. The Fed was founded in 1913 to stabilize the economy and prevent a recurrence of the short-lived Panic of 1907, but instead it promptly produced the Great Depression which lasted more than 15 years.
The Pecora Commission was stacked with big government sympathizers who blamed the free market and the gold standard without question, and without any consideration of government interference in the economy. This panel is no different. Never will they contemplate how government steered us into this crisis, and what perverse incentives can be removed or repealed so that the market will function more smoothly. Never will they discuss how investment should come from savings, not debt. Never will it occur to them that fiat money, artificially low interest rates and the whole Federal Reserve System might be unwise and unstable, not to mention unconstitutional. The answer will always be more government regulation and oversight. It is predictable that this government panel will eventually come to the firm conclusion that government needs to be bigger, and that the market is just too free.
Freedom Watch with guest, Ron Paul on Geithner/AIG Scandal
Ron Paul on Fox Business News discusses the Fraudulent Fed | <urn:uuid:36e873d3-e4f8-4f32-8808-6a68e6528adc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ron-paul-government-is-too/329542 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948385 | 370 | 1.828125 | 2 |
- (Reuters/KCNA for Reuters TV)
Before leaving North Korea Friday as part of his "basketball diplomacy" visit, ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman praised leader Kim Jong Un for being an "awesome guy," adding he and his father were "great leaders."
Rodman, who is now the most high-profile American to meet Kim Jong Un, told local media outside of the Pyongyang's Sunan airport before departing that it was "amazing how [Kim Jong Un] was so honest."
"Guess what, his grandfather, and his father were great leaders, and he's such a proud man," Rodman, who was visiting the country along with the famed American basketball exhibition team the Harlem Globetrotters, said. "He's proud, his country likes him – not like him, love him, love him," Rodman said. "Guess what, I love him. The guy's really awesome."
Many have described Rodman's visit to North Korea and his blatant praise of Kim Jong Un as being strange, especially because of the mutual hostility between the U.S. and North Korea. There is no formal diplomatic relations between the United States and North Korea, and the U.S. is regularly condemning the North's for its suspected nuclear program. Until 2008, North Korea was on America's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list.
And just in January, North Korea began a series of nuclear tests and rocket launches while also singling out the U.S. as its "sworn enemy."
North Korea has also been named as the No.1 Christian persecutor for 11 straight years by Open Doors. Being a Christian is illegal in North Korea, and those found to possess a Bible or of following Jesus are thrown into hard labor concentration camps or in some cases, publicly executed. Open Doors reported in January that two North Korean Christians were shot because of their faith. One was shot while leaving for Bible training in China, and the other one died in a labor camp.
And according to the World Food Program, about one in every three children in North Korea is chronically malnourished or "stunted," or too short for their age. And a quarter of all pregnant or breast-feeding women are malnourished. About 68 percent of the North's population receive public food ration through the country's Public Distribution System.
Kim Jong Un, 30, took over control of North Korea in December 2011 after his father, Kim Jong Il, passed away. Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, founded North Korea in 1948.
Kim Jung Un, who has been criticized as being a dictator who lives an extravagant life as his people starve, reportedly said that the visit was meant to facilitate amicable relations between the two countries through the power of sport.
Rodman, while attending a game between North Korea players and the Harlem Globetrotters on Thursday, told Kim Jong Un in front of a crowd of thousands that the leader "[has] a friend for life."
The two reportedly sat side-by-side while watching Thursday's game, which ended in a tied score of 110 to 110, and later they drank alcohol and dined on sushi at Kim Jong Un's palace.
Rodman, was visiting the Asian country along with four Harlem Globetrotters in an attempt to facilitate "basketball diplomacy. He was there on behalf of the New York-based Vice Media Company, which was filming a documentary on North Korea and its leader.
Rodman, who has an array of facial piercings, has made a name for himself in American pop-culture for his outlandish antics, including once wearing a wedding dress to promote his autobiography.
Some have defended Rodman and said he cannot necessarily be blamed for his brazen relations with North Korea, as he is not an expert on international relations. For example, on Feb. 26, Rodman inadvertently insulted South Korean rapper Psy, famous for his most-watched YouTube video of all time "Gangnam Style," by suggesting that Psy was from North Korea.
"May I'll run into the Gangnam style dude while I'm here," Rodman tweeted.
"I'm from #SOUTH man!!!" Psy responded.
North and South Korea are technically still at war since the Armistice Agreement in 1953. The Korean Demilitarized Zone along the 38th parallel north is the most heavily militarized border in the world.
Rodman's agent, Darren Prince, told The Associated Press that the ex-NBA star was not concerned about sparking political controversy through his visit.
"Dennis called me last night and said it's been a great experience and he made this trip out of the love of the USA," the agent told AP. "It's all about peace and love." | <urn:uuid:db0bae39-e36b-4ed7-8b0a-572e469adf78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/dennis-rodman-praises-dictator-kim-jong-un-as-awesome-guy-great-leader-91065/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983054 | 982 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Hundreds of people in Louisiana have been evacuated as widespread flooding threatens lives and homes.
Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Thursday afternoon after thunderstorms drenched the state with as much as a foot of rain this week.
Eunice, a town in southwest Louisiana, has had 12.25 inches of rain since Tuesday, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service said.
Jonathan Brazzell said seven parishes -- Acadia, Avoyelles, Concordia, East Carroll, Evangeline, Livingston and St. Landry -- have had widespread flooding since the storms began.
There were no initial reports of injuries.
"The Mermentau River is well above flood stage and expected to go to major flood stage," he said.
St. Landry Parish spokeswoman Megan Vizena said 30% of the area was underwater.
Authorities in Franklin, near the Gulf of Mexico, evacuated 118 people after 7 inches of rain washed over some roads and bridges, the weather service said on its website.
In Acadia Parish, rescuers saved close to 80 people from rising water, including 20 at an oil well.
"We will have more evacuations tonight," Maxine Trahan, a spokeswoman with the Acadia Parish Sheriff's Office said. "There were so many roads that were closed there were not enough signs (to warn residents). | <urn:uuid:96a06f7e-f9ff-4c87-a70d-39947f3f3456> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kitv.com/news/national/People-head-for-safety-as-rivers-rise-in-La/-/8905418/18089028/-/776sf2z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982499 | 279 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Alaska Food Coalition
The Alaska Food Coalition - the AFC - is a statewide group of 81 non-profit, faith-based and state agencies working everyday to help feed hungry Alaskans in communities like Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kenai, Soldotna, Nome, Dillingham, Bethel, Juneau, Kodiak, and many more.
Food Bank of Alaska
Food Bank of Alaska believes no one deserves to be hungry. We are dedicated to eliminating hunger in Alaska by obtaining and providing food to partner agencies feeding hungry people and through anti-hunger leadership.
"The underlying premise of Bean's Café is a deep belief in the inherent dignity of every person, a belief that people respond with kindness when treated kindly, with trust when trusted, and respectfully when respected. Our aim is not to set up a value system – determining what is right or wrong – or a way of life for persons, but to allow them to form their own. In this situation a person is not pressured into acting in a special way, and their eventual response is free, lasting, and more fully themselves". (Copied from the original proposal to organize Bean's Café – 1979).
Canstruction is the most unique food charity in the world! Canstruction, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that holds annual design and build competitions to construct fantastic, giant sized, structures made entirely out of canned food. In each city after the structures are built and the winners declared the creations go on view to the general public as giant art exhibits. At the close of the competitions all of the food used in the structures is donated to the local food banks for distribution to community emergency feeding programs.
Kids' Kitchen is a nonprofit dedicated to providing nutritional meals for children at no cost. With over a million meals served with love since 1996, Kids' Kitchen is starting to see the first children they served grow into young, dynamic adults. Love works for our community, our nation, and our world. Join Grandpa Elgin of Anchorage, Alaska, in supporting the youth through providing healthy meals for children, providing hot food for kids, and making life better by taking care of children who will one day care for us. It is not charity; it is investment. | <urn:uuid:82371ee2-6435-4abc-ac2b-4fc9e523deaf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/engage/engage_social_issues/Food_Security/community-organizations.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948113 | 459 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Our Green Travel Plan expresses our commitment to developing provision for pedestrians, cyclists and for multi-modal transportation including public transport.
The Key Objectives of this Travel Plan are to:
reduce the environmental impact of travel associated with both Institutions;
reduce parking congestion on campus and in the locality during term-time;
improve the options available for travel to both campuses;
improve the safety and accessibility of travel within and to both campuses.
Measures aimed at addressing these objectives during 2012 are laid out within the Plan and include improving public transport provision, improved facilities for cycling and walking, improved car park management, and the ongoing examination of parking restrictions and charging. Both Institutions encourage students, staff and visitors to consider using alternative methods of transport to help reduce the impact of car travel on the environment. By working in close partnership with Cornwall Council and other strategic partners, both Institutions endeavour to continue developing and improving the range of travel options available to members of the Universities, as well as visitors. Detailed information on specific modes of transport available to staff and students can be found within the Green Travel Guide. Copies of this handy manual are given to all new students within their Welcome Bag, and are available at both Campus receptions. | <urn:uuid:806c34bd-0c03-403c-928b-ee1725c4bf18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fxplus.ac.uk/find/travel-transport/green-travel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943285 | 251 | 1.804688 | 2 |
FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR
A Blatant, Frontal Assault on the Constitutional Separation of Powers
Regarding the power of the President, Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution states:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
The Senate’s power to pass on all appointments of Officers of the United States is explicitly enshrined in the Constitution. The one and only exception to this Congressional power occurs when the Senate is in recess. Despite the fact that, according to the Senate, the Senate is most emphatically not in recess, and despite the fact that they have been meeting every two days even over the holiday, the Obama administration has taken it upon themselves to declare that the Senate is in fact in recess and has made recess appointments to both the NRLB and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Consider the astonishing timeline here – Obama submitted the names of his proposed appointments two weeks ago - two weeks ago - there has been no filibuster of the appointments; there hasn’t even been a cloture vote scheduled. The Senate hasn’t taken any action one way or another because there’s this holiday that happens in the last two weeks of December that some Americans celebrate, but Reid has kept the Senate in pro forma session, including regular meetings, to preserve the Senate’s prerogative to advise and consent on Obama’s nominees, as it is absolutely and beyond caveat the Senate’s prerogative to do. Thus, despite the fact that the Senate isn’t even dragging its feet on these appointments, and despite the fact that the Senate has been adamant that it is not in recess, Obama has arrogated to himself the power to declare the Senate in recess for them and short circuit the entire Constitutional process for Senate confirmation of Constitutional officers.
This is nothing less than an assault by President Obama on the entire institution of the Senate. And it appears to serve no purpose other than Obama telling the Senate that he will do whatever he darn well pleases.
I can safely say that this is the ballsiest thing I have ever seen a President do that served absolutely no meaningful purpose at all. If Congress – and I am including Congressional Democrats in this – takes this lying down, it will set a breathtaking precedent and instantaneously demolish a significant part of Congress’ relevance. Consider that if Congress allows this to stand, then the next Republican President might just announce Jay Sekulow for his next SCOTUS appointment, and then two weeks later when the Senate breaks for the weekend, declare them in recess and appoint him to the Court. If Democrats consider this to be an undesirable view of the future, I would suggest that they figure out a way to cooperate with Republicans in making Obama pay a very real price for this blatant slap at their constitutional authority. | <urn:uuid:dce103da-22e5-434e-9c2c-59b3fdc14941> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redstate.com/2012/01/04/a-blatant-frontal-assault-on-the-constitutional-separation-of-powers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962808 | 731 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Photo: From Undocumented Immigrant to Olympic Silver Medalist: Leo Manzano Wins 2nd in 1500m
Impressive. That is just one word to describe Leo Manzano’s Olympic performance in the men’s 1500 meter final Tuesday.
Though he brought home a silver medal for the U.S., he was not born an American. When the now 27-year-old was just four years old, he was brought to the U.S. illegally. However, at the age of 14, he became a legal citizen.
He attended the University of Texas on a track scholarship and became an 11-time NCAA All-American and a five-time NCAA champion. He graduated with degrees in Portuguese and Spanish with a minor in business.
Leading up to the race, Manzano’s coach said his runner was a strong finisher capable of turning things up in the final straightaway.
Tuesday’s performance a true Olympic victory. He may not have won gold, but anyone watching would certainly call him a winner. In the last 65 or so meters, Manzano began to pull out from the center of the pack. He passed multiple runners and in a full out sprint, flew past everyone except gold medal winner Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria.
This was Manzano’s second Olympics, and while he may run for the U.S. he celebrated with both the U.S. flag and the Mexican flag and tweeted in both the English and Spanish throughout his Olympic visit.
After his win, he tweeted:
Silver medal, still felt like I won! Representing two countries USA and Mexico!
Manzano finished at 3:34:79, making him the first U.S. athlete to medal in the 1500 meter since Jim Ryun’s silver-medal-winning running in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Interestingly, for the first time in 20 years, a Kenyan runner did not medal, as the bronze went to Morocco’s Abdalaati Iguider. | <urn:uuid:7538f231-d45a-48b1-b8a6-d5ce030a695c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/from-undocumented-immigrant-to-olympic-silver-medalist-leo-manzano-wins-150/17693/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978817 | 423 | 1.53125 | 2 |
SAN DIEGO, June 27, 2012 – As part of its 2012 Environmental Champions Initiative, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) today announced that it will contribute $1 million to local environmental non-profit organizations in San Diego County and south Orange County.
SDG&E is welcoming proposals from non-profit environmental organizations for programs that engage and educate young people in the community as stewards of the environment in the areas of ecosystem awareness, environmental conservation, and energy and water efficiency.
Winning organizations can receive up to $25,000 for individual projects and up to $50,000 for collaborative projects with partner environmental non-profit organizations. This initiative is limited to environmental education and community engagement programs administered in SDG&E’s territory.
“The San Diego region is home to hundreds of non-profit organizations whose programs engage kids and communities in our local environment. SDG&E is proud to partner with many of these non-profits in support of our shared commitment to the environment and environmental stewardship,” said Pedro Villegas, director of community relations for SDG&E. “Through support of our partner non-profit organizations, we also seek to provide underserved communities with access to environmental education and engagement programs, access that may not be available otherwise.”
Organizations will have an opportunity to submit their applications until July 27. Preference will be given to environmental programs that target one or more of the following areas: natural resource conservation and protection, habitat preservation and restoration, energy efficiency, and waste/recycling. SDG&E plans to announce the winners in September.
SDG&E is a regulated public utility that provides safe and reliable energy service to 3.4 million consumers through 1.4 million electric meters and more than 850,000 natural gas meters in San Diego and southern Orange counties. The utility’s area spans 4,100 square miles. SDG&E is committed to creating ways to help our customers save energy and money every day. SDG&E is a subsidiary of Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE), a Fortune 500 energy services holding company based in San Diego. | <urn:uuid:daac18fc-3e24-4ff4-a97c-444622e5d30e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sdge.com/newsroom/press-releases/2012-06-27/sdge-award-1-million-grants-local-environmental-champions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942524 | 444 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Perdue gives leaders pep talk to nurture ideasWritten by Caitlin Bowling
A town doesn’t have to be big to have big ideas, according to North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue.
“What is it you have that you can capitalize on? That you can put together and sell,” Perdue said.
Last Thursday’s small town competitiveness forum at Haywood Community College brought together regional, state and federal leaders to discuss rural economic growth and projects in need of funding.
Appalachian Regional Commission Federal Co-Chair Earl Goal spoke at the forum. He emphasized the positive outlook of the small business owners he has spoken to — more than half of who said they plan to hire new employees.
“Yeah, they do plan to hire people; yeah, they are interested in investing in the community; and yeah, they do see a bright future,” Goal said.
During the forum, several local leaders expressed a need to expand broadband services in rural North Carolina so that students can access the Internet at home as well as at school. Most took the time to thank Perdue for previous funding and programs that have helped their towns and businesses.
Before taking comments and questions, Perdue asked attendees what their “big ideas” were.
“I have been told by people from around the world that the best ideas are in dorms in Western or UNC-A; they are in a garage in somebody’s neighborhood, or they are actually in the mind of a 15-year-old sitting in a public high school in Western North Carolina today,” Perdue said.
Perdue told people to look for creative ways to find funding for local projects and big ideas. In the 1980s, after years of being turned down for state funding, she and other residents of New Bern received a grant from Pepsi, which was invented there, to help rejuvenate area businesses.
“We need to decide that we as a country are going to build things again,” she said, later adding that she wants to visit China one day and see products made in North Carolina.
Perdue encouraged attendees to follow the lead of Appalachian State University in Boone.
The rural university entered the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon this year, building a self-sufficient, affordable, solar-powered home. With nearly 93,000 votes, the university beat out 18 other teams including entries from Purdue University and the University of Maryland for the People’s Choice Award.
The team from Appalachian State University created the concept themselves and sought out funding. Now, national companies such as Target and Lowe’s want to display the team’s house, Perdue said. | <urn:uuid:f21b7a92-67df-4e28-b292-cd70d58d7e86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smokymountainnews.com/index.php/calendar/item/5278-perdue-gives-leaders-pep-talk-to-nurture-ideas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969835 | 564 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The Egyptian-born Coptic Christian who made the anti-Islam film that sparked protests across the Muslim world has no regrets about his insulting portrayal of the Prophet Mohammad, according to an interview with The New York Times.
In his first public comments since the 14-minute trailer for his film, "Innocence of Muslims," gained notoriety in September, Mark Basseley Youssef told the newspaper he wanted to reveal what he called "the actual truth" about Mohammad and raise awareness of the violence committed "under the sign of Allah."
The film portrayed Mohammad as a womanizer, ruthless killer and child molester. The film touched off a torrent of anti-American unrest in Arab and Muslim countries. For many Muslims, any depiction of the prophet is considered blasphemous.
In explaining his reasons for the film, he cited "atrocities" by Muslims. After a Muslim gunman killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009, "I became even more upset and enraged," he said in written comments conveyed to the Times through his attorney. A Times request to interview him in person was blocked by prison authorities.
"I thought, before I wrote this script that I should burn myself in a public square to let the American people and the people of the world know this message that I believe in," said Youssef.
Youssef, a former gasoline station owner identified in some public records by his birth name, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, received a one-year prison sentence in early November for violating terms of his 2011 supervised release from prison on a bank fraud conviction. In the course of making the film, he made use of false identities and lied to his probation officer, both of which were prohibited under his probation.
As early as 2008, Youssef had completed a brief treatment for his movie, which he originally wanted to call "The First Terrorist." After going through five versions of the script, he raised $80,000 to finance the film, apparently through his second ex-wife's Egyptian family and donations from other Copts.
The shoot for "Innocence of Muslims" lasted only 15 days. Although only the film's 14-minute trailer has been released online, a feature-length movie does exist, running about one hour and 40 minutes, the newspaper said.
Some actors were under the impression that they were performing in an adventure drama called "Desert Warriors" whose villain was named George. Youssef, who worked on the film under the alias Sam Baccil, later dubbed the name Muhammad whenever an actor said George.
At least one actress has sued Youssef, claiming her image and reputation were harmed and her safety put in jeopardy, citing a religious edict she said an Egyptian cleric had issued against anyone connected with the movie. Youssef, however, has no qualms about how he handled the cast.
"They had signed contracts before they went in front of any camera, and these contracts in no way prevented changes to the script or movie," Youssef told The New York Times. | <urn:uuid:43cbd3b3-5658-422d-8c78-b3773a5ee011> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=293537 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987971 | 629 | 1.578125 | 2 |
A little while ago John MacArthur did a series of posts critiquing the ‘Young, Restless, and Reformed’ movement. Needless to say, it created quite a stir.
Those who disagreed with MacArthur argued that he was using sweeping generalizations that were unhelpful and uncharitable and that his tone was unloving and combative. We felt scolded as if by an absentee father who hadn’t invested in us, but stopped by to spank us anyway.
The response from those who sided with MacArthur was, by and large, ‘He has pastored faithfully for 40 years, you need to listen to him.’ To be sure, the response was more than that, and included biblical justification of gaining wisdom from elders, etc. In the end, I argued that the responsibility remains on the younger ones of us to make sure we’re listening, even if we’re not being addressed as we’d like.
