text
stringlengths 211
22.9k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
371
| file_path
stringlengths 138
138
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.93
1
| token_count
int64 54
4.1k
| score
float64 1.5
1.84
| int_score
int64 2
2
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New Delhi: India’s national carrier Air India flew two Dreamliner aircraft without passengers even after US regulators grounded the global fleet last month due to technical problems, an official said on Monday.
The Boeing aircraft owned by Air India were allowed to fly from New Delhi to Mumbai for maintenance reasons, said Arun Mishra, director general of India’s civil aviation regulator.
“They did not carry any passengers, just two pilots were allowed inside each aircraft and we only gave them the permission to fly because the company was paying very high parking charges at the Delhi airport,” said Mishra, declining to say when the flights were made.
Air India did not respond to calls by AFP.
Indian regulators had grounded Air India’s six Dreamliner jets on January 17 in line with the US Federal Aviation Administration’s advisory to cease flying the aircraft.
Aviation Minister Ajit Singh had demanded that US giant Boeing compensate the ailing Air India after the grounding order.
Air India and Boeing had earlier concluded negotiations for an undisclosed sum in compensation over a four-year delay in delivery of the Dreamliner to India because of production problems at the company.
Indian officials had said they were seeking up to $1 billion in compensation for the delays but neither side has disclosed whether the money has been paid.
Air India bought 27 Dreamliners as part of a 2005 multi-billion-dollar deal. It received the first plane last September and now has six, with the remaining 21 due to arrive by 2016.
Boeing’s troubled next-generation model has suffered a series of glitches, although Boeing insists the plane is safe.
World regulators grounded all 50 operating Dreamliners after a fire aboard a parked Japan Airlines 787 on January 7 and a smoking battery that forced the emergency landing of an All Nippon Airways 787 on January 16.
Investigations continue into what caused the potentially catastrophic battery meltdown. | <urn:uuid:806e69ca-2f73-41d9-9073-37773657a965> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gulfnews.com/business/aviation/air-india-flew-dreamliners-despite-grounding-order-1.1142061 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969637 | 396 | 1.640625 | 2 |
A question for a friend of mine.
Nina goes to college with me, she is on crutches and is in a thigh to ankle cast, her knee will.not.bend because of this, she needs a larger stall and hand bars to help her get up off the toilet. Today she was in line for the handicapped stall when a girl a wheelchair came in and got in line next to her. Not behind her, next to her. When the occupant came out the girl in the wheelchair tried to go in first. Nina protested and the girl said to her " That stall is for people like me, either use another one or wait til I come out!" Nina had none of this and scooted in before this girl, as she had already waited her turn when the original occupant had been in there.
The girl in the wheelchair was upset that Nina was "so rude and so obnoxious as to go ahead of someone in a wheelchair, don't you know that we go first?!"
Nina was quite upset, but did not think she had done anything wrong.
What do you all think, does being in a wheelchair trump all other handicaps when it comes to that stall? | <urn:uuid:43040058-4902-40bf-b679-b1595187c01a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.etiquettehell.com/smf/index.php?topic=123543.msg2846148 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991138 | 245 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Whether you follow the stock exchange regularly or not, an announcement of a company's stock jumping up by 137% in a single day is enough to blow your mind. But that's exactly what happened in the case of Acadia Pharmaceuticals (ACAD) this past week. But what exactly caused this giant leap forward in stock value, and how does it play out for Acadia and its competitors?
It all started with…
The exponential rise in stock value came after Acadia released the results of Phase III clinical trials on its latest pipeline drug pimavanserin. The drug is targeted for use in Parkinson's disease; more specifically, it aims to reduce the psychosis which often accompanies extreme cases of Parkinson's. The results of the trials were, not surprisingly, extremely positive. Pimavanserin's performance in comparison to the placebo group and even against drugs being manufactured by the nearest competitors was outstanding. Naturally, the promise of a drug capable of significantly reducing hallucinations and delusions suffered by Parkinson's patients is enough to skyrocket the reputation of the parent company. And that's exactly what we saw happen in the stock market - Acadia's stock was trading at $6.54, its highest since August 2009. Another reason for the increase in the valuation of the company is because pimavanserin is the only product on the market which is capable of acting as an anti-psychotic and is expected to bring relief to over 500,000 Americans. This automatically confers the image of Acadia being the pioneer in the industry, which is never a bad thing.
Acadia's incredible run is definitely good news for the management, but this does not mean that the company has secured its position as the alpha male of the stock exchange. The Celsion Corporation (CLSN) recently announced that, come January, it would be releasing its own Phase III clinical trial results for its drug ThermoDox, a promising therapy for primary liver cancer. Simply based on this announcement, trading in Celsion stock saw a 15 percent increase, and this is a strong indicator of the optimism people have over the results. Celsion's drug is also more eagerly anticipated, since it was allowed to skip directly to Phase III trials in both the United States and Europe. The layman can only infer from this information that ThermoDox has immense potential, or else it would not have been allowed to bypass so many stages of the testing process.
On another front, Exelixis (EXEL) also received FDA approval on its drug aimed at alleviating metastatic medullary thyroid cancer called Cometriq. While the direct competitor of this drug in the open market is going to be AstraZeneca's (AZN) Caprelsa, there is no doubt that FDA approval for Cometriq will bump its market value up, and hence pose a challenge to Acadia's position.
One area where Acadia does have the upper hand is in competition with AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). Both the competitors have produced drugs aimed at Parkinson's disease, named Seroquel and Risperdal respectively, but neither has the capacity to deal with the imminent psychosis. This competitive advantage is expected to carry Acadia rather well, and if the company gains FDA approval soon, will take them even further.
What about the investors?
From an investor's standpoint, the current scenario is a tricky one to make a decision on. While pimavanserin is bringing home the bacon for Acadia, and prospects look equally good in the near future, it would still be imprudent to invest heavily in the company. This is because Acadia's valuation dropped sharply in 2008 when it failed to meet its goals via clinical trials with pimavanserin itself. While that definitely makes this comeback all the more poignant, it does not absolve the company of its past failure entirely. In short, the current success of pimavanserin is not a definitive indicator of how the company will do in the long run, and this is important information for investors looking to establish a long-term relationship with the company.
On the other hand, investors can benefit if Acadia decides to partner pimavanserin - something that it should do. This is because the drug and the market opportunity are too large to go alone, and having a competent partner would make the process of seeking FDA approval a lot smoother. This same partner can also help Acadia expand into European and Asian markets, a move which will bring back further meaningful revenues. Another reason why Acadia should seriously consider a partner is because its current teammate - Allergan (AGN) - is focused on the development and commercialization of drugs made for treating glaucoma and chronic pain. With pimavanserin, it can be assumed that Allergan's expertise may not be enough, hence underscoring the need for Acadia to find someone who can work solely on pimavanserin.
Label expansion is also something that Acadia should - and is - considering. Pimavanserin is also being tested for efficacy in dealing with Alzheimer's disease psychosis [ADP]. If test results prove effective in alleviating psychosis in Alzheimer's patients as well, it would cause Acadia's reputation to soar even further.
Phase III clinical trials of Acadia Pharmaceuticals' new drug pimavanserin have proven it highly effective at debilitating Parkinson's disease psychosis [PDP]. Upon public release of this information, Acadia's stock went up 137% to reach its highest value in three years. As a pioneer in the area of PDP alleviation, Acadia's prospects look rather strong. However, other companies like Celsion and Exelixis are also bringing out their respective drugs against liver and thyroid cancer respectively, and pose a challenge to Acadia's position as stock market leader.
The company now has to gain FDA approval for the drug, and seek a partner to help commercialize and develop it; doing so will allow Acadia to enter new markets and gain more meaningful revenues. While the current scenario is definitely attractive to investors, there is no concrete evidence to predict how Acadia will perform in the long run. Investors are advised to allow some room for this initial hype to settle before considering their next move with regards to Acadia.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. | <urn:uuid:6e0679ea-e819-47b2-9c57-93820472daa3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingalpha.com/article/1051961-acadia-pharmaceuticals-making-big-waves?source=reuters | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960504 | 1,320 | 1.539063 | 2 |
This is a guest post from Shalini Menon. Shalini works for Explorers School for Outdoor Education, a start up that focuses on experiential & environmental education working with young people across India. She is certified in Basic Mountaineering from Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling and remains an independent facilitator and outdoor educator for many organizations strengthening [...]
What is What's With The Climate?
Serving as the voice of the nascent climate movement in India, “What’s with the Climate?” is attempting to provide an open forum for the discussion of climate change in the Indian as well as the global context. More?
Our Climate Negotiations Archive
Get updates via email | <urn:uuid:7f118196-7cd2-412c-b6b0-137b661aae62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whatswiththeclimate.org/tag/rohtang-pass/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942669 | 146 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Sport & Leisure Activities
There is a wide range of activities available at your local council leisure facilities across the city.
There are 29 fitness gyms - all with the latest in cardiovascular and resistance equipment - 16 swimming pools and over 500 fitness classes every week.
Whatever you're into, taking regular exercise could help you feel better and give you more energy.
You're never far from the chance to shape up, get fit and improve your health.
We offer a range of different leisure activities, located at a selection of different sports facilities across the city. Exercise and keeping fit is part of many people's lifestyle and within our leisure centres you have the chance to take part in a variety of different activities to suit all ages and fitness levels.
Whether you are looking for a competitive game of Five-a-side football with your work colleagues or to meet up with some friends to attend a fitness class, you can do it all in a friendly safe environment. We are committed to providing customers with a pleasant atmosphere and helpful, qualified staff to ensure that your visit is an enjoyable one.
The type of indoor activities you can enjoy, include:
- Martial Arts
- Running Centre
- Table Tennis
In order to find out which leisure centres run these activities just press the Make a Booking For Yourself button above and select Indoor Sports.
We are committed to providing instruction and coaching for both adults and children to offer opportunities to gain new skills and develop in a chosen activity. Therefore, all our sports coaching is delivered by qualified coaches. | <urn:uuid:5309a59f-5527-4a64-b258-9d24052047d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite/indooractivities?packedargs=website%3D4&rendermode=live%C3%82 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948153 | 313 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Phil Galewitz covers Medicaid, Medicare, long‐term care, hospitals and various state health issues. He has covered the health beat for nearly two decades. He is a board member of the Association of Health Care Journalists. In 2004‐05, he was a Kaiser Media Fellow and wrote about community solutions to the uninsured. Before coming to KHN, he was at The Palm Beach Post and was a national health industry writer for the Associated Press and The Patriot‐ News in Harrisburg, Pa. He has a BA in health planning and administration and a master's in public administration with an emphasis in health policy. | Contact: [email protected]
Obama and congressional leaders hope to reduce health care spending by promoting prevention to catch disease early. But some insurance and health officials say such efforts—although laudable—may not cut overall health costs.
Unions and advocates for low-income workers are criticizing a possible Senate Finance Committee move to drop an employer mandate in favor of a "free-rider" penalty. The provision would require companies to pay for part of the subsidies for uninsured workers to buy health insurance on the proposed exchanges. Business lobbyists say it's better than a straight mandate.
Powerful hospital trade associations are opposing President Obama's plan for an independent commission to determine how much Medicare pays doctors and hospitals. But certain "model" hospital systems - such as CHRISTUS Health - are breaking ranks and supporting the idea.
Public support for an overhaul the U.S. health care system has slipped somewhat, according to a new poll. But a majority of Americans still believe that "it is more important than ever to take on health care reform now."
Even as an overhaul of the nation's health care system gets bogged down in Congress, hospitals, doctors and administrators from around the country talk about how they have changed the way they operate to bolster health care in their home towns.
When talking about his vision for the U.S. health care system, President Barack Obama points to places like the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, which are known for providing high-quality, low-cost care.
Integrated health systems have won kudos for their performances from President Obama. But officials at the health systems say the health overhaul bills being debated in Congress don't reward them or encourage others to imitate them. They want lawmakers to move more aggressively to change the Medicare payment system to prod hospitals and doctors to provide better, less expensive care.
The hot new concept in health care--Accountable Care Organizations-- would get a test run in pilot projects included in health overhaul legislation.
Patricia Danzon, the Celia Moh Professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, discusses the debate over patent protection for biologics, drugs made from living cells.
Hospital officials today agreed to federal-payment cuts to help pay for a health care overhaul. They hope their concessions will build good will with the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers. They’re pressing for action on a host of other issues, including Medicaid reimbursements and funding for graduate medical education. | <urn:uuid:e8b06f6b-d739-4f07-a211-ac5dab733596> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Reporters/GalewitzP.aspx?page=18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966243 | 631 | 1.796875 | 2 |
State Representative Doug Cox says his fellow Republicans are trying to enact legislation that would harm women in Oklahoma. He says one example is a bill that would effectively de-fund Planned Parenthood, which provides important services.
"Cervical cancer screening for women, breast cancer screening for women, (Planned Parenthood) provides family planning services for women so that they can prevent unwanted pregnancies," says Cox. "In my mind the best way to prevent abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies."
Additional tests reveal no new cases of hepatitis or the virus that causes AIDS among patients of a Tulsa oral surgeon accused of running dirty clinics.
The pace of people seeking testing has slowed. About 3,900 patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington have gone to state clinics for testing. In March, health departments urged testing for 7,000 patients. Just 54 patients sought tests within the past week.
Inspectors said they found unsanitary conditions inside Harrington's clinics at Tulsa and Owasso.
In the most prominent challenge of its kind, Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. has asked a federal appeals court for an exemption from part of the federal health care law.
The retailer said Thursday it shouldn't be required to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill and other contraceptives that the owners oppose on religious grounds.
The Oklahoma City-based arts-and-crafts chain argues that for-profit businesses should have the same exceptions granted to religious groups and some nonprofits.
What should one say to a person who's thinking of taking his or her own life? What's the proper way to react to such news? How best should one respond? The Mental Health Association in Tulsa will present the 13th Annual Charles P. Seger Seminar this evening (Thursday the 23rd) at 6pm at the Cascia Hall Performing Arts Center. The theme for this year's seminar, which is free to the public (with no registration required), is "Recovering from Suicide and Depression." Our guest on ST is Dr.
Oklahoma transportation officials say heavy traffic on Interstate 35 through Moore is hindering the tornado recovery effort.
The Transportation Department on Thursday asked motorists to avoid the area. The I-35 off-ramps in Moore are still restricted. The only people allowed to travel into Moore are residents and emergency responders.
Also, Oklahoma City police say Western Avenue between SW 164th and SW 134th is closed to all traffic. The closure will continue until utility crews finish installing new power lines.
This week Performance Oklahoma presents the final concert program of the regular season offered by the Brightmusic Society in Oklahoma in their 10th anniversary season. The program, entitled Bright Virtuosi featured works by Zoltán Kodály, Carl Maria von Weber and Ptyor Tchaikovsky. | <urn:uuid:e8f02383-0dce-45f1-a937-250917a09d3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kwgs.org/node | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947773 | 569 | 1.617188 | 2 |
"A Year in the Life: Backstage to Onstage at Universal Orlando Resort" features behind-the-scenes information detailing the creative processes of events such as Mardi Gras and Halloween Horror Nights. But, happily, it also works in some of the history of the attractions.
"It's always fun to pull up the archives and start looking at stuff that really was the beginnings of some of the bigger projects," says T.J. Mannarino, director of art and design at Universal Orlando.
Early in the exhibit, there are three king-size aerial photographs of Universal property. The first is the land without development, the second showcases the boom of the late 1990s (no Universal CityWalk, only one of the two mega-garages) and the third from a few years ago. Why does a pre-Wizarding World of Harry Potter era seem so long ago already?
» The latest on traffic, delays and road construction delivered to your mobile phone. Click to sign up to receive text alerts!
One goal of the exhibit, Mannarino says, is to show how entertainment projects created in Central Florida can have global influences.
"Some of these events have grown to massive size and they actually touch, in effect, the world," he says. "Halloween Horror Nights is now in four separate parks, from Singapore to Japan to Hollywood to here in Orlando."
I counted in excess of 150 photos documenting more than two decades of Universal attractions, plus there are rarely seen blueprints of Horror Nights houses, costume sketches and prosthetics on display. Watch for a fake eyeball or two.
The exhibit also has a video component, including shots of show rehearsals.
"Nobody ever sees that. It all happens all under cover, in the dark of the night," Mannarino says. "To see some of the videos that we have of the performers rehearsing, I think, is probably unique for people who follow this industry."
One long wall holds an enormous graph that's a timeline for Universal's annual projects. Points are plotted for the planning stages of Horror Nights, Mardi Gras, the holiday season and two attractions that debuted last summer, the Superstar Parade and the Cinematic Spectacular lagoon show. Here's the big picture: It's pretty much always busy, even if guests can't see it onstage.
Next is a larger display area that will rotate items seasonally. The exhibit debuts with Mardi Gras, including massive heads that represented a king and queen on a bygone float and costuming — plus a random fiberglass shark. Universal's Mardi Gras celebration begins Feb. 9.
"Backstage to Onstage" wraps up with a wall revealing entertainment-related career options, including dancers, painters, technicians, recording engineers, float drivers, rigging and staging professionals, actors … and scareactors. By the lack of bean counters, one might get the impression that there are no stuffy desk jobs in the entertainment industry.
"Most people think, 'Well, if I can't dance or sing, then entertainment isn't a career for me.' We wanted to show that it was a piece of the career, but it's not the whole component," Mannarino says. "We need different kinds of people from technicians to stage managers to designers — and designers are vast, from audio to lighting to special effects."
[email protected] or 407-420-5477
'A Year in the Life: Backstage to Onstage at Universal Orlando Resort'
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday, through Jan. 26, 2014.
Where: 65 E. Central Blvd., Orlando
Cost: $9 general, $6 ages 5-12 | <urn:uuid:9a0e5e0f-2957-4614-9745-61a207f98180> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcall.com/travel/vacation-starter/os-dewayne-bevil-universal-history-center-20130131,0,811296.column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939869 | 784 | 1.59375 | 2 |
PARTIALLY PRIVATIZING WORKERS’ COMP
Workers’ compensation insurance is a lifeline for those injured on the job — a means for them to continue their standard of living and pay their medical bills without going bankrupt. Currently, businesses have two options when it comes to paying workers’ comp: self-insurance for corporations with sufficient financial ability, or a state-administered solution funded via the Labor and Industries tax deducted from your paycheck.
Initiative 1082 would establish a third, private alternative. Proponents of the initiative say allowing private insurers to wade in will increase competition, driving premiums down, as well as providing tax relief by not forcing workers to pay the L&I tax.
Those opposed to the measure, including state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler and state Auditor Brian Sonntag, argue the initiative gives preferential treatment to the private insurance companies, which would be allowed to set their own rates with virtually no oversight. All the money saved by the employees — by not paying L&I — will be borne by the employers. The state Office of Financial Management put it bluntly: “Losses will be absorbed by employers, injured employees and medical providers.”
GREENING OUR SCHOOLS (AND TAXING BOTTLED WATER)
After passing with just more than 60 percent support in the state House and Senate, a proposal to extend the sales tax on bottled water to fund energy-efficient school construction now falls to the voters.
Those in favor of Referendum Bill 52 argue the measure would increase student safety by helping to remove asbestos, mold and other toxic substances (though that’s not actually the point of the bill), while also creating new construction jobs. The state would also be saving money, as only those projects that will generate savings greater than the project’s cost can receive funding — though it’s worth noting that those savings are cumulative, covering the project’s projected lifespan.
Opponents argue now is not the time for the state to be assuming more debt. They point to the per capita debt for each Washingtonian — $2,226 in 2009, according to Moody’s Investment Services — being higher than the national average.
Though another initiative, I-1107, would repeal the tax on bottled water, the two are not contradictory. If both are approved, the construction would still go forward, just without the bottled-water tax as a dedicated revenue stream.
DENYING BAIL TO FELONS
Substitute House Joint Resolution 4220 proposes to amend those passages of the state constitution concerning the setting of bail for those charged with crimes “punishable by the possibility of life in prison” and who exhibit a propensity for violence. Currently, state law only allows bail to be denied for those charged with aggravated first-degree murder.
Judges can currently impose “any condition other than detention” when setting bail, and those in favor of the bill cite a “number of high-profile criminal tragedies” in recent years for changing those rules — though the legislative record indicates they’re primarily referring to one.
In November 2009, Maurice Clemmons shot four police officers in a coffeehouse in Lakewood, Wash., while on bail with nine pending felony charges. Of those charges, only one (second-degree rape of a child) might have made him eligible to be detained under Washington’s “three strikes” law.
Opponents of the amendment say it undermines the presumption of innocence afforded to all accused criminals under the Constitution. Judges have the ability to consider public safety, criminal activity and flight risk when setting bail, and to allow them to detain people without trial increases the chances that innocent people will be locked up.
RECALCULATING DEBT INTEREST PAYMENTS
In a time of economic woe, it should come as no surprise much of the ballot is devoted to the state’s finances, especially the state debt, which is capped by the state constitution. Senate Joint Resolution 8225 would not alter that limit, but it would change the way the interest on the debt is calculated.
Proponents, including state Treasurer Jim L. McIntire, say the reason for the amendment is to make the bonds that the state sells eligible for “Build America Bonds,” a new federal subsidy that pays 35 percent of the interest on taxable state bonds. This amendment would allow the state to count only the money it pays on the bonds, not including the federal subsidies. Both state transportation and local government bonds were already eligible last year, and the state saved more than $63 million on transportation projects alone.
Opposition to the amendment comes from state Republican representatives, including 2nd District Rep. Jim McCune and 44th District Rep. Mike Hope. Their statement says the amendment amounts to an “accounting gimmick” that would allow the treasurer to assume more debt. | <urn:uuid:448c8876-2d0b-4e20-a65e-92bae5b95d20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-15637-initiatives-and-referendums.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950684 | 1,013 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Some letters responding to the ‘dismay‘ of Richard Wilson, Caryl Churchill, Emma Thompson, Mike Leigh, Mark Rylance and other boycotters who hope to wipe Israel off the stage of The Globe Theatre, where Israeli company Habima have been scheduled to perform the Merchant of Venice in Hebrew.
One letter, We welcome Israel’s national theatre,
We are delighted to see the Globe theatre welcoming Israel‘s national theatre, Habima, to perform The Merchant of Venice in London (Letters, 4 April). Founded in the early 20th century in Moscow, Habima is one of the first Hebrew language theatres, and is a symbol not just of the cultural success of the state of Israel, but also of the resilience of a people who have united to overcome continued persecution throughout their history. Habima itself encountered persecution under the Soviet government as well after the Russian revolution. Now, as then, there are those who wish to oppose their work, seeking to delegitimise the state of Israel and its success, the Jewish people, and even the Hebrew language itself.
Habima’s productions have always explored the challenges faced by the Jewish people, and its presentation of The Merchant of Venice on the London stage continues that important mission. Those who wish to hijack the artistic and cultural work of Habima for their own narrow political aims simply remind us of the vital importance of such work. No artists should attempt to silence the expression of other artists simply because they are Israeli. By trying to suppress the cultural exchange of ideas they demonstrate the continued persecution of Jews and Israelis even occurring in 21st-century Britain. We condemn the acts of cultural terrorism that some may try to carry out during Habima’s performances. We welcome Israel’s national theatre to London as another fine example of the UK and Israel’s many shared values.
Arnold Wesker, Ronald Harwood, Maureen Lipman, Simon Callow, Louise Mensch MP, Steven Berkoff
And another – For artists … it is an act of self-harm
If there is one justification for art – for its creation and its performance – it is that art proceeds from and addresses our unaligned humanity. Whoever would go to art with a mind already made up, on any subject, misses what art is for. So to censor it in the name of a political or religious conviction, no matter how sincerely held, is to tear out its very heart.
For artists themselves to do such a thing to art is not only treasonable; it is an act of self-harm. One could almost laugh about it, so Kafkaesque is the reasoning: The Merchant of Venice, acted in Hebrew, a troubling work of great moral complexity (and therefore one that we should welcome every new interpretation of), to be banned not by virtue of itself, but because of where the theatre company performing it had also performed.
But the laughter dies in our throats. With last week’s letter to the Guardian, McCarthyism came to Britain. You could hear the minds of people in whom we vest our sense of creative freedom snapping shut. And now we might all be guilty by association: of being in the wrong place or talking to the wrong people or reading the wrong book. Thus does an idée fixe make dangerous fools of the best of us.
Boycotters of Israel’s artistic and cultural bodies fail in their stated aim on behalf of Palestinians. The boycott is badly conceived, discriminatory, badly targeted activism which abandons a sober look at how Israeli society and politics works and instead lashes out at Israel’s little guys – who are (and there may be a weird psychology at work here) often the ones in Israeli society most likely to share the boycotters’ view of Palestinians as subjected to grave injustice. Does anybody seriously believe it likely that those little guys will suddenly start refusing state money – taxpayers’ money, their livelihood – and hold their government responsible for their ill fortune rather than the boycotters who are most immediately responsible for harming them and the various genocidal entities dotted round their regional neighbourhood, who threaten to? Seriously? And if they do, where is the mechanism for Palestinian emancipation or a change of heart in the Israeli electorate? And it goes without saying that the boycotters don’t offer them any compensation or alternative support, which is the ultimate chutzpah. Refusal to join in with this weird boycotting game is the only dignified response. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which itself exists in a very unstable Middle East context, and a very oppressive world, obviously needs a different approach – creating reasons to cede ground and power.
And in the absence – over the decade-long lifetime of this particular incarnation – of any gains on behalf of Palestinians as far as I can see, boycotting Israel has counter-productive side effects. Paradoxically in the case of the cultural boycott the fabrications and authoritarian pieties of boycotters represent a new orthodoxy which brings out many people’s instinct for transgression. The trouble is, even if the boycotters of Habima aren’t themselves harbouring antisemitic beliefs (and maybe some of them are) their hostility, closed-minded bias and heroic self-image are midwife to a much more intentional antisemitism of a ruthlessness they can’t or won’t imagine, where the stakes for those who resist it will be far higher. So the renovated far right Harts, Atzmons, Eisens of this world gain ground, slipping onto programmes and campuses where they would never have been invited before boycotters started making out out that attacking Israel was the same as speaking truth to power.
The Globe Theatre deserves credit for refusing to participate in laying that ground. | <urn:uuid:6da97fd9-9d15-437c-a9a6-15c84e062c87> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://engageonline.wordpress.com/category/boycott-divestment-sanctions/boycott-opposition/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952459 | 1,186 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Tune for RAID performance
By Rick Cook
Several factors, including type of load, bus bandwidth and cache influence the performance of modern RAID systems. Because of the large number of performance factors, it's often hard to disentangle the options enough to understand which ones will be most cost effective in your application when you're installing or upgrading a storage system.
The bad news is, of course, that storage system performance is generally highly application-specific. Different options produce different performance effects, depending on block sizes, file sizes, system loading and other factors. If you want the absolute best performance out of a storage system you have to analyze your load and carefully tune the various parameters.
The good news is that there is, at the very least, a lot of help available from vendors and others on what works best for which kinds of loads. Recently Alliance Systems of Plano, TX, for example, a VAR and manufacturer of computer equipment specializing in the communication industry, released the results of a study of performance factors in RAID arrays.
Alliance concentrated on the RAID controller and the paths to and from the storage array. Specifically, the company tested the effects of increasing the SCSI bus speed by going from U160 to U320 SCSI, increasing the size of the controller cache from 32 to 128 MB and increasing the PCI bus width and speed from 32 bit/33 MHZ to 64 bit/66 MHz. With the exception of the controller cache, all these parameters are fixed by the hardware installed.
As might be expected, each of these changes impacted different types of load differently. For example, moving from a U160 to U320 32-bit bus SCSI controllers produced a 165 percent speed increase in sequential writes of large files, but an 8 percent speed decrease in random reads of small files. A 64-bit bus reduced the positive differences between the U160 and U320 SCSI controllers, and increased the negative differences in some applications, although naturally the 64-bit controllers were faster overall. Moving from a 64-bit U160 to a 64-bit U320 SCSI controller produced a smaller gain in performance on large sequential files (47 percent) and a larger performance decrease (23 percent) in a mix of sequential and random reads and writes. This is probably because as the bus becomes wider and the bandwidth increases, other factors, such as disk seek time and cache issues become more important.
Increasing the speed and the width of the PCI bus also showed major improvements on the random writing of large files and sequential reading of large files. Here the wider, faster busses produced the best results. Reads and writes of small files showed slight decreases in performance with the increasing bus speeds and widths.
While SCSI type and SCSI and PCI bus width made major differences in performance, changing the amount of cache had less impact. As might be expected, writing small files improved considerably (123 percent) because more complete files could be held in cache. However none of the other tests produced more than a 19 percent increase and a number of the tests, notably with large file sizes, actually showed a decrease.
According to the Alliance report, increasing the PCI bus width and speed produced a larger performance increase than varying any other single factor. The largest percentage increases in performance came when increasing both PCI bus width and speed and going from the U160 to the U320 SCSI bus. However, the increases varied strongly by file type. For example one of the biggest increases in performance in randomly writing small files (121 percent) came from increasing cache size.
It is also worth noting that most of the tests of the effects on reading and writing files of the same size were not symmetrical. A change that produced a large increase in performance on sequentially writing a large file, for example, might produce a much smaller change on sequentially reading the same file.
A close examination of the data produced by Alliance study implies something else as well. Most enterprises probably don't need to fine tune their storage arrays because beyond a certain, fairly general, point, the results don't repay the effort. Especially in multiple systems all running a mix of applications, it is better to select a configuration and a set of parameters that work well, and use them on all the storage arrays, because the savings in time and effort will probably outweigh the benefits of precision tuning.
The full report is available on Alliance Systems' Web site.
Rick Cook has been writing about mass storage since the days when the term meant an 80K floppy disk. The computers he learned on used ferrite cores and magnetic drums. For the last twenty years he has been a freelance writer specializing in storage and other computer issues.
09 Oct 2003
Disclaimer: Our Tips Exchange is a forum for you to share technical advice and expertise with your peers and to learn from other enterprise IT professionals. TechTarget provides the infrastructure to facilitate this sharing of information. However, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or validity of the material submitted. You agree that your use of the Ask The Expert services and your reliance on any questions, answers, information or other materials received through this Web site is at your own risk. | <urn:uuid:d080e011-6aa3-4c02-8b12-cb78dcdd206d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/tip/Tune-for-RAID-performance?vgnextfmt=aiog&cc=fc0f8619c561d210VgnVCM1000000d01c80aRCRD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944287 | 1,044 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The rate hike will mean about $3.5 million in additional costs to transport goods to and from Newfoundland and Labrador, which the industry cannot absorb, according to Jean-Marc Picard, executive director of the industry.
“We are always under the microscope for service in our industry and traffic to Newfoundland and Labrador is not different,” Picard said.
“We have no other choices to rely on ferry systems. Lately, service from Marine Atlantic has been less than favourable, causing major delays in delivery of goods, not to mention the strain on the customer/carrier relationships.”
Marine Atlantic cited increased costs associated with ongoing maintenance, supplies and labour when announcing the rate increase on Wednesday.
An example of the rate hikes will see the new price for the North Sydney to Port aux Basques run rise from $40.76 to $42.25 for an adult passenger. All other services will see similar increases.
The APTA intends to appeal the increase, which Picard said the industry has no choice but to pass on to its customers.
The rate hike is more bad news for the trucking industry, he said, in light of winds that have caused major delays in the last few months, impacting the delivery of goods to Newfoundland and Labrador.
“This increase comes at an especially bad time due to all of the service issues. We have trucks waiting for the ferry for days which translates to extra costs for the carriers. Therefore, it is very difficult to pass this increase onto the customers.” | <urn:uuid:0a7b939e-8b00-41ed-bf62-c56a1aaa1203> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Local/2013-02-15/article-3178646/Truckers-upset-with-Marine-Atlantic-rate-hikes/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956653 | 312 | 1.585938 | 2 |
The NAB has released a report from its technology advocacy program, NAB FASTROAD, that examines several recent advances in technology that could be applied to the design of high-performance indoor digital TV receiver antennas.
It proposes a new design that employs a combination of technologies and has the potential to achieve superior VHF and UHF performance for digital TV sets.
The report examines the technical progress made in advanced antenna design methods and evaluates the feasibility of applying such designs to digital TV reception. Specifically, it identifies and evaluates 10 candidate design methods and technologies that have the potential to improve the performance of indoor DTV antennas.
The 131-page report, commissioned by NAB and conducted by Devens, Massachusetts-based Megawave, is available online.
NAB FASTROAD (Flexible Advanced Services for Television & Radio On All Devices) is a technology advocacy program with the mission to seek and facilitate development and commercialization of new technologies that can be exploited by broadcasters using radio and television broadcast spectrum. | <urn:uuid:58a93c6a-d766-4637-bb40-e2e7247a3529> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://broadcastengineering.com/news/NAB-wants-better-indoor-DTV-antenna-design | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933759 | 208 | 1.679688 | 2 |
ADVICE from the Bureau of Meteorology at 5pm on Tuesday indicates that major flood levels are rising at Gympie.
At 4.10pm on Tuesday the river was at 17.14 metres.
Further river rises will occur during Tuesday evening with a flood peak up to 19 metres in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
This forecast peak is below the January 28 flood peak of 19.98 metres.
Residents and business operators in localities which may be impacted are urged to monitor river height bulletins, stay tuned to local radio stations and take action to evacuate to higher ground if required.
Highway expected to be cut at Kybong for next 24 hours
SUNSHINE Coast Local Disaster Management Coordinator Alan Rogers said the Bruce Highway will be closed at Kybong for the next 24 hours to traffic heading north to Gympie.
"There is also no access for heavy vehicles or cars to Gympie via Kin Kin," Mr Rogers said.
"Six Mile Creek is over roads at Cooran and Kin Kin which is preventing vehicular access from Pomona northbound into Kin Kin.
"Heavy vehicle drivers, travellers and visitors to the region will not be able to get through to Gympie and will need to make alternative travel arrangements.
"An evacuation centre is open at Nambour Civic Centre, 60-64 Currie St, Nambour. For more information call council's customer contact centre on 5475 7272.
"Importantly, remember, if it's flooded - forget it."
Mary expected to peak at 18m late Tuesday
INFORMATION received from the Bureau of Meteorology indicates that the Mary River is expected to peak at 18 metres later in the evening of Tuesday 26th February.
Road and bridge closures are in force throughout the Region as a result of flash flooding and inundation by floodwaters.
The Normanby Bridge is now closed to traffic as a result of flooding.
Gympie Regional Council staff and Emergency Services personnel are positioned on Gympie's Southside and in Gympie City.
Road closures are in place throughout the region and will be put in place in business districts and other localities as required.
"I strongly discourage residents and visitors from sightseeing and driving into localities where evacuations may be underway. Having unnecessary traffic and people in these areas is both a hazard and hindrance to businesses who are in the processes of evacuation," Cr Dyne said.
"I urge people to take heed of weather warnings, stay indoors if they can, drive to the conditions, and avoid flooded or closed roads. The simple message is: If it is flooded - forget it."
The Gympie Region Local Disaster Management Group (LDMG) met this morning at 8am.
