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KFOR Works to End Ethnic Violence
By Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service
CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo, May 3, 2000 NATO-led forces are working hard to quell continuing ethnic violence in Kosovo, according to Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.
"(Yugoslav President) Slobodan Milosevic will take advantage of any potential conflict in the region," Cohen told reporters during a May 1 visit here. "We have extremism on both sides. That's something we're trying very hard to discourage (among) the ethnic Albanians and, at the same time, not give Milosevic any kind of excuse to try to respond to that.
In recent weeks, NATO-led forces discovered a significant cache of weapons, Cohen said, and prior to that had put down local insurgence without any significant casualties.
"We understand that there are still some flash points that we have to contend with," he said. "We are strengthening our capability of interrupting the flow of weapons that may be transported illegally. We will take whatever measures are necessary to maintain peace and stability in our sector."
About 6,100 Americans are among the 42,000 troops in the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Cohen stressed NATO's success in driving out Serb forces, allowing more than a million refugees to return home.
"We're hoping that we will provide the basis for the people of Kosovo to establish institutions that will make them self-governing, that there will be local elections held this fall. We want to see institutions built that will allow the people of Kosovo to function in an autonomous way. That's our hope and that's why KFOR is here."
U.S. and NATO officials are looking forward to the United Nations providing more international police so U.S. troops won't have to engage in so many police activities, Cohen said. As things stabilize, U.S. officials expect to see the United Nations take over the major responsibilities, "but we can't put a time frame on that.
"Overall," Cohen said, "we believe the mission is being successfully carried out." | <urn:uuid:a892803c-0231-49ce-a10d-756e7807a263> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=45225 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961732 | 437 | 1.59375 | 2 |
As a way to advance the discussion on legalizing street vending in Los Angeles (link), local organizations, with the help of local city government support, have launched El Mercado del Pueblo, a pilot program that brings street vendors together at a designated vending area where they can sell their goods (link).
On September 1, the East Los Angeles Community Corporation (link) (ELACC) and Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar launched El Mercado del Pueblo in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, which will be held every Saturday evening from 5 to 10 pm (link). With the support of other local and affiliated organizations, notably the Leadership for Urban Renewal Now (link) (LURN) and Carecen (link), the pilot program was launched after two years of ongoing efforts.
ELACC sees this initiative as a short term solution to its efforts, the larger goal, again, being to legalize street vending so that permitted street vendors can sell their goods anywhere in the city. It has connected its street vending initiative to the additional effort of bringing more diverse food resources into the poorly serviced community, which has minimal access to fresh, healthy foods; ELACC’s approach, then, assumes that street vending can aid with cultivating healthier lifestyles in the obesity and hypertension-plagued community (link).
With the help of LURN and Carecen, ELACC has organized several town hall meetings and events to rally around street vending legalizing efforts, including the APA conference workshop held in April (link). Days prior to the Mercado’s opening, it, along with LURN, held a town hall meeting to gather input from street vendors and other stakeholders on how to proceed with the legalization efforts (link).
Organizers see theses efforts as effective and responsive ways for creating long-term, sustainable solutions to this old, tangled, and often misrepresented phenomenon. More so, it is thought that by creating regular forums around the issue, the vendors themselves can more effectively convey their intentions, the case for legalized street vending, as well as their desired legal outcomes from these efforts to other stakeholders. The picture below is indicative of the kind of enthusiasm these forums and outreach efforts have created around the cause. | <urn:uuid:dd1adf7e-495d-450f-94e7-148dcef99a16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://favelissues.com/2012/09/10/los-angeles-el-mercado-del-pueblo-and-street-vending-initiative/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956082 | 456 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Summary Staff Report:
Agriculture Districts in February 2007, the Board of
Supervisors acted to increase the commercial signage for
farm supply establishments located with direct access to a
rural principal arterial. This amendment was initiated
because of business and safety concerns relative to the
Culpeper Farmersí Cooperative (Co-op) along Route 17. The
facility is not readily visible to traffic traveling north.
Visibility and safety could be enhanced through better
Unfortunately, the Co-op is separated from Route 17 by a
fronting street and separate parcel, which the Co-op also
safety and business reasons, the Co-op needs to place its
sign on the small parcel it owns and is located adjacent to
Route 17 (refer to the illustration above). This would
constitute an off-premise sign, not permitted under the
existing ordinance. The proposed text amendment is intended
to remedy this problem.
This text amendment was initiated by the Planning Commission
on April 26, 2007. A public hearing was held May 31, 2007.
The Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval of
the proposed amendment. | <urn:uuid:869a2adb-4060-4f60-a3f0-08039795cc21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fauquiercounty.gov/Government/departments/BOS/pastagendas/06-14-07/agsigns_agrq.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9569 | 236 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Click to enlarge
''And wrenching off the splendid crown which encircled its brow he precipitately ran out of the church.''
the battle-field with a song, and they fall calm at heart. Their gaze is free of fear or dread, but to-day your eyes are sombre like the night, and your heart is agitated like the tempest when it rages amid the woods. You suffer and weep! Down among the chestnuts of Artadi is likewise seen a maiden, sweet like hope, beautiful as bliss, and she sighs sadly on murmuring your name. Iranzu! Iranzu! why did you go to the Gara-paita 1 of Artadi if your life was passing calmly and happily dwelling in the ancient homestead of your elders? Have you not heard, at times, that shadows of sadness and mourning obscured the fate of your child?
One day, when that lovely child, a babe, still in her cradle, was placed beneath the oak tree which shaded the doorway, an aged Astiya 2 passed by, and stayed to gaze upon that child with deep emotion.
Suddenly her eyes were filled with tears, and her tremulous lips murmured with sad accents a name. It was the name of her child--her child which she had lost that moon, and its memory had made her heart of mother shudder rudely! Because even the Astiyas, when they are mothers, have loving hearts and feel affection towards those little ones whom they have borne!
Touched tenderly by the memory of her lost one,
she endeavoured to imprint a kiss on the fresh, rosy cheek; but the innocent babe repelled with dread and fear her kisses and caresses. The vengeful Astiya spitefully uttered over her brow mysterious words of cursing and death!
Have none of those words reached to you, Iranzu? Listen, listen. "May a curse fall on the first youth who shall make your heart beat, and receives your first kiss of love!" she hissed.
And you are the first, Iranzu, who has attained to agitate the mind of that maiden; you the first who has made her virgin soul tremble with love; you who have won her loving caresses! Unhappy one! Better had it been for you had you encountered on the mountains of Otoso a herd of famished wolves, than have met the blue eyes of the maiden of Artadi! How could you dream of obtaining the hand of that rich heiress, you, poor cadet of Biscay, who has for his only heirloom a tile, a tree, and coat of mail? 1 Fly from her, Iranzu! Forget that perchance she is waiting for you at her window, listening with beating heart for the sound of your footsteps!
But alas! the son of Iranzu will not turn back, because he is love-stricken, and he will not return until he has seen her, even should he have to leap across the
black mouth of the chasm of Aitz-belz, 1 which descends, down to the bottomless pit. He runs, runs, and at length he reaches Artadi. Oh, how his heart beats on quitting the shades of the trees which overshadow her window! Oh, how he trembles and shudders as by the light or the moon he discovers the sweet brow of the love-stricken damsel!
But she is sad. Her eyes are swollen with tears, her looks reveal much anguish, her cheeks are pale! It is because the angel of pain, on passing swiftly, has left on her lips a kiss of death.
"What ails you, dove of Artadi?" cries the youth, with impassioned accents.
"Iranzu?" she murmured.
"You are weeping! What is the matter?"
"Fly from hence, Iranzu!"
"What do I hear?"
"Oh, I hear my father coming--retire, Iranzu. But, first, one word. The Eche-jaun of Igueldo has asked for my hand!"
"Oh! and what have you replied? What does your father say?"
"My father has accepted him, and I------"
"What am I to do? He is my father."
"He is your father, tis true. But I--I am your lover; oh, tell me--do you love me? If so, come with me! fly with me! Come, I will give you my heart and my life. I will win for you riches and a name!"
"It is impossible, Iranzu!"
"Oh! but listen to me!"
"Silence!" cried at this moment the aged Artadi, as he showed himself at the window. "By the love which my daughter bears towards you, I will give you a further term; but do not forget that if within fifteen days you do not bring your millares, 1 the maiden of Artadi will be the bride of the Eche-jaun of Igueldo. May heaven assist you!"
"Perhaps it will be the evil one," cried the bold youth, in great wrath, "since heaven is deaf to my pleadings and cries!"
A tremendous thunder-clap was the reply to this impious exclamation, while a dart of lightning clove in twain the massive trunk of an enormous oak tree which grew close to him.
Iranzu raised his head, and, with a look of deepest contempt on his countenance, glanced up at the dark window, and began running over mountain and valley, without aim or object, roaring with rage, and invoking in one breath both heaven and hell. On turning round the brow of a hill, a-pale blue light appeared before him,
and this flame flickered in an agitated manner, as though it shuddered at every movement. The young man stood still for a moment, as he gazed upon it with absorbing interest; but its pale, mysterious gleams strangely filled his soul with superstitious dread, and he turned back to avoid it. Yet the flame continued before him, and at length, annoyed at not being able to avoid or depart from it, he decided to continue his march forward; so he impetuously ran to encounter it, in order to drive. it away. But all in vain! If he advanced, the mysterious flame would flit before him; if he turned back, the flame would turn back also; yet he was unable to reach it, as it always kept at the same distance from him, fascinating his eyes, and troubling his spirit with its sinister, fantastic gleams.
"It must be my destiny!" he murmured, despondingly, and he continued to walk on, giving himself up with despairing resignation to his fate.
And they both ran and ran; the light before him floating amid the shadows in tremulous movements, Iranzu following it, taciturn and sombre. When any mountaineer approached the path Iranzu was following, and discovered the mysterious flame, he would quickly make the sign of the Cross and hasten his pace. The night was far advanced when they reached to Iciar. The flame went into the streets, and the youth still behind it. But on turning into the open space or
square before the church, the light glided swiftly over the door of the temple, and after flickering for a few moments with rapid movements, it vanished among the shadows. Notwithstanding the darkness of night, the youth observed that the church door was half open, so he stepped into the porch to look within. Black thoughts of crime must have at that moment risen up in his mind, because, on drawing back from the door, his eyes were glistening with sinister fire. Overcome, or rather led by some undefinable emotion, he once again looked into the interior with eager looks; but he only discovered the shadows cast forth by the holy images, and which moved beneath the flickering gleams shed by the expiring light of the lamp. Meanwhile dark thoughts assailed him each time with greater force, and he was maddened by tempting visions, and these temptations were dragging him towards the temple to manifest to his avaricious eyes the riches which were within. But he still wrestled between the voice of temptation and the voice of conscience, and he tremblingly murmured, without daring to enter, "That light is the one which is guiding me here--oh, light of my destiny! From whence does it come? Perchance from the lower regions? But no matter! If it affords me the needed millares, it will give me happiness!"
He vacillated for a moment; then, making a supreme effort, he leaped across the threshold, and with firm
step advanced to the altar of the Lady Chapel. In those days--as at the present time--the brow of the holy image was encircled by a rich diadem of gold studded with precious stones, and from the hands pended beads of inestimable value.
On finding himself standing at the altar, Iranzu felt his knees quail under him. "Oh, if I had all these precious things!" he said, as he gazed with longing looks at the image--"oh, if I had the courage! But it is such a sacred image, and hallowed by so many miracles--who would dare to raise his wicked hand to touch its holy brow?" Nevertheless he was instinctively approaching nearer and nearer to its side, until he stood on the altar.
A gust of wind at that moment moved the curtain which veiled the sacred queen of the angels. The youth trembled, yet he continued on the altar. Suddenly throughout the wide vaulted dome of the temple resounded the prolonged echoes of a far distant discharge of guns, and then another and another, until they numbered twenty-one. 1
It was the tender, respectful salute which from the far distant ocean some brave sailor was directing to Our Lady of Iciar, the Star of the Sea.
"What was I going to do--I, hapless man?" he murmured, as he leaped down from the altar. "Some
brave one, perhaps my brother Joanes, is sending across the shades of night his homage and prayers to the Mother of God, meanwhile that my sacrilegious hand is stretched forth to wrench off her crown I No, never, never will I stain my soul with such an impious deed! It is better to die at once! Death stifles in its arms at once misery and sorrow!"
Saying this, he flung himself on his knees at the feet of the Virgin and sobbed a prayer, while two burning tears coursed down his cheeks. But these pious feelings and emotions were of short duration in a heart puffed up with pride.
The evil one whom he had invoked in his senseless despair cast a deadly shadow over his better nature, and presented before his mind and feverish imagination the image of his beloved one, her eyes streaming with tears, her heart agitated, and calling him in sad, passionate tones. And he, on the wings of love, seemed to be flying to her side, and to clasp her in his arms; but her father appeared to come to separate them, delivering her up to his hateful rival who was taking her away for ever. And in the midst of his delirium he heard distinctly ringing in his ears those hateful words of the old man--"Do not forget if within fifteen days you do not bring your millares, the maiden of Artadi shall be the bride of the Eche-jaun of Igueldo."
Love, jealousy, wrath, and vengeance cast flames of
fire over his proud heart, a vertigo of rage took possession of his head, and, giving a leap, he stood on the altar and tore down the curtains which veiled the holy image, and, wrenching off the splendid crown which encircled its brow, he precipitately ran out of the church. On bounding over the threshold he heard almost in his very ears a frightful unearthly peal of laughter which well-nigh froze the blood in his veins, and was re-echoed in the inmost recesses of his heart like a cry of death. Maddened with terror at what he had done, he started in a wild career along the skirt of Murguizabel, without noticing that the aged Astiya, who, was concealed behind one of the recesses of the porch, was watching him with a look of sinister satisfaction. And he sped on and on until his chest became. contracted, and his breath failed him, and his legs tottered and bent under him. He stopped to try and recover breath for a moment, but on attempting it he thought to hear anew that terrible, awful peal of laughter, and uttering a cry of anguish, he began again to run along the broken rocks, and leaping across. torrents with senseless, fearful impetus, casting froth from out of his mouth, and darts of fire from his eyes.
The night was dark, very dark. The hurricane was breaking over the land, the wind whistled among the aged oaks, and their dry branches, moving under the impulses of the wind, appeared to be ill-omened phantoms,
that were putting forth their weird arms towards the guilty youth, whilst the shadows cast by the bushes, the broken rocks, and the briery hedges which waved around him, conjured up in his terrified imagination legions of devils that sprang up on every side as he trod the ground.
And thus he walked on for one hour, and two--and six--without stopping once, without lessening his pace, scarcely daring to breathe, until at the dawn of the new day he ceased to hear that fiendish laughter, as the shades of night disappeared, and the wind became calmed down. Exhausted and breathless, he stopped at the foot of a chestnut tree to rest awhile; but, wishing first to know whereabouts he was, he climbed the tree to reconnoitre the ground.
"How much I must have walked!" he murmured while he climbed up. "I must be far, very far away!"
It was the hour when the day wrestles to open a way amid the shadows, piercing through and pouring on all sides a dim misty light which alters every object.
"I can distinguish nothing," he said, fixing his eyes with yearning looks towards the east, where the horizon was beginning to be tinged with the soft light of dawn.
All at once the sun, rending the mists and fogs with powerful impulse, inundated with torrents of light a magnificent temple which rose up dark and sombre at the foot of the white cliffs of Andutz. On recognizing
it, the hapless youth felt his heart chilled within him with horror, and a cold perspiration overspread his pale, weary forehead. The building which appeared before his astonished gaze was the Church of Our Lady of Iciar, from which he had been unable to depart more than a thousand yards during seven hours of frenzied speed.
Believing that he was the victim of some nightmare, he closed his eyes to shut out this awe-inspiring vision, and on opening them again he saw on all sides the forms of armed men who were approaching, seeking something among the briers and bushes. No doubt the sacrilegious robbery had been discovered, and these men had come seeking the thief. Convinced at that moment of the terrible reality, he bent down his head in deep despondency and terror. Meanwhile the men were approaching, closely following his footprints step by step. Iranzu, perceiving this, wished to leap down, but the stolen jewels weighed him down terribly, and he was unable to move a foot as though he were nailed to the tree. Bewailing his powerlessness, he wished at least to cast the jewels from him in order to conceal his crime, but, on putting his hand to his breast where he had hidden them, he felt his fingers become charred at the contact. In this terrible anguish he made a last and desperate attempt to tear the cloth off his tunic; but it was in vain that he employed all his
strength. The fragile cloth resisted his efforts as though it had been made of woven steel.
By this time the men had discovered him, and were coming quickly to the tree, tracing a circle in order to prevent his escape. Oh, then did he curse his ill-fated love, his existence, and his crime; and then, unclasping the belt he wore, he made a noose with it, and in despair hung himself from one of the branches.
When his pursuers reached him, they found him in the last throes of death, and he only lived long enough to be able to recount the sad circumstances of his sacrilegious attempt.
Since that epoch the brow of the mountain on which this event took place is known throughout the district by the name of Hurca-Mendi--that is to say, the mountain of the gibbet. On the left extends the ancient roadway which leads from Iciar to the sea; and if any one desirous of investigating these legends advances by that side towards the deserted slopes of Arbill, the shepherds who tend the flocks there will show him the spot on which the unhappy, ill-advised youth put an end to his days, adding that during the darksome nights of winter there are heard the doleful sighs of his spirit as it wanders among the woods.
247:1 Hurca-Mendi. See Glossary.
248:1 Gara-paita. See Glossary.
248:2 Astiya. See Glossary.
249:1 A tile, a tree, &.c. See Glossary.
250:1 Aitz-belz. See Glossary.
251:1 Millares. See Glossary.
254:1 Twenty-one. See Glossary. | <urn:uuid:16f7efc5-cb6d-4023-8179-1a59927ddf82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/basque/lbp/lbp16.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978893 | 3,753 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The debate over the responsibilities brokers have to clients when selling them mutual funds is a pretty colorful one. Brokers are often demonized as craven salespeople, putting clients into the funds that offer the biggest kickbacks. Others argue that brokers are more highly regulated than independent advisors, and take the needs of their clients seriously. This is the basis for much of the debate as to whether there should be a universal standard that all investment professionals must adhere to.
A new study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Finance, is the first to clearly demonstrate that how brokers get paid does indeed affect fund flows—and performance.
Brokers are paid three ways:
• Funds that charge an upfront sales load give a big chunk of it (75%-to-80%) to the broker. Sales loads—often stated to be as high as 4.75%—are often reduced to a more-typical 2.77%, but are always taken out of your initial investment.
• The ongoing 12b-1 fee, which is capped at 1% and always taken out of fund assets, also goes to the broker.
• Revenue-sharing agreements, in which the fund's management agrees to share with the broker a portion of the management fees it assesses (which also come out of a fund's assets and aren't subject to any regulatory limits or disclosure requirements).
Given the debates going on, "this seemed like an opportunity to see if incentives have a bearing on how money gets allocated," says Susan Christoffersen, an associate professor of finance at the University of Toronto who produced the study along with Richard Evans at the University of Virginia and David Musto at the University of Pennsylvania. And yes, they do.
The study made a distinction between captive brokers, who work for a firm that owns (or is owned by) a mutual-fund company, and independent brokers. You might think the independent brokers gave more unbiased advice—but while that's possible, they also seem more influenced by load payments. The study looked at total loads paid as well as the portion of the loads that went to brokers, and found "significant evidence" that these payments skew broker's incentives across the board, and independent brokers even more so.
More distressing is the evidence that broker-sold load funds result in underperformance in the first year, trailing peers by an average of 1.13 percentage points—before taking the load into account. Christoffersen and her colleagues only tracked performance for 12 months, but "my conjecture is you'd be losing that money going forward; I just can't say how much," she adds.
Revenue-sharing also affected which funds brokers put clients into, but there was no difference in subsequent performance. Because revenue-sharing is an ongoing fee that rises as assets in the fund rise (which should happen if the fund performs well), Christoffersen points out, these payments better align a broker's interest with clients' interests.
Christoffersen referenced a major black eye the brokerage industry received when, in 2004, Edward Jones was found to have 240 mutual-fund families represented on its platform, yet 95% of client money went into just seven "preferred" fund families, which investors were led to believe were preferred because of their performance. But those seven firms just happened to be the only fund companies that made sizeable and regular payments to the brokerage.
A 2011 Financial Industry Regulatory Authority proposal would require brokers to disclose their revenue-sharing or "shelf space" payments, but a similar 2005 proposal was never adopted, says Ron Feiman, a partner with New York law firm Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel. Revenue-sharing may be disclosed in a fund's prospectus and statements of additional information, Feiman says, but while that might name brokers receiving payments, it doesn't reveal amounts or other details of the arrangements.
MANY BROKERS DISCLOSE revenue-sharing agreements on their Websites, but when was the last time you looked at the disclosures on your broker's Website? Which brings us to another wrinkle in the policy debate: "The vast majority of the public either doesn't understand or doesn't care to reflect on the difference between a broker's advice and an advisor's advice," says Kurt Schacht, managing director with the CFA Institute. "Broker-dealers appear to provide the same services as an advisor, so the client feels they're getting advice when, in fact, they're talking to a sales person."
But investor education, rather than more regulation, may be the answer. "I'm not sure how much more disclosure we can have a broker do," says Bob Pozen, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and former fund-industry bigwig (at Fidelity Investments and MFS Investments). "There's already a huge amount of disclosure. And I've been very impressed with how much change brokers have made. Ten years ago you could just say 'I'll give you more money to sell this fund.' Today, it requires some rigor to get on a platform."
How much rigor? We'll examine that in a future column. For now, consider this one step in the education. | <urn:uuid:d9ca4991-842f-40cb-b81e-2ace6da0ed95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424052748703892404578269963416600642.html?mod=BOL_mwnews_popemail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975488 | 1,055 | 1.585938 | 2 |
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PieceWork magazine is pleased to present this electronic pattern book which opens a window on another time and another place. The time is the turn of the twentieth century and the place is London, England. Needleworkers of that era would be amazed to see their favorite beading patterns in a virtual format of which they could never have dreamed.
In an effort to bring needlework to the emerging middle class, Weldon’s, a paper pattern producer of the Victorian era, began to publish monthly newsletters devoted to various crafts (beading, knitting, patchwork, and the like). These newsletters were typically 14 pages and cost 2 pence. Later, they were collected into book form, titled Weldon’s Practical Needlework. We have reproduced for you here the beading material from Volume 4. The 27 projects range from simple to ornate, from tassels and buttons to sash ornaments and bonnet crowns. The instructions might perplex a contemporary beader accustomed to detailed charts and succinct directions, but the patterns are often ingenious, and many of the objects transcend the century-plus span of years since they were devised.
This pamphlet serves as a curiosity, an inspiration, a resource, and a link to a time beyond our memories. In using and enjoying it, you keep the craft alive.
Please visit the preview below to see a sample page.
First Series Includes:
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Add to Cart | <urn:uuid:36879934-3bba-417e-a245-3866c51c072c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.interweavestore.com/weldons-practical-bead-work | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944589 | 333 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Can Emerging Market Consumers Keep Spending?
“In these developing economies, households tend to spend 55 to 60 percent of monthly income on food and fuel, because they don’t have the high health care and housing expenses of the developed world,” he noted.
“Food prices have a huge impact on emerging market consumers potentially in China — which is a huge importer of soybeans and the second largest consumer of corn — and in places like Mexico." (Read More: Massive US Drought Leads to Worst Fears for Corn Crop).
Riedel prefers the companies that will benefit from the drought. He likes Latin American farming company Adecoagro that will benefit from higher prices and fertilizer companies like Potash as farmers look to improve crop yields.
“You want to be cautious on food producers in emerging markets because they will get squeezed by higher input costs,” he warned. | <urn:uuid:03be71d9-d9e0-46d3-b63c-ae02e761fa41> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/48691687/page/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95429 | 187 | 1.835938 | 2 |
"Is Your Hormone Imbalance Stopping Your Weight Loss Cold In Its Tracks?"
"A hormone imbalance can be the death blow to your natural weight los..."
A hormone imbalance is when you have a high level of fat storing hormones being produced and a low level of fat burning hormones being produced in your body.
That's what this whole section is about...
If you read "Hormone Restoration" you will understand what hormones levels are supposed to look like.
All hormones cycle up and down.
But when you have a fat storing hormone imbalance, you have long periods of time where you have high levels of fat storing hormones and short times where you have fat burning hormones.
There Is Nothing Wrong With You...
This is why some people feel like there is something wrong with them. They are exercising and dieting correctly based on what they are being told but they are not getting results.
The answer could be this hormone imbalance. By restoring health and hormone restoration or hormone enhancement, you can start to lose weight the way you thought it should occur.
What are the hormones that need to be balanced? Well, you can read the page, "Hormone Restoration" if you like, or read Metabolism Makeover.
But for a very simple view, there are a few key hormones you need to focus on.
Insulin and cortisol.
Most of the poor health today modern industrialized world are a result of an imbalance of insulin and cortisol.
Before I continue, I want to say that I am NOT saying these hormones are bad. All hormones are needed for survival.
I am pointing out the hormone imbalance and its effect on body fat and health.
Insulin and Cortisol Block Fat Burning Hormones...
When insulin and cortisol are elevated, all fat burning hormones are suppressed.
What we want to have are the fat burning and anti-aging hormones of human growth hormone, testosterone, glucagon and fat burning levels of insulin. These cannot go up when insulin is too high.
By first restoring insulin and cortisol to normal levels, you can start to increase your fat burning hormones. Then with diet and exercise, based on your hormone response, you can elevate the fat burning hormones even more.
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Over the past 10 years I have been losing weight and putting it back on just about every three months.
I finally took a much needed step and hired Yegyan to help me stop the yo-yo diet cycle. After 30 days I lost 11 LBS and was able to get back into my favorite pair of jeans. After 60 days I lost a total of 16 LBS. After 120 days, the weight is still off, my skin looks much better, and I actually have energy at 2pm in the afternoon! Lol
People always ask me what’s different and it really boils down to the education that I received from Yegyan. He put facts behind his food & nutrient recommendations so that I began to WANT to eat healthier foods instead of just forcing myself.
It’s been a lifestyle change and I couldn’t be happier to have officially said goodbye to the old (overweight) Nick.
Yegyan, thank you for all of your hard work and for our new friendship.
I hired Yegyan to help me with general health and energy. I wasn't so interested in weight loss.
But I endedup losing 14 pounds in two months. And this was also during Christmas!
I hardly have any sugar cravings (and I was a sugarholic. I mean fast food dessert breakfast lunch and dinner), and have deeper sleep than I ever remember and more energy throughout the whole day.
The days were like a struggle to make it through. Now I feel good, calm, focused and happy all day. It is more than I expected.
I CAN FIT IN MY JEANS – haven’t worn them for about 8 years!
I spoke to you about 3 weeks ago, and I wanted to thank you again for responding to my last e-mail so promptly, and giving me some feedback on what I've been doing. I really appreciate it.
I just wanted to check in and let you know about my progress... so far after about 2 1/2 weeks, I've lost about 10lbs. When I took my measurements, I would say that I've lost between 1/2" and 1" in most areas of my body
T. D. Long Beach CA Jun 25, 2010
There was a change today.... 4.5 lbs loss to be exact. :)
Charlene Mercer, Dohar
Last time I told you I had lost 20lbs in three months by changing my diet and aerobic activity in the form of brisk running. My waist has gone from 45" to now 38" and my weight 196lbs my height is 6ft.... and my waist is getting smaller again. This is great motivation!
...At 57 I don't feel I have both feet in the grave yet. Above all I don't want to become what I see lots of my friends starting to turn into wizened old men!
Anyhow thought I would just give you some feedback and thank you for a well written and thought out book.
Larry Manderson, MD. Ireland
Got your metabolism makeover e-book, and love it!
Went to doc's office: She decreased my insulin back down to 40 (yippee!) and was really pleased with my progress.... I'm happy with what you've helped me accomplish thus far.
I was shocked to suddenly realize that I was feeling good after so many years of daily headaches and stuffed up nose.
L. Liberty, Tacoma, WA
When I first started changing my diet a week ago, I couldn't believe it. I definitely started to feel the difference.
My mind was clearer. It felt like a fog was lifted. My energy was increased.
I wasn't dragging myself around to do things. I had a lot more energy.
Even my hair improved. It wasn't as dry as it was before I changed the way I was eating. It has a lot more body and not as frizzy and it was. I was using a special conditioner to make it less dry and frizzy. I don't have to use that anymore.
My skin is different also. I have been told so many times by a lot of people that I look younger. I even notice it myself. I don't look so worn out anymore. My skin has a different look to it. It seems like my wrinkles are not as pronounced. The rest of my body isn't as dry as it was, I don't use half of the lotions I did before.
I have lost ten pounds and 1 inch of my thighs and hips. My life is changing for the better. I haven't even started to exercise yet. But I don't feel that it will be as hard as it would have been if I didn't change my diet. I'll update you with my results.
Thank you so much for all of your help and the knowledge that you are giving me. What a difference a diet can make in your life.
I think once you get the knowledge on how food affects your body, the easier it is to change the way you eat. Knowledge it half the battle.
So many people eat the wrong way because they have been given bad information. There are a lot of people on diets that are really not eating the right way or eating the right things. They seem to gain the weight right back the minute they stop the diet. They feel hungry all of the time and get tempted constantly by the things they can't eat.
Well I don't feel deprived. I don't feel hungry and I haven't been tempted by anything, which is unusual for me.
Nobody ate more sugar and sweets than I did. I was always putting a cookie in my mouth. Eating chocolate or cake any chance I got. I thought it gave me more energy. I don't need that anymore. I never thought I would not want any sweets, but I don't. I feel satisfied, which is a great feeling.
Feb 2 2009
Follow up ….
Ye Gyan, I am now down to 128lbs from 156lbs!! You're great!! I can now wear anything I want!! I feel so much better at this weight! Wait until you see me. We need to take another after picture!
Jan 20 2010
C. DeHaan. Oregon
Jan 21, 2010...
My sister gave me your web sight she really praises you. She said I could ask you what I could do about my cholestrol.
I am 62 5'2 and I weight 135 lb my numbers are 246 Chol/146 tri/43 HDL LDL 176 The doctor wants to put me on medication I dont want to do that.
I have just started taking Guggal (2) 300mg, Beta-Glucan (1) 250 mg,Niacin 2 100 mg drinking (2) tablespoons of chlorophyll in water, eating oatmeal and drinking oat bran 2 tablespoons and garlic is this going to work do I need to do more. I do this everyday and I am walking at the gym They are giving me 30 days to get it down. I have thought about adding red yeast rice.
Jan 27, 2010...
Yegyan I got to bed on time last night I woke up a few min at 12 am but after that I stayed asleep the rest of the night … I have droped a few pounds and I feel so good. I am smiling right now thank you.
3 Feb 2010...
… Everyone is starting to tell me how good I look. My mom could not believe my size 8's are really loose.
I had got up to a size 10 and it was tight boy that came off quick.
I have tried for months to do what you have got me to doing. I am a Tarus born in April and my head is hard but
I am listening to you and doing as you say.
Yegyan I did not know if I should tell you this but I am. It has only been a few weeks and the changes in on the out side of me are turning 35 year olds heads. YES I have got 35 year old men after me.
I was trying to change my cholesterol I dont know if that has happened yet but now I have another thing going on.
I have got men after me from 35 to 70 years old. I am really having a lot of fun with all the attention I am getting I was not looking for weight to go so much but I am really liking this.
I am in jeans I have not worn for 10 years I look 10 years younger than I am. THIS IS FUN
If people dont belive it they can email me.
E. Powell, WA
At 48 years old, I had spent the better part of 25 years running, working out, eating healthy food, and taking care of my body. Being somewhat of an exercise junkie, I was certain I had all the answers.
I was frustrated that my body was stuck in a state of “I’m not budging, just try and make me.” I can honestly say that I thought I knew exactly what I was supposed to be doing for myself and for my health, however, I was working in vain. What I wanted was completely eluding me.
I thought that at 48 I finally had the time, the space and the energy to have the body that I wanted, and dammit, I was going to get it.
I tried to tweak my diet and exercise routines in every way I could think of, but nothing was working.
Although I was keeping up a rigorous routine of daily exercising and relatively (at least that is what I thought) healthy eating, nothing was changing.
In addition to not feeling as fit as I should have been for how hard I was working, I literally had zero energy
Yegyan’s approach to diet, exercise and overall health and well-being are unlike anyone else’s. I have read countless books on diet and exercise. I have had personal trainers and diet coaches.
However, I have never felt as good or, in my opinion, looked as good as I feel and look today after following Yegyan’s advice and approach to repairing the body by correcting hormonal imbalances through nutrition and proper exercise.
I have lost those stubborn 6 pounds, 8% body fat and 12 inches overall. I am overwhelmed with excitement, not just because I look so much better, but more importantly, because I actually FEEL so much better. I feel more alive, more alert, more energetic, more rested, and healthier than ever.
L. Quintanilla, Aliso Viejo, CA
I listened to what you had to say about exercising and now can understand what I am doing wrong.
I have lost inches .... Thank you for helping me to understand that.
EVERYBODY was asking me what am i doing!!! and that i lost a lot of weight YAY!!!!!
today , my in laws came over for lunch .... it’s amazing how i could finally control my cravings that easy. THANK YOU YEGYAAAAAAAAAAAN!!
H. Abdul Rhiyad, Saudi Arabia
| Before I met Yegyan, I had been working out at the gym, but struggled to lose 10 pounds over a period of many months. |
When Yegyan and I talked about that, he explained that my heart rate should not go over 126 while working out in order to be burning fat. I had had no idea, so prior to that I had been working as hard as I could push it, out to 135 and even 140 and believing I was doing the best thing possible to lose weight in a healthy manner.
As soon as I began to keep my heart rate under 126 and increase the length of workouts as he had also suggested, the next 10 pounds came off much more quickly, and I was a believer!
Thank you Yegyan, for helping me to restore myself to fitness.”
Thank you so much for your consults and training. I read your book and though I was doing everything correct but the weight loss stopped even though other other symptoms like energy, sleep, flexibility relaxation were still improving.