Isn’t it interesting how history seems to repeat itself? Recently James MacDonald came under fire for his public schmoozing with TD Jakes. One of the responses to the criticism that I’ve heard has been this: ‘James has faithfully pastored for 30 years, has led Harvest, sent out church planters, and people have been saved! Let’s show some respect!’
Both times (with MacArthur and MacDonald) the defenders of these public figures appealed to past faithfulness as a defence for present action. That’s worth noting.
Ad Hominem by Any Other Name
In logic an ad hominem attack is when you criticize a person rather than their idea. What I find fascinating in both of the above cases is that the defence being used is actually ad hominem. In other words, rather than defending the actions or ideas of the person which have drawn the scrutiny, the defenders of these individuals have resorted to speaking about the men themselves. But who the men are and what they have done in the past was never the issue.
We need to attempt to avoid extremes. On the one hand, wisdom acknowledges the experience of the aged and proven faithful:
The glory of young men is their strength, but the splendour of old men is their gray hair (Prov 20.29)
Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old (Prov 23.22)
And we must ‘walk’ with those who have a proven track record of faithfully displaying wisdom:
Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm (Prov 13.20)
That being said, we must not pre-judge a matter based on past faithfulness or wisdom alone. Whether it is MacArthur, MacDonald, Don Carson or Tim Keller — or any of the heroes of that faith for that matter — we must hear a matter out fully, weigh the opposing views in the balance and prayerfully seek wisdom.
If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame (Prov 18.13)
The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him (Prov 18.17)
And let’s not forget that it was the youngest witness of Job’s sufferings who had heard all the others speak first, who finally answered with wisdom.
While we must honour those who have laboured before us and for us, the simple truth is that we do not biblically honour them if we do not weigh the wisdom of their words and actions against God’s word. No matter how faithful a man has been in the past, he is still a man, and still in need of ongoing correcting and perfecting this side of eternity. We must show them love, respect, and the benefit of the doubt, but we must never turn a blind eye to present unfaithfulness simply because we’ve witnessed past faithfulness.
I hope the people of Grace Fellowship Church would honour me and honour God in this same Berean way. | <urn:uuid:561311f5-dcdc-4b7c-bd2d-83d146531fa3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://julianfreeman.ca/christian-life/faithfulness-fallacy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97285 | 839 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Posts Tagged ‘mood board’
In the design work, designers and innovative thinking have been using mood boards for decards to help develop design concepts. Agencies and companies often use them as a means to visually communicate with other team members.
Ultimately, the mood board serves as a concrete frame of reference in abstract processes such as interface design, website development, marketing communications, brand creation and fashion design.
The company Image Spark has decided to move the mood board online. It seems like a simple idea. However, in the current state of distance and electronic communication with team member and customers, it is not always possible to be in the same physical space to create a mood board.
This tool creates an online tool for an individual or a team to be able the same types of visuals of a mood board.
These visual tools can be very powerful. Just imagine that I would tell you that I wanted to explain a series of things that are blue and make me happy. That would be pretty hard to envision.
What if I showed you this instead? It would be much easier to understand what I was talking about and the imagery that I had in mind.
The Image Spark tool also allows you to share with the community, create a source for images, assign tags and keep your images private.
There are definite short comings to the tool, but overall, the concept of online mood boards is one worth exploring. | <urn:uuid:95cb25f6-9934-4697-9d0a-bca67aecaf37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.viewfromw6th.com/index.php/tag/mood-board/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966377 | 291 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Facebook is concerned that a start-up social network with the word "book" in its portmanteau title is infringing on its own trademarks. It filed a court complaint on Wednesday in a California district court against Teachbook, a networking site geared toward teachers.
Claiming that Teachbook is "riding on the coattails of the fame and enormous goodwill of the Facebook trademark," the complaint asserts that the start-up, which is headquartered in a suburb of Chicago, shouldn't be using the "-book" suffix.
"The 'book' component of the Facebook mark has no descriptive meaning and is arbitrary and highly distinctive in the context of online communities and networking Web sites," the complaint explains. "If others could freely use 'generic plus BOOK' marks for online networking services targeted to that particular generic category of individuals, the suffix 'book' could become a generic term for 'online community/networking services' or 'social networking services.' That would dilute the distinctiveness of the Facebook marks, impairing their ability to function as unique and distinctive identifiers of Facebook's goods and services."
Teachbook, which has not yet commented on the matter, doesn't appear to imitate Facebook's design or feel, but Facebook's whole argument is that it doesn't want the "-book" suffix to become a social-networking term independent of the Facebook brand. The complaint brings up, among other things, that Teachbook markets itself as a social-networking option for teachers whose schools may have blocked or forbidden access to social networks such as Facebook.
It should be noted that the context of "-book" in the name Teachbook is very similar to that used by a company called Poolhouse Enterprises, which runs Facebook applications for users who want to showcase their kids and pets--Dogbook, Catbook, Ferretbook, and Rodentbook, to name a few. Several of Poolhouse's more popular apps are also available in Apple's App Store.
Poolhouse did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg derived the company's name (originally "Thefacebook") from the common college term "facebook," the bound book of classmate mugshots typically distributed to incoming freshmen. But since then, the social-networking site, which has more than 500 million users around the world, has more or less co-opted the word. Two years ago, the uncertainty of the trademark made some headlines, when Aaron Greenspan, a software entrepreneur who had attended Harvard University with Zuckerberg and claimed ownership of the concept behind Facebook, petitioned to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to have Facebook's trademark on the word revoked.
Greenspan's rationale was that "facebook" had been a common term prior to the rise of Facebook, and that the trademark, for which Facebook originally filed in February 2005, made it difficult for him to market the title of his book, "Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era" through Google search ads.
The legal dispute between Greenspan's company, Think Computer, and Facebook was
Greenspan, reached via e-mail, said he was unable to comment further. | <urn:uuid:88e30a06-5ec8-47d7-bf56-a60d007c8f1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20014700-36.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961119 | 650 | 1.84375 | 2 |
- 20%-25% Of All New Websites Published Are Using WordPress.
(via: Morgan Linton)
- UK Companies have to give customers their customer data under the "Midata!" plan.
Companies will have to release data about a person's consumption or transactions in an electronic machine-readable standard format upon request.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills plans to bring in legislation if companies fail to co-operate.
Possible legislation will focus on three "core" sectors: current accounts and credit cards, mobile phones and energy, with further powers to extend the legislation to other sectors if appropriate.
– The Guardian
- New Google track listing results for some band searches. Do you see it?
- Taliban accidently make email list public when a spokesman used CC instead of BCC to email everyone on the list. Over 400 email addresses were exposed.
"Taliban have included all 4 of my email addresses on the leaked distribution list … Quite reassuring to my safety."
–Kabul-based journalist Mustafa Kazemi
- The world's largest visual database contains 14,197,122 images, indexed into 21,841 categories.
(New York Times)
- What's posted (privately) on Facebook cannot be used at work say UK judges in a case of an employee demoted for privately posting views opposing gay marriage.
The comments were not visible to the general public, and were posted outside work time, but the trust said he broke its code of conduct by expressing religious or political views which might upset co-workers. [...]
The judge said the trust did not have a right to demote Smith as his Facebook postings did not amount to misconduct, and the demotion imposed by way of purported disciplinary sanction constituted a breach of contract.
– The Guardian
- Mobile phones are adopted by more people on the planet than electricity.
- Last Friday the last typewriter in the UK was made. It was a Brother CM-1000.
"Clearly, typewriters have been undergoing a decline in many years. There's always a point where it's not economically viable any more, and we always knew that time was coming."
– Phil Jones, Brother's UK head
- What about a self-filling bottle of water while a 14 year old girl invents a solar-powered water jug that purifies water?
- Visa, Mastercard, Paypal have no right to stop Wikileaks donations, says the European Union and will introduce legislation to regulate credit card companies ability to refuse service.
32. [The European Parliament] Considers it likely that there will be a growing number of European companies whose activities are effectively dependent on being able to accept payments by card; considers it to be in the public interest to define objective rules describing the circumstances and procedures under which card payment schemes may unilaterally refuse acceptance
paid passion job at Search Engine People sees me applying my passions and knowledge to a wide array of problems, ones I usually experience as challenges.
People who know me know I love coffee. | <urn:uuid:1930870e-38de-4bf4-8216-d1eabb2f5eda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/10things-week-47.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951659 | 619 | 1.5625 | 2 |
A colleague who works in the State Department contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to offer any suggestions for what Secretary Clinton might cover in her second address on internet freedom, the address she gave this afternoon at George Washington University. I sent him a long note in the form of a proposed speech, on January 24th, the day before protesters took to the streets in Cairo, ten days days after Ben Ali fled Tunisia.
My note was pretty angry, and I included with it a preface saying, “I don’t expect you’ll be able to use any of this, but thanks for listening anyway.” At that moment, I was very disappointed with the US government’s halting reaction to protests in Tunisia and the sparse media attention those protests received in the US. And I felt like anything Secretary Clinton said about internet freedom would sound questionable and hypocritcal in light of US government pressure on Wikileaks.
My colleague graciously acknowledged the note, vigorously disagreeing with my characterization of US government actions in response to Wikileaks. While I was grateful he’d asked for my input, I felt pretty sure I’d be disappointed by the speech Clinton delivered.
Actually there was a lot of what Secretary Clinton said today that I appreciated:
- I was glad to hear her make it clear that the movements in Tunisia and Egypt weren’t about the internet – at most, the internet helped with some of the organization and dissemination of the protest movements.
- While most of the critique over filtering/censorship featured the usual suspects – Iran, Syria, Cuba, China – it was encouraging to see Vietnam explicitly mentioned as a country that harasses and arrests bloggers. The examples used in this year’s speech felt broader than last years, and less China-focused.
- I was very pleased to hear Clinton point out that there’s no single tool that’s capable of “solving” internet censorship, and that people demanding funding for silver bullet solutions weren’t going to sway State Department policy. State has come under steady pressure from lobbyists to pour funding into one subset of the tools developers are working on to combat internet censorship. While I don’t believe circumventing censorship is ever going to be a valid strategy for the majority of internet users, I’m glad to hear support for an ecosystem of solutions – we need multiple approaches, if only because they make it harder for governments to block tools.
While I thought framing questions about the future of the internet in terms of tensions – security versus liberty, transparency versus confidentiality, expression versus civility – was wise, I didn’t find her answers regarding Wikileaks especially convincing. As friends at Berkman pointed out in reaction to her speech, Wikileaks didn’t steal those cables. They acted as a journalistic organization in publishing that leaked material. And while it’s good to know that it wasn’t official Obama administration policy to pressure companies not to do business with Wikileaks, but it doesn’t change the fact that US corporations cut vital services to Wikileaks under what they perceived to be US government pressure. I was glad she tackled the question head on instead of skirting it, even though I found the “it’s not Wikileaks, it’s theft we don’t like” explanation unpalatable.
I was particularly encouraged to see Secretary Clinton addressing the “dictator’s dilemma”, the difficulty of using the internet as a tool for economic growth and entertainment without enabling the internet for activist purposes. I wish I were as sanguine as she in offering this formulation: “Walls that divide the Internet – that block political content, ban broad categories of expression, allow certain forms of peaceful assembly but prohibit others, or intimidate people from expressing their ideas- are far easier to erect than they are to maintain. Not just because people find ways around them and through them, but because there isn’t an economic internet and a social internet and apolitical internet – there’s just the internet.”
Those walls are hard to maintain, true, but they’re lots easier to maintain with the help of the (mostly US-based) companies that host large fractions of the Internet’s traffic. What should YouTube do when a video they host violates local law in Turkey or Thailand? If they do what these countries request – geoblock the video in question so the remainder of the service remains accessible – they’re no longer the “just the internet” Secretary Clinton is counting on.
Whether or not the US government should be advocating an internet freedom agenda – I still find Sami ben Gharbia’s arguments against advocating such an agenda convincing – any attempt to use the internet as a digital public sphere needs to consider the role of US corporations. A year ago, I asked why Clinton didn’t put pressure on US corporations to work to make their content harder to block in closed societies. At the moment, I’d ask why Secretary Clinton didn’t challenge Facebook to rethink their real name policy – or at least their bad habit of deleting activist groups for inaccurate biographical information – in the wake of the use of that platform to push for change in Egypt. Her speech touched on the responsibility and power of US companies only in passing – I wish the speech had been a call to US companies to take a lead in ensuring their platforms can be used by people all over the world to push for social change.
Here’s the suggested speech I offered on 1/24:
Events in Tunisia are evidence that we’re in a different world than ten years ago. No, Facebook didn’t cause the Tunisian revolution – the frustration of the Tunisian people with their lousy situation and their bravery in taking to the streets caused the fall of a dictatorial, repressive government. But the internet helped the Tunisian people make the decision to stand up – reports from Sidi Bouzid were rebroadcast on Al Jazeera and passed around via email and SMS, helping people throughout the country understand that people were standing up and demanding change.
The internet makes it possible for people in a dusty, largely disconnected city in a country where the government systematically suppresses dissent to be heard. And when they are heard, their defiance and bravery can be an inspiration to the people around them and people around the world.
Before Ben Ali was forced by his people to step down, he was one of the most notorious censors of the internet. Tunisia’s largest ISP was actively spying on users, seizing dissidents passwords to their Gmail and Facebook accounts. But Ben Ali understood that the internet was so powerful that he couldn’t block Facebook, which over 19% of Tunisians use, or shut the net off entirely without sparking broader revolts and protests. As he bargained with his citizens to remain in power, one of the major concessions he offered was an end to internet censorship.
Throughout the Middle East, leaders are trying to figure out what the lessons of the Tunisian revolution are. Will the internet bring rebellions throughout the region? Will their governments fall as their citizens see frustration, protest and defiance online and on satellite television? The best governments in the region will learn to listen to these expressions of anger online, to encourage the dialog and to work with their citizens for solutions. The worst will attempt to block and silence these voices.
Our goal is not for the internet to lead to a wave of revolutions throughout the Arab world. (After all, we’re propping up most of these creaky autocrats, including Ben Ali, who we were apologizing for up to the moment his people sent him packing.) Instead, our goal is to ensure that people can make their voices heard in this new space, and hope that governments will be wise enough to listen and to engage.
When I spoke a year ago, I warned that an open internet has two sides – the potential to be used to harm, as well as to help. The events of the past year have shown that even our country has an ongoing debate about whether the internet is too open, whether sites like Wikileaks have a place in our public discourse. I regret the actions taken by some members of the US government to pressure US companies not to provide services to Wikileaks. If we believe in freedom of speech, we need to accept that we’re not going to like everything people have to say. If we believe in an open internet, it needs to be open to those that criticize, not just those that praise. And I accept that the heavy-handed actions taken by some undercut and call into question our commitment to the internet as an open space for dialog.
When I last spoke, I challenged governments like that of the People’s Republic of China to take up the challenge of wrestling with an open internet and listening directly to the voices of their people. Today, I offer two new challenges. One is to my own government, to wrestle with issues of online speech in a way that exemplifies our commitment to the First amendement, especially when that speech is politically uncomfortable.
And I offer a challenge to the companies doing the innovative work in creating our new, digital public sphere. Understand that the people using your tools are not just customers, but citizens. We need to ensure their rights of freedom of expression in online media, to ensure that dissidents, whether they are Tunisian, American or Chinese, can use Facebook, Twitter or whatever media they choose to challenge what’s wrong with their governments, celebrate what’s right and work for change. | <urn:uuid:cb632e22-e92e-4485-8c4b-0f087a6055ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/02/15/a-three-week-old-reaction-to-secretary-clintons-internet-freedom-2011-speech/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957559 | 1,971 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Ever wonder why the Occupy protester became the Occupy protester?
"....upon waking each morning in the Tent City, he was struck by an overwhelming feeling of being part of a family."
If you see their signs and hear their chants, you might conclude that they are more than displeased with corporate fascism, bank bailouts, and special-interest favors paid by politicians in return for hefty political contributions. However, The Frontier Lab
, a marketing research nonprofit in Chicago, has just completed a study that applies science to that question. Their report, "Short-Selling America," finds that while the messages on their signs might convey an anger with cronyism in the financial sector, this isn't the whole story and, in fact, is only true at the surface level. There are deeper values, ones The Frontier Lab mapped through a series of research in-depth interviews, that must be examined for a more comprehensive understanding of their movement.
"While their rhetoric might decry crony capitalism or bank bailouts, their values reveal self-centered and fear-based motivations."
The Frontier Lab's report, "Short-Selling America"
uses Means-End Value Chain
research (a technique applied most often in private-sector marketing research) to uncover real insights into the minds of the some of the most passionate Occupiers. Beyond the surface layer of slogans and "social-justice" banter, these methods show that while there are commonalities between the protesters, when you look at their values, they fall into two different segments--the "communitarian" and the "professional."
"By remaining at the surface-level you are subject to almost complete swindle, as the core Occupiers’ essence hinges less on the political ends than on emotional, self-directed fulfillment."
The communitarians are younger protesters, mainly in their twenties, and make up the majority of the voices heard chanting and waving signs. The professionals are the career protesters and organizers, drawing the playbooks and solidifying their careers.
"Their concerns were based on their individual needs, interests, and fears—not for the needs, interests, and fears of a larger community or future generation."
The report finds that while the communitarians voice concerns for social and economic issues, it is a sense of community and filling a void of purpose in their lives which is at the root of their connection to Occupy. And while claiming to promote the greater good for the community, at the source of these feelings is are desires that focus on their own self interest and solutions to their personal problems, such as repaying student loans and finding a job. Different from other activist groups such as the Tea Party, these protesters do not have an interest in their own responsibility or future generations. They seek an easy answer, and look to others to solve their problems.
"....when pressed they revealed that it was more so a sense of their own, individual self-worth—not concern for the other—that motivated their action than concern for the other. The Occupy movement, in this way, fulfills a lack of meaning and purpose in their own lives."
The professionals' value set is different from the communitarians. Driving them is prestige, validation, and control. They take pride in the achievement of producing mass protests and attracting the attention of the media. These are victories that bring them closer to achieving certain political ends, further validating their own importance to the movement.
The one goal these two sub-groups share is to convert the power of the individual into the power of the commune.
While some claim the need to find common ground between freedom loving Americans and the Occupiers, sadly, The Frontier Lab comes to the conclusion that any similarities, such as voicing an opposition to cronyism, are only present on the surface and fall short of being able to predict what they'll do next. And selling them the principles of freedom of liberty is like "selling a medium-rare rib-eye to a vegan."
The values that underlie the Occupiers oppose the deep-values that support American freedom. In a sense, the Occupiers “win” when America loses—they are truly going “short” on America.
In conclusion the report indicates if their is any ground to gain, the communitarians provide the best opportunity, but they would need to be sold on a feeling of community and purpose that currently exists in a realm with which is unknown to them. Then perhaps, there could be hope for them to understand American principles.
Read The Frontier Lab's "Short Selling America."
Cross Posted at: RebelPundit | <urn:uuid:4ac9c62e-c87a-4979-8978-3b1e5f4738bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2011/12/21/Scientific-Study--Occupy-Protesters-Driven-by-Self-Interest--Lack-of-Meaning--Fear-and-Control | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961819 | 943 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Apostles — those stern, bearded guys following Jesus of Nazareth? That’s so first century.
Lawrence boasts four female, modern-day apostles. They post on Facebook, share a Verizon cell phone and minister to clergy and laity, particularly Kansas University students.
They’re the Apostles of the Interior Life, a Catholic order with sisters in two U.S. locations: the University of Texas A&M and KU.
“Interior life is the life of our spirit, of our soul, and so our community wants to pay attention to this part that is more hidden,” says sister Elena Morcelli, an apostle.
This life involves thoughts, desires and emotions.
“We try to recognize how those are from God and lead us to God,” Morcelli says.
Consecrated yet contemporary
Recognized by the Diocese of Rome in 1996, the order has a Web site at www.apostlesofil.org.
Eleven apostles are in Rome, of whom four are studying at the order’s house of formation. Apart from the four at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, 1631 Crescent Road, four are at Texas A&M University.
Morcelli is quick to note that the apostles’ casual, everyday attire isn’t a statement against traditional Roman Catholic sisters’ habits.
“It’s not like a choice against the habit, or we want to hide ourselves,” she says. “We want to live a life that people live, in a very simple, sober way.”