40 businesses expected to flood as Gympie hits 18m peak
ALMOST 40 businesses are expected to impacted by Gympie's 18m flood today with the local disaster management group in full swing.
Gympie Region Local Disaster Management Group (LDMG) Chair Cr Ron Dyne, said the group was activated at 9pm on Monday night.
"Information received from the Bureau of Meteorology indicates that the Mary River is expected to peak at 18metres later in the evening of Tuesday 26th February,'' the mayor said in a statement released just after 815am today.
"Road and bridge closures are in force throughout the region as a result of flash flooding and inundation by floodwaters.
"Businesses and residents in low lying areas which are likely to be impacted are implementing flood plans and evacuating where necessary.
"Early estimates indicate that up to 39 businesses are likely to be impacted.
Evacuation centres throughout the Gympie Region are on standby with the Southside Centre at the Gympie Show Pavilion currently in operation.
The Disaster Coordination Centre hotline has now been activated.
All enquiries about flood related information and assistance in the Gympie Region can now be directed to 075482 6399.
The LDMG is monitoring the weather situation and Mayor Dyne urged residents and visitors to put safety first.
"I urge people to take heed of weather warnings, stay indoors if they can, drive to the conditions, and avoid flooded or closed roads," Cr Dyne said. "The simple message is: If it is flooded - forget it."
Gympie Hospital cancels scheduled appointments
GYMPIE Hospital has cancelled scheduled appointments for Tuesday and Wednesday because of flooding.
The following clinics have been cancelled:
- Specialist outpatients
Hospital staff have been able to contact most but not all patients who had scheduled appointments today and tomorrow.
The patients will be contacted during the week for rescheduling.
The hospital has apologised for the inconvenience.
Mayor tired of dealing with Gympie's floods
UPDATE: It is a town that "knows how to do floods", but after up to five of them in just two years, Gympie Mayor Ron Dyne is tired of it.
Already the Bruce Highway at Traveston, to the south of the town, has been cut with authorities warning it could remain blocked until this afternoon.
More rain is expected, even after 320mm fell in the upper Mary catchment in the past 24 hours.
Speaking to ABC Radio on Wednesday morning, Cr Dyne said businesses were "not coping real flash" and needed support as the town again faced down serious inundation.
"People are sick of the rain - we've had enough," he said.
"Only last week there was minor flooding and a couple weeks before that on Australia day there was 20.3m flooding.
"It had a major impact on business in the CBD."
Cr Dyne said he had heard no reports of any businesses considering leaving the town, but added the council was preparing a flood mitigation strategy.
"People say that Gympie is used to flooding and we know how to do floods," he said.
"But it's something we would rather not be known for."
Evacuation centres are open at the town's Pavillion conference centre and civic centre.
Kidd Bridge closed due to flooding as businesses evacuate
UPDATE 4.40AM: Kidd Bridge has been closed due to flood waters and Normanby Bridge will go under today as the Bureau of Meteorology predicts a major flood of 18m in Gympie.
Businesses and sporting clubs spent last night evacuating premises in wet conditions while emergency services activated the Gympie Local and District Disaster Management Group as a result of the heavy rainfall in the area.
Police have advised that the Normanby Bridge will be cut by flood waters around 9am Tuesday.
The Bruce Highway is closed at the Kybong/Traveston area south of Gympie.
Police would like to remind motorists to drive to conditions and delay unnecessary travel.
According to Energex, about 320 homes were without power overnight.
The Bureau of Meteorology at 4AM issued its latest flood warning for the Mary River.
Widespread rainfall totals of up to 320mm have fallen in the upper Mary catchment in the last 24 hours. Further rainfall is forecast for today.
Mary River upstream of Gympie:
Minor to moderate flood levels are rising along the upper Mary River between Bellbird Creek and Gympie.
Major flood levels are rising along Six Mile Creek at Lake MacDonald. Moderate flood levels are rising at Cooran, with major flood levels unlikely without further heavy rainfall.
At Gympie, river level rises up to 18 metres are likely late Tuesday evening (2 metres above the major flood level).
Mary River downstream of Gympie:
Moderate flood levels are rising between Fisherman's Pocket and Miva with rises to the major flood level likely during Tuesday. Minor flood levels are rising at Home Park with major flood levels possible during Wednesday. River levels are rising at The Barrage, with minor flood levels expected later this week.
Minor to moderate flood levels are occurring in Wide Bay Creek and Munna Creeks, with further rises expected as rainfall continues.
Major flood levels will continue to rise along Tinana Creek at Tagigan Road during Tuesday morning. Minor flooding is expected at Bauple East during Tuesday.
Minor flood levels are possible at Maryborough during Wednesday. A peak forecast will be provided once upstream peaks are observed.
Predicted river heights and flows
Moy Pocket: Moderate flood levels are rising, with major flood levels possible during Tuesday morning.
Dagun Pocket: Minor flood levels are rising with major flood levels expected during Tuesday morning.
Gympie: Rises up to 18 metres (major flood) are likely during Tuesday afternoon.
Miva: Moderate flood levels are rising, with major flood levels expected during Wednesday.
Tiaro: Moderate flood levels are expected during Tuesday morning.
Maryborough: Minor flood levels are possible during Wednesday (5 metres).
Higher levels are possible but dependent on further rainfall.
Gympie Regional Council Mayor Ron Dyne said people should apply caution and put safety first.
"I urge people to take heed of weather warnings, stay indoors if they can, drive to the conditions, and avoid flooded or closed roads," Cr Dyne said.
"The simple message is: If it is flooded - forget it."
For full warning details, visit www.bom.gov.au.
River height bulletins and road closure information are available through Gympie Regional Council's website www.gympie.qld.gov.au - "Local road network updates" and "Current weather events" tab. | <urn:uuid:708f59b5-e7a1-4c31-8b65-284c5a2c8ba2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.qt.com.au/news/caution-urged-severe-weather-forecast/1769122/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964717 | 1,973 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Best-Practice Business Models
Learn what works in creating a thriving home performance company from the experience of nine successful energy efficiency programs from around the country.
Take the test and earn 0.5 CE unit per article.
The success of home energy retrofit programs relies on a thriving home retrofit industry that can deliver high-quality solutions and energy savings in efficient ways. Programs that can best facilitate industry growth will give the industry maximum flexibility to innovate and develop efficient business models; provide consistency and flexibility so businesses are not constantly forced to adapt their business practices to disparate program environments; and include provisions to help companies participate in a program and reduce barriers to entry.
Growing the IndustryIn order to grow the home performance workforce, we offer the following suggestions.
Foster predictability. To help companies prepare for program participation and adapt to changes in the regulatory environment, programs should clearly communicate goals and requirements, develop long-term structures to minimize shifts in program design, and announce scheduled changes well in advance. When changes are necessary, programs should institute a change notification period during which industry participants have an opportunity to comment on the proposed changes. Program notices and updates can be distributed easily and affordably via e-mail to participating contractors and auditors.
Coordinate with other programs. Many companies work inside, outside, and across programs; consistency among programs helps these companies to function more efficiently. In the Northeast, the New York and New Jersey Home Performance with Energy Star programs and Long Island Green Homes all use BPI as their standard for certification and accreditation.
Keep it simple. Unnecessarily complicated rules and procedures can inhibit efficient business operations.
Remove barriers to entry. Companies entering a program should not be burdened with unnecessary paperwork, or structural or manpower requirements. Programs should make possible the electronic processing of forms and should be made easy for contractors entering the market, while maintaining program standards.
Provide Incentives. Because contractors may not have the capital to expand rapidly enough to meet program goals, programs should provide subsidies as needed to help contractors get off the ground and start building their businesses. For example, the New York Home Performance with Energy Star program subsidizes contractor-run marketing, training, and equipment purchases for home performance uses. Contractors receiving these kinds of incentives and subsidies should be required to show that they are completing a minimum number of jobs, so program dollars are not wasted supporting companies that are not succeeding in the marketplace. The New Jersey Home Performance with Energy Star program requires that, after their first year of participation, companies must complete a minimum of ten jobs per year to qualify for business incentives and subsidies. Incentives for contractors should be structured to complement strong consumer incentives and financing programs that build market demand.
Best Practice Guides
The Home Performance Resource Center (HPRC) is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization formed to conduct public policy and market research in support of the home performance industry. The center develops research materials for policymakers, energy program managers, and industry leaders to promote job creation, economic recovery, lower household energy bills, and deep reductions in residential carbon emissions through improved home energy efficiency. Efficiency First, BPI, and the Energy Foundation support the HPRC.
The Best Practices Committee is an official standing committee of the HPRC. The committee collected and reviewed data from the following state and local programs for the best practice guides:
- Berkeley FIRST, Berkeley, California
- Palm Desert Energy Independence Program, Palm Desert, California
- Sonoma County Energy Independence Program, Sonoma County, California
- ClimateSmart Residential Energy Action Program/ClimateSmart Loan Program, Boulder, Colorado
- New Jersey Home Performance with Energy Star, New Jersey
- New York Home Performance with Energy Star, New York
- Long Island Green Homes, Babylon, New York
- Clean Energy Works, Portland, Oregon
- Austin Energy Residential Power Saver Program, Austin, Texas
In Palm Desert, the program allows homeowners to request a progress payment of up to 50% of the loan amount, provided that at least 75% of the project materials have already been delivered. Programs can relieve some of this financial burden by paying qualified contractors a percentage of project costs in advance.
Allow companies to bring in their own leads. Some programs devote disproportionate resources to the direct generation of leads. While programs should work to generate leads for contractors, programs may choose to assist high-performing contractors by providing funds for companies’ own lead generation campaigns, as some programs have done through co-op marketing efforts. This allows programs to leverage contractor resources and expand program reach, and gives contractors the ability to develop their own brand identities and business models. As we said above, contractors should be required to meet certain thresholds for jobs completed in order to be eligible for subsidies.
Recognize the variety of tasks performed. Some programs have applied work rules to weatherization that were originally designed for large commercial projects. Such rules ignore the multifaceted nature of weatherization work, which typically involves one or two people working in cramped crawlspaces or attics, and the application of insulation materials wherever needed, including pipes, ducts, and structural elements of the home. For home weatherization, it isn’t practical to employ separately trained professionals for each surface (sheet metal, pipes) that is touched by insulation or sealing materials, and it is difficult to document the exact amount of time spent working with each building material. Thus labor guidelines for home energy retrofits should be more flexible than those for commercial weatherization projects.
Create prevailing-wage categories for each worker. There are currently instances, such as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded programs in Washington State, where work performed by a single worker during a day on the job must be divided into various state prevailing-wage categories. This can create significant confusion, especially when vastly different wage rates apply to different phases of a single task.
Home performance companies know the importance of paying workers fairly. However, subdividing work performed by a single worker into separate categories creates problems on the jobsite, where workers must understand the fine distinction between closely related job categories and can end up completing tasks that carry pay wages three times higher than wages for tasks requiring identical effort and skill. Employers must carefully avoid abuse or errors, and workers must deal with paychecks that vary unpredictably from job to job and from week to week. The burden of paperwork and fear of liability for inevitable errors prevents industry growth, and inefficient processes threaten to increase costs to homeowners.
Federal prevailing-wage guidelines have been crafted to ensure that a single wage applies to all sealing and insulation work done by a typical weatherization worker. In locations where state and local prevailing-wage laws apply to weatherization work, regulatory agencies should ensure that the applicable wage categories can be practically applied to a small crew weatherizing a home. Ideally, a single wage category should apply for all home weatherization work.
Owner and Employee Relations
The best home performance companies have highly motivated workers and engage in the kind of responsible contracting practices that lead to a well-trained, well-compensated, and healthy workforce. Owners and employees of these companies are proud of the culture and proactive working relationships they have created within their respective organizations. Programs should leave internal working relationships up to the discretion of each company and its employees.
Some programs are considering hiring restrictions that would require workers to belong to a union or incentives that establish a preference for work performed by union labor. Other programs have considered granting certification authority to unions that also represent and train workers. This results in a clear conflict of interest that would undermine the integrity of the third-party certification system that the home performance industry has already established.
Setting Industry Standards
To ensure uniform quality standards of home performance work, we offer the following recommendations. These recommendations follow in line with the Federal Home Star program’s Gold Star standard.
Develop clear pathways to certification. Confusion about program requirements can lead to decreased contractor participation. Programs should clearly outline the steps companies are required to take to get certified and allow all contractors and auditors who meet those requirements to join the program.
Require appropriate certification and accreditation, and strict quality control. Programs should require auditors and key contractor personnel to be certified according to the principles put forth by BPI and adopt national certification and accreditation guidelines that follow standards as dictated by organizations like BPI. There are not enough accredited contractors in many parts of the country, but the long-term goal should be to require accreditation for all participating contractors. Furthermore, rigorous quality control mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that work is performed to high standards.
Require test-outs for all jobs, with deeper inspections on a percentage of jobs. All projects should include a test-out conducted by either the contractor or a third-party auditor. If routine test-outs are performed by the contractors who complete the work (as is required by many industry-accepted certifications), programs should implement third-party oversight that includes random field testing on a percentage of all completed retrofits. Many programs provide a job completion and reporting incentive (for example, 5% of the job cost up to $500) to the contractor or auditor who performs the test-out.
Programs might consider conducting random field tests at a level that can be adjusted based on the level of the incentive (that is, a minimum 5% test rate for average incentives up to $500; 10% for average incentives up to $2,000; and so on). Inspectors should tell contractors when inspections will occur, so contractors can keep customers informed and can promptly correct any problems that the inspectors find.
Train city and county building inspectors. Some building inspectors are not fully aware of new building and remodeling techniques that incorporate building science and whole-house thinking. Building inspectors should receive comprehensive training in home performance so they understand new techniques in building science and can apply that knowledge when inspecting jobs.
The Auditor-Contractor Relationship
Of the programs studied for this report, one program uses independent auditors; two require all audits to be performed by the contractor who completes the work; and three allow either model. The relationship between contractors and auditors has been the subject of much discussion and debate. While some program leaders prefer to require independent third-party auditors to ensure the integrity of retrofit recommendations, others believe that audits should be performed by contractors, in order to make the audit-to-retrofit process as efficient as possible and increase audit-to-retrofit conversion rates. This aspect of program design ultimately depends on local program goals, so our consideration of the auditor-contractor relationship includes both specific recommendations and general considerations that programs should take into account regarding the auditing process.
Allow contractors to perform audits and energy retrofit work. Many homeowners prefer to hire one company to conduct the audit and to complete the retrofit, which can simplify the overall retrofit experience. In addition, some contractors refund all or part of the cost of the audit to customers who hire them to complete a retrofit, reducing the overall cost to the homeowner. Several programs that require audits, including New York and New Jersey Home Performance with Energy Star, Long Island Green Homes, and Clean Energy Works Portland, have had strong audit-to-retrofit conversion rates using companies that provide the audit and go on to complete the retrofit work. The HPRC believes that an all-in-one approach to home retrofits can increase the audit-to-retrofit conversion rate.
Make the services of independent auditors available to customers. Some homeowners are less likely to trust an audit if it is done by the same contractor who will complete the retrofit. These customers should be allowed to contract with an independent auditor. If an independent auditor performs the audit, programs should work to ensure effective communication between the auditor and the contractor.
Implement mechanisms to ensure customer trust. Programs that promote or allow the industry-accepted all-in-one model should take steps to maintain a high level of consumer trust. For example, many programs employ energy advisors who work with customers and advocate for their needs. These advisors may be present at the time of the audit or when the work is being done, although this approach is costly. Other programs require contractors to perform comprehensive analysis and reporting on every audit, with a percentage of all contractor audits randomly field-checked by third-party auditors. This approach allows for fewer quality assurance auditors while maintaining the high standards that the home performance industry supports.
Either way, public outreach is essential. Customers have the highest level of confidence in auditors and contractors if they have been informed about the quality control mechanisms that are in place, and about certification and accreditation requirements for program-approved contractors.
Third-party verification. Third-party verification of work done is particularly important in programs where auditing and retrofit implementation are provided by a single contractor. Austin’s Home Performance with Energy Star program conducts inspections on every job, while other programs, such as New Jersey Home Performance with Energy Star, conduct third-party inspections on a percentage of each company’s jobs.
Design pathways for a wide variety of contractors. Guidelines that require contractors to have auditors on staff can dissuade some companies from joining the industry. For example, a company with an HVAC background but no auditor on staff would be excluded from transitioning into comprehensive home performance retrofit work. Programs using the all-in-one model should consider allowing such companies to partner with or subcontract with program-approved independent auditors. In addition, programs should not limit contractors’ ability to provide comprehensive home performance solutions, and therefore should always allow the lead contractor on a project to create partnerships or subcontract work as necessary to meet these goals.
Ensure that audits produce actionable work scopes for contractors. When audits are performed by independent auditors, contractors often complain of having to redo their audits because the auditor didn’t give them the information they needed. With effective systems of communication in place, including data transfer mechanisms and data protocols, contractors will have access to this information and can better use it to bid for and complete retrofits. Furthermore, if independent auditors and contractors work together more effectively, the audit-to-retrofit conversion rate is likely to increase.
Programs should work with local contractors and auditors to design standard elements within audit reports that are easy for auditors to generate and useful for contractors when developing bids and conducting retrofits. For example, the New Jersey Home Performance with Energy Star program requires auditors to enter data that (minus any bid information) are then accessible to any other contractor from whom the customer requests a bid.
Provide additional training to independent auditors. To avoid situations where inadequate third-party audit reports force contractors to perform secondary audits, program-
approved auditors should receive additional training to produce actionable work scopes (including detailed photographs) that go beyond what might be included in a standard audit report. With these detailed work scopes in hand, homeowners can obtain bids with fewer or no site visits from contractors. This saves everyone time and money, which can be important when the work is being done on a tight budget.
Protect contractors from liability for independent audit errors, and vice versa. Some contractors participating in the New York Home Performance with Energy Star program routinely conduct secondary audits of homes that have already been audited by third-party auditors, because contractors are liable for any mistakes made by the original auditor. Programs should explore ways to solve this liability issue, as the additional cost of secondary audits limits profitability and growth potential in the industry.
Creating a Thriving Home Performance Community
The ambitious job creation and energy reduction goals that are driving the creation of home energy retrofit programs can only be met if programs are structured to facilitate a thriving, efficient, and trustworthy home performance industry. Programs should set stable and consistent guidelines and rules that give companies as much predictability and flexibility as possible, and cooperate with other programs to ensure that companies can easily work inside, outside, and across programs. Effective programs will help companies to expand and will include features that remove barriers to enter the program. Finally, programs should give companies the leeway to test and create innovative business models, so the industry can operate at maximum efficiency and continue to provide the highest level of quality to American homeowners.
For more information:
The full report on Best-Practice Business Models and additional documents in the HPRC Best Practices for Energy Retrofit Program Design series are available online at www.hprcenter.org.
Home Performance Resource Center
P.O. Box 55587
Washington, DC 20040-5587
- FIRST PAGE
- PREVIOUS PAGE
Enter your comments in the box below:
(Please note that all comments are subject to review prior to posting.) | <urn:uuid:df0028f5-5760-4607-91f9-f9995180bd46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homeenergy.org/show/article/year/1997/magazine/106/id/749/viewFull/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937583 | 3,426 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Bill Clinton started jogging near his new home in Chappaqua. But on each run he happened to jog past a hooker standing on the same street corner, day after day.
With some apprehension he would brace himself as he approached her for what was most certainly to follow.
“Fifty dollars!” she would cry out from the curb.
“No, Five dollars!” fired back Clinton ..
This ritual between Bill and the hooker continued for days.
He’d run by and she’d yell, “Fifty dollars!” And he’d yell back, “Five dollars!”
One day however, Hillary decided that she wanted to accompany her husband on his jog! As the jogging couple neared the problematic street corner, Bill realized the “pro” would bark her $50 offer and Hillary would wonder what he’d really been doing on all his past outings.
He realized he should have a darn good explanation for the junior Senator.
As they jogged into the turn that would take them past the corner, Bill became even more apprehensive than usual.
Sure enough, there was the hooker!
Bill tried to avoid the prostitute’s eyes as she watched the pair jog past. Then, from the sidewalk, the hooker yelled…
See what you get for five bucks!?” | <urn:uuid:8ea259c3-144b-40e1-b613-5b48e628db64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mademan.com/best-hillary-clinton-joke/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984262 | 291 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Connect to share and comment
Li Wangyang, a leading Chinese dissident who had been in jail for 22 years, was found dead under "strange" circumstances.
Li Wangyang, a leading Chinese dissident during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has been found dead, BBC News reported. Li was freed from jail one year ago but had spent more than 22 years locked up for his role in the 1989 protests.
Li died in a hospital, where he was being treated for heart disease and diabetes. Government officials say that Li, 62, committed suicide. People found him hanging from a window sill with a cloth around his neck. But others say the death is suspicious, the BBC reported.
More from GlobalPost: Yandex, Russia's Google, takes off
Relatives say that Li wasn't suicidal. “Last evening we were together, Li Wangyang did not show any signs of suicide, it is strange,” brother-in-law Zhao Baozhu told the Associated Foreign Press. “Li Wangyang is a man with a strong mind and strong spirit. Police have taken away his body without the approval of the family.”
Physical evidence also raises doubts about a suicide. Activists looking at images of Li's body found that his feet were touching the ground, which would seem to prevent him from killing himself through a hanging death, the Guardian reported.
In addition, Zhao told the Los Angeles Times that Li was too weak to even hold a bowl without shaking. "I can’t imagine how he could have tied his sheets into a knot."
Fellow pro-democracy activists want a thorough investigation into Li's death, the LA Times reported, and agreed that he seemed to be in "good spirits" before the apparent suicide. | <urn:uuid:ee782488-ccf2-4fee-a617-c5f8ea078b11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/120606/chinese-dissident-li-wangyang-found-dead-under-strange-circumstances | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977095 | 366 | 1.507813 | 2 |
A picture of Shawn Moore’s 11-year-old clad in camouflage and holding a scary-looking gun prompted New Jersey’s Department of Children and Families to visit his house for an “inspection,” according to Moore. As reported by the Associated Press:
The elder Moore was at a friend’s house when his wife called, saying state child welfare investigators, along with four local police officers, were at the house, asking to inspect the family’s guns.
Moore said he called his lawyer Evan Nappen, who specializes in Second Amendment cases, and had him on speaker phone as he arrived at his house in Carneys Point, just across the Delaware River from Wilmington, Del.
“They said they wanted to see into my safe and see if my guns were registered,” Moore said. “I said no; in New Jersey, your guns don’t have to be registered with the state; it’s voluntary. I knew once I opened that safe, there was no going back.”
The Department of Children and Families has not confirmed that the Facebook picture was the reason for the surprise “inspection,” but a spokeswoman did comment that it is “important to note the way an investigation begins is through the child abuse hotline. Someone has to call to let us know there is a concern.”
Yesterday, I argued on FoxNews.com that the gun debate is really a culture debate. Two cultures are emerging in America. One culture respects guns as important tools in the hands of responsible citizens. The other culture is disgusted by guns. It is becoming increasingly difficult to bridge the gap between those cultures in order to devise reasonable and effective gun laws that respect citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
Clearly, Mr. Moore is in the former camp and has taught his son how to responsibly use firearms. Appearing on “Fox and Friends” this morning, Moore’s son Josh said he’d been shooting guns since he was five, that he likes to hunt, and is a “pretty good shooter.”
Yet many who are animated by “gun disgust” believe keeping firearms in the home is tantamount to child abuse. But the actual number of accidental firearm deaths of children are usually grossly overstated. In 2010, the CDC reported 62 deaths by accidental firearm discharge for children between 0-14 years old. (You can check the numbers yourself here.)
While each and every one of these deaths is undeniably tragic, the number is far less than deaths due to accidental drownings (726) or bicycles (approximately 100 in 2006). Yet I’m sure social services would not have visited Mr. Moore’s house if he had put up a picture of Josh on a new ten-speed. In fact, for an instrument with such potential for lethality, the number of accidental gun deaths for children is remarkably low. Even seemingly innocuous things, such as adult beds, can kill dozens of children per year. Between 1999-2001, 41 children under five died after being caught between a mattress and a wall or headboard. Nevertheless, during the Clinton administration the Department of Justice ran a series of ads designed to frighten parents about the dangers of unlocked guns, claiming that “an unlocked gun could be the death of your family.”
Those numbers are unlikely to change the minds of the gun-disgusted. As in many areas of public policy, facts often matter less than we’d like to believe. | <urn:uuid:b2d2f451-b44e-4155-84ce-9f40c5148767> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/blog/week-gun-disgust-social-services-visits-new-jersey-mans-house-because-picture-son-holding-gun | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982535 | 729 | 1.648438 | 2 |
4 Essential Truths that are required for someone to convert!
At least four fundamental truths must be accepted by a seeker before he/she can be converted to Christ. After setting up a one-on-one study with a non-Christian friend, what lessons should be studied? It is up to you to guide the discussion with lessons that meet the student's needs. What are the needs? This article will identify and discuss four of those needs. After the seeker accepts these truths, continue teaching lessons that bring the person to Christ.
It is of vital importance that non-Christians realize the authority of Christ revealed in the Scriptures. In this area we are battling many liberal trends. Some view the scriptures as a high quality literary work. Others feel that the Bible is outdated and contains no relevant information for us today. Some even feel the Bible cannot be understood by the common man. And still others think that the scriptures are not all sufficient.
It is interesting to note that most of the people we study with on a one-on-one basis already accept most of the basic principles of Bible authority. The authority of Christ tends to be a non-controversial subject and serves as an excellent neutral ground introduction that emphasizes a belief you have in common with the seeker. If a person does not accept the Bible as God's word, the rest of the lessons will not have any impact.
A prevalent belief today is that false doctrine won't send you to hell. People have been unable to comprehend the horrible results that logically follow from having one Bible and 500-plus different denominations. The masses are forced into accepting that one church is as good as another! Jesus, however, has a different point of view and we must teach this to the seeker. It is important to show that all churches use creeds in addition to the Bible. At first, do not dwell on specific false doctrines taught by these churches. Rather, show that the creed book is used as doctrinal authority in addition to the Bible. Do this by confronting the student with the teachings found in the creed book used by his/her own church. Show that the creed book teaches things foreign to the Bible. Let me illustrate by two examples.
First, from the Discipline read the following: We have therefore expected that the discipline would be administered, not merely as a legal document, but as a revelation of the Holy Spirit working in and through our people. Then ask, Does the Methodist church use the Bible only? Second, read the following: Wherefore that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort. Then compare this statement with James 2:24.
First, from the Articles read the following:
Then ask, Do the AGC Pastors use the Bible only to determine doctrine? Second, read the following: Baptism is not a saving ordinance . . . nor is it necessary for salvation. Then compare this statement with 1 Peter 3:21.
Strongly emphasize the Lord's teaching on false doctrine and then make the application to the seeker's denomination. You must have the applicable creed book in your possession. It will take some work but it will pay off in effectiveness. Otherwise, the seeker will not believe you when you say his/her church has a creed book.
Have you ever met anyone who believed they were going to hell? Think about it! Everyone thinks they are going to heaven! It doesn't matter if they haven't been to church for 30 years or are living in fornication, they still think they are going to heaven. After the disciples had walked with Jesus for a few months they asked him, Lord are just a few going to be saved? The Lord answered: Seek to enter by the narrow door for many I tell you will seek to enter in and will not be able to (Luke 13:23).
We need to present the gospel in all its power in order to show people they are lost. This can be done by presenting a simple lesson on baptism. Emphasize the how, who, and why of baptism and then compare it to what the seeker has done. By this we can show the seeker that they have never obeyed the gospel of Jesus. Yes, they obeyed the gospel of men or some creed but not Jesus. It can be a highly emotional study when teaching someone they are lost after they have believed for 20 years that they were saved!
Quite simply, will the seeker ACT upon the words of Christ? A simple way to determine if a person has a commitment to God is to ask if he/she attends church every Sunday. This is the true acid test. It is simple yet 99 percent effective in making the determination. Unfortunately, one of the hardest obstacles to overcome when teaching people who are not in the habit of attending church every Sunday is to get them to make the commitment. Those who forsake the assembly are lost. The world teaches that attendance is an option that may be chosen. Attendance is not an option and it needs to be taught thoroughly.
All seekers must commit themselves to the Lord to the extent that they are willing to make changes in their lifestyle and any personal sacrifices needed to conform their life to Christ. Such changes or sacrifices may include the getting out of bed on Sunday morning, ceasing an illicit relationship, being forsaken by friends, etc. Teaching that points out the costs involved in being a Christian is needed. When they realize the costs involved, they may think twice. Help overcome their second thoughts by enumerating the blessings to be found in Christ.
The emphasis should be doctrine and teaching them that they are lost. Start with the lesson on doctrine and then follow with a lesson showing them that they are lost because their baptism was not the baptism taught in the Bible. When studying commitment, emphasize that they need to leave their false religion and that this may result in being persecuted by others. Resistance encountered may be from family, friends, church friends, or their religious leaders. Prepare them for these possible encounters. The important question to ask in advance is: If leaving your church causes you to be ostracized by all your family and friends, will you still make the change? A lesson on Foundation of Authority is unnecessary unless you wish to establish common ground at the beginning. Most strongly religious people already accept the Bible as God's word.
Seventy-five percent of the populace are not committed to Christ. The big question will be whether they are willing to put the words of Christ into action. Most already know they should attend church every week; they just don't feel like doing it. For the uncommitted, the choice is not which church to attend but whether they will obey Christ at all. It is important to show that Jesus is Lord and that we must obey him. Begin with a lesson on commitment. The focal point needs to be church attendance and purifying their lives of sin (ceasing fornication, etc.). There is no need to waste your time on those who are not interested in acting upon the words of Christ. If they aren't ready after the first session, they won't be ready after the 10th! Determine up front if they are willing to commit. It may save a lot of time that could be better spent with those willing to obey Jesus. If they are willing to commit, follow with a lesson on doctrine. Finally, show them they are lost by teaching a lesson on salvation which includes the teaching on Bible baptism.
Go to Interactive Bible Websight | <urn:uuid:22a1df11-059d-46eb-90da-3d80853f4be7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bible.ca/evangelism/e-4essential-truths.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97069 | 1,520 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Filed under: Cable Pulling, Raceway, Duct and Conduit
I’ve never thought of simple, innocent conduit as being gross. It keeps cables safe, takes them from one place to the next… and that’s it, right? Not if you also factor in the possibility that something other than cables and air could weasel its way into a stretch of conduit. Dirt and general debris (annoying, but not too terrible). Sticky cable lubricant residue (gross). And then of course, the really fun stuff like dead insects and (gulp) animal droppings (a “@*&$#*%^!!!!” would not be out of line here). “Nasty” would be the understatement of the decade.
Now that you know the truth about what could be lurking inside your conduit, the big question is how to get it out. It’s not like you can stick a pressure washing wand down that stuff – but that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Luckily, Ideal Industries got creative and came up with a very cool little thing called a foam carrier, a plug-like cleaning tool that’s attached to a pull line or cable, and maneuvered through a length of conduit – in one end, and out the other. As it’s pulled through, the foam carrier gently scrapes out any nasty bits that are clinging to the conduit’s interior, leaving you with a clean, unobstructed run of duct to send new cables down.
Being made of foam, the carriers are mildly flexible, so they can navigate smoothly through bends and around corners. You can pull them by hand, or even better, use a mechanical blower or vacuum system to send them down the line. Want to cut time in half and clean your conduit while you’re running new cables? Each foam carrier features a metal center rod, which is equipped with hooks at each end, perfect for attaching to, say, cabling. Once the cables and carrier are attached, just pull the whole assembly at once, and you’ll have freshly-pulled wires in crud-free conduit. That’s what I’m talking about. | <urn:uuid:67cdb559-976b-4ac9-bedc-a146cede5e12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cableorganizer.com/product-showcase/tag/foam-carriers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933432 | 460 | 1.65625 | 2 |
AMD, long synonymous with x86 CPUs, is joining the ranks of companies developing ARM-based...
Monday, October 29, 2012, 5:56 PM ETAMD, long synonymous with x86 CPUs, is joining the ranks of companies developing ARM-based (ARMH) server CPUs. The first ARM-based AMD chip is set to arrive in 2014, and will support its SeaMicro unit's innovative low-power/high-density server platform. AMD's relatively small server CPU share means it has less to lose from embracing ARM than Intel (INTC). And given AMD's recent woes, taking a chance or two might be a good idea. (conference call) (earlier)
TECH ETFs IN FOCUS
Latest Tech Articles | <urn:uuid:ee1deb1b-0179-4883-8f05-786dc1eb4328> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingalpha.com/currents/post/620811 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934314 | 153 | 1.601563 | 2 |
You know the feeling. The, "Oh boy ... I hope this works." Or, "Whoa ... we better get this contract." Or any of a thousand other variations of that same sensation. One word. Doubt. The entrepreneur's worst enemy. Heck, our economy's worst enemy. Doubt. Because, doubt is ultimately what stops us from taking risks, and what keeps our economy stagnant right now.
My company, in cooperation with our printer/partner, recently published our first catalog and started mailing it this week. We worked on it for two months including building a website that complements it in look, feel, colors, etc. There is some fear involved when you are small business and you are investing in a marketing campaign like this for the first time. But, how else do you grow?
1) If you stop marketing, you stop selling.
2) If you stop selling, you stop growing.
3) And, if you stop growing, you start dying - it is that simple.
Knowing all that, there is still doubt. Amazing, isn't it?
I've been fortunate to work for some great people over the years, people I really admire. The ones I admire the most are the ones who - in their own way - have rolled the dice. Some have been corporate types, who rolled the dice by earning promotions and accepting relocation after relocation in order to move up the ladder. In a lot of industries, that's the path people must follow to become C-level executives. Nomadic. But, for some, the benefits are reaped when retirement comes in early to mid-50's with a 7-, 8-, or even 9-figure nest egg in stock and options accumulated over a lifetime spent in airports and hotels. That takes a certain type of commitment, and plenty of opportunities for doubt. Do you move when the kids are in high school? Do you go to work for this particular manager, who has a bad reputation? Do you leave one company to move to a competitor?
That said, true doubt can only be found in entrepreneurs. The kind of doubt corporate lifers experience as described above is troubling, but pales in comparison with the doubt entrepreneurs experience. Entrepreneurs have that much doubt before breakfast. To paraphrase that old recruiting commercial, "Entrepreneurs ... we have more doubt by 6am than you have all day." Doubt about making payroll. Doubt about hiring. Doubt about the economy. Make it or break it sort of doubt.
I think back to a prior job of mine. Whenever a new real estate project was going on the market, I'd wake up shaking on the mornings that the advertising was supposed to start. Maybe a million piece postcard mailing was due to start showing up in people's homes that day. Or, a two week radio and television blitz was starting. Did I pick the right newspapers? Did we buy the right mailing list? Did we put the right phone number on the postcard? I'd be on pins and needles until I got a call from the sales manager saying, "The phone is ringing off the hook here!" The anticipation was incredible. When I think about the risks that the developers were taking when they laid out the money to pay for the land, the permits, the roads, the amenities, the marketing ... well, you've got to have cast-iron guts to be in that business.