After doing the coaching with you for 4 months I realized that there is more to this than meets the eye. You were able to spot many things that were giving me trouble. Better yet, you told me in advance what I would be running into. Not generally, but specifically me. From your experience you were able to tell me I would have a hard time with something and sure enough it was a brick wall.
Then you walked me through it every single day for three weeks straight.
There is no way you can put everything in a book.
I have reached my goal and know I have given myself the greatest gift - long-term health and knowledge.
Please put this email on your site! | <urn:uuid:cc7e9785-8cfa-4874-8971-afce4de205dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.natural-weight-loss-myths-revealed.com/hormone-imbalance.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980937 | 3,201 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Posted On:5/19/2005 3:35pm
I'm double posting this outside of the BBC-only Training Log forum for broader reading.
This advice is BJJ centric. All of the authors are from BJJ. Maybe Silat has a bunch of gurus recommending you keep a training log and I've just missed it. But at as it stands, I have found at least two BJJ black belts and a brown belt who highly recommend keeping notes and a training log. I thought I would collect their words and post them here for everyone to read. I trust you can make the leap of logic and figure out how to apply their advice to something other than BJJ.
BJJ Q&A 66 by Roy Harris:Take notes. It is impossible to remember all of the details to each and every technique in BJJ. Take notes and re-write your notes.
This is another area where I've had people argue with me. Many have said, "Oh, I don't learn that way." Well, one truth of the matter is this:
Writing notes is not designed to help a person learn. It is a method retention, designed to help a person remember the quantity and quality of information he or she received.
Another truth of the matter (regarding those who say, "Oh, I don't learn that way") is this:
Those who refuse to takes notes are just too lazy to make the effort! They would rather have someone else explain everything to them in intricate detail, practice and spar with the information, AND THEN be able to (or should I say, "have the luxury of being able to) ask for the details again at another time (just in case they forget). In other words, these type of students only want to EXPERIENCE the euphoria of learning something new, practicing it until they FEEL they understand it and then EXPLORE its use in sparring (just to see if they can make it work right away). They have little desire to do the hard stuff (i.e. practice the information until they can do it live, write, re-write and maintain notes, etc..). All they want is the FUN stuff.BJJ Q&A 0054 by Roy Harris:The process to performing the reps is simple: Do the reps. Start out slow. Build up your speed with time. Don't spar right away. Don't talk. Stay focused. Do them on each side of your body. Pay attention to each and every movement. Write down your observations and epiphanies. Keep a record of them and periodically review them. Spar with this newfound knowledge only after committing four to ten hours of repetitions. Add one form of resistance as you master each movement. Spar with it and keep track of your progress. Add variables as you progress. Review your notes and observations. Do more reps. Repeat the process.Quantify Your Grappling Experience (Part One) by Roy Harris:In addition to all of the training areas listed above, I have also taken copious amounts of notes. For example, I have over 800 pages of notes on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. That's alot of typing!BJJ Q&A 0025 by Roy HarrisI hope this discussion has prompted you to grab a notebook and start taking notes. I also hope it will inspire you to do some critical thinking on your own!Ripped from Lloyd Irvin's Grappling Blueprint:Everyday you come to grappling class you're given
What do you do with it? Why do you think I told you
to write everything down in a journal? It's a must so
anytime you want you can call on the information to aid you.
I've been doing this for 7 years now. I have hundreds
of completely filled black and white composition books,
with very detailed notes. I have complete descriptions
of moves that I've probably forgotten that I ever new.
One of my students Ken Parham was showing me a move
that he has been having great success with about a month
ago and I was like man that's cool. Where did you get
that move from?
"Lloyd you showed me that move about 4 years ago
and I just finally realized why you wanted me to do this
I was like I don't even remember that move.
I've been telling my own students this one principle
of taking notes for years and still to this day only
a handful even attempt it.
I had one student who's notes were so detailed and
structured it made my notes look like elementary scribble.
He was an attorney so I'm sure that had a lot to do with
it. His notes were amazing and everyone at my school saw
the results he was getting before he stopped.
I have people from all over the country that come and
do private lessons with me. The very first thing I
tell them is to make sure they bring a notebook.
Guess what? Only about 10% bring a notebook.
everyone else says I'll write it down when I get home.
Well that's fine and dandy if they actually did it,
but by the time they get home if they actually wrote
it down they would've forgotten many of the crucial
People are more interested in feeling like they're
getting their money's worth of the private by not
taking the time out to write down the details.
Whenever I did a private lesson with anyone almost
half of the time I would be writing notes.
The same thing goes for seminars. I'm not there to
see all of those moves. I'm there to make sure
I leave with something that will benefit my grappling
career. I stop and take notes during the entire
I remember when one instructor told me that I couldn't
take notes during the seminar and only could do it
after the seminar was over. I told him that I'm going
to need a refund on the seminar. Well all of a sudden
I was allowed to take notes.
It's amazing that I've never ever seen anyone take any
notes during any seminar I've ever seen.Accelerate Your Jiu Jitsu Path To Black Belt by Eddie Edmunds:Keep a notebook. During college I came to class each day with a notebook and a pen/pencil prepared to take notes. I needed to remember the material presented to me and taking notes allowed me to review the material over and over again. Is there any other way to remember the lecture? Well you can video tape the class or use a micro-recorder but you will still be taking “notes” in order to remember the content of the lecture.
A. Getting a notebook and taking notes will allow you to review a move as many times as you like. Through consistent review my ability to remember the move in detail is enhanced. In addition, there are numerous scientific studies that clearly show a vividly imagined event triggers our nervous system and aids in the embedding of a technnique in our muscle memory
B. Keeping a notebook also provides: 1. A place where you can write down the techniques your working and be able to track your improvement. 2. A forum to record the development of your trademark moves and comments on your teammate’s strengths, weaknesses and what strategy works best against each one. 3. A history of the progression of your Jiu Jitsu game. It will show you where your skill level was six months ago with regards to a position or a move your working to perfect and the progress you have made since then.
Thus, the path to black belt can be shortened by performing these two, simple tasks. Asking questions will build your ability to understand and remember Jiu Jitsu better. Keeping a notebook will also enhance your memory and aid you in executing a technique easier. And it gives you a blow-by-blow history of your progress.
Posted On:5/19/2005 4:43pm
Style: Jiu Jitsu
Sounds like a great idea. I agree that the best part of it is not HAVING the notes, but the actual act of writing them down helps you remember.
After class I always have about a 25 min ride home, so I think along the way of the exact details of every technique we learned that class. Sometimes I cant remember the technique until I really think about it, or I cant remember all of what we learned until I thnk hard. If I didnt do this after every class I would probably have not remembered half the techniques taught.
Actually, now that I think about it. We have a guy who brings a camcorder to every class and films the techniques. Thats one way to take notes!
Posted On:5/19/2005 9:35pm
I tried this earlier this year. It didn't work for me.
Why? It wasn't due to my personal resistance to the idea, it was more that my primary learning style is tactile. I can look at a technique description all day, and still not be any more the wiser as to how to actually execute the tech with any degree of skill. However, if I get the feel of the technique, it's not something I'm going to forget anytime soon.
I think that note-taking may be valid for people with more visual and auditory learning styles, but for myself and other more tactile individuals, I'm not convinced of it's efficacy.
Posted On:5/19/2005 10:28pm
Style: judo, karate, jap jj
i'll give this note taking idea a try, i have done a few sketches in the past, but with my terrible drawing skills it seems to take forever to draw it
i'll report back in a couple of weeks
Posted On:5/19/2005 10:33pm
Style: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
I take notes of all the techniques I learn. I've found that quite often when I am taught something it might not be immediately applicable to my game, but in a few months, or years, I'm at the point where that technique is suddenly useful and if I've got notes I'll know all the important details. Notes also help when I'm trying to remember all the details before I teach a class.
Yes Koto got his name changed, quit asking...
Posted On:5/19/2005 10:36pm
Style: Kyokushin Karate
These do help out a lot, as sometimes when you're looking back at something that you're struggling with but have done before, you'll read an idea or variation on it that you wrote down before and it'll hit you like a ton of bricks and you'll get it down.
This just happened to me with tai makra <sp>, a move I saw O'Sensei pull off in film of him on a DVD and worked with my sensei a bit to get. It was tricky at first due to the angle and movement, but now I can pull it off a lot easier than before.
They're also great for physical training, you can compare numbers and see how you've improved and it can be really motivating.
SON OF ODIN
My Punching with Power article
nuthin' ta f*ck with
Posted On:5/19/2005 10:49pm
Style: MT/SUB GRAPPLING
Did the Gracies take notes? No.
Did Mas Oyama take notes? No.
Did Bruce Lee take notes? Well yeah, but he did WC.
The reason note taking works is when the other see you with a little notepad thay are more inclined to want to beat you up and you must fight harder to survive.
Last edited by Moleculo; 5/19/2005 10:52pm at .
Posted On:5/19/2005 10:50pm
mas oyama wrote books
Posted On:5/19/2005 10:53pm
Originally Posted by Edge
mas oyama wrote books
Not while learning he didn't
Posted On:5/20/2005 1:32am
If you don't have constant access to your instructor, as in my situation and Lloyd Irvin's situation, then note taking is imperative if you want to improve.
Articles and Reviews
Tools and Info | <urn:uuid:bacac27d-4116-417b-b4d1-25d447da7b12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=24330&p=641527&viewfull=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969706 | 2,545 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Distinguished historian and educationist Mohammad Amin passed away on Saturday at a city hospital after prolonged illness. He was 86.
Affectionately called Amin Saheb, the 2010 Padma Bhushan awardee had taught at St Stephen’s College for over four decades and also headed its department of
history. He had a long list of eminent personalities, including historian Ramchandra Guha and Union minister Shashi Tharoor, as his students.
“He taught for 39 years in this institution and nurtured stalwarts. He had an inspired sense of vocation,” said Valson Thampu, principal, St Stephen’s College.
Former student Nayanjot Lahiri, who is a professor at DU’s department of history, recalled: “Amin Sahib was a scintillating teacher with an inexhaustible fund of stories about medieval India, many of which were hugely funny. He was truly an institution within an institution.”
“We will always remember him not just as a fantastic teacher but also for his ability to make light of situations, his humanity, breadth and kindness,” said Tharoor, the junior minister of human resource development.
Another student, Sagarika Ghose, senior editor, CNN-IBN, said: “We can’t ever imagine learning about Aurangzeb and Sher Shah Suri without his guidance.”
An active sportsperson, especially a cricketer, he also trained a lot of student in sports. He was conferred an honourary D.Litt in 2009 by Jamia Millia Islamia.
Amin is survived by his wife Khursheed, son, Shahid Amin, who is a historian too, and daughter Ghazala Amin, a teacher and a media personality. His last rites will be performed on Sunday.
© Copyright © 2013 HT Media Limited. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:e9ff832c-a532-4027-abf2-3603828cbbad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/973296.aspx | 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 | 0.983034 | 401 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Ask the Diet Doctor: 3 Tips for a Guilt-Free Thanksgiving
How to enjoy your favorite Thanksgiving foods—and still lose weight!
Q: I want to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family but I don't want the big day of eating to sabotage all the hard work I've been putting into losing weight? What are your top 3 tips for making it through Turkey Day?
A: I'm glad that you are going to take the time to enjoy Thanksgiving. Too many hardcore dieters skip holidays like Thanksgiving and wear their actions as some sort of red badge of courage – it is unnecessary. I’ve focused on adherence and splurge meals in previous columns—make Thanksgiving a planned splurge, follow the 3 tips below, and you won’t miss any of your weight-loss targets.
1. Get Active Before the Feast. In his book, Move a Little, Lose a Lot, Dr. James Levine talks about reworking your holidays and celebrations to make them more active. While Thanksgiving is traditionally about family, food, and football, there is no reason it can’t be about being active too. All around the country there are ‘Turkey Trots’ and other similar 5K races being held—enroll in one. If you don’t want to trot, just go for a walk, get in a quick exercise class or weight training workout. By being active in the morning, you'll improve your insulin sensitivity, making your body more ready to handle the calorie onslaught later that day.
2. Don’t Make it a 12- or 72-hour Feast. The "holiday creep" is where most people get into trouble. Thanksgiving is technically one big meal. Keep it that way. You risk diet disaster when you let yourself continue to eat like it's Thanksgiving on Friday or even Saturday. Enjoy yourself on Thursday and then get back to your plan.
3. Eat Your Vegetables First. When you sit down to eat your Thanksgiving dinner, reach for the green vegetables first. Eating fibrous green vegetables first will limit the total calories you eat for the duration of the meal. These vegetables are bulky, low in calories, and high in fiber. That translates to slow digestion and making you feel fuller sooner.
Follow these 3 tips and you can enjoy your holiday without sabotaging all your hard work.
Dr. Mike Roussell, PhD, is a nutritional consultant known for his ability to transform complex nutritional concepts into practical habits and strategies for his clientele, which includes professional athletes, executives, food companies, and top fitness facilities. Dr. Mike is the author of Dr. Mike's 7 Step Weight Loss Plan and the upcoming 6 Pillars of Nutrition. | <urn:uuid:71e3d72c-4068-49fe-aadb-caf230e40f16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shape.com/weight-loss/weight-loss-strategies/ask-diet-doctor-3-tips-guilt-free-thanksgiving | 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 | 0.950201 | 554 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Study Examines Baltimore’s Bail System
Justice Policy Institute addresses bail-system concerns
Published: September 11, 2012
“We’re all about Baltimore,” says Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on ways to relieve societal costs posed by the criminal justice system. Not only did JPI’s 2010 report, “Baltimore Behind Bars,” make a valiant attempt to apply some reason to the intricate, arcane craziness of Mobtown’s overcrowded jail system, but JPI recently declared September to be “Bail Month,” announcing a new report highlighting Baltimoreans’ “stories of being involved in the money-bail system and for-profit bail-bonding, and how it impacted them,” Velázquez says.
“There essentially two systems of justice,” Velázquez continues, “one for people with money [to make bail], who are essentially free and unsupervised, and one for people who don’t,” who end up sitting in jail until their charges are resolved. Velázquez explains that D.C. doesn’t have a money-bail system—charged defendants are released on pre-trial supervision, rather than having to make bail or go to jail while their charges are pending—so JPI focused on Baltimore, the closest big city to D.C. that has one.
During “Bail Month,” JPI will release the Baltimore report, as well as two others that look at bail-system concerns and solutions on a national scale. JPI has scheduled a panel discussion, “The High Price of Bail,” at 4:30 P.M. on Sept. 27, at Busboys and Poets, 5th and K streets, NW, in Washington, and Velazquez says another similar event in Baltimore is in the works. | <urn:uuid:6933e508-d234-4f48-bdb7-65d65c3e8529> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://citypaper.com/news/study-examines-baltimore-8217-s-bail-system-1.1371485 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949121 | 420 | 1.640625 | 2 |
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that the killing of Osama bin Laden offered a clear message to al Qaeda’s Taliban allies in Afghanistan: “You cannot wait us out, you cannot defeat us, but you can make the choice to abandon al Qaeda and participate in a peaceful, political process."
— Hillary Clinton: Osama bin Laden killing shows “you cannot defeat us”
“We want to do what we can to protect innocent Libyans against the marauders let loose by the Qaddafi regime,” [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton said.
Still, Clinton said that if the U.S. were to act alone, “there would be unforeseen consequences to that that I believe would be detrimental.” But, she added, “as part of the international community, there will be a wide range of actions discussed.”
— Clinton: There’s “no way” United States will take unilateral action in Libya | <urn:uuid:cfbd0026-bfc9-44e8-a0b1-2347242d0301> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://paulbalcerak.tumblr.com/tagged/Hillary-Clinton | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938215 | 203 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Google has rolled out a new version of its mobile app to allow you to search through e-mails and contacts. Simply type or speak the name of the sender or a part of the e-mail. The mobile app will quickly pull up results from e-mails or contacts and allow you to reply and forward.
What else is great about the revised Google mobile app is that it lets you search for on-device and on web e-mails/contacts. You can also quickly find a contact and either call or SMS text them. As you search for certain contacts more frequently it caches those results at the top for later use.
Other improvements in the new mobile app have been made, such as the ability to use Wi-Fi to access the internet. The new mobile app is currently only available for BlackBerry devices running OS 4.5 or higher. To download Google Mobile App to your BlackBerry, visit m.google.com | <urn:uuid:2dc4339a-cf68-406f-b8d6-196205458ae6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://n4bb.com/new-version-of-google-mobile-app-to/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931425 | 188 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A string of disappointing economic data capped by last week’s jobs report is prompting even some of the more optimistic economists to question the durability of the U.S. recovery.
While analysts such as Stephen Stanley of Pierpoint Securities LLC and Michael Feroli of JPMorgan Chase & Co. still see growth strengthening in the months ahead, they voiced concern that the lull in the economy may prove prolonged, leaving it more vulnerable to external shocks or policy missteps.
“We’ll do better in the second half,” said Feroli, chief U.S. economist for JPMorgan in New York and a former member of the Federal Reserve’s forecasting team. “That said, the concern is that there’s enough weakness that could feed on itself.”
Policy makers have limited leeway to respond to the accumulating signs of slowdown. The Fed is completing its purchase of $600 billion of Treasury securities this month, leaving it with a $2.77 trillion balance sheet that some central bankers fret is already too big.
The record $1.6 trillion federal budget deficit that the White House projects this year has left President Barack Obama with little room to use fiscal policy to spur the economy, especially with Republican lawmakers calling for cuts in spending, rather than more investment.
“Our economy is not creating enough jobs, and Democrats’ binge of taxing, spending, borrowing and over-regulating is a big part of the reason why,” John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives and a Republican from Ohio, said in a statement on June 3.
Jobless Rate Climbs
Payrolls grew at the slowest pace in eight months in May and the unemployment rate unexpectedly climbed to 9.1 percent from 9 percent in April, Labor Department figures released on June 3 showed. The 54,000 rise in jobs followed a 232,000 gain in April and was below the 165,000 median increase forecast by economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
The jobs numbers followed a series of economic statistics suggesting that the economy is decelerating. Manufacturing grew at its slowest pace in more than in year in May, according to Institute for Supply Management data released last week. Consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, rose less than forecast in April as households felt the pinch of grocery and energy costs, a Commerce Department report showed.
Stanley, who is chief economist at Pierpoint in Stamford, Connecticut, said he is betting that the softness in the economy will prove to be temporary, the result of a surge in gasoline prices that has since subsided and supply disruptions from the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Like Feroli, though, he is becoming more concerned.
“I’m starting to get worried,” Stanley said. The economy’s “animal spirits are fragile.”
Investor concern over the economy sent stocks down. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 97.29 points, or 0.8 percent, to 12,151.26 in New York on June 3, extending a fifth straight weekly loss, its longest slump since 2004. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 1 percent to 1,300.16. Treasuries rose, pushing yields on two-year notes down three basis points to 0.43 percent, the lowest this year.
Feroli and Stanley started the year more optimistic than many of their peers. The economy was forecast to expand 3.1 percent in 2011, according to the median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg News survey published Jan. 13. At the time, Stanley’s projection was 3.8 percent, while Feroli predicted 3.3 percent growth. Stanley has since cut his forecast to 2.9 percent while Feroli has lowered his to 2.4 percent.
The two are not alone in shaving their forecasts. Joe LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York, projected growth of 3.3 percent for 2011 at the start of the year, on a fourth-quarter over fourth-quarter basis, and has reduced that to 3.1 percent.
Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital Inc., has trimmed his 2011 forecast to 2.5 percent, down from a 3.1 percent estimate at the beginning of the year.
Economists aren’t the only ones with reason to worry: the latest jobs numbers pose a challenge to President Obama, whose re-election prospects hinge on pushing the jobless rate lower.
“The danger is that if we continue to take two steps forward, two steps back, people are going to continue to suffer a high level of economic anxiety,” said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist. “There’s no way that can be good politically for the president.”
Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s chief economist, said the jobs report represents a “little bump” in the road to recovery and that the broader trends are “substantially more positive” than when Obama took office in January 2009.
“We should never read too much into any one month’s report,” Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a June 3 interview on Bloomberg Television. “No doubt we face some headwinds.”
The slow pace of the recovery doesn’t come as surprise to Kenneth Rogoff, a former International Monetary Fund chief economist who is now a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. History shows that it takes time for economies to recover from financial crises like the one that hit the U.S.
© Copyright 2013 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:bdd31c03-9236-43e6-bc11-434bd34cf2a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moneynews.com/Headline/Slowing-us-Growth-Doubts/2011/06/06/id/398899 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953342 | 1,179 | 1.820313 | 2 |
About the HOPR Program
The M.S. and Ph.D. Graduate Programs in Health Outcomes and Policy Research, with a concentration in pharmacoeconomics, are designed to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to evaluate the economic, clinical and humanistic outcomes of medical treatment. The program focuses on producing graduates for positions that emphasize research rather than administration.
Topics addressed in the program include the many facets of economics in healthcare, including the use of pharmaceuticals, appropriateness and quality of care, patient outcomes, patient satisfaction with care, costs of both appropriate and inappropriate medication use, public policies related to health care and pharmacoepidemiological considerations. The course of study examines the respective roles and behaviors of the healthcare professionals (e.g., physicians, pharmacists, nurses, allied health) involved in patient care and the influence of healthcare-related organizations (e.g., managed care, health maintenance organizations, public and private insurance, pharmaceutical manufacturers) on health outcomes. Very important to the medication use process and the understanding of health disparities is the role of the patient. Major research interests of the faculty include evaluation of Medication Therapy Management Services, Health Disparities, and Consumer Perception of Pharmacists.
The Health Policy focus of the Graduate Program in Health Outcomes and Policy Research is designed to provide an intense, academic foundation for students pursuing careers in research, teaching, and health administration. The formal curriculum provides a comprehensive understanding of health policy development, implementation and analysis, with required courses in biostatistics, epidemiology, health economics and research methods as well as in health care systems and public policy. The program is designed to provide maximum flexibility for students with a variety of interests and backgrounds.
A Master of Science option is available for applicants with health professional degrees and experience. The faculty includes professors from several of the colleges of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Areas of interest include health manpower, health economics, community health, health systems organization and function, organization and professional behavior, and health services research.
Health Systems Pharmacy Management
The M.S. Graduate Program in Health Outcomes and Policy Research with a concentration in health systems pharmacy management is combined with a two-year residency. It is designed to develop the knowledge, skills, and leadership abilities necessary to provide and evaluate a comprehensive pharmacy benefit and service for patients of organized health care settings. The program emphasizes health systems pharmacy management. It also includes but is not limited to the following practice management areas: medication systems management, human resources management, fiscal management, and technology assessment. Medication systems management focuses on the study of drug resources, safe/effective drug use systems, drug information and therapy management, and pharmacy data management. An additional program focus is the medication use process in the health care system and in society to reflect interactions and services among providers of care, payers of care, and recipients of care.
and Policy Research
847 Monroe Ave., Suite 205N
Memphis, TN 38163 | <urn:uuid:d11403bf-1c90-4460-ae76-4af0563179cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uthsc.edu/pharmacy/gradprograms/hopr/about.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931042 | 605 | 1.726563 | 2 |
St. Francis School of Music
Welcome to the St. Francis School of Music. I am honored to introduce you to our newest program and faculty. In a time when many schools are reducing their arts offerings due to budget constraints, St. Francis is blessed to offer our students not only an excellent group music program, but also an extracurricular instrumental and vocal program led by some of the finest musical talent in Houston.
Creating music not only moves the soul, but also stirs the brain at its most fundamental level. It is one of the few activities that uses both sides of the brain, and research shows that music education contributes to a child’s intellectual development in a surprising breadth of ways. Working with music enhances the brain’s ability to adapt and change, primes it for other forms of human communication, and tones it for auditory fitness. Music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention and making predictions, contributes to higher achievement in math and science due to its reliance on abstract reasoning skills, increases self-esteem, and even offers a documented solution to drug abuse and teen violence.
St. Francis students already benefit from a strong group program that helps them develop the basic musical foundation that every child needs and deserves. Now, the St. Francis School of Music takes this music education one step further by allowing our students and other children to delve into specific disciplines more deeply than they can in a classroom setting, exploring individual musical interests at their own pace and on their own developmental level.
Musical proficiency is a skill that will benefit your child in countless ways, bringing joy throughout life. I encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to give your child this wonderful gift.Susan B. Lair, Ph.D.Head of SchoolSt. Francis Episcopal Day School | <urn:uuid:26608637-a8d8-4aeb-bde5-849eaa517a3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sfedshouston.org/page.cfm?p=3075 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950528 | 361 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Numerous prescription medications have made it easier to live with sexual health issues such as genital warts, genital herpes or cold sores. Millions of patients have reduced the symptoms and discomfort associated with their outbreaks.
Patients who use the effective products below can find that their conditions are at least manageable. Right now, some level of relief is available until a drug is discovered that can eliminate sexual-related maladies such as herpes.
Consult with a doctor with regard to diagnoses, and to learn which prescription medication may be the most effective for you. Once these steps are taken, medications may be ordered and reordered conveniently online.
Famvir can help to alleviate and suppress symptoms associated with genital herpes. The oral prescription medication also is effective in treating cold sores (recurrent herpes labialis) and shingles (acute herpes zoster), including cases in patients who are infected with HIV.
Denavir is a topical antiviral cream used to treat recurrent cold sores on the lips and face. Applied every two hours, it has been shown to heal cold sores in an average of 4.5 days and also reduce lesion pain by about one-half day.
Acyclovir is the generic, FDA-approved oral form of expensive Zovirax, used to treat and suppress genital herpes and shingles. It can speed up healing, decrease pain/itching/formation of new sores, and lower the risk of infection spreading to other parts of the body.
Valtrex is an oral medication to treat and suppress genital herpes and herpes zoster infections (shingles). Valtrex disrupts the process by which the herpes virus reproduces itself and spreads to other cells in the body. This helps to keep the virus inactive, or "sleeping." | <urn:uuid:496e05f8-65e5-4aac-9017-c3e326044650> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessrx.com/sexual-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931408 | 367 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Women in Business
As a woman in business, read below to discover and connect with free business assistance programs tailored to the needs of women in business including business mentoring for women, funding programs for business women, peer-to-peer networking and how to become a certified women business enterprise.
Discover small business assistance programs tailored specifically to support women in starting, growing and succeeding in business. Available small business resources include counseling, training, advocacy, peer-to-peer networking, business development and financial guidance
>> Learn more
Utilize a free, online interactive program to develop your ideas for launching a new business or improving an existing one while working with an experienced business mentor all virtually!
>> Learn more
Discover and directly connect with thousands of FREE small and mid-sized business assistance resources including funding, marketing, international, counseling, and much more.
The U.S. SBA offers an online training program designed to help women entrepreneurs find and participate in Federal contract opportunities allowing you to do business with the government and related contractors. It is a practical and easy to use guide indexed by subject matter to help you efficiently learn about and navigate topics of particular interest. The program also offers additional links to targeted contract and women in business related resources. Learn more or start the registration process to access the guide.
Discover various public funding programs aimed at financing business ventures that seek to add value to a particular community or region such as new jobs or main street improvements.
Discover a wide range of alternative funding sources including factoring, merchant advances, peer-to-peer lending and more.
Any business that is majority owned, operated, and controlled by one or more women and targets other businesses as customers should consider Women Business Enterprise (WBE) certification. To become certified, you will need to complete a Uniform Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Application. The benefits for becoming a WBE are that your business will become eligible for doing business with government agencies and hundreds of national corporations who are looking to specifically do business with women owned companies. Click here for more information.
Learn from industry experts about the latest technologies, products and services that can give your business a competitive edge as well as support profitability.
Confidential business counseling is available for women entrepreneurs at no-cost through a variety of channels including Small Business Development Centers, SCORE Counselors to America's Small Businesses and Women's Business Centers.
Connect with help 24 x 7 x 365 at the Virtual Incubator. Discover a broad range of free programs by stage of business need including start-up, growth, skills training and funding; and learn about special business opportunities such as government contracts.
Receive weekly, monthly and ongoing assistance to guide all of the core operational components of your growth through a comprehensive Business Success System.
Use no-cost online video presentation application to create, publish and track compelling sales, marketing, training, elearning and related business communication messaging. Easy-to-use, online, self-service authoring tool lets you combine slides, images, video, surveys, documents and voice to produce effective business communication strategies.
"MYWomen in Biz is a public/private collaborative project of the Knowledge Institute, recognized leaders in small business development and education by the US SBA and others. Institute entrepreneurial resource portals serve millions of individuals in all 50 United States and internationally." | <urn:uuid:5fade60c-28a9-426e-86e3-c8c464654654> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://buzgate.org/8.0/il/ch_women.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9364 | 681 | 1.554688 | 2 |
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help adding keyboard macros
help adding keyboard macros –
I have this industrial robotic programming software and there is a gui for a virtual pendant. I have been able to hook up an 360 controller and basically use it as a mouse and interface with the gui but there are no keyboard shortcuts for any of the buttons in the gui. I was wondering how hard it would be to add some. If i was able to macro a few of the buttons in the gui, i could use xpadder and map the keys to the controller and actually control the virtual robot with the joysticks on the controller.
When i start the virtual pendant, a seperate program opens called virtual flexpendant.exe and when i look at it in IDA Pro there are references to buttons, im just not sure and wondered if someone could give me some guidence.
Windows Forms also provides the SendKeys class for sending keystrokes to the active application
This seems to be the direction i need to go, if anyone has anything constructive to add, feel free......
Last edited by jarmster; 05-19-2011 at 05:50 PM. | <urn:uuid:3d154e2b-b8c5-4142-9dc8-669a020ff4f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://psx-scene.com/forums/f16/help-adding-keyboard-macros-87042/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930722 | 252 | 1.640625 | 2 |
13 There above it[a] stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it." 17 He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."
Top 10 sermons on Genesis 28
- 4 Things to Remember in Uncertain Times
- TOO BLESSED TO SEE GOD
- Jacob's Night in the HardRock Motel
- Jacob's Waking Dream
- Things Are Not What They Seem | <urn:uuid:5ef07379-0e20-4b55-a4de-b718f7be9952> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sermoncentral.com/bible/NIV/Genesis-28.asp?passage=Genesis+28%3A13-28%3A17 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966599 | 249 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Bayón, Damián Carlos. "Arte abstracto, concreto, no figurativo." Ver y Estimar: cuadernos de crítica artística (Buenos Aires) 2, no.6 (September 1948): 60-62.
The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
This is a critical essay that discusses Nuevas Realidades. Arte Abstracto, concreto, no figurativo [New Realities. Abstract, Concrete, Non-Figurative Art], the exhibition that was presented at the Galería Van Riel September 12-25, 1948. The exhibition included examples of Concrete art and Madi art, and featured the work of certain independent Abstract artists as well. This is the first instance of a review of Concrete and Abstract art ever published in Ver y estimar [To See and Ponder] magazine. It is interesting to note that, though the work of Rogers, Belgiojoso and Peresutti, the Italian architects, is mentioned in the catalogue, it was not, in fact, on display at the exhibition, as the essay points out.
Ver y estimar magazine was published by Jorge Romero Brest with the help of a group of his students. It appeared thirty-four times between April 1948 and December 1953. Publication was interrupted for a few months, and then ten more issues appeared during its second incarnation, which lasted until October 1955. Damián Carlos Bayón was the head of the editorial department. | <urn:uuid:3c88d91c-7e2e-4066-9e65-67a844978974> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://icaadocs.mfah.org/icaadocs/THEARCHIVE/FullRecord/tabid/88/doc/742367/language/en-US/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948565 | 389 | 1.820313 | 2 |
There was a time – many years ago – when the National Council for Civil Liberties – or Liberty as it is now called – used to have constant debates at its annual general meeting about whether to argue in favour of the legal protection of race hate speech. There were two points of view as to how extreme a view the organisation should take of the right to free speech. All that was decades ago. But it does illustrate the problems that libertarians sometimes encounter when faced with calls for proportionate restrictions on what can be said or written about people as a means of protecting the vulnerable.
I have read an article in the Mail on Sunday which reports that Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty has criticised the Labour leader Ed Miliband for endorsing the proposals made by Lord Justice Leveson for future regulation of the press, and attributes to her the view that the implementation of those proposals in full would in some way undermine or infringe the right to freedom of expression as protected by article 10 of the European convention on human rights.
I have the greatest of respect for Shami, and for Liberty, and we agree on many things. But quite frankly I was startled by the suggestion that has been attributed to her, which is so obviously wrong that I was driven to wonder whether she has been misquoted, something she is indeed now claiming – last night, she published a statement clarifying her position.
I have now had an opportunity to study Leveson's proposals in detail. Miliband is quite right. There is no question whatsoever of these proposals violating the right to free expression as protected in the convention. Almost all European states have much stronger privacy laws than this country, and are constantly shocked by the failure of UK law to protect the right to privacy against press intrusion into the personal lives of even the rich and famous – never mind the hacking of the phones, and the publication of private diaries, of people who have been the victims of terrible crimes such as appears to have happened in the Milly Dowler and Kate McCann cases.
Arguments such as the one that has been attributed, I hope wrongly, to Shami in the Mail on Sunday are the sort of nonsense that gives human rights a bad name with the public. The European convention is not there to protect the powerful interests of media barons, or profits of newspaper owners obtained by committing criminal offences.
It is my clear view that the legal opinion attributed to Shami is wrong as a matter of law. In fact, it is the very opposite of the correct legal analysis.
Of course a free press and protection of the right to freedom of expression are essential to the health of a democracy. Investigative journalism is a vital means of exposing seious wrongdoing and holding public authorities to account.
Despite some media claims to the contrary, all the lawyers and judges working in this field understand very well indeed that genuine public interest journalism is the lifeblood of democracy. And we know that sometimes that includes the right to be wrong.
As Leveson observed to Michael Gove, he doesn't need jejune lessons from an education minister on the importance of free speech.