The job requirements, so to speak, of apostleship involve four elements. The first is a strong prayer life — a minimum of four hours a day. This includes the rosary, Mass and other liturgical services, Morcelli says.
“Those are really the gems, the pearls, of our day,” she says. “This is where we get our oxygen, our motivation.”
The second element is the apostolate, or their activities on campus or in the center. The third is ongoing formation, or time in theological study.
Fourth, the apostles use community life, or meetings with other sisters, as Morcelli says, “to witness together the joy and the beauty of the love of Christ.”
Coming to Lawrence
Monsignor Vince Krische, who was the center’s chaplain for 28 years, helped bring the apostles to Lawrence. He invited them to visit KU in 2003.
Krische, now pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Prairie Village, says the sisters provide spiritual direction on a one-to-one basis, which the center’s classrooms of 10 to 80 students couldn’t give.
“They were a perfect addition,” he says.
Morcelli estimates that each year, the sisters see about 100 students regularly — about 30 to 40 students per sister.
No exact figures are available on the number of Catholic students at KU. The Rev. Steve Beseau, the center’s chaplain, puts the estimate at 4,000. Each week, 1,000 students attend Mass at the center.
Beseau says the apostles are witnesses to joy, community life and prayer. “Apostle,” he says, means one who is sent — and these have been sent to teach the interior life.
“They don’t give in to worry,” he says. “Even when bad things happen, it still falls under the providence of God.”
The apostles have room and board from the center, and they live on donations such as money, clothes or furniture. They send any surplus donations to Rome to support those studying to become apostles, Morcelli says.
“People at times kind of wonder, but we want to show them that we are normal people, but yet with a different call,” she says.
For Morcelli, that call involved coming to Lawrence from Italy, with no knowledge of the culture and little understanding of English.
“On the human level, it was just like, ‘You’re doing what?’ It was totally insane,” she says. “Here everything is just so perfect, organized and efficient, almost like a machine. We Italians are more laid-back and enjoying some time.”
She says the sisters brought with them “not Italian style, but really Jesus’ style, where Jesus wants us to experience the joy of life.”
“It’s not like Italian versus American type of thing, but this concept of holy leisure and joy — breaking the craziness of this machine,” she says.
Becca Ashley, Olathe senior majoring in Spanish education, has spent all four years of her time at KU under Morcelli’s spiritual direction.
“You meet them, and you see their joy, and you see how utterly happy they are, and you say, ‘I want that,’” she says. “And you don’t have to become an apostle of the interior life to have it.”
Ashley says the apostles taught her how to live in joy as Mother Teresa described it, to put Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last — J-O-Y.
“I understand who I am and who I’m supposed to be because I understand more that I was created to live in this joy; I was created for a specific purpose,” she says.
Morcelli would agree. She says consecrated people are created to be a sign — “a sign of joy, a sign of hope, a sign of life that has a meaning that goes beyond what we see here,” she says. “So whatever we do, we try to be this sign.”
Debbie Li, an apostle
Because her father worked for Singapore Airlines, Sister Debbie Li says, she grew up all over the world.
“Since I was 2 months old, I’ve been traveling,” she says — California, London and Honolulu, to name a few.
Her academic dream had been to go to Oxford to study engineering, and she was accepted there. “I was ecstatic,” she says. Before she went, however, a multinational company in Singapore gave her a full scholarship to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She decided she couldn’t refuse.
“But really I see that God’s ways are not my ways, because if I had gone to Oxford,” she says, “I don’t think I would have discovered my faith again.”
The university, which Li describes as a kind of “Catholic Disneyland,” at that time had a house for several of the Apostles of the Interior Life. During Li’s sophomore year, she met Sister Tiziana Mazzei and started a journey of spiritual direction with her.
“I was pretty close to getting married,” she says, of the time before she chose consecration. The person she had been dating was Protestant, and she says they had a really good relationship.
“He taught me the meaning of what it means to love,” she says.
At the same time, she says, she believed later that God was calling her to give her life to more than just one person: to God in an exclusive way.
“I felt that my heart was made for something else,” she says. “I guess I thirsted for this God who was limitless.”
She says her former boyfriend was extremely understanding of her decision.
“Obviously it hurt both of us, because we knew what we were leaving, but we didn’t know what was coming. … But he was very, very supportive all the way through.”
Li attended the order’s house of formation in Rome, where she spent two years studying philosophy and three years studying theology at St. John Lateran, an international pontifical university. During her fourth year in Rome, Li took her vows of consecration on Dec. 8, 2006.
“At the end of the day, you do it because you’re so in love with somebody,” she says. “If we think that evil has the power to attract, then how much more powerful, how much stronger, how much more forceful, must love be.”
Questions raised about her faith don’t shake Li. She says she likes the challenge of giving reasons for her faith, which in the end, she says, is about a relationship with God.
“God is not a concept; he’s not an abstract idea. … You couldn’t marry a cause. You marry a person; you give your life for a person,” she says.
She acknowledges that some might find it difficult to enter into such a relationship.
“Being in a relationship means that you’re vulnerable,” she says. “But only in that can you really love, I think. And so, when you open yourself up to a relationship with God, he makes himself known.”
— Shanxi Upsdell
Loredana Mazzei, an apostle
Sister Loredana Mazzei comes from a family of consecrated siblings. Three of the four daughters, including her, are consecrated.
“One is married with two kids,” she says, laughing. “So she saved the race.”
Mazzei’s laughter is hearty and frequent, as is her smile. Her sense of humor must have come from her father, who she says would often tell friends, in front of his wife, “I am so sorry that I got married.”
“And everyone was saying, ‘What are you talking about?,’” she recalls. Her father would finish the sentence: “... too late!”
She says her parents had a wonderful marriage, and because of that, Mazzei always dreamed of having a family.
“I had a great experience of what it means to love one another and love in a family environment,” she says.
One of the things that marked Mazzei’s spiritual journey was the death of her father when she was 14 — seeing his faith and peace even in the midst of pain. He would go to Mass and read the Bible every day, she says.
“When he passed away, I wanted so badly his joy because I knew that when you are in a difficult situation, paradoxically, you can be even joyful,” she says.
Mazzei’s experience with the Apostles of the Interior Life came at an early age, when Sister Susan Pieper, the first of the apostles, came to Italy to her parish. (Pieper is now at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center.)
“When my sister Tiziana decided to join Susan, I still thought that she was a little bit crazy,” Mazzei admits.
Then Mazzei went on a spiritual retreat, where her roommate was studying to become a nun. Mazzei says her roommate’s joy led her to reconsider her perspective on consecration.
“There was something I was holding back because I didn’t want God to take advantage of me, you know? Like he did with my sister, that was my idea,” she says, smiling. “After this retreat, I realized that whatever God really wants, if it’s his will, it’s really to make us much happier than we even think. And so I was much more open.”
Then life continued, and Mazzei started dating. She says they had a great friendship in the Lord.
“God really blessed me because he gave me a really good guy that had the same ideals that I had, that wanted to pray every time we would go out for a date,” she says. She says the person was also “really nice-looking too — that is important.”
“I really had all of these beautiful gifts, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t enough,” she says. “And I know that it wasn’t because of him. It was because of me. There was something there that, you know, I wanted more, and no human being can give you that more.”
Mazzei says she has generally found people to be more religious in the U.S. than in Italy, though at times, she says, they lack clarity on spiritual beliefs.
“When you sell a product, that product can be liked or disliked. … We are not selling a product, but are talking about someone that is already at work in each soul, whether they admit it or not,” she says.
Every time you meet a person, she says, “you meet a divinity at work, hidden within.”
— Shanxi Upsdell | <urn:uuid:4b0e2999-ba4e-4068-ada8-83870a2a871f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/dec/27/living-joy-lawrence-boasts-four-female-modern-day-/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980534 | 2,794 | 1.53125 | 2 |
U.S. wheat rose to a three-week high on Friday, posting its biggest weekly gain since July, as drought conditions deepened in the southern Plains wheat belt where the crop was in the worst condition in history before its winter dormancy.
Wheat, corn and soybeans each had their second straight weekly gain, with dry weather in South America also buoying futures at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT).
"The ongoing weather worries brought in renewed buying here after some shorts were shaken out of the market," Terry Reilly, analyst at Futures International, said of wheat.
"The overall feature is improved U.S. and China economic conditions, poor U.S. crop conditions and strong global wheat demand. That brought some longs back," Reilly said.
Agriculture commodities traded in both positive and negative territory as traders took profits ahead of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday on Monday in which many U.S. markets will be closed.
"We can take a day or two to breathe, especially ahead of a three-day weekend," said ABN Amro broker Jeff Thompson, adding that volume was light.
Wheat knocked out its high from earlier this week late in Friday’s session, enticing a new rebound of buying.
Benchmark CBOT March wheat ended 10 cents, or 1.3 per cent, higher at $7.91-1/4 per bushel, just off the session high of $7.93-3/4 and good for the highest settlement since Dec. 26 (all figures US$). The contract gained five per cent for the week in the second straight weekly gain after not rising for the week since November.
Dry conditions are forecast through the end of the month in the Plains states that grow most of the wheat in the country, John Dee, meteorologist for Global Weather Monitoring, said Friday.
"The hard red winter wheat belt in the Plains looks quiet and dry but cooler next week, but there shouldn’t be a cold air threat in the Plains," Dee said.
Still, some weather models showed the possibility of rain by the end of the month.
Hard red winter (HRW) wheat contracts at the Kansas City Board of Trade gained less than soft red winter (SRW) wheat in Chicago, with the closely-watched spread between the two contracts showing the smallest premium of 2013 for HRW wheat over lower-quality SRW.
Severe drought in the Plains left the U.S. winter wheat crop at an all-time low before it entered dormancy, the U.S. Agriculture Department said late last year.
South America dry, too
A turn to dry weather in Argentina and in southern Brazil is beginning to cause concern among crop and market interests, Dee said. "We’ve gone from too wet to too dry in a hurry. It’s not a panic situation but there certainly is a situation where concern about dryness is growing," he said.
CBOT March corn finished three cents higher at $7.27-1/2 per bushel after declining on Thursday for the first time in nine sessions, snapping the longest streak of gains since June. Corn gained more than two per cent for the week, capping the best two-week stretch since July.
Soybeans for March delivery shed one cent to $14.29-1/4 per bushel but gained nearly four per cent for the week in the largest such increase since August. Most deferred soybean contracts also gained.
Private analytics firm Informa Economics raised its forecast for 2013 U.S. corn plantings to 99.303 million acres from 99.026 million, trade sources said on Friday.
If realized, U.S. corn acreage would be the largest since 1936. Informa also cut its soybean acreage estimate to 78.777 million from 78.962 million.
– Michael Hirtzer reports on the grain and livestock commodity markets for Reuters from Chicago. Additional reporting for Reuters by Sam Nelson in Chicago. | <urn:uuid:79306069-d6de-49c3-ad1c-85d2b46f84b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.manitobacooperator.ca/daily/u-s-wheat-jumps-most-in-any-week-since-july | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961286 | 831 | 1.703125 | 2 |
MySocialCloud Stores All Your Social Feeds, URLs, Passwords
Category: Social Networking
Scott Ferreira co-founded MySocialCloud because he had log-in fatigue. He was using multiple services and social networks and wanted a better way to manage it all.
Recently Ferreira experienced another big breakthrough. He saw a Twitter post by multi-billionaire Richard Branson saying that he wanted to meet 18 entrepreneurs and talk about what they were building to change the world. Two days later Ferreira, 20 at the time, and his sister, 18, were on a plane to Miami to give Branson their startup pitch.
Branson invested in Twitter and Square, so his decision to back social startup MySocialCloud isn't all that surprising. Ferreira said that he is in the middle of talks with HP and other companies. The fact that corporations are interested in a social media management solution signals a larger trend: Employees can't quit their social networks during work hours, so IT has to deal with it.
MySocialCloud is a free Web app that serves as a dashboard for storing and displaying links, websites, and social feeds. Ferreira said some companies are using it specifically to "keep track of research on potential clients and sharing important info with business peers and to make sure employees never forget their usernames and passwords. It helps companies be more productive and efficient with their time which in the business world equals money."
Ferreira gives one example of MySocialCloud's usefulness as a one-stop Web organizer and repository. "A group of architecture students were working on building a place down in South America. The village only has one computer with an Internet connection. [So] the students did all of their research [beforehand], stored the research on MySocialCloud, and were easily able to access it once in the village. If they had [waited] to do all the research there, it would have taken even longer" because of the poor Internet connection, he said.
I tried out MySocialCloud and found it easy to plug in my Facebook and Twitter streams. I added the URLs for websites I frequently go to such as BYTE and Wavii. It was nice not having to remember my passwords and log in every time I go to a new site. At home, I don't need MySocialCloud because all my logins are saved. But at work, where I don't want to save my password information, it has come in handy.
All I have to do is remember to use the service in the first place. In other words, I just have to get rid of my old habits of logging in and forgetting passwords.
Boonsri Dickinson is the Associate Editor of BYTE | <urn:uuid:eb7f2ac9-46e9-44e1-9954-22dcec6119c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.informationweek.com/byte/personal-tech/social-networking/mysocialcloud-stores-all-your-social-fee/240000987?cid=SBX_byte_related_news_Social_Networking_social_networking&itc=SBX_byte_related_news_Social_Networking_social_networking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978721 | 561 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Each legal entity or person that actively carries on business within the District of Mission, as a sole proprietor, a corporation or a partner (each partner is a separate legal entity not the partnership itself) is deemed to be a distinct business and is required to obtain a business license. Businesses are verifiable in that each legal entity carrying on business is required to file a tax return in regards to their business activities. A business includes any of the following activities:
a) carrying on a commercial or industrial activity or undertaking of any kind, or
b) providing professional, personal or other services for purpose of gain or profit,
c) providing any other services in exchange for money or other consideration, including
non-profit services and/or businesses classified in Schedule “A”,
but does not include an activity carried out on or by either the Federal or Provincial governments including corporations or agencies owned by them, or by any public transit authority.
Business license applications , including transfer of ownership and change in address or name shall only be accepted and processed through the Inspection Services Department. Accessory home occupations are required to read through the Zoning Bylaw 5050-2009 Section 107 and indicate that this has been read on the business license application form. The cost of a business license is contained within Schedule “A” of the Business Licence Bylaw 3964-2007.
A business which involves the preparation of food (restaurants, caterers, etc.) or a use regulated by the Community Care Facility Act, such as a day care, should also contact the Fraser Health Authority at 604-814-5515.
Where an application involves a change in the use or occupancy of a building that may require that alterations be made to it in accordance with Building Bylaw 3590-2003 a building permit shall be applied for and an inspection acquired prior to the issuance of a business license.
Business License Renewal
Every business is required to renew its license every year. Renewal notices will be mailed out by the District of Mission, Inspection Services Department on an annual basis.
Payments for renewals only can be made in person at the District of Mission Municipal Hall or mailed to District of Mission, Inspection Services Department, 8645 Stave Lake Street, Box 20, Mission, BC V2V 4L9.
Payments can also be paid via telebanking, the internet (banking service) or banking machines (ATM’s). Please inquire at your financial institution to take advantage of any of these options. | <urn:uuid:84fe9596-2b90-4d7f-8777-1a86d1e74b82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mission.ca/municipal-hall/departments/building-bylaw-enforcement/business-licenses/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940247 | 524 | 1.5 | 2 |
Eastern Suffolk BOCES
Board of Cooperative Educational Services
First Supervisory District of Suffolk County
James Hines Administration Center
201 Sunrise Highway
Patchogue, NY 11772-1868
Phone: (631) 289-2200
Fax: (631) 289-2381
General Questions, Comments, or Concerns? E-mail
In 1948, a New York State law called the Intermediate School District Act gave the
go-ahead for certain small school districts to combine their purchasing power, thus
forming the first BOCES. By sharing the costs of services and programs through the
BOCES, the districts could now assure high quality programs for students while saving
their taxpayers money.
School districts are not required to use any BOCES programs or services. They choose
to purchase a BOCES service rather than providing it on their own when they believe
that the cost and quality warrant it. (In this sense, a BOCES resembles a business
more than a public school district, though the BOCES are not organized for profit.)
If a member district determines that it can provide the service better and/or for
less money on its own, the district is free to do so.
When two or more districts within a BOCES identify a need (for example, special
educational classes) it is the responsibility of their BOCES to help them fill the
need. In this way, new BOCES programs and services are created at the request of
Member districts share the cost of the services in which they participate. Each
district pays a percentage of the total cost, based on how much service it purchases.
The more school districts that participate, the lower the cost for everyone.
There are 37 BOCES in New York State, to view the statewide web site
please click here. | <urn:uuid:c8f52666-6559-43f7-8d81-ead6ce1cbc64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esboces.org/about_us.aspx?CFID=5019931&CFTOKEN=c347facb47a73f35-6E21A2A8-F0A6-F49F-6E3862826733E43D | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931426 | 384 | 1.695313 | 2 |
photo from modelermagic.com
Today–more small Stonehenges for the home. Above is the Larson Designs 1/72 scale Stonehenge model, a pre-made resin model that sells for between $50 and $75.
It has its faults but over all it is not a bad model. Many stones are in the right places including the trilithon horseshoe faces the three-lintel segment of the outside circle, always a sign that someone actually looked at Stonehenge before making it. And that IS desirable. (We learned that Larson Designs makes or at least made a Firefly Class freighter model. Also desirable.)
And this little set is made by Mosaic Mad Romans, a UK company that makes simple mosaics for children. This kit does need assembly. The company claims it is made of marble, which outclasses the real monument to a considerable degree. We are not certain how this qualifies as a mosaic, but it is charming, and once again the trilithon horseshoe/three-lintel stretch thing happens, so we’ll overlook that small detail.
There is no shortage in the world of Stonehenge sets and kits for home use. How many households include one (or more), we wonder? Stonehenge continues to proliferate its offspring by infecting and re-infecting the human mind in a natural reproductive process. It is awe-inspiring to watch, although we could do with David Attenborough to do it justice.
While the creation of Stonehenge replicas never takes a rest, Clonehenge will be going on hiatus for a month or so. (Unless we receive or stumble upon an example we cannot resist posting. We’re weak like that!) We don’t even plan to post the Friday foodhenge for a while. It even could be longer than a month until we return to the task. We shall see. We stand confident in the conviction that we will not be missed.
If you do get a twinge, the world is full of materials for making Stonehenge replicas. Go to it! Or just keep your eyes open. You know they’re out there. Always take a camera. So until next time, friends, happy henging! | <urn:uuid:4dc6c349-2530-4abc-81d6-7719f9a222e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://clonehenge.com/2011/09/23/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934059 | 470 | 1.804688 | 2 |
I have a requirement in hadoop and I am not able to get it right. I have to execute a UNIX script inside hadoop program and whatever is being echoed by UNIX scripts should be obtained in the hadoop program as output from Unix script. How will it be possible?
In ordinary JAVA program, I am able to execute JAVA program and get the output of unix script. But same is not working in hadoop. Can you please help? | <urn:uuid:453198fa-7da5-4a23-a7e7-ca8bbc4c81b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coderanch.com/t/594134/hadoop/databases/Executing-script-Hadoop | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948844 | 98 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Mike Spang has the long job title: “Business Research Director, Document Imaging, Corporate Business Research, Eastman Kodak Company”. He spoke about how Kodak went about creating a satisfying global corporate web experience.
To put it in somewhat of a context, about five years ago Kodak had to rapidly reinvent itself as a digital camera company, and so the website had to also change from a portal for photography to a portal for digital imaging, with 80 percent of the web visitors being regular consumers.
The website also had to provide people with an experience beyond just camera purchasing. As one can read in an article in Business Week that was just published, CEO Antonio M. Perez “aims to make Kodak do for photos what Apple does for music: help people to organise and manage their personal libraries of images. He’s developing a slew of new digital photo services for consumers that he expects to yield higher returns.”
Spang described how Kodak through a clever use of user-centred design and a wide range of usability methods, was able to reinvent its web site, make it truly global and incorporate input from users worldwide.
The techniques used included open ended site surveys, heuristic evaluation, focus groups, cognitive walkthroughs, card sorting, usability testing (in lab, remote, web-based), visitor satisfaction assessments, multivariate design testing, and web traffic analysis.