Doubt is working against our country right now. Companies have doubts about their customers, their vendors, their banks. Bankers are leery to extend credit even to each other. People are leery to borrow, fearing for their jobs. Corruption and conflict in DC coupled with national mid-term elections that are less than 100 days away further fans the flames of doubt. Wall Street teeters and totters, bullish one month, bearish the next. It is an ugly, visceral thing, this doubt. Yet, there are signs we are shaking off this doubt. The American spirit is not easily quashed. Some of us must still love that doubt. Revel in it. New companies continue to spring up. New business relationships are formed and new technologies are designed and marketed. And, new catalogs are put in the mail ... | <urn:uuid:0dc16983-7ae1-4c75-98af-b84efdbeca1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iberkshires.com/blog/?user_id=6433&tag=economy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969748 | 865 | 1.515625 | 2 |
"Obama or Romney — who will be the better president on foreign policy?"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
June 21, 2012
Author: Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
November’s presidential election will be dominated by the economy, of course, but there is a big foreign policy agenda that President Obama and Governor Romney need to address. The stakes are high as we face the most complex international landscape in memory. The victor in November will face challenges as diverse as North Korea, the European economic crisis, humanitarian suffering in Syria and Sudan, and climate change.
Both Obama and Romney have the intellect, sophistication, and temperament to be successful foreign policy presidents. Obama has built an impressive record of accomplishment by restoring America’s global credibility and pursuing a relentless campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen. His decision to leave Iraq was remarkably uncontroversial given our tortuous eight-year occupation. Romney will have difficulty running to Obama’s right on national security given the latter’s record in bringing Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki to justice.
Still, Romney’s background makes him more promising on foreign policy than most realize. He managed a first-rate Salt Lake Olympics, has traveled widely and assembled an impressive group of foreign policy advisers. But like many presidents, he would take office without deep international experience. How would he respond to the unrelenting crises that occupy every president’s Oval Office in-box? In particular, what does Romney’s statement that Russia is our number one adversary (not Iran or Al Qaeda) tell us about his core foreign policy instincts and worldview? Is his international template too fixed in the past and not sufficiently grounded in our very different 21st century? At this point, Obama has the foreign policy edge and is better prepared to lead internationally.
But the debates and thousands of hours on the campaign trail will provide a more complete verdict and give Romney a chance to share with voters his ideas for America’s international mission. He wants to restore an “American century” and maintain unrivaled American power. Obama has acted as chairman of the board of a broad network of traditional friends such as France and the United Kingdom along with new partners Brazil and India in a rapidly changing global power network. Which candidate will keep the United States powerful and influential at a time when we cannot always get our way and must lead as first among equals?
Romney and Obama have already begun sparring. They disagree on Afghanistan. Obama will withdraw most combat troops by 2014 and hopes to negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban to permit our final exit. Romney is critical of Obama’s troop reductions but thin on specifics. Should we cut our losses and exit Afghanistan in a year or two, as Obama advocates, or redouble our efforts against the Taliban as Romney seems to prefer?
Romney has been critical of Obama’s Iran strategy, but the administration has made a strong case for trying negotiations backed by tough sanctions before considering force. After this week’s disappointing talks with Iran, don’t be surprised if Obama’s critics argue diplomacy isn’t working and we should turn instead to the military. Will Romney make the mistake of jumping on that bandwagon? He needs to be more specific on what the United States should do next in this high-stakes global poker game.
Romney and Obama should also debate what we should do if Egypt’s military rulers complete their coup and deny the Muslim Brotherhood real power. And how long can we stand by as Syrian civilians are brutalized by their own government? Finally, Obama has followed past presidents in seeking to engage and not contain China. But he has hedged by starting a long-term military build-up to maintain America as Asia’s power broker. Romney’s threat to impose sanctions on China on his first day in office made some question how effectively he would deal with this complex country.
Our next president will need Nixon’s guile, George H.W. Bush’s experience and skill, and FDR’s courage to lead us through the thickets of the foreign policy challenges ahead. Obama has demonstrated he is more than capable of leading the United States internationally. Romney has not yet done so. That will be part of the campaign’s drama as we decide which of the two can best provide the vision, judgment, and wisdom we so desperately need to remain the world leader at a complicated and dangerous time.
For more information about this publication please contact the Belfer Center Communications Office at 617-495-9858.
For Academic Citation: | <urn:uuid:f33ad166-e10a-4c6f-afe2-bb21f7a8865a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/22141/obama_or_romney_who_will_be_the_better_president_on_foreign_policy.html?breadcrumb=%2Fpublication%2F21686%2Fwhat_to_do_about_iran | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954772 | 954 | 1.570313 | 2 |
COLLIER, Robert Hutcheson
COLLIER, Robert Hutcheson. (Dalkeith, Scotland, July 17, 1842-Dubuque, IA, Mar. 9, 1896). Businessman. Collier settled in Dubuque as manager of the Northwest Department of LAFLIN AND RAND POWDER COMPANY, a dealer in blasting powder. He served in the position from 1878 until his death.
Collier was a director of FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF DUBUQUE and the NOVELTY IRON WORKS. He was vice-president and director of the NORWEGIAN PLOW COMPANY. His son, James Currie COLLIER, became one of the city's most important lumbermen. | <urn:uuid:3f5493fb-c559-4399-a5ff-6312e0ec6a4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.encyclopediadubuque.org/index.php?title=COLLIER%2C_Robert_Hutcheson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931322 | 156 | 1.5 | 2 |
- L A Walkington, consultant medical oncologist1,
- P Lorigan, senior lecturer in medical oncology2,
- S J Danson, senior lecturer and consultant medical oncologist1
- 1Weston Park Hospital, Sheffield S10 2SJ, UK
- 2Christie NHS Foundation Trust Hospital, Manchester, UK
Patients diagnosed with thin cutaneous melanoma usually have a good prognosis after surgical resection, but prognosis is poor for those who present with, or develop, metastatic malignant melanoma (stage IV disease). Average survival is less than 12 months, and this has remained unchanged for more than 20 years.1 The mainstay of treatment in advanced melanoma has been dacarbazine chemotherapy, which has a poor response rate of 8-10%.1 However, the past three years have seen important advances in systemic treatment options for patients with this disease. Two treatment strategies, based on immunotherapy and genomics, now offer real hope of improved quality of life and prolonged survival, albeit with a serious risk of side effects and high drug costs.
It is now clear that the immune system has an important influence on the outcome of several cancers not previously thought to be immunogenic.2 Melanoma is an immunogenic tumour in that it expresses melanoma specific antigens, and a clinical response to immunotherapy has been shown. Better understanding of the complex molecular interactions needed to generate an immune response has led to the development of effective new immunotherapy agents.
Cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) is a key negative regulatory molecule. It is expressed on the surface of T cells shortly after activation by antigen presenting cells and inhibits the immune response. Ipilimumab is a fully humanised monoclonal antibody that competitively binds CTLA-4, resulting in increased T cell activation and proliferation.
A phase III trial randomised patients with metastatic … | <urn:uuid:6d75c788-cd2c-471d-af65-9a40653a0710> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1265 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935239 | 401 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Published by Dewi Lewis
There is no longer, social commentators would have us believe, a working class. We are all of us, they claim, middle class or else lumped into one general mass, described as an "underclass". Chris Coekin's Knock Three Times refutes the supposition.
Primarily a document of Acomb working men’s club in York, photographed over a decade from 1996, Coekin’s opus reveals itself as a personal exploration of his own background, upbringing and social identity within a family in which such clubs have played a significant role.
Acomb club, Coekin implies, in the published conversation with David Campany that appears at the front of the book, is much like others of its kind; a place for social gathering. It has a bar, a games room, a lounge and a concert room. These are the fixtures, but what makes it much more than simply a building is the people who use it.
As we are introduced to them visually, although it is in no way a formal greeting, we meet ordinary people. Probably some of them are “characters” but Coekin does not seek them out as performers, gurners for the camera. Instead he affords them the dignity of being themselves; people who are revealed simply talking, sitting, drinking, laughing, holding hands, or lost in thought.
Interposed between meeting the club’s members we are introduced to its furnishings: functional tables, strip lighting, coat hooks, a condom machine in the gents’ toilet – shot from a child’s viewpoint (Coekin reveals why in the aforementioned interview) – and the club’s performers, whose dressing room walls we see bedecked with the artists’ “z” cards, often crudely defaced, presumably by fellow performers.
The third layer to Knock Three Times is the Coekin family’s relationship with the working men’s clubs. The book is dovetailed with black and white family snapshots: firstly the Coekin clan in a Blackpool club in 1963; lastly, his grandfather posing for a photographer, standing with seven fellow men, incongruously drinking pints through straws, at the family’s local club, Latimer Road, Leicester, circa 1935.
Elsewhere, in a picture from the early 1980s, Coekin’s Dad, a champion darts player, is seen holding a trophy. Later, his one line redundancy letter is presented to us: “Dear Barry Coekin,” it reads, “Please be advised that as from today’s date we have made you redundant. Yours etc.” This one-sentence dismissal, comes after 46 years working for the company. On the opposite page is Coekin’s paternal grandfather’s leaving certificate that tells of his 49 years’ service with British Railways London Midland Region. Coekin corrects this casual carelessness: he worked for them for 52 years. The three missing years matter in a lifetime of labour.
The documents’ inclusion, and Coekin’s telling of the stories that lie behind them, as well as his family’s connection with clubs, make the book an altogether more vital work. Similarly, the historical family snapshots juxtaposed with the contemporary portraits of Acomb club members highlight how far and yet how not at all far we have moved over the intervening decades.
Some people may view Knock Three Times as a “moment in time and place” piece. They would be wrong to do so. The time and place of Coekin’s book – whatever demographic “experts” may have us believe – says as much about the way many of us in Britain live today as it does about yesteryear.
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites | <urn:uuid:19599ed1-e335-44ab-b44e-aff480cd945b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foto8.com/new/online/reviews/255-knock-three-times | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964929 | 818 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The main reason for this post is to raise awareness of actual research on active shooters (those who commit mass murders) sited in this article in today’s WSJ.
Yes, and active shooter (someone that goes to an enclosed area and shoots at victims, some of whom are random targets) is a criminal. But there are differences between “normal” criminals that think differently than what we do–who think nothing of killing someone for some advantage or slight and the active shooter that is out to just kill as many people as they can (and possibly some “reason”, but the mass killing is not rational).
From the article:
They are predominantly weaklings and cowards who crumble easily as soon as an armed person shows up….
At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer’s next shot was to kill himself.
If anything, to prevent active shooters from killing lots of people, the population of armed, concealed-carrying individuals needs to increase, not decrease. The article sites research, not just pontificates and conjectures. If you think we need more gun control, read the article first. | <urn:uuid:790a4c3f-ecdc-4105-a5cb-fca08111f465> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://novatownhall.com/2012/12/18/active-shooters-vs-criminal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976964 | 270 | 1.796875 | 2 |
We present what we believe is the first reported case of a patient with supraglottic stenosis secondary to Wegener granulomatosis. The diagnosis was unclear initially because the biopsy results were nonspecific, but a finding of an elevated cytoplasmic-pattern antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (c-ANCA) level established the diagnosis of localized supraglottic Wegener granulomatosis. Wegener granulomatosis is characterized by necrotizing vasculitis that is localized predominantly to the kidneys and the upper and lower airways. In the airways, subglottic involvement is well documented, but to the best of our knowledge, supraglottic stenosis has not previously been described. Localized forms of Wegener granulomatosis are characterized by limited disease that involves only the upper airway. The diagnosis in localized forms is complex because histology is diagnostic in only 50% of cases, and only 60% of patients have a positive c-ANCA level. We discuss the diagnostic criteria and management strategies for these localized forms. | <urn:uuid:0862b0ee-0fcb-4308-a13e-4db80b374783> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entjournal.com/article/supraglottic-stenosis-localized-wegener-granulomatosis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932723 | 235 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Category:Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
From Sonic Retro
Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (occasionally shortened to AoStH) is an American animated television series created by DiC Entertainment. First airing on September 6th, 1993, the series (along with its darker, network-broadcast sister show Sonic the Hedgehog) was the face of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise through the mid-90's. Focusing more on slapstick humor and cheap gags as opposed to the more story-driven Sonic the Hedgehog, the series has nevertheless gained its own distinct fanbase. Being originally packaged and sold as a syndicated series, the program continues to air on numerous stations across the globe, a continued testament to the character's popularity.
The setting and characters of the show also served as the inspiration for the Sega Mega Drive game Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, a localized version of the puzzle-game Puyo Puyo utilizing the design of Dr. Robotnik that populated western media, especially in Europe and Australia.
This category has the following 2 subcategories, out of 2 total. | <urn:uuid:66bccadd-d98e-4521-9f03-fea1220ec7b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://info.sonicretro.org/Category:Adventures_of_Sonic_the_Hedgehog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935335 | 230 | 1.585938 | 2 |
|You scored as Evidentialist. You are an evidentialist! Apologetics primarily consists in showing the good reasons one has to believe the claims of Christianity. You consistently confound unbelievers with your knowledge of history, science, and Bayesian computation that you learned from John Warwick Montgomery, Gary Habermas, and Richard Swinburne.|
What kind of apologist are you?
created with QuizFarm.com | <urn:uuid:cf5110d4-fbf1-4441-af3d-6ac330b061ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://socrates58.blogspot.jp/2005/07/what-kind-of-apologist-are-you-quiz.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949524 | 90 | 1.546875 | 2 |
View Full Version : question for handy billy builders
07-14-2006, 03:42 PM
It appears to me in almost all pictures of the handy billy 21 that when the motor is in the tilted up position that the engine hatch must be opened to avoid the engine crashing through it. Is this the case or are they opened just to show off the motor well. If this is the case then how much higher would you need to make the engine cover to avoid hitting it. I ask because I think it is nice to be able to lift the engine out of the water when not in use to avoid growing a beard on the submerged lower unit section. I also think that raising the engine hatch much higher may somewhat ruin the look or proportion of the the boat. Also, the plans mention connecting a tube to the exhaust and routing out the transom to avoid excessive fume build up and causing engine problems at idle. Did anyone do this or have idling problems from not doing it.
07-15-2006, 01:18 PM
Even the smallest powerhead in 25 hp will require the hatch raised to raise the motor. Doug Hylan's big sister Tophat is designed to allow the 50hp motor to be raised under the closed hatch, and even in this much larger boat (both physically and proportionally) it looks a bit silly to my eye. Note: "crashing" as you say is not possible since no short shaft 25 that I know of offers power tilt.
I have had no problem with fumes choking the motor at idle. I made provisions for the hose and thru-hull, but couldn't get the hose to adhere to the port well (I didn't try too hard) and have experienced no ill effects since it came undone the last time.
07-15-2006, 05:02 PM
thanks for the reply and your boat looks great. I wish I could get your video to work for me.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.1 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:914b60aa-9cea-40dd-a8ab-f3deaa49f93d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.woodenboat.com/archive/index.php/t-52711.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962596 | 428 | 1.554688 | 2 |
It's All Politics
Who 'Owns' The Bush Tax Cuts?
Originally published on Mon July 9, 2012 2:53 pm
They're called the Bush tax cuts for a reason. And when they were passed in the early 2000s, most Democrats opposed them.
Cut to a decade later: President Obama is calling for a second extension in as many years of the "temporary" cuts, but it won't come without a fight from congressional Republicans.
Given the apparent role reversal, who owns the George W. Bush-era tax cuts now: Democrats or Republicans?
"They're still called the Bush tax cuts, but I think it's a bit of a misnomer at this point," says Ted Gayer, the co-director of economic studies at the centrist Brookings Institution.
Michael Ettlinger, vice president for economics at the left-wing Center for American Progress, says it's really a matter of semantics. "It's just easier to call them the Bush tax cuts," he says.
The latest fight between the president and Republicans is shaping up to be a battle royal — not only are taxes involved but so are deficits and class politics.
That's because the president wants to extend the cuts for one year, but only to those making less than $250,000. NPR's independent analysis shows Obama's proposal would add $3.2 trillion to the national deficit over the next decade, as opposed to $3.9 trillion if the tax cuts were extended to everyone, like Republicans want.
The Bush tax cuts sliced about 2 percent off most tax brackets. According to the Tax Policy Center, 83 percent of Americans will see their taxes rise if the cuts are allowed to expire. Those making between $50,000 and $75,000 would pay about $2,200 more, while those making $1 million or more would owe an extra $175,000.
Both sides have to make their case to middle-class Americans.
For Obama, it goes like this: The wealthiest Americans need to pay their fair share and take some of the burden off the struggling middle class.
For Republicans, it goes like this: A tax increase on the wealthy, who are the economy's "job creators," will have a negative trickle-down effect on the middle class in the way of more lost jobs.
Sound familiar? The same lines were drawn two years ago, but the president blinked and the Bush tax cuts were renewed for all taxpayers. If the issue comes to a head again before Election Day, don't count on Obama backing down again.
"There will be a political fight this fall on the dueling positions on tax cuts and no resolution before the election," says Brian Darling, a senior fellow for government studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
"If Obama wins, there will be a short-term deal in the lame duck [session]," he says. "If Romney wins, there will be an effort to extend all the tax cuts on a permanent basis." | <urn:uuid:57fb7d04-7a50-4212-b3a1-8576168d9a1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kanw.com/post/who-owns-bush-tax-cuts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962997 | 613 | 1.78125 | 2 |
In N. Africa, Al Qaeda offshoot claims six Western hostages
The claim by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb that it holds hostages kidnapped more than a month ago fuels fears that the group is expanding its reach.
Al Qaeda's North African franchise has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of two Canadian diplomats and four European tourists in Niger. The claims have not been verified, press reports say. But if true, the news is likely to fuel concerns that the Algeria-based Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is expanding its reach in Africa and increasingly targeting Westerners.Skip to next paragraph
Israeli general hints at another Gaza campaign
Unclaimed attack on Islamic school raises tension in Nigeria
See no evil? Activists doubt credibility of Arab League mission to Syria.
Arab League observers head to Syria's war-ravaged Homs
Christmas church bombings put global spotlight on 'Nigerian Taliban' (VIDEO)
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
Two Canadian diplomats, including the United Nations envoy to Niger, Robert Fowler, were abducted in mid-December. The four tourists – a Swiss couple, German woman, and British man – were abducted Jan. 22 in Niger after visiting a Tuareg cultural festival in neighboring Mali. (Click here to see a map of the region from the CIA World Factbook.)
Initial suspicion for the kidnapping of the Canadian diplomats centered on the Tuareg, a nomadic group that is fighting the Niger and Mali governments to win autonomy for their homeland. But the Tuareg had denied involvement, reported the BBC.
The BBC reported Wednesday that the Al Qaeda claim came in an audio recording.
The audio recording of the man, who identified himself as Salah Abu Mohammed, was broadcast by Arabic satellite station al-Jazeera. ...
The authenticity of the tape, in which the group said it would soon issue conditions for the hostages' release, has not been verified.
"It is their normal practice not to speak until they are sure that they have got good people for good money and they are in a safe place before any negotiations," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme....
Mr Ben-Madani said the group's influence is spreading and it now has small branches in places like Mali, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria and Morocco.
"It is spreading and growing in numbers," he said.
Ennahar Online, the website of an Algerian newspaper, quoted from the audio tape.
"We are pleased to transmit to the Islamic nation the good news of the success of the Mujahidines in achieving of two operations in Niger," says on this soundtrack the spokesman of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, Salah Abou Mohammed....
Mujahidines "reserve the right to manage the case of six hostages by Islamic law (Sharia)," adds the spokesman, without further detail.
A posting on Islamist websites on Thursday showed three separate images of what it said were a Swiss couple, a German woman and a British man, surrounded by men bearing rifles.
In the photographs the women's faces have been blurred. | <urn:uuid:774639fe-0b0b-44db-83f2-627b216d0e37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2009/0219/p99s01-duts.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952374 | 633 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Honestly? Things don't look so good at present, and I have a feeling we have gone beyond Thaksin now.
Let's just take a step back.
We are talking of Thailand ("The Land of Smiles"), where behind the serenity of those smiles and the softly spoken greetings lies a complex culture. Many learned books have been written on the subject of the culture and customs of Thailand, and to even attempt an in-depth comment by way of background would be futile. I will therefore restrict my comments here to some personal observations, garnered over 30 years and which may surprise some.
I have recognised the power of the monarchy in Thailand. In how many cases over the years have there been incidents in the present day Capital and elsewhere, which have been resolved not by the elected Government, but by the King? Pictures showing the various factions sitting, or kneeling, on the floor at the monarch's feet, followed by an announcement that matters have been resolved and that everything is returning to some degree of normality. That is, until now.
The recent development of Thailand politically and economically has not always been smooth. Who can forget the Asian crisis of 1997, with its origins in Thailand? (At least it gave a bored media attending the uneventful Hong Kong handover in June 1997 a new vigour!)
And the more recent ascent of Thaksin Shinawatra to power. A savvy, wealthy businessman who harnessed the support of the rural masses to succeed in becoming the 23rd Prime Minster of Thailand in 2001. Elected on the back of his relatively newly founded (1998) political party "Thai Rak Thai" - or effectively Thailand for the Thais. A businessman who understood that the fortunes of Thailand were likely to rest on goodwill towards, and encouragement of foreign investors, but who knew that he was unlikely to gain the needed support for election if he espoused embracing a foreign "invasion".
And here is where one of the "hidden" difficulties for Thailand exists. Remember one critical fact; Thailand has never been colonised, and is therefore the only country in Asia never to have suffered that fate. As a result the Thais are proud of their history their heritage and their independence - fiercely proud! Leading perhaps to a well-hidden, but nonetheless present, xenophobia.
So, as we approach today's situation we have a chain of events spanning a little over 10 years that has led us to today. And as an aside, I don't want to skirt over the last couple of years but to do it justice would defeat the purpose of trying to create a general picture of where we seem to be today. It would be a large volume.
We commenced with an Asian economic crisis that started in Thailand in 1997, the formation by Thaksin of a new political party in 1998 (dissolved for electoral fraud around 2006) which met a pent-up nationalistic demand mainly from the majority rural areas, and the subsequent election in 2001 of Thaksin. He was ousted in 2006 in a bloodless coup, but has been keen (some say desperate) to return to power. His huge rural support base, to whom he still appeals and who he reportedly assists financially, have become part of a new organisation - characterised by the "red shirts" - to put pressure on the Government to hold elections that might bring him back. Meanwhile he has himself been convicted of fraud and sentenced, as a result of which he remains out of the country.
Today, we are faced with the "red-shirts" having created mayhem, death and bloodshed in the streets of Bangkok. In the past this would have been dealt with already by the Monarch calling in the main parties and striking a deal, but the King is ill, and has been for some time. He is the world's longest reigning monarch (June 1946), but the issue of his succession is also one that occupies the minds of many in Thailand. It is still the case in Thailand, I believe, that anyone who writes about the Monarch is deemed to have broken a law - so heaven knows what might happen the next time I go down there - but this succession issue is difficult. Once again, I can only rely on the information I get from respected colleagues and friends who are much closer than I am to what goes on but the Crown Prince, by many accounts, is not popular, and does not enjoy the reverence with which his Father is treated.
The Government with the support, currently, of the armed forces, is standing firm against the demands of the demonstrators and refusing to bow to pressure which is the sort of stand you would expect from an elected Government. But my worries go beyond the current situation. I think we need to keep a close eye on what happens with the Monarchy and the power that it previously held. Also, I have a feeling that the "red shirts" - once (still?) under the patronage and support of Thaksin have developed a "people power" strength of their own and may be out of control. The role of the army is looking increasingly important and, as has happened before, we may just end up with a military government in Thailand. Not ideal, but perhaps it is the only way to restore some semblance of peace and order.
But one thing is starkly clear. The neatly "bundled" entity that was Thailand, with the clear roles played by the Monarch, the military, the Government and the people, has become untied. Putting it back is a little like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube - which you can do if you start from the bottom!! | <urn:uuid:66846e97-b264-4185-b50a-42717e0a5188> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://davideldon.typepad.com/eldononline/2010/04/thailand-untied.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978519 | 1,142 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Robert Kennedy and His Times
by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Houghton Mifflin, 1,066 pp., $19.95
They were, to be sure, spectacularly flawed—of an ore much mixed with brazen, base elements. But if nothing else, it can be said that the Kennedys afforded this society of the common man and the commonplace with something very close to its first national mythic saga—a line of jaunty and audacious, but strangely star-crossed princes in an American house of Atreus. “I guess the only reason we’ve survived,” the third dryly quipped, with his two older brothers already gone and his younger brother having just capsized in a small plane, “is that there are more of us than there is trouble.” Talking about them in romantic terms is finally inescapable because they constituted, whatever else, a singularly romantic event in this nation’s experience. They became part of the dream life of America in the mid-century: it seems peculiarly appropriate that, toward the close of the Democratic convention in Los Angeles in 1960, the old briny Irish-Borgian patriarch of the line, Joe Kennedy, would have emerged from the front portal of Marion Davies’s Beverly Hills palace and stood there in a lambent Hollywood sundown to receive his son Jack just after his nomination for president.
It also seems impossible, in any appraisal of them now, to avoid that somewhat tattered term, “existential.” Most of all, coming out of the bland comas of the Eisenhower years, they instantly acted to quicken somehow the nation’s sensation of life—which may be among the greatest of gifts of a leader to a people. Even their famously implacable calculus of political accession was never so tightly calibrated that it was not left open to the exhilarations and creativeness of surprise: they retained the zest to understand, as Jack Kennedy allowed once, that “the finest strategies are usually the result of accidents.” At the same time, although only moderately intellectual themselves, they still seemed to have a compulsion to involve themselves and the power they carried with the brisker minds and more interesting imaginations about them, out of some instinct for what was most alive in the society in their age.
At the least, their effect on the style of political theater forever after them has proven to be, it’s not too much to say, epochal. Robert Kennedy himself as early as 1956 was in despair as a campaign orderly to Adlai Stevenson who, it seemed, delivering professorial recitations with an elegant deliberation from texts even at whistle stops, “could never get it clear that it was not so much what he said as how he said it.” Kennedy had sensed that politics lay as much in manner as matter now, indeed that manner carried cargoes of meaning as real. And after the Kennedys, American politics was permanently altered from largely a pedagogic commerce among principals who tended to evoke at the best sententious, vest-suited school superintendents—Taft, Eisenhower, Stevenson—to an age, for better or worse, of sentiment and flourish, of matinee cavaliers. The current generation of politicians … | <urn:uuid:c9773cc2-6c6f-492f-8a04-30d8ff9b4336> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1978/oct/12/the-transformation-of-bobby-kennedy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969984 | 687 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Kuwaiti minister says cutting oil output only way to halt slide in prices
Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah said Tuesday that reducing oil production was the only way to mop up the market's oil surplus and halt the slide in prices.
"There is an oil surplus on the market, and there is no other way of mopping up this surplus, which is largely responsible for the fall of crude prices", Sheikh Saud was quoted as saying by the official KUNA agency.
He added that crude prices will fluctuate during the first half of 2001, and that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries would examine the situation at its meeting in Vienna on January 17.
On January 10, Sheikh Saud forecast a likely cut from January. "It is almost certain that an agreement on a reduction in production will be reached during the meeting," he said.
"About one million barrels a day will be taken away if it is necessary, especially with the coming of spring and summer, which bring a reduction in consumption levels and the worldwide demand for oil," Sheikh Saud said.
The oil price fell below $26 a barrel in London Tuesday, as forecasts of a cold Christmas in much of the United States were overshadowed by mounting concerns of an OPEC production cut in the New Year.
Benchmark Brent North Sea crude for delivery in February eased to $25.81 a barrel in early deals, from $26.24 at the close on Monday.
In New York, the reference light sweet crude January contract was selling for $29.47 a barrel, from $29.76 at the close on Monday.—AFP.
©--Agence France Presse.
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com) | <urn:uuid:abbc5d18-e229-4aed-84ec-2ba261c2fda3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albawaba.com/business/kuwaiti-minister-says-cutting-oil-output-only-way-halt-slide-prices | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973754 | 357 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Pupils attend classes at Shuicheyuan Primary School in Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China’s Guansu province, last Thursday when schools in the city opened.[Pei Qiang/For China Daily]
Changes neededto reform educational bureaucracy, says Premier Wen
BEIJING: The Chinese government has vowed again to increase its spending on education to four percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012, a target previously set in 1993.
The pledge was included in the National Outline for Medium and Long Term Educational Reform and Development (2010-20), which was released on Sunday by the State Council.
The outline, which addresses almost all major issues ranging from the education system and the quality of teaching to school enrolment, is expected to be a leading document for educational reform and development over the next 10 years.
It will be open for public comments in one month.
"Though it takes time to realize the target of four percent, China has performed better than the international average in regards to its education expenditure's proportion of fiscal expenditure from 2004 to 2008," Ding Xuedong, vice-minister of finance, told a press conference in Beijing.
"The country's spending on education has topped the list of fiscal expenditures."
China first pledged to increase its education spending to four percent of GDP in 1993 but has so far failed to achieve the target.
"The increase in education spending since 2006, when spending was only 2 percent of GDP, is a welcome development. It should enable the government to achieve its target of spending 4 percent of GDP on education one year earlier," Richard Herd, author of the recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Economic Survey on China, told China Daily on Sunday.
"Nearly all OECD governments spend more than this on education. So the new priority for the government should be to achieve universal, free 12-year education by the end of the next five-year plan," he said.
Education has been one of the issues receiving the most criticism from the public, especially education imbalances, the academic workload of students, academic corruption as well as a growing education bureaucracy.
Premier Wen Jiabao on Saturday called for changes in the education bureaucracy, a problem that plagues China's development of education.
"I hope that the administrative rankings of colleges will be removed," Wen said during an online chat with Internet users on gov.cn and xinhuanet.com.
Wen said another way to boost educational development is to have schools run by educationalists.
He defined "educationalists" as those who love to teach and know how to teach, and those who have been teachers for their entire lives.
"If the head of a school is changed every two or three years, that school will never become excellent," said Wen.
Wen said the country's outline for medium and long-term educational reform and development gives priority to reducing the student's academic workload so that they can develop in an all-around way. | <urn:uuid:ce461527-451d-4981-a00a-27d4ad4427c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-03/01/content_9515384.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964145 | 625 | 1.71875 | 2 |
POSTED: 03:28 a.m. HST, Dec 23, 2012
JERUSALEM » The face-off at the security gate outside the Western Wall one Friday this month was familiar: for more than two decades, women have been making a monthly pilgrimage to pray at one of Judaism's holiest sites in a manner traditionally preserved for men, and the police have stopped them in the name of maintaining public order.
But after a flurry of arrests this fall that sparked international outcry, the women arrived for December's service to find a new protocol ordered by the ultra-Orthodox rabbi who controls the site. To prevent the women from defying a Supreme Court ruling that bars them from wearing ritual garments at the wall, they were blocked by police officers from bringing them in.
"How can you say this to me?" demanded a tearful Bonna Devora Haberman, 52, a Canadian immigrant who helped found the group Women of the Wall in 1988. "I'm a Jew. This is my state."
The officer was unmoved. "At the Western Wall, you can't pray with a tallit," he said, referring to the fringed prayer shawl in Haberman's backpack. "You can't go in with it."
After years of legislative and legal fights, the movement for equal access for people to pray as they wish at the site has become a rallying cause for liberal Jews in the United States and around the world, though it has long struggled to gain traction here in Israel, where the ultra-Orthodox retain great sway over public life.
This has deepened a divide between the Jewish state and the Jewish diaspora, in which some leaders have become increasingly vocal in criticizing Israel's policies on settlements in the Palestinian territories; laws and proposals that are seen as anti-democratic or discriminatory against Arab citizens; its treatment of women; and the ultra-Orthodox control over conversion and marriage.
"When my kids start expressing frustration with Israel as a society because what they hear and see from a distance is not welcoming to them in their religious practice — that's not good for the Jewish people, let alone for the state of Israel," said Rabbi Steven C. Wernick, the director of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, an American immigrant who runs Kol Haneshama, a leading Reform synagogue here, said Women of the Wall "is an issue that really brings out the gap between Israeli Jews and American Jews."
While more than 60 percent of Jews in the United States identify with the Reform or Conservative movements, where women and men have equal standing in prayer and many feminists have adopted ritual garments, in Israel it is 1 in 10. Instead, about half call themselves secular, and experts say that most of those consider Orthodoxy as the true Judaism, feel alienated from holy sites like the Western Wall, and view a woman in a prayer shawl as an alien import from abroad.
(Jewish law requires only men to pray daily, and it prohibits women from dressing like men.)
"Secular Israelis do not see this as their problem; to them it's a bunch of crazy American ladies," said Shari Eshet, who represents the New York-based National Council of Jewish Women here. "It's embarrassing for Israel, it's embarrassing for Jews, and the American Jewish community is beginning to understand that it's a slippery slope here."
The increased agitation around the wall is part of a broader clash over Judaism and gender that has roiled Israel in recent months. For instance, women have won lawsuits against segregation on buses and sidewalks imposed in religious neighborhoods. But a bus line recently stopped accepting advertisements with images of people after religious vandals routinely blacked out women's faces in the name of modesty.
In January, speakers at a conference on health and Jewish law canceled their appearances because women were barred from the podium — a demand of the most Orthodox — while the chief rabbi of the air force quit after religious soldiers were not excused from events where women sang.
These controversies concern the imposition of Orthodox doctrine in secular spheres. More complicated are questions of how Judaism itself should be practiced. This spring, the Supreme Court ruled that the government must pay the salary of a Reform rabbi along with hundreds of Orthodox ones. A small group of Jerusalem restaurants has been seeking an alternative kosher certification system to the one run by the government's rabbinical council.
"The next chapter of what it means to be a Jewish state is being defined right now," said Elana Sztokman, the director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, who is writing a book that includes a chapter about Women of the Wall. "We have to figure out what does Israel want, what role do we really want religion to have in this state? And it's happening on the backs of women."
Women of the Wall began in December 1988, when tourists attending a feminist conference decided to take a Torah scroll they had brought from the United States to a prayer service at the Western Wall, a remnant of the retaining wall that surrounded the ancient Temple Mount. The group has since returned 11 times a year to pray on Rosh Hodesh, the first day of the Hebrew month, an occasion embraced by Jewish feminists.
"This did not evolve here in Israel, this is an import from abroad," said Anat Hoffman, the group's leader. "Many of Israel's best inventions were imports," she added. "For example: Zionism."
Israel's Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that women cannot bring a Torah or pray with ritual garments at the Western Wall, saying that doing so disrupts the public order. The court designated a discreet part of the wall, called Robinson's Arch, for coed prayer with full regalia.
But the women complain that separate is not equal. They are at work on a new Supreme Court petition that challenges the 13-member board of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which governs the site, saying its ultra-Orthodox majority does not represent the Jewish public.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, who leads the foundation, has denounced the women as zealots. "They don't come here to pray, they want to protest," he said in an interview. "They hurt us, the Jewish people, by distorting the truth."
The first arrest was in 2009. Since June, there have been 16, but the women were generally released and their cases were dropped after they agreed not to visit the Western Wall for a period of time.
In October, Hoffman refused to sign such an agreement, and spent a night in jail.