The plain fact is that Leveson's recommendations are no threat whatsoever to genuine investigative reporting – reporting that is aimed at exposing wrongdoing in the public interest. If they were, then I would also oppose them, because muzzling the press from reporting the wrongdoing of politicians and the powerful is the route to tyranny. If any lawyer makes the claim that these careful propopsals undermine free speech then, in my opinion, they are deluded.
The right to free expression carries responsibilites. The press in the UK have great resources at their disposal, and some tabloid newspapers wield great power: the power to wreck people's lives for no better reason than to make money. Other European lawyers and judges have looked on in horror as the Leveson evidence has emerged. They cannot believe the UK would allow these gross intrusions into the right to privacy to carry on. In my view, it is not the implementation of these proposals that would lead to violations of human rights law but a failure to implement them in full. There needs to be a light-touch statutory underpinning to this new independent body in order to protect the legal right to privacy of those whose personal lives, phone calls, and private communications have been illegally invaded.
The public knows what is going on here. Most ordinary people believe that the real reason some members of the Conservative party, including the prime minister, have refused to accept the advice they asked Leveson to provide to the nation is not because of a pure concern about maintaining a free press to expose political wrongoing in the public interest. It is because they rely on the newspaper editors to support their policies and endorse them at election time. They want to carry on having tea together, laughing out loud in their private texts, going horse riding together. And they want to keep well-oiled the revolving door that sees prominent journalists from Murdoch owned newspapers becoming politicians and ministers. Gove is a case in point.
Miliband has done a very brave thing by taking a decisive stance on this issue, even at the risk of making himself unpopular with the press. The politicians who oppose Leveson will be able to rely on the support of the media in future. The whole point of Leveson was to expose this sort of patronage and bring it to an end. And yet by giving in to pressure from the papers the prime minister and his Conservative cabinet colleagues are doing exactly the same thing.
Lord Justice Leveson is right. | <urn:uuid:644620d3-860b-4df1-8081-0e68000e524c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/03/leveson-human-rights-shami-chakrabarti | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976374 | 1,127 | 1.625 | 2 |
Kazim here. I know I've mentioned before that I sing in the Austin Community Chorus, and that we do a lot of religious music. I did a whole show about justified acknowledgment of religion in art and education a while back. The fact is that historically, MOST classical music (along with other forms of art) was sponsored by the church. So in general, if a song is much more than a hundred years old and has words, there's a fairly high chance that it will have something to do with Jesus.
This doesn't stop the music from being very uplifting and well written. A couple of years ago I was doing Bach's "Saint Matthew Passion," which ranks high among the best music I've ever heard from any era. Of course, the words are in Latin, so it's easy to just ignore what you're saying unless you grew up Catholic, which I didn't.
This season we're doing a piece called Saint Paul by Felix Mendelssohn. I'm not familiar with very much Mendelssohn. I've heard the overture he wrote for A Midsummer Night's Dream and it's fine. Apparently, this upcoming performance is a fairly big deal. Mendelssohn originally wrote the piece in English but then later translated it back into his native German, and the German version became the standard while the English got lost to history.
Apparently some music historian dug up the original English lyrics and republished it. There have been other translations before, but our concert will feature the world debut of THESE PARTICULAR English lyrics, or something like that. Musicians get excited about the weirdest things.
Anyway, my point in writing this is that I don't particularly like it. The music doesn't really do it for me, but singing the English words just makes it generally much more unpleasant. The story is the most tedious kind of apologetics. It is all about how Saint Paul used to persecute Christians, then was blinded and visited by Jesus. He converted to Christianity and then went on to write most of the most awful sexually repressed parts of the Bible. (Okay, that last part isn't in the piece, it's just my spin.)
Probably my least favorite passage is when he's condemning a Christian to death. The basses chant "Stone him to death!" and then the tenors (that's me) join in "Stone him to death!" and then the altos and then the sopranos, and so everybody is yelling in unison. Frankly, it's a little bit creepy and uncomfortable. Supposedly it's about the Jewish power structure persecuting the Christians, but I can't help flashing forward on the Spanish Inquisition and other acts of atrocity, as well as the modern reconstructionist movement, who ironically want to bring back exactly the punishment that is used to portray Paul as a bad guy. It kind of feels like being part of a lynch mob.
Much of the rest of the piece follows the kind of simpering glurginess that you often hear in praise of Christianity. It's a lot of "Oh blessed are they who have endured" and even something that goes like (paraphrasing because I don't have the score) "You are so grand and mysterious that you are beyond our comprehension." Bleah.
Next season, though, we get Beethoven's Ninth (Ode to Joy). Now that's something worth sticking around for. | <urn:uuid:68dd1366-f954-4c7f-b663-352d133a8465> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2008/01/religious-choral-music.html?showComment=1201886520000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980386 | 707 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Books to Look For
Fantasy & Science Fiction May 1989
By Orson Scott Card
Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War: A History of Indochina
since the Fall of Saigon (Macmillan/Collier, trade paper, 479 pp, $12.95).
Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, trans. Richard Howard (Harper &
Row, cloth, 274 pp, $17.95).
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, KOEL, computer game
Every now and then I point out to you a book that isn't sf or fantasy, just
because I think it might appeal to the kind of people who like fiction that makes
you think, that makes you reinterpret the world you live in.
Nayan Chanda's Brother Enemy is fascinating contemporary history by a
first-rate journalist. Chanda, as a reporter for Far Eastern Economic Review, had
the kind of access available only to journalists who come to oriental stories
without looking -- or acting -- American. But this book transcends its story.
By the end of the book, you see clearly that we Americans weren't the
only ones who acted out our fantasy version of the world in Southeast Asia. The
Russians, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians -- all of them took
some of their most dangerous and outrageous steps because they believed that
other people would act certain ways. The other people never cooperated. Every
act was misinterpreted or overinterpreted by the other side, so that the
pinheaded bureaucratic conflicts of Brzezinski and Vance are not the result of a
unique American stupidity, but rather the way that all governments seem to
make their decisions. The trouble is that every one of these decisions killed
Chanda shows us how unfathomably alien we human beings can be to
each other. Tzvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian expatriate writing history and literary
criticism in Paris, makes this theme even clearer in The Conquest of America.
Using the stories of Columbus and Cortes as a springboard, Todorov explores in
marvelously clear philosophical terms that whole idea of how two alien cultures
interact. As I read this book, I found Todorov again and again making explicit
ideas about alienness only touched on in the best and most insightful science
While Cortes was busy trying to understand the Mexicans in order to
exploit their weaknesses and conquer them (itself a revolutionary concept among
the Spanish), Montezuma and the Mexicans were busy trying to understand, not
the Spaniards, but rather what the gods meant by sending them. In practical
terms, this guaranteed the Spanish conquest; but in spiritual and philosophical
terms, neither culture proved to be "superior" to the other.
If the philosophical issues raised by science fiction about aliens are as
interesting to you as the stories themselves, these two books will delight you as
they did me. They're also fascinating history, not the least because they weren't
written by Americans, with American assumptions. I read them in alternation
over the past couple of weeks, and I feel like my world has grown larger because
By coincidence, through the same weeks I was playing the computer game
Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Already a hit in Japan, where it was created, this
game is a vivid simulation of the world and events of China after the fall of the
Second Han dynasty, beginning in 189 A.D. No, there's no sf or fantasy
element -- but because this brilliantly designed and programmed game was
created by Japanese gamewrights and takes place in ancient China, it is an
experience of immersion in an alien world. Yet it is a world that is recognizably
like the one Chanda describes in Brother Enemy, with cultural assumptions very
different from our own; and learning to master the play of the game requires, on
a very small scale, some of the cultural reinterpretation that Todorov so
brilliantly describes The Conquest of America.
Robert Cormier, Fade (Delacorte, cloth, 310 pp, $15.95).
Cormier is one of those writers caught up in the contradictions of the
genrification of American publishing. Because his protagonists are children, his
books are all published as young adult novels. But because he is a brilliant writer
with a dark and terrible vision, his books are so disturbing that I'd think twice
before turning them over to the average child. In case you've been living on the
moon, this is the author of I Am the Cheese, a book so complex that I've used it
to teach all principles of literary structure, and The Chocolate War, a disturbing
look at how fascism can arise in an activity so seemingly benign as selling
chocolates to raise money for the local high school.
Fade is something new for Cormier, however. First, he is mining his own
experiences growing up as a French Canadian -- a "Canuck" -- in
Massachusetts. I believe storytellers often do their best work when they write
about they own community, the group that gave them their root identity.
Second, Fade is Cormier's first venture into fantasy. Paul, the hero, has
long been intrigued by a family picture in which his uncle Adelard does not
appear -- even though everyone swears that he was there when the picture was
snapped. Then he discovers that he, too, has Adelard's ability to fade, to
become invisible at will.
Fading, though, is a two-edged sword. Paul can humiliate the local bully,
but he also discovers secrets about friends and neighbors that make it impossible
for him to like them anymore. And as the fading starts to become involuntary,
it finally distorts his whole life, cutting off many of his fondest dreams.
Because this is a Cormier novel, if refuses to stay simple. Halfway
through, the narrative suddenly stops, and we realize that we have been reading
on unpublished manuscript by a famous -- but dead -- author named Paul
Renault. But as his cousin and his agent discover, there is more truth to the
story than they'd like to admit. And the second half of the manuscript brings us
face to face with the most terrible possibilities of fading.
It is unfortunate that this exquisite novel is somewhat marred by a stock
horror ending -- the sort of silliness we saw in Stephen King's Christine, for
instance, in which we start hearing news reports about portentous events that
suggest that the whole thing is beginning all over again. Please, folks, let's give
that one a rest, can't we? But in this case, the flaw is easily forgotten. What
haunts us is the character of Paul, whose discovery of his own sexuality and
adulthood coincides with his piercing of other people's facades of respectability.
And, as with all good fantasy, Fade is clearly true. Young adolescents are
in fact as invisible and rarely-considered as children; yet they are old enough to
understand the events swirling around them. This gives them a terrible power,
and if they are not wise or good, they can destroy people with it. I'm not sure
this novel is for teenagers at all. It must just be for adults, to help us understand
these invisible people growing up in our houses. | <urn:uuid:cea29d50-82ad-4bab-8e8b-5adff73845d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/f&sf/89-05.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956515 | 1,576 | 1.632813 | 2 |
BY GLENN PUIT
TRAVERSE CITY — A swan spotted this fall with a large fishing lure snagged between its eyes was never seen again, meaning no one knows if the bird survived the quandary.
The swan first was observed by boater Jim Chester on Grand Traverse Bay near the Elmwood Township Marina in October. A hook pierced the bird's head and a lure and segment of line dangled from its face, making it tough for the bird to eat.
Chester watched for days for the reappearance of the bird to see if he could help it, but it never showed up.
"I never saw it again," Chester said.
A Record-Eagle article about the swan's difficulties prompted at least a half-dozen people to contact Chester to offer help in saving the big bird.
"There were people who read the article who came down to the dock. I met one couple that claimed to have experience in catching wounded geese and swans and other critters and they said I should call them if I ever saw the swan again," Chester said.
Rebecca Lessard runs the Wings of Wonder raptor sanctuary in Empire. She said there's no way to know the bird's odds of survival. The swan's ability to live would depend on how much the hook hampered its ability to eat.
"It (the hook) could cause an infection and bring the bird down or make it weaker and then it could become part of the food chain," Lessard said. "Something an eagle could easily get."
Lessard said the wounded swan was the second report she received from the Traverse City area in which a bird was wounded this fall due to fishing line. She said a herring gull was observed with its feet tangled in a mass of fishing line in downtown Traverse City.
The incidents, she said, should serve as a reminder to fishermen to do everything possible to secure waste fishing line and lead lures and weights even after they are snagged or cut.
"All I could tell people is there is nothing we can do because the bird can fly away," Lessard said. "This is a perfect opportunity to show people that they can't leave their ... fishing line and hooks behind. It's a huge source of pollution, including all the lead from the sinkers and jigs and hooks. You should do your darndest to get (snagged lines) and remove the garbage. It just doesn't disappear." | <urn:uuid:2a36ebbf-2d84-4965-bf41-f10fd5090018> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://record-eagle.com/local/x1746072127/Swan-with-fishing-lure-stuck-in-head-not-seen-since/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982539 | 512 | 1.53125 | 2 |
BEYOND THE CONFLICT Jarbawi.
The morning he found out that Avi Schaefer was dead, Sami Jarbawi thought of all the things the two men had hoped to do together and now wouldn't — cook, run, maybe hike. Along the way, they would teach a skeptical world how a Palestinian and an Israeli soldier can make peace.
Schaefer, the Brown University student recently killed by a suspected drunk driver on the streets of Providence, left behind hundreds of friends, including soldiers in the Israeli army, with whom he served for three years before coming to Brown.
But perhaps one of his more compelling friendships was with Jarbawi, a 20-year-old Brown sophomore and Palestinian who says the bond he forged with Schaefer was nothing short of remarkable.
"The extraordinary thing is that the friendship managed to go beyond the conflict, to just take place, to crystallize, to just be friends, which takes a lot of guts and courage," Jarbawi says. "We put the conflict aside."
Police say Daniel Gilcreast, 23, of North Providence, struck Schaefer and another Brown student as they were walking in the breakdown lane at Thayer and Barnes streets about 1:45 am on February 12. The other student, a woman, was treated for injuries at the hospital and discharged. Gilcreast was arraigned for driving under the influence, death resulting, and driving under the influence, causing serious bodily injury, and released on $25,000 surety bail, under the condition that he doesn't drive or drink alcohol.
The death of Schaefer, who would've been 22 in June, was especially upsetting for Jarbawi, who says the two had been socializing with friends that night downtown and parted ways on College Hill only 11 minutes before the 911 call. The next morning, a student told him the awful news, but it didn't sink in until he went to the Hillel Center later that day and saw hundreds of students in despair: "I knew then he was gone."
Jarbawi, tall and reed-thin with jet black hair cut short, grew up in Ramallah, the political capital of the West Bank. He remembers evacuating his grade school during an Israeli bombing, watching Israeli tanks patrol his neighborhood and, during one of the many curfews, running through the mountains to reach his Quaker school. When he was 15, he left his home to attend a Quaker high school outside Philadelphia and eventually landed at Brown.
Schaefer, also tall and fit with dark hair, showed an independent streak as well when he left his family in Santa Barbara, California after graduating from high school and volunteered as a soldier in the Israeli Defense Force, where he was a counterterrorism instructor. (His identical twin brother, Yoav, joined too.) Schaefer started Brown as a freshman only this fall.
The men first met about six months ago at Common Ground, a student club that promotes debate about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. One night, they both spoke to the group and, not surprisingly, disagreed. "We didn't leave the meeting as friends," Jarbawi says. "We left the meeting as a Palestinian and an Israeli would leave a meeting.'" | <urn:uuid:94c26db1-4c54-4248-8332-f33ff3da0dfc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/97659-palestinian-student-remembers-his-israeli-friend/?rel=inf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984868 | 664 | 1.6875 | 2 |
BBC Radio 4 : The Two Minute Silence (a)Event Name: Remembrance Sunday 2009
Venue/Location: BBC Radio 4
Date: 8th November 2009
A short Radio 4 feature exploring the contemporary relevance of the Two Minute Silence.
The programme includes David Cotterrell, professor of fine art at Sheffield Hallam University and official war artist for the British troops in Afghanistan, who has marked the two-minute silence both in Camp Bastion and, inadvertently, at Sheffield railway station, on his return from the front line; Billy Stanger from Orkney who has played The Last Post at Remembrance Day services in Kirkwall for the past 57 years; and Dave "Charley" Brown, a veteran of both the Falklands conflict and the Northern Ireland Troubles, who now works for the South Atlantic Medals Association which helps Falklands veterans and their families.
Every Remembrance Day, during the two-minute silence, Clare Jenkins's mother remembers her father, Clare's grandfather, who was wounded during the early days of the First World War on the Mons Retreat from Belgium.
Meanwhile, Bill Stewardson thinks of a far more recent conflict, the one taking place in Iraq. His 21-year-old son, Alex Green, was killed by a sniper in Basra two years ago. In this programme, Clare Jenkins talks to her mother, to Bill Stewardson and to David Cotterrell and others about their personal reasons for respecting the two-minute silence.
It may be 90 years since King George V decreed: "All locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead." However, the silence still resonates with millions, not just in Britain but around the world.
Presenter and Producer/Clare Jenkins | <urn:uuid:877ab1b7-e5f8-446f-b430-b61b9d9b3779> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cotterrell.com/talks/4441/bbc-radio-4-the-two-minute-silence-a/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944197 | 375 | 1.632813 | 2 |
I'm going to display my ignorance and join the 'trouble visualizing causality and relativity of simultaneity' camp. Why do all observers have to report the gun fires before the target is struck? Someone moving past the target at FTL speed could see the target struck, then move past the photon wavefront of the event to a point where the light bouncing off the trigger just as it's getting pulled is arrving. I don't see how this is moving back in time, but merely trading distance for observability. If he tries to FTL travel back to the target to warn him to duck, he'll see events happen as he gets closer to the target and arrive at a bleeding dead body. The activities of the gunfight would appear to speed up as he got closer as he raced back along the photonic wavefronts of events. At no time, though, would he be violating causality anymore than seeing someone die in front of you to a 2 mile distant sniper violates causality just because the sound of the gunshot hasn't gotten to you yet. It's an observational error due to positional change.
There are several inconsistencies in this scenario. We can come at it from a causality-breaking perspective or an equivalency-breaking perspective. The former, relating to the death and trigger-pull events and their respective wavefronts, quite honestly make my head hurt. But since you did ask how causality is threatened, I'll sketch in some thoughts as best I can.
The death event and trigger event each have a wavefront, which we should think of as the edge of a sphere radiating out from that point in time/space. However, each moment before and after those events ALSO has a sphere, like the layers of an onion. Now, what would we see flying FTL in a straight line along the bullet's path, traveling from the victim to the shooter? As we approach the source of the wavefronts (center of the onion), things occur in normal sequence, just as they would were we standing still and experiencing events outer-to-inner. In other words past (outermost layers) to future (innermost). As we pass the center and overtake layers inner-to-outer, we're going to see events in reverse sequence. In this scenario I'm assuming a normal LTL bullet.
1. Unsuspecting victim wanders around.
2. Shooter lines up his shot.
3. Pulls trigger.
4. Bullet comes at victim. Shooter lowers weapon.
5. Impact. Shooter waits to see if he scored a hit (impact sphere needs time to reach him.)
(Here we are at the center of the victim's timeline sphere.-- Since we are traveling too fast for any of the victim's successive wavefronts to reach us, we're not going to see any of his future. Nor will we ever see shooter's reaction to his shot. By the time he sees it's a hit we'll have passed the center of his onion.)
6. Reverse impact. Bullet sucked out of victim's head. Shooter waiting to see what happened.
(Center of shooter's timeline sphere.)
7. Shooter raises weapon. Bullet travels back towards shooter.
8. Bullet enters chamber, sucks explosion back into shell. Trigger pushes shooter's finger out.
9. Shooter lines up his shot (in rewind.)
10. Resuscitated victim wandering around backwards.
You have to admit that if the FTL inertial frame is not special, i.e. if it's just as valid as the shooter's or victim's, then we have some very broken shit going on. We have causality problems out the wazoo. We are seeing the same events happen twice, once normally and once in reverse. In reverse we're seeing entropy decreasing and all kinds of issues with ballistics, kinetic/potential energy transfers, etc. Hell, if this guy goes far enough he can directly witness (admittedly at a distance) events that happened before he was born (in reverse at first, but just tap the brakes and let the waves come naturally to play in proper order). If watching yourself being born is not time travel, I ask you, what is?
This is getting long, but I did promise an equivalence-breaking approach as well. The simplest way to illustrate it, I think, is this: The FTL ship's cabin is illuminated, is it not?
If yes, then: The traveler is going to measure light within the cabin at its normal speed w/r/t his inertial reference frame (the ship). He's also overtaking light outside the ship, which he's going to measure with negative velocity (how negative depends on how much FTL he's traveling). But some LTL observer outside the ship will measure light within the cabin as FTL. If he sees the cabin lit, and light must travel from the source to the bulkhead, and the light source is FTL, then the light must also be FTL. So now we have two people measuring different speeds for the same light beams; moreover, they are measuring different speeds for different light beams in their own inertial frames. We have a violation of the equivalence principle.
If no, then: The traveler is sitting there in the dark even though his lamp is turned on. Light from the lamp can't reach the forward bulkhead, and the light that hits the aft bulkhead (due to the ship's overtaking it) can't reflect back into the cabin. The ship's cabin is an inertial rest frame in which light is simply broken. Again a violation of the equivalence principle. | <urn:uuid:c88ee706-0f67-4a66-9d97-785e3c2e6152> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=22151781 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964126 | 1,162 | 1.84375 | 2 |
But what charm could such a man as Lindau find in such a place? It could not be that he lived there because he was too poor to live elsewhere: with a shutting of the heart, March refused to believe this as he looked round on the abounding evidences of misery, and guiltily remembered his neglect of his old friend. Lindau could probably find as cheap a lodging in some decenter part of the town; and, in fact, there was some amelioration of the prevailing squalor in the quieter street which he turned into from Mott.
A woman with a tied-up face of toothache opened the door for him when he pulled, with a shiver of foreboding, the bell-knob, from which a yard of rusty crape dangled. But it was not Lindau who was dead, for the woman said he was at home, and sent March stumbling up the four or five dark flights of stairs that led to his tenement. It was quite at the top of the house, and when March obeyed the German-English “Komm!” that followed his knock, he found himself in a kitchen where a meagre breakfast was scattered in stale fragments on the table before the stove. The place was bare and cold; a half-empty beer bottle scarcely gave it a convivial air. On the left from this kitchen was a room with a bed in it, which seemed also to be a cobbler’s shop: on the right, through a door that stood ajar, came the German-English voice again, saying this time, “Hier!”
March pushed the door open into a room like that on the left, but with a writing-desk instead of a cobbler’s bench, and a bed, where Lindau sat propped up; with a coat over his shoulders and a skull-cap on his head, reading a book, from which he lifted his eyes to stare blankly over his spectacles at March. His hairy old breast showed through the night-shirt, which gaped apart; the stump of his left arm lay upon the book to keep it open.
“Ah, my tear yo’ng friendt! Passil! Marge! Iss it you?” he called out, joyously, the next moment.
“Why, are you sick, Lindau?” March anxiously scanned his face in taking his hand.
Lindau laughed. “No; I’m all righdt. Only a lidtle lazy, and a lidtle eggonomigal. Idt’s jeaper to stay in pedt sometimes as to geep a fire a-goin’ all the time. Don’t wandt to gome too hardt on the ‘brafer Mann’, you know:
“Braver Mann, er schafft mir zu essen.”
You remember? Heine? You readt Heine still? Who is your favorite boet now, Passil? You write some boetry yourself yet? No? Well, I am gladt to zee you. Brush those baperss off of that jair. Well, idt is goodt for zore eyess. How didt you findt where I lif?
“They told me at Maroni’s,” said March. He tried to keep his eyes on Lindau’s face, and not see the discomfort of the room, but he was aware of the shabby and frowsy bedding, the odor of stale smoke, and the pipes and tobacco shreds mixed with the books and manuscripts strewn over the leaf of the writing-desk. He laid down on the mass the pile of foreign magazines he had brought under his arm. “They gave me another address first.” | <urn:uuid:dfd729f4-a358-4ef2-9d60-69f10dae66f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/3367/53.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981217 | 816 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Gopher Student-Athletes in Good Hands
Feb. 4, 2008
When most people talk about Linda Roberts in conjunction with the University of Minnesota, they probably talk about her phenomenal basketball playing days from the late 70’s into the early 80’s. This stands to reason, since she was a three-time team MVP, earned All-America honors in 1981 and has her jersey hanging from the rafters inside Williams Arena.
Although Roberts is very proud and appreciative of these accolades, her full identity can be seen easier in her off-the-court actions. Everything she embodies is deserving of recognition as one of two Golden Gophers featured as part of the Big Ten’s celebration of Black History Month.
As a child growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, Roberts was privileged in having opportunities to become athletically involved. Initially she expressed interest in volleyball but switched gears to basketball, much to the chagrin of her future opponents. She would frequent a nearby recreation center which produced such professional athletes as Paul Molitor and Dave Winfield. It was here that the young Minnesota native would develop her talents and open a world of opportunity.
During her high school days, Roberts brought home St. Paul Central’s first Minnesota girls’ basketball state championship. She would later be inducted into the Minuteman Hall of Fame, named one of Central’s top 100 greatest athletes and placed in the Minnesota State High School League of Fame.
At the University of Minnesota, Roberts would continue her success as a starting center. In her first year, she quickly aided the Gophers program by producing 24 total wins, up from 15 the previous season, while also leading the team in rebounding with 387 boards. In her next three years, the St. Paul talent would pace the team in scoring and rebounding. She was also a two-time Wade trophy finalist, which is awarded annually to the nation’s top female collegiate basketball player, and would leave Minnesota with 17 school records, including the all-time mark in points and rebounds. To this day, Roberts is one of only three Gopher players to average a career double-double, recording 14.4 points and 11 rebounds per outing. She has also tallied more rebounds than any women’s basketball player ever to compete in the Big Ten with 1,413 caroms.
Today, Roberts tries to expose aspiring youth to similar opportunities she had as a child. As the Director of Special Events and Outreach for Minnesota Athletics, Roberts has the responsibility of connecting the community with Gopher athletics, mainly in dealing with the younger generation. She brings in children from throughout the community and allows them to obtain a first-hand account of what goes on in the world of collegiate athletics.
“I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to spend time with children and help expose them to their interests,” said Roberts. “The most important part of these visits is the educational value it brings.”
Roberts also tries to educate kids throughout her many speaking engagements in which she consistently highlights her views, one of them being her “PDL” motto.
“P stands for perseverance, D stands for determination and L stands for loyalty,” said Roberts. “All three of these characteristics are needed to be successful in life.”
Roberts has definitely achieved success and on Jan. 15, 2006, Minnesota honored her by retiring her No. 21 jersey. Although her number was hung from the rafters alone that night, Roberts was not. Eight of her former teammates joined her on the court for the honor.
“I truly say that if it wasn’t for them passing me the ball, or getting the rebound and passing it to them, I wouldn’t be having my jersey retired,” said Roberts. “I didn’t do it all by myself. Minnesota is great at honoring its past, and they let me have the ceremony my way.”
Little did Roberts know that some 25 years after her playing days, her cousin, Ashley Ellis-Milan, would be donning the same No. 21 Minnesota jersey.
“To be honest, I didn’t even realize she wore the No. 21 until I got to Minnesota, said Ellis-Milan. “ I chose 21 because I was born on the 21st day of March and it has always been my favorite number.”
Ellis-Milan is currently a sophomore and starting at center for the Gophers. Much like her cousin, she led the team in rebounding in her debut season.
It is athletes such as Ellis-Milan in which Roberts focuses her efforts now. Under Roberts’ direction, Minnesota athletics has recently started a new mentoring program titled the African-American Mentor Support Group. Currently, the program deals with only black student-athletes, but Roberts has hopes of broadening the agenda.
“Eventually the goal is to provide each student-athlete at the university with a mentor that can stay with them all four years of college,” said Roberts. “Sometimes when 18-year olds get out of their comfort zone they become uneasy. We want them to feel welcomed and connected to the university. The mentor will be there as a friend to provide guidance and support to the student-athlete.”
You can even find Roberts mentoring her own family at times. One day when Roberts was babysitting her nephew, Shawn, she was giving him a few pointers on how to play basketball. At one point in the lesson, Shawn looked up at his aunt and said, “Girls can’t show boys how to play basketball.”
Then at the Minnesota Hall of Fame induction ceremony, clips were being shown of Roberts’s accomplishments. After viewing these highlights, Shawn turned to his aunt and said “I guess you were alright.”
This situation is a prime example of how Robert’s advises youth.
“You can give advice to someone today and they might not fully comprehend it, but someday they will,” said Roberts.
It is plain to see that Roberts truly cares for the welfare of today’s youth. She continues to counsel students of all ages day after day. Her constant support and attention to less fortunate children provides welcome opportunities to grow and develop. However, Roberts’ direction does not stop at young adults, she also opines to the parents.
“Parents must find out what interests their children at an early age,” said Roberts. “Children deal with difficult choices in today’s society, and they need parental guidance.”
Guidance should not be a worry for the parents of Minnesota student-athletes, because with Roberts at the helm, they are in good hands. | <urn:uuid:0484c918-9888-485d-9fd2-fca982929fbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bigten.org/genrel/020408aaa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981498 | 1,412 | 1.664063 | 2 |
London, England (CNN) -- It will be an image burned forever into Spain's national consciousness: the sight of captain Iker Casillas in tears after La Roja banished decades of World Cup failure by winning their first title on Sunday night.
At a time when the Spanish economy is in crisis, with the highest unemployment rates in Europe, the country needed a good news story.
Spanish flags were flown from balconies across the country as millions took to the streets in joyous, anarchic scenes. In South Africa, players such as Carles Puyol and Andres Iniesta kissed their badges, newly minted with a single star above their left breasts to honor their achievements.
Even before the final, patriotism coursed through the team. "We dedicate this victory to Spain," gushed Xavi, Barcelona's playmaker, after the semifinal win against Germany.
The next day El Pais declared: "Not since the Spanish civil war have there been so many flags in the streets." Such has been the ubiquity of Spain's flag it has been dubbed "The Red Effect" in honor of the national team's exploits.
On the face of it, such nationalistic, flag-waving sentiments are to be expected in the aftermath of a World Cup win. But in Spain -- a country where unique regional identities from the Catalans to the Basques to the Galicians have in the past taken precedence -- outpourings of national pride have been controversial and, paradoxically, divisive.
The flag is seen by many, especially the Catalans and the Basques, as a totem to the Franco era. Even the country's national anthem has been shorn of its lyrics, so not to reopen the old wounds left behind from the 1936-39 Spanish civil war and General Franco's subsequent dictatorship.
In fact, Spain's football failure has been put down to the tensions between regional and national loyalties, suggesting that not everyone was pulling in the same direction.
There is even a Catalan national football team, coached by the iconic Dutchman and former Barcelona star Johan Cruyff. Last December they beat Argentina 4-2 in a friendly with a team that featured Xavi, Puyol, Gerard Pique and Joan Capdevila, all of whom started on Sunday night.
Yet seven months later a Spain team led by Casillas, Real Madrid's Castilian captain, and powered by the Catalan brilliance of Barcelona's midfield, captured the biggest prize in the game.
"When Iniesta scored the winning goal, you could hear the reaction all over the city," explained Carolina Abellan, a reporter for the Spanish TV channel Cuatro who was in Madrid for the final. "The cheers were incredible and I saw lots of people crying."
Many of this morning's newspapers in Spain have hinted that the victory could herald a new dawn for the country, where a sense of national identity might now take precedence over regional concerns. As ABC noted: "The Spanish team is a metaphor for what Spain can aspire to be."
Even Marca, the pro-Real Madrid newspaper, had time to praise the old enemy. "Iniesta [of Barcelona] took us up into heaven...We suffered, but it was worth it."
The transformative power of football, either by promoting national unity or through sparking a long-dormant national pride, can be overstated. But the sport, especially World Cup finals, has been known to have huge political significance.
The best example is the 1954 World Cup final -- the so-called "Miracle of Berne" -- where West Germany, a team of amateur footballers beat Hungary, then the best team in the world.
It came at a pivotal moment in German history, at a time when the country was still haunted by its complicity in the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War. It was here, argues the German historian Joachim Fest, that the modern Germany was born.
"It was a kind of liberation for the Germans from all the things that weighed down upon them after the Second World War," he explained. "July 4, 1954 is in certain aspects the founding day of the German Republic."
So is this truly a new dawn for Spain and its fractious regions? Not everyone has jumped on the bandwagon.
The complexity of the country's identity was highlighted just 24 hours before the World Cup final, when more than a million Catalans marched on Barcelona to protest government moves to curtail the region's autonomy. In comparison, an estimated 75,000 people took to Barcelona's streets to watch the final.
"In Spain, we have a problem with national identity," Abellan told CNN. "In some places in Spain, the Basque Country and Catalonia, above all others, it's extremely difficult to see a Spanish flag or a national team game without there being problems.
"But in this World Cup, there were more Spanish flags than ever in places like Bilbao or Barcelona. Many of the players on the national team are Basque, like Xabi Alonso, or Catalan, like Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique, and they were the first ones to stand up and talk of Spain."
Only time will tell whether the ghosts of Spain's past are really put to rest. But there could be a far more immediate and much-needed impact from Andres Iniesta's extra-time strike.
A Dutch academic study before the last tournament in Germany discovered that World Cup-winning countries have enjoyed positive economic growth following all but two finals, thanks to a mixture of increased confidence and heightened prestige.
According to Ruben van Leeuwen and Charles Kalshoven's 2006 study "Soccernomics," that bounce can be worth an extra 0.7 percent of GDP.
With the country's economy teetering on the verge of its own Greek-style debt crisis, and with unemployment hitting 42.9 percent among 16 to 24-year-olds, Spain's World Cup victory could not have come at a better time.
But as the tears and the joy from Johannesburg to Madrid to Barcelona prove, La Roja's legacy could mean much, much more.
"Well, that can only be answered in time," cautioned Abellan. "But, for the moment, we've seen thousands of people celebrating the Spanish victory in places like Bilbao or Barcelona, and that was never the case before." | <urn:uuid:3362460d-979c-4bb7-af95-e65311934ad7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/football/07/12/spain.world.cup.unity/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962518 | 1,312 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The R90S:The project bike is a 1975 BMW R90S.
The R90S uses a BMW type 247 horizontally opposed, air-cooled, twin cylinder engine with a displacement of 898cc. This configuration is popularly known as a "Boxer". For those who are really into it, it's also called an "Airhead". This version of the Boxer engine produced 67 BHP, and propelled the smiling rider to reported speeds of over 120 MPH.
The R90S was among the first "Superbikes" to be produced, and set the standards by which performance motorcycles were judged. A cafe-style "Bikini" fairing gave it a sleek, distinctive look that is, for better or for worse, very period. You won't mistake an R90S for anything made in the 90's, I guarantee it.