Since there are more than 50 different national versions of the site, the research took place in the UK, Germany, France, China, South Korea and the United States.
Download presentation (pdf, 2.8 mb, 44 slides)
Emmi Kuussikko, Sulake Corporation
Emmi Kuussikko is a research manager with particular responsibilities for market and user insight at the Sulake Corporation, an interactive entertainment company based in Finland. Sulake is responsible for Habbo Hotel.
Habbo is one of the largest teen online communities in 29 different countries. It is a virtual world for young people, a massively multiplayer online game where teenagers create their own personalised virtual characters and interact with other characters in the community. It has 7 million unique users monthly, mainly in the 13 to 16 year old age range, and over 60 million characters have been created globally.
Since it is the community that creates a truly unique gaming environment and a great deal of the changing content is created by the users themselves, they strongly feel they own the brand and the Sulake Corporation just manages it with them.
Research in this online environment is of course also done online. The user base is very loyal and they are very eager to participate in surveys. So actual data collection is very fast. A survey can collect over 40,000 answers in just a few days.
Here are some of the results from a recent survey done globally.
Most teens spend more time on the internet (>90%) than TV (~60 %). Mobile usage is mainly used for text messages, followed by camera use and game playing. One third listen to music on the mobile phone, especially in the UK and Italy. Teens mostly use the web to stay in contact with their friends: IM and email. Then come games. The research provides also a more detailed insight into youth characteristics regarding life style and values:
- No 1 value: having warm social relationships with friends and family; no 2 value was having fun, and no 3 was security
- Many are rather conservative in their values
- Fame, wealth and influence are important to about half
- They generally have a very positive self-image
- They endorse a socially responsible world-view
- Even thought most claim to be tolerant, many have negative attitudes toward minorities. But they would like to have friends from other countries.
Kuusikko’s presentation started to become really interesting when she presented user segments, and the spread of these segments by country.
The user segmentation was based on a cluster-factor analysis. Trying to create maximum divergence between groups and minimum within, provided an accurate and reliable method for identifying groups with similar characteristics. The variables examined were personality, values, attitudes, subculture membership, areas of interest.
Five user types were found: achievers, traditionals, creatives, rebels and loners.
Sulake also uses a more selective community of 200 users to generate, co-create and test new ideas in a continuous and open dialogue.
I hope to be able to add a download to Kuusikko’s presentation shortly.
Mehmood Khan, Unilever
Mehmood Khan is the eccentric thinker who is the Global Leader of Innovation Process Development at Unilever.
Unilever‘s mission is to “add vitality to life”. It manages 400 brands spanning 14 categories of home, personal care and foods products “that help people look good, feel good and get more out of life”.
Khan has been with Unilever since 1982 and has worked in wide areas of the business: marketing, exports, procurement, business development and innovation. He has been pioneering new business for Unilever in places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia and North Korea, along with developing new portfolios in China and other countries in East Asia.
In his presentation, entitled “A holistic approach to innovation”, Khan described the key features of Unilever innovation.
According to Khan, innovation is about turning creativity in a successful enterprise. At Unilever innovation is customer-focused which allows the company to keep its brands connected to people’s lives. The innovation learnings and in particular the customer focus have also shaped the vitality brand strategy.
Download presentation (pdf, 136 kb, 17 slides) | <urn:uuid:b2a99574-859a-4a65-8bd5-53418e74b2d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.experientia.com/blog/category/branding/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954674 | 1,181 | 1.734375 | 2 |
[ExI] Wrestling with Embodiment
kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Wed Feb 15 10:53:25 UTC 2012
On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 2:34 AM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 7:23 AM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com>
>> > Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>
>> >> ... if you had never experienced sad, how would you
>> know the true
>> >> "meaning" of happy?
>> > I call Bullshit on this.
>> Sweet. I like an active conversation! Let's see what we can
>> agree upon!
>> > It's like saying "If you never knew Green, how would
>> you ever know the true 'meaning' of Red?"
>> Not exactly analogous because Green is not the opposite of
> Green is exactly the opposite of Red. Have you never seen a colour wheel?
I'm not sure, but I think the color wheel has little to do with
physics and is just a convenience for artists mixing paint. I'm
probably totally wrong though.
> I don't understand you saying it's not. What do you think is the opposite of Red?
As I understand things, Red is a wavelength of light. Asking what the
opposite of Red is, is kind of like asking what is the opposite of Pi?
Negative Pi? That's not exactly an opposite...
>> If, on
>> the other hand, you said "If you don't know what UP is,
>> appreciation of DOWN is probably limited." then maybe that
>> is not
>> quite so full of shit. Happy and sad are opposites, and if
>> you can't
>> appreciate sad, then happy becomes the new base line. So if
>> all you
>> experience is happy. Then there are times when you are more
>> happy, and
>> times you are less happy. Less happy times might then be
>> described as
> OK, but none of this means that an absence of one produces a corresponding
> absence of the other. Higher happiness being your baseline doesn't mean you
> are LESS happy. It just means your baseline is happier than someone else's.
> Your ability to experience 'happy' isn't compromised. In fact, I'd say you are
> more happy, not less.
But your appreciation for "happy" is compromised. My ancestors were
extremely happy to have a glass of water during certain periods of
their lives. I will NEVER be that happy to have a glass of water,
because I haven't (and don't expect to) gone without water being close
by for any period of time.
>> Now if I say I can see red and green but not xrays or radio
>> waves, and
>> apply that analogously to the happy-sad spectrum, then what
>> you have
>> is simply an optimist... :-) They would be somewhat
>> sad-blind. They
>> would still have to experience a continuum of emotions for
>> the words
>> to have any meaning. Can you or I really appreciate infrared
>> ultraviolet? Only in a limited way.
> So you're saying that my inability to see infrared means my ability to see
> whatever I /can/ see lacks some kind of meaning?
> This makes no sense at all.
It just means you can't appreciate infrared in the same way as an
animal that has been seeing infrared for years might. You have no
ability to process the meaning of infrared images the way a creature
brought up on infrared would.
> It would mean all the millions of things and ways I can't see make my current
> perceptions totally meaningless. Suppose there are depths of sad and happy
> that we are totally unaware of. Then suppose there are not. Do these two
> possibilities change our current experience in different ways?
Not totally meaningless, just LESS meaningful. Our feelings about
experiences are calibrated to our past experiences. That's really all
I'm saying here.
>> Linguistics is all about the relationship of words to each
>> other. Have
>> you ever noticed that the dictionary uses words to define
>> other words?
>> Where do you start understanding? Everything in
>> understanding words is
>> related to experience, and to the words we have previously
>> exposed to. While you could give a machine the equivalent of
>> some sort
>> of endorphin rush of happiness... if they haven't had
>> sadness, would
>> they appreciate it as much? I think not. So they could have
>> the tokens
>> "happy" and "sad", but it might not have the same meaning to
>> them as
>> it does to us. In fact, they probably don't have absolutely
>> meaning to you and I.
> By this logic, electric shocks don't hurt people who have never
> experienced an orgasm as much as those who have.
Not following how my logic says that... but orgasms are electricity...
>> > Suppose I invert your question, and say does sadness
>> only derive 'meaning' from
>> > happiness? (In other words, can you only be sad if
>> you've been happy?)
>> Yes. When I have met people in Haiti and Brazil who have
>> experienced wealth, they are still glad to have a little
>> money. But
>> they don't understand what it's like not to have to worry
>> about where
>> your next meal comes from.
> This just demonstrates that people who have never experienced
> something, don't know what that thing is like. It doesn't
> demonstrate that they experience less of the opposite.
Yet, their impressions are modified by their experiences.
>> Likewise, we have a hard time
>> getting into
>> the mind of people who are ALWAYS worried about where there
>> next meal
>> is going to come from. This different experience of the
>> poverty-richness spectrum gives meaning to both parties, and
>> makes it
>> difficult for them to fully understand each other.
>> Thankfully, the
>> neo-cortex gives us the ability to run a little simulation,
>> but it
>> really isn't QUITE the same as actually having BEEN in
>> abject poverty.
> Yes, I have never been in abject poverty, and agree that I can't
> really understand what that's like. This doesn't reduce my ability
> to enjoy the modest level of affluence that I have. On average,
> I'm happier, not less happy, for not having been abjectly poor.
Yes, but do you APPRECIATE your being more happy. Would you
potentially appreciate your "modest" wealth (which is likely FAR from
modest on an international scale) even more if you had been very poor
at some point in your past?
>> > Do you think it makes sense to say that if someone has
>> never had any happiness in their lives, or very little, that
>> makes their sadness somehow less significant than that of
>> someone else who has been happy loads of times?
> So you do think that sadness derives meaning from happiness
> (see further above), but you don't think that sadness is made less
> significant if less happiness has been experienced? These are
> the same thing, and you've answered both No and Yes to the same question.
Perhaps. I am not a professional philosopher. The sadness that today's
typical teenager experiences when their music is deleted from their
iPod could not have been experienced by Henry VIII. He would have been
very happy to have had an iPod for a single afternoon. That is,
sadness is calibrated by experience. Henry never had the experiences
that are enjoyed by today's teenagers, and most of us would be
terribly unhappy to live like a king, if that king were Henry.
>> it merely makes them less familiar with the subject. The
>> people I have ever met still have some happiness. But when
>> baseline is at a different place than mine, that makes the
>> meaning of
>> the words we use slightly different, at least to degree. If
>> I put you
>> into the life of any of 80% of the people on this planet,
>> you would
>> find yourself very sad, very quickly, because your baseline
>> different from theirs. You would probably not enjoy living
>> in a
>> favela, but some of the happiest people I've ever met live
>> Different experience... leads to different feelings in the
>> context... leads to different definitions of the words.
>> My ex-brother-in-law lives in a bed in an open air hospice
>> Singapore. He has no ability to walk or even move much due
>> to a
>> brittle bone disease. Yet, he experiences some happiness,
>> for example,
>> when we visited him he seemed happy about the fact. I would
>> guess his
>> life is not as happy as mine has been. He derives pleasure
>> different ways than we do. He has had to adapt to a sadder
>> base line
>> in his emotional life. Things that would make you and I very
>> sad are
>> simply part of his daily life. So, does "happy" and "sad"
>> mean exactly
>> the same thing to him and I? Not exactly.
> If what you say is true, then everybody will be as happy as
> everybody else, because people who are 'unhappy' will by
> that token, be 'happy', and people who are very happy will
> be correspondingly less happy, so it will all even out.
Right! I think most people spend a certain percentage of their time
feeling happy and a certain percentage feeling sad, pretty much
independently of their circumstances. You have gotten what I was
> I honestly think there are people who are much happier, and
> others who are much unhappier, than average, and they aren't
> that way by virtue of experiencing a more-than-average amount
> of the opposite state. It's pretty obvious, really.
There are people who are predisposed to be happy, no matter what is
happening to them. Look at the Dali Lama and his crowd. While they
seek to eliminate all forms of happy and sad from their lexicon of
experience, they seem pretty happy, even when trekking barefoot over
the Himalaya to avoid capture by the Chinese...
And I've met people who have everything you would ever want, and are
still unhappy. They shouldn't be, but they are.
I guess it boils down to your definition of happy. Is happy a chemical
state of the brain? If it is, then surely some people are happier
(have say higher serotonin levels) than others, independent of their
People say that lions and other big cats have the highest serotonin
levels measured. So big cats are happier than you and I, despite the
fact that they live pretty rugged lives (by civilized standards)...
More information about the extropy-chat | <urn:uuid:e6481645-4758-454f-8e5c-300192f25ab8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2012-February/071265.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973724 | 2,423 | 1.507813 | 2 |
DENVER Four of the University of Colorado's faculty leaders in math, aerospace, psychiatry and internal medicine have been designated as President's Teaching Scholars for 2011, including two at CU-Boulder.
The new members of the President's Teaching Scholars Program are:
--David Klaus, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder
--Eric Stade, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics, University of Colorado Boulder
--Mark Earnest, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor, General Internal Medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus
--Robert Feinstein, M.D., Vice Chairman for Clinical Education and Evidence-Based Medicine Integration, and Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Anschutz Medical Campus
The title of CU President's Teaching Scholar signifies the university's highest recognition of excellence in and commitment to learning and teaching, as well as active, substantial contributions to scholarly work. CU President Bruce D. Benson annually solicits nominations of faculty for the designation, a lifetime appointment.
Klaus, recipient of a Boulder Faculty Assembly 2007 Excellence in Teaching Award, is associate director of BioServe Space Technologies Research Center. He works closely with NASA and the private space industry, providing expertise in the field of bioastronautics, which spans the study of microgravity and other effects of the space environment on living organisms, and the design of spacecraft systems required to support human spaceflight.
"Dr. Klaus is an international leader on curriculum development in bioastronautics, and is impacting the way that the world views the study of human spaceflight in an academic setting," wrote Jeffrey M. Forbes, chair of the aerospace engineering sciences department, in the nomination letter. "He is the architect and primary instructor for the bioastronautics curriculum in our department and is actively disseminating his innovative approach to other universities in the U.S. and abroad."
In 2004, Klaus received the Rocky Mountain Section Educator of the Year Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His body of published research includes more than 70 journal articles, book chapters and conference papers on space microbiology and spacecraft design.
"It is an honor to be selected as a President's Teaching Scholar," Klaus said. "In our highly research-oriented environment, this opportunity provides a uniquely dedicated purpose to focus a bit more effort on the teaching element of academia, which I truly enjoy. I look forward to working with the program in the years to come."
Klaus earned his master's degree and Ph.D., both in aerospace engineering, from CU-Boulder.
Stade, former chair of the department of mathematics, is co-director of iSTEM, a CU-Boulder program aiming to transform STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education and boost the number of STEM teachers at all levels. He has been a driving force in creating or redesigning several courses. He leads his students in undertaking outreach efforts throughout the Boulder Valley School District.
"His passion for mathematics and mathematics education is contagious, and over the years, it has infected in a good way all of his students and his colleagues in our department," wrote Judith A. Packer, mathematics department chair, in the nomination letter. "He is a force in the classroom, in the lecture halls at conference venues, in meetings of the members of the iSTEM project, and even in the elementary schools of Boulder Valley School District where he performs his outreach, as he communicates both his enthusiasm and love of the subject matter to anyone who meets him."
Stade said that while he had aspired to the President's Teaching Scholar designation, he hadn't expected to attain the honor.
"There are several big-picture questions about teaching on which I've reflected informally, but have not yet had real occasion to explore systematically," he said. "For example, relatively recently, I've become quite intrigued by underlying connections among various, seemingly disparate, misconceptions in mathematics. The PTS program represents, to me, an invaluable support network and intellectual framework from which to study such issues in education as these.
"My fellow scholars make up a formidable cohort. I am thrilled by the opportunity to learn from, contribute to and work with these wonderful colleagues and this great program."
Stade was winner of the 2010 Distinguished Teacher Award from the Rocky Mountain Section of the Mathematical Association of America. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Earnest is co-founder and co-director of the LEADS Track Program on leadership, education, advocacy, development and scholarship. The program addresses the needs of underserved and disadvantaged populations. He also is director of REACH, an interprofessional educational program for the Anschutz Medical Campus.
"Through his formal training and experience, Dr. Earnest has assumed a role as an institutional, regional and national leader as an educator, clinician and scholar," wrote Jean S. Kutner, M.D., M.S.P.H., head of the General Internal Medicine Division, in the nomination letter. "His selection for leadership positions, successful attainment of significant grant funding and numerous awards attest to his outstanding accomplishments."
His advocacy work has focused on expanding access to care for Colorado families, reducing conflicts of interest among providers, media advocacy and promoting prevention through policy. One of the most highly regarded internists in the state, he was featured on the cover of 5280 Magazine's Top Doctors issue in 2009.
"I'm deeply honored to have been selected and to have the opportunity to collaborate with some very accomplished and creative educators across several campuses and disciplines," Earnest said. "Adapting health professions education to respond to the imperatives of a rapidly evolving health care system is an important and enticing challenge. I look forward to tapping the collective wisdom and experience of this group in helping us find creative ways to meet that challenge."
Earnest earned his medical degree from Vanderbilt Medical School and earned a doctorate in health and behavioral sciences from the University of Colorado Denver.
Feinstein, formerly senior associate dean of education in the School of Medicine, is credited with developing five full curricula: one for family practice residents, a wellness curriculum for patients, and three major curricula for psychiatric residency-training. His evidence-based medicine (EBM) curriculum recently was selected by the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training as a national model for psychiatric EBM teaching. As part of the President Teaching Scholar's Award, Feinstein is developing a new four-year Psychotherapy Scholar's Track within the psychiatric residency training program.
He has been selected as a founding member of the School of Medicine's Academy of Medical Educators, and won the Academy of Medical Educators Excellence for Mentoring Award in 2010. He has been teacher of the year four times in both psychiatry and primary care residency training programs, and once for medical Student Teacher of the Year at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
"From the moment Rob arrived, his passion and high energy for educational innovations, curriculum development, supervision, mentorship and educational scholarship were apparent to everyone," wrote Robert Freedman, M.D., psychiatry department chair, in the nomination letter.
Said Feinstein, "This is an amazing group of experienced faculty, with broad interdisciplinary interests, all of whom are extremely accomplished and love everything about teaching and education. Discussing educational technology and pedagogy with economists, aerospace engineers, professors of anthropology, sociology, English, business, dentists, physicians, etc., allows a cross-disciplinary fertilization and exchange of ideas that allows each of us to think very differently about how we could educate students within our own professions and others about our professions. Through discussions, seminars, educational events and academic papers, this group will foster all kinds of new innovations in education."
Feinstein earned his medical degree from New York University, performed his psychiatric residency in New York at Albert Einstein/BMHC, and earned his certificate in psychoanalysis from the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.
The University of Colorado is a premier public research university with four campuses: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Some 58,000 students are pursuing academic degrees at CU. The National Science Foundation ranks CU seventh among public institutions in federal research expenditures in engineering and science. Academic prestige is marked by the university's four Nobel laureates, seven MacArthur "genius" Fellows, 18 alumni astronauts and 19 Rhodes Scholars. For more information about the entire CU system, and to access campus resources, go to www.cu.edu. | <urn:uuid:e434de91-bb13-4e16-aafe-b5ad59ab7135> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2011/04/22/two-cu-boulder-faculty-members-join-ranks-presidents-teaching-scholars | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96228 | 1,777 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Geithner: 'The credit crunch is not over'
Small businesses took center stage as Washington power players convened to tackle the growing crisis in lending.
WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- One day after Goldman Sachs' CEO apologized for his bank's role in the financial meltdown, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner called on the nation's financiers to step up and do more to fix the damage they helped cause.
"This credit crunch is not over," Geithner at a small business financing forum in Washington hosted by the Treasury. "It may feel dramatically better for large companies, but it is not over for small businesses across the country."
The nation's banking system was stabilized with taxpayer dollars, and Geithner said he holds the biggest banks accountable for passing the torch from Wall Street to Main Street.
"Banks bear some responsibility for the extent of the damage caused by the crisis," he said. "And they carry a substantial obligation to help our communities get back on their feet."
Geithner and an assortment of top Washington officials, including Small Business Administrator Karen Mills, met Wednesday with a gathering of bankers and small business owners to address the credit crunch that has plagued small business owners for more than a year. Frozen out by banks unwilling to make risky lending bets on startups and small companies, the nation's 6 million small employers are struggling.
"In my home state of Virginia, we have long-term, successful retailers who are not going to be able to hire up for the holiday season," said Senator Mark Warner, D-Va. "Small businesses have hung on as long as they can and are basically at the end of their rope."
Many voices, little consensus: The Obama administration has made several attempts to unlock small business lending, with middling success.
Stimulus provisions aimed at motivating banks to increase their participation in the Small Business Administration's loan programs helped staunch the bleeding, but 2009's SBA loan volume still fell sharply from the year before. Last month, President Obama unveiled a new set of proposals, including increasing the cap on SBA loans and offering community banks ultra-low interest government loans. Business owners and bankers gave the plan a lukewarm reception.
The day-long forum Treasury hosted on Wednesday was aimed at generating fresh ideas.