She wrote in the Huffington Post that she was "handcuffed, strip searched, laid on the bare floor" and "locked in a tiny cell with a crying young Russian woman accused of prostitution."
Outrage engulfed the diaspora. Thousands gathered for solidarity prayer services.
Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, said he was flooded with complaints and set up two conference calls with American rabbis. Under pressure from international groups, the Jewish Agency, an arm of the Israeli government, passed a resolution on Oct. 30 calling for a "satisfactory approach to the issue of prayer at the Western Wall."
At the service in November, six women were arrested. Then, on Dec. 14, four more were detained for defying the new rules about entering the area with their prayer shawls.
Rachel Cohen Yeshurun, a Canadian immigrant, took out a prayer book and shouted the commandment to wear the garments, only to be led to the police station before the service began. She was followed by two teenagers from Britain and Rabbi Elyse D. Frishman of New Jersey, the editor of a popular Reform prayer book.
Sharon Gretz Strater, 27, a student from California, wept at the prospect of giving up the shawl her mother wove for her Bat Mitzvah, but relented. Haberman, who said that her shawl was designed by her five children, two of whom are serving in the Israeli army, would not, but after several minutes of tearful argument, she managed to get through.
"They made me take an oath and swear that I wouldn't take out my tallit and tefillin," she said, referring to the shawl and the leather boxes containing prayers that she wears daily, as men are commanded to. "It's unbelievable that this is what we're calling our police to do."
A half-hour later, Haberman was dancing and singing hymns in the women's section of the Western Wall, tears replaced by a grin of what she called "ecstasy." Soon after, she and the others were at Robinson's Arch, wrapped in their shawls as they read from the Torah. | <urn:uuid:02534658-dd1f-4e4a-b92c-803e4af98ed7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/nyt/19040101_A_divide_over_prayer_at_a_sacred_site.html?id=184604531 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974086 | 1,807 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Part of Anderson County is no longer under a boil water notice that started Tuesday.
The Anderson Regional Joint Water System was making planned improvements to the Interstate 85 area and the east side of the transmission main system, leading to the warning.
The Joint Water System advised the residents of Big Creek Water District and the Town of Williamston to vigorously boil their water for at least one minute prior to human consumption.
According to the Joint Water System it is no longer necessary to vigorously boil their water.
For more information, call 864-226-9676, or go to: www.arjwater.com. | <urn:uuid:1aa2dcb9-831d-410c-b1ef-1dea3aa38b3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wyff4.com/news/local-news/anderson-news/Boil-water-advisory-lifted-for-affected-communities/-/9654706/19362644/-/cd6djqz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943573 | 125 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Order in nature tends to break down; the same is true of civilizations. As an analyst, I find this immutable law both frightening and palpable. Decay will proceed — the only question is at what pace and whether it can be denied.
Fortunately, it can be slowed and even prevented when a country has the will to do so.
America’s dominance is waning. We have to get over the shock that our technologies are no longer absolutely superior, our arsenal without peer, our ability to influence world affairs without question. Some will argue with this view. Let’s examine the facts.
The Chinese Navy has 283 ships, roughly the same as the U.S. More worrying is the quality of the ships. The latest generation, the Type 052D, is an Aegis-class air-defense destroyer that carries equivalent capabilities to our own — phased-array radar, anti-air, anti-ship and land attack capabilities. Its adaptable and modular vertical launch system is the largest and some say most sophisticated in the world. On our end, we seem to be struggling to perfect the mission modules for our latest design, the littoral combat ship.
The Chinese have flown the J-20, a fifth-generation fighter jet with a configuration that suggests a superior range, maneuverability and weapons payload to both the F-22 and F-35. The Russians are not far behind with the T-50.
Other examples can be found in cybersecurity, anti-access, missile technology, counter-stealth technology, even industrial policy.
The world is unstable and getting worse. The Middle East is in flames, at least metaphorically. China is causing tremendous angst in the South and East China seas. Almost daily incursions into Japanese territorial space and other provocations with Taiwan and other neighbors are changing the way we think about China’s “rise.”
Japan has elected a new prime minister who argues the nation should abandon its post-World War II pacifist constitution and its purely defensive posture. U.S. foes North Korea and Iran are still there, but with longer-range ballistic missiles and either existing or imminent nuclear weapons.
Of equal concern is our willingness to fund our way of life. The average American has become woefully insensitive to the nature of the world we live in. Our lives revolve around iPhones, flat-screen TVs and Super Slurpees. We take the short view, and our allies seem to be following us. What happened to American self-determination?
In the waning days of World War II, the U.S. spent 37 percent of GDP on defense; during the Korean conflict, the equivalent was 15 percent. During Vietnam and the Cold War, it hovered around 10 percent. During the post-9/11 wars, it never got much above 5 percent.
Today, excluding costs associated with overseas operations, we sit at 3.6 percent. After sequestration, it will be 2.9 percent — less than Algeria, Angola, Armenia and Azerbaijan (those are just the countries starting with the letter A).
Just because we are bringing our troops home doesn’t mean the problem has gone away. The 9/11 attack may seem a distant event, but many state and nonstate actors actively plan our demise.
An effective cyberattack could shut down the U.S. financial system or electric grid for weeks. Some estimates put casualties in the thousands if the grid collapses for a prolonged period during the winter. Spending 10 percent of GDP on defense is no longer politically palatable, but 4 percent seems more reasonable than 2.9 percent, given the threats we face.
I understand that money does not grow on trees. With almost $17 trillion in debt, we can’t keep playing by the same rules. I’m not advocating cutting entitlement programs so we can buy more arms; that’s a poor choice. So here’s a different idea.
The U.S. Army and the other services have Facebook pages with hundreds of thousands of followers. If nothing else, Americans are patriotic. While much of the world does not relish U.S. leadership, as soon as we pull back from places like Palestine, there are loud protestations over our absence. We need to invest in our world view; that means maintaining a quantitative and qualitative edge over those who would do us or our friends harm. But we must do so without increasing our debt or gutting social programs.
After 9/11, the Treasury issued Patriot Bonds. Average citizens buying these bonds enjoyed a reasonable yield while contributing to the nation’s recovery, but the money flowed into the Treasury’s general fund, so there was no guarantee of how the dollars were spent.
I propose establishing a “Freedom Recapitalization Bond,” with the proceeds going directly to the Pentagon. They would still increase overall government debt, but it would be held by Americans, and perhaps some patriots might even agree to zero-interest bonds or charitable contributions if they knew where the money was going.
Christmas is a time of giving. Perhaps we should re-evaluate what’s important and how we can slow the inexorable decay of capabilities in the absence of investment. War bonds once played a role in helping us overcome huge challenges. Their time may have come again. Without constant vigilance, military capabilities fall into disrepair or obsolescence. Ignorance and indifference have the same effect — erosion and decay.
John Walker, who leads the Defense Industries practice at Navigant and is a leading research-and-development portfolio analyst. | <urn:uuid:f67ee02c-3992-4c01-97b4-4f39be6c9a3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defensenews.com/article/20121209/DEFFEAT05/312090005/Everything-Decays?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CTopics%7Cp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941519 | 1,148 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The Cost of Incomplete
The Cost of Incomplete
Here comes the checklist: Firewall, got it. IPS, got it. SIEM, got it. DDoS protection, I think I got it. Endpoint protection, got it. And so goes this list. The space between those words is where you get hit.
A recent article from the ABA Banking Journal shines a light on this subject and the growing idea that there needs to be a sea change in how we approach security. Because the fabric that underpins all of the technology on which we have come to rely is so “ordered,” it has been the belief that structured models could be used to address the evolving security concerns that have arisen from the adoption of new technologies. But, just like in “The Matrix,” the technology has turned on us. DDoS attacks and APTs are examples of how structured models are costing users and companies billions each year. Let’s look at what needs to change.
Information. Vis-à-vis one very popular model, layered security, we see a model that is necessary in many respects but can fail to inform properly. That is partly because the component parts tend to be proprietary and it is costly to have enough of them in the right places to let you know when something bad is happening. Remember, too, that it’s not enough to have the data, analysis also has to be performed to discover the threat.
One area of the above referenced article where I encourage caution is the section entitled, “Layer It On.” Following the advice in that section is a good idea in general, but only to a point. What is missing in this section is the idea that we must still be able to see what’s happening within the network when one of the structured layers of defense fails. On top of layered defenses, we need solutions that provide network visibility and intelligence so that we can make sure our security tools are working, and still detect attacks when they don’t. Most enterprises already have this capability in the form of NetFlow, which can turn ho-hum devices like routers and switches into security information points.
By collecting and analyzing NetFlow with advanced solutions like Lancope’s StealthWatch System, organizations can fill in the gaps left by conventional security controls. StealthWatch augments layered security strategies by delivering a more complete picture of network activities and security events. By leveraging the often forgotten, ho-hum devices on the network, the system can identify potential concerns before they become problems – helping organizations avoid the high cost of an incomplete security strategy.
For further information on NetFlow for security, go to: http://www.lancope.com/solutions/security-operations/.Tweet
TAGS network security, network visibility | <urn:uuid:ee091cdc-6dcb-4806-8f9b-d61cde7bc9d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lancope.com/blog/cost-of-incomplete/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952941 | 574 | 1.75 | 2 |
Licences > Security steward certification
District Police Departments
Security steward certification
The duty of security stewards is to maintain order and security and to prevent crime and accidents at the event or site for which they have been appointed as security stewards. Security stewards may be employed, for example, at public meetings or events organised under the Assembly Act, at hotels or restaurants under the Act on Accommodation and Food Service Operations, on campsites under the Outdoor Recreation Act and on passenger ships under the Seamen’s Act.
Under the Public Order Act and with the permission of the police, security stewards may also be appointed to assist the police in maintaining order and security at shopping centres, public transport stations or on public transport. However, such assignments can be performed only by people who are employed by guarding services suppliers and have valid certification to act both as a security steward and guard.
People of the age of 18 years or over whose personal characteristics make them suitable for the job and who have undergone the training specified by the Ministry of the Interior may be certified as security stewards. The length of the basic training is 32 hours or at least four days. To renew their certification, security stewards must complete an 8-hour-long refresher course specified by the Ministry of the Interior. In addition to the basic and refresher training, security stewards may be required to undergo further forcible means training, which lasts for 12 hours, and, in order to carry gas sprays, to satisfactorily complete special forcible means training lasting a minimum of 11 hours.
Training for security stewards is arranged by the local police, certain vocational institutions and such parties on whose behalf persons with valid security steward trainer certification issued by the Ministry of the Interior work as trainers. A list of certified security steward trainers is available in Finnish on the website of the Security Sector Supervision Unit at www.poliisi.fi/tavy
Participation in the basic and further training requires that the person has passed a written theory test and any necessary skills test to demonstrate professional competence in practice. The police may also require the organiser of the event to familiarise its security stewards with any special issues or facilities at the event location.
If, as a part of his or her work duties, a security steward carries a gas spray, he or she must undergo gas spray training identical to the one completed by guards. Starting 1 March 2011, it comprises a general module with a minimum of six lessons (1 October 2002 to 28 February 2011 the duration of the general module was 4 lessons) and user training consisting of at least of five lessons. Only persons authorised by the Police College or the National Police Board are allowed to act as trainers in the courses.
Security steward certification is granted for a maximum of five years at a time by the local police department of the applicant’s municipality of residence. Applications for certification can be submitted to any local police department but they must be submitted in person.
When applying for security steward certification, the applicant must provide
Back | Print page | <urn:uuid:6512e5a6-c969-4133-9860-c01f9ffe70ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.polamk.fi/poliisi/home.nsf/pages/8BA4B88FB7178D42C22573480026F76A?opendocument | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951976 | 621 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Here goes a phrase I didn’t think I'd say anytime soon: The economy is weak, but housing remains a bright spot.
That's according to Fannie Mae's July economic and housing outlook report.
"Despite signs of deteriorating momentum for economic activity, housing continues to be a bright spot as news from the housing market has been relatively upbeat, presenting a rare upside boost to the economy," says Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae chief economist.
Consumers are spending less, and consumer confidence has reached one of the lowest levels this year. The job market is still terrible, and the European debt crisis remains a concern, Fannie's report says. Believe it or not, the silver lining is the housing market.
Home sales and construction of new single-family homes will continue to increase this year, according to Fannie's forecast: "We expect housing starts to rise by 22 percent and total home sales to increase by 9 percent in 2012. Home prices for 2012 overall are now projected to be above last year’s depressed levels, compared with a slight decline in the previous forecast."
Potential homebuyers also are more optimistic about the market.
From the report:
The share of consumers who say they would buy if they were going to move increased by 6 percentage points to the highest level seen in the survey’s two-year history. At the same time, 35 percent of respondents believe that home prices will go up in the next 12 months, with an average rise of 2 percent -- also the highest level recorded since the survey began in June 2010.
But the situation isn't rosy for everyone, especially for homeowners who live in areas where home prices continue to decline.
Home prices are still falling in about half of 1,166 counties for which CoreLogic reports overall house price indexes, according to a post on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's blog, called Liberty Street Economics.
From the blog:
"Roughly half of the counties have measured house prices that are still declining, while half have stable-to-rising prices," the post reads. "In contrast, at the height of the housing market crash, more than 75 percent of the counties were experiencing falling house prices."
What's the housing market like in your area?
Follow me on Twitter @Polyanad. | <urn:uuid:2bcfe12f-3434-411e-8c8c-cee8aab4a75b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bankrate.com/financing/mortgages/bright-spot-in-dark-economy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969289 | 476 | 1.648438 | 2 |
THE DECISION last week by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar ends a long and difficult chapter in the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. controversy and puts us at the start of the next one. We all can influence what direction this story takes next.
The six of us, whose sympathies lie on both sides of the Drakes Bay Oyster issue, believe the West Marin community badly needs reconciliation. None of us, in our decades in West Marin, has seen any issue create such deep rifts in the community as the five years of painful strife over Drakes Bay Oyster Company. This issue has hurt the good working relationships, built in the 1970s and '80s, between those who emphasize local food production and those who emphasize preservation values in the National Seashore. The wounds of the strife between these two worthy perspectives need healing.
We knew before Salazar's decision that, whatever the decision might be, one side would be hurt, angry and extremely disappointed. We want to acknowledge the grief that the Lunny family, their employees and the many ardent supporters of Drakes Bay Oyster Co. are going through. This is a time for the community to offer understanding and compassion — to listen and look for ways to offer support — to all those whose deeply held values have been contradicted and whose livelihoods have been affected by this ruling.
Healing may be a very long way off, but perhaps some steps in that
Jared Huffman, our newly elected congressman, is in a unique position. He knows West Marin from his six years representing us in the Legislature, and he is not identified with either side in the issue. He has followed the arguments on both sides, he has witnessed the fallout from the conflict, and he is willing to help heal the rifts if we ask him.
We know that many people in West Marin cared about the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. issue but remained silent because they felt there was no room for civil discourse. They were inclined to doubt the worst that each side said of the other. Now is the time to create openings for those people to speak up and be heard.
It will be hard for those who were the most passionate to bring us back together. Surely the people who made the strongest statements did so out of their best intentions, but the result was a gulf that open discussions have not yet been able to bridge. The strength of feelings, the nature of the battle, will make it harder for everyone to shake hands afterward. Those who can reach out to the other side — with sincerity — will earn the gratitude of the community.
How we manage the aftermath of this conflict and what we can learn from it will affect the strength of shared community in West Marin well into the future.
Those wishing to associate themselves with opinions in this column can to www.drakesbayhealing.org
Nancy Bertelsen, former psychotherapist, writer and community organizer, first moved to West Marin 39 years ago. Steve Costa and Kate Levinson, 16-year residents of Inverness, own Point Reyes Books. Burr Heneman, co-founder of Commonweal, was a member of the federal Citizens Advisory Commission for Point Reyes National Seashore and moved to Bolinas in 1971. Michael Mery isa native of West Marin who has worked with many community organizations. Claire Peaslee, naturalist and writer, has been a resident of West Marin since 1980. | <urn:uuid:edab1f21-3e75-4a34-9bc0-75f14a6b2591> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_22132912?source=pkg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970462 | 699 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The site of a new high school in The Ponds was unveiled on Wednesday but no one expects the institution to be a silver bullet solution to the strain from population growth.
The school will be built at the corner of Riverbank and Ridgeline drives and is expected to be ready for students by semester one 2015.
But The Ponds, Kellyville Ridge, the Alex Avenue Precinct and Stanhope Gardens are booming and more schools are needed to meet demand, parents say.
Tiffany Brooks, who lives in The Ponds, had campaigned for a high school to be built in the area for about four years.
She was ‘‘pleased’’ the state government had committed to build the new school but said it would come too late to benefit both her sons.
‘‘It’s good for all the young families in the area,’’ she said.
‘‘(But) I would have been more pleased if it was built some time ago.
‘‘I have an older son going into high school now.’’
Mrs Brooks’ sons have attended John Palmer Public School in The Ponds and her eldest is moving into year 7 at Glenwood High School this year.
If The Ponds High School is built on time, her eldest boy will be in year 9 and may not want, or be able, to change schools.
Glenwood High has borne the brunt of the influx of high school students in the region over the past five years.
It is the main public high school to service Kellyville Ridge, Stanhope Gardens, The Ponds, Glenwood, Parklea, Kings Langley and Kings Park.
Quakers Hill and Kellyville high schools are the next closest.
Riverstone MP Kevin Conolly said the area was also in desperate need of a new primary school and he would lobby the education minister for a commitment to that this year.
‘‘They’re (schools) bursting,’’ he said, ‘‘They’re very full and we absolutely know how much pressure there is on local schools.’’
Mr Conolly said the new high school would have 52 teachers and capacity for 1100 students.
The project is currently in the design phase with statutory approval expected early this year.
The department expects to call for tenders in the first half of 2013 and begin construction by the end of 2013.
■A forecast compiled by The Ponds resident Tony Brooks estimates Glenwood High School would have 1897 students by the time a new high school is complete.
■Premier Barry O’Farrell ‘‘fast-tracked’’ 10,000 new homes in The Ponds in April 2011.
■Government plans include 6300 homes, with 18,000 people, and two new schools in the Alex Avenue precinct of Riverstone.
■9000 new homes, 27,000 residents, three new primary schools and a new K-12 school are scheduled for Riverstone. | <urn:uuid:9ae54f80-71e1-487b-acab-6506fab72a4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blacktownsun.com.au/story/1258327/new-schools-needed-in-northwest-growth-area/?src=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969797 | 640 | 1.585938 | 2 |
A new survey shows that a lot of consumers who buy netbooks may be dissatisfied with their purchases. Clearly, PC makers and retailers need to do a better job explaining the differences in capabilities between netbooks and regular laptops to consumers.
Today, contract manufacturer Foxconn joined an alliance whose members seek to make ultra-low-cost PCs. The alliance members, which include chipmaker Via, plan to put out netbooks as well as laptops. And that's bad news for companies like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer.
Bloomberg Businessweek writers Peter Burrows, Cliff Edwards, Olga Kharif, Aaron Ricadela, and Douglas MacMillan, dig behind the headlines to analyze what’s really happening throughout the world of technology. Tech Beat covers everything from tech bellwethers like Apple, Google, and Intel and emerging new leaders such as Facebook to new technologies, trends, and controversies. | <urn:uuid:6942ca0a-7e8f-4012-933a-c67780dee679> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/articles/netbooks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937639 | 187 | 1.601563 | 2 |
[originally published on the ACT Blog]
Over the past few weeks an online debate has been brewing between antitrust scholars over the FTC case against Intel. The focus of the debate has been the FTC’s decision to pursue most of its case using its Section 5 authority to prevent “unfair and deceptive” practices, rather than its Section 2 authority for combating anti-competitive behavior.
The discussion began with a piece by Bob Litan, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department in the Clinton Administration, entitled “The FTC’s Radical Application of Section 5.” As the title suggests, Litan has some serious concerns about the FTC’s case in general and its application of Section 5. It’s a pretty compelling piece that I recommend to all you antitrust geeks, but if you’re short on time/attention span I’ll try to summarize.
Litan believes (like we do) that the FTC has a pretty difficult case to make, given that:
- The levels of innovation and price cutting from the semiconductor industry are unparalleled by any other industry (see our paper on Exponential Innovation)
- The FTC seeks to prevent Intel’s above-cost discounting of chips, a practice that Supreme Court has regularly defended and cautioned against regulatory interference of such pro-competitive activities.
Therefore, he argues:
The FTC apparently seeks to avoid proving harm to competition under the established standards of Section 2 because the causal link between the conduct it challenges and any conceivable harm to competition is weak. At a minimum, therefore, the relief sought by the FTC should reflect the tenuous connection between the conduct it challenges and the potential for harm to competition.
Yet, the FTC is pursuing pretty heavy-handed remedies.
Litan then goes on to make make compelling cases for how the FTC’s proposed remedies transform Intel into a regulated utility, which could actually raise prices, reduce innovation, and create “a radical and sweeping re-interpretation of this nation’s antitrust laws, with potentially grave implications for private incentives to innovate and compete.”
Enter David Balto, former policy director of the FTC and current Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Balto has been consistently supportive of the FTC’s case against Intel and took issue with the Litan’s reading http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/balto_ftc_intel.html of the situation. He argues:
These predictions of doom are exaggerated and misplaced. The reality is far more straightforward.
Balto argues that three different foreign antitrust authorities have charged Intel with anticompetitive conduct, and Intel’s conduct effectively limited consumer choice through its “rebate schemes.” Balto goes on to cover familiar territory by summarizing the arguments made the FTC and other antitrust regulators, and suggesting that Litan’s fears are far outweighed by the potential damage Intel could inflict on competition in the future, especially in the GPU market. He summarizes his points with:
The FTC’s action is perhaps most important for its focus on dynamic competition. Innovation is central to the growth of the U.S. economy. Exclusionary conduct that dampens innovation extracts a significant cost on the economy.
However, Balto never really addresses Litan’s concerns about the application of Section 5 in this case, but argues that the use of Section 5 authority is not radical and is in fact warranted in this case. While he does say that the FTC’s Section 2 case could stand on its own, Balto actually confirms Litan’s thesis that the FTC pursued the Section 5 claim to free itself from the bar of demonstrable consumer harm.
Section 5 enables the FTC to go beyond narrow competition concerns. As the Supreme Court has held in FTC v. Sperry & Hutchinson Co., 405 U.S. 233 (1972), “like a court of equity, the Commission may consider public values beyond simply those enshrined in the letter or encompassed in the spirit of the antitrust laws.”
Perhaps his most compelling argument for the use of Section 5 authority is the speed at which the administrative courts can reach a decision, but that is a double-edged sword. Acting quickly can help the FTC address concerns before market opportunities are closed, but it can also magnify the cost of mistaken action as well. In the end, however, this was not one of Balto’s more compelling arguments for regulatory activism.
It wasn’t long before Geoff Manne of Lewis & Clark Law School offered his own rebuttal to the rebuttal. On the Truth on the Market blog, Manne posted an article entitled “David Balto (and the FTC) gets it woefully wrong on Intel <http://www.truthonthemarket.com/2010/04/14/david-balto-and-the-ftc-gets-it-woefully-wrong-on-intel/ .”
Manne highlights many of the failings of Balto’s piece.
- He notes that Balto’s reliance on decisions by three foreign commission as evidence of Intel’s liability is misleading at best, given that “it is well-accepted that conviction by a party acting as judge, jury and prosecutor is less than decisive.” This is doubly true given that the FTC is pursuing conduct that the other jurisdictions never even looked at.
- He also notes that, despite Balto’s assertion, none of the other Commission’s provided any evidence or specific conclusions that Intel’s conduct led to higher prices.
On Section 5, Manne provides his most effective rebuke of Balto, however. Manne notes that Balto is completely dismissive of error costs concerns (such as those made by Litan) because of his certainty that agencies “don’t err in the cases they bring-only in the cases they don’t bring.” He then takes on Balto’s argument that the use of Section 5 is critical to ensuring “dynamic competition”
Balto finishes by praising the FTC’s focus on dynamic competition and by comparing the case to the DOJ’s Microsoft case–as if to highlight how perfectly off-base his assessment is. The DOJ and the courts in Microsoft were so forward looking that they dismissed the threat to Microsoft from Linux and didn’t even realize that there was a threat from Google. Larry Lessig has announced that he “Blew It on Microsoft <http://webmonkey.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/posts.html?pg=6> ” for failing to appreciate the dynamic market. This case by the FTC is built on theoretical models of speculative harms and against copious evidence of present-day benefits to consumers. If this is how the agency focuses on “dynamic” competition, count me out.
The debate (online and offline) over the FTC’s case and the use of Section 5 will certainly rage on, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the FTC’s case is anything but a slam dunk. | <urn:uuid:a129e4a8-f580-4d8b-b478-422e66913393> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://actonline.org/antitrust-blog/category/topics/rebates-topics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951351 | 1,501 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Jon R. Godsall The tangled web - a life of
Matador, 2008, 576 pp £ 8.99. ISBN: 978-1906510-428
For more than 20 years Jon Godsall studied documented evidence on the many faceted life of Richard Burton - soldier, explorer, traveller, scholar, linguist, anthropologist, swordsman and copious author. Taking his title from the poem of Burton's The Kasidah1, in 2008 Godsall published his work with Matador, the self-publishers.
With 429 pages of text with extensive notes, comprehensive bibliographic data and an author index, this book incorporates the known facts on Burton. There are also 16 pages of illustrations and 4 very good maps, made by the author, of the main explorations.
Although much is already published on Burton, Godsall unearthed interesting previously unknown data which is to be seen here for the first time. This included Foreign Office documents relating to Burton's consular activities and material held in the Royal Asiatic Society, in particular correspondence in the Oscar Eckenstein Collection between Eckenstein and Burton's first bibliographer N. M. Penzer. New material came to light when in 1981 Godsall enjoyed a meeting with Mrs. Dorothy Flemming - great-niece of Isabel Burton. Present day descendents of Burton also provided useful leads. Making good use of these encounters, Godsall has managed to draw the past and the present closer together.
Godsall’s overall style is factual. He examines events about and sayings of Burton and questions their truthfulness and offers his own interpretations. By looking at things from the stance that 'The biographer does not trust his witnesses living or dead'2, Godsall turned the nature of The Tangled Web into a biographical enquiry.
Burton had a larger than life, many sided personality and countless achievements. While in no way demeaning these achievements, Godsall looks at the contradictions between published facts and what he thinks really was the case. He challenges the authenticity of the accepted finer details surrounding Burton's life. For example, Burton maintained that he passed his Arabic exam but there is evidence that he did not - although in itself this matters little, bearing in mind the superlative annotated translations of The Arabian Nights and other works that he made.
A controversial figure, Burton was not shy to write about things which were taboo at the time. There are certain ambiguities surrounding his interest in sex, both from his former liaisons with women, his marriage to Isabel Arundell and his writings on male sexuality. The latter date back to his early time in the army in India when Burton, being the only available British officer who could speak Sindi, was given the job of reporting on the situation of male brothels in Karachi. In this context Godsall brings in the work of the biographer Fawn Brodie in her book The Devil Drives. He makes damning criticism of what he sees as Brodie's incorrect analysis and misrepresentations of the situation, which have been accepted by later biographers.
An interesting point can be construed about first edition of Burton’s book First Footsteps in East Africa. Appendix 4 of that book talked about female circumcision and, even though it was written in Latin to try and avoid a problem with the censors, it was not included by the publisher when it came out in 1856. However, Fawn Brodie did find and purchase what she thought was a unique copy with 2 pages bound into it of the Appendix IV. This she made available to Gordon Waterfield who included it as Appendix 2 of his 1966, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London publication. From text and notes in The Tangled Web the pieces of this jigsaw can be fitted together. Two pages out of four of the original Appendix IV can be seen on the Burtoniana website.
In 1861 Isabel Arundell and Richard Burton were married after a courtship of several years. Theirs may seem an unlikely match coming as they did from different social planes and with widely differing views on religion. Sometimes it may look as if Isabel was dominated by her husband and certainly she did all she could that he asked of her, but she always maintained her own strong opinions. Godsall is not the only biographer to condemn Isabel's burning, shortly after his death, of many of Richard Burton's unpublished writings and other documents - in particular his translation of The Scented Garden. Some detail is given about Isabel's repulsion of some papers of K.H. Ulrichs's (pseudonym 'Numa Numantius') Memnon with its treatment of homosexual love which would have been included at the head of The Scented Garden if it had reached publication.
Little further information appears in this work on three well researched areas of Burton's pilgrimage to Mecca, his journey to the forbidden city of Harar, previously unvisited by Europeans, or his search with Speke for the Nile. Several biographers, Godsall included, report being attracted to the life of Burton after seeing the BBC Series of 1971 on the 'Search for the Nile'. Unfortunately this does not appear to have been released by the BBC although many people would like to see it.
The Tangled Web encompasses a vast area and includes a great deal of biographical data. While reading, it helps to continually appreciate the text both from close range, for fine detail, and from a wider perspective, to follow the broad overall picture of Burton's life. The references to the many notes are shown numerically by Chapter Number at the end of the text of the book. For checking out these notes, it would have been helpful to the reader if the written title headings at the top of each page of text had included the Chapter Number too, as is often the custom when there are copious notes.
This study will be a most useful tool for any wanting to know about the life of Richard Burton, not only for its perspective per se but also the successful way it has introduced leads to other available biographical data. It is significant that it was chosen as Book of the Month by Geographical, the Royal Geographical Society's own magazine, for its February 2009 issue.
9 July 2009
. R. F. Burton, The Kasidah, Canto VI, stanza iv
As palace mirror'd in the stream
as vapour mingled in the skies
So weaves the brain of mortal man
the tangled web of Truth and Lies
. P.M. Kendall, The Art of Biography, London 1965 p. 22 | <urn:uuid:e94f22a8-1693-4bb7-87ee-3d4c7cddf875> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.burtoniana.org/biography/2008-Godsall/ReviewLadizesky.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971133 | 1,353 | 1.75 | 2 |
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- The euro area's economy is showing modest signs of improvement, as new figures Wednesday indicated more consumer optimism and steadier bank finances. Weak demand for bank loans, however, made it clear the recovery was still some way off.
The European Union's economic sentiment indicator, which mixes business and consumer outlooks, rose by 1.4 points in January to 89.2 for the 17 EU countries that use the euro. It was the third straight monthly increase. The jump was fed by increased confidence among consumers and from businesses in the construction and service sectors of the economy.
Meanwhile, sentiment in industry and the retail trade remained broadly flat.
The survey is one hopeful sign as the eurozone struggles to get out of a recession that saw its economy shrink in the second and third quarters of 2012. A drawn-out crisis over too much government debt is weighing on growth as countries cut back on spending to reduce their deficits.
Nonetheless, the sentiment indicator remains well below its long term average of 100 for 1999-2012. And much of the improvement in consumer sentiment came from just one country, Germany.
The data mean that the eurozone probably bottomed out in October and that "growth prospects are brightening, " IHS Global Insight analyst Howard Archer said. Still, he said it "remains to be seen to what extent and how quickly this will feed through to boost eurozone economic activity.
The European Central Bank expects the economy to shrink 0.3 percent throughout the course of 2013, but to make a modest recovery later on in the year.
Bank lending data from the ECB confirmed Wednesday that the recovery remains a ways off. Its quarterly lending survey, released Wednesday showed a "pronounced net decline" in business loan demand in the last three months of last year. The main reason: Companies are not seeing a need to finance new fixed investment such as buildings and machinery, a key component of any economic recovery.
The survey also shows banks continue to tighten credit standards.
The ECB survey of senior loan officers at 131 banks indicated that the banking system is on a steadier footing. Banks are now reporting better access to funds from deposits and borrowing.
Banks, key to growth as suppliers of credit, were hit hard during the eurozone debt crisis by losses on government bonds. This made it harder for them to borrow from other banks and bond investors due to fears they might not pay the money back.
Banks are also facing regulators' demands to hold back more money as a financial buffer against losses. These requirements can also mean less money available to lend out.
Eurozone financial markets have been more stable since the ECB offered to buy bonds issued by indebted countries in the secondary market if those countries promise to reduce their deficits. That offer has lowered government borrowing costs although no bonds have actually been bought.
The improvement on stock and bond markets, however, has yet to be seen in the wider economy.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
She can sing, but can she act? Jewel takes on a famous role.
Star-studded event raises millions for AIDS research. (Photos)
Morgan Freeman can't stay awake during a TV interview. (Video)
The Galapagos Islands are now just a click away. (Photos) | <urn:uuid:163e7296-dca9-4b8d-88fa-7b1197c8cc18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtop.com/628/3211693/Economic-data-shows-eurozone-steadier-still-weak | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96783 | 685 | 1.617188 | 2 |
My books are among one of my most prized possessions. I love to read, just about anything from the silly and childish to the tear jerking and latest craze. So I have (finally--I know, I know) put together this super-duper easy Book Cover tutorial, that any level
sewer seamstress can do, for any size book, hey you can even hand stitch it!
-Outer fabric (I used canvas)
-Inner fabric (I used cotton)
-Lightweight fusible interfacing
-Brown or butcher paper
-Trim's (lace, buttons, rickrack) optional
-1/4" seams where used thruout.
Cut out (or piece together) a piece of paper larger than your book, height and width wise.
Wrap paper around your book, crease and mark the edges with a pencil.
Now, you are going to add your seam and inner flap allowances.I added 1/2" to the top and bottom, and 2 1/2" to each side (for inner flap). Use your ruler to make your pattern nice and straight! Now using your pattern, cut one out of your outer fabric, as well as one of your inner (lining) fabric. And since we do not want a floppy book cover, take your fusible interfacing, and press it onto the backside of each of your fabrics.
And now, the fun part! Here is where you can go either really creative, or just stay a plain Jane. This owl and mushroom print is one of my all time favorites, so I only added a bit of rickrack. However, the possibilities are pretty much endless. You can use a plain linen as your outer fabric, and use all sorts of different sized buttons, vintage lace, embroidered flowers, among other things to decorate your book cover. If you are a Sudoku/crossword fanatic, and are making a cover for one of those books, you can make a small slip pocket, to hold your pen or pencil on the outside!
So I attached my bright cherry red rickrack in place. Pretty, pretty.
And now, with right sides together, stitch around the cover, but be sure and leave a opening wide enough for your to turn the cover inside out (but you knew that already!). I used 1/4" seams!!!!
Having the cover turned right side out, take some scissors (slightly blunt) and, gently push from the inside of cover, make sure your corners are nice and squared. I know that they sell corner thingies at fabric shops, but I personally have managed to somehow cut thru fabric using those things, so I refuse point blank to use them. I always use scissors (these right here, as a matter of fact) and have never ripped a seam, or cut thru fabric.
Now,once your cover is nice and squared, press along the edges, paying special attention to the part you left opened, that it is folded nice and even with the rest of the cover. Now take your book, center it on the cover, and press in place your inner flaps.
Having everything pressed in place, stitch around the cover, staying as close to the edge as possible.
Your all done!!!
Doesn't your book look nice and cozy now?What is really great about this book cover, it pretty much is a basic pattern making lesson, where using all the steps, you can make a slip cover for any size book, photo album, or checkbook as well. Feel free to use (non-commercial) and link to this tutorial, and if you make one, please send me some pictures, I would love to see them: [email protected]
While I have made and sold some book covers in my Simbiosis shop in the past, I am currently working on a few more, that will also include a super cute, and matching book mark for you! So stay tuned.