Between 1973 and 1976, 17, 455 units were produced, before the model was replaced by a slightly larger displacement version, the R100S.
Here's an example of what the bike is supposed to look like:
My R90S:My R90S was brought to my house on New Year's Eve Day, 1998. The previous owner and an associate purchased the bike at Auction some time previous. The bike had been wrecked in what appeared to be a head-on collision with an object of some mass, which proved to be reluctant to move. Significant damage was done to the fork tubes, which were bent, the frame, which was bent under at the headstock, and the fairing, which was missing and is presumed destroyed. Although other minor damage was evident, the bike appears to have been under good care, and was in very good shape at the time of impact.
1/1/99: Bike arrives. 10/7/99 Some leads on needed parts. 11/16/99 Frame and Fairing arrive. 11/21/99 Frame is prepped. 12/1/99 Swapping begins 3/8/00 Coming into focus.
1/1/99:Images of how the bike looked this day:Assessment of the damage: I spent some time looking over what was usable, and what has to go. There are two lists:
Things that are okay:
And, things that need to be replaced:
- The engine, which turns, appears to be in relatively good tune (valves look good)
- The wheels. Surprisingly, there appear to be no loose spokes, and the front rim seems okay. Tires are low-mileage and in great shape.
- Seat and tank. Seat is in nearly perfect condition. Tank has been repainted, and evidence of a large corroded spot is visible. Also, some impact damage is apparent, probably from the final collision.
- Transmission appears to shift well and positively, although further inspection is obviously required.
- Electrics seem to be okay. Suprisingly, the battery was still holding a charge, and everything that was still attached (turn indicators, brake lights, headlight) all seem to function normally.
I wanted to get some pictures before doing any major work, but the tank and seat looked so nasty that I couldn't resist polishing them up. The shots you see are just as the bike arrived, except for this.
- Frame. This is obvious. Someone has tried to straighten the frame already. Experts seem to agree that you get one chance, and this one missed. I'm going to go ahead and just figure on replacing the thing. It may lose some collector value, but I'm not doing this as a finanacial investment, I'm doing this to finish a project and have a nice bike.
- Fork tubes. Fortunately, the previous owner was able to find another set, and these were included with the bike. Just a matter of getting them in.
- Exhaust. The /6 exhaust was not part of the deal, and will be returned to the previous owner for inclusion on some other project. Great shape, though!
- Shocks. The original shocks were removed for the same purpose as the exhaust. I'll probably upgrade these to Konis, just 'cause.
- Fairing. Ain't one here, and I want one. I'd prefer to get a nice used one, since a new one will probably cost me as much as the bike itself. And that's before it's painted! Careful examination eventually revealed traces of some of the fairing's mounting hardware, which supports my destruction hypothesis.
- Mirrors. Ain't there, gotta have 'em.
I'm currently following some leads on the internet, priority is getting a frame. The plan is to move everything over to the new frame, part by part, cleaning and servicing as I go, rebuilding as necessary.
10/7/99:After many months of being distracted from the project (new job, other projects, the usual), I have finally been able to locate a usable frame and fairing, discovered on the IBMWR BMW motorcycle marketplace. The check is going out tomorrow.
Once the frame arrives, priority will go to establishing a workable skeleton upon which to hang the parts as they are removed from the old frame. This involves:
At this point, there will be enough structure on the new bike to get it standing on its own two wheels. (with a new centerstand, of course)
- Installing new steering head bearings
- Rebuilding the forks
- Moving the rear sub-frame over
- Moving the drivetrain
11/16/99:The frame and fairing have arrived. The fairing is in need of paint and mounting hardware, but the screen is in fantastic shape.
The frame is from a 1977 R100S. It arrived in a very interesting manner, and is need of some minor surface rust elimination. So far, it looks straight, and none of the rust is structural, or in any critical area. Overall, I am very pleased with the purchase, and will highly recommend Mr. Lawrence Hogarth. Lawrence is a very knowledgeable guy, and a very straight shooter. I'd do business with him any time!
Since the fairing will defnitely require painting, and the tank could use new paint and some very minor bodywork, I am thinking about what sort of paint job to put on the bike.
A couple of ideas:
In any case, at the moment, I am thinking it will be something with a lot of depth. Of course, ask me again after polishing out coat #20!
- I am thinking of my Specialized Epic bicycle, which has a beautiful finish, with tons of depth. It fades from a red at the ends of the tubes into a natural carbon fiber near the centers. Obviously, the BMW wouldn't have any carbon fiber, but a hint of red around the headlight, fading into a deep black might be kinda cool.
- Of course, trying to duplicate an original Silver Smoke scheme would be authentic, but the growing number of non-original items on the bike is starting to make me think that an orignal scheme at this point would be somehow inappropriate. And I'm not actually that much of a fan of the Daytona Orange scheme...
11/21/99The new frame has been prepped, and swapping will begin presently. The prepping process mainly involved spot treatment of a couple suspicious looking spots that looked like they were starting to get interested in rusting. These were shot with a rust arrestor, primed, and then painted. All threads were cleaned and inspected, and all fasteners checked.
12/1/99Figiring I'd start from the front, I went ahead and removed the fork stanchion tubes that had been pressed into the triple clamp. This freed up the steering head, so I went ahead and moved that over to the new frame. Surprisingly enough, the steering tube and the triple clamp showed no malformation under inspection. This was a little surprising, given the nature of the accident. I am not complaining, however, and the frame started to look like it might someday be a motorcycle.
The damping rods in the forks also proved to be straight, and showed no signs of damage or lack of proper function.
At this time, unfortunately, the pressures of the end of the year took their toll on my time and money available to work on this project, so there was a small hiatus...
3/8/00After a few months of inactivity, I finally got some time, energy, and a little money from a tax refund, and dove back into the project.I decided that it was time that the project stopped looking like a broken motorcycle sitting next to a few strange-looking hunks of metal. So I moved over the rear sub-frame, the ignition coils, and the battery tray. This had the twin result of making the project actually look like some progress had been made (very important psychologically), and also allowed some more strategy to be devised for attacking the rest of the project. I am still waiting for some small parts to arrive for the forks, which will be installed ASAP. The next subject to tackle is to move the swingarm, final drive, and rear wheel over to the new frame. It has also become very apparent that the wiring harness for this bike is going to represent some serious strategy. There are wires going everywhere, and clearly the way the harness wants to be removed is by loosening everything up, and then being pulled by the headlight out of the front of the frame. If you're trying this, make sure to use lots of masking tape, and label every little connection.Many thanks are due to the good folks at BMW/Triumph of Santa Cruz, for their help and expertise on this project, as well as keeping the rest of my stable running well.
In attempting to remove the swingarm, there are some other words of warning: the aperture in which the pivot pin and its locknut reside is too small to admit a standard 27mm socket (a hard one to find on its own). Plan to either use a bench grinder or a lathe to turn down the outside diameter. Owning neither, I discovered that it is very difficult to find a machine shop willing to do any turning at 4:00 in the afternoon.
Return to my BMW page
This page copyright 1999, by Michael Zenner. BMW, R90S, and the BMW roundel are trademarks of BMW. Last updated November21, 1999 | <urn:uuid:6160b92e-924e-42a7-b3f0-771ef3b08bd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rdrop.com/users/mvz/bmwr90s.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976167 | 2,158 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Everyone knows that they should be looking after themselves and keeping in reasonable shape, but often it’s hard to find the time to commit to a new fitness regime at the gym. It’s often a lot easier to workout at home, as any exercise routine can be fitted in as and when you have time.
The home fitness market has developed into a multi-million dollar industry, and it’s not hard to see why – there’s a huge variety of different machines and contraptions that all promise to whip you into shape in no time at all. If you are just starting out, though, it’s probably best to focus on improving your overall fitness first of all before buying a specialist machine that will concentrate on a specific muscle group.
Most fitness stores will have a good range of treadmills and crosstrainers for sale, and it’s these that you should be looking at for your first purchase. They will both give a fantastic all-over workout and will exercise a huge variety of muscle groups. They will also give an aerobic workout, which is when you raise your heart rate and oxygen intake for a sustained period – by doing this for twenty to thirty minutes, three times a week, your body will start to burn calories and you should begin to lose weight.
These machines can be a little on the large side, and it’s often best to have a space dedicated to them. If you have a spare room, that’s ideal – if you can leave the machine set up and ready to go, you can jump on and do some exercise whenever the mood takes. If you haven’t got enough space to spare, then you should check out the space-saver versions of these machines and most stores will have easy-to-store crosstrainers and folding treadmills for sale alongside the regular machines.
By concentrating your first couple of months on either of these machines you should make a good improvement in your general health – once you have a good base to work from, you can then start to look at other machines or weights to target specific muscles that you want to build. It’s important, though, not to run before you can walk – it’ll be easier and more enjoyable to improve your physique once you’re fit enough to sustain a reasonable level of intensity workout. | <urn:uuid:8855ce88-5a30-47cf-8855-a291e90f8de2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marjanlovsin.com/articles/power-yourself-into-shape-with-a-home-fitness-machine | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95386 | 486 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Growing number of terminals
require TWIC identification
Mar 14, 2008 9:15 AM
Many transportation shipping facilities, including a handful of petroleum refineries and terminals not included under the federal Transportation Worker Identity Credential (TWIC), are requiring drivers to present TWIC cards in order to get beyond the facility gate, the New England Fuel Institute has reported in its newsletter, NEON.
Although TWIC cards are only required at specific marine ports as designated by the US Coast Guard, the non-port facilities are voluntarily turning to TWIC identification requirements in order to meet their personnel security obligations under the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Chemical Facility Anti-terrorism Standards, according to the NEON report.
These facilities are increasingly requiring TWIC even though the background check to obtain a commercial driver license (CDL) hazardous material endorsement is identical to the TWIC driver security assessment procedure. The NEON report also points out that voluntary compliance by non-port facilities places an enormous burden on hazmat drivers, who may find it difficult to obtain a TWIC card since DHS credentialing centers are located only in ports covered by the TWIC requirements.
The information is posted online at nefi.com.
© 2013 Penton Media Inc.
Acceptable Use Policy blog comments powered by Disqus | <urn:uuid:91294a53-5202-4495-8af3-438b5a92ef5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bulktransporter.com/management/shippers/terminals_require_twic_id_0314/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935431 | 267 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Recently, Commissioner White asked district personnel to compile a list of pros and cons regarding the replication of the SOTA model for the Northeast Zone so that students who wish to attend such a program would not have to be turned down due to availability. District officials have been less than supportive of this idea saying that securing professionals to teach in the new school would be difficult and the replication would be costly.
Last night at the Board meeting, the School of the Arts choir performed. It was marvelous.
Speakers at the Business meeting told the Board of the shortage of music programs at the secondary level and, while most elementary schools had music programs, there was an inequity in they type and delivery of those programs in and across schools.
Also speaking at the meeting were teens concerned about the rising incidence of pregnancy and STD’s amongst teens in our community. They were advocating for better sex education and condom accessibility in schools.
A study by Scott Turner in Academic Leadership Live, shows that “The difference between success and failure has been simply identified as how a student spends their after-school time.”
The district has no problem recognizing the value of sports programs for students yet has not extended their view to include Glee clubs, Chess clubs, Debate clubs, Leadership clubs, Cooking clubs, and any other club that would bring young men and women together in a positive way. Volunteers can be utilized in all of these areas.
The cost of providing these opportunities for our youth can be measured in dollars. The cost of denying these opportunities to our young people is measured in their lives. Regardless of the financial investment, schools should be a place where children are given every opportunity to discover their greatness. Each Zone should offer children of all ages the chance to explore their passions and develop their dreams.
Giving students alternatives to being in the street would be more beneficial than giving them condoms to protect themselves once they are there.
Join the Movement to Save Our Children! | <urn:uuid:123fddb3-386f-4346-8d37-ece02fa23c5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://educabilityrocs.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981724 | 395 | 1.617188 | 2 |
So Atlantic City is building a new Holocaust memorial, which is great news for those of us who'd rather look at pretty architecture than feed coins to Elvis Multi-Strike and eat buffet steak ?til we puke.
Unfortunately, AC isn't building the memorial you see here. But we want to tell you about it anyway for the simple reason that it's lovely.
The conceptual scheme, by Jerusalem-based architects SAYA, is called Fields of Memory, and it placed second in a recent international design competition to erect a Holocaust memorial on AC's famed boardwalk. (First prize went to a pair of Columbia U students for a pretty cool design, even if it looks a bit like it got blasted by a tidal wave.)
Fields of Memory would be an urban garden that sings. It'd dance, too. As the architects tell it, vast bunches of rust-like "light stalks" -- some tall, some short, and many in between -- would sway in the breeze, their lights flickering, their stalks producing sounds like the soft whistle of a flute. The pictures do a good job of conveying the concept, but to really grasp it, you've gotta watch the film above. It's hypnotic.
The idea of the memorial is both to emulate the neighboring sea grass and to reference the biblical story of Shibboleth (shibbolim means "rye stalks" in Hebrew), a parable about ethnic and cultural hatred. Per the architects: The stalks? "collective presence, motion and sound create the effect of an absent-present crowd which has gathered to testify and tell a tragic story." Awfully poetic, eh? What a shame it won't be built. Maybe it was just too classy for AC.
[Images courtesy of SAYA] | <urn:uuid:478b4881-2b79-48f4-ae26-de050df7a22a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663035/a-singing-swaying-urban-garden-that-memorializes-the-holocaust | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963001 | 367 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Ronald Reagan is an interesting spectre.
When Reagan was President from 1980 to 1988, I was still coming to a period of political realization. I was still a child, paying more attention to the news than my friends were, but I was too young to understand the nuances of Cold War politics. My primary source of information was my parents; and, like most “my dad is cooler than your dad” children, I probably annoyed the other children on the playground by talking about how I would vote for Walter Mondale, if only I could vote yet.
And, it was probably my continued predilection towards these kinds of conversations that made me a social leper when it came to dating in high school.
But let’s give credit where it’s due. Reagan probably accidentally introduced me to politics as a young child by giving his (overwhelmingly expensive and realistically-impossible) missle-defense shield program the nickname “Star Wars” at a particularly impressionable time in my life. When you’re a child in the 80s, a shield in outer space seems perfectly plausible, especially when you believe your society is only ten-to-fifteen years away from patrols by the Millenium Falcon above your head and Marty McFly's Hoverboard below your feet.
And so, while I have grown up to realize that my childhood ideas of the way the world works were naive, many people have not learned that lesson about the economic policies of Ronald Reagan.
Quite the opposite, actually.
Somewhere in the years following his death in 2004, Ronald Reagan became a legend; and possibly Mitt Romney’s favorite ghost since Moroni. During his term, President Reagan’s approval ratings never topped a modest 68%, and his average was a 53. In case you’re not one to click on the links I provide, George HW Bush capped at 89 and settled with about a 61. So that means that, during their respective presidencies, George HW Bush was actually more popular than Reagan. And Bush spent less time at his job than your average Cleveland Browns coach.
But oh, how history re-writes itself in rose-colored inks. Turn on the news today, and it seems like Reagan was a beloved demi-god, wielding the Hammer of Thor and bringing the nation together over a time of such economic prosperity that our middle class feet were lined with diamonds on the souls of our shoes.
(Hell yes I dropped an obscure Paul Simon reference. Take that, Dennis Miller.)
Today, Republicans love the ghost of Ronald Reagan. And I think that’s fantastic. Good for you guys. Reagan did arguably (and eventually) preside over a time of economic prosperity, and there’s nothing wrong with regarding the 80s as halcyon days. I still love a good game of Galaga.
But let’s not pretend the world was not a different place. Let’s not make the mistake of exactly and finitely equating his policies as though past were prologue.
Reagan’s famous M.O. was the oft-debated theory of “Trickle Down Economics.” In short, the theory is that, if businesses and the wealthy are afforded tax breaks and incentives, that money will eventually “trickle down” to the poorer and make the economy stronger. It wasn’t a new idea, and it wasn’t even one that was agreed upon as something that would work (even then), but it was a sort of blueprint for him then, and it is still the economic blueprint for the GOP now.
Mitt Romney (as of now, anyway) would love us to go back to the policies of Reagan to re-usher in that same prosperity; say nothing of the fact that the tax rates were still higher under Reagan than they are today, that the internet and machines hadn't yet replaced humans in manufacturing jobs, or that we were spending money hand over fist to push the now non-existent USSR into bankruptcy.
Another thing we seem to be ignoring is that there are less mechanisms in place for that wealth to trickle down to the working class because there are fewer unions today in order to bargain for a bigger piece of that wealth. In 2011, the union membership rate was 11.8%. In 1983, it was 20%. With the number of union memberships essentially cut in half, there are even fewer tools in place for middle class workers to bargain for that wealth than when Reagan was President.
And since Reagan was President, the wealth gap has increased, and expendable income decreased; whether or not you want to debate that Reganomics was the cause of that. There have simply been no reasons for the wealthy to give up the very human tendency towards greed, hire more people, and filter that wealth down through philanthropy and the growth of the middle class.
The realisty is that, since the days Reagan, the diamonds on the soles of our middle class shoes went first to cubic zirconium, then to shards of glass, and now we’re stuck with idiotic lights in our sneakers that make us look like you’ve got a one-man disco party on your piggies. And that’s if you haven’t given up on life completely and decided on Crocs.
Put simply, even if we were to agree that “Trickle Down” economics was a viable theory back then, there are barely any mechanisms remaining in place today to ensure that the wealth actually does what it’s “supposed” to do. And though our country still maintains some similarities from the 80s (I’m still waiting on that Hoverboard, McFly), it’s simply not applicable to make an apples-to-apples comparison with our current economic climate. | <urn:uuid:790ea0bf-7659-42e4-951d-fe3029584ead> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://strongsville.patch.com/blog_posts/trickling-up | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976351 | 1,214 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1936 (36.37)
Wrack: From the "Bertoloni Album," 1839
William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)
8 11/16 x 6 7/8 in. (22 x 17.5 cm)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1936 (36.37 (25)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1936 (36.37)
[Table Set for Tea]: From the "Bertoloni Album," 1839
William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)
Photogenic drawing from a paper negative
Image: 5 1/4 x 8 in. (13.4 x 20.2 cm); sheet: 6 3/4 x 8 5/8 (17 x 21.8 cm)
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1936 (36.37.36)
6 3/4 x 8 3/8 in. (17.1 x 21.2 cm)
Anonymous Gift and Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts; 2004 Benefit Fund; W. Bruce and Delaney H. Lundberg Gift; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel; Susan and Thomas Dunn and Constance and Leonard Goodman Gifts, 2009 (2009.279)
A young English gentleman on his honeymoon sat sketching by the shore of Lake Como early in October 1833, one eye pressed close to a camera lucida. With this simple draftsman's aid, consisting of an adjustable metal arm fastened at one end to the artist's sketchbook or drawing board and supporting a glass prism at the other, the young man saw a refracted image of the Italian landscape superimposed as if by magic on the pages of his sketchbook. It seemed a simple task to trace the features of the village buildings, lake, and distant mountains with his pencil. But alas, it only seemed simple, he later recalled, "for when the eye was removed from the prismin which all looked beautifulI found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold."
The would-be artist was William Henry Fox Talbot (18001877). A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a recently elected Liberal member of Parliament in the House of Commons, Talbot was a true polymath. His intellectual curiosity embraced the fields of mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, and botany; philosophy and philology; Egyptology, the classics, and art history. He had published four books and twenty-seven scholarly articles on a variety of subjects and was a fellow of the Astronomical, Linnean, and Royal Societies. Amid shopping lists and daily reminders, he filled his pocket diaries with the titles of books to read, complex mathematical formulas, and notations of experiments and experiences.
Talbot's frustration that day with the camera lucida led him to recollect his experiences ten years earlier with another drafting aid, the camera obscuraa small wooden box with a lens at one end that projected the scene before it onto a piece of frosted glass at the back, where the artist could trace the outlines on thin paper. The camera obscura, too, had left Talbot with unsatisfactory results, but it was not his own feeble drawings that he remembered after a decade. Rather he recalled with pleasure "the inimitable beauty of the pictures of nature's painting which the glass lens of the Camera throws upon the paper in its focusfairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade away." These thoughts in turn prompted Talbot to muse "how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper." "And why should it not be possible?" he asked himself. Talbot jotted down thoughts about experiments he could conduct at home to see if Nature, through the action of light on material substances, might be brought to draw her own picture.
In January 1834, Talbot returned home to Lacock Abbey, an amalgamation of buildings incorporating the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century remains of a former abbey about eighty-five miles west of London. Within a few months, he began to experiment with the idea that had occurred to him at Lake Como and soon found that a sheet of fine writing paper, coated with salt and brushed with a solution of silver nitrate, darkened in the sun, and that a second coating of salt impeded further darkening or fading. Talbot used this discovery to make precise tracings of botanical specimens: he set a pressed leaf or plant on a piece of sensitized paper, covered it with a sheet of glass, and set it in the sun. Wherever the light struck, the paper darkened, but wherever the plant blocked the light, it remained white. He called his new discovery "the art of photogenic drawing."
As his chemistry improved, Talbot returned to his original idea of photographic images made in a camera. During the "brilliant summer of 1835," he took full advantage of the unusually abundant sunshine and placed pieces of sensitized photogenic drawing paper in miniature cameras"mouse traps," his wife called themset around the grounds to record the silhouette of Lacock Abbey's animated roofline and trees. The pictures, Talbot wrote, "without great stretch of the imagination might be supposed to be the work of some Lilliputian artist."
Occupied with other activities, Talbot worked little on his invention between the sunny days of 1835 and January 1839, when the stunning news arrived that a Frenchman, Louis Daguerre, had invented a wholly different means of recording camera pictures with dazzling precision on metal plates. Preempted just at the moment when he was beginning to revisit his earlier experiments with an eye toward publication, Talbot scrambled to stake a claim to priority, to produce pictures that might compare favorably with Daguerre's, and to solve the problems of lengthy exposure times and fugitive prints. Well before Daguerre revealed the details of his process, Talbot presented his own before the Royal Society in January and February 1839. At the time of Talbot's announcement, his "art of photogenic drawing" was clearly better suited for recording the shadows of plant specimens, lace, or similar flat objects by direct contactpictures we would now describe as photogramsthan for camera images.
Although such photogenic drawings were beautiful as objects and useful as scientific records, Talbot knew that a fast, permanent, and accurate means of producing photographic images in the camera was the true brass ring, and on September 23, 1840, he found a way to seize it. Talbot discovered that an exposure of mere seconds, leaving no visible trace on the chemically treated paper, nonetheless left a latent image that could be brought out with the application of an "exciting liquid" (essentially a solution of gallic acid). This discovery, which Talbot patented in February 1841 as the "calotype" process (from the Greek kalos, meaning beautiful), opened up a whole new world of possible subjects for photography.
Talbot's early photogenic drawings, such as those in the Bertoloni Album, with their shades of lilac and lavender, remained fugitive, for they were only partially stabilized with a solution of salt. A more permanent means of "fixing" the image with hyposulfite of soda was proposed by Talbot's friend the eminent scientist Sir John Herschel; "hypo" was adopted by Talbot for most prints beginning in the early 1840s and is still used today as a fixer for black-and-white photographs. With all the pieces of a workable process now in place, Talbot set out to promote his invention at home and abroad. He traveled to Paris in May 1843 to negotiate (unsuccessfully) a licensing agreement for the French rights to his patented calotype process and to give firsthand instruction in its use. At home, he demonstrated the commercial viability of his invention by means of a photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, published in parts beginning in 1844. In less than a decade, Talbot conceived and brought about a wholly new way of making pictures, perfected the optical and chemical aspects of photography, and learned to use the new medium to make complex images for the botanist, historian, traveler, and artist.
Talbot spent the last twenty-five years of his life developing and perfecting an effective photogravure process. That he should have spent so much time developing a process for printing photographs with ink rather than silver salts is not wholly surprising. Talbot's early photogenic drawings are so ephemeral that, despite their exceptional beauty, they can never be exhibited or exposed to light without risk of change. Even his far more stable calotypes fixed with hypo were inconsistent in their permanence, many deteriorating in quick order; a reviewer of the 1862 International Exhibition described some photographs as "fading before the eyes of the nations assembled." Thus, Talbot's search for a photographic process using permanent printer's ink was a final step in the refinement of his earlier, still imperfect, invention. | <urn:uuid:39210cf1-513e-48b0-af83-b8c9d27ca11c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tlbt/hd_tlbt.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964637 | 1,883 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Monday, March 29, 2010
Crackdown: State troopers seal off a road as the Feds conduct a tri-state operation to arrest members of the Hutaree "Christian militia."
The first thing that must be understood is that while the murder of any human being is the most serious crime one can commit, it is not necessarily a crime to kill a police officer.
Defensive use of lethal force against criminal aggression is morally legitimate and legally protected, even -- no, make that "especially" -- when the aggressor is clothed in the habiliments of the state's punitive priesthood. This is not the view of some obscure, unsavory self-styled Christian militia group from Michigan. It is the long-established view of the United States Supreme Court as expressed more than a century ago in the ruling John Bad Elk v. The United States.
John Bad Elk, a Lakota Indian living on a South Dakota reservation, shot and killed a tribal policeman named John Kills Back, who attempted to carry out an arrest without warrant or probable cause. Bad Elk was convicted of murder after the Judge instructed the jury (as paraphrased by the High Court) that "the policeman had the right to arrest [Black Elk] ... and to use such force as was necessary to accomplish the arrest, and that [Black Elk] had no right to resist it."
Under the common law, the High Court pointed out, Black Elk was not obliged to submit to an unlawful arrest, and he "had the right to use such force as was absolutely necessary to resist an attempted illegal arrest...." Furthermore, ruled the Court, "the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction when the officer had the right to make the arrest from what it does if the officer had no such right. What might be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed." (Emphasis added.)
Simply put: As a matter of law, a citizen has an unqualified right to use lethal force to defend himself against a criminal assault by a law enforcement officer. This is not "sedition"; it's stare decisis.
The federal indictment against the Hutaree "Christian militia" describes the group's alleged preparations for potential armed conflict against law enforcement officers as a "seditious conspiracy." Whether this constitutes a criminal conspiracy of any kind depends entirely on whether the group planned to commit aggressive violence against individuals.
If they were acquiring weapons and developing appropriate skills in anticipation of defending themselves against government aggression, their actions-- while possibly conspiratorial in nature -- don't amount to a crime. This is particularly true in light of our cultural history, in which sedition -- agitation to change the existing political order -- is our proudest civic tradition.
Government is nothing more than the rationalization and exercise of violence. Everything done by government contains at least the implicit threat of lethal coercion. Thus the indictment's description of Hutaree as "an anti-government extremist organization which advocates violence against local, state and Federal law enforcement" is a product of rhetorical onanism.
The same is true of the charge that the militia's members "did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and other persons known and unknown" -- great googlymoogly, do federal prosecutors pay their scribes by the syllable? -- "to levy war against the United States, to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States, and to prevent, hinder, and delay by force the execution of any United States law."
If Hutaree was preparing for armed defense against criminal actions by government officials, this charge is as pointless as a broken pencil. If their efforts to "prevent, hinder, and delay" various government initiatives were confined to activism, rather than armed conflict, they are -- in that particular -- not substantively different from hundreds or thousands of other groups.
Once again, the gravamen here is the question of aggressive violence. As paraphrased by the Regime's media stenographers, the charges against Hutaree are digested into a "plot to kill law enforcement officers." This would allegedly entail murdering one policeman and then ambushing others who would attend the Soviet-style paramilitary ritual that occurs on those rare occasions a police officer is killed in the line of duty.
Rather than providing specific details, referring to particular witnesses, or alluding to other material evidence, the indictment repeatedly refers to Hutaree's "general concept of operations." To whose "concept" does this refer -- the specific, overtly stated intentions of the militia members, or the way those intentions were conceived by federal authorities or their allied left-wing "watchdog" activists? Was this "concept of operations" committed to print, or captured on an audio or video record? Was there a specific plan, or were there outbursts of ill-considered speculation or depraved wishful thinking?
In studiously vague language, the federal indictment alleges that "one officer in particular" had been identified as a potential murder target. Plotting to murder another human being is a crime, of course, as is preparing to murder others who would assemble for a funeral.
These matters are questions of fact dependent on evidence not outlined in the indictment. Given that cases of this kind often end in plea bargains before they go to trial, it's possible we may never learn what, if any, evidence supports the most serious charges against the group.
Hutaree, we are told, is a violent cult. FBI Special Agent Andrew Arena referred to Hutaree as typical of the "radical and extremist fringe groups that can be found throughout our society." It may well be a dangerous little sect; like nearly everyone else, I hadn't heard of the group prior to yesterday (March 28), so I can't offer an adequately informed opinion of its intentions. At least some of those involved in other citizen militia groups in Michigan were leery of Hutaree, suspecting that it was seeking to provoke a civil war.
Whatever is eventually learned about Hutaree, as things presently stand the indictment against it could provide a template for "seditious conspiracy" prosecutions involving practically any group that endorses the use of defensive force to protect citizens against government aggression.
Indeed, the definition of "conspiracy" used in the Hutaree indictment could make a criminal out of anyone who reads Federalist Paper 46 in public, thereby sharing James Madison's commendably seditious admonition that the people preserve "the advantage of being armed" in the event that insurrection against the central government proves necessary in order to preserve liberty.
The tri-state crack-down against Hutaree, which involved what was described as a "batallion" of state, local, and federal troops (there's little point in using the term "police" any more), is the largest but by no means only recent campaign of its kind.
Last week the Feds reeled in several members of a properly ignominious Connecticut neo-Nazi street gang calling itself the White Wolves.
The White Wolves crackdown followed the familiar outline:
A federal informant (in this case, a convicted felon acting as a "cooperating witness") infiltrates a tiny and all but inconsequential clique of petty criminals, incites them to commit an "overt" criminal act (in this case by asking them to sell him firearms). The feds then draw up a grandiose indictment depicting that the little knot of skinheads as a world-historic menace.
As is true of the case against the Hutaree militia, the White Wolves indictment is a bureaucratic confection -- a wedding cake-sized pile of rhetorical meringue concealing a criminal complaint the size of a small Twinkie.
The objective here -- and, most likely in the Feds' prosecution of the Hutaree militia -- is to induce at least one or more members of the targeted group to join the pool of infiltrator/provocateus for use against other targeted groups.
The dynamics of this routine are a bit like multi-level marketing: The federal handler -- usually an FBI Special Agent assigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force -- serves as the "upline" to a small stable of provocateurs, each of which is highly motivated to create a large "downline" of similarly compromised assets. As with many other MLMs, nothing of value is actually accomplished, but the people at the top of the pyramid -- in this case, the Homeland Security bureaucrats -- make a very comfortable living.
In times of relative tranquility, that cynical exercise provides career security for Homeland Security functionaries. There's reason to believe that the Feds have expanded and escalated this ongoing enterprise to exploit, and exacerbate, growing public hostility toward an increasingly invasive and esurient government.
Whether it is ever demonstrated that Hutaree intended to "levy war" against the U.S. government, this much is beyond serious dispute: The Homeland Security state is unambiguously preparing for war with the public -- in fact, it has been doing so for a long time.
During a 1997 visit to the Battle Command Training Program at Ft. Leavenworth, author Robert Kaplan frequently heard "discussion of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the National Guard to act as a local police force once it has been federalized by the army in a civil emergency," he recalled in his book An Empire Wilderness. "The implication was that turbulence within the United States might one day require the act to be repealed."
Kaplan describes a round-table discussion of potential military action against domestic dissident groups. One Marine Major, referring to the Oklahoma City Bombing (an atrocity carried out by a former federal employee and "others" who remain "unknown"), declared: "The minute I heard about Oklahoma City, I knew who did it -- rednecks, the kind of guys from southern Idaho."
According to Kaplan, that officer and another of the same rank "suggested that `a time might come when the military will have to go domestic.'"
In the strictest sense, that was a treasonable utterance -- a threat, by people in a position with the means to carry it into effect, to wage war against the people of the "united States in Congress assembled."
When talk of that kind is indulged in by members of a tiny, disreputable club, it is labeled "seditious conspiracy" involving "weapons of mass destruction" -- that is, homemade explosives. When such talk reflects the shared opinion of armed functionaries of the Regime -- people with access to the largest and most destructive arsenal ever assembled, and a growing foreign body count demonstrating a willingness to use it -- this is a sober, responsible discussion of Homeland Security affairs.
Apparently, it's sound public policy for the government to wage war against the citizenry, but a federal offense to take notice of that fact.
Be sure to get your daily dose of sedition on Pro Libertate Radio, courtesy of the Liberty News Radio Network.
Dum spiro, pugno! | <urn:uuid:a3befbe8-78fe-42de-8477-961289b2a188> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2010/03/causus-belli.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961248 | 2,281 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Women Challenge Pentagon on Combat Bar
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The Pentagon "categorically" bars women from ground combat jobs, excluding them from more than 238,000 jobs, training and occupational specialties, four officers and the Service Women's Action Network claim in Federal Court.
The officers - Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar, Staff Sgt. Jennifer Hunt, Capt. Alexandra Zoe Bedell, and First Lt. Colleen Farrell - sued Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
They claim the "combat exclusion policy" is unconstitutional, "harms servicewomen, including the plaintiffs, in significant ways," "is not justified by any important governmental objective," and is "based on outdated stereotypes of women and ignores realities of the modern military and battlefield conditions."
"Nearly a century after women first earned the right of suffrage, the combat exclusion policy still denies women a core component of full citizenship - serving on equal footing in the military defense of our nation," the complaint states.
The policy, adopted by the Department of Defense in 1994, excludes women from most combat positions and bars them "from being assigned to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground," according to the complaint.
"As a result of this policy, women are barred from more than 238,000 positions across the Armed Forces, including all infantry positions, and from certain military occupational specialties and training schools. No United States statute requires this categorical exclusion of women. Instead, the DoD has itself decided to close these positions to servicewomen solely because they are women."
The officers add: "The combat exclusion policy sends a clear message to the world that women are not capable of serving their country to the same extent as men."