Participants enthusiastically plunged into brainstorming, offering up a blizzard of suggestions. Many targeted specific, technical obstacles that have slowed the flow of small business loans, like onerous paperwork requirements for SBA-backed lending and the regulatory problems banks face if too many of their small business loans default.
Senator Warner touted a proposal he sent to President Obama last month, with the endorsement of 32 other members of the Senate. Warner is backing the creation of a $50 billion small business lending pool, drawing on $40 billion from TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funds and $10 billion from participating banks. Bankers would manage the loan pool funds, but because the money would stay off their books, banks wouldn't be able to simply absorb it into their own working capital.
"I think we need to be exponentially more aggressive," Warner said of the government's response to the deepening crisis.
Geithner seemed to agree. He and other officials acknowledged that the small business situation remains critical.
"As we wind down programs that help big banks, we are committed to doing more to help small businesses access the credit they need to grow and hire new workers," Geithner said.
That was a refreshing to hear, said Steve Steinour, CEO of Huntington Bank (HBAN). There was "clear recognition that the successes so far are not adequate."
Huntington, based in Columbus, Ohio, has kept its small business lending steady through the recession. It made almost 1,000 loans last year through the SBA's primary loan program, totaling $141.4 million. Steinour found Wednesday's brainstorming session fruitful.
"The SBA got an awful lot to work from -- a very rich palate," he said.
The SBA plans to compile the conference comments into a report that will be sent to President Obama and publicly released online.
Why it matters: One theme recurred throughout the day: Scarce credit is preventing small business owners from creating jobs.
With the unemployment rate topping 10%, that's a critical obstacle to the nation's economic recovery. Entrepreneurs like William Ortiz-Cartagena of San Francisco were on hand to illustrate how financing can translate directly into jobs.
Ortiz-Cartagena is the owner of Gentle Parking, a company that coordinates parking logistics. He banged on bank doors repeatedly to find loans to get his company launched, with no success. Finally, in February, he landed a $10,000 loan from Opportunity Fund, a community development financing fund that specializes in working with underserved populations. Gentle Parking now has a staff of 12.
Lack of financing is keeping the company from expanding further, Ortiz-Cartagena said.
"Once we have the tools, we got it. We'll take care of the rest," he said. "I am excited to see the government actually rolling up their sleeves and talking to me."
They're talking. The next step is action. Which won't be easy.
Banks remain under tremendous pressure to shore up their balance sheets and avoid risky loans -- which small business loans typically are. Defaults have spiked this year as companies struggle to keep up with their bills, even as their sales deteriorate.
"There are no quick fixes," Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chief Sheila Bair said at the conference. She expects the current quarter to be a rough one for banks, which are still suffering losses from past bets gone bad.
But until someone -- the banks or the government itself -- starts lending, small companies will continue to feel shut out from recovery efforts.
Lani Hay, the founder of technology services firm Lanmark Technologies in Fairfax, Va., has seen her credit lines slashed and her financing options dry up. She compared the current situation with business owners and bankers to a middle-school dance: Boys on one side, girls on the other, and a wary refusal to mingle.click here. | <urn:uuid:7e3c9982-60fc-43c1-9e42-b6c5367d9f48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/18/smallbusiness/small_business_geithner_sba_financing_forum/index.htm?postversion=2009111909 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969752 | 1,268 | 1.546875 | 2 |
A blueprint of Shougang industrial park. Photo: Courtesy of Shougang Publicity Department
Located far out west, will the artistic hub attract the crowds? Photo: CFP
In October last year, the 2011 Beijing International Cartoon Week was launched in the old industrial base of Shougang (Capital Steel Group), the capital's steel factory in Shijingshan district. The fair drew the public's attention to cartoons. At the same time it drew attention to a project to turn this area into an industrial park for culture, arts and technology over the next decade.
He Huanmei, who is in charge of this project, revealed that the current goal they have set is to exceed the 798 Space both in terms of scale and diversity. "On top of the cartoon and animation industry, we will introduce technology companies that specialize in cloud computing, and telecommunication organizations like China Unicom," she said. "And our overall focus will be on culture and arts," He added.
He disclosed that once they receive official approval to use the land for commercial purposes, the construction of the park could happen very quickly. "I think we shall see it opening early next year," she told Metro Beijing. "This is a general plan and some other factors need to be considered when the construction is carried out." Metro Beijing decided to find out what those other factors are and whether the plans represent real competition for 798 and other cultural hubs.
Not built in a day
Like 798, the planners of Shougang want to make use of the old factories. Hong Feng, the director of the Association of Art Promotion of Songzhuang, an established industrial zone of culture and art in Tongzhou district, pointed this out. "Using old factories for constructing a cultural industrial park is not a new idea," he said. "798 is a good example of this and it has been successful."
Zhang Lei, an artist who worked at 798, also told Metro Beijing that the old factories are good resources that not only save money, but retain the local industrial history and culture. "We don't have many old factories in Beijing, especially ones like Shougang that lasted for decades," he said. "So places like this are good to preserve as a monument of the history of the area."
"It is a good thing that Shougang wants to become a new culture-orientated park," said Xu Dong, a director of an artistic photography workshop near 798. "It is especially good to fill in the empty gap in the west side of Beijing, where there is currently not much in terms of art and culture."
Xu's workshop is based in Caochangdi Art District, another one of the city's creative areas. Having settled there for years, Xu might be enthusiastic about the new project, but said that he would not consider moving to the Shougang industrial park. "A cultural industry needs time to grow and gain recognition in the field. The same will apply to Shougang," Xu explained. "I don't want to move there because Caochangdi is already established."
Xu is not the only one expressing this opinion. Hong said that both Songzhuang art zone and 798 had been around for ages before they became the great assembly places of culture and art. "Songzhuang, for instance, is no longer just a village for painters, but an artistic industrial park with diversified organizations and individuals in the fields of film and music," he said. "A culture of art has been fostered here and people have not moved elsewhere, even when they have been offered better and cheaper deals for artistic space in similar settings."
Get an edge
Therefore a cultural hub needs time to gain popularity. It also needs a specific focus that can set it apart from the other ones that exist in Beijing. Although He said the industrial park of Shougang will not be 798 in many respects, questions remained about just how different it will be.
"Beijing has more than 30 industrial parks of culture and each needs to have its own character, otherwise it's just a waste," Hong said. "In terms of Shougang, I think it really depends on whether the individuals or organizations that are doing this project have a good knowledge about the field." Hong explained that the park should stick with its historical edge of being an old factory instead of focusing on too many aspects and ending up being a place for all and yet none.
In Zhang's words, the park in Shougang must have something amazing to draw people there. "This park is really far beyond the city center, especially when you consider the traffic, so it needs something special to make people visit it over others," he said.
Xu also said that 798 and Songzhuang have their own characteristics and Shougang should do the same. "Many places throughout China have been inspired by 798, but without being different, they have not succeeded," he said. "I feel that Shougang should not be too commercial as it is not good for cultivating culture of all different kinds." Xu added that 798's rising commercialization is making some individuals and organizations move out elsewhere. Maybe Shougang can learn from this.
It may be too early to draw any conclusions about the impact this new cultural zone will have on western Beijing. As Hong said, places like 798 only had a few artists settling there in the beginning. Who knew that within a few years it would be turned into one of the most influential art and cultural zones in town? Shougang is therefore one to watch. | <urn:uuid:160561fe-bb45-4e19-a14b-cf6d2e7ed730> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/712775/Culture-vulture.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97428 | 1,149 | 1.679688 | 2 |
By Katie Wright
Accountability at IACC! Thanks to the incredible, and I mean incredible, work of Dr. Susan Daniels’ IACC team the IACC audience were all treated to a wonderful presentation detailing the exact breakdown of how all NIH autism research monies were spent. (Click link for details spending analysis.) I love this office! Dr. Daniels’ team gets the job done like no one else. They produce an incredible amount of really important work. This work = accountability. Wow, did this office use the their IACC hiatus well. They produced reams of valuable information as well as a great web search program. Thank you.
The report CLEARLY showed that despite promises and assurances to the contrary, the NIH continues to spend the lion share of its $ on genetic research (76,798,748) and only 5% (yes, FIVE PERCENT, $4, 432,899) of its entire autism research budget on studying environmental factors. Just how many times have we heard Dr. Insel waxing on and on about how he now understands the importance of environmental research. Speaking for myself I have been hearing this sorry refrain for 5 yrs. Insel goes on talk shows, NPR, web interviews talking about how committed the NIH is to researching potential environmental triggers of ASD. This feels like just another case of a politician telling the voters what they want to hear and then quietly doing the opposite.
As usual Dr. Linda Birnbaum of the NIEHS defends the lack of environmental research by stating that “environmental” category is strictly defined as the study of chemical compounds and much gene / environment research was not included in this category. Please- “gene- environment” research is usually 90% genetic and 10% environmental in nature, so let’s be totally transparent here. Incredibly, we can always count on Dr. Birnbaum to rationalize the lack of environmental research funded via IACC. Of course environmental research means the study of chemical compounds! What is environmental supposed to mean: the study of Fragile X and the genome? No. Families want strictly accurate categories, not environmental padding.
Clearly it is not just the public comment speakers who are unhappy with the fact that ASD environmental science is grossly underfunded. Almost immediately Dr. Insel went on the defensive, attempting to rationalize the massive disparity between genetic and environmental research investments. Insel stated:” I mean people are all upset about this but it isn’t like 95% of the research is genetic and only 5% is environmental!” Yes, Dr. Insel that is pretty much exactly how it is! How I wish I was not in listen-only mode.
Clearly Dr. Insel had been working over time pre IACC meeting in order to portray the IACC report as an incomplete or inaccurate measure of autism research expenditures. In order to hide from the actual facts, Insel argued that the IACC portfolio report did not include all the autism research IN THE ENTIRE WOLRD and therefore the report was only semi accurate portrait of environmental research. Furthermore, only if one looked at all the research IN THE ENTIRE WORLD there is actually a great deal of ASD environmental research. Oh boy was Dr. Insel on a tear here! On and on and on about the explosion of autism research all over the globe and how much environmental research is really going on. In fact, by Dr. Insel’s count 38% of all autism research $ is spent on environmental science. We should be counting the ENTIRE WORLD of autism research in our portfolio accounting!
OK, this is nuts on so many levels. You know that crazy speech Otter gives Dean Wormer and the college students in “Animal House?” Otter insists that if Delta House is put on double secret probation then the entire fraternity system should be on probation and if Dean Wormer is blaming the entire fraternity system than he is blaming all colleges, and if all colleges are at fault than isn’t the entire United States of American really at fault…I know it makes no sense, but that is my point. Finally Otter says to Dean Wormer, “say what you want about me sir! Say what you want about Delta House! But I am not going to stand here and let you badmouth the United States of America!” All the students applaud.
I kept imaging Insel saying, “Say what you want about me! Say what you want about the almost total absence of NIH ASD environmental research! But I am not going to sit here and let you badmouth the ENTIRE WORLD of autism research!” We cannot flee from our failures and hide behind the whole world of autism research because:
1) We are all Americans here. So let’s stay put for a moment, and focus on our own problems.
2) NIH autism research is overwhelmingly genetic in nature. This research is conservative and uninspired. As a result we have achieved no breakthroughs and developed no new treatments in the past 10 years.
3) Sorry Dr. Insel, you cannot seriously claim that 38% of all the autism research in the world is environmental. Nor can you use that dubious figure to counterbalance the NIH’s failure to reasonably fund ASD environmental research.
4) France could be doing 100 studies the environmental science of face processing and call it environmental. Please, other countries can label their research any way they like that doesn’t mean it’s true. We have zero means by which we can hold foreign countries accountable.
Ok, so let’s return to earth and focus on the issues at hand. Why isn’t the NIH funding environmental research? I would like to hear a discussion about that. When Dr. Insel did return back to the United States all he wanted to discuss were the private and academic gene and brain institutes throughout the country doing some autism research and how IACC should include them at IACC meetings. IACC’s mandate is that public seats must represent the public. That means, people affiliated with large national autism advocacy and research orgs. These orgs must be totally transparent in their financials and legitimately represent the ASD community. For example, AS, the National Autism Association, Talk About Curing Autism and SafeMinds are such organizations. But no, Dr. Insel did not want leaders from NAA or TACA on IACC, despite the fact that these organizations have over 30,000 members, fund research and serve 10s of thousands of ASD families. Instead, Dr. Insel wants IACC to guest host academics and bureaucrats from the Rockefeller Institute- who do more, wait for it….Genetic research! Dr. Insel just doesn’t get it and never will.
Let’s bottom line it: the NIH spends only FIVE PERCENT of
its entire autism research budget on studying environmental factors. This is
unacceptable and must be remedied.
Katie Wright is Contributing Editor to Age of Autism. | <urn:uuid:d806670d-d1c8-49ef-8334-a4e782a2ac24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/08/government-nih-only-5-of-budget-on-environmental-factors.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947254 | 1,450 | 1.578125 | 2 |
This morning I drove to Bamboo Sourcery in Sebastopol, CA to pick up six bamboos I had ordered. I couldn’t help but feel sad knowing that in all likelihood this would be my last visit. In September, Bamboo Sourcery announced that they would cease operations in November (they recently extended this deadline by a couple of weeks). I don’t know what the reasons are, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the economy. They must have been affected by the dramatic downturn of the housing market in California and the attendant decrease in landscaping business.
What makes the closure of Bamboo Sourcery even more poignant is the fact that this isn’t just a backyard business with limited stock. Bamboo Sourcery was a major player in the industry, offering as many as 300 varieties, including many obscure ones that few other nurseries carried. Their 8-acre facility in the hills on the western edge of Sebastopol, about 20 minutes from the coast, comprises the nursery and sales operations, several houses as well as demonstration gardens with mature specimens of many running and clumping species, all clearly labeled. Walking through the clumping bamboo garden this morning, all I could hear was the rustle of leaves—no cars, no people, no man-made sounds. I kept wondering what will happen to this magical place with its thousands of bamboos. I don’t know if they will find a buyer for the nursery, or whether a shroud of benign neglect will settle on this hilly property. It would be a shame to lose this unique resource. Maybe it can be turned into a non-profit botanical garden?
|Entrance to Bamboo Sourcery, with a beautiful specimen of Fargesia nitida 'Nymphenburg' (commonly known as “fountain bamboo”)|
|Office trailer, surrounded by mature bamboos|
|Planting next to the office; Otatea acuminata aztecorum on the left and Sasa palmata 'Nebulosa' on the right|
|Plants waiting for customer pickup|
|Row of 25-gallon containers|
|Phyllostachys viridis ‘Robert Young’ (yellow) with one culm of Phyllostachys nigra (black)|
|Mature specimen of Himalayacalamus asper, a tightly clumping mountain bamboo from Tibet. Not very cold-hardy |
(rated to 15°F) and not very tolerant of high summer temperatures either. Appears to do really well in coastal locations.
|Another clump of Himalayacalamus asper on the right, with Phyllostachys angusta (stone bamboo) on the left)|
|Trail through the clumping bamboo garden|
|Gate to the lower propagation area|
|My haul, to be planted in the stock tanks and containers in our back yard|
Bamboo Sourcery appears to be sold out of the most popular varieties in 1- and 5-gallon sizes, but they still have lots of 15- and 25-gallon plants—these are impressive plants for instant effect. Varieties less in demand are still available in smaller sizes. The price list on their web site is updated daily so check there if you’re looking for something specific.
If you live in Northern California and want a great deal on bamboos, you have until December 18th to make the drive to Sebastopol in Sonoma County, about an hour north of San Francisco. Unfortunately November 29th was the last day for shipping so no more mail orders. Contact information and driving directions are on their web site.
UPDATE 4/13/11: Bamboo Sourcery re-opened for business on March 15, 2011. For more details, visit their web site. | <urn:uuid:70c75738-f8c8-4eda-93b3-35063c223b61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bambooandmore.info/2010/11/final-visit-to-bamboo-sourcery.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952105 | 798 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The internship: a fundamental step in the curriculum
Integral part of the curriculum, the engineering internship carries major stakes. Students, training organizations or companies, each of the actors in the internship process agrees on its importance.
Each year, EURECOM students can browse a database of several hundreds of offers, fueled by the efficiency of its network of partners and relationships with companies.
The “student affairs” team provides operational assistance to enable each student to find a quality internship that meets their expectations. | <urn:uuid:a80684d4-21d0-4eb7-b1c0-5b891688c7c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eurecom.fr/en/partners/collaboration-types/internship-proposal | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936051 | 102 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Chilean Catholics Protest Court Ruling against Free Contraception Program
Hundreds of Chileans announced that they will leave the Catholic Church on April 29, in protest of the Vatican involvement with a court's anti-contraception ruling. Chile's Constitutional Court outlawed President Michelle Bachelet's free emergency contraception distribution program on April 18. The court ruled that free distribution of emergency contraception was unconstitutional. According to Women's eNews the court ruled that emergency contraception could "endanger a recently fertilized egg."
On Tuesday, thousands of people marched in the capital of Chile to protest the court's decision. Gloria Maira, a member of the Movement for the Defense of Birth Control, told IPS, "This is a demonstration by the country in demand of freedom. We don't want any more moral dictatorships. We want to make the decisions in our beds, we want to decide on our own uterus, we want to decide how many children we will have. We do not accept the Constitutional Court decision."
Mujeres Publicas, a women's rights group in Chile, is organizing another protest this time directed at the Catholic Church and not at the courts. The Church has denounced the emergency contraception distribution program from the beginning. According the Women's eNews, Mujeres Publicas has already collected 500 names of people who are renouncing their membership in the Catholic Church as a result of these laws.
Lorena Etchberry, the spokesperson of Mujeres Publicas, told Women's eNews, "We wanted to do something other than convoking marches that would protest the church's public health policies. We are not against any religion or any church in specific, but rather we are protesting the fact that the church is interfering in matters of the Chilean government. We have the right to decide what to do with our bodies, and we also want poor women to have the right to decide."
President Michelle Bachelet had introduced the distribution program to reduce teen pregnancy and address the economic disparities for access to reproductive health.
Media Resources: Women's eNews 04/25/08; IPS 04/23/08; The Santiago Times 04/14/08; Feminist Newswire 02/06/08 | <urn:uuid:435e6b00-a3c7-4143-9d4b-825e2a1872a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=10965 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953775 | 451 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Just a few days after Arizona lawmakers passed an immigration law that will essentially require anyone who is or looks like an immigrant to carry their proof of residency at all times, the Arizona House voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate and prove his own citizenship status. Arizona’s local KPHO station broke the news:
The Arizona House on Monday voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state’s ballot when he runs for reelection. The House voted 31-22 to add the provision to a separate bill. The measure still faces a formal vote.
It would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president. Phoenix Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the bill is one of several measures that are making Arizona “the laughing stock of the nation.” Mesa Republican Rep. Cecil Ash said he has no reason to doubt Obama’s citizenship but supports the measure because it could help end doubt.
Casey Newton of the Arizona Republic points out that similar laws have been proposed in Oklahoma, Florida and Missouri, though none have been signed into law. Newton also points out that the bill “originated from a fringe group” known as “birthers.” Many have pointed out that even if the bill gets past the Senate and Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R-AZ) desk, it will likely be determined to be an “unconstitutional imposition of state eligibility requirements on federal candidates.” Experts have also predicted that Arizona’s recently approved immigration law will be found unconstitutional on the grounds that it “singles out the speech of immigrant day laborers for criminalization” and conflicts with the federal government’s enforcement of immigration laws — a function assigned by the constitution. | <urn:uuid:5b338b55-e994-414c-8db5-4fba2007e144> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/04/20/92710/arizona-birther-bill/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962485 | 395 | 1.640625 | 2 |
home in Chapel Hill, Eaves rallied friends and fellow ROTC alums to his
cause: a new memorial for Memorial Hall recognizing Carolina's service
dead since the Civil War. A member of the hall's transformation committee,
Eaves was already involved in the facility's two-year, $15 million renovation.
"Our initial goal was to raise $500,000 to name the portico,"
Eaves said. "We formed the ROTC Memorial Committee, drafted a letter
to ROTC alumni and so far, have received about $400,000 in pledges and
Located in the center of the UNC campus, Memorial Hall was built to honor
Carolina's fallen Civil War soldiers. After the first hall was razed and
a second one built on the site in 1931, the original memorial plaques
were incorporated into the auditorium of the new building which for 70
years served as a center for the performing arts, university ceremonies
and civic and campus events. Transformation of Memorial Hall into an updated,
state-of-the-art facility began in April 2002. As part of the process,
the lobby will be expanded on both sides, leaving the symmetry of its
historic façade intact.