I hope you liked this tutorial, and that it made sense more than anything, lol. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, and I will be more than willing to help you out as much as I can. I hope you have a lovely weekend, Mele and I are actually going down to California for the weekend *doing a silly jig of happiness* so I will be back with more Julie-ness next week. | <urn:uuid:ab021665-b910-43f0-a348-6fb124754d1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://33stitches.blogspot.com/2010/06/book-cover-tutorial-image-heavy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947679 | 916 | 1.625 | 2 |
While descending Lonesome Lake Trail near Franconia Notch in New Hampshire's White Mountains last winter, my friend Phil Plouffe and I edged aside to let a group of snowshoers pass on their way up.
Three or four shuffled by, nodding their heads in appreciation of our small courtesy, but just as we prepared to step back onto the path another ascending handful, and then another, rounded the bend, so Phil and I clambered back onto a rock to wait beneath a canopy of ice-encrusted spruces.
After more than 20 had gone around us we began to feel like car passengers held up at a railroad crossing while a mile-long freight train passed. No matter, though, Phil and I weren't in a hurry and used the break to take off our packs, munch peanuts and brush snow off our parkas.
Finally, the last snowshoer plodded past, and Phil and I resumed our descent.
There was nothing remarkable about encountering other outdoor enthusiasts on the trail, but we observed one detail that would have been unusual not too long ago: About half the snowshoers were women.
These days more women are taking to the outdoors, even in winter, and a growing number of organizations and adventure travel groups are taking advantage of the trend.
A variety of tours and events throughout the Northeast and beyond cater to women looking to snowshoe, cross-country ski, ice climb, camp or hike in the winter woods. Some organized trips are for families, including moms and kids, still others for singles of either gender and others are exclusively for women.
"It's a completely different dynamic when all-women groups are hiking and camping together," said Sally Manikian, an experienced outdoorswoman and backcountry resource conservation manager for the Appalachian Mountain Club in Pinkham Notch, N.H.
Men tend to plan their outings by establishing a leader who reviews the plan, then makes his decision. Women typically reach decisions by consensus, Manikian said.
Either process works, but sometimes women traveling with a mixed-gender group feel pressured to "go along with the guys."
"I can't underestimate the value of women leading women," Manikian said. "One of the benefits of women leading women is that I feel like I don't need to explain myself. Learning from other women, there is an immediate understanding that we are both meant to be there."
Women traveling together in the outdoors are also more comfortable discussing topics such as hygiene on the trail, she added.
I met Manikian a few years ago when she served as winter caretaker of Gray Knob, a tiny cabin nestled at 4,370 feet in the Alpine Zone of New Hampshire's Northern Presidential Range.
I was on a writing assignment to spend a week as a temporary replacement caretaker, and Manikian lingered a couple of days to show me the ropes before she headed down the trail. She led me through a variety of chores: posting daily weather reports relayed from the nearby Mount Washington Observatory, keeping the cabin and outhouse clean and secure, and collecting overnight fees from hikers staying at Gray Knob as well as at Crag Camp, located four-tenths of a mile away down a snow-covered trail on the edge of King Ravine, and at The Perch, a three-sided lean-to seven-tenths of a mile away overlooking Cascade Ravine.
The three buildings, owned and operated by the Randolph Mountain Club, are among several White Mountain camps open in winter to hikers. A few winters ago Manikian noticed an interesting phenomenon at Gray Knob: More than half the guests one night were women.
"I was really psyched," she said.
The caretaker serves as an innkeeper, making visitors feel comfortable, but also keeps track of their whereabouts in case of accidents and medical emergencies on the mountain, where winter winds can roar above 100 mph, temperatures often plunge below zero and snow piles up yards deep.
There are few amenities inside the cabin - because firewood is in such short supply in the Alpine Zone you almost never light the wood stove, so the indoor temperature often dips into the teens.
There's a propane stove for cooking that must be used sparingly; when the tank runs out every month or so the caretaker must carry it down to the road, drive 15 miles to a store, get it filled, return to the trailhead and then haul the 40-pound canister 3.2 miles up a steep, icy trail back to the cabin.
In addition to having served as a caretaker, Manikian, who earned a master's degree in international political theory from the University of Wales, attended law school, worked as a newspaper reporter and drove a team of sled dogs for guests at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods.
In her new job with the AMC, she oversees 15 caretakers at various shelters and hopes more women join the ranks.
Of course, you don't have to be a caretaker or experienced mountaineer to spend a winter night in Gray Knob or in other AMC shelters at Lonesome Lake, Zealand Falls and Carter Notch. All are accessible via relatively easy, well-traveled trails that usually don't require such technical equipment as crampons. The website also describes what kind of gear and food to pack, which varies from hut to hut and season to season.
For many women, and men, simply hiking or skiing to one of these shelters and spending the night is an adventure; others use them as staging grounds for more ambitious hikes into the mountains. | <urn:uuid:239ef189-ca76-4ee0-9cc4-001a30560ec1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shorepublishing.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101201/GRACE02/312019804 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967155 | 1,160 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Lawmakers have reached a compromise on a proposal to create more educational opportunities in eastern Kentucky.
House Speaker Greg Stumbo has been advocating to move the University of Pikeville into the state university system. But that proposal doesn't currently have the support to become reality, which forces supporters to adopt a compromise.
It’s been another busy week in the Kentucky General Assembly. Lawmakers may have reached an agreement on regulating pseudoephedrine, Kentucky Amish might have a new option to a reflective triangle for their buggies and support is waning for University of Pikeville’s bid to become a public university. Kentucky Public Radio Capitol Bureau Chief Kenny Colston speaks with Rick Howlett for some perspective on what’s happening in Frankfort.
A proposal to make the private University of Pikeville a public institution has hit a roadblock in the Kentucky legislature. House Speaker Greg Stumbo conceded Thursday he doesn't think lawmakers will accept a proposal to use millions of dollars from a tax on coal mined in the region to turn the private University of Pikeville into a public school. What started as a seemingly unlikely proposal had gathered momentum early in the legislative session. But that momentum waned in recent weeks, after local officials and public university leaders objected. Former Gov. | <urn:uuid:dd636720-9d8d-42bc-ace1-182eee37d120> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wkms.org/term/university-pikeville?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959432 | 256 | 1.5625 | 2 |
AGA, along with its member utilities, believes that all Americans need to be educated about the importance of the efficient use of energy and conservation – because all have a role to play
Washington, DC – The American Gas Association (AGA) today commended the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) for launching the second phase of the “Anybody Can Serve, So Let’s Conserve” national energy efficiency campaign.
Anybody Can Serve was initiated in January 2009 to coincide annually with the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Building on this successful campaign, NARUC today rolled out the “30-60-90 Day Energy Efficiency Challenge,” a new program designed to demonstrate how families can take simple steps to lower their energy usage, save on utility bills and help clean the environment.
“I am very pleased to be here today partnering with NARUC in the launching of the second phase of its national energy efficiency campaign,” said Rodney Powell, president and chief operating officer of Yankee Gas Services Company, who spoke on behalf of AGA.
As part of the 30-60-90 Day Challenge, low-to-middle income families (families that make $50,000 or less a year) from all over the country compete to see who can conserve the most energy.
“AGA, along with its member utilities, believes that all Americans need to be educated about the importance of the efficient use of energy and conservation – because all have a role to play,” Powell said. “Our campaign theme comes from Dr. King, who, when told what a great man he was, would always reply, ‘Anyone can be great, because anyone can serve.’”
By investing in the efficiency of buildings and appliances, promoting smart energy choices and subsidizing energy-saving efforts for low-income families, America’s natural gas utilities are helping their customers save money and reduce their carbon footprint. In 2008 alone, natural gas utilities budgeted nearly $565 million on energy efficiency programs. In fact, although the number of residential households using natural gas increased from 38 million in 1970 to about 65 million today — an increase of more than 70 percent — residential consumption over that time has remained essentially flat and greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas household have actually declined.
“Policies that promote the direct use of natural gas in homes and businesses are good for the economy, good for the environment and good for the consumer. That’s why AGA is proud to partner with NARUC and other key stakeholders for such a worthy and honorable cause,” Powell concluded. | <urn:uuid:7370a85a-dfdb-4dc0-b8ef-8031d094199b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aga.org/Newsroom/news-releases/2010/Pages/NARUCAGALaunchNewPhase.aspx?PF=1&PF=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951883 | 543 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Throwing unprecedented political weight into legalizing same-sex marriage, the Obama administration on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down California's ban on gay nuptials.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, the administration for the first time stepped into the four-year legal battle over Proposition 8, arguing that the 2008 voter-approved law violates the federal equal protection rights of gay and lesbian couples and does "not substantially further any important government interest."
Although the administration stopped short of asking the Supreme Court to find all state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the legal reasoning, if adopted by the justices, would implicate laws similar to
President Barack Obama already has come out in favor of gay marriage and also has asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the 1996 federal ban on same-sex marriage benefits. But Thursday's legal salvo marked the first time the administration has stood against a state's right to outlaw gay marriage.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on March 26 in the legal challenge to Proposition 8 and consider the federal Defense of Marriage Act the following day. Federal appeals courts have declared both laws unconstitutional.
Gay rights advocates called the president's legal move historic, with San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera noting that no
"The (administration's) arguments, start to finish, would apply to other states," said Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer for California couples challenging Proposition 8.
ProtectMarriage.com, the group defending Proposition 8, called the president's legal move "hardly surprising, but nevertheless troubling," and took him to task for interfering with state marriage laws when his position was different in the past.
"The president has impugned the motives and actions of millions of Californians" who voted for Proposition 8, said Andy Pugno, the group's lawyer.
Lawyers for same-sex couples had lobbied the administration to side with their cause, while backers of the gay marriage ban pressed White House officials to stay out of the case.
The federal government did not take a position in the three previous Supreme Court cases that are considered at the heart of the gay marriage legal fight, including its two most recent gay rights decisions in 1996 and 2003 and the 1967 case that ended state bans on interracial marriages. But having taken a position in the federal gay marriage case, legal experts say, the administration may have decided it could not stay out of the Proposition 8 challenge.
"They were in a bit of a bind," said Brad Joondeph, a Santa Clara University law professor who clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
The government's brief took a strident position that the Supreme Court should apply the strictest anti-discrimination standards to the marriage rights of same-sex couples.
Administration lawyers stressed that California and seven other states that do not allow gay marriage provide equal benefits to same-sex domestic partners. That, they said, undermines Proposition 8 supporters who argue the law is needed to preserve traditional marriage.
"It indicates that Proposition 8's withholding of the designation of marriage is not based on an interest in promoting responsible procreation and child rearing ... but instead on impermissible prejudice," wrote U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
A host of other groups on Thursday filed legal briefs asking the Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, including dozens of prominent Republicans who say such bans violate the equal protection rights of gay and lesbian couples. In a separate brief, 13 states and the District of Columbia submitted arguments against Proposition 8. California's brief on Wednesday urged the justices to uphold last year's lower court ruling declaring the gay marriage ban unconstitutional.
Legal experts have mixed opinions on how much such friend-of-the-court briefs sway the Supreme Court, but the justices often pay close attention to the federal government's arguments. Vikram Amar, a UC Davis law professor who clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, said that while the solicitor general's views are always important, the administration's arguments in a politically charged case such as Proposition 8 are unlikely to turn the tide.
"I don't think it hurts," he said. "But if the bottom line question is whether it would make the difference in the case, I don't know about that."
In January, dozens of groups filed briefs supporting Proposition 8, including 20 states that ban same-sex marriage. They argue that California voters had a right to define marriage and that the Supreme Court should not intervene in the political debate.
Despite the Obama administration's arguments, the Supreme Court does not necessarily have to address the most sweeping legal questions in the Proposition 8 case. The justices can limit the scope of the ruling to California, or for now sidestep the issue of a state ban on same-sex marriage.
Howard Mintz covers legal affairs. Contact him at 408-286-0236 or follow him at Twitter.com/hmintz | <urn:uuid:0ca1118d-3d2f-476e-a69e-fd6f0324ba98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.willitsnews.com/nonregional/ci_22694008/president-obama-calls-u-s-supreme-court-strike | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948207 | 998 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Where is California headed in 2013?
To hear Gov. Jerry Brown tell it, the answer lies in references to the Book of Genesis, the legacy of the Golden State's pioneers, and the Little Engine That Could... just to name a few.
"This is my eleventh year in the job and I have never been more excited," said Brown as he wrapped up Thursday morning's State of the State, a speech lasting around 25 minutes.
The governor used his now familiar speaking style, a mix of details and dreaming, to make the case that the Golden State has turned the corner.
"Governing never ends," said Brown. "We have promises to keep."
The speech was full of specific ideas -- an affirmation of his intent to run a tight fiscal ship of state, a defense of his education plan to loosen the state's mandates and focus more money on the students with the greatest needs.
(Classic Brown: "Lay the Ten Commandments next to the California education code and you will see how far we have diverged in approach and in content from that which forms the basis of our legal system.")
His greatest applause line seemed to come during the education comments, in his insistence that the cost of a college degree in California must not continue to rise.
"I'm not going to let the students become the default financiers of our colleges and universities," he boomed into the Assembly dais microphone over the applause of legislators and guests.
But the third State of the State of his third term as governor showed Brown, who will be 75 in April, as a politician more keenly aware of the long arc of history than ever before. His defense of high speed rail and a Delta water solution was largely a plea for lawmakers to step back and see the bigger picture.
On water, the governor tried to point out the relatively cheap cost of his proposal for habitat restoration and a pair of underground, peripheral tunnels.
"The London Olympics lasted a short while and cost $14 billion, about the same cost as this project," he said. "But this project will serve California for hundreds of years."
And on high speed rail, it was the reference to the children's story of the Little Engine That Could -- an apparent adlib, as it wasn't in the prepared remarks handed out by his office.
The classic story that teaches perseverance to kids seemed to fit not just the train, but Brown's view on fixing what's been wrong with California.
"I think I can, I think I can," said Brown. "And over the mountain, the little engine went. And we're going to get over that mountain." | <urn:uuid:3dbc67f2-237e-4397-8095-ea2b98d0e623> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news10.net/news/california/article/226688/430/Brown-waxes-historic-cheers-progress-in-State-of-the-State | 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 | 0.97632 | 541 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Polk State: Degrees Already Affordable
Published: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 1:35 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 1:35 a.m.
LAKELAND | Polk State College President Eileen Holden said Monday that Gov. Rick Scott's "challenge" to offer a $10,000 program for a four-year degree is more like a cake walk for her school.
Scott's challenge was addressed to state colleges, not universities. PSC, however, isn't one of the schools that accepted it.
That's because PSC is already highly affordable, Holden said.
"Here at Polk State, we are already delivering the best value in the region we serve," she said in a prepared statement. "We are very proud of our current price-point and the quality that we deliver for area students."
Scott called on state colleges to make it possible for students to spend $10,000 to obtain degrees in fields that best lead to jobs. He also challenged them to reduce the amount of student-loan debt needed to get an education.
PSC currently has accredited bachelor's degrees that cost students less than $14,000, she said. That's without factoring in money saved through dual enrollment credits, Bright Futures scholarships, Pell grants and other financial aid.
The school's four-year degrees are: bachelor of applied science in supervision and management, bachelor of science in nursing and bachelor of science in criminal justice.
No exact numbers were available Monday, but Holden said most students end up paying "significantly" less than $14,000 for those degrees.
Graduating with a burden of student debt is not a problem for most PSC students, she said.
"I agree with him (Scott) that student-loan debt is a big problem," she said, "and I'm proud that it isn't a problem at our institution."
More than 90 percent of PSC's graduates walk away with diplomas without such debt, Holden said.
"That says a lot about the affordability of a degree at Polk State and about the contribution we are making to the local economy," she said.
"Those students bring a degree to the workforce, and they do so without being burdened by the massive loan debts that so many other recent college graduates carry."
They also get jobs, Holden said.
Newly released data from the Florida Department of Education shows PSC led the state in preparing students to fill workforce needs.
The numbers showed 87 percent of the school's students who completed programs designed to lead to jobs in 2009-10 found employment within months.
PSC's rate of graduate employment ranked higher than the other 27 Florida College System institutions, according to FDOE.
"I share the governor's commitment to keeping costs low for students, and I look forward to working with him to identify practical funding models for higher education that do not compromise on the levels of quality Florida's citizens have a right to expect," she said.
The college has more than 12,000 students enrolled in courses for credit.
Since opening in 1964, more than 30,000 degrees have been awarded by the school.
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:d9f127a8-73fe-43de-a60f-ac74f2bcc95f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theledger.com/article/20121127/NEWS/121129427/0/TOPIC0404 | 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 | 0.973549 | 680 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Bert Weiss (Courtesy Q100 The Bert Show)
ATLANTA -- On Thursday, one of Atlanta's most popular radio show hosts dropped a bombshell on his listeners admitting to his listeners that, on the weekends, he has a problem with alcohol.
According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse, as many as 43% of adult men and 29% of women admit to binge drinking at least once a year. Dr. Carmen Martinez with DeKalb Addiction Clinic says binge drinking amounts to nearly 20% of all alcohol related problems. She says because of its social nature, the problem is much easier to deny.
"They fail to see the negative consequences that they have in that person's life. And those negative consequences may not be evident," she said. "So when we refer to a 'functioning alcohol,' it's a person who can go about their everyday life without having direct evidence of a problem," said Martinez.
Weiss noticed his issue and he knew he needed to address it.
"I've got two kids now, I've got a 10 year old and a 5 year old, who I'm just getting more present to -- I just want to be a role model to them when they're not around," Weiss told 11Alive.
Bert decided to come forward with the information about his addiction because on the Bert Show he said "We preach that we're real every single day, and if I have something this monumental going on in my life and I'm not sharing it -- I don't think that's authentic at all."
Weiss spoke about his battle on the air Thursday; he said he realized he had a problem after meeting with his former therapist.
Although Bert is afraid because he doesn't know what the future holds for his social life as he knows it, he's still ready to face the future and plans to continue on with the Bert Show.
You can send Bert a message of support below.
He posted this message on the Bert Show's webpage Thursday:
Admitting My Dysfunctional Relationship With Alcohol:
I don't know what you'd call my drinking. I know that I'm not ready to call myself an alcoholic. But I also know that my relationship with alcohol is VERY dysfunctional. I don't drink every day. I don't drink during the week. I can go weeks without a drink. I never crave alcohol. I didn't even like the taste of alcohol. I've never been so hung over that I've missed a day of work or an event or an important engagement. I can be at dinner with my wife and friends and have no problem having a drink or two. I can drink wine with my wife and stop at a glass.
My problem is the party. The bar. The event. The guys' night out. I can't put a governor on my drinking. Once I get buzzed I put my foot on the accelerator. I act foolish. Do stupid things that are barely acceptable for freshmen in college. I used to be the life of the party when I drank. Recently, I only get mad at myself while I'm drunk for allowing myself to get to this state. I can't avoid putting myself in situations in which I'm going to binge drink. In fact, I purposely put myself in situations in which I know I'm going to binge drink.
For years I've laughed about my binge drinking. I was always the guy pushing shots and overindulgence on everybody in the group. I've built a social life around alcohol. My definition of fun starts with alcohol.
Ok, so the more I'm writing, the more I'm realize that I'm gonna eventually have to come to terms with the word "alcoholic." I've always thought of the alcoholic as the person who wakes up in the morning, rolls over, tips the bottle back and starts his day. The person that NEEDS to have a drink; the person that hides bottles in the drawers of his desk at work; drinks and drives; misses work. That's not me. Maybe there are different categories of alcoholism? I'm just beginning, so I'm clueless about all of this.
All I know is that I'm embarrassed. I feel shame. I'm really scared I can't do this. I'm scared I'm gonna lose friends. I'm scared I'm going to isolate myself in my house for fear of being tempted to turn into that guy again. I'm sad I haven't been able to do this myself. Can I learn to dabble in drinking? Do I have to quit altogether?
I want to be a role model to my kids even when they are not around. When I drink, I'm not that guy. I don't want to waste more Sundays hungover.
I have my first meeting on Sunday.
Here are some resources to help anyone with an alcohol addiction.
Atlanta Alcoholics Anonymous:
24-hr hotline: 404-525-3178
1,100+ meetings in Atlanta every week
Alcoholics Anonymous (nationwide):
Atlanta Recovery Center (any addiction):
24-hr hotline: 877-755-5719
St. Jude's Recovery Center, Inch:
QUIZ: AM I AN ALCOHOLIC?
Send your message of support to Bert Weiss here: | <urn:uuid:7d4e95a1-4575-40d6-b407-eca5a3de5528> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.11alive.com/rss/article/267151/40/Bert-Weiss-admits-to-drinking-problem | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978594 | 1,083 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Gemach to the Rescue
In our Parshat Lech Lecha piece on "Kindness Unlimited" we described the impact of Gemachim upon the community. We here present one of the responses, from Frieda Resnick.
"These Gemachim mean something special to me. One year, erev Pesach, my elderly husband and myself were just getting settled at my daughters home when he realized he had left all his medicine at home. We lived on the other side of the city in Gilo no way to go home and get it. And it was about candle-lighting time. My grandchildren told me about the medicine Gemachim, and two of my granddaughters scoured most of Sanhedria and Sanhedria Murchevet, finding half of his medicine needed for heart, blood pressure and other ailments. One granddaughter returned to the house, and the other kept going to other neighborhoods even after the Pesach seder had begun. She was able to locate all of his medicine, which was really a life-saver. What a wonderful thing that Gemachim exist! And today, at the bris of my great-grandson, I asked my granddaughter where she had gotten the lovely pillow and blanket set that the baby was sleeping on. Guess where from a Gemach! Thank G-d for Gemachim!"
May we suggest that our readers become partners in these wonderful services to the public by investigating which Gemach in Israel they would like to support. | <urn:uuid:6ff9a0d0-a449-49a6-a8ee-03833d0d07b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ohr.edu/this_week/the_human_side_of_the_story/2406 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97855 | 305 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Monday 28 March 2011
over the Holzape. The name of the railroad is Carlsbahn, but no train goes there any longer. It was build in 1848 and went from Hümme to Bad Karlshafen. In 1986 the railroad was closed forever.
I cycled along the Diemel to Wülmersen (the history of it goes back to the Middle Ages, when the bishop of Paderborn was the owner and gave it to the monks of Helmarshausen), to see the "Wasserschloss" there.
A very nice tour, not too far, quiet along the woodland. The history of the "Wasserschloss", (the name means that it was in former times surrounded by water) one can find in Wikipedia. Interesting as I find it it would be too long for me to repeat it here. And I do not show a photo of the castle, (it was build in the 17th century, gone to ruins and in the last century restored, but eventually I can come back and find a good angle to show it. | <urn:uuid:497bb679-bf74-445b-9fc3-18c4ef6cc905> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1055391 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975392 | 228 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Just a few weeks ago, Google announced the addition of a new analytics dashboard for local business owners. You can only see it if you log into your Google Maps profile, which means you must first claim and verify the Local Business Listing associated with your enterprise.
As people have moved online in their searches for local business information, Google has done a spotty job of providing it. Google Maps has come under criticism for having incomplete and inaccurate local business data. Ideally, every local business owner would claim, verify, and enhance information about their enterprise within Google Maps, serving to make the data much more trustworthy and up to date.
A couple of summers ago, Maps began a program to help with this by offering a few bucks to anyone who could get retailers and service providers to sign up for Local Business Listings. I don't have the numbers on this. Since it was discontinued, I suspect it was not very successful.
It appears that Google's main motivation behind its new analytics dashboard is to entice more business owners to claim their listings. However, aggressive intervention to control the worst of the spammers is needed, as well. It's difficult to get people to play by the rules when competitors are gaining an unfair advantage by obviously thumbing their noses at them.
Maps' new dashboard is similar to others we have seen from some online yellow pages, profile distribution services, and private enterprise solutions. The statistics it provides are rather basic and simple to understand:
It's very likely that Google will continue to add useful features to its dashboard, similar to the way it's expanded the value of Webmaster Tools over the years.
Google's official blog post and video introducing the dashboard offer some suggestions as to how businesses might use what they learn from the dashboard. Resourceful entrepreneurs will undoubtedly find other ways to leverage it to their advantage.
Owners also gain other advantages by claiming their Local Business Listings. They are likely to get a bit of a boost in the Maps algorithm by providing this indicator of trust to Google. They are also assured that they are controlling the information displayed about their business, rather than leaving that up to someone else.
People seeking local business information are very likely to be in a buying mindset, but until now, it has been impossible to show business owners any meaningful data on this. As a marketer, I find the new dashboard's greatest value to be the way I can use it to visually impress local business owners with the impact that search is having on their bottom line.
We've always said that people were searching online and buying offline. This data gives us a way to prove it. Few people are likely to ask for driving directions unless they are serious about getting in their vehicle and going to the location. With enough numbers about different cities and niches, we may eventually be able to come up with some meaningful metrics to use for benchmarking the impact of local online search independent of what happens on a company's Web site.
What About Profile Distribution Services?
Go ahead and use one of the profile distribution services designed for local businesses. It will feed your data out to many places across the Web that you may not have the time to attend to manually. Most of the local platforms they push to will send you a bit of traffic and, when considered all together, they may send a nice chunk of targeted visitors to your Web site and/or your location.
Profile services make it easy to update your information in these places, as well, and will probably give you a few more citations that can help you to rank better in Maps. However, these should only be used to supplement your local efforts and not be your main avenue for local search marketing. In other words, don't just pay your money, build a profile, and call it done. Most of you still need to do the work of managing your own profiles in Google Maps and Yahoo Local. This is where most people are searching for you, so it's definitely worthwhile to put in the effort to get it right.
Mary Bowling has been involved in all aspects of online marketing since 2003. She has a special interest in Web site usability and in search engine optimization, including optimizing all types of media for search engines. Mary has also developed specialized expertise in promoting brick-and-mortar businesses on the Internet through local search marketing. She is currently doing independent consulting and working with seOverflow and Maia Internet Consulting in Denver, CO, optimizing and marketing a wide variety of businesses and nonprofits online.
Her accomplishments include speaking at Search Marketing Expo and Search Engine Strategies conferences on a variety of topics, conducting trainings and webinars for Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Workshops, authoring popular white papers on local search and SEO for WordPress Blogs and speaking at SEMpx' s Searchfest.
May 22, 2013
1:00pm ET / 10:00am PT
June 5, 2013
1:00pm ET / 10:00am PT | <urn:uuid:119c0540-ec34-4c9d-a78f-fb51f80c5ad8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1703743/google-maps-dashboard-boost-local-businesses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965539 | 1,003 | 1.570313 | 2 |
I am writing this letter in response to the article Nobel changes, community adapts (December 19 North Star). Specifically I feel the need to address the statement in that article which asserts that, “students will not be affected all that badly” and “that the population just isn’t there” (to sustain Nobel School). The statement that “enrollment continues to decline” is false.
Enrollment across the entire Near North District School Board is declining, but here in the Western part of the board, enrollment has been up at every school for the past two years except for Victory School.
The projected size of next year’s Kindergarten class in Nobel is 30 students. This is despite the fact that parents know there is a very real possibility that the school may close in the fall of 2014. As well, several new students have joined the school this fall, and several more will be joining the school in the New Year. It is unfortunate that the researcher of this article chose to speak to community members who do not or no longer have children in the community.
Nobel School does serve as the community centre for many residents in the area.
The Early Years Program operates a centre out of the school, the playground offers a park-like setting, volunteers dedicate time to the students, and the school is used after hours for sporting clubs and events.
McDougall township officials chose to build an arena beside the school with the intention that the Nobel school community and village could make best use of that facility. With the highway diverted out of the heart of Nobel, businesses have been forced to close, but as stated in the article, Nobel has now become a much safer and desirable place to live.
The newly built McDougall Recreation Centre has become a popular meeting place for shuffleboard, basketball, ball hockey, air cadets, birthday parties, cross country ski club for dry land training, rollerblading, fitness classes and of course hockey and skating.
The fitness trail through the village, the public golf course, the boat launch access to Georgian Bay and the beautiful public beach with nightly swimming lessons in the summer months, all make Nobel a great place to raise a family It has only been two years since the highway has moved and several new homes are being built in the area and younger couples are moving into the older homes.
Families are seeing the benefit of living in a semi-rural area, which offers affordable homes with large yards and close proximity to all the amenities in the town of Parry Sound. Having a school in the neighbourhood is a large attraction to families.
There is a very real feeling of community at Nobel school, which provides an important sense of belonging and security to students and families. By closing the school, we are indeed ripping out the heart of a community, which is just beginning to adjust to many infrastructure and socio-demographic changes. By closing the school, students will be adversely affected.
They will be losing a community centre and a sense of neighbourhood. To close Nobel School at this time is short sighted and fails to consider the growth potential of this area.
We need to stop looking at the school as simply a place to educate the kids. We have not even begun to think creatively about how the school space can be shared and used in a multipurpose way.
We still have an opportunity to consider alternatives in the forthcoming Accommodation Review Committee proceedings.
As the headline of your article states, Nobel is adapting, but it does not mean we are dying. | <urn:uuid:2c6eb4e9-a811-477d-89e9-fd107749a5de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cottagecountrynow.ca/community/parrysound/article/1558806 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966609 | 725 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Commissioner Clyburn Remarks at the Benjamin Hooks Institute
Opening Remarks of Commissioner Mignon L. Clyburn2012 Annual Civil Rights and Human Rights Conference
Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change
University of Memphis, Tennessee
April 20, 2012
Thank you, Dr. Rezaee, for that gracious introduction. I am delighted to share the stage with Ms.
Melanie Hudson, whose organization, Children's Health Forum, seeks to prevent and eradicate
diabetes, asthma, lead poisoning, and HIV/AIDS, diseases that disproportionately impact children in
It is a distinct honor and privilege to speak at the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change.
This impressive institute deserves praise and special mention for dedicating precious resources
towards the study and promotion of civil rights and social change. By preserving almost 400 boxes of
Dr. Hooks’ papers, it has provided us all with incredible treasures of the life and legacy of an
I would also love to find time to read through the papers of Dr. Hooks’ wife and secretary, Ms.
Frances Dancy Hooks. These papers chronicle her work with organizations such as Children with
Learning Disabilities; and improving the abilities of those with challenges, through enhanced access
to advanced communications services, is one of my top priorities.
But what excites me the most, is that this Institute is much more than an archive of civil rights
history. Its work not only acknowledges the fact that there is much more to do when it comes to
bridging many divides, it is leading the way for change through groundbreaking research, community
service projects, and world class conferences. Through outstanding scholarship and tireless efforts,
you celebrate and truly honor the legacy of an eloquent, strategic, and successful human rights
legend. But what is most significant to me, and those you serve, is that you do what so few others
have the courage, capacity, conviction or heart to do: You apply what you’ve learned, through this
research and study, to proactively improve the state of those communities, most in need.
Dr. Hooks’ Legacy at the FCC
As Daphne mentioned, I am in my third year as a Commissioner at the FCC. So it should come as no
surprise that, in many ways, I consider Dr. Hooks a role model. As a proud daughter of civil rights
advocates, I, like Dr. Hooks, am naturally drawn and committed to serving those communities, whose
interests and issues, are not adequately addressed by the communications industry.
Dr. Hooks was the first African American ever appointed to the Federal Communications
Commission, and I am the first African American female to serve. Like Dr. Hooks, I feel a
responsibility to leave a legacy that helps to pave the way for more persons of color to be appointed,
and for a woman to one day chair this agency.
But Dr. Hooks’ most important legacy to me was his brilliance, and the fact that he was a careful
strategist, who believed that we should try to bring all stakeholders -- public officials, and private
corporations -- to the negotiating table. Yet, he knew that while collaboration was a prudent and
effective way to overcome the most difficult of challenges, in the absence of consensus, he was never
fearful of federal regulation.
And the results of his strategy were game changing.
When Dr. Hooks was named to the FCC in 1972, African Americans owned a mere 14 broadcast
radio and TV stations. By the time he left the Commission, in 1977, African Americans owned more
than 200 broadcast stations.
But as important as media ownership is, Dr. Hooks did not stop there. He challenged the
communications industry to hire more African Americans, called for local programming to serve the
needs of all local communities, and urged the media industry to present more positive images of
people of color on the air.
He was also tremendously successful, at improving diversity from within. In 1972, only three percent
of FCC employees were African Americans, and they were generally relegated to low-paying
positions. By the time he left, African Americans made up about 11 percent of the employee
population, and his influence paved the way for qualified attorneys, and other specialists, to more
fully contribute to this communications landscape.
Dr. Hooks’ Lessons Remain Relevant Today
Now when you consider the fact that Dr. Hooks served on the FCC, from 1972 to 1977, you might
conclude that the current state of affairs and our present day policy issues would be very different.
For, during his tenure, broadcast radio and over the air TV were the most advanced technologies by
which most Americans used to receive their news and information. Cable TV was just beginning to
deploy nationwide, and HBO started providing commercial service in 1972.
It was a very different time, in that if you wanted to communicate with someone in another area, you
either mailed a letter or made an extremely quick and incredibly expensive long distance call, over a
wire line network, for there were no commercial Internet service providers and there was no
commercial mobile service.
Today, there are scores of platforms for which Americans receive their news and information, and use
to keep in touch, and as a result, there are more technologies for the Commission to regulate. And
today, the entire world is fixated on wireless. Despite this incredible pace of change, however, the
primary responsibility of an FCC Commissioner remains the same. We still apply Congressional
mandates that are set forth in the Communications Act. And we still strive to reach the best and most
balanced decisions, in order to serve the public interest.
You may have guessed that I would affirm, that many of the policy challenges Dr. Hooks was faced
with still exist today. He and I spoke briefly over the phone, about the lack of diversity in ownership
of broadcast radio and TV properties, and how in the current climate-both politically and legally-
there seemed to be few options and limited means to make things better.
A 2007 study conducted by the media advocacy group, Free Press, found that while people of color
comprise 34 percent of the U.S. population, they owned just 3.15 percent of full-power commercial
television stations. And while women made up around 51 percent of the population, they owned less
than six percent of the TV stations. The Minority Media Telecommunications Council reported that,
according to the FCC's Consolidated Database System, the percentage of stations that are minority
owned, declined from 7.78% in 2007, to 7.24% in 2009, and is presently falling rapidly.
But perhaps what is just as striking, if you noticed, is the fact that the data I just referred to, was from
Free Press and MMTC, not the FCC.
For years, I am sad to say, our agency failed to collect sufficient data on the state of diversity, or lack
thereof, when it comes to commercial media ownership. Just why is this noteworthy? Other than
having a full picture on the state of the industries we regulate, if it is ever concluded, that there is a
nexus between station ownership, and the provisioning of critical news and information to vulnerable
or underserved communities, then the only way for us to sustainably address those voids, would be
with sound and solid data. But there is some good news to report. I am happy that at long last, we are
well on our way in this regard, and it is my hope, that the record will be populated with the data
needed to make sound, universally beneficial decisions, for us all.