Yet 14.5 percent of active military personnel are women, and more than 280,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the complaint. All were exposed to combat situations in modern warfare, which lacks clear boundaries or front lines.
"Of the women who have been deployed since Sept. 11, 2001, 85 percent reported serving in a combat zone or in an area where they drew imminent danger pay or hostile fire pay, and nearly half reported being involved in combat operations. Many of these women have served in combat with distinction. But they have been deprived of the training, opportunities, and recognition they deserve because, under the exclusion policy, they cannot 'officially' be assigned to ground combat units," the complaint states.
The unconstitutional policy makes it more difficult for women to move up to the top ranks, as combat experience is a factor in promotions. "For example, over 80 percent of general officers in the Army came from combat arms positions, from which women are excluded. Chances for promotion to senior enlisted positions are likewise enhanced for those who have served in combat arms positions and career specialists. The DoD's combat exclusion policy thus serves as a structural barrier to the advancement of women within the Armed Forces," the complaint states.
All four officers say they were exposed to combat overseas and have been held back from pursuing their interests in the military due to the exclusion policy.
Maj. Hegar was awarded a Purple Heart after being injured when her helicopter was shot down as she rescued injured soldiers.
Staff Sgt. Hunt's vehicle was hit by an explosive device during a tour in Iraq, for which she earned a Purple Heart.
They seek declaratory judgment that the combat exclusion policy violates the constitutional right to equal protection of law, and want the Pentagon enjoined from enforcing the policy.
Their lead counsel is Rosemarie Ring, with Monger, Tolles & Olson. | <urn:uuid:f924d5b3-9ca8-4eef-b915-cbed68c504af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/11/28/52605.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963917 | 745 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Advisors may soon face increased reporting regulations if a new bill regarding money laundering, currently working its way through Ottawa, is passed. Bill C-25 is the first step to reform the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.
The implications of the planned changes are far reaching. In an anti-money laundering panel hosted by IFIC earlier this week, Prema Thiele, a partner at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and a frequent speaker on securities law, pointed out: “If you are a licensed securities registrant, you are under many obligations under the money laundering regime.”
But while the current legislation is limited to persons or entities dealing in securities, Bill C-25 would broaden that to include “any other financial instruments,” as well as making a specific reference to “advising” services.
Mutual fund manufactures will also want to take note of the proposed provisions of the bill since they too will fall under the legislation since the Canadian Securities Administrators passed National Instrument 81-107, which, among other things, aims to register all mutual fund managers.
While some might question the logic of this given that fund managers don’t deal directly with the client, Derek Ramm, an officer with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada sees this as a useful provision.
“What I would say to the fund manufactures is that you are actually in a very unique position — that the independent advisors aren’t — to see suspicious activity,” he says. “You can take a global snapshot of what is going on where the independent advisor can’t.” As an example, Ramm points out that fund manufactures can tell if multiple clients are using the same mail-drop access.
Under the current draft of the legislation, Bill C-25 will also change when suspicious activity is reported. Currently, a suspicious transaction has to be reported only after it has been completed; the proposed bill adds if someone attempts to conduct a transaction that is suspected to be related to a money-laundering offence, then the transaction is reportable.
The industry has concerns about this provision. “We have to define what an attempted transaction is,” says Stephen Harvey, the chief anti-money laundering officer at CIBC. While Harvey plans to reserve judgment until he sees the final version of the bill, his initial thoughts are that this part of the bill is ill-advised.
“I think it’s going down the wrong path,” he says. “We are trying to define too closely what is suspicious.” Harvey thinks what is normal or abnormal should be left to the industry. “The more defined you try to make your regulatory regime, the further from the money you actually end up.”
Another proposed change is that firms that conduct business outside of Canada will not be exempt under this legislation. This will put an increased onus on firms to understand who their clients are and to determine if any of them can be considered politically exposed persons.
The IFIC panelists believe a risk-based approach would be the most effective way to approach this inter-jurisdictional issue. As Thiele says, firms have to assess which countries you have relations with that are most vulnerable to corruption. “There are businesses out there that appear to be more vulnerable to corruption in a global prospective.”
Oil is one of the examples Thiele singled out. If you’re dealing with any of those, she says you have to add them to the “politically exposed person” file. “You have to go to start looking for these sorts of things,” she says.
The emphasis Bill C-25 puts on politically exposed persons is meant to highlight the importance of getting the industry to understand who their customers are, in order to have a clear idea of what the ownership is and who are the beneficial owners, in case people intentionally conceal these.
“The biggest single problem I see on a day-to-day basis is that people don’t really understand the ownership structure of an account,” says Ramm. Detecting whether or not information about ownership is being concealed can be tough, but Ramm says it is possible to spot signs since these accounts tend to operate outside of the norm.
That’s one of the deficiencies Ramm has noticed. He says although the regulators keep ratcheting up the level of knowledge firms are supposed to have about their customers, firms haven’t been keeping up.
At another conference in Toronto this week hosted by the Investment Industry Association of Canada, Derek Pattison, director of regulator affairs at Scotiabank Wealth Management outlined some of the expected changes firms need to be aware of to keep in line with the anti-money laundering requirements.
One of the anticipated changes relates to the use of provincial identification cards and “client evidence” firms need to meet, as well as making sure client documentation satisfies all requirements.
For instance, while FINTRAC allows about seven forms of ID, including birth certificates, driver’s licenses, passports and old age security cards, only passports and driver’s licenses match requirements under the IRS qualified intermediary program in the U.S. This program does allow birth certificates, but only for individuals under the age of 21.
If you can’t get this, you need to go back to the U.S. client for more information, says Pattison, such as a personal cheque from the client’s Canadian bank account.
Pattison also warned of some potential risks with the U.S. qualified intermediary program. His main concern is with audits. Under the program, a small sample of accounts will be audited and the findings will be compared to other accounts at the firm.
As explained in the presentation, “This extrapolation has the potential to result in enormous penalties, as the audit only looks at a small number of accounts with U.S. income and assumes the result from the sample account is representative of the remainder at the firm.”
In Canada, The IIAC is pushing the provinces to allow firms to accept more forms of client ID including provincial ID cards, although there’s been no indication if or when that change might happen.
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Walden Theatre brings the Greek tragedy Oresteia to the stage beginning on Thursday.
Oresteia will take place on Oct. 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, and 20 at 7:30 p.m. each night. Matinees are to happen on Oct. 13 and 20 at 2 p.m. each day. All performances will go on at the Nancy Niles Sexton Stage, located inside Walden Theatre at 1123 Payne Street
in the Highlands.
Evening performances are $15 for adults, $10 for students, and $10 for seniors. Matinee shows, meanwhile are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, and $8 for students. All tickets can be purchased through Walden Theatre by calling 502-589-0084.
The Greek tragedy Oresteia begins with Agamemnon's arrival home after the Trojan War. His return sets off a wave of betrayal, murder, and even dysfunction between the gods. The play deals with issues of love, hate, and social justice.
Aeschylus created Oresteia, which Julane Havens adapted and directed for the Walden Theatre stage.
More information on the show can be found at the Walden Theatre
(Image from Walden Theatre) | <urn:uuid:d2caad6e-f399-47cd-9297-14e643598ec0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.louisville.com/content/walden-explores-new-justice-greek-tragedy-theater | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947095 | 268 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Urbanites and UT students have a new way to get around as RideScout™ announced its formal launch in Austin this week.
CEO Joseph Kopser and his team have built a real-time, mobile aggregator and comparison engine for ground transportation options. And with ties to the sharing economy and transit’s rising importance, they appear to be in a good spot.
Two big hooks provide the lure for the app. Its “best ride” ranking is an easy way to see pricing and estimated times. But the kicker is the breadth of options you get. Buses, transit, subways, taxis, limos, shuttles, car-sharing, and even pedicabs are included. The iPhone app has been out a month or so, and an Android version should be ready this Fall.
It’s been a quick ascent. Just last spring, RideScout was still embryonic before placing second at the HATCH Pitch Competition at last year’s SXSW. From there, Kopser and some of his West Point alums raised $350k and started building in late July.
Now it’s in a bit of a perfect storm. Cities are faced with infrastructure challenges everywhere, as traffic increases, roads are in need of repair, and urban populations continue to rise. The low-hanging fruit for many metros is to optimize what already exists. When buses or rail cars aren’t filled, those are idle resources that are funded with taxpayer dollars. That’s one of the pieces that’s caught the City of Austin’s attention.
“RideScout will push highly motivated citizens to alternative modes of transportation, helping to fill underutilized public transit capacity to keep more cars off the roads,“ said Todd Hemingson, Vice President of Strategic Planning and Development for Capital Metro.
Hemingson and other city planners have no doubt seen the light, or at least the data.
“Public transit ridership increased by 34 percent between 1995 and 2011, according to the American Public Transit Association, and the ASCE report states that access to transit across the country has grown by nearly 10 percent.
That’s the big upside. But here’s the other part.
“Although transit investment has also increased, “deficient and deteriorating” regional transit systems cost the national economy $90 billion in 2010.”
Until those crumbling pieces can be fixed, cities will need more innovation from the RideScouts of the world. A whole ecosystem needs to be nurtured around infrastructure. Part of it’s behavior, but as we’ve seen with other trends, unlocking data with the right technology can open up all sorts of possibilities. As Austin City Councilman Chris Riley puts it, “the default answer for transportation in Austin doesn’t have to be a personal car.”
Last week’s SXSW Interactive was a good test for the young company. Kopser struck deals with AirBnB and some of the car-sharing companies in town and was able to refine some ideas they’ve been building on.
However those pan out, it was clear the transportation needle moved significantly. For the first time, for better or for worse, transit-oriented discussions were everywhere. Regulatory tussles, rideshare launches, and more kept things moving.
As SXSW ended, there were other indications they might be onto something. In SX flair, urban design firm Gensler challenged people to come up with ideas to improve the city. It solicited feedback using a physical installation (photo above) with the hashtag #designatx. What were the top things mentioned? Mass transit, traffic, and congestion issues, things the firm described as “practical and things that could be implemented.”
“Austin has the perfect launch city mix: terrible traffic congestion and rapid population growth of technology savvy residents looking for alternatives to car ownership,” said Kopser.
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Group art shows are rarely measured by their subject matter, but rather by their adherence to a theme. But consider Wordplay at Studio Quercus (385 26th St., Oakland), which could have been about anything — the fact that it's about the interplay of text and image seems incidental. What makes Wordplay a great show is the airtight consistency between one artist's work and the next. As a result, the whole ends up being greater than the sum of its parts. Accolades to curator and gallery director Susan Sharman, who gathered four Bay Area artists (in addition to herself) to make this show: Amy Ahlstrom, Hopi Breton, Lisa Kokin, and Mary V. Marsh.
The uniquely human impulse to write — that is, to create visual language and imbue the graphics with such deep meaning that their power is said to be mightier than the sword — has long been a preoccupation of Modern art. The artists of Wordplay acknowledge this history (often with specific, Modernist references) using highly diverse media, creating personal vocabularies rendered in various ways, from the vaguely psychological to the purely iconographic and the wholly abstract.
Marsh's finely executed fake newspapers emulate the real thing with surprising beauty. They work in the same clever, self-reflexive way Magritte's classic painting "The Treachery of Images" does — transmitting information in a way that language can't. Ahlstrom deftly channels her inner Lichtenstein by invoking themes more commonly associated with Pop art painters, juxtaposing them with traditional quilting techniques. The assemblage works of Kokin are compelling: She tenaciously splices self-help books, then sews words together into compositions that seem to liberate — and exalt — them. Sharman's embroidery, meanwhile, is nostalgic by nature, and her use of implied stories and found textiles adds another layer of evocative, yet somewhat tragic, feeling. Breton's sculpture morphs into abstract marks and symbols, suggesting cuneiform or other unspecified forms of writing. Her use of dense materials gives weight to her creative languages and belies the curvilinear nature of their form.
Wordplay works so well because of the aesthetic synergy of the artists — not because of the philosophical theme of the exhibit. In this case, the narrative is simply a perk.
Wordplay runs through June 16. Artists' reception on Saturday, May 19, 7-10 p.m., in conjunction with Murmurama, an Oakland Art Murmur event. 510-452-4670 or StudioQuercus.com | <urn:uuid:db15d234-618a-420f-9f1b-2a02fba640af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/mighty-wordplay/Content?oid=3198295 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940213 | 539 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Will not jeopardise safety in pursuit of nuclear power: PM Manmohan Singh
"We will ensure that the safety and livelihoods of people are not jeopardised in our pursuit of nuclear power," Singh said at a function to confer lifetime achievement awards on four nuclear scientists.
Noting that the 2011 Fukushima incident had raised "justifiable" concerns on atomic energy, Singh said, "Even as we implement our power programme, we will continue to ensure that nuclear power remains wholly safe."
He said Parliament was examining a Bill to set up a new Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority.
The Prime Minister said India has enhanced its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the first Operational Safety Review Team recently visited the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station.
"As we pursue our national growth objectives to meet the rising aspirations of our people, the supply of affordable clean energy will be one of our foremost national challenges and a key priority for our government. Nuclear energy will remain an essential and increasingly important element of our energy mix," he said.
Singh said India was in the process of expanding its indigenous nuclear power programme.
On the much-delayed Kudankulam nuclear power project, he said: "We will reach a new milestone soon, as the first nuclear reactor with Russian collaboration at Kudankulam starts operating, with the second reactor to follow later in the current year."
The Prime Minister said the Department of Atomic Energy | <urn:uuid:69400d19-9493-4646-b96d-b53cc9119f73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.financialexpress.com/news/will-not-jeopardise-safety-in-pursuit-of-nuclear-power-pm-manmohan-singh/1059619 | 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 | 0.942978 | 292 | 1.75 | 2 |
Community Development Projects near Phinda Game Reserve
Community Development Projects near Phinda
Phinda Private Game Reserve is a bit more than checking out animals. I had a look at some of their Community Development Projects for the surrounding area which are supported by the andBeyond Foundation.
While South Africa hosted an awesome recent FIFA World Cup, it’s still a country of great divides – it’s both First and Third World at the same time.
Unfortunately, things like health and schools still need additional funding apart from the government.
However, once you’ve finished checking out the animals at the Phinda Private Game Reserve, you can opt to see where the funding for andBeyond Foundation’s Community Development Projects goes to.
Community Development Projects – In Pictures
For example, the Mduku Primary School and Health Clinic. Things that we take for granted, such as teachers and doctors!
The kids below are from the Mduku Primary School.
The andBeyond Foundation has provided financial support to the running of the Mduku school.
While we take state funded education for granted, seeing a place like Mduku Primary School makes me realise how lucky I am!
This is the Principal who’s pretty happy about his new library, which will soon be full of books.
Health is also a big issue, especially in rural areas. HIV/AIDS is a problem here in South Africa. In fact, it’s one of the worst areas in South Africa in terms of infection rates.
When I visited the Health Clinic, I noticed a dispensary of free condoms that anyone could use if they wanted. But HIV / AIDS is also a cultural issue, so this is always going to be a massive challenge. The construction of this clinic and staff training occurred with help from the andBeyond foundation as well.
Also, while most of us in the western world take Internet Access for granted, many people are luck to have any access to the web at all.
But the locals can go to a ‘Digital Village’ and learn how to use a computer, and the Internet. There are accredited computer classes provided and the internet is supplied free of charge.
I even spotted a couple of locals using internet while I was there.
More Community Development Project Stuff
While most people associate Africa with bad news, I was glad to see an African Good News story for once.
Unfortunately, Good News doesn’t make headlines.
If you’re around this area, check out what the Phinda Private Game Reserve Does for the locals with their Community Development Projects.
See more at andbeyond.com. | <urn:uuid:8f7f522f-c6f2-47a2-a1c6-a072b43a0909> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetraveltart.com/community-development-projects-near-phinda-game-reserve/?adclick=19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944692 | 542 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Raleigh, N.C. — Bobby Ravenscroft spent Father's Day slaving over a hot stove, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Ravenscroft was among the volunteers at Temple Baptist Church in Raleigh who serve up home-cooked meals to the needy at 2 p.m. on the first and third Sunday of each month.
"I always liked to cook. This is just an opportunity to help people in need," Ravenscroft said.
Car salesman Bo Bodenstine said he got to thinking after Temple Baptist's pastor preached about hunger. He decided to see if they could convert the kitchen of the church on Clifton Road into a soup kitchen.
The first week, nine people showed up. In recent weeks, the number has jumped to as high 150.
"Every week, it is getting bigger," Bodenstine said.
All of the food is donated, and the church has turned its library into a food pantry. Every diner gets a hot, hearty meal, a dessert and a sandwich for later.
Volunteers said they want to spread the word about the soup kitchen, so they can serve even more people.
"There are more and more people that definitely need this," Ravenscroft said.
"You don't have to be down on your luck," Bodenstine said. "Just come in, and enjoy a free meal if you are hungry and you need it." | <urn:uuid:cbce0f8a-b1ff-4383-b7ee-7567d8e5054f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wral.com/news/local/noteworthy/story/11217193/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985374 | 303 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Heres the latest news from the PSN Team:
WipEout 2048 on PlayStation Vita takes us 36 years into the future and offers a glimpse at the birth of anti-grav racing, a fictional sport that has become synonymous with PlayStation. Take a look at this new trailer and pay close attention at the start for an impression of what two WipEout ships squaring up on the streets of Britain might look like.
In keeping with the theme, here are a few words from Mick Hocking, Vice President for Liverpool, Evolution and London studios, on where he thinks gaming will be in 2048. Mick is largely responsible for the creation and development of such series as WipEout, MotorStorm and SingStar, and is well placed discuss where we have been and, crucially, where we are heading.
At gamescom you appeared as part of a panel looking at the shape of gaming in 2021. The latest WipEout game is set in 2048; what will gaming be like then?
Well the pace of change is already so fast. Just look at the advances from PSP to PS Vita. In just seven years we have added touch screens, cross play, next-gen graphics, dual analogue sticks. I mean seriously; that’s pretty incredible.
At gamescom I talked about the potential of mixing stereoscopic 3D with augmented reality. I can see a point where home headsets will become a real possibility. They’ll be lightweight, with high resolution screens and tracking sensors too. Possibly even these headsets’ screens will be transparent, so players can see the real world as well as augmented reality stereoscopic 3D at the same time. So you can have a fully immersive experience, a partially immersive one, or an augmented reality experience with this one device.
And what about portable gaming?
Well if we stick with the headset idea, I see no reason why once such technology became established in the home, it couldn’t be modified for portable use. I was playing Heavy Rain recently and thought that the AR technology that Norman Jayden uses to solve cases could be amazing if applied to gaming. Everyone who has played that game remembers the scene when he gets given that pokey office and uses the AR glasses to completely modify the way he sees the world around him. One minute he’s underwater, the next he’s on the surface of Mars, then he’s above the clouds in a stunning mountain vista. Imagine if, by wearing a set of similar glasses, or even some kind of contact lens you could completely transform wherever you are – on the bus, in the park, wherever – into a completely immersive and interactive game world.
What will 2048 bring in terms of software rather than hardware? What types of games will we be experiencing on the portable consoles of the future?
Well, I really hope that we’ll still be making WipEout games!
What I do think you’ll see are games that increasingly blur the lines between the gaming and real-world environments. PS Vita is already doing this in a few ways. The front and rear cameras are used to put game objects in a real world setting on-screen, Reality Fighters is a launch title that really shows off this capability. Also the NEAR functionality allows you to collect virtual items by passing by real-world locations where PS Vita users are, or have been. Fast-forward thirty years and think back to the ‘AR’ style technology we discussed and imagine the possibilities. Even when not actively playing a game you could look around you and spot gaming items, characters, perhaps even entire ‘levels’ to interact with.
I see it this way: Thirty years ago when the only real handhelds were the Game & Watch kind, the kind of power and gaming experience that PS Vita is offering would have seemed impossible. In the future, technology is going to allow game designers to create experiences that are limited only by our imaginations.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests) | <urn:uuid:25f36107-d6b9-4b4b-8ea9-150b5878b413> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/threads/418492-Welcome-To-The-Year-2048 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959335 | 833 | 1.539063 | 2 |
BRUSSELS, Dec 22 (Reuters) – The European Commission said it doubts that WestLB’s plans to set up Germany’s first “bad bank” complies with EU rules on state aid, granting only temporary clearance for the rescue plan.
“I am surprised about the level of the additional aid required and will make sure that the new aid is fully compatible with EU state aid rules,” Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Commission said it doubted the measures taken by the German government to rescue the stricken lender were compatible with state aid rules for impaired asset relief.
It would open an in-depth investigation into the plan, under which WestLB is receiving capital of 3 billion euros ($4.29 billion) from Germany, the European Union executive said.
For now, approval was given only to ensure financial stability, it added.
In a separate statement, the German finance ministry said it had no doubts the measures would be given the green light, adding that the EU’s investigation was part of the “usual legal assessment procedure for state aid”. | <urn:uuid:7a79d5df-7b47-4278-a486-467d2324e83a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/financial-regulatory-forum/tag/westlb/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959127 | 234 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Famous venture capitalist, speaker, and author Guy Kawasaki said in his book, The Art of the Start, “Of the effort you put into write a business plan, 80 percent should go into the executive summary. These are the most important paragraphs of your organization’s existence.” So how do you create an executive summary that will catch the eye of a venture capitalist? There are 7 keys to writing a business plan executive summary that will catch the eye of a venture capitalist.
1. Visually Appealing – This should be a no brainer, but many entrepreneurs write an executive summary like they would write a novel. If your executive summary is simply a number of paragraphs stuck together you might as well kiss your chances at venture capital good bye. Include graphs, tables, bulleted lists and even your company logo to add some color and break up the plain text. (A poorly designed executive summary is 1 of the Top 15 Executive Summary Mistakes of All Time)
2. A Strong Grab – If your first sentence does not grab the readers attention you have probably already lost your chance to make a great first impression. Don’t start out like every one else with a mission statement or some bold claim about the projected growth of your industry. Investors want to see traction in your business. Do you already have customers and are they satisfied? Have you signed any major contracts or partnerships that might be intriguing to the reader?
3. Explosive Growth Potential – Don’t ever forget that every venture capitalist has one goal in mind. Make a lot of money. Venture capitalists typically look for returns of 5 to 10 times their initial investment. If your best case scenario is to make a 100% return then you probably are not a good fit for a venture capitalist. Make sure to show them how your business can hit it big.
4. Simple Business Model – Not only do venture capitalists hope to make a lot of money they want it to be as easy as possible. You need to simplify your business model as much as possible. Typically venture capitalists are looking for innovation and creativity, but when it comes to your business model — simple is best. No one wants to risk millions of dollars on something they can’t understand.
5. Unique Competitive Advantage – You need to address your competition, but don’t stop at simply identifying your competition. You need to explain how your solution has a unique and sustainable advantage over your competition. If your competition can copy your business then why would any one want to invest in a business that has no unique, long term advantage?
6. Sound Financials – A set of financial projections that are built upon sound, data-driven assumptions will catch the eye of venture capitalists. It does not have to be too in depth because investors know that no one can project what is going to happen in 3 to 5 years. If someone could make accurate predictions then venture capitalists would be far more successful.
7. A Clear Request – Imagine the frustration a venture capitalist would have after reading your entire executive summary if you did not clearly request a next step. Request the exact amount of investment you are seeking or request that the reader meet with you in person or even that they review the rest of your business plan.
Make sure to follow these 7 tips if you want to write a powerful business plan executive summary to catch the eye of venture capitalists. Also Check out the 30 Most Common Business Plan Mistakes of All Time | <urn:uuid:fb5788e9-b972-49f4-b067-4ca4a90b23bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessplanexecutivesummary.com/2010/11/venture-capital-executive-summary.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946646 | 700 | 1.664063 | 2 |
It's hard to find a good present for our grandma (actually, she's my mom, but Anya's grandma).
"I have everything," she says always.
Ok, we will not buy a present, we will make it!
My mom has a beautiful garden in Russia. She grows everything there: potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, apples, strawberries, black and red currants, gooseberries... and it's not all. Her favorites are flowers. Her garden is full of flowers.
My mom's birthday is in February. No flowers yet :) Well, we will give her a garden of flowers made of...crayons!
To make a piece of art, we used canvas (12"x12"), crayons (we used 3 boxes to pick only greens), artificial flowers, glue gun and hair drier.
|Glue crayons to the edge of canvas with a glue gun.|
Turn canvas upside down so crayons are pointing down.
|This job is a little messy, do not forget to put (news)paper around.|
|Grandma's Garden is pretty!| | <urn:uuid:17c19572-b7b6-4d93-bba4-eb0fae9e666c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aroundbeads.blogspot.com/2012/01/grandmas-garden-crayon-art.html?showComment=1331567928660 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935936 | 239 | 1.710938 | 2 |
How come I have so many pilules in each packet?
There is two reasons for this – 1) in case you drop some, you have spares and 2) it takes longer for us to chase 1 pilule around our bowl than just to collect a few in the packet. You only need one pilule for a dose. Don’t touch other peoples/animals remedies – cup the paper and tip them into the water or on the other persons hand. Keep any spares in a dry, dark place for possible future use.
Why can’t I use Eucalyptus and Tea Tree oils when taking remedies?
Strong oils and chemicals will disrupt the effectiveness of the remedies.
What time of day should I take remedies?
Take the remedies at a suitable time for you. It doesn’t have to be the same time every day, just a time that is convenient for you, that you won’t forget. You can put reminders in your diary, calendar, computer reminder program so you don’t miss taking your remedies.
Can I add the remedy to my pet’s food/milk? Can I take my remedies near eating?
The process of digestion does interfere with the uptake of the remedy for healing. If you can leave ½ hour between taking remedies and eating, drinking coffee and cleaning teeth, you will get the best results.
What do I do with the excess water after mixing up the remedy?
With Animals we advise you on how to turn the remedy into liquid for easier administration. When you do this the water becomes the remedy for a short time – 2 to 3 hours. You only need a small amount – a few drops or a syringe full out of the water for the dose. The actual amount doesn’t matter because a dose is what is taken in the moment. After treating, throw the remaining water away.
What can I expect?
Everyone is different and the path that the body will take to push out/release health issues will be different for everyone. Most people will be tired at different stages in the healing. This is your body resting you to achieve faster healing. Try to go with that and rest more than normal. Some people will push out rashes or other skin conditions. Some people will have headaches and body aches for a short time. These are healing releases, not side effects and should pass quickly, so just keep taking your remedies to support your body to continue healing. Contact us if you have any concerns.
How does it work?
Energy remedies work by stimulating a healing response in the body by adjust the vibration of different parts of the body.
Should I keep taking my medication and supplements?
Our goal is always to get you off your medication. If you are on life saving medication then you should continue on it for a while and we will slowly wean you off. Anything that isn’t important can be stopped or weaned away. The same with supplements. As we run the remedies your body will readjust and absorb nutrients better, taking away the need for supplements.
What if I miss taking my remedy?
If you miss a day, ideally you will take the remedy missed and continue with the same day spacing from then on. The day spacings are tested to ensure maximum results from your remedies.
What do I do after I have finished my plan?
As you come close to completing your plan, drop us an email with an update on how you are going. We then review your photo again to see if a following plan is needed. You then decide if you want a follow up plan.
NB: Everyone is different – their inherited issues, life experiences to date and the amount of medication and bacteria exposure is different. We can generally determine how many plans would be ideal for you at the start of your first plan. This however doesn’t take into account life issues that come up during the running of that plans that will need releasing and healing.
After we have you at a level that you are comfortable with, you are welcome to contact us for regular healing plans throughout the year to keep you on track and clear current issues and/or if you feel unwell from maybe poison or bacterial exposure, or something else, we can speed your recovery at this point too. Having our basic healing kits on hand will help you deal with day to day issues with out medication to have you strong and healthy going forward. | <urn:uuid:a76ff821-a3c8-4a7d-b152-625a07efcf04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healwithease.com/faqs-about-healing-plans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949297 | 909 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Glass Heel, Contributor
Savvy, get-ahead advice and musings by the women of GlassHeel.com.
Women have come a long way in the money department. We’ve got more jobs than ever, we’re making more money than ever and we’re opening up businesses at a fast rate. However, despite all this success there are still several obstacles standing in our way of financial success.
Debt is an epidemic that sees no gender, however the plastic is really hurting us ladies. So much, in fact, that recent studies show that women who owe more than $50,000 in debt is on the rise. The study also shows that women were the majority of seeking help during the Recession as well as a rise in women seeking help after having been widowed or divorced.
Whether it’s student loans or the AmEx, women are finding themselves toe to toe with debt now more than ever. Does that mean all is lost? Of course not. But it does mean we need to start prioritizing our money and cutting our spending habits.
Not Saving for Retirement
If you think you’re too young to start saving for retirement, think again. Fifty-three percent of Americans currently don’t have enough saved up for retirement. And guess what else? Women are far more at risk for outliving their savings because they generally have longer lifespans than men.
Moral of the story? Start saving for then golden years now. You’ve got plenty of time to start small and take advantage of compound interest. There are also countless financial tools that are making it easier than ever to start saving for retirement, like lifecyle funds which automatically reallocate your money according to your age.
Not Starting a Side Hustle
I recently went to Chris Guillebeau’s Miami book signing for The $100 Startup. In his talk he addressed the concern that entrepreneurship is traditionally seen as risky in comparison to a “stable” job.
Thanks to the Recession we all came to realize that even the most “stable” of jobs aren’t really all that secure. People who had been doing well in the same company for 30 years got the boot, so what makes you think you won’t?
One solution is to start a side business. Women tend to be creative, whether we’re freelancing for clients or running our own Etsy shop. We also own about 67% of all at-home small businesses. Pretty nice chunk, eh? | <urn:uuid:e4d358f2-02c9-4024-acb8-0f325d93379a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/glassheel/2012/05/25/6-things-that-keep-20-something-women-from-financial-success/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968478 | 527 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Register.com is a leading provider of domain name registration and Internet services to small and medium-sized businesses. With nearly three million domain names under management, Register.com has built a brand based on quality services.The Problem:
Register.com was a pioneering internet company and launched a very successful IPO during the Nasdaq bubble. Later on, however, as demand for domain names slowed, Register.com’s revenues and market value fell dramatically and the company faced multiple challenges. Low-cost providers had exploded onto the domain registration market and taken significant share from incumbents like Register.com, leading to revenue erosion. To revive growth, Register.com decided to begin marketing value-added services directly to its customers instead of relying on third party providers. This business model shift along with complex revenue recognition rules exacerbated the volatility in Register.com’s revenues and profitability. Finally, the new Sarbanes-Oxley rules exposed several Material Control Weaknesses in Register.com’s systems, leading to several costly financial restatements. All of these events lead to a precipitous decline in Register.com’s market value, attracting several shareholder activists agitating for change.Vector Insight:
Through all this complexity, Vector saw great value in Register.com. Low-cost competitors were still continuing to gain share in the overall market, but revenue at Register.com was beginning to stabilize as management refocused its efforts around its core customers. Revenue from value-added services was beginning to grow rapidly, surpassing the revenue lost from third party partners, and had the potential to become an engine for sustainable growth. Register.com was generating a significant amount of cash, even while spending heavily on public company costs and updating its technology.The Solution:
Vector and the Register.com management team partnered to take Register.com private through an all cash buy-out. Vector made a cash offer for all outstanding shares of Register.com, providing the current shareholders with a significant premium and serving as a white knight. After the transaction, Vector, its co-investment partners and the employees of Register.com owned 100% of a private Register.com. As a private company, Register.com would be free to make long-term value maximizing decisions for the business as well as shed all of the costs and distractions of being a small public company forced to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.Operational Changes:
Relieved from the short-term demands of public shareholders, the management team at Register.com was able to realize dramatic improvements to the business. Vector led projects to introduce new revenue streams, divested a non-strategic unprofitable division, recruited a new CEO and management team, improved operating efficiency, enhanced customer service capabilities and broadened product offerings to better serve customer needs. Based on the proceeds of the divestiture, the financial strength of its turnaround and debt recapitalizations in 2006 and 2007, Register.com distributed returns well in excess of invested capital within the first 20 months of the investment.Register.com Today:
Register.com had regained its former status as a leader in the domain name registration industry and became one of the most profitable companies in its sector. Even through the recent economic downturn, the Company remained solidly profitable. Its strong product portfolio, sizeable customer base and streamlined operations made Register.com an attractive strategic acquisition target. In July 2010, Register.com was sold to Web.com for $135 million. This acquisition will provide both revenue and cost synergies for Web.com and creates one of the largest online marketing and web services companies serving small businesses. | <urn:uuid:c4479640-a3f8-470a-ae64-d208aeb2e081> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vectorcapital.com/portfolio/casestudy/4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959817 | 732 | 1.625 | 2 |
The gods have an interesting way of presenting themselves. They are in league with the masters but listen to the oppressed. Thus, simultaneously do they maintain the insanity and give hope to the hopeless. Is this how the gods and madmen dream of a solution?
The dream will never be realised until we see that dreams are not real. They are our visions of hope and fear. When gods and madmen rule the house of dreams the hopes and fears of the people are left to the realm of nightmares.
We must wrestle the the demons of ignorance and mayhem from the control of the gods and madmen and usher in the hopes and dreams that fear holds us back from. It is up to all of us to acquire this knowledge and grow through the dreams, into the world of reality.
Perhaps for humans to rise above these sleep and dream states, they must be awakened to the world of reality- about their hopes and fears. Perhaps we must all be freed from our bonds that tie the mind to its past, and work together towards a state of free will. This is when our dreams will become reality, and we can all claim the state of togetherness- when we are free of the thoughts that seperate us. Only then will there be a state of mind where all are free and equal to believe in the future of all humans- male and female, equal in the fight for justice.
No matter who we are and what we call ourselves, we are all the family of humans on this earth. This is the state we should be dreaming about. This is the reality we should all be sharing. Until we do, then trivialities will rule us and nightmares will be our reality.
When we know, no gods and madmen are our masters, then we can master our human free will. Until that day, the world will be as it always has been. Run by gods and madmen, and this will be the only state that exists.