Upon approval of the Board of Trustees, the ROTC Memorial Committee will
dedicate the portico area with a plaque inscribed, "ROTC Alumni to
honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country." The
original Civil War plaques will be reinstalled; research is also being
done to add the names of all those with ties to the University who died
in service to their country. A book listing their names and the names
of donors will be placed in the lobby.
The committee also wants to raise an additional $150,000 to $200,000 for
an outdoor memorial honoring Carolina's service dead. "This artwork
could take the form of a garden or a sculpture," Eaves said. "Students,
faculty, staff and visitors will pass by this space every day. Inside
and out, the sacrifice of our fallen heroes will always be remembered."
a gift honoring those Carolina alums who died in service to their country,
please contact Sam Magill at 919-962-9694. If you know someone
whose name should be included in the memorial listing, please call Don
Luse, director of the Carolina Union, at 919-966-3120. | <urn:uuid:e32cb4b0-45a4-4432-b760-50e911d2e855> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://givingpubs.unc.edu/documents/carolina_connections/archives/spring2003/memorial.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956628 | 514 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Ok I was reading this article.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48045456/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/search-amelia-earharts-plane-set-begin/
And I now think I'm blind. In the article they show this picture:
And this is said about the picture:
"The photo shows the western end of the island and the wreck of the British steamer SS Norwich City, which went aground on the island's reef in 1929," Gillespie said.
"But on the left side of the frame there is something else: an apparent man-made protruding object which is hard to explain in that spot," Gillespie said.
"The photo is wallet-size and, in the original print, the object of interest is smaller than a grain of rice and easily missed," he added.
Ok this image is quite a bit larger then the original wallet-size phote... at least on my screen. And I think a grain of rice would stick out like a sore thumb. And I see nothing... or at least nothing which I'm sure is what they are talking about.
Reading more they go on to say:
According to Glickman, the object in the image could be a composition made from the upside-down landing gear of Earhart's plane: a floating wheel, the fender, the strut and a worm gear.
Does anyone here see what they are talking about? My "detailed analysis" of a dark pixel there on the left side of the photo produces this image with my high tech software.
So I think I'm looking at the wrong dark pixel. | <urn:uuid:fb65d856-14e6-424f-b5dd-e37b229bcd26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23940&p=284478 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948252 | 349 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Microchip is listed on the "Jewish Supers List" (http://blaklion.best.vwh.net/jew.html; viewed 23 December 2005).
From: Steven M. Bergson, "Jewish Comics: A Select Bibliography" last updated 28 June 2005 (http://www.geocities.com/safran-can/JWISHC.HTM; viewed 23 December 2005):
Baron, Mike. "Philanthropy" Punisher Annual #3 (3rd story) (NY: Marvel, 1990)From "Microchip" page on "Marvel Infinity: An Unofficial Fan Site Dedicated to the History of the Marvel Universe" website (http://members.fortunecity.com/dm_bishop2/marvel/microchip.html; viewed 23 December 2005):
Microchip (the Punisher's aide) goes against an organization that is posing as a charity to defraud retirees after he learns about the scheme from one of the victims (his neighbor, Mrs. Rosen).
Current Status: Deceased
Real Name: Linus Lieberman
History: Microchip is probably the only friend and confidante that The Punisher has. A former weapons engineer, Microchip made his living as a mechanic, computer hacker and expert inventor, and built most of The Punisher's arsenal.
Throughout the years, Micro had been The Punisher's sidekick on many missions and the brains behind a lot of the Punisher's operations. Microchip had also become a target over the years by many of The Punihser's enemies. One such enemy was the Kingpin, Kingpin had Micro kidnapped and held as a prisoner, cutting his finger off and sending it to The Punisher in the mail.
Microchip was killed by Sudden Death, a rogue SHIELD agent. | <urn:uuid:b026f575-79bb-43e5-9d8b-3116651f7641> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/Microchip.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949356 | 379 | 1.5 | 2 |
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Robert Key: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport when an inspection was last carried out of the condition of the carriageway on the A303 at its junction with the A345 at Countess Roundabout, Wiltshire; what reports he has received on levels of road safety at this junction; and if he will make a statement.
Chris Mole: The Highways Agency carries out safety inspections every 28 days on trunk roads and the last one at this location was on 2 June 2009. No safety critical defects were identified in this inspection.
We are aware of minor defects to the road surface that do not pose an immediate danger to the travelling public, and overnight repairs are planned for the week commencing 22 June 2009 to deal with the most significant of these.
In a five year period the Countess Roundabout has had a recorded 32 accidents across all arms of the roundabout and the circulatory carriageway. None of the accidents had a poor or defective road surface listed as a contributing factor.
Annual Safety Statements concerning road safety are compiled by the Highways Agency across the entire trunk road network including Countess Roundabout. The most recent statement for this location was issued in October 2008.
Paul Clark: The Future of Air Transport White Paper, which set out the strategic framework for the development of airport capacity in the United Kingdom to 2030, identified 30 major airports in the UK. The following table lists, in the right hand column, the major airports and in the left hand column the constituency or constituencies within which each airport is situated:
Mr. David Anderson: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport what recent representations his Department has received on (a) restrictions imposed and (b) charges levied by airlines on passengers who require supplementary oxygen when travelling by air.
Paul Clark: The Department for Transport has received some 130 letters about the carriage of oxygen. European Regulation 1107/2006 on the rights of disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility when travelling by air does not impose specific obligations on airlines to carry or provide oxygen in the cabin. Where air carriers do supply medical oxygen to passengers on request, it is possible to make a charge for this service. However, many airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, EasyJet and Flybe allow passengers to use their own oxygen and their own Portable Oxygen Concentrator free of charge. It is important that passengers know airlines' charging policies before choosing which carrier to fly with.
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport (1) what requirements there are on light aircraft taking off from or landing at airports located close to housing developments to have silencers fitted; and if he will make a statement;
Paul Clark: Aerodromes are expected to consider the environmental impact of their operations and apply measures designed to minimise the noise impact on the local population. To assist aerodromes in this task, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has published best practice guidance on noise considerations at general aviation aerodromes which is available on their website. This guidance also serves to provide members of the public with an explanation of the constraints and factors that must be considered by aerodrome operators when deciding on the noise mitigation measures that could be adopted.
In the UK, aircraft are required to comply with the Aircraft Noise standards recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and published in annex 16 to the Chicago Convention (annex 16, volume 1). The certification requirements place a maximum decibel limit on the noise level that an aircraft may produce, and are specific to the aircraft type concerned. The requirements do not specify how those noise limits should be met, e.g. through the use of silencers.
The Department for Transport has not had any recent discussions with the CAA about the fitting of silencers to light aircraft. The effective management of aircraft noise includes a number of elements, including action to address noise at source. While it is possible to fit silencers to some light aircraft, this can have an effect on engine power and consequently aircraft performance. The CAA must take these factors into account on a case by case basis when considering whether the installation of silencers on different types of light aircraft.
Lorely Burt: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport what research his Department has commissioned on levels of noise pollution in the area surrounding Birmingham airport in the last three years.
Paul Clark: The Department for Transport only produces noise contours for the three London noise designated airportsHeathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. Elsewhere the monitoring of aircraft noise falls to the local airport operator.
However in line with the EU Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EU (transposed by the Environmental Noise (England) Regulations (2006)), Birmingham International Airportin common with other airports with 50,000 movements and aboveis required to commence formal consultation on a Noise Action Plan by 1 July. These draft plans, which have been prepared in response to noise mapping contours produced in 2007, are required to be developed in consultation with the local community.
Mr. Hoyle: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport how many pensioners in (a) Chorley and (b) Lancashire received concessionary bus passes in the latest period for which figures are available.
Chorley and Lancashire are part of the NoWcard scheme. The last information held by the Department is that; as of April 2008 the NoWcard scheme had received 280,200 applications from older and disabled people.
John McDonnell: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport pursuant to the answer of 22 May 2009, Official Report, column 1489W, on departmental conditions of employment, what timetable he has set for the consideration of the standardisation of processes in areas such as travel and subsistence claims and annual performance.
The specific issues identified by the National Audit Office as needing addressing in the medium-term, including the approach to travel and subsistence claims and annual performance appraisals, are not yet planned in detail. Specific timetables to address these have not yet been scheduled.
The Department and its agencies report all significant personal data security breaches to the Cabinet Office and the Information Commissioners Office. Information on personal data security breaches are published on an annual basis in the departments annual resource accounts as was announced in the Data Handling Review published on 25 June 2008.
Additionally, all significant control weaknesses including other significant security breaches are included in the Statement of Internal Control which is published within the annual resource accounts.
Mr. Paice: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Transport what estimate he has made of the percentage of electricity used by his Department which was derived from renewable sources in (a) 2006-07 and (b) 2007-08.
Chris Mole: The Department for Transport reports its electricity derived from renewable sources figures through the annual Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) report. The figures for 2006-07 and 2007-08 are as follows:
|Renewable e lectricity|
|Renewable Electricity kWh||Percentage of total electricity|
The figures have fallen due to an increased use of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and the over estimation of consumption in 2006-07, but the Department for Transports target to use electricity of which more than 10 per cent. has been derived from renewable sources has been exceeded.
|Next Section||Index||Home Page| | <urn:uuid:cf0006f8-292e-4705-9550-c50df905bb02> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090624/text/90624w0006.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956001 | 1,535 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Why visionary futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard sees December 22, 2012, not as the end of everything but the beginning of “conscious evolution.”
Diane Daniel | March/April 2012 Issue
Barbara Marx Hubbard has been expecting for decades. Now she has a due date: December 22, 2012, or, as she calls it, Day One. Birth Day. Birth 2012. It also happens to be her 83rd birthday.
Some people are predicting doomsday on that date, believed to be the end of the Mayan “Long Count” calendar cycle, which will “run out” after 5,126 years. But the longtime visionary sees enlightenment rather than apocalypse. She’s not alone in promoting December 22, 2012, as a springboard to positive change, but her proclamations may be among the boldest. “This is the largest wakeup call that any species has ever had,” Hubbard declares. “Humanity has been moving up to this point of overpopulating, polluting, warring. We know we’re in a crisis where our lives can be destroyed, but we’re also in a place where it can evolve into a more sustainable and peaceful world.”
If it seems that Hubbard is jumping on the 2012 bandwagon, in a way it’s the -reverse. She’s been preaching “conscious evolution” and positive human potential since the late 1960s and concedes that December 22, 2012, is arbitrary. “The planet is now open to the vision I’ve been expressing all along,” she says. “For me, it doesn’t have anything to do with the Mayan calendar. It’s just a good deadline.”
In its most basic form, “conscious evolution” is the act of generating a positive future by being aware of how our individual efforts contribute to the global greater good to become, as Hubbard puts it, “Universal Humans.” To achieve that, Hubbard touts both personal growth and global change. “They’re simultaneous. The more one shifts Internally, the more you’re giving to the external. If you’re not connected to your being, the work you do in the outside world won’t have as much quality. The outgrowth of that inner essence is your gift to the world.”
A petite woman with snow-white hair and a girlish smile, Hubbard has been proclaiming the positive most of her adult life. But she hasn’t had a national platform since 1984, when her Campaign for a Positive Future succeeded in getting her name entered as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. vice-presidential nomination. Her vision of a “Peace Room” instead of a War Room, a message she still spreads, attracted a small but loyal band of supporters, although she drew scant media coverage.
In the past two and a half years, Hubbard’s ideas have found new audiences through films, lectures, books and especially through webinars she’s producing with the Shift Network under the heading “Vision 2012.” Also, Neale Donald Walsch of Conversations with God fame showered Hubbard with praise in his 2011 book-length tribute, The Mother of Invention: The Legacy of Barbara Marx Hubbard and the Future of YOU. In March, an updated edition of Hubbard’s 2001 book, Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence, 10 Steps to the Universal Human, came out, while the publisher of her 1998 title, Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, is considering a new edition.
“I have a passionate excitement about what’s possible in 2012,” Hubbard says in a voice resonating with energy. Much of her enthusiasm stems from her collaboration with the Shift Network, a Petaluma, California-based for-profit organization started in 2010 by Stephen Dinan. Its mission is to “empower a global movement of people who are creating an evolutionary shift of consciousness that in turns leads to a more enlightened society.”
Hubbard’s most visible project is a 12-session course called Agents of Conscious Evolution (ACE). Continuing the birthing analogy, she writes in promotional material that the course, which costs $497, will teach students to “midwife” the 2012 evolutionary transition “by offering a new worldview, breakthrough innovations and new patterns of social synergy.” The syllabus assembles Hubbard’s lifelong work. Conscious evolution is explained and explored, with an emphasis on moving from ego to essence, finding a true calling and taking one’s message into the world. “We’re inviting ACE students to form global teams around the world to engage in Birth Day, the same way people now do for Earth Day,” she says.
Hubbard sees social media as the key changemaker. “There are innovations and breakthroughs in every field, in every function, but they’re unconnected,” she explains. “If we can connect them, they can lead to a new, positive world. If I had one wish, it would be ‘Facebook with a Purpose.’” Beyond that, she wants to further her idea of a Peace Room as sophisticated as a War Room. “In our war rooms, we track enemies and how to defeat them. In our Peace Room, we track innovations and creative solutions, and how to connect them, communicate them and mobilize them for action.”
How this would be achieved is a process that’s still, well, evolving. “This is a vision,” Hubbard says. “I don’t know exactly how it would be done. Maybe it would be inviting people on the Internet to share that they’re working on X, Y and Z in a way that people can see it. We’re working on that.”
Meanwhile, Hubbard relishes this renewed opportunity to share her visions on a national and even global stage. Despite once being called “the best informed human now alive regarding futurism” by Buckminster Fuller, Hubbard’s years of -visionary insights have remained below the surface, making her journey also a lesson in persistence. “I’ve felt all along that this work was intuitively mine to do, but it has been frustrating to not have a platform,” says Hubbard, who is refreshingly forthright about her disappointments.
Hubbard’s drive to save the human race from itself was sparked by childhood observations, which she chronicles on her website, evolve.org, and in her 1976 autobiography, The Hunger of Eve.
Her father, Louis Marx, made a fortune by creating the first mass-produced toys, which continued to sell well during the Depression. The family first lived in Manhattan, then in Scarsdale, New York, and Hubbard attended exclusive private schools. She acknowledges that her portion of the family fortune has given her “food to eat and a place to live, on a modest scale” without having to hold a job. But the money is not abundant enough to fund her projects, she says.
Her mother’s death from breast cancer when Hubbard was a teenager first caused her to question the universe, she wrote in Eve. “My desire for personal contact with the forces of life was awakening. I was only 14, but the real hunger for deeper purpose had begun.”
Hubbard’s quest for knowledge was magnified when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, leading her to question President Dwight Eisenhower, one of her father’s friends, about the purpose of power and how it could be used for good. His lack of an answer pushed her further.
She studied political science at Bryn Mawr College, and it was during that time that she started a journal. She’s now on volume 175. “I have two large bookcases filled with them,” says Hubbard, who writes her thoughts on the unlined pages of hardcover artist notebooks. “I think I was guided all my life to try to track my process of what was motivating me to discover. This way, I can keep the thread of my journey.”
Before graduating from college, she married the artist and philosopher Earl Hubbard and was pregnant with her first child, Suzanne, who recently has started to spread the message of conscious evolution with her mother. Of marriage, Hubbard writes, “I wanted to be Barbara Marx, not Mrs. Earl Hubbard. But I didn’t have the strength to struggle against it.” By the time she was in her early 30s, Hubbard had five children and was living in suburban Connecticut.
Several events in the 1960s affected her profoundly, starting in 1962 when astronaut John Glenn orbited Earth in Friendship 7, signifying for Hubbard a leap from “human to humanity, from earthbound to universal.” Around the same time, she was introduced to the work of psychology professor Abraham Maslow, and then to the man himself. His notions of self-actualization and chosen vocation resonated with Hubbard, who did not have work she found rewarding, though she says she loved her children and played her part. “I was one of those super moms—until I blew up and became an evolutionary woman,” she says with a hearty laugh.
Her “soul-changing” moment was meeting virologist and visionary Jonas Salk. “He recognized in me as right all those qualities that I thought were wrong,” she says, such as being interested in the future and wanting to connect with others of like mind. “He freed me to be myself and awakened me to evolutionary consciousness.” She calls Salk her one true romantic love, although the feelings were unrequited.
For many years, Earl and Barbara Hubbard were involved in boosting the space program, convinced that it signaled the birth of a new era. They formed the Committee for the Future, a small group of space enthusiasts attracted to the ideals of harmony on Earth and explorations beyond the planet.
After she and Earl divorced in 1970, the work continued with her new partner, John Whiteside, former chief of the Air Force Information Office at Cape Canaveral, with whom she remained until his death from lung cancer in 1981. During the 1970s, they organized 25 interdisciplinary conventions around the country called SYNCONs, for “synergistic convergence,” bringing together divergent leaders to problem solve. “We were a tiny band of explorers,” Hubbard recalls. “I sold my house to fund this. It was very experimental.”
Their home and base of operations moved to a Washington, D.C., mansion loaned to them by Hubbard’s sister Patricia, wife of Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. (Today, Patricia works as a life coach and shares many of her sister’s spiritual philosophies.)
The SYNCONs took place in wheel-shaped environments, with the structure symbolizing the whole instead of the separate. The wheel was divided into wedges representing basic social functions, such as governance, health, infrastructure and science, as well as growth functions, including the arts and space sciences. The goal was to match needs with resources. That organizational structure, which she has expanded and calls “The Wheel of Co-Creation,” is the basis of Hubbard’s current teachings.
“Even people from opposing sides found they were getting more of what they wanted through connecting,” she says. “If there had been a spiritual Geiger counter, it would have gone off the charts. What we didn’t have was ongoing dialogue. With the Internet, it’s now possible to keep the dialogue going.”
After her failed bid for vice president, Hubbard, who is now single, ended up on the West Coast. She’s lived in Santa Barbara for a decade, and for two and a half years in her current home, a modest rental house with a garage that holds 10 tall metal cabinets filled with copies of her speeches and other archives. “I have been very persistent in communicating,” she notes.
From her house, Hubbard operates the nonprofit Foundation for Conscious Evolution. The executive director is Patricia Gaul, a former actor and Hubbard’s assistant and multimedia producer who says her life changed after hearing Hubbard speak in 1998. “She was the only individual I had encountered who described the human experience within a universal evolutionary perspective,” Gaul says. “Her vision was inclusive of the spiritual and the social. She was connecting all the dots.”
When Hubbard isn’t traveling, she stays on the go at home. She rises at 5:30 a.m. for her “favorite moments. I get my cup of coffee and I quiet my mind to allow the impulse of evolution to rise up and to -unfold into my own expression for that day. Then I write in my journal.”
She takes daily walks in her neighborhood, usually for 30 minutes. “It’s always been my exercise and my relaxation, the way I let my thoughts settle,” she says. Hubbard feels the opposite about driving her 2001 Prius, which has traveled only 35,000 miles. “I don’t like to drive,” she explains. “Usually somebody drives me. I have a real difficulty with a sense of direction on the ground. But ask me for the direction of evolution, that I know,” she says with a chuckle.
Everyone comments on the octogenarian’s vitality. “What I’ve discovered is the older I get, the more I can express,” Hubbard says. “The world is more interested in what I want to relate, so I’ve grown more and more energetic.” That energy is implicit in what she calls “regenopause,” her take on menopause. “Women used to think that when reproduction was done, we were done. But the awakening of the urge to express and create is far stronger than the urge to procreate.”
Hubbard’s fans are mostly women, many but not all in their regenopausal stage. Olivia Pool, 33, has attended two events featuring Hubbard at the Sophia Institute, a learning center for spiritual growth in Charleston, South Carolina, which recently added the futurist as a regular presenter. “She comes in this cute little old lady package, but there’s this amazing force behind her,” says Pool, publisher of Charleston Art Mag. “I love her concept of co-creation, working with other people to create things and each person utilizing their best skills to work toward a common goal.”