I wish I had great news, however, when it comes to workforce diversity. Staggering imbalances
remain, when it comes to senior and leadership positions in the communications and technology
space. Only one in four communications jobs created between 1990 and 2005, were filled by women,
and among communications companies in the Fortune 500, women comprise just 15 percent of top
If there is any place, where the benefits of full inclusion and economic and workplace parity should
be organic, where the strength, and majestic beauty that makes our nation so envied by the rest of the
world, should be reflected in all of its glory, it is in our media, technology, and telecommunications
companies, at all levels, including inside of the C-Suites and on their governing boards.
Companies that ensure that their best, most talented and diverse talent is recognized, mentored,
sponsored and promoted equitably, are more profitable, and score the highest on employee evaluation
reports. So, I have begun collaborating with others, who are focused on these efforts, to bring
additional thought, advocacy, and results, when it comes to workplace equity.
Why is this so important to me you might ask? The 37 year-old words of Commissioner Hooks make
it more plain:
“With all due respect to the fine Black entertainers, and the splendid Black athletes, who certainly
deserve all of the limelight they get....there should be room for other Blacks as well-room for the
Black educators, the ghetto youth leaders, the social and civic, religious and political leaders, who are
doing a yeoman’s job, in attempting to train young Blacks, in the face of pervasive racism and
Too often, the headlines of today don’t cover a broad enough range of personal and professional
accomplishments within our communities. Despite the fact that there is an African American in the
White House, there is still not enough coverage of those sacrifices and victories that so many other
people of color have made, in order to become successful in fields, other than sports and
entertainment. And all too often, because of the absence of those types of stories being told, many of
us -- especially our youth -- fail to realize just how sweet the rewards of hard work really are. What
is rarely seen, is how delayed gratification on one end, can reap incredible benefits on the other end.
However, we all know that these rarely aired messages, shown just at the right time in a person’s life,
could be the very spark which lights currently depressed communities.
Today’s Communications Challenge: Broadband Deployment and Adoption
In 2009, one my greatest honors came when I was joined by Dr. Hooks during a Hearing on Digital
Inclusion right here in Memphis. Even though he was clearly weakened by his illness, he accepted
the FCC’s invitation, to take part in an incredible evening event, which attracted some 170 persons at
the National Civil Rights Museum. He spoke of the ability of broadband to lift up all people in the
And in his remarks, he made two important points. First, that broadband is no longer a luxury; it is a
basic necessity. Access to basic broadband has taken the way we experience the world to a whole
new level. It has become the thread that connects modern society. Access to broadband means access
to better education, healthcare, job opportunities, news and information. It can also serve as the great
equalizer, when it comes to entrepreneurship, because I have been told, countless times, that those
biases that seemed to exist when there was face-to-face interaction back a few years ago, are now
virtually eliminated. Because you never see me, and all you know now, is that I am a qualified
vendor delivering to you, a much needed or desired product or service. Period.
At the college, university and even high school level, there is a growing demand for distance learning
and education, for working adults and for children who perform better in non-traditional settings.
Many libraries have extended their collections to include e-libraries and e-books, and other online
services and retailers have established websites for e-commerce.
Forward-thinking entrepreneurs have started investing in Internet startups, forsaking the cost of
operating a physical location. More job seekers now have the ability to search employment listings
and post their resumes electronically because they must, and many of those seeking government
assistance, now have to file and process their applications on-line.
All of this is to say, that exclusion from broadband, would prevent Americans from participating in
the very basic facets, of today’s society. The battle for fairness and equality has extended from
broadcasting to broadband.
The second point that Dr. Hooks made, that night, is that we have to adopt policies to deploy
affordable broadband, and encourage all Americans to adopt broadband. The FCC estimates that 14
to 24 million Americans do not have access to adequate broadband infrastructure, and approximately
100 million Americans do not subscribe to broadband at home.
Even more upsetting is the estimate that only 10% of people living on Tribal lands have access to
broadband due to lack of adequate infrastructure to support extended service.
And the percentage of Americans, that do not adopt broadband, even when it is available to them, is
also disturbing. Only 50% of rural Americans, 35% of the elderly, 42% of people living with
disabilities, 59% of African-Americans, and 49% of Hispanics, have adopted broadband service at
home. And why do these groups choose not to adopt? The top most cited barriers are affordability,
lack of digital literacy, and relevance. Some consumers have to choose between paying for basic
necessities and paying for broadband, while others do not consider broadband important enough to
adopt, as opposed to subscribing to basic cable.
For years, the government has been tiptoeing around implementing any long-term solutions to this
problem. That changed when President Obama was elected and Congress passed the Recovery Act.
From that came the mandate that the FCC deliver a National Broadband Plan, which was released in
March of 2010.
The Plan made a number of recommendations to extend broadband coverage to underserved
communities, while promoting adoption of the technology by addressing barriers to entry. Since its
release, the FCC has been focused on implementing those recommendations.
Dr. Hooks would be pleased to know that the manner in which the FCC prepared the Plan, and is
implementing its recommendations, comes right out of his policy playbook. There must be
collaboration with all public and private stakeholders in order to develop a consensus to promote
wider broadband deployment and adoption.
Through a public-private partnership called Connect-To- Compete, FCC Chairman Genachowski’s
staff persuaded key cable companies, to offer all eligible families for $9.95 per month, high speed
internet with a no installation/activation fee option and no modem rental fees. Several non-profit
organizations and private companies have also volunteered to offer digital literacy training. But we
did not stop there.
In the Communications Act, Congress directed the FCC to adopt policies that would make “available
... to all the people of the United States ... a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and
radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.” The policies that the
FCC implemented to meet this statutory obligation, is known as the Universal Service Fund Program,
which ensured affordable, wide-spread basic telephone service, to over 98% of this nation.
One of the most important recommendations, in the National Broadband Plan, is that we reform this
Program, so that it addresses the universal service challenge of our time -- namely, to ensure that all
Americans have access to broadband.
In October 2011, we adopted the Connect America Order, to make those much needed reforms. We
also adopted an express universal service principle that universal service fund support should be
invested in broadband-capable networks. We also set goals for the Fund to preserve and advance
voice and broadband services to American homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions.
The reforms in the new Connect America Fund are designed to facilitate the acceleration of
broadband build-out, to the approximately 18 million Americans living in rural areas who currently
have no access to a robust broadband infrastructure.
That Order, for the first time, recognized the growing importance of mobile broadband, by making it
an independent universal service objective. We implemented a Mobility Fund that will provide up to
$300 million to accelerate deployment of networks for mobile voice and broadband services, in
unserved areas in the first phase, and then provide ongoing support in Phase II, of up to $500 million
annually, where mobile service would not otherwise be offered.
In arriving at these reforms to the USF program, the FCC sought input from as wide a range of parties
as possible. The staff held over 400 meetings with the industry and consumer advocates and
reviewed over 2,700 comments. The reforms include a number of proposals from several relevant
Since I am sharing the dais with a distinguished leader in health care, I should also mention that the
Commission has been collaborating with health care providers, through its Rural Health Care Primary
Program, since 1997. And in 2010, the FCC provided $85 million through this program, to more than
3,000 health care providers for telecommunications services and for Internet access services.
It is impossible to overstate the positive influence that Dr. Hooks had through his work at the FCC.
He not only dramatically improved the state of diversity in the communications industry, but helped
to pave the way for me. He also showed me how much can be achieved through collaboration, and
for that and more, I am eternally grateful. Thank you again for allowing me to present these opening
remarks. I look forward to your questions.
Note: We are currently transitioning our documents into web compatible formats for easier reading. We have done our best to supply this content to you in a presentable form, but there may be some formatting issues while we improve the technology. The original version of the document is available as a PDF, Word Document, or as plain text. | <urn:uuid:0ff4ce5b-680a-4d68-8eb3-824ee2bc7de5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fcc.gov/document/commissioner-clyburn-remarks-benjamin-hooks-institute | 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 | 0.956041 | 3,768 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society. What man has made, man can change.
Frederick Moore Vinson (1890 - 1953)
Source: Speech at Arlington National Cemetery, Memorial Day, 1945
Contributed by: Zaady
The problems we face are human problems and therefore are capable of human solutions.
Copyright © 2013 Gaiam, Inc. | <urn:uuid:9fe0d19c-890f-48af-a8b4-f31c63bb64f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/frederick-moore-vinson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962101 | 96 | 1.796875 | 2 |
TOP STORY>>Police on the alert for shoplifters
Leader staff writer
Wal-Mart’s recent decision not to prosecute first-time shoplifters between the ages of 18 and 65 for taking merchandise less than $25 is supposed to help the Bentonville-based big-box store concentrate anti-crime efforts on organized theft rings.
Critics say the company is trying to save labor costs and reduce criticism from police departments about a high number of shoplifting calls.
Sgt. Brent Lucas of the Cabot Police Department estimates officers respond to shoplifters at the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Rockwood Dr. at least once a week.
“I don’t think the new policy is going to make much difference,” Lucas told The Leader.
When he was a patrolman, Lucas saw shoplifters take everything from electronics to hair coloring kits.
“The few dollars people think they’re ‘saving’ by stealing is nothing compared to the thousands of dollars in fines if they get caught,” Lucas said.
Locally, a co-manager for Wal-Mart Supercenter in Jacksonville declined comment but referred The Leader to the home office’s public information office.
Marisa Bluestone, spokesperson for Wal-Mart, told The Leader that the shoplifting plan was implemented “a few months back.”
Bluestone also indicated that Wal-Mart is not giving thieves a green light, though.
“Everyone (who dabbles in shoplifting) will still be more likely to be busted here than anywhere else,” Bluestone explained. “We’re pretty good at catching thieves.”
Capt. Charley Jenkins, public information officer for the Jacksonville Police Department, was unaware of the Wal-Mart’s policy change in dealing with shoplifters.
Jenkins said he had not heard of any official notification and the store was not required to give any.
“It’s their decision, but when we get a call for service, we will answer it,” Jenkins said.
This past weekend, the Jack-sonville police station did not have incident or arrest reports involving shoplifting activities at the Wal-Mart Supercenter on John Harden Drive.
“Probably, Wal-Mart has the lion’s share of it (shoplifting),” Jenkins said. He estimated the number of shoplifting incidents at the local Wal-Mart Supercenter at more than 50 percent of those in other stores in Jacksonville.
Two attributes of the store may also contribute to the amount of activity.
“One factor is they are the largest store in town, and it’s the only 24-hour store we have,” Jenkins said.
A portion of an official statement from Wal-Mart states, “To be clear, we will continue to prosecute shoplifters to the full extent of the law. We are putting our prosecution policies in line with other retailers and reducing the burden on local police…”
“We’re concentrating our resources on organized theft rings and high-dollar losses,” Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley told the Associated Press. “It simply is not efficient to prosecute most petty shoplifters at the expense of those high-dollar items.” | <urn:uuid:ffcaa1a4-fe68-43dd-88ed-2a6258188263> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.arkansasleader.com/2006/07/top-storypolice-on-alert-for.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947224 | 691 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Here is a little spiritual cognitive therapy. There are a couple of ways of thinking that can prevent us from having a proper trust in God. The first is if we forget that we are born into a spiritual hospital; indeed, a spiritual ICU. So, we can expect things to look pretty ugly at times. That is why M. Scott Peck began The Road Less Traveled with the line, “Life is difficult.” If we think it is going to be easier than it really is, then we will often be disappointed and get mad at God and stop trusting him. We live in a vale of tears.
On the other hand, we also know that the therapy will be successful so long as we do not consciously and intentionally resist it.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. (Is. 55:10-11)
The second way of thinking that can trip us up is to think that God is just waiting there for us to make some little error so he can zap us, as if we are walking on spiritual eggshells—just balanced on the precipice of damnation. This is especially a trap for those who have had an earthly father that is that way (and I have at times been that kind of father). God’s mercy is much greater than his wrath, which only lasts for a little bit, but his mercy endures forever.
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger for ever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor requite us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father pities his children,
so the LORD pities those who fear him. (Ps. 103:8-13) | <urn:uuid:cc21b007-38e1-470a-a9e7-9e6bfe34975d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.robertgotcher.blogspot.com/2007_03_18_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976333 | 495 | 1.5 | 2 |
News, Rankings and Reports on Utah
This publication reveals the state of the Utah economy and the plans of the new Governor as he takes control after the resignation of Governor Jon Huntsman to become Ambassador to China. Governor Herbert, among other things, proclaims economic development, education and energy security his highest priorities.
The study evaluates and ranks states based on 33 factors including taxes, human resources, right-to-work legislation, energy costs, infrastructure spending, workers compensation laws, economic incentive programs and state economic development efforts.
Rankings are based on publicly available data that includes 40 different measures of competitiveness. States receive points in each metric, which are then separated into 10 broad categories: cost of doing business, work force, quality of life , economy, transportation and infrastructure, technology and innovation, education, business friendliness, access to capita and cost of living.
PUBLICATION: Money Magazine
Four Utah towns made Money magazine's latest list of the 100 best places to live in the United States. These towns included Farmington, Bountiful. Lindon and Draper.
The top performing states keep taxes, spending, and regulatory burdens low, while the biggest losers in the book tend to share similar policies of high tax rates, unsustainable spending and regulation.
PUBLICATION: Milken Institute
The Milken Institute measures the stock of capable entrepreneurs and risk capital available to support the conversion of research into commercially viable technology products and services.
PUBLICATION: Deseret News
Utah's strong job creation has helped keep the state out of some of the economic doldrums facing the nation, according to a report released by the Milken Institute.
PUBLICATION: The Economist
NOBODY knows quite how the contagion that broke out in Wall Street will affect the rest of America, nor how deep or how long the likely recession will be. What is certain is that some places will suffer more than others. So far Utah, a state best-known for Mormonism and pretty rocks, is looking unusually healthy.
Forbes rankings measure states on six main areas of importance: business costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. | <urn:uuid:e652be4e-ce65-41fc-a951-e261086b9667> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://siliconslopes.com/article/utah-articles | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938445 | 443 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Delphin TopMessage Data Acquisition and Control System
CHESTERLAND OH—August 15, 2011
CAS DataLoggers recently provided the data acquisition solution for Twin-Tec, a German developer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly products and technologies for reducing exhaust emissions, including a wide range of diesel particulate filters and catalytic converters for automotive applications. TwinTec was heavily involved in producing products for retrofitting and upgrading already approved vehicles as well as corresponding replacement products. In Germany, the government encouraged all owners through financial incentives to retrofit their filters since many old vehicles had no diesel particulate filtration. Many German automobile owners became interested in adding a particulate filter to their exhaust system in order to protect the environment and benefit from the reduced vehicle emission taxes. Twin-Tec was therefore developing many different retrofit filters for many different brands. Each filter required testing on the road under typical driving conditions to determine filter efficiency—however, virtually every new filter also required a new design due to the wide variety of exhaust systems and their varying temperature and pressure operating levels. During test drives, the filter temperature, pressure, engine speed, idle times, vehicle position and speed all needed to be measured accurately and reliably to ensure that the filter met all required standards. In order to record all the test data, Twin-Tec needed a sophisticated data acquisition device capable of extreme accuracy and fast signal processing and that could capture the wide range of data required in the tests.
Twin-Tec installed a Delphin TopMessage Data Acquisition and Control System with ADVT and DIOT modules in combination with a GPS sensor to record measurement data from the filters in tandem with vehicle position information. The whole system was installed in a small weatherproof enclosure and its sensors were interfaced to the enclosure through special connectors. During the test drive, all test data was recorded on the TopMessage’s internal memory. Engine RPM was recorded through a separate speed meter (DAB 500 from AVL) which was providing TTL pulse output. The pulses were then recorded by the counter and inputs of the DIOT module. The live data was visualized through a mimic interface using ProfiSignal Basic software.
The TopMessage featured 2 slots for analog, digital input, or output cards, as well as an Ethernet interface and CANbus for expansion modules. The analog inputs could be attached to RTD sensors, thermocouples, volt or 20 mA signals, enabling any physical value to be acquired. The measurement data was saved as scaled and linearized to the device, and scaling was pre-configured for all current thermocouple and RTD sensor types. The high measurement accuracy, up to a 24-bit resolution, enabled high-precision measurements without need for any signal amplification. Additionally, the device processed any signal quickly and reliably from just a few thermocouples right up to thousands of measurement points spread over several plant areas. The data acquisition device also featured screw terminal connections and up to 1 GB of local memory. The TopMessage also offered powerful alarm and programming capabilities to allow the device to process measurements and initiate actions on its own. The TopMessage could be used for local data acquisition and logging when connected to a PC; for remote unattended data collection connected to the internet; or as a stand-alone device.
In order to record the vehicle speed and direction, a special NEMA driver for a GPS sensor was developed. This driver was interfaced to the TopMessage through serial RS232 port. A separate COM channel was created for the GPS information like speed, direction, altitude, etc, and all the data was stored directly on the 1 GB TopMessage data logger memory. After the test drive was finished, all the data was analysed with the ProfiSignal software included free with the TopMessage. This user-friendly software provided for the acquisition of measurement, control and test data as well as functions for archiving, analysis, operation and monitoring. It was also possible to convert the GPS data into a KLM file which could be loaded by Google Earth to plot various measurement channels like vehicle speed, filter temperature or pressure of position or engine speed.
Twin-Tec benefitted immediately from installing the Delphin TopMessage data acquisition system in its diesel particulate filter testing program. Filter temperature, pressure, engine speed, idle times, vehicle position and speed were all measured in the test drives using one powerful device. Twin-Tec subsequently used 5 TopMessage systems to more smoothly run the testing. The universal analog inputs made it easy to connect all the temperature and pressure sensors, and engineers found it easy to configure the TopMessage’s ProfiSignal software to show live reading during the test drives. The data acquisition system’s 1 GB internal memory provided storage capacity for several thousand test drive kilometres, and the interface of the GPS sensor also gave Twin-Tec valuable additional information about vehicle speed in combination with engine RPM and particle emission. Additionally, the small and compact size of the TopMessage (200x73x118 mm) made it an ideal fit for installation in the small enclosure. Additionally, internal calculation and logic channels were used to trigger data logging when test conditions were reached.
In the event that Twin-Tec needed to expand the number of channels used, Delphin slave module expansion chassis were also available to expand the TopMessage to a maximum of 1000 hardware/software channels. Up to ten slave devices, each with identical housings and each equipped with two I/O modules, could be attached to a master, with any combination of I/O modules being possible. Check out the TopMessage’s product page here.
For further information on the Delphin TopMessage, additional data acquisition and control systems, or to find the ideal solution for your application-specific needs, contact a CAS Data Logger Applications Analyst at (800) 956-4437 or visit the website at www.DataLoggerInc.com.
CAS DataLoggers, Inc.
12628 Chillicothe Road
Chesterland, Ohio 44026 | <urn:uuid:122c4b57-081e-4f16-86a0-efdf43debcc9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dataacquisition-blog.com/category/diesel-emissions-testing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93861 | 1,241 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Two very different views of Italy slaying
Special to The Seattle Times
British and Italian pressWeb sites of leading Italian and British newspapers that have been following the slaying of Meredith Kercher:
Corriere della Sera (Milan, in English): www.corriere.it/english/
La Stampa (Turin): www.lastampa.it/redazione/default.asp
The Daily Telegraph: www.telegraph.co.uk
The Times of London: www.timesonline.co.uk
Daily Mail: www.dailymail.co.uk
ROME — The brutal Nov. 1 slaying of British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, has been front-page news in Britain and Italy since the story first broke, but the styles of the two nations' media could hardly be less similar.
The British tabloid press, famous for its seminude "page-three girls" and slang-filled headlines, has taken to referring to murder suspect Amanda Knox as "Foxy Knoxy," and has focused on gruesome details of the slaying.
The Italian press, with its often flowery language and sometimes contradictory reporting, simply calls the 20-year-old Seattle native and University of Washington student "L'americana" or by her first name, while concentrating on the minutiae of the ongoing investigation.
Media experts say the differences reflect more than news judgment.
"In every country, the style of the media is a function of the culture," says Paul Smith, a professor of cultural studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and a frequent commentator on media issues. "These styles don't reflect the different cultures, they are an intricate part of them."
While U.S. newspaper coverage of violent tragedies is usually straightforward, fact-driven and focused on major breaks in the story, the British and Italian press in their own way each feast on the tiniest developments.
To wit: On Wednesday, the gore-loving British tabloids reported that remnants of hair were found in Kercher's clutched fists and provided an estimate of the amount of blood she lost before dying.
The process-oriented Italian press, meanwhile, said the first report on forensic evidence was expected today, and that despite the tragedy the city of Perugia has no desire for the University for Foreigners — where Kercher, Knox and Knox's boyfriend and fellow suspect Raffaele Sollecito all studied — to move elsewhere.
Since Knox, her boyfriend and a second man were arrested in connection with the slaying, many photos of the three have appeared in British tabloids — mostly candid shots of them at parties, acting silly, flashing toothy smiles. The photos that have run in the Italian press are generally more solemn, serious shots taken after the slaying.
"I think that British people tend to look at many stories from a personal perspective," says Lucy Beresford, a London psychotherapist, writer and media commentator. "Perhaps they want to know certain things because they may have a daughter about to study abroad and a story like this worries them.
"It is also relevant to note that there is a 24-hour news cycle and a case like this and some others evolves over a long period," she adds.
British reports have often focused on gossip, including conversations Kercher reportedly had with friends about Knox's purported bad habits. For example: Sollecito enjoyed violent comic books with titles like "Blood" and "Mad Psycho"; details of Knox's MySpace.com profile (source of the nickname "Foxy Knoxy"); and gore — how deep the cut across Kercher's throat was, or the "seminude" state she was found in the morning after she was killed.
Italian journalists, on the other hand, are focused on minutiae: the actual time of the death; whether a knife Sollecito owns could have been used to slash Kercher's neck; the origins of a foreign hair found on the head of the third suspect, bar owner Diya "Patrick" Lumumba; and the owner of an unexplained high-heel shoe found in Kercher's room.
Italian newspaper La Stampa on Wednesday ran a series of full-color artist's renderings of how the slaying might have taken place and depicting the crime scene.
Very often, the "facts" reported in some Italian stories change from day to day.
"A problem with Italian media is that it is so competitive that every journalist on a story wants a scoop every day," says Giuseppe Mazzei, a communications professor and commentator with Rome's Sapienza University. "This means they have to focus on smaller and smaller areas and they don't have the time to double- and triple-check information that may just be based on hearsay."
Eric J. Lyman is a freelance writer based in Rome.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company | <urn:uuid:2ae77b78-e722-47bf-b36a-7966a6276cae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20071115&slug=italy15m | 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 | 0.956897 | 1,015 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Firefighter Tom Adams Named New York Daily News Hero of the Month
Firefighter Tom Adams (center, holding the frame) and Chief John Sudnik (center, three stripes on sleeves) with firefighters from Ladder 163.
Saving a man on a very poignant day earned Firefighter Tom Adams from Ladder 163 the honor of being New York Daily News Hero of the Month on July 22.
"This is a very special honor of ours, recognizing the important role our firefighters play in New York," Bill Holiber, CEO of New York Daily News, said during the ceremony at the newspaper's offices in lower Manhattan. "The bravery Tom displayed was extraordinary."
Queens Borough Commander John Sudnik added: "It's not often I can go and spread good news - but someone is alive today because of him. And it happened on a pretty significant day."
The New York Daily News Hero of the Month story.
Firefighter Adams was working at Ladder 163 on June 19 - Father's Day - when they were called to a fire on 44th Avenue in Woodside, Queens, at 4:50 a.m.
He had the can position, a water extinguisher to help them get past the flames and search for victims. He found an unconscious victim, a male in his 40s, about 15 feet inside.
As he was dragging the 200-lbs. man to the door, he said the fire was rolling across the ceiling. He and Firefighter James Pue carried him to the street, where EMS transported him to Elmhurst Hospital.
Yet, what makes the story more emotional is that the rescue occurred on a solemn day for the Department - especially Ladder 163.
On Father's Day 2001, three members of the FDNY were lost in a fire in Queens, including Firefighter John Downing from Ladder 163. And just the day before the fire, Firefighter Adams had taken part in the 10-year Father's Day fire memorial ceremony and met Firefighter Downing's family.
"I was just happy to help any way I could," said Firefighter Adams, a three-year veteran of the FDNY. He thanked his family and all the firefighters who attended the ceremony: "You've all molded me to be who I am today and I'm a firefighter because of all of you, so thank you." | <urn:uuid:3118d51d-50ad-45de-9579-c6016b5f7892> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/events/2011/072211b.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973852 | 477 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Tragedy's Other High Price|
by Dionne Searcey, Newsday
February 4, 2003 — Minutes after Columbia exploded Saturday, postings popped up on Web sites offering for sale, at highly inflated prices, NASA patches, lapel pins and photos tied to the crew who perished.
Bidding was going strong on eBay yesterday as an official mission patch, emblazoned with the names of the seven-member crew, apparently was selling for as high as $100. Museum shops nationwide have been peddling the same patch for under $10. Nearly every shop is sold out now, but the manufacturer has announced plans to produce more.
This dramatic boost in sales of space souvenirs counts as one of the more peculiar responses to tragedies in NASA's space program. Space retailers financially benefited from the 1986 Challenger disaster as well as the deadly Apollo 1 fire during a simulated launch in 1967.
While NASA has explicitly warned that the sale or confiscation of actual debris from the shuttle is illegal, the agency routinely sanctions the retail marketing of trinkets and other common items, even those that have flown in space.
Regulars in this niche market say people purchase mementos to show support for the crew's families and to feel more connected to national tragedies. U.S. flag sales spiked after Sept. 11 for the same reason, they say.
While some good Samaritans were offering to donate proceeds from the sale of their mementos to a fund for the victims' families, others were charging as much as $51 for a T-shirt.
One such sale on eBay elicited a response from an angry bidder: "ihopeyourfamilydiestoo." Many mainstream retailers also find the price-gouging distasteful.
"I would say there are a few people who have bought from us who are the lowest of the low, scavenger scum of the Earth who are trying to turn a profit," said Dayna Steele Justiz, president of Houston's The Space Store and thespacestore.com.
Her privately owned store, located across the street from Johnson Space Center in Houston, is selling the same patches offered at outrageous prices on the Internet for $4.95. Customers have placed so many orders that the store closed yesterday to accommodate them all.
The company that manufactures them, A-B Emblems in Weaverville, N.C., was out of stock yesterday but was firing up machines to make thousands more last night.
"It's sad that people think these are limited," said company vice president Andrew Nagle.
Other, more rare types of mementos connected to Columbia will be sold for hundreds of times their face value, a leading space auctioneer predicted.
Based on prior tragedies, autographs of the astronauts who died will be among the most valuable. Mementoes connected directly to the mission will be worth more than mass-produced ones. Artifacts that flew on previous Columbia missions will be prized.
"You have a disaster such as this, and it jogs everybody's awareness. It's unfortunate but a truism," said Michael Orenstein, president of Aurora Galleries International.
Kim Poor, who runs Novaspace Galleries, a space memorabilia shop in Tuscon, Ariz., said he sold out of his paintings of the Challenger after it exploded.
"I couldn't give the damn things away before that," he said.
Poor plans to donate receipts from his unsigned prints of Columbia to a scholarship fund for the victims' children. Still, he conceded that the tragedy would end up being good for business.
"That's the silver lining, you know?" he said. "It gets people talking about space."
The preceding article appeared in Newsday. It is reprinted here with permission of the author.
back to News
© 1999-2013 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved.
Questions? E-mail [email protected] | <urn:uuid:41a15fe5-5b20-487a-983d-3d09b49c5ec0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://collectspace.com/news/news-020403a.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963128 | 809 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Looking northeast across 4th & Denver at the Akdar Temple Building in 1952. KRMG Radio Station is located on the first floor. The Akdar building was desined by A.C. Fabre who also designed the Minck Building (now the Adams Hotel). To the left is the Dainty Maid Sandwich Store, one of the first sandwich vendors in town.
Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.
Preservation and archiving of this significant Tulsa treasure of photographs and artifacts was made possible through the Tulsa City-County Library and the Tulsa Historical Society and the generosity of Tulsa World/Lorton Family Chester Cadieux the Rotary Club of Tulsa and many other community-minded corporations, institutions and individuals. | <urn:uuid:bec6b4c7-9ebe-402d-9d99-47e167491ede> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cdm15020.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15020coll1/id/1688/rec/6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952835 | 153 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Ready to take your education to the next level? Earning a higher learning degree means you can now access a greater range of career opportunities with the best salary perks. Thanks to the many accredited degree programs made available through YourDegree.com you can actually earn your next degree right from the comfort of your own home.
Explore Your Opportunities
Many students understand the need for higher learning, but aren't sure of which major to declare. E-learning can let you explore your career curiosity without a four year commitment. Suppose you're intrigued by crime scene investigations. Take an introductory forensics class online, and at the end of that course you'll know if going for an online criminal justice degree is for you. If not, you can still use the credits you've earn towards whatever program you settle on.
Affordable and Flexible Options
Whether you're going for an associate's, bachelor's, master's or doctorate degree, you'll quickly find that enrolling in e-learning is a flexible and affordable option. Earn credits around your own work and family schedule while saving money. Take control of your future and live up to your potential with an online degree.
Featured Blog Posts
- Master’s Degree Provides Opportunities For Hygienists
Having a master’s degree can be useful because it will allow them to change their career path and follow some of their personal interests.
- The Differences Between an Associates of Arts and Associates of Applied Science
The one you ultimately choose will depend on a variety of factors, such as whether or not you want to continue with your undergraduate degree or you simply want to start a career as quickly as possible.
- A Second Bachelor’s May Be More Beneficial than a Master’s
Students and recent graduates are always looking for ways to combat the job market. They look for ways to ensure they will have a job when they graduate.
- Certifications to Increase Income for Freelancers
Freelance businesses are one of the fastest growing at home job options. A freelancer works in a variety of fields including writing, editing, virtual assistant niches and affiliate marketing to name a few.
- Focusing on Job Skills with a Master’s Degree
The professional science master’s degree, also known as the PSM, began in 1997. It provided a way quickly equip students with the skills that they would need in science, technology, engineering, and math fields.
- Deciding on a Master’s Degree Program
Choosing the right master’s degree program is one of the crucial points when pursuing an education because it can really determine what your career pathway is going to be like. | <urn:uuid:bbb82c6e-53e6-4772-991d-2e8be0c69200> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yourdegree.com/?aos=7&concentration=98°reeID=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949972 | 551 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Cool! How low resolution? Would the shield itself be able to directly output to a screen without going through the Arduino, too?
Technically, it's all thru the Arduino, since it is making use of a modified version of the TVOut library; the image data itself is stored in a RAM array on the Arduino itself (which means your program can only be so complex - it would be a better bet to have one Arduino acting as the video processor, and a second communicating with it over a serial link to act as the main processing system).
As far as resolution - I can't recall exactly, but if you research those links (and/or contact Nootropic directly - send him a PM, he's on this forum all the time), you should figure it out (192 x 128 or less, 1 bit-per-pixel, something like that - its modifiable in the software library, IIRC). | <urn:uuid:88125b9b-75c3-470e-b057-bb3e16f0d0c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=63918.msg465907 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951331 | 188 | 1.679688 | 2 |
April 1, 2011
Spring College Fairs from UHEAA and the Utah Council
It feels like spring is finally here! The impulse to run around outside is pretty much irresistible this time of year. But before you exchange all thoughts of school for thoughts of summer, read this. The Utah Council and UHEAA are hosting six college preparedness nights this May, and if you (or your kids!) are a sophomore or junior in high school, you should come to one of them!
These events are a chance to meet representatives from Utah’s institutions of higher education, learn about financial aid, the admissions process, and what resources are available to help you plan for college. Also, there will be cookies. I don’t know about you, but the possibility of cookies is always a good incentive for me to go somewhere.
Desserts aside, these events will be a really great opportunity to get the edge in preparing for higher education, and there are a few things you can do to make the most of them.
- Learn about the schools who will be there. You can find information on Utah’s colleges in the 2011-2012 High School Guidebook. If you have questions about a specific college, this will be a great time to get some answers! Write them down in a notebook, and bring it with you to help you remember the answers.
- Set up a “college” email account: firstname_lastname@gmail/yahoo/hotmail.com. It’s going to leave a better impression than, for instance, [email protected]. (Hint: this “I’m a serious adult” email address will also serve you well when you apply for jobs.)
- Gather business cards. If you talk to a representative and really like their school, get a card from them and email them later with more questions!
- Go to the information sessions. These events will be set up with a college fair and information sessions on financial aid, UtahFutures, and admissions. The sessions will be 30 minutes each and will probably answer a lot of your questions. And if the presenter doesn’t answer your question, ask it!
Now that you know how to prepare for these events, you may be wondering where they are. You’ll find the locations of the events below. Click on any of the school names to register.
- Weber State University
- University of Utah
- Salt Lake Community College
- Utah Valley University
- Southern Utah University
- Utah State University-College of Eastern Utah
See you at the fairs! -UHEAAPosted by: Sumiko | <urn:uuid:659c1923-5261-4323-bb71-c09a9be82aa9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.higheredutah.org/spring-college-fairs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944295 | 556 | 1.664063 | 2 |
EPA's Energy Star Top Building List
More than 3,300 schools, hospitals, office buildings, courthouses and retail stores earned the Energy Star label in 2008. Which boosts the number up to a total of 6,200 officially qualified Energy Star buildings in the country.
This is a huge step in the right direction for the country. Hopefully the numbers will largely increase by next year’s report. Congrats to Los Angeles for being #1!
Click here to read the full report. | <urn:uuid:fc10e0da-80a4-4ded-a768-e616e3561727> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://liveearth.org/sv/liveearthblog/epas-energy-star-top-building-list | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930657 | 102 | 1.679688 | 2 |
“Why are you majoring in that field?” I asked a sister in college. She sighed, “To be honest, I just want to get married. I don’t really care about what I’m studying right now. I’m just waiting to get hitched so I can be a wife and a mother.”
“It’s awesome that she wants to be a wife and a mother, but why would she put her life on hold?” I wondered. Why would a skilled, passionate young woman create barriers to striving for self-improvement and her ability to be socially transformative when she doesn’t yet have the responsibilities of wifehood or motherhood? Being a wife and a mom are great blessings, but before it actually happens, why exchange tangible opportunities, just waiting for marriage to simply come along—if it came along? I didn’t have to look far to find out.
“I’m already twenty-six,” another sister lamented. “I’m expired. My parents are going crazy. They think I’m never going to get married and they pressure me about it daily. My mom’s friends keep calling her and telling her I’m not getting any younger. She keeps crying over it and says she’ll never be a grandma. It’s not like I don’t want to get married; I’ve been ready since college! I just can’t find the right guy,” she cried.
Why, as a general community, are we not putting the same pressure on women to encourage them to continue to seek Islamic knowledge? Higher education? To make objectives in their lives which will carry over and aid them in their future familial lives, if such is what is meant for them? Perhaps it’s because we’re obsessed with the idea that women need to get married and become mothers and that if they don’t, they have not reached true success.