The people create the Leviathan. They must learn how to cut him down. Without our support, gods and madmen are nothing, wars, states and religions are ideas.
Whoever is on top, gets their way. It's a fight to be on top of the mountain, so you can have your way. Each one will demand his way when he is on top, so there is no hope for this kind of state you speak of, for one must rule the other, and control its existence and reality.
Is it possible to see a state where all people are one? It is just a dream that must be interpreted as impossible until we wrestle the controls of the world from all gods and madmen- Banish it all from our state of consciousness. That is what we should be dreaming.
If there is one dream, it is to imagine us as one, not many divided, each free to believe in ourselves and our right to be free from all forms of oppression, including god and statehood. Where our only purpose and meaning is to work for peace and justice for all, and not war and hatred.
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world would live as one.
Completely sane world
madness the only freedom
An ability to see both sides of a question
one of the marks of a mature mind
People don't choose to be dishonest
the choice chooses them
Now I know how Kusinich feels. | <urn:uuid:95c7334d-39d6-47ee-abfa-8da8b5a61051> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tvnewslies.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4845&view=next | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958751 | 692 | 1.796875 | 2 |
What seemed like typical lunch-time ruckus to visitors at Berkeley High School last week was in fact an act of solidarity with immigrants across the nation.
More than 3,000 Berkeley High students trooped out of their classrooms May 22 at a prompt from their principal, Jim Slemp, and surrounded the 17-acre Milvia Street campus to protest the recent arrest of a Berkeley family by U.S. Immigration and Cus-toms Enforcement (ICE) agents.
In less than 10 minutes, members of Fighting for Immigrants’ Rights and Equality (FIRE)—a group formed by Berkeley High staff and students—helped students form a human chain, dotted with posters and placards decrying what they said were violations to immigration rights.
The May 6 arrest of a Latino family who lived near the Berkeley High campus sparked protest among local immigrant groups and advocates and prompted the Berkeley Unified School District to send out a telephone message advising parents not to panic, after rumors started circulating that ICE agents were rounding up students in Berkeley and Oak-land schools.
“If you had seen our children’s faces when ICE officers took the family in Berkeley you could see the kids really cared,” said Slemp. “People were fearful. It’s important that we treat people equally and make Berkeley High a safe place for everyone. This is a statement about who we are. Kids could have gone out to lunch if they wanted to, but they chose to stay back for this.”
Berkeley High sophomore Giovanni Guzman waved a red and blue “Fire Melts Ice” poster next to a 6-foot-long “Power to the People” banner.
“I am here trying to show where we stand,” said Guzman, who was born in Mexico. “Many of my family members are undocumented, and I was afraid for them when ICE was in the city.”
“Immigrants Are People,” chanted the crowd, as cars and buses stopped for a second to honk and absorb all the action.
Beatrice Leyva Cutler of United in Action cheered the students on.
“This really shows the unity we have in Berkeley,” Cutler, the mother of a Berkeley High sophomore, said. “It shows the support of the school for immigrants. The voice of students and teachers is extremely powerful for our community.”
Although ICE agents did not enter any school campuses in Berkeley, the Berkeley Board of Education is drafting a policy that limits access to the district’s schools from outside agencies, including Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS, now ICE) officials.
The district currently has no policy outlining whether or not it should cooperate with ICE agents.
“While we are not asking our employees and students to break the law, we will not volunteer or cooperate with immigration officials,” said board member Karen Hemphill. “We have a legal responsibility to educate all Berkeley residents, regardless of their citizenship status or national origin, and we cannot do it unless our schools provide a safe and secure environment. We want to make it clear to immigrant families that they and their children are safe on our campuses. We also want them to know that we will not share student information with the INS.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe that public schools were prohibited from denying immigrant students access to elementary and secondary public education.
“The reaction within the community [regarding the arrests] was fear and anxiety and part of [ICE’s] intent was intimidation,” said school board president John Selawsky. “Our kids have to be comfortable coming to school every day. We don’t want them to be afraid of outside agencies and worry about being questioned and detained and taken away in vans.”
Hemphill said the district’s new policy will be modeled on the City of Berkeley’s 1971 resolution, which declares Berkeley as a “City of Refuge” and directs the Berkeley Police Department not to participate or collaborate with ICE.
Hemphill said the panic around the May 6 incident had prompted board members to establish a new policy.
“Even though ICE agents did not set foot on any school campus, they can do so with permission from higher authorities,” Hemphill said. “That’s not a warm and fuzzy feeling for me.”
The district is researching several school district policies opposing ICE raids, including the one adopted by the San Francisco Unified School District in 2007, which was drafted after reports of ICE raids caused immigrant families to stop sending their children to school, afraid for them to leave their homes. | <urn:uuid:e4bbc10a-f794-4ca2-84c6-13344b94b368> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-05-29/article/30111?headline=Berkeley-High-Students-Take-Stand-Against-Local-Immigration-Raids--By-Riya-Bhattacharjee- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97385 | 977 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Top Performance at Recycling Plant
Hour after hour, day after day—a pair of Bobcat® skidsteer loaders working at the Midwest Elastomers, Inc., plant in Wapakoneta, Ohio, just keep going. And that’s just the way David Gudakunst likes it.
He’s the material logistics manager for the 26-year-old company that provides custom grinding services that turn rubber and plastic materials into fine mesh powders and granules. Among the final uses: Surfaces for playgrounds and sports venues.
“This is among the toughest of all work environments for a skid-steer loader,” he says, as his S300 machines continuously haul scrap rubber from the yard to the granulating machines. “Before we purchased our first Bobcat machines—two 963s—we tried other brands. They just couldn’t hold up to the workload.”
When Gudakunst was evaluating different brands of skid-steer loaders he discovered the advantages of the Bobcat machines. “The S300s are built for severe-duty applications. They are very durable and rugged with strong lift arms. They hold up well. We don’t have the problem of frequent hydraulic hose breaks like we did with another brand of loader. In our situation, these Bobcat units are the best.”
Gudakunst says part of the severe-duty environment is multiple operators. “We have six to eight regular operators and another six to eight standby operators,” he notes. “It can be tough on a machine to have this many people rotating in and out of the driver’s seat. Different skill levels and operating styles can be hard on a loader. That’s not a problem for our S300s.”
All operators at Midwest Elastomers participate in the Bobcat skid-steer loader training program.
“Veteran and inexperienced operators take the course annually,” says Gudakunst. “Our new people keep asking when they can take it. The Bobcat training courses are first-class.”
Regular preventive maintenance is handled by Bobcat of Lima. Due to the dusty work conditions, operators clean radiators each shift, and check fluids at the same time. “Our maintenance program goes a long way toward keeping the machines running,” says Gudakunst.
With the S300s working 16 hours a day, Gudakunst knows there is little margin for error. “We can’t afford breakdowns,” he says. “Our Bobcat loaders
handle the abuse real well. For our application, I don’t think there is any other skid-steer loader worth buying.”
Check out the powerful S300 at your local Bobcat dealer.
Read more about Bobcat training courses at www.bobcat.com/train. | <urn:uuid:5343bdff-0fdd-4bcc-b24a-458ba092513a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bobcat.com/publicadmin/viewArticle.html?id=12512 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935977 | 628 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Illustration by Andy Rementer
Manti Te’o Joins Notre Dame’s Long Tradition of Hooey
Whatever else Manti Te’o manages to accomplish in his interview with Katie Couric, the humiliated Notre Dame linebacker will at least be proving Karl Marx right: All historical events really do occur twice, first as tragedy, then as farce.
Last year, we watched a mythic college football program -- Joe Paterno’s Penn State -- unravel in a horrific child-sex- abuse scandal. Now we’re watching another unravel in a screwball comedy that could have been scripted by Mel Brooks.
As singularly ridiculous as the Te’o story may seem -- that his incredible season was inspired by the phony death of an imaginary woman -- the only real difference between it and the rest of the horse-pucky generated in South Bend, Indiana, is that his heartwarming story of triumph over tragedy was exposed more or less in real time, before it had a chance to set as myth.
As lore has it, an obscure Fighting Irish team revolutionized college football in 1913 by using the forward pass to beat Army. In reality, as Murray Sperber details in his book “Shake Down the Thunder,” Notre Dame was already a well- known football school at that point, and the forward pass didn’t catch on until many years later, not even in South Bend.
Sports myths don’t create themselves. They feed off the bloated copy of rapturous sportswriters, and Notre Dame’s were nourished by the very best of the very worst. Before Pete Thamel, the author of Sports Illustrated’s now-infamous Oct. 1 cover story on Te’o, there was the great, purple-prosed monster of the post-World War I press box, Grantland Rice, who famously compared the Irish’s 1924 backfield -- average weight: 158 pounds -- to the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” (While we’re deconstructing myths, it’s worth noting that Rice didn’t even dream up this image himself. According to Sperber, he got the idea from a student press assistant.)
The story of Notre Dame football was so good that Hollywood had to tell it. And so it did, in the 1940 biopic “Knute Rockne, All American,” which, on the eve of the nation’s entry into World War II, turned a good football coach into a Great American. Never mind Rockne’s enduring battle with Notre Dame to lower admission standards for football players, his advice column for college-football gamblers and his fixation on money. The movie is vague about Rockne’s final, fatal plane trip to California. In case you ever wondered, he was on his way to Los Angeles to sign a big deal for rights to his life story.
Let’s not overlook Rockne’s co-star, George Gipp, played by Ronald Reagan, who as a politician would later present a lot like the charming, insouciant halfback portrayed in the film. The real Gipper was a hard-drinking pool-hall hustler who bet on his own team’s games. His endlessly quoted deathbed speech to Rockne -- and Gipp may well have died from pneumonia brought on by a three-day drunk -- never happened. Rockne concocted “Win one for the Gipper” himself. He knew from experience that these fictitious last prayers, whether from a dying child or a former Fighting Irish star, almost always helped motivate his team.
Forget Notre Dame’s record of national championships and Heisman trophies. Far more remarkable is the sheer quantity of manufactured history that this football program has produced -- and we haven’t even gotten to “Rudy,” the saccharine 1993 movie about the diminutive walk-on whose dream was “to play football for the Irish.”
In the film’s most iconic scene, the team’s seniors march one by one into the coach’s office to lay their jerseys on his desk, a collective act of protest intended to force the coach to allow Rudy to suit up for his final game of eligibility. Yes, this, too, was a complete fabrication.
Here’s something that did happen: The real-life Rudy, Daniel Ruettiger, parlayed his fame from the movie into a successful career as a motivational speaker and corporate trainer, offering clients such pearls of wisdom as, “Follow your passion, instead of chasing the dollar.”
Alas, Rudy failed to heed his own advice. He borrowed heavily against his fancy Las Vegas home, and then tried to dig himself out of debt by incorporating a company to market his new sports drink, “Rudy.” Only, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the real purpose of the company, Rudy Nutrition, was to serve as the vehicle for a penny-stock scam that bilked investors out of $11 million.
“Investors were lured into the scheme by Mr. Ruettiger’s well-known, feel-good story but found themselves in a situation that did not have a happy ending,” the SEC said in 2011, charging Rudy with securities fraud. (Ruettiger ultimately settled with the SEC, agreeing to pay a substantial fine.)
Which brings us back to Manti Te’o’s well-known, feel-good -- and now thoroughly discredited -- story. In a way, it’s the myth of the Gipper updated for the social-media age. In place of a dying halfback, we now have a dead fake Internet girlfriend.
However this plays out, it’s safe to say that Te’o has already secured his place in Notre Dame’s grand tradition of hooey.
(Jonathan Mahler is a sports columnist for Bloomberg View and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of the best-selling “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning,” “The Challenge,” and “Death Comes to Happy Valley.” The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the editor responsible for this article: Stacey Shick at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:abecd9c2-167c-4090-a7ac-75d2830f477b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-23/manti-te-o-joins-notre-dame-s-long-tradition-of-hooey.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96861 | 1,343 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Under the auspices of the Royal Court, the United Nations World Food Programme has been discussing this week with the authorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ways to further
A strategic partnership between the two in the area of humanitarian assistance is a natural alliance which would benefit millions of the world's most vulnerable and needy people
WFP Deputy Executive Director John M. Powell
strengthen their humanitarian partnership to help feed the hungry poor around the world.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, under the guidance of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, is one of the major providers of humanitarian assistance globally. The World Food Programme is a leading United Nations Agency in humanitarian action.
"A strategic partnership between the two in the area of humanitarian assistance is a natural alliance which would benefit millions of the world's most vulnerable and needy people", said WFP Deputy Executive Director John M. Powell who is leading the delegation's official visit to the Kingdom.
The WFP delegation, which included the leaders of WFP's work in Ethiopia and in the occupied Palestinian territory, met first with His Excellency Dr Fahad Bin Abdulrahman Balghunaim, Minister of Agriculture.
Substantive discussions also took place with senior officials at the Ministries of Finance, Foreign Affairs and the Interior, as well as with the Saudi Fund for Development.
The delegation had the honor to be received by His Royal Highness Prince Faisal Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, President of the Saudi Red Crescent Society, where the scope for joint action in humanitarian crises was the focus of discussion.
Following the meeting, His Royal Highness expressed his appreciation to the Deputy Executive Director for a valuable and enlightening meeting.
"The Red Crescent Society, under the direction of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and His Highness the Crown Prince, will continue to provide assistance to our brothers, sisters and friends most in need around the world," he said.
"I wish WFP all the success in its noble task of alleviating human suffering. We are looking forward to the visit of WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran early next year and to continuing our discussions on how to better serve humanity."
Since 2006, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has contributed over US$40 million in support of WFP's humanitarian efforts worldwide.
In the occupied Palestinian territory WFP provides food assistance to nearly 700,000 of the most vulnerable people in the West Bank and Gaza strip, who have been dramatically affected by escalating violence, a stagnating economy and rising unemployment.
In Ethiopia, WFP currently assists more than five million people. Most of these people are women and children who struggle to meet their daily food needs in the face of chronic poverty and recurrent natural disasters such as droughts and floods. More than 80 percent of Ethiopia's 77 million people live in rural areas, relying predominantly on rain-fed farming.
During the four-day visit the WFP Deputy Executive Director also traveled to Jeddah for high-level discussions with the Islamic Development Bank, the Organization of Islamic Conference, and its Islamic Solidarity Fund. | <urn:uuid:f6b95a58-fd81-454f-b587-370119d3dae4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/enhanced-strategic-partnership-kingdom-saudi-arabia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950175 | 652 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Who’s Going To Catch Me If I Fall?
” Catch me dad, catch me,” shouted my son while he jumped from a rectangular stone falling into a shallow, bubbling water in one of the neighborhood’s water park. He was so happy, all smiling and laughing as he landed in the water with a big splash. As he was about to jump for the fifth time he looked at me with a huge smile and said, ” this is so much fun!”
There are falls that results into bruises, cuts and fractures. These are the ones that made you yell, “ouch,” and requires first aid or emergency attention. Some of which may have prompted you to call 911. One day, my son was screaming and crying. I ran hurriedly down the stairs. I tried to ask him as calmly as I could, ” what happened?” He replied with his voice trembling, ” I have a big cut on my foot.” I told him, “okay, let me take a look.” He had a little abrasion on the sole of his foot. I looked at his scared face and said, ” it’s alright, I’ll fix it and then it won’t hurt anymore.” So, I cleaned his abrasion, placed some antibacterial ointment with analgesic on it and covered it with a band-aid. I carried him back to the living room. He hugged me and said, ” thanks dad.” Before I knew it he was running around. I told myself, ” he’s back in the game!”
There are falls that made us think that whoever caught us is our own version of a Superhero. When I was around 12 years old, I had a severe attack of my asthma. It was so bad that I developed hypoxia and passed out. For some unexplainable reason, my dad who was about 2 feet shorter than I am, braced me from my fall, lifted me up and carried me to the car. It must had been his adrenaline. After the incident I told myself, ” man, my dad has super powers.” In my eyes , he had the strength, the heart and the bravery of any superhero. Best of all, he is my dad.
We all have fallen at one point in our lives. Sometimes we fell flat on our faces. Other times we landed on our backs, hands or feet. In all these falls, we were able to stand up, heal ourselves and move on. Sometimes we were lucky enough that someone was there to catch us as we fell in fear or simply held our hand as they helped us stand up and make sense of what just happened.
There are times when we are alone and one of our dreaded question is, ” who’s going to catch me when I fall?” Now, I’m no longer referring to just the physical fall. I’m more dwelling into the emotional and psychological fall. How many times our hearts got wounded? How much tears have we shed from a broken heart? How many times our feelings were hurt from all sorts of reason? How many times your soul felt like it’s just falling and falling, not knowing what’s below and when you’re going to touch ground? At one point, in any of these moments we looked around and said, ” who’s going to catch me if I fall?” I sure did and I’m no longer afraid to face such a question. I know that people I love will do it for me in a heart beat and I for them. Love creates a strong and lasting bond that assures you that you’ll never be alone ever again.
As I sadly say goodbye to the happy memories of Summer, I welcome the cozy, festive, thankful spirit of the Fall season. As I look around me, the leaves are starting its Autumn transition. A tinge of gold, red, orange, brown , purple and yellow colors are starting to dominate the once green landscape. Can’t wait to put some pumpkins on our front yard and celebrate trick or treating with my son. I wonder what costume he will wear this Halloween. A zombie? Another superhero? A zombie superhero? What ever he wants, it’s cool by me.
Who caught you when you fell? What were your thoughts when it happened? What do you look forward during this Fall season. Whatever those answers are, I hope it gives you good memories and a bright future to look forward to. A blessed and happy day to all.
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- Weekly Photo Challenge: FALL, #1 (fromundermanyhats.com) | <urn:uuid:dee7c40e-7442-482c-8873-7f9586fefb99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thismansjourney.net/2011/09/26/weekly-photo-challenge-fall/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954558 | 1,227 | 1.65625 | 2 |
radiator flow: connecting IN and OUT lines, yay or nay?
please consider the illustration attached.
i am expanding my radiator system for two new ADJACENT radiators that will be on their own new branch out of the network and both radiators have shutoff valves so the flow in and out of the radiator is a variable. is it necessary to connect the radiator IN line (the same as boiler OUT line) and OUT (same as boiler IN) outside the radiators to ensure that there always is flow no matter whether the radiators valves are on or off?
i was thinking this might be necessary to make sure other radiators on the system that are not turned off do get uninterrupted flow.
please let me know if this question doesn't make sense. | <urn:uuid:bdfc1ade-0a41-40a1-b603-6baf78301252> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diychatroom.com/f7/radiator-flow-connecting-out-lines-yay-nay-119295/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96036 | 160 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Welcome to the Sweet DIY tutorial area of our blog!
This tutorial is for our White Wooden Dessert Pedestal as seen on our Vintage Circus Dessert Table. We want to share with you just how easy it is to create your own dessert pedestals for cakes, candies, cookies, cupcakes, whatever you desire to put on them! This particular pedestal was inspired by a vintage circus themed party we planned for our son's 2nd birthday a few weeks ago.
While browsing for the serving pieces we wanted to use we were a bit discouraged by the price tag that came with most vintage serving pieces and new ones too for that matter. As a budget conciencious family we are always on the look out for the best deal or cost-effective option and for us that means DIY most of the time.
So, let's get down to business here.
For this project you will need several common tools and several items all purchaseable at AC Moore.
- 1 clean cloth
- 1 wooden candlestick
- 1 rectangular wood block
- 1 circular wood block
- 1 small wooden tray
- 1 pack of woodsies craft sticks
- 1 tube of liquid nails
- 1 small square of fine grit sandpaper
- 1 utility knife + a safe cutting surface
- 1 can of spray paint (we chose white)
- empty cardboard box or safe painting area in a well ventilated space
Step One: Prep Work
Take your wooden components and lightly sand them all over to get rid of any imperfections or splintering. You want a nice smooth even surface for your glue and paint to adhere to. After sanding, wipe of any fine dust with a damp cloth, then let your pieces air dry for a few minutes.
Step Two: Measure + Mark + Glue
Select the circular piece of wood to be your base. Find the center of your base piece of wood and mark it by drawing on line horizontally and one line vertically meeting in the middle. Grab the candlestick and find the center of the base of it and mark it the same way. Draw your mark lines slightly up the side of the base of the candlestick about 1/8" in. Take your candlestick and apply a dab of liquid nails to the base then using the marks you made, line it up to match the center of the circular base. Do the same center marking to the rectangular wood block and the top of the candlestick, then line them up and glue together as well. You should now have a candlestick with a wooden block attached at each end. Let the piece dry for about an hour to ensure that it is secure before moving on to step three.
Step Three: Measure + Mark + Glue... Again
Turn your small wooden tray upside down and then find the center in the same method we did in Step Two. Do the same to the rectangular wooden block on the side that will attach to the bottom of the tray. Line 'em up and glue 'em. Let it dry an hour. Just like before.
Alternative to Step Two/Three: Walk on the Wild Side
If you aren't a fan of measuring stuff, walk on the wild side and eyeball that mess. We recommend you OCD it to death, but if you have a good eye for these things go ahead. Find what looks to be the center of everything, glue them to each other. Done.
We wanted a nice scalloped edge on our new pedestal and decided to use craft sticks with their perfect little rounded edges to get there.
Step Four: Cut!
Take out one of your craft sticks and hold it up to the outer edge of the tray. Decide how long you want your scalloped edge to hang down and hold it in place to mark a cut line. Take the stick and place it onto your safe cutting surface, then use the utility knife to cut on the line you marked. Use your first stick as a guide to cut all the rest to the same length. You will need approximately two dozen cut pieces to cover each long side of the tray. Lightly sand the cut edges to smooth them out. Overacheivers: go ahead and cut more to glue onto the ends of the tray as well.
Step Five: Measure + Mark + Glue... Again? Mmmhmm.
Lay your sticks out side by side. Measure the length of about 12 sticks together, then mark that measurement on both sides of your tray, making sure to keep things centered. You want to avoid having a gap at one end with no edging. It will look funny. Use your guides to glue the cut sticks on to the tray sides, lining them up evenly at the top and bottom and keeping the edges flush with one another. Let dry one hour. Did we mention that before? Overacheivers: Do the same for the tray ends.
Spray painting can come off beautifully or badly. Its all in the...finger. And the wrist. Basically your technique is key. If you aren't already a pro at spray painting we recommend a great tutorial courtesy of Becky Higgins which you can find here.
Step Six: Paint Makes it Pretty.
Now that you have glued and measured and marked and glued and measured and marked and glued again and again and again, whew, it's time to paint! So don't sweat all those pesky little marks we made you draw cause they are all about to disappear. Take your pretty new pedestal to your designated spray painting area. Well ventilated and properly protected. We prefer to go outdoors and take our chances with the elements most of the time. Sure it can be annoying with a little wind, but man is that paint stinky! We recommend you spray two to three coats of your paint. The wood is going to soak it up a bit at first, so if you prefer you can apply a light base coat of primer beforehand. If you are an old hat at this stuff, you don't need us to tell you anymore. But if you are a newbie to spraying paint then we do recommend you read the tutorial on spray painting. Allow your paint to dry according to the manufactuer's recommendations. You are done!
Note: If you plan to serve food that is not wrapped on your dessert pedestal you will need to do one of two things beforehand. You can either make an insert to put onto the bottom of the tray area to serve as a barrier between the painted surface and the food or you can apply a foodsafe top coat to the inside area of the tray where the food will touch. We chose the first option. | <urn:uuid:1d6593f6-b4d9-403a-8cf4-fbda3c6be93b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hellomysweet.me/sweetblog/2011/5/20/white-wooden-dessert-pedestal-diy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940018 | 1,357 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The big news in Europe these days is unification. Hosting two world wars within one lifetime inspired European nations to understand the necessity of working together. With the advent of the European Union (EU), its 27 (and counting) member nations have succeeded in attaining their two key goals: avoiding intra-European war and integrating their economies. Now they're moving on to new challenges: forming a common foreign policy and an integrated legal system. Of course, it's dangerous to generalize about "Europe," and many Europeans are not in step with the EU. These "Euroskeptics" mock the EU's high-minded ideals in light of its obvious failings. But despite foot-dragging in certain quarters, Europe as a whole is moving forward.
Europe is the part of the world most similar to the USA. That's why I consider it the wading pool for world exploration. Americans and Europeans are both affluent, well-educated peoples who love their freedom. But, while we have much in common, we also have fundamental differences. I learn a lot about America by studying Europe. Europe does some things better than we do. Some things, they do worse. And most things are open to debate. Considering innovative European approaches to persistent challenges that vex our own nation can be constructive.
The next several blog entries are designed to showcase some of my favorite examples of the Europe-America divide. You'll probably find some of these ideas appealing, and others appalling. I'll state the obvious: Europe doesn't have all the answers. But I wonder if Europe is "out-innovating" us when it comes to finding clever new solutions.
When I encourage Americans to take a look at a European approach to a problem that is befuddling us, some critics accuse me of “America-bashing” — “If you love Europe so much, why don't you just move there?” Short answer: I love America more. And because I care about our society, I challenge us to do better. Particularly in difficult times, we should be open to considering all the solutions we can.
About This Entry
You are reading "Europhiles and Euroskeptics", an entry posted on 20 July 2009 by Rick Steves. | <urn:uuid:f4c66480-3869-4319-9848-4705a6baec3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ricksteves.com/tapa_blog/index.cfm?fuseaction=entry&entryID=37 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951877 | 459 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Originally posted here: http://ottodestruct.com/blog/2009/wordpress-settings-api-tutorial/
When writing the Simple Facebook Connect plugin, I investigated how the Settings API worked. It’s relatively new to WordPress (introduced in version 2.7), and many things I read said that it was much easier to use.
It is much easier to use in that it makes things nice and secure almost automatically for you. No confusion about nonces or anything along those lines. However, it’s slightly more difficult to use in that there’s very little good documentation for it. Especially for the most common case: Making your own settings page.
So, here is my little documentation attempt. | <urn:uuid:f18dc1b2-715d-4e3a-98d0-0b3b8227e3fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ottopress.com/tag/tutorial/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936271 | 152 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Dombey and Son, Chapter 31, facing p. 344 in the "London Edition." Mounted vertically. Dimensions: 10 cm in height, 15.8 cm.by Phiz (Hablot K. Browne) — an illustration for Dickens's
The carriages arrived at the Bride's residence, the players on the bells began to jingle, the band struck up, and Mr. Punch saluted his wife. The people ran, and pushed, and pressed around, while Mr. Dombey, leading Mrs. Dombey by the hand, advanced solemnly into the Feenix Halls. — Dombey and Son, chap. xxxi.
This plate, depicting the arrival of the bride at her residence immediately after the wedding, both recalls the swirling, vigorous action of Phiz's crowd scenes for Barnaby Rudge and anticipates such later crowd scenes as those found in A Tale of Two Cities. Note, for example, how Phiz has positioned Dombey's proud profile in the off-centre in the composition, and through his erect posture and the black hair and height has distinguished him from the other male members of the middle-class present.l Then, too, we note Phiz's familiar fondness for horses (compare to "The Stoppage at the Fountain" and "The Spy's Funeral" in A Tale of Two Cities), and unruly, boisterous crowds accompanied by percussive musicians (the drummer, right, and the tambourine player, upper left of centre). Ironically, the vast expense and pomp of the bourgeois ceremony (as exemplified by the silk hats of the celebrants and the ornate uniforms of the carriage drivers and postillons in the background) seems to be staged for the benefit of the "pauper" audience, extreme left and right. That this marriage may not be successful is implied by another theatrical event, the Punch and Judy show, upper right. In contrast to the sterile solemnity and posing of the middle class wedding-party Phiz sets the vital energy of the gaping, lower-class onlookers.
Image scan, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Dickens, Charles. Works. "London Edition" London: Caxton Publishing Company, 84-86 Chancery Lane, W. C., n. d. (no volume number)
Last modified 6 October 2005 | <urn:uuid:a009c506-91dd-4cf4-a05b-fb9b2a6a8297> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/phiz/184.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930663 | 545 | 1.585938 | 2 |
A $2.4 billion drop in resource revenue has put Alberta on pace for a deficit of between $3.5- and $4 billion — one of the highest deficits in history, Finance Minister Doug Horner revealed Tuesday in the province’s third quarter fiscal update.
The sea of red ink will be four times deeper than was forecast in the budget last February. The province initially predicted an $886 million deficit, but by the second quarter had increased its deficit forecast to $2.3 to $3 billion.
Now it’s forecast to be $1 billion more, which will rival the $4 billion deficit the Don Getty government posted in 1986-87.
Horner blamed the ballooning deficit on the discounted price Alberta companies are getting for the heavy oil or bitumen from the oilsands, which has had a dramatic impact on royalties and taxes.
“We’re seeing declining resource revenues in Alberta and that’s, for the most part, a result of Alberta’s market access problem,” Horner told reporters at Calgary’s McDougall Centre, “I know you have heard me talk a lot about the bitumen bubble. ... It is a bubble that is not going to pop any time soon and it is costing us a lot of money.”
But he noted it is not just the differential between the price of Alberta heavy oil and West Texas Intermediate that is hurting the treasury, but also the higher exchange rate and lower land lease sales.
“It doesn’t paint a pretty picture for the third quarter, and to be honest, it’s not getting all that prettier,” Horner said.
The new deficit projection doesn’t include $1.1 billion the province is borrowing for the twinning of Highway 63 to Fort McMurray or the $4.1 billion already borrowed for various financial corporations and for lending to municipalities.
The sustainability fund which has covered four previous deficits has been reduced to $3.4 billion from a one-time high of $17 billion.
The flood of red ink prompted the government to simultaneously announce a three-year management salary freeze that it says will save taxpayers $54 million. Horner also announced plans to cut public sector managers by 10 per cent over the same three-year period.
While he said he didn’t want to interfere in the ongoing collective bargaining, unions should take the management wage freeze as a sign of the times.
“We’ve been fairly consistent in saying that there is no new money,” he said. “They should take that as a strong signal of what we have in mind.”
The province froze MLA wages earlier this month, rejecting a one per cent cost of living increase to their $156,311 salaries.
Horner said his Conservative government has also found $600 million of in-year savings across all ministries.
Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, said he doesn’t think the government should be blaming a $3.5 plus billion deficit on the discounted price of bitumen, which accounts for less than $1 billion of the shortfall.
“It seems rather strange that the minister of finance would tell Albertans that this is a long-term situation because it’s probably not going to be,” he said. “It seems to be very much a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that won’t last.”
Smith said Horner is obviously interfering in the collective bargaining process before it even begins and that rather than slash management jobs, he should be redeploying managers to the front lines to meet the province’s rapidly growing population and its demand for more public services.
Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan said the finance minister appears to be more intent on finding scapegoats than solutions.
“It’s clear they are desperate to blame anyone but themselves,” he said. “It’s time for the government to stop playing the blame game.”
McGowan said the question Albertans should be asking is not where to cut, but why does the province have a deficit in a booming economy.
“The real cause of the problem has to do with years and years of cuts to taxes for high income earners and corporations, and years and years of royalty giveaways,” he said. “It has nothing to do with how much we pay our public sector workers.”
Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith said the fiscal update shows Premier Alison Redford’s provincial budget is unravelling.
“We’re seeing the budget was an absolute farce,” she said.
She dismissed as “window-dressing” the government’s plans to cut management by 10 per cent and to freeze their salaries.
Liberal critic Kent Hehr said it was folly to blame slumping oil and gas revenues for the financial problems, saying the government needs to budget more conservatively and change the tax structure.
“Everyone knows our revenue structure is broken,” he said.
NDP critic David Eggen said Albertans are angry over the Tory government’s bungling of the province’s finances.
“They know our economy is growing,” he said. “What’s wrong with this government? Why did they miss the boat that’s been sailing along in Alberta?” | <urn:uuid:eabc1f78-9296-48fc-851f-4393b7caf5cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theprovince.com/news/alberta/Alberta+pace+billion+deficit+finance+minister+Doug+Horner/7986454/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961821 | 1,138 | 1.648438 | 2 |
They say when an old man dies, it's like if a library is burning down. But Nika Bohinc (Ekran) and Alexis Tioseco (Criticine) were not old yet. Unbelievable tragedy!
« Pour faire un film, il vous faut obligatoirement une fille et un pistolet » in Histoire(s) du cinéma. Why did Godard ever utter this nonsense ?A book can always be copied, reprinted, handwritten, recited, learnt by heart. Censorship has always had a hard time to suppress literature. But when the light doesn't shine through the celluloid, a film dies completely, definitively. When eyelids shut down forever at the touch of a bullet, cinema ceases to exist abruptly; not only an instant death, but any evidence it ever had been disappears at the same time. Unfortunately images are transient figments of our memory. We can't photocopy, rewrite, memorize a film when the last reel is lost, because unlike books, the sum of images and sounds exceeds whatever a narrator could transmit orally.
The preservation of film archives in celluloid was a big concern of Alexis' ultimate post on his blog Concentrated Nonsense and many of his previous articles.
I always thought the real "book-keepers", or "hommes-livres" in French, from the ending of Truffaut's adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 ending were instead the cinephiles. Most certainly, Truffaut had this analogy in the back of his head. When a film title is pulled from public theatres, when a nitrate reel burns out, when a filmmaker can't find a distributor, when censorship bans a scene or an entire film... there are only cinephiles left to testify that these images ever existed. When a film critic dies, not only the unimaginable amount of unwritten material waiting in her/his head is lost, but all the films seen, revisited, hunted down, captured, felt, cherished, understood, appropriated vanish instantly. Irrecoverably. As certain as when light halts, darkness takes over.
It takes a long time to form a cinephile. Hours and hours of steady viewing. Years and years of initiation. Thousands of films ingested and digested. This investment was dear to Alexis heart, and the raison d'être of his love for his girlfriend Nika, as you can read it in this beautiful open letter.
Domestic film culture in her land, Slovenian cinema, and his land, Filipino cinema, in particular, but also World Film Culture in general will suffer greatly from their absence. Two pairs of eyes that had seen so many wonders, that had so many things to tell us about it. I'll remember Roy Betty's final words, the Blade Runner replicant (another perfect cinephile metaphor), as of someone whose eyes had encyclopaedic memories, someone who was not allowed to live to tell. An irreparable loss for their families and friends, for a cinephile community severely lacking such exemplary models of transnational love and dedication.