Hubbard frequently espouses a “co-creative society,” which she describes as one “in which each person is free to do and be his or her best. It facilitates each person giving his or her gift within the whole, where it fits best.”
Carolyn Rivers, Sophia’s founder and director, calls Hubbard “a national treasure. I think of her as an evolutionary pioneer. She’s saying let’s evolve into being who we were destined to be and create a much more conscious world. Her work is really about relationships and a spiritual unfolding and what she calls a compass of joy—our true work aligning with our essence self instead of our ego self.”
For Hubbard, the soul-filling work that comes from “a compass of joy” leads to “vocational arousal,” which occurs when two or more people feel communal energy around their passions and inspire each other to act collectively. She calls these -internal urges “impulses of evolution” and says they guide people to right action.
While Hubbard does some speaking engagements, she’s reaching more people through DVDs and online. An ACE course last summer, for instance, drew about 900 English-speaking students from around the world, mostly Americans. Students are assigned partners and organized into online groups with facilitators. One of the students, Deborah Van Handel, a 56-year-old yoga and Montessori teacher in Litchfield, Connecticut, called Hubbard “riveting. I’m astounded by her. She has the vibrancy of my daughter, and she’s a compelling speaker. I really like her concept that we’re on the edge of evolving as a different creature on the planet, and that we have a choice: Either evolve or become extinct.
Van Handel says she initially took the course in pursuit of her own growth, but started to feel inspired to take Hubbard’s message into the community. “I feel more connected to my own heart and soul’s journey, but the other piece is to be part of a community I resonate with. I’m finding more courage to step into universal work. It’s something I’ve been seeking for a very long time.”
Thierry de Wijn, one of a handful of ACE team leaders and the only one outside the U.S., says community work is essential for a global shift. The Dutchman, who lives near Amsterdam, has admired Hubbard since he was introduced to her work in 2003. “I like that she names our global crisis as a birth of something new instead of the end of the world, which really gives you hope,” says De Wijn, 47, who runs the Hubbard-inspired non-profit, the Art of Co-creation, which helps match creative projects with the resources to fund them. One of his goals is to see people in ACE and his own group act to create a better future. “Once we get down to more concrete projects and people see that we help a -community or a project and things start happening, then it helps people’s -understanding of conscious evolution.”
Hubbard, too, wants to see her “global teams” celebrate “Birth Day” and beyond but says activities are in the planning stage. “We’re going to have as much global media as we can, and, if nothing else, we’ll have a platform for people to connect to each other and share their projects,” she says. Through The Shift Network, she and visionary Byron Belitsos will collaborate on a book about “parenting the birth,” she says, giving practical ways to realize its potential.
What if Birth Day doesn’t take off? “If this doesn’t work, it’s because something else wants to happen,” she says. “There will be other occasions.”
That devotion keeps Hubbard going. “I’d like to say to all visionaries, ‘Don’t give up. Don’t let frustrations get to you.’ I’m harvesting fields and years of work. … I feel amazingly joyous. Not a joy out of ‘I’ve succeeded,’ but from the impulse of what I’m being and doing. I’ve turned into a verb. I’m an evolving woman.”
Diane Daniel is consciously evolving from her home in North Carolina. | <urn:uuid:1ca239c5-eb82-4884-b81c-32614a80b539> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://odewire.com/becomingaverb | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969264 | 4,076 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Tag: wesley gerber. shooting
Caught raiding a chicken coop in rural Wyoming, a blue heeler named Bo was shot twice, tossed in a barrel, doused with gasoline and set on fire.
According to the Washakie County Sheriff’s Office, an 18-year-old neighbor shot the dog — after returning home and finding it was going after the family chickens.
Then, thinking Bo was dead, he asked his father what to do with the dog’s body.
“I said, ‘Burn it,’” the father, Mike Gerber, told the Casper Star-Tribune. ” …We have had other predators come around — and even our chickens that the dog had killed — how we got rid of them was we just burned them.”
His son, Wesley Gerber, dragged the dog to a burn barrel in the front yard, doused the dog with gasoline, and threw in a match.
“The next thing you know, the dog comes popping up out of there in flames,” Mike Gerber told the newspaper. Bo ran around in a circle, and then home.
Ben and Abby Redland, Bo’s owners, said when Bo ran into the house “there was this terrible smell … His hair was melted and fallling out. He was still smoldering.”
Bo was rushed to a vet. Bullets had grazed his cheek and back, and he had third-degree burns over most of his body. “Bo was in such shock, the vet didn’t think he’d make it,” Abby Redland told the Los Angeles Times.
Since the incident — back in December, in rural Worland, Wyoming, 150 miles north of Casper — three-year-old Bo has fully recovered, though he has a few scars.
The Redlands have taken out a restraining order on the Gerbers. And they’re pushing to change Wyoming law and introduce measures that require those who shoot pets to at least contact the animal’s owners.
“I wish it never happened,” Mike Gerber said. “The decisions being made were made fast. Maybe if they would’ve been thought through more clearly, we would’ve done things differently.”
(Photo: By Abby Redland, via Los Angeles Times)
Posted by jwoestendiek February 22nd, 2013 under Muttsblog.
Tags: abby redland, animals, ashes, barrel, ben redland, blue heeler, bo, burned, chickens, dog, dogs, doused, gasoline, mike gerber, neighbor, pets, property, shot, survival, washakie county, wesley gerber. shooting, worland, wyoming | <urn:uuid:eb557178-69d7-4a8f-96b6-7caf05140b33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ohmidog.com/tag/wesley-gerber-shooting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973378 | 591 | 1.609375 | 2 |
What ever happened to the Shoe Scanner Idea? It’s still cooking! TSA started collecting data on Shoe Scanning Detection technology in the fall of 2008 and is currently soliciting industry input as it looks to explore future use of shoe scanning systems. In addition, TSA has requested funding for shoe scanning detection technology as part of the FY11 budget.
This would be a win-win because it’s the perfect balance of security and convenience. Shoe removal has long been considered one of the most inconvenient aspects of airline security, so this would be welcomed with open arms (and shoed feet) by the flying public. I can assure you that our officers want this technology to work just as much or more than the passengers do. This would allow them to focus their attention on other things and there would be much less clutter on the X-ray belts. So the passengers and officers would be gaining all of this added convenience and security to boot. (Shoe pun intended)
Check out the recent USA Today article on this subject.
TSA Blog Team | <urn:uuid:be6cb3a9-c579-4e17-a8a1-972e60744dae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/03/whatever-happened-to-shoe-scanner-idea.html?showComment=1267703932448 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964645 | 218 | 1.546875 | 2 |
In the past 10 days, Boulder-based Sunflower Farmers Market has endured two distinct and dramatic shocks that have rocked the foundation of the natural-foods grocer.
The burgeoning chain swiftly executed a management change after its founder and CEO was arrested in a Phoenix child prostitution sting.
Days later, the homegrown grocer that built itself on the premise of "serious food . . . silly prices" played witness to a merger that effectively doubled the size of a competitor.
"It's, of course, been an interesting week," said Chris Sherrell, who was named Sunflower's acting CEO on Feb. 12, two days after the arrest of Michael Gilliland. "But we have a good, strong head on it."
Despite the uncertainty, Sunflower's officials have expressed confidence in the grocer's stability and future. And some industry and legal experts agree: Sunflower appears to be weathering the storm, but only time — and consumers' shopping habits — will tell.
"Things will just have to play out as they will," said Meg Major, editor of Progressive Grocer magazine.
Since the first Sunflower Farmers Market opened in Albuquerque in 2002, the company was viewed by many in the natural-foods world as a rising star.
Sunflower helped to create a "value-focused" sub-sector in an industry often dogged by perceptions of elitism and expensiveness, said Bob Vosburgh, a Supermarket News group editor specializing in health and wellness.
"I think Sunflower has been able to walk that fine line between natural and organic and price," Vosburgh said.
After finishing 2010 with 32 stores, Sunflower entered this year with a target of five to six new stores and another eight to 10 in 2012.
While the promptness of Gilliland's resignation following the charges appears to have helped limit some damage, it did not alleviate the entire situation for the business, said J. Robert Brown, a professor of corporate and securities law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
"Obviously, it's horrible publicity, and that's whether he's guilty or not," Brown said.
Comparing Gilliland to Joseph Nacchio, former CEO of Denver-based Qwest who was convicted on criminal insider-trading charges, Brown said the long-term effect on Qwest appeared to be minimal.
However, Sunflower's fate is in the hands of the consumer, Brown cautioned.
"As long as consumers keep coming, Sunflower will just soldier on," he said.
Walking out of Sunflower's Boulder store last week, 23-year-old Alex Jones said she was aware of Gilliland's arrest. Jones said she didn't know the full details of the charges and was unsure whether she would stop patronizing the grocer.
"I don't know if it would stop me from coming here," she said. "It's so cheap."
On a recent trip to her hometown Sunflower, Arvada resident Shirley Hanson, 82, expressed disgust after being made aware of Gilliland's arrest.
"I may not be as eager to go here," she said. "But some of the stuff they have, I really enjoy."
The company's operational challenges appeared to grow more complicated last week when competitor Sprouts Farmers Market announced plans to merge with Henry's Farmers Market and Sun Harvest. The combination would result in Sprouts becoming a 98-store chain with deeper pockets and a sharper eye on growth, Sprouts officials said.
Despite the geographic overlap with Sunflower's markets, Sprouts officials shrugged off the idea that the Boulder chain is a chief competitor. Instead, Sprouts typically gains new customers from "traditional" stores such as King Soopers.
Sherrell said the added competition could be healthy for Sunflower.
"The more competition, the more people recognize the concept," he said. "It really makes it more visible."
Denver Post staff writer Greg Griffin contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:5c6b438c-728a-497d-82df-834a8ce01df1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_17429589?source=pkg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977102 | 811 | 1.507813 | 2 |
For the first time in more than a decade, Dennis Simcoe won’t be able to simply pick up the phone and call Ford Motor Co. when it’s time to replace one of Edmonton’s 230 Crown Victoria police cruisers. That’s because Ford, which currently boasts 70 per cent of the North American police car market, is finally retiring the aging, tank-like police car next year, creating unease among police departments and an opportunity for competitors to step in. “It’s a very well-performing police vehicle,” says Simcoe, who oversees fleet operations for the city of Edmonton and already sounds a touch nostalgic for the Crown Victoria. “You can pound on them and they still keep ticking.”
For Ford, though, the “Crown Vic” lost its commercial appeal a long time ago. Built in St. Thomas, Ont., the car has been relegated to police and taxi fleets since 2007 after Ford decided the consumer market for big, rear-wheel-drive sedans had all but disappeared, save for a handful of Florida retirees. Even taxi companies are moving away to smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. And police departments, although important and high-profile customers, only buy about 60,000 of the roughly $30,000 vehicles a year in total—not enough to justify a dedicated assembly line.
Ford is now attempting to convince police to move to a car based on its front- and all-wheel-drive Taurus platform, as well as a sport utility vehicle, promising performance benefits that stem from modern vehicle stability systems and the improved fuel economy of a smaller but still powerful V6 engine. “We can add that advanced technology and maybe change the way people think about police cars,” says Marisa Bradley, a Ford spokesperson.
But police departments aren’t yet sold. They like the Crown Vic’s old-fashioned body-on-frame construction, which makes the cars cheap and easy to repair since damaged panels can simply be replaced. Moving to a front- or all-wheel-drive car will also require police officers to be retrained at considerable expense because the vehicles handle differently. In general, rear-wheel-drive cars are thought to handle better than front-wheel-drive vehicles, although they can lose traction on slippery roads (all-wheel-drive cars are said to offer the best of both worlds).
Ford’s competitors, not surprisingly, are eager to muscle their way back into the market and have seized on the uncertainty. GM, in particular, is touting a big, burly, rear-wheel-drive vehicle with a V8 engine that boasts more interior space to house the $25,000 or so worth of equipment—radar guns, computers, protective shields—that police officers need to do their jobs. As well, the seats are specially designed to accommodate the bulky gun belts worn by patrol officers. The car also carries a familiar name: Chevrolet Caprice, which used to be the go-to police car until GM decided to scrap the model in 1996 and the Crown Victoria took over. “[Police] customers have been asking for us to bring back a full-sized rear-wheel-drive sedan,” says Dana Hammer, the manager of law enforcement vehicles for Chevrolet. He adds that the Caprice PPV (police patrol vehicle) is a “modern” vehicle based on a rear-wheel-drive platform built in Australia and sold elsewhere in the world under the Holden brand. No decision has yet been made on whether it will be offered to police departments in Canada.
The sales pitches (and trash talking) have already begun in earnest. Earlier this month, Ford, GM and Chrysler, which sells a police car based on its rear-wheel-drive (V6 or V8) Dodge Charger model, brought their offerings to a test track in Michigan, where state police hold an annual evaluation. Following the event, GM quickly issued a press release that trumpeted the performance of the Caprice, noting that it was faster from zero to 95 and zero to 160 km/h than the Ford and Dodge cars, and stopped in a shorter distance.
Ford’s Bradley, however, scoffed at GM’s claims. “It was convenient that they left out the new [Ford] Police Interceptors and judged their cars against the Crown Vic,” she said, adding that the Taurus-based Police Interceptors beat the field in handling and braking at the Michigan tests. The results weren’t official because the cars, nearly a year away from production, are considered prototypes. Still, for Edmonton’s Simcoe and other police fleet managers across the continent, the Crown Victoria remains the car to beat. | <urn:uuid:f0b287e0-7b92-4df9-9605-c7e5c8bb4149> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/10/07/clash-of-the-cruisers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961615 | 982 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Medical research charities and the Academy of Medical Sciences have written to the Times today (£), welcoming a consultation on changes to the NHS constitution and calling on the NHS and Government to work to raise public awareness of the benefits of sharing patient data and the safeguards that are in place to protect personal confidentiality. Sharmila Nebhrajani, AMRC chief executive, was one of the signatories. The letter is in response to proposed changes to the constitution that will clarify how patient data collected by the NHS will be used. You can read more about that in Liz’s blog post here.
Confidential patient information must be kept safe and secure but it must also be shared more effectively
Sir, A poll this year found that 82 per cent of people think it is important for the NHS to offer opportunities to take part in healthcare research, including clinical trials. The consultation on the NHS Constitution announced yesterday is an opportunity to achieve this, for the benefit of all.
Patient records are an invaluable resource for research. They provide data that can be used to understand the causes of disease, to track infections, to recruit people to clinical trials, and to investigate the safety and effectiveness of drugs, treatments and interventions.
Research based on patient data should be routine. Yet for too long it has been held back by a complex and confusing access system. We therefore welcome the consultation, and the clarification about how patient records should be handled.
Confidential patient information must be kept safe and secure but it must also be shared more effectively. Rigorous safeguards protect patients when researchers, from academia or industry, access their data. Wherever possible, researchers use anonymised information. Where this is not possible, individuals must give consent unless there are exceptional circumstances. All research must be approved by an ethics committee, and there are strict controls on how data can be used.
Everyone is concerned that health data should be kept confidential, so it is essential that patients understand how and why their information is used. Revising the Constitution is an important first step, and we urge the NHS and the Department of Health to reinforce it by raising awareness of the benefits of sharing patient data and the safeguards that are in place.
Professor Sir John Tooke, Academy of Medical Sciences
Sharmila Nebhrajani, Association of Medical Research Charities
Professor Peter Weissberg, British Heart Foundation
Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK
Professor Sir Mark Walport, Wellcome Trust | <urn:uuid:bee5d525-c257-4432-bb50-06d7b3d428bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://policyblog.amrc.org.uk/2012/11/06/charities-and-researchers-call-for-greater-awareness-of-patient-data-use/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933992 | 494 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Discussion Thread: This post << Part 4 << Part 3 << Part 2 << Part 1
(Also a contribution to the May Working/Learning blog carnival hosted by Rupa Rajagopalan)
In the last few posts, I have tried to identify what I think are the pillars of the learning process/experience and tried to establish that they remain valid in both traditional and 2.0 contexts. These pillars are goals, time, measurement, content/knowledge and improvement. I also tried to make concrete the business case, context and critical success factors for these methodologies.
In this post, I will be looking at additional components of formal methodologies that could be adopted by organizations worldwide to foster this new style. But before we do that I wanted to assess whether we can really have a formal set of methods, priciples and procedures around Learning 2.0, the way we can in traditional learning. I want to clarify that I am not referring to putting formal methodologies in how people should be taught or should learn using the Learning 2.0 style. That is implicit in the style. Rather I am referring to methodologies that can help organizations initiate and propagate this new style because of its apparent benefits.
Let us look at some of the additional components of the methodology and revisit some I have talked about earlier.
Learning is organized around groups, each around a specific learning context or domain. These groups could be aggregated over role profile requirements. For example, Level 2 support engineers need to be skilled in voice support, technical skills around the product and soft skills around customer management. That is what they need to learn and improve on. These are functional groups brought together by commonality in the work they do in the organization.
Some learning contexts could be organization wide. For example, there is a lot of learning around ethics or corporate responsibility that applies to all. These contexts apply to the entire organization or large non-functional chunks thereof.
But context is a key organizing factor for these groups and any Learning 2.0 strategy must include this key factor. The network for the organizations is a collection of small and large groups or communities around specific learning contexts.
Groups Organization and Roles
Each group needs organization. The group would comprise of experts, experienced professionals and new hires alike across a specific context/group. The group may give rise to sub groups all aligned to the group.
To initiate, structure and motivate collaborative learning within groups, there must be a few individuals who would take the initiative to orchestrate some group activities. This is not to say that these orchestrators would impose certain learning objectives or structured 1.0 methodology on the group. Rather, these individuals would be ones that understand both group dynamics and the learning context and be able to correlate them with business requirements. For example, the orchestrator may adopt Tuckman’s 4 stage model for a group – forming, storming, norming and performing. Then ensure that all members reach the performing stage (defined in a special way for the learning 2.0 style) and satisfy the business requirements.
There shall be other roles and responsibilities that the group may have to undertake. For example, initiating new members would be a process. In this process, senior or performing members of the group would take responsibility for understanding learning needs and help to create paths through the mass of collaborative content and member groups across the context.
For example, if I am a rookie technical engineer, I need to understand the product (i.e. I get connected to Bill Marsh, the expert, who is part of the specific product network/group), need to understand and learn from the experiences of the services group (i.e. I get enrolled into the service troubleshooting group led by Jatin Sharma), need to learn about ethics and business conduct (i.e. I get enrolled into a corporate group on ethics led by Sue Liang) etc. Bill, Jatin and Sue follow a specific methodology to get me into the performing stage for the group very fast.
Similarly, if a group decides to create an assessment to ensure it’s members have really learnt the features of the new product, it can decide to create a process to ensure this happens. If a rating needs to be provided for a particular piece of content or even interaction, then the community can engage in peer reviews.
The group grows and thrives based on 2.0 styles that have been discussed. However there needs to be a method to how it evolves or devolves. The method needs to be as decentralized as possible. If it is centralized as in 1.0, we shall only go on to create a similar learning style and shall fail to leverage the 2.0 benefits. Maybe this requires strategies only to the extent of getting all the members trained/skilled to reach them to the performing stage? These distinctions are key. And I know these strategies shall require orchestrators with specialized soft skills.
Organizations have a huge amount of content to start with. There are two challenges that we have to address here:
- How to repurpose some or all of the content (structured courses, other sources of content) in meaningful ways to act as the repository of information for the group?
- How to grow this repository of content to not only add new content but also improve on the existing content through collaboration?
These are key challenges because organizations cannot ignore the investment made in creating this content, nor can they just leave groups alone to create large amounts of unusable or unstructured content (ultimately this will have heavy impacts on the technical infrastructure as well). However I believe that once groups start performing, the traditional content generation requirements will reduce immensely or will reduce time for development of structured material to a great extent. In this context, vendors/content developers need to be the ones that maintain these ever growing and improving repositories.
Measurement and tracking
This acquires a different connotation in 2.0. You are now trying to track how successfully groups are being able to translate their interactions to meaningful performance. So far, ratings and other quantitative information for participation, can be tracked and these shall be one set of measures that can generate some analytics. The other measures, ones that track individual growth, I am less sure about. At one end I feel these should be what the traditional measures are. This has the benefit of atleast being able to rate both 1.0 and 2.0 progressions on a common scale. However, I also feel that perhaps the 2.0 assessments should be unique to the group definition of expertise or prowess.