We all know the honorable and weighty status of wifehood and motherhood in Islam. We all know that marriage completes half your deen1 and that the Prophet ﷺ (peace be upon him) has told us about the mother, “[…] Paradise is at her feet.”2
But getting married and becoming a mother is not the only way to get into Paradise. And not every grown woman is a wife and/or mother, nor will ever be. Some women will eventually become wives and/or mothers, if Allah subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He) blesses them with such, but for others, Allah (swt) has blessed them with other opportunities.
Allah (swt) did not create women for the sake of wifehood or motherhood. This is not our first goal, nor our end goal. Our creation was to fulfill our first and most important role—to be His SLAVE. As He tells us in Surah Dhaariyat (Chapter of the Winnowing Winds), “And I did not create the jinn and humankind except to worship Me.”3
Worship comes in such a variety of forms. Being a housewife (a.k.a. domestic engineer!) can be a form of worship. Being a stay-at-home-mom can be a form of worship. Being a working wife and mother can be a form of worship. Being an unmarried female student can be a form of worship. Being a divorced female doctor, a female journalist, Islamic scholar, film director, pastry chef, teacher, veterinarian, engineer, personal trainer, lawyer, artist, nurse, Qur’an teacher, psychologist, pharmacist or salon artist can each be a form of worship. Just being an awesome daughter or house-fixer upper can be forms of worship. We can worship Allah (swt) in a variety of ways, as long as we have a sincere intention, and what we do is done within the guidelines He has set for us.
Unfortunately, however, that is not the message our community is sending to single sisters – both those who have never been married, and those who are now divorced. When I speak to many women and ask them about the ways they want to contribute to society and the ways they want to use their time and abilities, a number of them will tell me that they have no idea and that they’re only going through the motions of school or work while they’re waiting for Prince Muslim to come along and with whom they can establish parenthood.
However, Prince Muslim is not coming along quickly or easily for many awesome, eligible Muslim women. And for some, he has come along, and he or the institution of their relationship turned out to be more villainous than harmonious. Single and never married or divorced — very capable and intelligent Muslim women constantly have to deal with the pressure of being asked, “So…when are you getting married? You aren’t getting any younger. It’s harder to have kids when you’re older.”
The amount of tears, pain, stress, anger and frustration which these awesome women are constantly dealing with because of a social pressure to get married (especially when many already want to, but are just not finding the right person!) and have children is not from our religion.
Islam gave women scholarship. Our history is filled with women who have dedicated their lives to teaching Islamic sciences. Have you ever heard of Fatimah Sa`d al Khayr? She was a scholar who was born around the year 522. Her father, Sa`d al Khayr, was also a scholar. He held several classes and was “most particular about [his daughters] attending hadith classes, traveling with them extensively and repeatedly to different teachers. He also taught them himself.”4 Fatimah studied the works of the great al-Tabarani with the lead narrator of his works in her time. You know who that lead narrator was? The lead narrator of Fatimah’s time was not named Abu someone (the father of someone, indicating that he was a male). The leading scholar of her time was a woman. Her name was Fatimah al-Juzadniyyah and she is the scholar who men and women alike would study under because in that era, she was the greatest and most knowledgeable in some of the classical texts.5 Fatimah Sa`d al Khayr eventually married and moved to Damascus and eventually to Cairo and she continued to teach. Many scholars travelled specifically to her city so they could study under her.6
Fatimah was brought up in a family that valued the education and knowledge of a woman to the point that her father was the one who would ensure she studied with scholars from a young age. Before marriage, she was not told to sit around and be inactive in the community out of fear that some men would find an educated woman unattractive or intimidating and would not want to marry her. She was not going through the motions of studying random things in college because she was stalling until she got married. She sought scholarship and Allah (swt) blessed her with a husband who was of her ranking, who understood her qualifications and drive, and who supported her efforts to continue teaching this religion even after marriage. She left a legacy we unfortunately have most likely never heard about because we rarely hear about the over eight thousand female scholars of hadith who are part of our history.7
Why do we never hear about Fatimah Sa`d al Khayr and the thousands of female scholars who were like her? I think that one of the reasons—and it’s just a personal theory—that as a community, we are so focused on grooming our women to be wives and mothers that we lose sight of the fact that this is not even our number one role.
Servitude to Allah (swt) is our number one role. We need to use what He has given us, the means that we have at the moment we have, to worship Him in the best of ways.
Islamic history is filled with examples of women who were wives and mothers, who focused completely on their tasks of being wives and/or mothers, and produced the likes of Imam Ahmed rahimahu allah (may God have mercy on him).8 We take those examples as a community and we reiterate the noble status of such incredible women.
But we also have examples of people who were not only wives and not only mothers, but those who were both of those, one of those, or none of those, and still were able to use the passions, talents and skills Allah (swt) blessed them with to worship Him through serving His creation, through calling His creation back to His Deen and leaving legacies for the generations to come. Some of these women were wives and mothers and dedicated their lives to focusing on their families completely and some of them continued to serve the greater society at large.
Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi mentions in his introduction to his Dictionary of women hadith scholars, Al Muhadithaat, “Not one [of the 8000 female hadith scholars he researched] is reported to have considered the domain of family life inferior, or neglected duties therein, or considered being a woman undesirable or inferior to being a man, or considered that, given aptitude and opportunity, she had no duties to the wider society, outside of the domain of family life.”9
Female scholars in our history were focused on being family women when they had families to whom they held responsibilities, and when able, they also had goals and objectives in life which extended beyond the roles of wifehood and motherhood. So what about someone who is not yet married? Many single women are using their time to the utmost, focusing on improving their skills and abilities to contribute back to the ummah (community) and society at large. They are loving worshipping Allah (swt) through investing in their abilities and using those for the greater good. Perhaps we can all take from their example.
God, in His Wisdom, has created each one of us differently and in different circumstances. Some recognize this, love any stage they are in, and develop their abilities to the fullest. Let us, too, use the time and abilities God has given us to maximize our worship to Him and work for the betterment of society and humanity as a whole. If wifehood or motherhood comes in the process, then at least we were using all of our ability to worship Him before it came and can continue to use the training and stamina we gained before marriage to worship Him with excellence once it comes along.
If there are parents, families and communities that are pressuring women to get married and have kids: Be grateful Allah (swt) has blessed you with daughters, married or unmarried, mothers or not, as the Prophet ﷺ has said, “Do not be averse to daughters, for they are precious treasures that comfort your heart.”10 We are putting more pressure on our sisters than they can emotionally and psychologically handle. Let us give them space, let them find themselves and establish their relationships with Allah (swt).
Allah (swt) created us to worship Him. That is our number one role. Now, let us do our part and figure out how best we can fulfill the purpose for which we’ve been created.
- Al Bayhaqi [↩]
- Al-Nasaa’i [↩]
- Qur’an, 51:56 [↩]
- Nadwi, Mohammad Akram, Al Muhadithaat, Interface Publications, (2007): pg. 93. Print. [↩]
- Ibid [↩]
- Nadwi, Mohammad Akram, Al Muhadithaat, Interface Publications, (2007): pg. 95. Print. [↩]
- Nadwi, Mohammad Akram, Al Muhadithaat, Interface Publications, (2007). Print. [↩]
- The Code of Scholars, Muhammad Alshareef. EmanRush, 2008. CD [↩]
- Nadwi, Mohammad Akram, Al Muhadithaat, Interface Publications, (2007): pg. XV. Print. [↩]
- Al Haythami, Majma al zawaid, vii. 286, as cited in Al Muhadithaat. [↩] | <urn:uuid:410c43bd-639c-413c-abad-1a87c392cf26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.suhaibwebb.com/relationships/marriage-family/wifehood-and-motherhood-%E2%80%93-not-the-only-ways-to-paradise/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979526 | 2,604 | 1.734375 | 2 |
I just did a meditation session and I made an observation. There are two kinds of thoughts that appear in our mind:
1. Random thoughts
The random thoughts just arise in our mind all the time. As far as I’m concerned random thoughts arise out of nowhere. For example try to stop thinking, right now! You can’t, because thinking is like breathing. You can’t just stop it. Well, I know there are some people that can control breathing to a certain degree, but I doubt that anybody can stop thinking.
Some claim that random thoughts arise from our past conditioning, but I’m not sure about it. Some of them probably are.
2. Created thoughts
The second kind of thoughts that happen in our mind are created thoughts. These thoughts don’t just arise in our mind. We, consciously and by choice create them. In other words, we have ability to think, what we want to think, what serves us, what empowers us, not just watch what randomly arises in our mind.
Here is the conclusion:
In my opinion, if you want to have a great life, you have to create and continue creating your thoughts instead of just experiencing your random thoughts. Random thoughts are not always bad either, they can be a great source of creativity. So, watch your random thoughts and use them if they are constructive, let them go if they are destructive. Create new thoughts to give yourself an extra oomph, when you need it.
This simple knowledge followed by practice is the key to designing any life you want. | <urn:uuid:f9d7c14f-eab1-4a09-88f7-974472271264> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.goalsblogger.com/how-we-think/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949074 | 328 | 1.601563 | 2 |
|Op-eds on legal news by law professors and JURIST special guests...||
Prosecuting Terror Suspects in Federal Court: The Right Choice
JURIST Guest Columnist Virginia Sloan
, president and founder of the bipartisan Washington DC-based Constitution Project
, says that US Attorney General Eric Holder should stand by his decision to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in traditional federal court, rather than in military commissions....
ast month, the Constitution Project, working with Human Rights First, brought more than a dozen signatories to Beyond Guantanamo: A Bipartisan Declaration
to our nation’s capital to meet with members of Congress and their staffers to advocate for the trial of terrorism suspects in traditional federal court, rather than military commissions. Signatories also cautioned against using a system of indefinite detention to hold suspects without charge or trial. These efforts were particularly timely given recent debate on these issues and pending legislation that could force the administration to pursue prosecutions of terrorism suspects only in military commissions.
For far too long, the national debate around how and where to try suspected terrorists now held at Guantanamo has been incorrectly framed as a partisan dispute. It is simply wrong to believe that the national security debate has to pit Democrats against Republicans, and conservatives against progressives. Beyond Guantanamo is an example of policy experts from across the political spectrum who have come together to support federal court prosecutions for suspected terrorists and to oppose any policy of indefinite detention without charge.
The range of voices that Beyond Guantanamo represents is vast, with former members of Congress, diplomats, federal judges and prosecutors, high-level military and government officials, as well as national security and foreign policy experts, bar leaders, and family members of 9/11 victims having joined the Declaration. At the conclusion of the day’s events, we asked a few of our participants to summarize their thoughts about the full day of meetings and activities.
From Stephen Abraham, retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps (Reserves):
The choice of trying terrorists in Article III courts or by military commissions is a false choice. This is not a choice between tested and untested forums. Rather, it is a choice between a system of justice that has endured as a light unto the nations for more than 200 years and a process created in haste, borne out of fear. Terrorists seek to weaken our faith in our nation and ultimately ourselves. Affirming our institutions, our laws, and our values is our greatest weapon. Each time we try a terrorist according to our laws, we have won a battle in the struggle against terrorism.
From Bruce Einhorn, former federal judge and former Special Prosecutor and Chief of Litigation at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations:
I came three thousand miles to urge our elected officials on Capitol Hill to end the unproductive and so far unconstitutional use of military commissions to try alleged terrorists at Guantanamo or wherever such suspects are found or held. For almost nine years, our government has attempted to employ military commissions without success. In case after case, the U.S. Supreme Court has found the Executive Branch rules and congressional legislation that authorized these commissions to be constitutionally defective. During that period, only three trials of alleged terrorist were actually held before military commissions. In contrast, during that same period, hundreds of such trials have been successfully completed by the federal district courts, and 97% of those prosecutions have resulted in guilty verdicts.
The district courts have a long history of presiding over alleged terrorist cases in a fair and efficient manner, with no violence or security glitches' interfering in the proceedings. Moreover, U.S. Justice Department prosecutors have extensive experience in prosecuting complex cases of terrorism, sabotage, violations of the laws of war, and criminal conspiracy. By contrast, most military prosecutors, while intelligent and industrious, lack the background to handle the unusually challenging and complicated issues associated with the prosecution of alleged Al Qaeda operatives and their terrorist allies.
It is time to stop offending our Constitution and stop wasting taxpayer money on a military commission system that has not worked. I again urge our senators and congresspersons to utilize the finest and most respected civilian court system in the world, which has functioned with minimal revisions and maximum fairness since its inception in 1789.
From Don Guter, retired Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy:
These guys are not warriors. They are thugs and they deserve to be treated like any other common criminal, not as legitimate soldiers. Our federal civilian courts have a proven track record of delivering the swift and sure justice that Americans expect and deserve. Attorney General Holder made clear that federal courts are [the] best venue to prosecute these cases and the administration should not waiver in its determination to do so.
From Donna Marsh O’Connor, member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows:
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrow is proud to partner with the Constitution Project as it works on the Beyond Guantanamo campaign. Knowing that we are surrounded by thoughtful and knowledgeable Americans (distinguished constitutional attorneys, military figures, and leaders of our nation from both sides of the political aisle) makes those of us who lost loved ones and continue to trust in the American rule of law feel supported, validated and energized. In our common goals we believe we will prevail. We support the closure of Guantanamo Bay, the end of indefinite detention and torture and we will work to dignify through its use the United States Constitution and the good citizens of the United States.
From Richard Rossman, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and former Chief of Staff for the Criminal Division at the U.S. Department of Justice:
Our American values are based upon equal justice, not making up new rules whenever we are afraid. For over 200 hundred years, our Constitution and our form of justice have served our country quite well. We have, however, strayed from these concepts since 9/11.
We need to get back to our basics. Except for the battlefield combatant captured in a war zone, those persons who commit wrongs against the citizens of the United States should be brought to justice in our federal criminal courts. Guantanamo should be closed immediately and not just moved to Illinois. Those persons who are detained in Guantanamo and anywhere else the military is holding alleged terrorists should be charged with wrongdoing in Article III Courts or released. Until this happens, we will not truly be a nation of ‘Equal Justice Under Law.’
As recent headlines demonstrate, it is far from clear whether Attorney General Holder's decision last November to try five of the 9/11 suspects in federal courts will be overturned. Last month, however, the Constitution Project was proud to enable so many individuals with so much authority and expertise to make their voices heard in support of the Attorney General's original decision. We hope Congress and the White House will listen.Virginia Sloan is the president and founder of the Constitution Project
|April 02, 2010|
e-mail op-ed |
post comment | 1 comments
how to subscribe |
Let's ignore the situation as it stands now. Let's assume that enemies who have declared war on the U.S. can ignore the Geneva Conventions (only the 3rd and 4th apply here) and are automatically protected by the Constitution. Let's look at the implications of that assumption.
In the future, in any conventional war, uniformed combatants, abiding by the Geneva Conventions, will have to be tried in U.S. courts under the protection of the Constitution. And there will be no legal charges against them.
It is not against U.S. law for a uniformed member of a foreign military to combat a uniformed member of the U.S. military. And if it was? What would be the result? We would have to sentence them to a specific time which may exceed the duration of the war, which would then violate the Geneva Conventions. Or a time that may be less than the conflict when we would be forced to let them free to return to battle our troops. Not to mention making illegal an act committed on foreign soil would violate every other Treaty the U.S. signed. In either case our military would not be assigned the protections ensured by the Conventions.
So, in the hypothetical future conventional war we would have 3 choices: we would take no POWs, since we could not make that act illegal and we would expose our military to trial be local laws which could be neither as fair or as enlightened (we could not take POWs, but our enemy could); we would have a standard that benefits enemies that ignore the Geneva Conventions over those that follow them; or, we would be forced to violate the Geneva Conventions ourselves.
Historically, the international community has acted to close loopholes in the Geneva Conventions when one has been found. That's why there are 4 of them. Now you, and the international community, are forcing the U.S. into an untenable position.
By insisting that local laws apply to these cases, you are actually violating the Geneva Conventions. That can not have a good result for the U.S. in the future. | <urn:uuid:af335235-8df2-4c18-a59d-098ab545b841> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2010/04/prosecuting-terror-suspects-in-federal.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961029 | 1,864 | 1.742188 | 2 |
|Sylvania Wilderness and Recreation Area
The Sylvania Wilderness and Sylvania Recreation Area, is located near Watersmeet, Michigan and is part of the National Wilderness Preservation System and the Ottawa National Forest Combined with the adjacent Recreation Area, the 18,327 acre wilderness offers an outstanding camping, fishing, hiking, canoeing and skiing experiences. It is also the perfect place for those which to enjoy a solitary wilderness experience. The Sylvania Wilderness and Recreation area features 34 named lakes, some of which offer sand beaches while others are surrounded by red and white pines. This large natural area with its old growth forest and pristine lakes provides habitat for a wide range of living things. While exploring Sylvania visitors may see threatened or endangered plants and animals such as rare orchids, bald eagles, loons and osprey. Camping is permitted at designated sites by permit only. Permits can be obtained on a walk-in basis at the Wilderness Entrance Station or can be reserved through Reserve America on line at www.Recreation.gov.
Black River Harbor
Known for its spectacular waterfalls, idyllic beaches, scenic hiking trails and tranquil campground, The Black River Harbor Recreation Area, one of the many areas of the Ottawa National Forest, is a popular destination throughout the year and is known for gorgeous waterfalls, sandy beached, spectacular hiking trails and a serene campground. The Black River, which originates in Wisconsin, flows through forested areas of large pine, hemlock and hardwood trees. The River, displays a unique color, which is derived from tannin that come from the many hemlock trees and it showcases a series of scenic waterfalls as it drops in elevation to meet Lake Superior.
The Harbor, with ample parking for trucks and boat trailers, offers one of the area’s few access points to Lake Superior, with boating a major summer time activity. The boat ramp can accommodate almost any craft trailered in. There is no launching fee. Boat fuel and snacks are available through the concessionaire.
Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness
The Wild and Scenic Sturgeon River rushes out of the northern portion of this wilderness, over the 20 foot volcanic outcroppings of Sturgeon Falls, and through a gorge that reaches 350 Feet in depth and a mile in width. Throughout this rugged, steep Wilderness, the Sturgeon and Little Silver Rivers and their tributaries have carved falls, rapids, ponds, oxbows, and terraces. Stunning views are possible from eastern rim of the gorge. Except for a few naturally bare slopes, most of the land is forested with pine, hemlock, aspen, sugar maple, birch, and basswood. When the leaves of the hardwoods of the Ottawa National Forest change color in the fall, they form a vivid tapestry. There are few established trails in Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness, and the few overgrown logging roads are hard to find and follow. The North Country National Scenic Trail parallels the northern and eastern boundaries for about eight miles. Sturgeon River Campground offers nine sites on the southeastern boundary. In Spring and during peak runoff, kayaking and white water canoeing are challenging, and only recommended for advanced paddlers.
Black River Harbor Recreation Area
Black River Harbor Recreation Area is composed of the Campground, the Harbor and adjacent picnic grounds and waterfall observation facilities. The campground is a modern facility with flush toilets; sewer dumping station, pressurized water system, and 40 paved camping spurs. The campsites can accommodate tents, trailers, and motor homes. Seven campsites provide overlooks to Lake Superior. Each campsite is bordered by vegetation providing privacy for a quite enjoyable experience.
The Harbor offers one of the area’s few access points to Lake Superior, with boating a major summer time activity. There is no launching fee; however, there is a fee for transient docking. Boat fuel is available and there is ample parking for trucks and trailers.
Tall hemlock and pine surround the Black River Harbor day use area. Picnic tables and grills are available for visitors, as well as an enclosed pavilion with fireplace, which can be reserved for special events. Access to the beach and North Country National Scenic Trail are by crossing the area’s unique suspension bridge.
There are five distinct and picturesque waterfalls within the Recreation Area that you won’t want to miss. All are accessible by traveling County Road 513 or by hiking the North Country National Scenic Trail northward from the Harbor parking lot or southward from Conglomerate Falls parking lot.
Three generations of McCormicks, the descendants of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaping machine, held the deed to this area before Gordon McCormick willed the land to the U.S. Forest Service. McCormick Wilderness has recovered from the logging era that ended in the early 1900′s. Today, you’ll find a mixture of northern hardwoods and lowland conifers interspersed with small patches of towering white pine, Michigan’s State Tree. Straddling the divide between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, this region ranges from nearly level terrain to rocky cliffs. McCormick’s water is what draws most visitors, with the Huron, Dead, Pahokee, and the Wild and Scenic Yellow Dog Rivers all have part of their headwaters within the wilderness. Many cascading waterfalls on the Yellow Dog make it unnavigable. The Yellow Dog is one of a few Eastern rivers designated “Wild”. Eighteen small lakes add sparkle to the landscape. Trout, pike, and bass live here, but only in small numbers due to the less-than-fertile-waters. The three mile White Lake Trail connects County Road 607 to White Deer Lake where the McCormick Estate once stood. Remnants of old, unmaintained trails can sometimes be found, but the rest of the Wilderness is fairly rugged, isolated, unspoiled, and relatively difficult to access
Lake Ottawa Recreation Area
Lake Ottawa Recreation area is in a beautiful forested north woods setting located 5 miles southwest of Iron River, MI., on the Iron River Ranger District. Located in the general area are Lake Ottawa, Brule Lake, Hagerman Lake, Brule River, Bass Lake, the Historic Mile Post Zero/Treaty Tree, The Ge-Che Trail, and miles of hiking trails. Lake Ottawa Campground is 95% surrounded by National Forest System Land and offers a picnic shelter with two stone fire places and original log picnic tables, and two log toilet buildings, which were constructed by the CCC in the late 1930′s. A pressurized water system and sewage dump station is located in the campground. Adjacent to the campground is a CCC ere day use recreation building, with flush toilets, swimming beach, accessible fishing pier, playground area and playing field, picnic areas and boat launch.
The Ottawa National Forest, in all its splendor, is the perfect vacation spot for you, your family, and all those seeking a top rated wilderness experience! | <urn:uuid:1048f953-bf69-40e0-a216-eef6bb0563fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://michiganmainstreets.com/ottawa-national-forest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938116 | 1,465 | 1.65625 | 2 |
|Plot||Curly Bear is born (part 2)|
|Air date||May 9, 2003|
|Season||Season 34 (2003)|
|Releases|| Three Bears and a New Baby|
| || ||While staying at Gina's, Baby Bear gets a call from Papa Bear at the hospital saying that the baby has been born and he's now the big brother to a baby sister. Gina then drives Baby Bear to the hospital where he reunites with his parents, who introduce him to his baby sister: an adorable little bear cub with soft light brown fur, and a tiny pink bow in her curly hair; Baby Bear is amazed at the fact that all she can do at the moment is pretty much sleep a lot, but as he holds her for the first time, she wakes up and meets her new big brother. Gordon, Gina, and Maria also drop in to see the baby, and after a comment that she looks a lot like her new brother, Baby Bear begins to list off the differences between them, including her curly hair (which he then casually mentions that she's a "little curly bear"), which catches Mama and Papa Bear's ears and declare that Baby Bear just gave her her name: Curly Bear. Later that afternoon, the Bear family makes a pit-stop on Sesame Street to introduce Curly Bear to everyone as well as Baby Bear showing her the highlights of the street.|
| || Jerry Nelson sings "I'm the Big One Now."|
(EKA: Episode 2876)
| || Elmo and Winston, a beluga whale, demonstrate the word LOVE.|
(EKA: Episode 3709)
| || The Number of the Day: 20|
After it's revealed that the number 20 is the number of the day, a large number 20 appears.
(First: Episode 4006)
| ||20 Race horses. Martin P. Robinson announcing.|
| ||On their way home from the hospital, Baby Bear wishes to make a quick stop through Sesame Street, so he can show Curly, as well as introduce her to various friends, including Telly, Gabi, Miles, Big Bird, a Honker, a Dinger, and other kids, while both Papa and Mama Bear remind Baby Bear they need to get Curly home.|
| || A mom takes her son for a walk in the stroller, and he sees all he can see.|
(EKA: Episode 3656)
| || Journey to Ernie: Beach|
(First: Episode 4039)
| || Ernie and Rubber Duckie direct Liam Neeson in a stirring rendition of the alphabet.|
(First: Episode 3797)
| || Global Grover|
Dressed in sheep's clothing, Grover has just returned from the deserts of Arizona where he learned about a family of sheep herders. Just as he's about to sign off, a group of Muppet sheep arrive to take him back to Arizona with the rest of the herd.
| || || Global Thingy|
No one will play with Alien Thingy until he gets their ball down from the tree.
(First: Episode 4039)
| || The Letter of the Day: Y|
Cookie Monster locks the Letter Y Cookie in a suitcase so he won't eat it, but the suitcase has no bottom. "Me wonder how that happened."
(First: Episode 3988)
| ||His Y, Her Y|
| || Y is drawn out with drawing tools then cut out.|
| || Spanish Word of the Day: gato|
A cow tries to help Rosita by illustrating gato, but she isn't a cat. Suddenly Little Murray Sparkles comes by and Rosita replies that this is what gato is.
(First: Episode 3985)
| || Elmo's World: Water|
(EKA: Episode 3831)
| ||While still on their stop through Sesame Street, Baby Bear introduces Curly Bear to Snuffy, a duck, as well as the letter Y, and the number 20, to both of which she begins crying at, though Baby Bear assures her one day she'll love the letter Y and the number 20.|
|Previous episode:||Next episode:|
|Episode 4054||Episode 4056| | <urn:uuid:e97bf07b-9afb-41c1-a35f-85e7131ba742> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Episode_4055?oldid=662010 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953225 | 900 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Aircraft Fleet Showing Its Age
chart plotting the average age of the Defense Department's tactical aircraft fleet has caused a stir in the Pentagon's E-Ring. According to its projections, the average DoD aircraft in 1996 is already more than 10 years old, or roughly one-half of its projected service life. Given funding and modernization trends, the chart shows the entire fleet aging rapidly as the new century approaches. This is troubling news to DoD planners.
"The lines are all heading in the wrong direction," says a senior DoD official. "Everything is getting older." According to statistics released by the Air Force, the average age of its fighters will double from 9.6 years to 19.2 years between 1996 and 2005. "As soon as the average age of weapons gets beyond the one-half mark of their expected service lives, you're on a slippery slope for the entire fleet," says the official. "It takes much more money to buy average age back when you've let it get past that limit."
Those concerns explain why even in the midst of a procurement free fall, aircraft continue to dominate the Pentagon's modernization plan. Indeed, of the six high-priority "leap ahead" weapons systems identified by DoD in the fiscal 1997 budget and defense plan for future years, five are aircraft programs: the multiservice Joint Strike Fighter, the Air Force's F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter, the Navy's F/A-18 E/F strike fighter, the Marine Corps' V-22 vertical takeoff and landing transporter, and the Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter.
Not only is the fleet aging, but its importance to overall Defense strategy cannot be minimized. Since the Gulf War, air power has become the key to modern warfare.
"We've been criticized by some for an over-emphasis on tactical air, with people pointing out that we already have air superiority, so why do we need to put so much emphasis on air? It's because we believe that everything we'll do depends on air dominance," said Defense Secretary William Perry at a recent briefing. "During Desert Storm, the Air Force basically shut down the Iraqi Air Force, allowing all our ground and other forces to operate without any interference. That's what's called air dominance. We had it in Desert Storm, we liked it, and we want to continue to have it in any future military conflict."
Advanced Tactical Fighter
The key to dominating the air over future battlefields will be the Air Force F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter, now in development and destined to replace today's F-15 fighters. The stealthy, F-22 aircraft is designed to penetrate enemy air defenses and achieve first-look, first-kill capability against multiple targets. It is being developed by a team consisting of second-ranked aircraft contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., sixth-ranked Boeing Co., and the Pratt and Whitney engine-making division of third-ranked United Technologies.
The fiscal 1997 budget includes $2 billion for continued research, development and testing of the F-22, with an additional $11 billion for production of the initial 40 aircraft by 2001. The planned purchase of 442 F-22s will cost an estimated at $74 billion. Initial operation of the aircraft is planned for early next century.
According to DoD officials, the F-22 offers a prime example of the need for advanced planning and steady funding in modern weapons development.
"We started the first planning concepts for the F-22 back in 1975, and the first squadron won't be operational until 2004," says a senior DoD official. "That's nearly 30 years later. The half point in its service life will come 45 years after initial concept. That's like starting World War II using Wright Brothers planes."
Joint Strike Fighter
The last major military aircraft program still up for grabs is the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), formerly known as the Joint Advanced Strike Fighter. Funded roughly equally by the Air Force and Navy, this program will support development of an aircraft to replace the Air Force F-16, the Navy F-14, and the Marine Corps AV-8B and F/A-18s.
The JSF program is still in its early developmental stages, and the question of whether one aircraft can satisfy so many customers is still open. The "all things to all people approach" will involve developing several demonstrator aircraft to explore different approaches to meeting the services' various needs. Then, prototype aircraft will be developed to help the services decide on the ultimate design of the fighters.
The fiscal 1997 Defense budget includes $582 million for continued JSF development, with plans to spend another $3.2 billion in the next five years. Three industry teams are competing for two contracts to develop JSF aircraft, led by top-ranked McDonnell Douglas Corp., second-ranked Lockheed Martin Corp., and sixth-ranked Boeing Co.
Competition for the contracts is fierce because the stakes are enormous. According to a study conducted by Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems, the JSF could eventually replace nearly 3,000 U.S. tactical aircraft, and between 2,000 and 3,000 F-16s and F/A-18s worldwide. Combined, those aircraft could represent a nearly $1 trillion market, virtually ensuring that the winner of the program will become world's dominant military aircraft manufacturer.
F/A-18 E/F Hornet
After the debacle of the canceled A-12 bomber, the Navy was left with a fleet of aging A-6 bombers on its aircraft carrier decks with no replacement on the horizon. Rather than wait for a completely new aircraft, the service decided on the F/A-18E/F Hornet, a significantly improved version of the F/A-18C/D model with enhanced range, payload, wingspan and survivability.
The twin-engine, multi-mission aircraft will conduct ground strike, interdiction, close air support, fighter escort and fleet air defense missions. The new Hornet will replace not only F/A-18C/D model, but partially replace A-6E bombers and F-14A air superiority aircraft.
The fiscal 1997 Defense budget includes about $2 billion for production of 12 aircraft, and funding for more F/A-18 E/Fs in 1998. DoD's future spending plans include more than $80 billion to buy 1,000 of the fighters by 2015. Prime contractors on the program are top-ranked McDonnell Douglas Corp., teamed with fifth-ranked engine manufacturer General Electric Co.
The V-22 Osprey
There exists perhaps no better testament to the resilience of major weapons programs once they are begun-and to the support the Marine Corps commands on Capitol Hill-than the V-22 Osprey.
Targeted for termination by at least one Defense secretary and many powerful DoD civilians, the aircraft that can take off and land like a helicopter and fly like a prop-plane has exhibited more lives than a cat. All of which is good news for contractors Bell Helicopter division of Textron, which ranks seventh among aircraft manufacturers, and Boeing Vertol. The fiscal 1997 budget contains $600 million for initial production of four aircraft, and another $577 million for continued research and development.
Given advances in modern anti-ship missiles that make ships involved in close-in amphibious operations extremely vulnerable, the Marine Corps sees the V-22 as a critical link in its plans to fight future wars. With its added speed and range, the V-22 can carry Marines from ships based far off shore deep into an enemy's rear or flank. The Ospreys are expected to deploy with U.S. forces beginning in 2001.
Over the life of the V-22 acquisition program, expected to last until 2022, the Marine Corps hopes to buy 425 aircraft, with the Navy purchasing an additional 48. The Special Operations Command is nearly as excited about the aircraft as the Marine Corps and is expected to buy an additional 52 V-22s to transport Special Forces teams. Abroad, demand for the Osprey is thought to be as large as 600 aircraft, according to officials of Boeing Vertol.
The Comanche Helicopter
If the V-22 is the aircraft that won't die, the RAH-66 Comanche is the helicopter that just can't seem to get a start on life. Designed to replace the Army's rapidly aging fleet of OH-58 and AH-1 helicopters, the armed reconnaissance aircraft has been continually pushed into the background as the Army and Defense Department have struggled with funding shortfalls. In fiscal 1997, the Pentagon will spend $289 million for continued research and development on the program, with an additional $1.7 billion planned for the 1998-2001 time frame. No production is expected in the next five years.
Nevertheless, the Comanche successfully completed its first flight earlier this year-albeit without many of the weapons systems it will eventually carry. The aircraft is being developed by a joint venture between third-ranked United Technologies' Sikorsky Aircraft Division, and Boeing Vertol. Engine development is being carried out by Light Helicopter Turbine Engine Co., a partnership of 14th-ranked Allied Signal Aerospace and Allison Engine Co. | <urn:uuid:f863b48b-2cb6-476a-b0d6-82b98a4b634f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.govexec.com/magazine/1996/08/aircraft-fleet-showing-its-age/504/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951949 | 1,886 | 1.796875 | 2 |
- Special Sections
- Public Notices
The State Library of North Carolina, a division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, has awarded Supply Elementary School a grant to help strengthen its library’s book collection, according to a news release.
The $10,000 School Library Collection Development Grant was one of 54 awarded this year to public school libraries statewide. Of the more than 2,300 North Carolina public schools, 660 have received funding through this program since 2000.
If you currently subscribe or have subscribed in the past to the Brunswick Beacon, then simply find your account number on your mailing label and enter it below.
Click the question mark below to see where your account ID appears on your mailing label.
If you are new to the award winning Brunswick Beacon and wish to get a subscription or simply gain access to our online content then please enter your ZIP code below and continue to setup your account. | <urn:uuid:b2f122b5-b968-451e-babb-68e9d1d98ced> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brunswickbeacon.com/content/supply-elementary-awarded-federal-grant?mini=calendar-date%2F2013-02 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93123 | 185 | 1.625 | 2 |
Morgo: Lenders shouldn't turn their backs on home ownership
The lobby of the Bayport Post Office was abuzz with complaints about Islip's property taxes recently when a young postal clerk stopped the conversation cold. "I know taxes are high," she said, "but when I pull into the driveway and see my house and know it's mine, I own it and my kids have a home of their own, I don't worry so much about taxes."
That kind of pride in home ownership has largely gone out of fashion since the mortgage meltdown. Lenders gave risky mortgages for overpriced homes to unqualified households, and when the bubble burst, the nation's economy reeled. Now many of these lenders will not give construction loans for anything but rentals and won't give home mortgage loans to any but well-heeled households.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Barack Obama took note. "Too many families with solid credit who want to buy a home are being rejected," he said. That, along with the difficulty of some homeowners to refinance, is "holding our entire economy back."
The postal clerk instinctively knew that home ownership is good for families. Countless studies have shown that it builds self esteem, and children who live in homes their parents own have higher test scores. It also builds net worth. While it is true that those who purchased homes at the peak of the housing market saw values plummet, it's certainly not true over the long haul. Ask Long Islanders who bought homes in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s about the gap between their current values and the original prices they paid.
Owner-occupied homes build neighborhood stability, especially in lower-income communities. Homeowners vote at higher percentages than do renters, and are more likely to belong to civic organizations. As a consequence, elected officials are more responsive to them.