Survivors are left with the responsibility to pass on to the next generations everything Nika and Alexis, ces "hommes et femmes-films", these "film-keepers", had the liberty to share and recount from the scrupulous spectatorship of their intimate filmic memory, their fragile and fugitive mental film archive.
Lights out and silence. | <urn:uuid:06234ceb-da9a-44c7-86d7-fad49c01e9c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://screenville.blogspot.com/2009/09/light-speed-zero.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94531 | 721 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Want to see John Mayer make fun of Justin Bieber? Want to see Ed Helms run around Africa in a silly safari outfit? Now do you want to see them do it for charity?
Celebrities and non-profits have been pairing up for a long time to help give good causes some exposure and a much needed PR boost. Below weâve combed through some of the best videos to bring you nine amazing celebrity-powered social good campaigns. Weâve picked a wide range of stars (from first lady Michelle Obama to Ke$ha) and a wide range of causes (from malaria prevention to anti-bullying).
There is, however, no way of including every amazing campaign out there. We had to leave some standouts behind, like Matt Damonâs work with Water.org, Leonardo DiCaprioâs commitment to environmental issues and dozens more. You can check out LookToTheStars.org for a quick cheat sheet on what your favorite celebrity is really up to, or just take a look below for some spectacular examples.
We know we missed a bunch, so share your favorite celeb-backed campaigns in the comments below. Join the conversation.
1. Comedy Fights Malaria â A Bazillion Stars
In order to put an end to malaria in developing countries, Malaria No More tapped a ton of stars including John Mayer, the cast of The Office, Orlando Bloom and Aziz Ansari. As the campaign suggests, humor played a big role. Other videos asked to lower infant mortality rates and get kids to “Bieber” age, or followed Ed Helms as he “hunted” malaria-causing mosquitos in full Safari garb.
2. The Lazarus Effect â Bono and Friends
Bono teamed up with a bunch of his celebrity friends to illustrate what $0.40 can buy. The video supported the Lazarus Effect (a (RED) campaign) that aimed to help HIV-stricken people with just two life-saving pills. Bono has long been working on causes in Africa through One.org and lent his star power to (RED)’s efforts.
3. Let’s Move â Michelle Obama and Beyonce
First lady Michelle Obama has made nutritional eating and childhood obesity her main causes. She started Let’s Move as a way to inspire kids to eat better and exercise. Beyonce joined the effort by retooling some song lyrics to customize a workout song, complete with choreography. Beyonce delighted students at PS 161 in Harlem, New York, with a surprise visit and impromptu dance workout.
4. It Gets Better â Dan Savage, Pop Stars & Everyday Folks
Following a rash of gay teen suicides, Dan Savage started the “It Gets Better” campaign to tell LGBT youths that though they might be bullied now, their lives will improve. He opened up a YouTube channel where anyone could submit a video of support, including just about every celebrity in existence.
5. LIVESTRONG â Lance Armstrong
Although Lance Armstrong has come under fire as of late, his work with LIVESTRONG and the Lance Armstrong Foundation has been a tremendous success story. Diagnosed with testicular cancer, Armstrong battled back physically, not only rejoining competitive cycling but using that platform to spread awareness and raise funds for cancer research. Nike, one of Armstrong’s early sponsors, even lent its support.
6. DonorsChoose.org â Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert may be best known for his comedic right-wing punditry, but he does a lot of amazing work supporting DonorsChoose.org, an online platform where people can help fund local classrooms around the country. Colbert has not only lent his name, but also given the non-profit air time on his show, asking his followers and fans to help contribute. This video is from a 2009 panel Colbert moderated for the organization. Turns out his Spanish is pretty good and that he was stuffed into a fair number of lockers when he was a kid.
7. Crowdrise â Edward Norton
Edward Norton co-founded Crowdrise when he originally ran in the New York City Marathon and raised money for a conservancy in Africa. He helped create a platform where anyone can raise money for a cause. This year, he re-partnered with the marathon to turn the historic event into an historic fundraising opportunity. Rather than fade into the background, Norton has been an active advocate and knowledgeable spokesman for the organization and online philanthropy in general.
8. Pencils of Promise â Justin Bieber
Boy-wonder Justin Bieber has made philanthropy a part of his celebrity persona. In this clip he’s supporting Schools 4 All, a program run by education non-profit Pencils of Promise that aims to build a series of schools for needy communities around the world. Bieber promises to visit the school that raises the most money. Considering the kid’s capable of shutting down whole shopping malls with his presence, that’s a big deal. Bieber has also shown his soft side in music videos like his participation in the “We Are The World” remake for Haiti and his own video, “Pray“.
9. DoSomething.org â Usher & Friends
DoSomething.org has a long history of asking celebrities to help motivate young people to make a difference. In the above video, Usher asked youths unable to vote in the 2008 Presidential election to make their voices heard. Other stars like Rachel Bilson, Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers have used the platform to help promote their own causes. By calling on so many different celebs, DoSomething is able to compile an impressive roster of talent while giving some serious spotlight to varied causes and projects.
Series Supported by CITGO and the Fueling Good Campaign
The Stars of Social Good Series is supported by CITGO and the Fueling Good Campaign. It all starts with one person helping another. Then that person helps two more. Pretty soon you have a neighborhood, a community, an entire city â one act of kindness inspiring another. Thatâs why CITGO donates thousands of gallons of gas to worthy charities. Itâs our way of keeping the momentum going, one mile at a time.
More Social Good Resources From Mashable:
- Do Celebrities Really Help Online Causes?
- Is Purchasing Power the Best Way To Help Good Causes? [OPEN THREAD]
- 12 Top YouTube Videos for Social Good
- 7 Easy Ways to Do Good Online Beyond Donations
- How Non-Profit Organizations Are Bolstering Citizen Media Around the World
For more Social Good coverage:
- Follow Mashable Social Good on Twitter
- Become a Fan on Facebook
- Subscribe to the Social Good channel
- Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad | <urn:uuid:cbf501dd-9d3e-4d80-9e92-9f517ad59946> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.abdullahturhan.com/category/social-media/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938312 | 1,420 | 1.539063 | 2 |
It's finals time for me, so I'm a little preoccupied with all things early christian. However, some of the stuff I'm reading has distinct connections to my feminist leanings.
As I read more and more of the church fathers, I find myself at odds with their use of male-gendered language for the relationship between the different manifestations of the Godhead. Most specifically, the Father-Son language that's used almost exclusively and widespread throughout patristic literature. I avoid using it in my notes, but as I'm studying for exams I'm beginning to realize that I may have lost some of the intrinsic relationship implications by avoiding those terms.
The terms "father" and "son" are fundamentally part of what these authors are describing - the relationship between begotten and the person who begot is at the heart of the debates taking place. The church fathers then verbalized this in whatever manner they knew best, which not surprisingly, was that of a parent-child relationship, and specifically the father-son relationship (fueled by a multitude of references to God the Father in the Bible).
I'm still very much a proponent of using gender-inclusive/gender-free terms for describing the Trinity in our daily use now (also empire/dominion-free terms), which means "father," "lord," "son," and other familiar terms are out in favor of "creator," "redeemer," and "sustainer." The bigger question now, however, is how to rethink the church fathers and put their male-dominated ideas into gender-free language while still maintaining the important relational aspects they were trying to convey in the first place.
Something I don't have the time (or background knowledge) for currently, but a book I'd be interested in reading some day. | <urn:uuid:ed1aaa76-3b57-4896-bda4-9b04e01c229d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://impersonated.blogspot.com/2008/12/church-fathers-and-inclusive-language.html?showComment=1239997500000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976566 | 368 | 1.546875 | 2 |
... 1981, minutes after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan to succeed Jimmy Carter as U.S. President, Iran released 52 hostages held since the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran 444 days earlier. The New York Times reported that Carter "look[ed] haggard and worn after spending two largely sleepless nights trying to resolve the hostage crisis as the final chapter of his Presidency." The ex-President planned "to fly to West Germany early tomorrow to greet the hostages personally at the invitation of" Reagan, "the man who defeated him for re-election."
... 1956, Maria Larsson (right) was born in Långasjö, Småland, Sweden. A onetime schoolteacher, Larsson eventually became active in Christian Democratic party politics in her country. She's served as Sweden's Minister for Elderly Care and Public Health, in the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, since 2006.
... 1951, U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) was born in New York. | <urn:uuid:a82f3e29-72e4-4856-82b3-77bbbcca2fdd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intlawgrrls.com/2008/01/on-january-20.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971147 | 214 | 1.507813 | 2 |
1993 Hall of Fame Inductee and famed host of American Bandstand, Dick Clark, passed away on Wednesday, April 18, 2012. He was 82.
Affectionately known as “America’s oldest teenager,” Clark was significant in transforming the record business into an international industry. As host of American Bandstand, Clark provided many acts with the opportunity to reach a national audience via television, spreading the gospel of rock and roll to teenagers across the country.
Born Richard W. Clark in 1929, he entered the music business as a sales manager for an upstate New York radio station at age 17. In 1952, he began doing a radio show ("Caravan of Music") at WFIL in Philadelphia. The station’s TV affiliate had a teen-oriented show called Bandstand that was taken over in 1956 by Clark. He was such an affable, magnetic host that Bandstand was picked up for national distribution by ABC in 1957. With Clark as businessman, personality, music lover and host, American Bandstand catapulted to popularity and, in 1996, celebrated its 40th anniversary.
Although his demeanor was low-key and agreeable, Clark did not shrink when it came time to defend rock and roll. He stood up for the music when it was under attack from censorious voices who branded it immoral. Such figures as Buddy Holly and James Brown made their national debut on American Bandstand. The show’s success helped spread the word throughout the entertainment industry that rock and roll was no fluke.
Although Clark subsequently moved on to other areas of TV that had little to do with music, his weekly televised record hops – which predated MTV by 25 years – played an integral role in establishing rock and roll, keeping it alive and shaping its future. For more than 30 years, he was a fixture on December 31, as television viewers across the country tuned in to Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve on ABC.
With the passing of Dick Clark, we lost a real hero who had untold influence on both world culture and the art form we call rock and roll. Clark was a trendsetter who helped guide our tastes in music, dance and fashion for more than three decades. His show American Bandstand was instrumental in showing the world that rock and roll was here to stay. | <urn:uuid:debe54fd-ff00-4336-ada1-45b3047f5cf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rockhall.com/blog/post/7623_remembering-dick-clark/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977975 | 472 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Lou Roffman: Our Own American Hero
We all knew Lou Roffman at the Georgetowner. He had special standing here because he was our former publisher Dave Roffman’s uncle, hence the nickname Uncle Lou. He was Uncle Lou, also, to still more who had occasion to hear stories about him from Dave or to meet him on his occasional visits from out West. He was Uncle Lou at the Midway and World War II Memorials, and he was Uncle Lou at the Nats game a couple of years ago.
Even if he had another name, but the same life and history, there’s more than enough to celebrate the life and mourn the passing of Lou Roffman Aug. 10 at age 94. A World War II veteran in the Army Air Corps, he made history, being one of the rare American soldiers to serve at both Pearl Harbor and Midway, the first a military tragedy for the United States, the second a battle that turned the tide against the Japanese in the Pacific.
That wasn’t the whole story. Roffman was a flight engineer with B-17 bombers of the 31st Bomb Squadron at Hickam Field on Dec. 7 when the Japanese attacked. Later, he fought at the Battle of Midway. Later still, he was wounded in a bombing mission. He received a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions in mission in which he landed a plane after the pilot had been killed.
Reading Uncle Lou’s obituary, you can sense the full life well and long-lived, something of a true and wonderful life which might have made an inspiring movie. He served in the military until 1968, retiring from the Air Force with the rank of senior master sergeant.
During retirement, he and his wife Irene began a whole new life in Riverside, Calif., where he owned a pool hall and three bars, was a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Elks Club and Hollywood’s Magic Castle and perhaps more fittingly the Optimist Club, of which he should have been president.
In California, he practiced magic, a passion of his. He would perform for children in children’s hospitals, regale then with stories and magic tricks and remind them of the stories of the greatest generation of which he was an honored member.
Around here, we remember Uncle Lou, slowed a little by age in his latter years, a smiler and laugher and story teller. We remember him at the Midway commemoration, where former sailor Tony Curtis, the movie star at 80, wearing cowboy boots and hat, kissed a female autograph seeker. Lou came up behind him and Curtis asked him “Do you want a kiss, too?” Lou said, emphatically, “Hell, no! Just the autograph.” But we do remember Uncle Lou accepting kisses from the girls at the restaurant after the dedication of the World War II Memorial. We remember when his nephews Dave, Randy and Phil gathered here to fete Uncle Lou at the new Nationals Park, where his name sparkled on the scoreboard.
We remember Uncle Lou, an old soldier and airman whose memory will not fade away. | <urn:uuid:68cb952b-54a9-462a-9538-e7e3a5df7811> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.georgetowner.com/articles/2012/aug/22/lou-roffman-our-own-american-hero/ | 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 | 0.978981 | 663 | 1.507813 | 2 |
By Lucy Jordan, Senior Contributing Reporter
BRASÍLIA, BRAZIL – Seven years after the scandal surfaced, Brazil’s Supreme Court on Thursday, August 2nd began to hear the huge cash-for-votes corruption case that threatens to tarnish former President Lula’s legacy and the reputation of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT).
In what could be a watershed moment for a new, scandal-intolerant Brazil, prosecutors charge that public money was laundered through companies linked to advertising executive Marcos Valerio and paid to some coalition members to settle debts and ensure their support for the PT. Globo calculated the amount of money allegedly siphoned off may be as much as R$100 million.
The scandal, which Attorney General Roberto Gurgel has called “the most daring and outrageous corruption scheme and embezzlement of public funds ever seen in Brazil” has been dubbed the “mensalão,” or big monthly payment, in reference to the bribes legislators allegedly received.
“This is the most important trial in Brazil’s recent history,” said Greg Michener, a political scientist at Fundação Getúlio Varas, specializing in transparency. “[It] will decide whether impunity and all its associated ills – disregard for the law, and citizen cynicism, among the most grievous – will persist.”
The most prominent of the 38 high-profile defendants, who are accused of corruption, racketeering and money laundering, is José Dirceu, former chief of staff to Lula, who allegedly oversaw the scheme. A powerful figure in the PT, he was initially groomed as Lula’s successor but resigned in 2005 after the scandal broke, allowing President Dilma Rousseff to rise in his place and run for president in 2010.
On Monday, Dirceu gave his defense along with four others accused of the most serious involvement in the scheme: former PT president José Genoino, former PT treasurer Delúbio Soares, and businessmen Valério and Ramon Hollerbach. The lawyers for all five denied the charges and, according to Correio Brasiliense, tried to discredit the whistleblower, Roberto Jefferson, calling the accusations “invented” and “fanciful.”
Lula has denied any knowledge of the mensalão, and has not so far been implicated. But there are fears that the case could damage the former union leader’s continued popularity, whose eight years in office saw an average annual GDP growth of over four percent, and some 35 million Brazilians brought out of poverty.
In May, it was reported that Lula was so worried about the case that he lobbied the court to delay until after October’s municipal elections. Lula has admitted meeting with court officials, but denied putting pressure on them.
“[The mensalão] could diminish Lula’s legacy,” said David Fleischer, a professor of political science at the University of Brasilia. “It’s going to spill mud over the PT and there may be some testimony that involves Lula directly. We will have to wait and see.”
While her party may be affected, the mensalão is unlikely to tarnish President Rousseff directly, experts say. Rousseff is not accused of involvement in the scandal, and has taken pains to maintain her distance, with reports that she has banned her staff from mentioning the scheme publicly at all.
Since taking office in 2010 Dilma has taken a tough line on corruption. Seven ministers accused of corruption have resigned under her watch, and she has overseen the implementation of a freedom of information law that has seen the salaries of public officials released online. “[President Rousseff] has anti-corruption credentials, so her popularity is not going to be directly affected by the mensalão scandal,” said James Bosworth, a consultant working on Latin American issues.
In fact, said Mr. Michener, harsh sentences in this unprecedented trial, in the wake of Rousseff’s moves toward a more transparent government, could actually be a boon for the current PT administration. “People will associate the government with putting a decisive stamp on the legacy of impunity, even if it is not the government’s doing.”
The Rio Times is an English language news company covering Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. We launched in March of 2009, dedicated to the expatriate and traveler community here, as well as those interested abroad. Our mission is to provide our community with local information, and improve their understanding of the Marvelous City, and Brazil.Read more | <urn:uuid:99c0eb40-83a1-426d-8bda-fc069d62cb83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/front-page/mensalao-corruption-trial-begins-in-brazil/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965015 | 984 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Ron Paul addressing UT Campus
Paul's visit to UT campus was his second during a three-day campaign in Texas. The presidential candidate presented his ideas and plans for office regarding the war on drugs, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, controversial bills like SOPA and the national debt.
|Ron Paul addressing UT Campus ||Cody Permenter|
A politician admitted to thousands of students Thursday night that “alcohol is many more fold dangerous than marijuana” and even asked, “Why can’t we protect the liberty to put into your bodies whatever you choose?” As if the crowd wasn’t rowdy enough, the youths on The University of Texas LBJ Lawn went even wilder as Ron Paul presented his beliefs to them.
Despite only having 80 delegates to front-runner Mitt Romney’s 846, Paul told his followers that this was a great time to continue the revolution because no matter what changes were going to happen soon.
“People have woken up and said, ‘Look, this isn’t working so well anymore,’” said Paul. “This monetary system doesn’t work, this entitlement system enriches the rich and not the poor, and also we have a foreign policy that is deeply flawed and most people by a large majority say it’s time to come home.”
The reason why I think students love Ron Paul so much is that most of the population is very disillusioned with the ‘business as usual' type of politics that dominates both seats, whether Republican or Democrat. Also the wars and national debt issues are starting to pile up, and our generation is going to have to foot the bill sooner or later and that’s why most of the people are starting to get up in arms about this.
Paul went on to say that getting back American’s liberties was his focus. He said that even though Americans managed to stop the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA), politicians still went into the House on Thursday and “overwhelmingly passed” a new bill called CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing in Protection Act.
CISPA, similarly to SOPA, is a controversial bill due to its potential to violate privacy rights as it allows websites to hand over your personal data to the government. It’s intent, however, is to protect America’s intern interests against attacks.
Other controversial bills that Paul denounced were the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, saying that these bills and other laws were passed due to careless interpretation of the Constitution. He said that once he’s elected president he would get rid of “40,000 useless laws.”
The topic turned too war, and Paul acknowledged that not a single war has been declared since World War II. Paul said American needed to follow the law and only declare war by the people through their elected representatives.
“Had we been following that law we’d have been in no wars since World War II,” he said. “Think about how much wealthier this country would be; think of how much less death and destruction we would have.”
Paul said that the national debt has been pushed up by $4 trillion due to wars in the Middle East, and that politicians on both sides of the spectrum were too eager to jump into more wars with Syria and Iran. Later on, he also claimed that 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq and that there was no need to invade it.
As for other reasons for our national debt, Paul discussed the need to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and lessen government regulation.
On that note, Paul hit a popular note by also mentioning that he believes the war on drugs has done more harm than the drugs themselves, and that the government has no business regulating personal lifestyles.
Aside from his hands-off approach to recreational drugs, President of Libertarian Longhorns Jose Nino said that there are other reasons students love the GOP nominee.
“The reason why I think students love Ron Paul so much is that most of the population is very disillusioned with the ‘business as usual' type of politics that dominates both seats, whether Republican or Democrat,” said Nino. “Also the wars and national debt issues are starting to pile up, and our generation is going to have to foot the bill sooner or later and that’s why most of the people are starting to get up in arms about this.”
This visit was Paul's second during a three-day campaign in Texas that ends with a rally at the University of Houston Friday night. | <urn:uuid:804d229f-2e4e-41a0-97a2-1c34f9a2a3e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.readthehorn.com/news/campus/57601/ron_paul_comes_to_ut_rallies_students_around_platform | 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 | 0.981104 | 960 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Question of Palestine home
7 May 1996
LETTER DATED 7 MAY 1996 FROM THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
ADDRESSED TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL
I have the honour to transmit to members of the Security Council the report submitted to me by my Military Adviser, Major-General Franklin van Kappen, following his mission to Lebanon and Israel. My decision to send the mission was taken in the light of the tragic events that took place at Qana on 18 April 1996, in which more than 100 Lebanese civilians were killed in the headquarters of the Fijian battalion of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
Members of the Council will note that the mission sought to establish, to the extent possible, the facts surrounding those events. General van Kappen had extensive discussions with UNIFIL commanders, Lebanese and Israeli authorities, and eyewitnesses. As indicated in the report, while the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, the pattern of impacts in the Qana area makes it unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of technical and/or procedural errors. For their part, the Israel Defence Forces maintain that the incident was due to a sequence of operational mistakes and technical failures, compounded by chance.
I view with utmost gravity the shelling of the Fijian position, as I would hostilities directed against any United Nations peace-keeping position. But this incident is all the more serious because civilians, including women and children, had sought refuge in the United Nations compound at Qana.
I welcome the cease-fire agreement announced on 26 April 1996, and it is my earnest hope that the restoration of calm in the area will enhance the prospects for negotiations leading to a comprehensive peace settlement which would preclude further tragic events. In the meantime, I have instructed the Force Commander of UNIFIL, Major-General Stanislaw Wozniak, to enhance cooperation with the Government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces in maintaining peace and stability in UNIFIL's area of operation. I have also given instructions for arrangements to be worked out with the Israeli authorities to see to it that United Nations positions in Lebanon are not fired upon in the future.
It remains of the greatest importance that the parties to this conflict should ensure that innocent civilians do not become victims of the hostilities.
In view of the seriousness of the events at Qana, I have decided to transmit the report to the Security Council.
) Boutros BOUTROS-GHALI
Report dated 1 May 1996 of the Secretary-General's Military
Adviser concerning the shelling of the United Nations
compound at Qana on 18 April 1996
1. On 18 April 1996, shortly after 1400 hours local time, the headquarters compound of the Fijian battalion of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) came under fire by Israeli artillery. At the time, more than 800 Lebanese had sought refuge inside the compound, which is located in the village of Qana. An estimated 100 persons were killed and a larger number wounded. Four United Nations soldiers were wounded. There was extensive damage.
2. The same day, you directed that I travel to the area to investigate the incident and to identify steps that could be taken to prevent a recurrence.
3. I left New York on the evening of 18 April and arrived on 20 April at UNIFIL headquarters at Naqoura, where I was briefed by Major-General Stanislaw Wozniak, UNIFIL Force Commander, and his staff. I was accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Dodds of my staff and assisted in the field by two UNIFIL officers with expertise in artillery and ordnance.
4. My team and I visited the United Nations compound at Qana several times, met with the commanding officer of the Fijian battalion and interviewed eyewitnesses to the attack. These included members of the Fijian battalion, members of the Force Mobile Reserve, Lebanese army officers and others. A detailed survey of the area was carried out. In Beirut, I met with the Minister of Defence of Lebanon, Mr. Mohsen Dalloul, and with the commander of the Lebanese Army, General Emile Lahoud (both on 22 April).
5. I held three meetings with representatives of the Israel Defence Forces: first, with the Deputy Chief of General Staff, Major-General Matnan Vilnai (21 April), and later with the Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant-General Amnon Shahak (25 April), and with the commander of the Northern Command, Major-General Amiram Levine (25 April). In addition, I visited the Israeli artillery battalion that had carried out the shelling (21 April).
Israeli account of events
6. On 21 April, I met with Major-General Vilnai at Tel Aviv and visited the artillery battalion. On both occasions, the Director of Israeli artillery, Brigadier-General Dan Harel, was also present. He, I was told, had investigated the shelling incident. The Israeli officers gave the following account of the incident:
(a) In the early afternoon of 18 April, an Israeli patrol had come under fire emanating from Qana. The precise location of the patrol was not given, except that it was close to the "red line", which is a line on Israeli maps that marks the northern edge of the Israeli-controlled area in southern Lebanon. Mortar shells had fallen as close as 40 metres to the patrol, which had requested assistance. The Israeli forces had initiated rescue fire procedures.
(b) At 1352 and 1358 hours, respectively, Israeli locating radar had identified two separate targets in Qana from where fire had originated. The first target was located 200 metres or so south-west of the United Nations compound. The second target was located some 350 metres south-east of the compound. The data had been sent automatically to the Northern Command and to an artillery battalion located on the Israel-Lebanon border, about 12 kilometres from the sea. The battalion comprises three batteries with four guns each. It is equipped with M-109A2 guns (155-millimetre calibre). When the battalion received the data, it checked the targets on a map and found that one of the two locations was between 200 to 300 metres from the United Nations position at Qana. The commanding officer had therefore sought instructions from Northern Command, which rechecked the data and gave permission to fire. This decision had not been taken lightly; officers of some seniority had been involved.
(c) When the order to fire came, the first target had been engaged by one battery, using all four guns. Thirty-eight shells (high-explosive) had been fired, about two thirds with impact fuses and one third with proximity fuses. (Proximity fuses cause a round to explode in the air above the target; they are often used for anti-personnel fire.) The two types of fuses had been employed in random order. Convergence fire had been used so that the impacts would be concentrated in the target area. Regrettably, a few rounds had overshot and hit the United Nations compound.
(d) The commanding officer of the artillery battalion had no satisfactory explanation why so many shells had fallen some 200 metres north of the intended target (see the attached sketch). Asked if he had shifted fire during the shelling, he said he had not; he added that the mission had taken only three to four minutes (the time given by the Israeli forces was from 1407 to 1412 hours) and there would have been no time to change target data.
(e) We questioned the commanding officer about the procedures employed in the firing. His replies indicated a high professional standard.
(f) The second target had been engaged by another battery located in the same position. It had fired 40 rounds, from 1411 to 1417 hours.
(g) In response to repeated questions, the Israeli interlocutors stated that there had been no Israeli aircraft, helicopters or remotely piloted vehicles (RPV) in the air over Qana before, during or after the shelling. (These would have enabled the Israeli forces to observe the target area and adjust their fire.) However, at my request, General Vilnai promised on 21 April to look into this question again. On 26 April, Brigadier-General David Tzur, Chief Israeli Liaison Officer to Foreign Forces, confirmed in writing that there were "no choppers or Mini-RPVs flying above the area of Qana on 18 April, before or during the incident".
7. The Israeli officers stated that the Israeli forces were not aware at the time of the shelling that a large number of Lebanese civilians had taken refuge in the Qana compound. I did not pursue this question since I considered it irrelevant because the United Nations compound was not a legitimate target, whether or not civilians were in it.
8. The Israeli officers emphasized that it was not Israeli policy to target civilians or the United Nations. On the contrary, the Israeli forces had made every effort to avoid the loss of innocent lives. The incident at Qana was therefore all the more deeply regretted.
Events prior to the shelling
9. My team and I questioned a number of witnesses on the activities of Hezbollah fighters in Qana prior to the incident. The following was found:
(a) Between 1200 and 1400 hours on 18 April, Hezbollah fighters fired two or three rockets from a location 350 metres south-east of the United Nations compound. The location was identified on the ground.
(b) Between 1230 and 1300 hours, they fired four or five rockets from a location 600 metres south-east of the compound. The location was identified on the ground.
(c) About 15 minutes before the shelling, they fired between five and eight rounds of 120 millimetre mortar from a location 220 metres south-west of the centre of the compound. The location was identified on the ground. According to witnesses, the mortar was installed there between 1100 and 1200 hours that day, but no action was taken by UNIFIL personnel to remove it. (On 15 April, a Fijian had been shot in the chest as he tried to prevent Hezbollah fighters from firing rockets.)
(d) The United Nations compound at Qana had taken in a large number of Lebanese seeking shelter from Israeli bombardments. By Sunday, 14 April, 745 persons were in the compound. On 18 April, the day of the shelling, their number is estimated to have been well over 800. When the Fijian soldiers heard the mortar being fired not far from their compound, they began immediately to move as many of the civilians as possible into shelters so that they would be protected from any Israeli retaliation.
(e) At some point (it is not completely clear whether before or after the shelling), two or three Hezbollah fighters entered the United Nations compound, where their families were.
Survey of impact area
10. The technical survey of the impacts of the Israeli shells yielded the following information:
(a) Thirty-six impacts were found in the Qana area. Shell fragments of 155-millimetre calibre were found throughout the United Nations compound. The distribution of the impacts was uneven; there were two distinct areas where the impacts were concentrated and two "stray" impacts.
(b) The first concentration of impacts was centred about 100 metres to the south of the United Nations compound, on a group of houses some 75 metres north-west of the mortar firing point. In all, 17 shells (16 with impact fuses, 1 with proximity fuse) landed south of the United Nations compound.
(c) The second concentration of impacts was centred on the middle of the United Nations compound. Given the number and state of the casualties and the destruction caused by the shelling, a major clean-up operation had to be launched immediately after the end of the shelling. This resulted in the loss of important evidence. However, there was substantial evidence of multiple proximity-fused artillery ammunition detonating directly above the compound, covering a large portion of its area. While the exact number cannot be determined, the available evidence suggests that eight such projectiles detonated over the compound and one just outside it. There was also evidence that five high-explosive point-detonating projectiles detonated in the compound and three close to it. In sum, evidence was found of 13 detonations inside or directly above the compound and 4 very close to it.
(d) Almost all the proximity fuses were used in the area of the United Nations compound.
(e) Despite an extensive aerial and ground search, no impacts were found at the second target area identified by the Israeli forces (350 metres south-south-east of the United Nations compound), although evidence was found that rockets had been launched from a site nearby.
11. Several witnesses reported that during the shelling there had been a perceptible shift in the weight of fire from an area south-west of the compound (the mortar site) to the compound itself.
12. Several witnesses stated that they saw an RPV over the Qana area before, during and after the shelling. Two helicopters were seen 2 kilometres south-east of the United Nations compound during the shelling and one was observed close to the compound after the shelling had finished. The presence of one helicopter and an RPV was documented on a video tape, which covers the latter part of the shelling. It was taken by a member of the Force Mobile Reserve from a position overlooking the United Nations compound at Qana from a distance of about 1.5 kilometres. The RPV on the tape was of a type with a real-time data link capability.
13. The following are my findings:
(a) The distribution of impacts at Qana shows two distinct concentrations, whose mean points of impact are about 140 metres apart. If the guns were converged, as stated by the Israeli forces, there should have been only one main point of impact.
(b) The pattern of impacts is inconsistent with a normal overshooting of the declared target (the mortar site) by a few rounds, as suggested by the Israeli forces.
(c) During the shelling, there was a perceptible shift in the weight of fire from the mortar site to the United Nations compound.
(d) The distribution of point impact detonations and air bursts makes it improbable that impact fuses and proximity fuses were employed in random order, as stated by the Israeli forces.
(e) There were no impacts in the second target area which the Israeli forces claim to have shelled.
(f) Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted vehicle were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling.
While the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors.
Preventing a recurrence
14. On 19 April, General Levine informed General Wozniak of new precautions adopted by the Israeli forces with regard to firing at targets near United Nations positions. I recommend that these measures be reviewed and confirmed at the political level.
) Franklin VAN KAPPEN
Major-General, Military Adviser
Addendum dated 7 May 1996 to the report of the Secretary-General's
Military Adviser concerning the Qana shelling
1. In view of the findings outlined in my report of 1 May, Ambassador David Peleg, ChargÚ d'affaires of the Permanent Mission of Israel, was invited to Headquarters on 2 May. In the presence of Mr. Kofi Annan I asked him for additional comments on two questions: the absence of any impacts from the second battery in the target area given; and the presence of helicopters and an RPV in the Qana area at the time of the shelling. Mr. Peleg was shown the videotape mentioned in paragraph 12 of my report.
2. On 6 May, Ambassador Peleg visited Headquarters together with Brigadier-General Dan Harel, Director of artillery of the Israel Defence Forces, and other officials. General Harel related the findings of an Israeli investigation which, he said, had been completed only the day before. He explained that, in their eagerness to cooperate with the United Nations, the Israeli forces had given me information during my visit before their own investigation was completed. Some of this information had turned out to be wrong. General Harel provided the following additions and corrections:
(a) Two errors had been discovered in the checking by Northern Command of the distance of the targets from the United Nations compound (see para. 6 (b) of my report). First, the compound had been marked by a pin on a map (scale 1:20,000) about 100 metres north of its actual location. Secondly, in calculating the distance, the space covered by the compound had not been taken into account. As a result, the distance between the target and the compound (i.e., the edge of the compound - FVK) had been estimated at about 350 metres rather than the actual 180.
(b) The fuse mix ratio had been the reverse of what I was told, namely, two thirds proximity fuses and one third impact fuses rather than the other way around.
(c) The second battery had missed the second target completely. General Harel showed me an aerial photograph on which a group of seven impacts was marked about 150 metres west of the rocket site (180 metres south of the mortar site). General Harel could not explain why the second battery missed its target; the data provided to the battery had been correct.
(d) General Harel could not explain why there were in Qana two distinct impact concentrations with main impact points 140 metres apart.
(e) It was now known that an RPV had in fact been operated over southern Lebanon. However, it had moved between the area of Kafra/Yatar and the coast and had been in the Yatar area at the time of the shelling. It had been dispatched to Qana only at 1418 hours, that is, after the shelling ended, and arrived at its destination at 1431 hours. He pointed out that RPVs have a narrow field of view so that the presence of an RPV in the vicinity of Qana did not mean that Qana itself could be observed.
(f) Two helicopters had been sent north of the "red line" (see para. 6 (a)) after the Israeli patrol came under attack in order to locate and attack the sources of fire. However, they could not find the target and left the area. General Harel did not know the route taken by the helicopters or whether they had overflown Qana. He would have to look into this.
(g) General Harel stressed that the Israeli forces were under strict instructions not to target the United Nations. Therefore, the shelling of the Qana compound could only be the result of a combination of technical and procedural errors and chance.