Collaboration must be geared towards results. I have seen too many frustrated people on the forums who either have not had their problems resolved or queries answered satisfactorily causing them to either abandon their learning or not be able to solve their problem effectively. To many times, the conversations turn acrimonious. This is a show stopper. A network must produce results if it is to continuously motivate and help its members. Individuals are fallible. The network should not be.
So there should be a methodology and purpose that should treat each problem as a learning event, an occassion to help the individual learn and acknowledgement to the people who help facilitate that learning in a timely fashion.
In summary, these are a few key components that need formal methodologies to create successful and effective social networks for learning. There will be other components and ways to engender effectiveness, this is not an exhaustive list and we need to work collaboratively to flesh these out. Look forward to comments! | <urn:uuid:34707b20-8026-41bd-b8cc-ccfca8b6402c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://learnos.wordpress.com/2008/05/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951011 | 1,537 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Similar edges but notice the vast difference in the finishing?
Another where the seaming is blah.
Now, you get the picture. The finishing usually makes or break the FO!
If you are looking for a knitting/crochet enabler, you should try to do the following:
1. Ask to see their samples of work to get an idea of what you'll be learning. (ask if she knits them, don't *just* assume she does.)
2. Observe how she teaches or interacts with her students -- does her personality shine and would you like to interact with her?
3. Is she patient and willing to repeat the motions or instructions where necessary?
4. Is she willing to share her experiences and show you how to *think* and not follow patterns blindly?
5. Is she able to articulate the techniques and adapt to suit the students' learning styles?
6. Is she willing to help you alter a pattern so that it fits and flatters your body?
Afterall, as I always say,"If you are going to put so much time and effort in it, you might as well attempt to do it the best you can with the best guidance available."
Now, here's the test piece....
There's a seam in this piece. Can you tell me where it is?Sharing is sexy | <urn:uuid:219b7907-b5dc-4a66-b97d-7659e9c43b4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thehandiworks.blogspot.jp/2005/12/finishing-quality-homemade-vs-handmade.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960133 | 279 | 1.53125 | 2 |
by Daniel Harder
(Daniel’s story was collected for IFD’s Black Community Spotlight. Learn more)
From the time I was 4 or 5 years old, I knew that I was gay. I can even remember my first crush at that age. I don’t know if I had a true understanding of what being “gay” meant, but I knew that I had an attraction to the same sex. Yet, I was not comfortable and accepting of myself. I wanted to be like other young men I saw: macho, proud, strong, and attracted to women. Especially as a little black boy, these are some of the ideas that many people made me believe defined being a man.
I was taunted a lot throughout my early academic years in school. My voice was softer than other boys. I didn’t necessarily want to engage in the same activities that other boys did. Although, I did play football and basketball with my male friends and was quite good at it. However, five minutes later you could find me jumping double dutch and braiding hair with my female friends, and in complete heaven. I knew I was different, but the teasing and harassing that “friends” put me through, made me feel like I couldn’t be myself.
Now don’t get me wrong, growing up was a wonderful time for me. I had two parents and two step-parents who were extremely loving and supportive of me. I mean, our family could rival that of the Cosby’s, we’re so close. Yet, for some reason, I didn’t think that my family would be accepting of who I was; the true me. My family and I would have many discussions about loving me and accepting me for who I was, but I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. I would hide my feelings; lie about them. Keeping them a secret. Why? I don’t know. Unlike many other families (especially in the black community), I wasn’t being shunned. Not once was I told I would be kicked out of my family’s house, or better yet, condemned to eternal damnation. Yet, I just couldn’t find the strength inside me to be as open and honest about who I was. First with myself, and then with others.
As time went on, I continued to hide my feelings. I “dated” girls to save face. Actually, the only time I kissed a girl was in a game of Truth or Dare. HA! By the time high school arrived, my focus shifted. I had found my true calling which was dance and enrolled in a performing arts program where I was surrounded by others who were different: lovers of the arts, other gay men and women. Everyone had a story, but loved one another exactly the way they were. I didn’t realize it at the time, but dance would become my medium to share with the world who I truly was.
Senior year rolled around, and something happened to me. I met someone. Not a girl, but a boy. We became completely enamored with one another and started dating. Secretly. Somehow, all of those feelings that I grew up with came flooding back to me. The teasing and taunting I had grown up with made me feel like I had to keep this man that I was in a relationship with hidden. I prayed a lot. Asking God to help me find the strength to accept who I was, but also to find the courage to be able to share who that person is with the world. I don’t remember exactly when it hit me, but with those prayers came understanding, acceptance, peace, and forgiveness. I eventually sat down with my family and closest friends, and shared the good news with them. I WAS GAY HONEY and PROUD! Tears were shed. Not because I was gay, but because I had finally come to a place where I could feel free.
As time has gone on, I’ve learned more and more about myself as a black gay man. It is a constant work in progress, but I’ve discovered I can be macho, proud, strong, and gay! I’ve learned not to define myself as how others see me, but only by how I see myself. As a performer, our goal is to always be as open and honest with our audience every night that we hit that stage. I don’t think that I would be able to do that night after night had I not found acceptance and love for myself first!
-(Share your story with us!) | <urn:uuid:2fbf156a-7037-4b0c-8a5c-cf02dc0fbbf4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://imfromdriftwood.tumblr.com/tagged/MD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990101 | 966 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Anchorage — Eager voters were waiting outside the state Division of Elections office in Midtown Anchorage at 8 a.m. Sunday when regional elections supervisor Julie Husmann got to work.
She advised them to come back in a few hours: Early voting, which began Oct. 22, resumed at noon on Sunday. And by 11:15 a.m., people were lining up, just as they had on Saturday.
It was taking voters 45 minutes to an hour to get through the line, a bit longer than the day before. Some were voting early and others, who live outside Anchorage and the Mat-Su, were casting in-person absentee ballots.
"I think most people think it's an enormously important election," Anchorage voter Mark Erickson said early in the afternoon, waiting outside in the brisk sunshine.
Erickson, 59 and a psychiatrist, looked at the line stretching ahead of him. It didn't seem like a hassle, but rather a sign many in Alaska were serious about voting. "I'm delighted to see so many people here."
Some in the line said it was more convenient to vote on the weekend than during the work week. Some said they just wanted to make sure they got to cast their ballot. Some were headed out of town. Some made it a family outing with the kids. Some used walkers or canes to get to the building.
"I always try to vote early to avoid lines," Jason Norris, 33, said. "But it is good to see a good turnout. It's an important election at all levels."
On Saturday, more than 1,000 people cast early votes in Anchorage, and another 100 or so voted absentee, Husmann said. Statewide, more than 13,000 voted early as of Friday afternoon. That number appeared lower than four years ago, elections officials have said. In 2008, the Alaska ballot had a hotly contested U.S. Senate race and Gov. Sarah Palin was running for vice president.
Still, in Anchorage, the parking lots around the elections office at 2525 Gambell Street were filling up. Once voters got inside the building, the line snaked through a big room where orange cones stamped "Elections Dept." designated where to go. From there the line went down the hall, and then to the room where people could vote.
Posted signs told voters what kind of identification is required in Alaska: voter card, driver's license, birth certificate, passport, military ID, state ID, hunting or fishing license, current utility bill, or a paycheck. Husmann said voters generally had what they needed. Those who live in the region then simply sign a statement and their vote is placed directly into a ballot box.
The early votes will be counted on Election Night, she said, while the in-person absentees cast by people from outside the region will be reviewed and counted with other absentees in the days after the election.
Early voting continues Monday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. both at the Midtown elections office and City Hall downtown. On Election Day, voters can cast their ballots at the elections office from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. or at City Hall from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., or at their designated polling place.
Reach Lisa Demer at [email protected] or 257-4390. | <urn:uuid:3037f3de-5071-4f73-a8db-fde1762dc6b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adn.com/2012/11/04/2682187/voters-line-up-to-cast-ballots.html | 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 | 0.984853 | 696 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The length of time he delayed with Ricote prevented Sancho from reaching the duke's castle that day, though he was within half a league of it when night, somewhat dark and cloudy, overtook him. This, however, as it was summer time, did not give him much uneasiness, and he turned aside out of the road intending to wait for morning; but his ill luck and hard fate so willed it that as he was searching about for a place to make himself as comfortable as possible, he and Dapple fell into a deep dark hole that lay among some very old buildings. As he fell he commended himself with all his heart to God, fancying he was not going to stop until he reached the depths of the bottomless pit; but it did not turn out so, for at little more than thrice a man's height Dapple touched bottom, and he found himself sitting on him without having received any hurt or damage whatever. He felt himself all over and held his breath to try whether he was quite sound or had a hole made in him anywhere, and finding himself all right and whole and in perfect health he was profuse in his thanks to God our Lord for the mercy that had been shown him, for he made sure he had been broken into a thousand pieces. He also felt along the sides of the pit with his hands to see if it were possible to get out of it without help, but he found they were quite smooth and afforded no hold anywhere, at which he was greatly distressed, especially when he heard how pathetically and dolefully Dapple was bemoaning himself, and no wonder he complained, nor was it from ill-temper, for in truth he was not in a very good case. "Alas," said Sancho, "what unexpected accidents happen at every step to those who live in this miserable world! Who would have said that one who saw himself yesterday sitting on a throne, governor of an island, giving orders to his servants and his vassals, would see himself to-day buried in a pit without a soul to help him, or servant or vassal to come to his relief? Here must we perish with hunger, my ass and myself, if indeed we don't die first, he of his bruises and injuries, and I of grief and sorrow. At any rate I'll not be as lucky as my master Don Quixote of La Mancha, when he went down into the cave of that enchanted Montesinos, where he found people to make more of him than if he had been in his own house; for it seems he came in for a table laid out and a bed ready made. There he saw fair and pleasant visions, but here I'll see, I imagine, toads and adders. Unlucky wretch that I am, what an end my follies and fancies have come to! They'll take up my bones out of this, when it is heaven's will that I'm found, picked clean, white and polished, and my good Dapple's with them, and by that, perhaps, it will be found out who we are, at least by such as have heard that Sancho Panza never separated from his ass, nor his ass from Sancho Panza. Unlucky wretches, I say again, that our hard fate should not let us die in our own country and among our own people, where if there was no help for our misfortune, at any rate there would be some one to grieve for it and to close our eyes as we passed away! O comrade and friend, how ill have I repaid thy faithful services! Forgive me, and entreat Fortune, as well as thou canst, to deliver us out of this miserable strait we are both in; and I promise to put a crown of laurel on thy head, and make thee look like a poet laureate, and give thee double feeds."
In this strain did Sancho bewail himself, and his ass listened to him, but answered him never a word, such was the distress and anguish the poor beast found himself in. At length, after a night spent in bitter moanings and lamentations, day came, and by its light Sancho perceived that it was wholly impossible to escape out of that pit without help, and he fell to bemoaning his fate and uttering loud shouts to find out if there was anyone within hearing; but all his shouting was only crying in the wilderness, for there was not a soul anywhere in the neighbourhood to hear him, and then at last he gave himself up for dead. Dapple was lying on his back, and Sancho helped him to his feet, which he was scarcely able to keep; and then taking a piece of bread out of his alforjas which had shared their fortunes in the fall, he gave it to the ass, to whom it was not unwelcome, saying to him as if he understood him, "With bread all sorrows are less."
And now he perceived on one side of the pit a hole large enough to admit a person if he stooped and squeezed himself into a small compass. Sancho made for it, and entered it by creeping, and found it wide and spacious on the inside, which he was able to see as a ray of sunlight that penetrated what might be called the roof showed it all plainly. He observed too that it opened and widened out into another spacious cavity; seeing which he made his way back to where the ass was, and with a stone began to pick away the clay from the hole until in a short time he had made room for the beast to pass easily, and this accomplished, taking him by the halter, he proceeded to traverse the cavern to see if there was any outlet at the other end. He advanced, sometimes in the dark, sometimes without light, but never without fear; "God Almighty help me!" said he to himself; "this that is a misadventure to me would make a good adventure for my master Don Quixote. He would have been sure to take these depths and dungeons for flowery gardens or the palaces of Galiana, and would have counted upon issuing out of this darkness and imprisonment into some blooming meadow; but I, unlucky that I am, hopeless and spiritless, expect at every step another pit deeper than the first to open under my feet and swallow me up for good; 'welcome evil, if thou comest alone.'"
In this way and with these reflections he seemed to himself to have travelled rather more than half a league, when at last he perceived a dim light that looked like daylight and found its way in on one side, showing that this road, which appeared to him the road to the other world, led to some opening.
Here Cide Hamete leaves him, and returns to Don Quixote, who in high spirits and satisfaction was looking forward to the day fixed for the battle he was to fight with him who had robbed Dona Rodriguez's daughter of her honour, for whom he hoped to obtain satisfaction for the wrong and injury shamefully done to her. It came to pass, then, that having sallied forth one morning to practise and exercise himself in what he would have to do in the encounter he expected to find himself engaged in the next day, as he was putting Rocinante through his paces or pressing him to the charge, he brought his feet so close to a pit that but for reining him in tightly it would have been impossible for him to avoid falling into it. He pulled him up, however, without a fall, and coming a little closer examined the hole without dismounting; but as he was looking at it he heard loud cries proceeding from it, and by listening attentively was able to make out that he who uttered them was saying, "Ho, above there! is there any Christian that hears me, or any charitable gentleman that will take pity on a sinner buried alive, on an unfortunate disgoverned governor?"
It struck Don Quixote that it was the voice of Sancho Panza he heard, whereat he was taken aback and amazed, and raising his own voice as much as he could, he cried out, "Who is below there? Who is that complaining?"
"Who should be here, or who should complain," was the answer, "but the forlorn Sancho Panza, for his sins and for his ill-luck governor of the island of Barataria, squire that was to the famous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha?"
When Don Quixote heard this his amazement was redoubled and his perturbation grew greater than ever, for it suggested itself to his mind that Sancho must be dead, and that his soul was in torment down there; and carried away by this idea he exclaimed, "I conjure thee by everything that as a Catholic Christian I can conjure thee by, tell me who thou art; and if thou art a soul in torment, tell me what thou wouldst have me do for thee; for as my profession is to give aid and succour to those that need it in this world, it will also extend to aiding and succouring the distressed of the other, who cannot help themselves."
"In that case," answered the voice, "your worship who speaks to me must be my master Don Quixote of La Mancha; nay, from the tone of the voice it is plain it can be nobody else."
"Don Quixote I am," replied Don Quixote, "he whose profession it is to aid and succour the living and the dead in their necessities; wherefore tell me who thou art, for thou art keeping me in suspense; because, if thou art my squire Sancho Panza, and art dead, since the devils have not carried thee off, and thou art by God's mercy in purgatory, our holy mother the Roman Catholic Church has intercessory means sufficient to release thee from the pains thou art in; and I for my part will plead with her to that end, so far as my substance will go; without further delay, therefore, declare thyself, and tell me who thou art."
"By all that's good," was the answer, "and by the birth of whomsoever your worship chooses, I swear, Senor Don Quixote of La Mancha, that I am your squire Sancho Panza, and that I have never died all my life; but that, having given up my government for reasons that would require more time to explain, I fell last night into this pit where I am now, and Dapple is witness and won't let me lie, for more by token he is here with me."
Nor was this all; one would have fancied the ass understood what Sancho said, because that moment he began to bray so loudly that the whole cave rang again.
"Famous testimony!" exclaimed Don Quixote; "I know that bray as well as if I was its mother, and thy voice too, my Sancho. Wait while I go to the duke's castle, which is close by, and I will bring some one to take thee out of this pit into which thy sins no doubt have brought thee."
"Go, your worship," said Sancho, "and come back quick for God's sake; for I cannot bear being buried alive any longer, and I'm dying of fear."
Don Quixote left him, and hastened to the castle to tell the duke and duchess what had happened Sancho, and they were not a little astonished at it; they could easily understand his having fallen, from the confirmatory circumstance of the cave which had been in existence there from time immemorial; but they could not imagine how he had quitted the government without their receiving any intimation of his coming. To be brief, they fetched ropes and tackle, as the saying is, and by dint of many hands and much labour they drew up Dapple and Sancho Panza out of the darkness into the light of day. A student who saw him remarked, "That's the way all bad governors should come out of their governments, as this sinner comes out of the depths of the pit, dead with hunger, pale, and I suppose without a farthing."
Sancho overheard him and said, "It is eight or ten days, brother growler, since I entered upon the government of the island they gave me, and all that time I never had a bellyful of victuals, no not for an hour; doctors persecuted me and enemies crushed my bones; nor had I any opportunity of taking bribes or levying taxes; and if that be the case, as it is, I don't deserve, I think, to come out in this fashion; but 'man proposes and God disposes;' and God knows what is best, and what suits each one best; and 'as the occasion, so the behaviour;' and 'let nobody say "I won't drink of this water;"' and 'where one thinks there are flitches, there are no pegs;' God knows my meaning and that's enough; I say no more, though I could."
"Be not angry or annoyed at what thou hearest, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "or there will never be an end of it; keep a safe conscience and let them say what they like; for trying to stop slanderers' tongues is like trying to put gates to the open plain. If a governor comes out of his government rich, they say he has been a thief; and if he comes out poor, that he has been a noodle and a blockhead."
"They'll be pretty sure this time," said Sancho, "to set me down for a fool rather than a thief."
Thus talking, and surrounded by boys and a crowd of people, they reached the castle, where in one of the corridors the duke and duchess stood waiting for them; but Sancho would not go up to see the duke until he had first put up Dapple in the stable, for he said he had passed a very bad night in his last quarters; then he went upstairs to see his lord and lady, and kneeling before them he said, "Because it was your highnesses' pleasure, not because of any desert of my own, I went to govern your island of Barataria, which 'I entered naked, and naked I find myself; I neither lose nor gain.' Whether I have governed well or ill, I have had witnesses who will say what they think fit. I have answered questions, I have decided causes, and always dying of hunger, for Doctor Pedro Recio of Tirteafuera, the island and governor doctor, would have it so. Enemies attacked us by night and put us in a great quandary, but the people of the island say they came off safe and victorious by the might of my arm; and may God give them as much health as there's truth in what they say. In short, during that time I have weighed the cares and responsibilities governing brings with it, and by my reckoning I find my shoulders can't bear them, nor are they a load for my loins or arrows for my quiver; and so, before the government threw me over I preferred to throw the government over; and yesterday morning I left the island as I found it, with the same streets, houses, and roofs it had when I entered it. I asked no loan of anybody, nor did I try to fill my pocket; and though I meant to make some useful laws, I made hardly any, as I was afraid they would not be kept; for in that case it comes to the same thing to make them or not to make them. I quitted the island, as I said, without any escort except my ass; I fell into a pit, I pushed on through it, until this morning by the light of the sun I saw an outlet, but not so easy a one but that, had not heaven sent me my master Don Quixote, I'd have stayed there till the end of the world. So now my lord and lady duke and duchess, here is your governor Sancho Panza, who in the bare ten days he has held the government has come by the knowledge that he would not give anything to be governor, not to say of an island, but of the whole world; and that point being settled, kissing your worships' feet, and imitating the game of the boys when they say, 'leap thou, and give me one,' I take a leap out of the government and pass into the service of my master Don Quixote; for after all, though in it I eat my bread in fear and trembling, at any rate I take my fill; and for my part, so long as I'm full, it's all alike to me whether it's with carrots or with partridges."
Here Sancho brought his long speech to an end, Don Quixote having been the whole time in dread of his uttering a host of absurdities; and when he found him leave off with so few, he thanked heaven in his heart. The duke embraced Sancho and told him he was heartily sorry he had given up the government so soon, but that he would see that he was provided with some other post on his estate less onerous and more profitable. The duchess also embraced him, and gave orders that he should be taken good care of, as it was plain to see he had been badly treated and worse bruised.
Eric von Hippel
Erik S. Raymond | <urn:uuid:7b69be83-71c3-47f1-8404-47985eb23e09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/don_quixote.miguel_de_cervantes/_114.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989591 | 3,653 | 1.796875 | 2 |
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