Yet the number of Long Islanders receiving home mortgages fell by nearly two-thirds since 2005, according to federal housing data. Lower-income minority neighborhoods were especially hard hit. New mortgages for blacks and Hispanics on Long Island sank 86 percent from 2005 to 2011, compared with a 56 percent drop for whites in the same period.
Economists watch housing statistics closely because few things stimulate the economy as much as home purchases. It's no wonder when you consider the ripple effect of the purchase price, closing fees, taxes on the sale, and the furnishings and equipment home ownership requires.
Unfortunately, housing downturns take a long time to recover. It takes time to sell a home in a down market and to reduce the inventory of foreclosed homes. But, at least nationally -- because of record low interest rates -- things are improving.
Yet Long Island is lagging behind the rest of the country. Our housing prices during the boom rose faster and higher than in most of the country, and they dropped further during the bust. We have a relatively high percentage of foreclosed homes. And another, counterintuitive, reason for our lag is that less than 20 percent of Long Island's housing consists of rentals -- way below the percentage of neighboring suburbs.
Because business and some political leaders, most notably Mayor Paul Pontieri of Patchogue, have championed the ability of rentals to transform moribund downtowns, more rentals are being approved -- in downtown Patchogue and Riverhead, and in Coram, to name a few. Banks realize loans to build rentals are good business -- but they are reluctant to lend for home mortgages and for-sale construction.
Mitchell Pally, chief executive of the Long Island Builders Institute, said that at a recent bankers forum the institute sponsored, "Lenders frequently expressed a willingness to lend for rental construction but a wariness for home ownership construction loans."
Lending to create legal rentals on Long Island is smart, but it shouldn't come at the expense of lending for home ownership. A full spectrum of housing options is needed -- from below-market-rate rentals to market-rate rentals; from affordable houses to luxurious ones -- if Long Island is to attract and retain entry-level workers, high-income executives and all those in between.
It's shortsighted and destructive to abandon home ownership, the sector that once drove Long Island's economy. It can again.
Jim Morgo, former chief executive of the Long Island Housing Partnership, is an economic development consultant to the Long Island Association. | <urn:uuid:1362fa4c-31c9-48b9-a126-c157e0dca665> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/morgo-lenders-shouldn-t-turn-their-backs-on-home-ownership-1.4641474?cache=03D163D03D163Dp%3A%2Fhe3D03Dn63Fr%3Ftags%3D+Michael+Hervey%3Ftags%3D+congress%3Ftags%3D+Republican | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968924 | 895 | 1.578125 | 2 |
This week’s cover photo on Time magazine has turned up the heat on the controversy surrounding breastfeeding toddlers and preschoolers. The reaction is varied.
Some think the image of mother Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding her preschool-aged son is natural and beautiful. Others find the image disturbing. And some just roll their eyes, pull their shoulders toward their ears and think “who cares?”
The words that accompany the photo read like a battle cry: “Are You Mom Enough?”
Oddly, the story the photo illustrates is not about breastfeeding children who are no longer babies — not entirely anyway.
The article explores a childrearing style known as attachment parenting, which started its climb up the popularity ladder two decades ago after Dr. Bill Sears published his bestselling parenting manifesto, The Baby Book. Sears is profiled in the story.
In addition to promoting the concept of babies weaning themselves from the breast (something that usually happens between ages 1 and 2), attachment parenting encourages “baby-wearing,” “co-sleeping” and responding quickly to a baby’s cry.
Crysta Bourdon, a doula and owner of Gentle Beginnings, a childbirth services organization in Southeastern Ohio, is a “huge proponent” of attachment parenting, but says the Time cover is an “epic fail.”
“I think that cover photo is a ridiculously exaggerated illustration of attachment parenting,” Bourdon told InvestorPlace. “It’s just more fuel for the mom wars. Every mother is ‘mom enough’ if she’s parenting in love.”
Bettina Forbes, co-founder of an organization called Best for Babes, likes the cover and thinks it “will make mainstream America less squeamish about women breastfeeding children of any age,” she told ABC. “It’s high time we talk about these things,” Forbes said.
Martin Schoeller, the photographer who captured the cover image and several other photos illustrating attachment parenting, said on Time’s website that his intent was to avoid stereotypes.
“It was important to show that there’s no stereotypical look for a mom who practices this kind of parenting,” Schoeller said. | <urn:uuid:30c30847-a09e-4cfd-a65d-fa5e3a275552> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://investorplace.com/2012/05/time-magazines-eye-popping-magazine-cover-stirs-debate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960979 | 481 | 1.757813 | 2 |
At present, one of the best platforms to look for numerous earning possibilities is the World Wide Web. The internet has been continuously providing limitless opportunities for people to handle their money prudently through investing online. If you look forward to investing in the internet, this article will give you significant advice on investments online.
Best Investing Tips
Before, you have to hire an investment professional to understand how your business is doing. You frequently had little say on how your capital should be spent or when the investments will change from this to that. Now, you are not required to study day trading or become a market expert to utilize the internet and perform some of your own investing. You can obtain hot stock market tips and resources, carry out research, and even purchase mutual funds or stocks online. All you need to do is to prepare and study your preferred niche to get started.
The following are 5 steps you should perform to keep your online enterprise rolling.
- Examine the Source – You may be delighted by the recommendations and free stock investment advice that you stumble upon about online investing opportunities, stocks, bonds, and other internet ventures. Just because you read it from the web doesn’t necessarily delineate that the information is accurate. You should not only assess the details contained but also the author of the information. Try to confirm and validate the information before you do anything about it.
- Investigate at the Outset – Prior to choosing any websites to purchase bonds, funds, or stocks, you should be certain that you are dealing with a reputable company. Search for consumer feedbacks and reviews about the firm. You will have to understand how you can send money to them, how fast they execute trades, and how reliable their support system is. In addition, you must ensure that you can withdraw your money from them if needed.
- Stay Away from Risky Strategies – If you are a novice investor, an advice on investing online that you should always remember is to recognize the risks involved on trading or investing and how you can manage them appropriately. You will not get rich overnight. Thus, you must stay away from highly speculative investments or inaccurate claims that will only rip-off your hard-earned investment capital.
- Diversify Your Portfolio – Investing online is an excellent approach to manage your financial future appropriately, but you should be very careful. Instead of sticking with one company, it’s most beneficial to invest in a broad range of sectors and companies so you’ll not be hugely impacted by the volatility of the market. In addition, you may also want to consider having somebody else to place some of your capital in other enterprises so your financial status will not solely rely on your performance.
- Educate Yourself – An advice on investments in the internet that you must retain information of is not to take investing online lightly. Before you venture on this, you must ensure that you have sufficient knowledge and understanding of how to do business in the internet. The process of getting new information should be constant. You will never learn how to invest and about every little aspect of investing in one reading or business course, thus constant researching and studying is necessary. | <urn:uuid:0dd966ad-d693-4376-9d6a-9266a01f769d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.qwoter.com/college/Investing-101/advice-on-investments.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948327 | 639 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Training is mandatory for all beginners and allows you to ride a quad bike in the knowledge that you are completely safe.
Your supervisor will teach you how to evaluate and negotiate every kind of terrain. You will learn all about each of the different surfaces that you will encounter. Your progression over more difficult terrains will make it easy for you to manoeuvre the quad bike with ease, and therefore in all safety.
You will learn how to accelerate, brake, negotiate slaloms, large rocks and bumps, how to maintain your balance – all the things which will help you enjoy your experience to the fullest.
Your supervisor will adapt your training according to your aptitude and abilities.
Our multi-lingual team is on hand at all times and guarantees you a learning environment which is adapted to your level and wishes, which allows you to learn and develop at your own pace.
Our fleet of quad bikes of 125cc and 300cc is checked daily to ensure maximum safety at all times, and all bikes are serviced regularly throughout the year. | <urn:uuid:7173e380-08ef-4a69-b155-72e280f5a842> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.palmaquad.com/en/quad-maroc-essouira.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949351 | 211 | 1.726563 | 2 |
And in the last 18 months, U.S. officials say his Al Qaida has regrouped using safe havens along the Pakistani border to train and dispatch hundreds of new recruits.
ROSS: And just as troubling, amidst all the turmoil in Pakistan, the influence of bin Laden continues to grow there, a country with many nuclear weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GIBSON: Brian Ross there.
Well, Osama bin Laden, as he pointed out, has said it is his duty to try to get nuclear weapons. Al Qaida has been reconstituted and re-energized in the western part of Pakistan.
And so my general question is, how aggressively would you go after Al Qaida leadership there?
And let me start with you, Senator Obama, because it was you who said in your foreign policy speech that you would go into western Pakistan if you had actionable intelligence to go after it, whether or not the Pakistani government agreed. Do you stand by that?
OBAMA: I absolutely do stand by it, Charlie. What I said was that we should do everything in our power to push and cooperate with the Pakistani government in taking on Al Qaida, which is now based in northwest Pakistan. And what we know from our national intelligence estimates is that Al Qaida is stronger now than at any time since 2001.
OBAMA: And so, back in August, I said we should work with the Pakistani government, first of all to encourage democracy in Pakistan so you've got a legitimate government that we're working with, and secondly that we have to press them to do more to take on Al Qaida in their territory.
What I said was, if they could not or would not do so, and we had actionable intelligence, then I would strike.
And I should add that Lee Hamilton and Tom Keaton, the heads of the 9/11 Commission, a few months later wrote an editorial saying the exact same thing.
I think it's indisputable that that should be our course.
Let me just add one thing, though. On the broader issue of nuclear proliferation, this is something that I've worked on since I've been in the Senate. I worked with Richard Lugar, then the Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to pass the next stage of what was Nunn-Lugar so that we would have improved interdiction of potentially nuclear materials.
OBAMA: And it is important for us to rebuild a nuclear nonproliferation strategy, something that this administration, frankly, has ignored, and has made us less safe as a consequence.
It would not cost us that much, for example, and would take about four years for us to lock down the loose nuclear weapons that are still floating out there, and we have not done the job.
GIBSON: I'm going to go the others in a moment, but what you just outlined is essentially the Bush doctrine. We can attack if we want to, no matter the sovereignty of the Pakistanis.
OBAMA: No, that is not the same thing, because here we have a situation where Al Qaida, a sworn enemy of the United States, that killed 3,000 Americans and is currently plotting to do the same, is in the territory of Pakistan. We know that.
And this is not speculation. This is not a situation where we anticipate a possible threat in the future.
And my job as commander in chief will be to make sure that we strike anybody who would do America harm when we have actionable intelligence do to that.
GIBSON: Senator Edwards, do you agree with him?
EDWARDS: If I as president of the United States know where Osama bin Laden is, I would go get him, period. | <urn:uuid:4ce055b5-e282-48c3-ba73-c9a6425efc3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/story?id=4092530&page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971848 | 778 | 1.59375 | 2 |
By John W. Miller
As we reported Thursday, most Members of the European Parliament would prefer to scrap their expensive second home in Strasbourg.
On Friday, France fought back, reminding parliamentarians that Europe, at least in this case, is a continent ruled by treaties, not men.
The survey, said government spokesman Bernard Valéro, was “regrettable.” Be there no mistake, he went on, “the seat is legally fixed by the treaties. This initiative is not a formal parliamentary action, and certainly does not implicate its president, Jerzy Buzek.”
Mr. Valéro praised the “plurality” of different locations for EU government buildings which “reflect the diversity of the European Union.”
Still, the porte-parole threw in some peace-making reassurances, hinting that France would ease the Brusselites’s lives some by jazzing up Strasbourg.
French authorities, he said, “will continue to implement concrete actions to affirm Strasbourg’s European dimension and to make working life easier for European MEPs, especially by improving the accessibility and attractiveness of the city.” | <urn:uuid:93192b6d-dc52-410e-a983-0bdec4fc7b0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2011/02/11/france-to-meps-strasbourg-stays-deal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947601 | 248 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Also We would like to know are using Google and other third parties for advertisement on our website. So you must be aware that
Google's use the DART cookie which enables it and its partners to serve ads to their users based on their visit to your sites and/or other sites on the Internet.
But you must be aware that you may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the advertising opt-out page. For google this information can be found at this URL http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/privacy-policy.html
For new internet users who do not know what cookies are we want to mention that cookies are no programs that can cause damage to your systems or files in any way. It just stores some information on your browser. But still if you do not feel comfortable in using cookies and you do not want information collected through Cookies we would like to let you know that there is a simple procedure and method in most web browsers that will enable you to deny or accept the Cookie feature. However you should note that Cookies are necessary to provide you with advance website features like adding your personal favourites or remembering your last visit to site and take you the area of website which you most likely would be interested in. | <urn:uuid:8f4a299c-1dbd-4b75-b752-91e0f4c650eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hitwebcounter.com/privacy_policy.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944561 | 255 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The Thompson Plan to fix our illegal immigration problem will SEE us into the future.
*Secure -- We must secure our border. This is the most important thing we can do. If we cannot maintain our border security then we do not know who or what is coming in to our country. With terrorism and the illegal drug trade being a constant threat, porous borders and not a feasible plan. We must increase our presence with more border agents, allow them to do their job, we should build a fence where necessary and utilize resources such as electronic monitoring where possible.
*Expedite -- It is imperative that we allow LEGAL immigrants to have an efficient process to enter the country. Currently people can wait upwards of five years before being able to get in to the country legally while it is easy to skip the line and come here illegally. It is important that we have a good legal guest worker program that works for our farmers, our restaurants and other service industries. This must not apply to those here illegally. The program in place now is cumbersome and sometimes nearly impossible to use effectively.
*Enforce -- In the end we must enforce the laws we have on the books. We are nation that believes in the rule of law and we cannot allow widespread breaking of that law to go unenforced. Individuals who are here illegally must return home!
If we can hit all three points of this plan, Secure, Expedite, and Enforce it is easy to SEE a safe future for our country. | <urn:uuid:e394373e-db14-4aa6-adea-3e0bbbbe378e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://votesmart.org/public-statement/701642/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943496 | 303 | 1.585938 | 2 |
U.S.-Israeli Relations: Opinions From Tel Aviv
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL MARCH)
MARTIN: Today, President Barack Obama took the stage before thousands of pro-Israel activists here in Washington for the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. His address to that influential lobbying group comes at a crucial time for Israel, with a looming nuclear threat in Iran and a violent conflict in neighboring Syria. It's against that backdrop that Mr. Obama reaffirms support for Israel and its security concerns.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Four years ago, I stood before you and said that Israel's is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. That belief has guided my actions as president. The fact is, my administration's commitment to Israel's security has been unprecedented. Our military and intelligence cooperation has never been closer.
MARTIN: In the speech, the president also focused on Iran's drive toward developing nuclear weapons and the danger that poses to Israel.
OBAMA: Iran's leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.
MARTIN: Tomorrow, Mr. Obama will meet at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the growing tensions between Israel and Iran. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. | <urn:uuid:233a6d25-1fbe-4674-bdb5-16fe0001bd40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wcbe.org/post/us-israeli-relations-opinions-tel-aviv | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94035 | 364 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Here is another obstruction/interference question. This recently happened in a PA High School State Championship Quarterfinal game. There are 4 umpires officiating. Runners on 2nd and 3rd, one out. Shortstop is playing shallow in order to cut the runner off at home. Ball is hit past the pitcher towards the glove side of the shortstop. Roughly 6-8 feet from 2nd base. The shortstop takes a diagonal path to the ball. She has her glove arm extended. At that point there is a collision between the runner and the shortstop. The ball goes into center field. The runner from 3rd scores. The runner at second makes it to 3rd. Being that the shortstop is my daughter, I feel that she would have made the play on the ball, had she not been hindered by the runner. The coach of my daughterís team also shared my opinion. The opposing coach argued that his runnerís forward progress was hindered by my daughter and should be awarded home. The 4 umpires met , than did nothing and let the play stand. There was an injury timeout after the collision to attend to my daughter. She had a bad headache and a loose tooth. During this timeout the 2 coaches argued their points. I still believe that something should have been called. Am I correct? Of course I do not look at it objectively. I think that my daughter makes that play and at the bare minimum throws the runner out at first or keeps the ball in the infield. Arenít fielders protected from collisions if they are making a play on the ball? What do you think the correct call would be? | <urn:uuid:5efdc72e-085e-4f17-a96a-6a19cbe532c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.discussfastpitch.com/softball-rules-questions/10382-more-obstruction-interference.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98775 | 331 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The Constitutional Question for Obamacare
Oral arguments were heard two weeks ago on whether the minimum coverage provision of the Health Care Reform Act, passed by congress during the Obama presidency, is constitutional. (Find oral arguments here). Constitutional on this issue is being judged, inter alia, on whether the law regulates existing commerce or forces non-market participants to enter the health care insurance market.
The first question for General Verrilli, representing the US Department of Health and Human Services and defending the constitutionality of the law, asks whether everyone in the country is already in the healthcare market or not. His response is something like, it’s empirically more probable than not that everyone will be in the market.
The question then becomes whether this proposition justifies congress in requiring individuals to preemptively purchase financing for their participation in that market in the form of health insurance. Verrilli continues that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce under Article I, with both sides conceding that under this power Congress is able to require individuals to pay for any actual, realized health services with an insurance policy.
The question then becomes, in order to effectuate that regulatory policy, is it necessary and proper for congress to require every individual to purchase such financing before they actually need it? Verilli responds that yes, it is necessary because an individual will not be able to purchase such financing, i.e. insurance, after they are injured.
Scalia seems to think that while possibly necessary, such a requirement is not proper. | <urn:uuid:db1b84e2-d31f-4c1a-8139-a0e155d16647> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eagleionline.com/2012/04/10/the-constitutional-question-for-obamacare/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947752 | 307 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Not in report nor any of the media propaganda about the report: All those convicted are Muslim.
They’re college-educated, have jobs and were born and raised here. A new study finds the terrorist threat is increasingly in our own backyard.
In 1997, a Sudanese man named Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl became the first person to plead guilty in the United States to offenses related to being part of al Qaeda. Between al-Fadl’s conviction and the end of 2011, 170 other individuals have been convicted by American courts or military commissions for committing crimes on behalf of, or inspired by, the organization responsible for the 9-11 attacks.
A new study finds that a majority of these operatives were American citizens. Nearly a quarter were converts to Islam. More than half had completed some form of college course work.
Some of the names are well known, such as John Walker Lindh, the American who was found by U.S. troops in 2001 to be fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Others are described as al Qaeda aspirants, and were arrested and convicted of plotting terrorist acts after an informant or undercover FBI officer lured them into a sting.
While several organizations have examined the trend of Americans joining al Qaeda, the new study from the Henry Jackson Society, a right-leaning think tank in London, goes into specific biographical and demographic detail on the individuals themselves.
The study is especially timely this month as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has demanded President Obama release Justice Department legal memos spelling out his authority to kill U.S. citizens who have joined al Qaeda overseas.
Timely indeed? As in meant to scare any Americans who still believe they should be giving up their liberties in the name of fighting terrorism? al Qaeda is Barrack Hussein Obama’s favorite bogeyman and he uses it every time his
impeachable offenses domestic policies are only supported by a failed media.
As for who joins al Qaeda, the report says there aren’t many advance signs. “There needs to be an acknowledgement that the threat can come from any region of the country, from any background or educational status,” said the report’s main author, Robin Simcox. “There is no classic profile for the home grown al Qaeda threat in the United States, the key here is to look at the spread of ideology and not profile for education, race or social status.”
What about religion? Do all so-called think tanks have their heads up their asses? How many non-Muslims scream Allah Akbar and wave the flag of jihad?
Mike Hayden, the last CIA director under George W. Bush and the author of a preface to the new study, compared it to a baseball encyclopedia. “The way I would view this, this is not about targeting Americans or American groups, this is about being aware that Americans and American groups are being targeted by al Qaeda for recruitment,” he said.
Fox News covered this report and Brett Baer says to look in the mirror if you want to see an accurate image of an al Qaeda terrorist.
A fine example of why Fox News has about as much credibility as the other major propaganda outlets and routinely hosts terror-linked CAIR. Fox’s “since November 30th” data reads an awful lot like Creeping Sharia’s post from December 2012, Arrests, convictions and plots by Muslims in U.S…since November 1, 2012.
The report does state blacks and Saudi’s are the top American al Qaeda terrorists. Al-Qaeda in the United States – A Complete Analysis of Terrorism Offenses
(note on the report title – if they only looked at “al Qaeda terrorism” and ignored all other Islamic terrorism it’s note a complete analysis)
Filed under: al Qaeda, Creeping Sharia, Legal, Media, News, Politics, Religion, Sharia, Video Tagged: | al Qaeda, Creeping Sharia, hamas, islam, Legal, Life, Media, Muslim, News, Obama, Politics, Random, Religion, Sharia, terrorism, utube, Video, youtube | <urn:uuid:36f8819b-eb6e-4a8f-b479-f3ce8021e502> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/report-majority-of-convicted-terrorists-in-u-s-are-american-citizens/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956232 | 853 | 1.6875 | 2 |
This year in the Cockrell Butterfly Center, we were taken on quite a roller coaster ride with Lois the Corpse Flower! I don’t think any of us will ever forget about that! People filled the Grand Hallway and waited in line to see the most talked about flower Houston has ever seen.
In the midst of everything, we quietly received a very special gift, which may have been overlooked. Over Memorial Day weekend, I traveled to New Orleans and was able to visit the Audubon Insectarium, which was amazing! I was very jealous of their live animal collection and in particular, their pink katydids. They had quite a few of them, but despite that, my attempts to organize some kind of trade with them to get some pink katydids here in Houston were futile.
It wasn’t long after I got back that I received a call from a family in Dayton who said that they had found a pink katydid! They were so kind to drive to HMNS and deliver it. When I saw it I was overjoyed, it was the exact same species they had in New Orleans and just as pretty and pink as any of theirs! He was a boy and we named him Don Johnson (One of my friends said his color reminded her of Miami Vice).
So, when it rains it pours; a few weeks later I got another phone call about a pink katydid, a female. Don Johnson had a girlfriend and this would hopefully lead to little pink baby katydids! I got yet another phone call from a gentleman who had found a golden katydid and an orange one before that. The orange one got away, but he brought me the golden one. So at this time I had a veritable cornucopia of colorful katydids!
|Katydid in the wild
photo credit: frankcheez
The pink coloration is unusual, but not quite as rare as you might think! The color comes from a genetic defect, similar to albinism, called erythrism. Some animals, such as flamingoes, become pink because of what they eat, but since katydids eat nothing but green plants with only the occasional flower, it is due to a lack or abundance of certain pigments in their bodies. Not many people actually understand the reason for this. In tropical places, it may help the katydids to camouflage themselves among pink or red flowers and plants. Here in the United States, however, it’s not much of an advantage. The only katydid native to the United States known to have this genetic defect is the oblong-winged katydid, Amblycorypha oblongifolia. The most common form of this katydid is green, less common is the pink or golden form, and the rarest is the orange form. I wish I could have gotten my hands on the orange one!
Sadly, Don Johnson passed away at the end of July, followed by Goldie, but my pink female was alive up until a couple of weeks ago, continuing to lay eggs in her enclosure. The eggs have started to hatch and we’ll soon have baby pinkies everywhere! They are fat and round with very long back legs, and their color is amazing! Don Johnson and Pinkie’s oldest son is up there on display now, soon to be joined by his brother’s and sisters.
If you haven’t had the privilege of seeing one of these hot pink katydids, stop by and take a look, they’re sure to steal your heart! | <urn:uuid:7eaf968f-232b-419d-96bc-125ece0e928b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.hmns.org/tag/amblycorypha-oblongifolia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984453 | 755 | 1.617188 | 2 |
PANNA: Action Alert: PAN Leader Targeted in the Philippines
Pesticide Action Network Updates Service (PANUPS)
The Philippine Supreme Court recently re-instated a plantation owner's libel suit against Dr Romeo Quijano, an important international public health advocate and leader of Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Philippines, and five journalists for documenting and publicizing the situation of a village poisoned by pesticides. Pesticide Action Network Regional Coordinators and Dr. Quijano's many colleagues around the world ask you to send a letter to Philippine officials demanding an end to this harassment. (The text of the letter written by the PAN Regional Coordinators follows below.)
In 1997 Dr. Quijano and his daughter, Llang-Llang published an article, "Poisoned Lives" in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Post newspapers, reporting on illness in the village of Kamukhaan, Mindanao which was poisoned by persistent aerial and ground spraying on a nearby banana plantation owned by the Lapanday Agricultural Company (LADECO) (see PANNA's Global Pesticide Campaigner, December 1999 and PANUPS of August 26, 2002). The Quijanos reported widespread health problems consistent with pesticide poisoning and even several deaths attributable to the pesticides used on the plantation in the 1980s. They and several journalists were sued for libel by LADECO shortly after the article appeared, and sued a second time after the first case was denied in 2001. It is the second libel suit that has just been re-instated by the Philippine courts and that now threatens Dr. Quijano and others.
Dr. Quijano and these journalists performed an important public service for the community of Kamukhaan and other rural villages where frequent and heavy applications of pesticides deeply affect human and environmental health. They must not be silenced or punished for documenting or for exercising their rights and duty to speak out against serious environmental health damage.
Please contact the Philippine officials listed below and let them know you support the work of Dr. Quijano and others to documenting the health risks of pesticide use in Kamukhaan:
Within the U.S. first dial the international access code 011:
(Text of letter to these officials sent by PAN Regional Coordinators of Asia/Pacific, Africa, Europe, and North and Latin America)
Dear Respected Representatives,
The Regional Coordinators of the international group, Pesticide Action Network, would like to express our concern at recent events in the Philippines against a number of highly respected individuals who have documented conditions of, and sought to support, a community affected by exposure to pesticides. The concern is the revived legal action pending against Dr Romeo Quijano, a professor at the University of Philippines and a highly respected member of the global health community. Dr Quijano is President of Pesticide Action Network Philippines. The action also affects five journalists: Ilang-Ilang Quijano (Dr Quijano's daughter and a reporter on Pinoy Weekly), Leti Boniol (Inquirer desk editor), Danilo Mariano (ABS-CBNnews.com editor); and New York Times correspondents Carlos Conde and Nick Legaspi (Malaya desk).
Originally dismissed in 2001 in recognition that this case concerned the public interest, we have now learned that the Department of Justice revived the case in July 2003. The medical profession and the press have a duty to investigate causes of ill-health. In the case in question, the circumstances affecting a Philippino community could be seen as an abuse of their human rights and harassment of those seeking to redress injustice is limiting their freedom of speech.
We have followed the plight of the villagers of Kamukhaan, Mindanao, since first documented by Dr Quijano in 1997 and are aware of the apparent level of pesticide contamination arising from the nearby banana plantation owned by the Lapanday Development Corporation (LADECO). Dr Quijano has visited this 700-strong community on many occasions and documented the serious health and economic impacts on them as a result of living in the shadow of the plantation. Other investigators, including some of those named in the legal action, as well as national and international organizations, have corroborated the findings.
The conditions facing this community are appalling. They have suffered widespread disease and fatalities from pesticide exposure for over 20 years. Repeated aerial and ground spraying of pesticides have polluted soil, and affected the local flora, fauna and biodiversity. The resulting deaths of trees, animals and fish, and of crop failures, have destroyed not only the health of the whole community, including children, but also their livelihoods as farmers and fisherfolk. We are concerned too at possible effects on the workers living on and near the plantations.
You may be aware that governments, working through the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) adopted in 2001 a revised version of the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides in order to better protect communities in poorer countries where conditions of use mean that pesticide applications are often extremely hazardous. The Code recommends that pesticides in the most hazardous categories established by the World Health Organization, class Ia (extremely hazardous), class Ib (highly hazardous), should not be used under most conditions in developing countries, and that class II (moderately hazardous) should also be avoided. We understand that the pesticides used on the plantation include carbofuran, diazinon, glyphosate mancozeb, maneb and paraquat. There are many concerns relating to these chemicals, for example, acute toxicity according to the WHO classification [carbofuran (Ib) paraquat and diazinon (both II)]. Others are carcinogenic or disrupt hormone systems. Ecotoxicological effects have also been identified.
The revised Code provides guidance for governments to help eliminate the adverse health and environmental effects of pesticides. The Code also calls on those using pesticides and with a role in the food chain - agricultural producers, food marketers and retail outlets - to assist in the implementation of the Code. The pesticide industry has now adopted the revised Code and its member companies have pledged to comply.
As an organization which investigates the adverse effects of pesticides at field level, we are well aware that many pesticides that have not yet been classified under an international system cause severe health and environmental effects. Documentation of the effects of pesticides is extremely important for contributing to the improvement of human health of all exposed communities, particularly the poor who have limited resources to protect themselves. Field documentation contributes to scientific knowledge, and assists research establishments and industries to develop and implement less hazardous tools and strategies for control of pests and maintaining productivity.
We respectfully ask the government to intervene in this matter through establishing an official enquiry, and supporting the actions taken by Dr Quijano and others. Their actions constitute an important public service not only to the community of Kamukhaan, but also to others facing similar assaults on their lives and livelihoods in the Philippines and elsewhere. Actions that stifle legitimate investigations and documentation do a disservice to all those working to improve the conditions of poor communities and for a clean and sustainable environment.
Sarojeni J. Rengam, Regional Coordinator, Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific
The Pesticide Action Network is a coalition of over 600 public interest organizations and trade unions in ore than 60 countries. It works to eliminate the hazards of pesticides and to promote safe and sustainable alternatives.
PANUPS is a weekly email news service providing resource guides and reporting on pesticide issues that don't always get coverage by the mainstream media. It's produced by Pesticide Action Network North America, a non-profit and non-governmental organization working to advance sustainable alternatives to pesticides worldwide. | <urn:uuid:dfd8e1a2-6c69-4bb1-b0f9-1233f35c5953> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.panna.org/legacy/panups/panup_20031014.dv.html?quicktabs_1=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943986 | 1,589 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Search - List of Books by Lionel Blue
"Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic." -- Lionel Blue
Lionel Blue (born 6 February, 1930) is a British Reform rabbi, journalist and broadcaster. He was the first British rabbi publicly to declare his homosexuality. Born in the East End of London, he was the son of a master tailor.
Total Books: 45
Blue read History at Balliol College, Oxford and Semitics at the University of London before being ordained as a rabbi in 1960. He spent time in the Army but was discharged after a nervous breakdown brought on by anxiety over his homosexuality.
He is best known for his longstanding and respected work with the media, most notably the wry and gentle sense of humour on "Thought for the Day" on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He is also widely respected in the UK as a journalist, cook and author.
In July 1998 Blue was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University. He is also Honorary Doctor of Divinity & Fellow of Grey College, Durham. | <urn:uuid:870f5530-627c-4456-81a2-a2bf3843f2e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.paperbackswap.com/Lionel-Blue/author/?t=cl | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980348 | 240 | 1.75 | 2 |
Paternity leave plan labelled ridiculous by gender equality campaigners
Campaigners ask: why would the government agree to three days off for new fathers when it already grants its own civil servants five days?
- Yes: 82%
- No: 18%
The government's proposal to give new fathers three days' paid leave when it already grants its civil servants five days' paternity leave has been condemned as absurd by a group campaigning for gender equality.
"Civil servants have five days … when I say it's ridiculous, I am asking why should the private sector have only three days," said The Women's Foundation's chief executive Su-mei Thompson.
Under the proposal, new fathers would enjoy three days off on 80 per cent pay. The plan has yet to go before the Legislative Council but was given the thumbs up by the Labour Advisory Board at the end of November after a lengthy debate involving unions and business leaders.
"It was a good first step but it was not bold enough. [Hongkongers] have started to realise the importance of the father in parenting … but we hope Hong Kong can carry on with the discussions," said Thompson.
According to the city's labour laws, a woman is eligible for 10 weeks' maternity leave during and after her pregnancy.
Thompson said Hong Kong still had a long way to go to match the family-friendly work environments that are the status quo for many developed economies.
"In an ideal world, we would like the discussion to be reframed as parental leave [instead of maternity and paternity leave], so that either the mother or the father can choose [the amount of time off]," she said.
In some Scandinavian countries, she said, parents can choose how to divide leave.
In Sweden, for example, new parents qualify for shared parental leave of up to 480 days.
According to a Swedish government website, men claimed about 20 per cent of total parental leave taken in 2008. In a bid to advocate better gender policies, meanwhile, the foundation is offering scholarships to one Hong Kong university graduate every year to study gender issues at Cambridge University's Centre for Gender Studies.
"The talent pool of skilled researchers in Hong Kong is very small for those who understand gender issues and can apply the best practices in gender analysis.
"We hope that after their studies, students can come back to work in public administration, research or media," she said.
Thompson also called for the advertising industry to get rid of gender stereotyping.
"In traditional advertising, when you try to sell a car, the dad would drive the car and the mum would be doing the housework. But in some countries, there is more advertising that portrays the reversal of those roles," she said. | <urn:uuid:8a6e75eb-e1e6-4fb6-b586-17b7b54a346f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1118506/paternity-leave-plan-labelled-ridiculous-gender-equality-campaigners | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969956 | 554 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Fiscal Cliff Speech
President Obama’s New Year’s Eve speech was certainly in stark contrast to that of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Different in tone and delivery. Very different in terms of the staging.
The President is now routinely flanked by public service workers when he gives a speech. And his New Year’s Eve speech was no different. This adds up to an image of the President surrounded by his supporters and admirers…unlike the isolation of the North Korean leader’s speech.
The Armageddon of the “fiscal cliff” was bizarrely more likely than the Armageddon inspired by North Korean leaders. And that was the main thrust of the President’s speech.
His speech set out his stall right from the start. If the fiscal cliff nightmare isn’t sorted 98% of Americans can expect to pay higher taxes of up to $2000 a year. And spending cuts will hit just about every aspect of federal spending. That much was clear.
The president was fluent in his speech delivery using some good rhetorical techniques:
…the last thing folks like the folks up here on this stage can afford right now is to pay an extra $2,000 in taxes next year. Middle-class families can’t afford it. Businesses can’t afford it. Our economy can’t afford it.
Repetition featured strongly in this speech, as did some good comic turns from the President. Speaking about the proposed solution to the problem the President noted that things could pan out for the better, before noting:
But with this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time.
That got a good laugh.
He continued with the laughs and jokes as he neared his conclusion:
So as of this point, it looks like I’m going to be spending New Year’s here in D.C. You all are going to be hanging out in D.C. too.
I can come to your house? Is that what you said? I don’t want to spoil the party.
Happy New Year. | <urn:uuid:5d4aa06e-938c-49d2-b671-2136a29bae31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timetomarket.co.uk/blog/speeches/fiscal-cliff-speech/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975503 | 444 | 1.75 | 2 |
Aug 03 2010
Coming Changes …
Ready or Not!
Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come, even though they may take a lot longer to happen outside the U.S.!
1. The Post OfficeGet ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.
2. The CheckBritain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.3. The NewspaperThe younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.4. The BookYou say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
5. The Land Line TelephoneUnless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they're always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.6. MusicThis is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is "catalogue items", meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
7. TelevisionRevenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing all lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.8. The "Things" That You OwnMany of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.9. PrivacyIf there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7 "THEY" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "THEY" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.All we will have that can't be changed
Are Memories … | <urn:uuid:1320c059-61be-4ea9-893d-6be4eb1b10fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://emailfromgrandma.com/tag/paranoia/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956681 | 1,287 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.