3. It will be noted that the additional explanations provided by General Harel address the question why the Israeli forces fired at a target close to a United Nations compound. They do not address the first four of my findings. I also note that the Israeli forces have not yet provided details concerning the presence of helicopters in the Qana area, a question I first raised on 21 April. As I stated in my report, it is unlikely that gross technical and/or procedural errors led to the shelling of the United Nations compound. However, it cannot be ruled out completely.
) Franklin VAN KAPPEN
Major-General, Military Adviser | <urn:uuid:b0b1b76d-b5c4-4e1f-a6a8-9c66c95fd9c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/62d5aa740c14293b85256324005179be?OpenDocument | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977947 | 4,031 | 1.617188 | 2 |
... AS SEEN BY DIANE HUDSON
I am a textile designer and thus particularly interested in the representation of fabrics in old master paintings. I have just completed a study of luxury fabrics in 12th century Siena, based on Simone Martini’s Three Saints in the Fitzwilliam Museum, where designs feature small foliate patterns and vines, picked out in gold on richly coloured grounds. Future plans include actually constructing some designs and working out the repeats of the painted versions of fabrics, as well as a study of Leonardo’s natural history drawings.
My other sources of inspiration include pottery and porcelain, particularly English manufactures of pottery figures and shapes, such as cauliflower teapots, which appeal to my admiration for craft skills. I love the Staffordshire lead-glaze cats, birds, dogs and owls and the ‘marbling’ effects of their decoration. Current ideas in my head are for repeat patterns and hand printed cushions based around these, where I can also use sewing skills. I want to keep these kinds of hand crafting skills alive alongside the onward march of technological changes and standardization.
I could go on and on and include fans, embossed Japanese prints, samplers and stumpwork boxes: to me the Fitzwilliam Museum is a mine of inspiration!
Diane Hudson (b. 1965)
Born in Manchester in 1965, Diane Hudson first discovered her love for art and design at Russell Scott School in Denton and Fairfield High School for Girls in Droylsden. Awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Trust Fund scholarship, she attended a two-year foundation course in Art and Design at Tameside College of Technology and then studied Textile Design at Manchester Polytechnic. Noted for her umbrella design, her work won a course prize for achievement. More recently, she also completed a BSc (Hons) in Product Design with the Open University. She has since continued her studies in History of Art, also with the Open University, and prepared a special project on the use of luxury fabrics in 12th century Siena, based on Simone Martini’s Three Saints in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Future plans involve preparing a special project on the natural history drawing of Leonardo da Vinci, also to assist her textile design.
Initially self-employed on the government funded Enterprise Allowance Scheme as an artist, Hudson has also worked in publishing and has worked at the Fitzwilliam Museum as Photo Sales Manager. A regular exhibitor at the annual Eastern Open and craft fairs, her paintings and textiles can be found in private collections around the world, including Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Hudson’s most recent project is to design a series of textile prints for international representation at major trade fairs including Indigo in Brussels and Surtex in New York.
Diane Hudson lives just outside Cambridge, on the borders of the Fens.
1999 Centre for the Arts, King’s Lynn, group exhibition, Eastern Open
2000 Town Hall, Downham Market, group exhibition, Downham Art Circle Summer Exhibition
2001 Town Hall, Downham Market, group exhibition, Norfolk Adult Education Service Exhibition
2002 Centre for the Arts, King’s Lynn, group exhibition, Eastern Open
2003 Town Hall, Downham Market, group exhibition, Downham Art Circle Summer Exhibition
2004 Neptune Gallery, Old Hunstanton, group exhibition, Auction for Bosnia
2005 Centre for the Arts, King’s Lynn, group exhibition, Christmas Boxed
2006 Oliver Messel Gallery, Norwich, group exhibition, Woman Institute’s Annual Exhibition
2007 Centre for the Arts, King’s Lynn, group exhibition, Eastern Open
Town Hall, Downham Market, group exhibition, Downham Art Circle Summer Exhibition
Exhibition Centre, Brussels, group exhibition, Indigo
Jacob K Javits Convention Center, New York, group exhibition, Surtex
2008 Festhalle, Frankfurt, group exhibition, Heimtex | <urn:uuid:5b7d7d13-46cb-4730-a729-80be62fdb9f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/inspiration/contributors/hudson.html | 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 | 0.946021 | 824 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Although I am a children’s librarian, I have a deep and abiding love for YA literature, as I’m sure most of us do. Some of our mature readers in the Children’s Library have already read their way through many a YA Fantasy and Sci-Fi book, so I am always on the lookout for stories that our kids can “read up” to without exposing them to much content their parents might find objectionable.
One book which fits all these criteria is Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. In a reverse of the Twilight-spawned “mysterious guy, normal girl” trope that is so common in fantasies today, Beautiful Creatures is about a mysterious girl, Lena, and the normal boy (Ethan) who is drawn into her strange world. It’s a southern-set, gothic mystery filled with magic and forces of light and dark. I loved it, our kids love it, and the copies in our library are almost never checked in.
Cue the movie adaptation! With the success of The Hunger Games, studios are rushing their YA-adaptations into production. First to hit the screen is Beautiful Creatures. Although the movie does not come out until February 13, 2013, the trailer was released last week online. It looks just about perfect to me. The supporting cast is stocked with veterans like Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, and Emma Thompson. The two leads are played by relative unknowns, which is always interesting. And everyone is sporting a southern accent, with varying degrees of success. Check out the trailer today! | <urn:uuid:a6b92f52-a95a-41d3-88c5-17aa0fbc3cfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2012/09/book-to-film-soon-beautiful-creatures/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959889 | 335 | 1.53125 | 2 |
INO Investment company showed off their new mobile I-Brick plant in Otjomuise's 8ste Laan yesterday, where the company has started building its first show house.
The company's director, Fillemon Iyambo, said the business idea that began in 2010 was implemented to help solve the problem of the high cost of housing.
"We want the citizens, especially young people, to be able to buy quality houses at affordable prices."
Iyambo said this is their first project.
"Thanks to the City of Windhoek for giving us land to build our demo house. We plan on expanding to northern areas. We also hope to receive positive responses from other municipalities that have received our proposal," he said.
Iyambo said the I-Brick uses less cement than conventional bricks due to a specially formulated resin mixture.
Virtually no cement is used during the actual building process, he said, adding that it is faster to build than most other building systems.
"The I-Brick manufacturing plants are fully portable, allowing for brick manufacture in remote areas because everything on the machine is hydraulic and there is no need for electricity."
Iyambo said a chute is created when building with the bricks which allows for plumbing and electrical reticulation without the need for cutting into the walls and subsequent plastering.
According to Iyambo, the house walls can be built from foundation to roof height in one day, depending on how experienced the people working with the machine are.
"The building system allows for the use of unskilled labour, empowering the communities with skills and jobs in the areas which houses or structures are being built.
"Most of the builders that are currently employed on the site are from the neighbourhood, we just trained them on how to use the machine, which slows down the working process," Iyambo said.
The show house is expected to be completed within 12 days and its cost will be between N$130 000 and N$150 000.
The I-Brick system is used in South Africa, Swaziland, Malawi, Kenya and Mozambique and it is said to be a success in these countries. | <urn:uuid:a97a68d8-27ee-464e-9ae1-ba2dbd803281> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allafrica.com/stories/201301150337.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971924 | 450 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Now let’s take a look at a product from HKC but you can actually meet it under another name, e.g. Morex Cubid 3388. Frankly speaking, we didn’t take the trouble of finding out which version is the original one. Perhaps the real manufacturer is some obscure third party, which is often the case with China-made products. If you place a large enough order at a factory, they will make you a computer case with any marking you want.
The unknown manufacturer must be given credit for producing a really nice-looking system case despite all its simplicity. Well, if you prefer high-tech design with a lot of polished aluminum, you may not like this model, yet its cute front is going to fit any other home interior perfectly. Even the commonplace vent holes are shaped not as a dull square but as a wavy pattern resembling the logo of one well-known operating system.
Alas, the front panel made from glossy black plastic with a cute pattern is somewhat spoiled by the unconcealed I/O connectors. The chrome strip around the Power button is rather inappropriate, too.
The front connectors (two USB ports and two audio sockets) are placed in a recession in the bottom right of the panel. Above them there is a large Power button surrounded with two LED indicators. There is no Reset button again.
The back panel is quite a boring view. The only thing that may catch the eye is the three characteristically shaped depressions that are obviously meant for COM ports (legacy ports if you can’t recall them). This interface is still employed in some industrial equipment but it’s hard to imagine this cute system case somewhere in a manufacturing facility. This must be just a relic of old times.
Although the system case has no fans, it seems to have some sort of air circulation inside thanks to the small 60mm fan located on the side panel of its 150W power supply MGP MX-150. This bundled power supply offers a standard selection of cables:
- One mainboard cable with a 20+4-pin connector (32 cm long)
- One CPU cable with a 4-pin connector (32 cm)
- One cable with two SATA power connectors (32+14 cm)
- One cable with one SATA power connector, one PATA power connector and one floppy-drive plug (32+14+14 cm)
You can see a large interior when you remove the top frame (which you will use to fasten your drives). We guess a microATX mainboard would fit in here if the chassis were just a little longer. The chassis is made from steel which is a mere 0.5 millimeters thick. This doesn’t affect the rigidity of the case much, especially as it has a desktop orientation, but you can feel the thinness of the metal when you take the top panel into your hands.
As we’ve said above, optical and hard drives are fastened to a detachable frame which also helps make the chassis stiffer. First we attach one 2.5-inch hard disk drive to the bottom of the frame. And then a slim optical drive goes on top of it.
When discussing the first product in this review, we mentioned the mini variety of a SATA power connector which is used by slim optical drives. The Antec system offers such a connector with its bundled power supply whereas HKC includes a special adapter into the box for that purpose.
Quite impressively, there is a lot of free space next to the mainboard. Yes, there are an HDD and an optical drive above, yet this space is still not utilized properly. It might be used for a whole array of 2.5-inch hard disk drives, for example!
Laying out the cables in this chassis was not very easy. Although there is quite a lot of room, the cables have to be hidden somewhere below the massive frame which gets in the way.
If you prefer a faster CPU, you can take a broad cooler for it, but its height is limited to only 55 millimeters in this system case. | <urn:uuid:864c5c02-0b2b-4409-a4e5-2a77bdd14026> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cases/display/mini-itx-cases_5.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948955 | 846 | 1.546875 | 2 |
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Tue September 25, 2012
Commentary: What matters most in November
The election is six weeks away, and the vast majority of the media attention has been on whether President Obama or Mitt Romney will win the state. But I think that in Michigan, the real importance may be about something bigger.
This election will also determine whether one incredibly rich man can essentially buy our government for his own selfish interest.
That man is Matty Moroun, the owner of the Ambassador Bridge over the Detroit River. He is 85 years old, and according to Forbes, is worth close to two billion dollars.
But that’s not enough for him. He has spent more than $15 million of his private fortune in an effort to prevent a new bridge from being built. He gave members of the state legislature hundreds of thousands of dollars to successfully prevent a proposed new bridge bill from even coming up for a vote.
When the governor of Michigan and the government of Canada found a legal way to go around this and build a new bridge anyway, Moroun decided, in effect, to pay to hijack our government.
He spent, according to public records, nearly five million dollars to collect enough signatures to slap a constitutional amendment on the state ballot. If it passes, no new bridge will ever be able to be built without a statewide vote, no matter what.
Additionally, he spent at least two to three million more to successfully get a second constitutional amendment on the ballot, one that would effectively destroy state government’s ability to respond to any crisis or effectively change with the times.
Proposal Five says that no new taxes could ever be raised, no matter what the emergency, unless first approved by a statewide vote that could only be held in November, or, again, a two-thirds vote of the legislature. That’s a prescription for disaster that could send this state spinning into default or leave our citizens helpless in the face of disaster. I asked Rich Robinson, the president of the non-profit and non-partisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network, what he thought. Robinson said, “It almost seems like Moroun is saying, ‘if I can’t have my way on the bridge, I am going to destroy the state.’”
I asked if he had ever seen anything like this. He said no. The DeVos family did once spend heavily in a failed effort to get a school voucher amendment. Developer Al Taubman did the same in support of a stem cell amendment. But those were for causes bigger than themselves. The bridge amendment is solely designed at preserving one private monopoly.
What‘s more, Moroun has already run $10 million worth of blatantly false TV commercials aimed at getting people to vote for his amendment. Robinson estimates that the Morouns will spend another half a million a week between now and the election running similar ads. The League of Women voters has been urging citizens to pressure TV stations not to accept “specific misleading and untrue ads,” but this doesn‘t seem to be happening here.
So it will be up to the voters to decide whether one very rich man should be able to buy whatever he wants, even if that clearly is against the public interest. If that doesn‘t scare you, I think it should.
Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio’s political analyst. Views expressed in the essays by Lessenberry are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan. | <urn:uuid:c278ce0c-e03d-4618-a5dd-bb5bf13f30c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.michiganradio.org/post/commentary-what-matters-most-november?ft=1&f= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966449 | 739 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Economic Program | Report
Net Gains and Losses: A Modern Labor Market and a New Deal Welfare State
How do we ensure American middle class prosperity in an era of ever-intensifying globalization and technological upheaval? That is the question we are trying to answer with NEXT—a new project at Third Way that taps into cutting edge research by top American academics.
Each of the papers we commission will take a deeper dive into one aspect of middle class prosperity. In this second NEXT paper, Eva Bertram looks at an America where work has fundamentally changed for millions but the safety net has remained static, and asks what reforms are needed.
This publication is free for re-use with attribution. Check out our Issuu library to find embed code for your website or blog. | <urn:uuid:25651acc-4e6a-4262-bc99-cd21b4699b07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thirdway.org/subjects/6/publications/648 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932759 | 157 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Aug 30, 2011 / ENERGY GLOBE Award
ENERGY GLOBE Manifesto to be presented at 2012 Rio Conference
Salzburg/Traunkirchen, Austria: The message of the press conference held by the ENERGY GLOBE Foundation in Salzburg on 29th August 2011, Austria, was forceful as well as positive: The world’s current energy, environmental and climate problems are solvable, however, only on a global level and through joint efforts – and as a result of more efficiency and frugality.
Each and every individual’s contributions are important. Policy makers need to create proper framework conditions; local efforts are very important, and the world must get away from the notion of endless economic growth. “All this can be achieved the minute we stop talking and start acting, and as soon as we begin to create an awareness in people from an early age on”, Wolfgang Neumann, founder of the ENERGY GLOBE Foundation, stated in the course of the press briefing together with other Foundation members as well as representatives from the Salzburg Provincial Government.
Implementation of changes in energy politics was the topic of the ENERGY GLOBE Colloquium held at the Salzburg Caverns on Sunday, 28th August 2011. International as well as local experts attended the event chaired by Club of Rome president, Ashok Khosla. The Colloquium’s results – the ENERGY GLOBE Manifesto – will be published in two weeks and also be presented at the 2012 Rio Conference, where main topics will be energy, food, new economic systems, and the raising of public awareness in order to promote a change in culture to meetthese challenges.
A preliminary summary of the discussion was presented before media representatives. Getting to the heart of the issue, Club of Rome president Khosla stated that more and more people are using more and more resources that are only of limited availability. “We must not allow that someday in the future there will be street fighting over water. Access to energy is already causing violence today.” Khosla sees the solution in a decrease in the world’s population which will happen as soon as there are “schools for girls and jobs for women in the emerging nations.” Smaller families are a sure way to create sustainability and prosperity, Khosla is convinced. “We must stop exploiting the earth. Sustainability is the magic formula needed to ensure our own survival as well as that of future generations”, Khosla says.
“Investments are important, but we must always take social and ecologic aspects into consideration. Unless we do so, we will be paying much more, and the damage will be irreversible”, says Hong Nguyen, honorary member of the ENERGY GLOBE Foundation and investment banker from Vietnam, currently residing in the United States.
First comes food, then comes biofuel, says former EU Agricultural Commissioner and honorary Foundation member, Franz Fischler, in view of a prognosticated world population of 9 billion by the year 2050.
Salzburg local politicians Sepp Eisl and Walter Blachfellner consider rapid rethinking and acting, more local initiative, innovation as the main driving force behind global changes, and a suitable legislative framework as part of the state constitution as the most important steps towards a sustainable future.
The general public needs to be made aware of these issues emotionally as well as through providing information. “What we need is professional sustainability marketing”, says Gesa Köberle, vice-president of the ENERGY GLOBE Foundation and sustainability representative for the German DEKRA, as she addressed the press.
The ENERGY GLOBE Colloquium will take place on a regular basis, pointing out feasible ways of change in energy politics. This year’s event in Salzburg, Austria, was sponsored by Wüstenrot, the Austrian Economics Ministry, the Province of Salzburg, Salzburg AG, Fronius, Energie AG, and bauMax.
More information about the ENERGY GLBOE Colloquium and photos can be downloaded from http://www.energyglobe-foundation.com/colloquium-2011. | <urn:uuid:61fc7dce-f4ca-48ff-9517-83ce686ac517> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.energyglobe.com/news/details/category/2/id/1789/?egp=afcfc7097c77da55b944812b986b72a2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942936 | 892 | 1.5 | 2 |
MANY MOONS, by James Thurber
Indie Bound Description:Princess Lenore is ill from eating too many raspberry tarts. She believes that possessing the moon is the only thing that will cure her. Despite a command from the King, neither the Lord High Chamberlain nor the Royal Wizard nor the Royal Mathematician can get the moon for her. Only when the clever Court Jester consults the Princess herself is the problem solved--with characteristic Thurber wit.
My Thoughts: I decided to talk about this book to continue the moon theme (Moon Festival is officially tomorrow!) of the last week. I loved this story and used to read this book over and over again. Of course, my version was different-- it was the classic one illustrated by Louis Slobdkin. But this new version, illustrated by Marc Simont, looks lovely as well. It might be interesting to get a hold of both copies and compare and contrast the two! | <urn:uuid:5cc6f493-5ef6-467c-87d0-7943039c4697> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gracelinblog.com/2010/09/book-talk-tuesday_21.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94906 | 194 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Department of Transportation to remove trees from deadly span of Interstate 26
To reduce fatalities and severe-injury crashes, the state Department of Transportation plans to remove trees in the median of Interstate 26 from Summerville to Interstate 95.
The DOT also plans to install cable guardrails in the center of the median after the trees have been removed from the nearly 30-mile stretch of highway in Berkeley and Dorchester counties.
In 2010, an analysis conducted by The Post and Courier determined that the stretch of interstate around Ridgeville had claimed more lives than any other part of the highway. Of the nine fatal wrecks in 2009 between Summerville and I-95, seven involved impacts with trees or roll-overs into ditches, records showed.
The $5 million project announced Friday will happen from mile marker 170, just east of Interstate 95, to mile marker 199 near Summerville.
“The general plan to improve safety on this two-county section of I-26 is to provide more recovery area for drivers who veer off the roadway,” the DOT said.
Currently, the distance from the travel lanes to the median tree line is 25 feet, DOT said.
The trees in the median are primarily pines with some hardwoods. The work would also prepare the stretch of median for future widening of I-26, DOT said.
I-26 in the project area has an annual average daily traffic count of 32,433 vehicles. The speed limit is 70 mph. From 2007 through 2011, 1,934 crashes resulting in 44 fatalities and 709 injuries occurred in the stretch of interstate. Half of the crashes were run-off-the-road accidents, the DOT said.
The crash causes were primarily distracted drivers and drivers who fell asleep. Other factors were DUI, speeding, driving too fast for conditions, tire failure, improper lane change and debris in the roadway, the DOT reported.
When the project is finished, the zone where drivers can recover from running off the road into the median will grow from 25 feet wide to 46 feet wide on both sides of the interstate, said Tony Sheppard, DOT director of traffic engineering.
The cable barriers will reduce fatalities, he said.
Sheppard said the DOT looked at leaving trees in place and installing cable barriers on both sides of the uncleared median, but that doubled the cost of the project to $10 million.
The timetable for the project has not been determined. Sheppard said the DOT must first obtain environmental permits from the Army Corps of Engineers.
The Berkeley County portion of the project is ranked No. 1 on the top-ten priority list for interstate safety improvements. The Dorchester County section is ranked No. 3.
News of the DOT plan met with mixed reaction on the The Post and Courier Facebook page.
“I think it is a great idea!!! We have seen countless accidents and deaths due to people running off into the median and hitting the trees,” said Ovieda Diane Weir of Harleyville.
Mass transit advocate William Hamilton of Mount Pleasant expressed opposition to the project.
The $5 million could be used to finish the new bus and train station in North Charleston. The current bus station is an embarrassment and the train station is decrepit, he said.
“Before we squander five million irreplacable dollars on something which won’t move anyone further or better and has zero economic return to our region, we should have a public hearing,” he said.Reach Prentiss Findlay at 937-5711. | <urn:uuid:7c0135ce-8f25-41b2-b680-ffea8bc64976> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20130216/PC16/130219344/department-of-transportation-to-remove-trees-from-deadly-span-of-interstate-26 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950297 | 727 | 1.757813 | 2 |
I vividly remember finishing my packed lunch in my middle-school cafeteria and then actively trying to stop myself from going up to the lunch counter and buying a pre-packaged (and, in hindsight, probably repulsive) cookie as an after-meal treat. I remember counting my change, realizing I had enough to afford the sweet snack and then thinking about how I should not have it. No, this is not one girl’s story of her battle with junk food. This is one girl’s battle with Lent.
This is what the Lenten season was for me: I would vow give up something, like cookies or ice cream, and then struggle to live up to that promise for the next 40 days. I think this was probably the pattern for most adolescent Catholics—attempted sacrifice followed by a sugar binge on Easter.
However, as I got older, I started to forgo the yearly ritual. And this year, instead of sacrificing for a month and a half, I’m trying to live a healthier life year-round.
“In my experience, people take it very seriously,” says Father John Daya of St. John’s on South 13th Street. “I think Lent is a time of personal renewal. People really wish to deepen their relationship with God. They pray more often and go to church more often.”
OK, so maybe this is just me not being very serious about Lent. I understand the point. It’s an opportunity to cleanse your soul and create a deeper connection with God. But Lent also sort of seems like a second chance to make good on the New Year’s resolutions people have broken by Ash Wednesday.
New Year’s resolution: Work out three times a week and lose 40 pounds in the next year.
Reality: Have actually gone to the gym maybe three times since New Year’s. Cutting ice cream out for Lent is a step in the right direction.
That may not be a very religious thought, but it’s a realistic thought. Sticking to your resolution is tough. Why shouldn’t we be able to start over and give it a second try? We can. It’s about time I start admitting the truth though, that I’ve been lazy, not that I’m suddenly feeling religious.
“People do a variety of things for Lent,” says Father Daya. “There is the traditional thing of giving stuff up like desserts or going to the movies. There is also a new concept. People may be fasting from gossip or from being angry or rude. Behaviors that need to be challenged. People choose to give those things up.”
It is said that if you can give up a bad habit for about 30 days, you can quit it for good. Go more than a month without nasty gossip, and you might just realize how negative blabbing about others can be. On the other hand, that coconut cream pie is going to taste just as delicious in 40 days. | <urn:uuid:0a31131a-0c28-447c-9263-12f25c3f7a2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2012/03/27/lent-sacrifice-working-you/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969001 | 634 | 1.679688 | 2 |
In Israel, a new five month scholarship program being offered to young aspiring athletes – one of them could be you.
An old Jew, stripped to his ill-fitting pajama bottoms, his ribs pronounced in his emaciated frame, is being mocked as he is kicked and prodded through a double line of soldiers.
Though frightened, the Jew endures the physical and verbal abuse with a conscious dignity. But then, one of the soldiers strikes the old Jew so hard that the cloth yarmulke perched atop his bald head comes flying off, landing on the gravel.
At first, the old Jew is unaware he has lost the yarmulke, but after a moment his hand goes reflexively to his head. Realizing it is gone, he quickly searches the ground. He spots it by the boot of one of the soldiers.
Despite the taunts of the soldiers, he reaches down to retrieve it. He is rewarded for his efforts with a sharp kick to the ribs from the point of the soldier’s boot. But that is of less concern to him than the fact that he had retrieved his yarmulke.
With the dignity that has marked his progression from the first, he continues forward until finally the whips and beatings knock him to his knees. A final blow by the butt of a soldier’s gun is the last indignity the old Jew suffers in the land of the living.
As the soldiers kick the old man’s body out of the way, they do bother to note the yarmulke left behind in the mud. Already they have moved on to their next amusement.
Somewhere, many centuries before, a different Jew had died.
After his burial and Kaddish, the man’s soul rose to Heaven to receive the Divine judgement. When it arrived, it presented the good and bad deeds performed during the man’s life and then awaited judgment. But no judgment came. In the majestic hush of Heaven, something unimaginable had occurred. Never before had the heavenly tribunal been presented with such a case; the good and bad deeds of this soul were exactly equal.
The soul could neither enter the Gates of Paradise nor could it be cast intoHell. The mighty tribunal determined it was destined to hover aimlessly between Heaven and Earth until God Himself should take pity and beckon the soul unto Him.
The soul howled in agony at the verdict. Taking pity on it, the Heavenly shammas offered a glimmer of hope.
“Fly down, little soul, and hover close to the world of the living, and when you’ve brought three appropriate gifts, rest assured – the Gates of Paradise will open to you, the gifts will do their work.”
The soul hovered close to earth century after century until finally it collected its first two gifts: a bit of earth from the Holy Land mixed with the blood of a Jewish martyr, and a pin soaked with the blood of a modest and pious Jewess, also martyred.
Only one more gift! But what could that gift be? How many years must the poor soul search for the gift that would ensure its acceptance into Paradise?
After centuries more of searching, the soul landed in an unknown prison yard. There, two long rows of soldiers faced each other, creating a narrow passage between them, a narrow passage through which an old, emaciated Jew was pushed, prodded and beaten. The soul viewed the torture of this poor man with horror and sadness. The dignity the old Jew managed to preserve was remarkable, but his calm seemed only to incite these soldiers to greater brutality. And then the Jew fell to his knees.
A moment later, he was dead.
The hovering soul came closer. There, in the mud, it saw the murdered man’s forgotten yarmulke. It collected the unobserved yarmulke, the “dirtied piece of cloth” that had earned the man so many wicked blows and carried it up to Heaven. There, this third gift was accepted as “truly beautiful. Unusually beautiful.” The soul entered Paradise and eternal rest.
The yarmulke, or skullcap, like so much in Judaism, serves two different and seemingly opposing functions. It is at once both a crown of Jewish religiosity and a sign of piety and humility; crowning glory and humble servitude.
It is a mark upon the Jew, one that identifies him as an adherent of his faith. Even more significantly, this simple head covering reminds him of his place in the universe.
The headdress (migbatt) of the kohanim is to be “for glory and beauty.” In fact, the headgear itself bore the name pe’er (beauty). Such a headdress raises a man. Likewise, a man with an uncovered head is like one in rags and half-dressed, and is accordingly forbidden to recite the Shema, to officiate as reader, to read aloud from the Torah, or to recite the name of God with due dignity.
The Midrash contrasts the attitude of Moshe in hiding his face before the Shechinah at the burning bush with that of Nadab and Abihu, who looked on with uncovered heads; the one showing reverence and awe, the others, insolence.
Halacha has therefore consistently equated bareheadness with light-mindedness and frivolity, and hence forbids it. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi taught that “a man ought not to walk four cubits in an erect position, which suggests overbearing pride, ignoring God’s omnipresence.” Rav Huna, the son of Joshua, refused to take so much as a single step without having his head covered, for he said that “The Shechinah is above my head.”
Going with one’s head uncovered is considered k’chukos hagoyim, the ways of the nations. By covering our heads, we are distinctly identified as Jews.The yarmulkeis not merely an article of identification, it is a statement of Jewish piety, demonstrating awareness that we stand beneath something so much greater than ourselves, greater than our intellect, our creativity and even our desire.
The yarmulke symbolizes our humility in the presence of God. The yarmulke reminds us of our ongoing and ever-present duties and responsibilities, and of the significance of individual actions and words.
* * * Each morning we recite, “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who crowns Israel with Glory”in recognition of the glory and pride associated with being a Jew.
An examination of the many berachot recited by the Jew each morning reveals that in only two of the blessings is Israel mentioned specifically by name – Ozer Yisrael b’gvurah (Who girds Israel with strength) and Oter Yisrael b’tifarah (Who crowns Israel with glory.)
Belt and headgear: both have significance for the Jewish people. To the non-Jew, the belt is worn for both comfort and power. To the Jew, it has a deeper significance that speaks to our attachment to God and our deep moral strength. Similarly, non-Jews cover their heads to protect themselves from the elements. Jews cover their heads because of yirat Shamayim.
The belt divides the upper half of the body – the source of the spiritual and intellectual faculties – from the lower – the regions for performing physical and sensual functions. We wear a belt “that the heart should not see the nakedness of the organs of sensuality.” A belt prevents impure thoughts from entering the mind. The precept to wear a belt serves to strengthen our control over our sensual desires. So we thank God for the strength with which He guides Israel. Such strength, gevurah, is strength that comes from self-control.
This notion of subordinating our sensual nature to our intellectual or spiritual nature finds its greatest expression in the covering of the head. “To crown” expresses the honor that comes with such head covering. “Thou shalt be a crown of honor in the hand of God” (Isaiah 3:3).
The yarmulke, in one simple piece of cloth, reminds us constantly of the essential beauty and duality of our lives; to wear our glory humbly before God.
Rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Safran, serves as OU Kosher’s vice president of communications and marketing.
About the Author: Rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Safran serves as OU Kosher’s vice president of Communications and Marketing.
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The Japanese do not feel the need to apologize to Muslims for the negative way in which they relate to Islam.
Palestinian youths from Hebron, though, who met with Israelis near Bethlehem to share their problems and insights have been forced to issue a statement distancing themselves from the meeting.
Benghazi isn’t likely to keep Hillary out of the Democratic field in 2016, but after 2008, she is justifiably paranoid.
Many of my fellow college students are quick to voice their acceptance of their LGBT friends, but they turn up their noses and frown slightly when they speak of a Hasid.
The growing revelations that the Obama State Department watered down public statements on the attack in order to cleanse them of any mention of al Qaeda and terrorism is a travesty.
We must confront Islamist groups with what Prime Minister David Cameron referred to as “muscular liberalism.”
Al-Qaradawi’s visit and statements also serve as a reminder that the Israeli-Arab conflict is centered, more than ever, around religion.
Everyone who reads newspapers should know at least one thing. Threats to annihilate Israel have always been unremarkable. Almost never, it seems, have Israel’s existential enemies sought any reason for concealment.
Mark Treyger, a candidate for city council in New York City’s 47th council district, met recently with the editorial board of The Jewish Press at the newspaper’s Boro Park office.
Israel’s government did not want to liberate Jerusalem. Or to be more specific, the Labor and National Religious Party ministers did not want to liberate Jerusalem. “Who needs that whole Vatican?” Defense Minister Moshe Dayan explained at the time.
Last Friday, the Western Wall underwent an unwelcome transformation from sacred site to media circus as the group known as the Women of the Wall sought to hold a decidedly non-traditional prayer service.
Two recent revelations have raised serious questions about the kind of government President Obama is running.
Readers of my monthly Baseball Insider column may have noticed its absence last week (the column appears in the second issue of every month). The reason for that is I have something more serious and personal to share with you, something that didn’t seem appropriate for a baseball column.
The ticking of the clock is uniformly, maddeningly constant. Tick, tick, tick. In equal, perfectly differentiated, precise segments. One second after another. Tick, tick, tick. A minute. An hour. One day. Another. Then a week. A month. A year. A lifetime.
Last year, not long before Passover was to begin and my thoughts were already on the coming Seders and great drama we would be observing, I happened to be just outside a building when I observed the following small scene unfold before me.
Murderous violence has been with us since the generation after Adam and Eve first trudged, ashamed and burdened, east of Eden, banished from the Garden because of their disobedience. Few things through the ages have defined us so much as our ability to visit horrific cruelty upon our fellows.
The strength and numbers of Orthodox Jews in America have never been greater, and yet those of us concerned with Judaism’s future must admit we confront a future no less frightening than the future that was evident to Hannah’s noble sons in Modi’in all those centuries ago.
Recently, my wife Clary and I traveled to Lithuania to experience what remains of one of Judaism’s most magnificent centers of learning. My journey, organized by Zvi Lapian of Israel and led by the eminent historian and distinguished scholar Dr. Shnayer Leiman, took me to what was once the world’s center of Torah learning.
Our sages teach us that when we have left this life and face the Court on High, we will be called upon to answer for our lives. Among the questions we will be asked is, “Did you throughout your lifetime eagerly await and anticipate the geulah, the ultimate redemption?”
The past is never dead. It’s not even past. – William Faulkner
We Jews are a people of memories. Our past defines who we are. The past infuses our religious lives with context, purpose and meaning. How could we be if not for knowing how we were?
For me, Israel is personal.
I was born as Israel’s War of Independence raged, just weeks after the state’s miraculous birth. As I lay in the hospital room with my mother, the windows shattered with the relentless attacks of those who sought, once again, to destroy us – this time not on their bloodstained soil but on our own sacred land. Once again, by God’s hand, we prevailed. The few against the many. The weak against the so-called strong.
Printed from: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/the-yarmulke-crown-of-honor-sign-of-humility/2011/05/11/
Scan this QR code to visit this page online: | <urn:uuid:47587e37-4a31-4209-b8b9-3c29bf97dbac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/the-yarmulke-crown-of-honor-sign-of-humility/2011/05/11/0/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960054 | 2,897 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Filtering Sigma-Delta Audio Signals Directly
The utility of directly processing sigma-delta encoded audio signals is discussed. The problems of overflow and rounding in such a system and the consequential noise build-up are investigated. An efficient and cost-effective method of implementing a second-order filter, given the higher sample rate, is presented. The problems of coefficient accuracy are also discussed.
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This paper costs $20 for non-members, $5 for AES members and is free for E-Library subscribers. | <urn:uuid:23e63772-5535-4251-a35a-b8662d19c1e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=7334 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931919 | 158 | 1.5 | 2 |
432: Know When To Fold 'Em
Apr 8, 2011
When is it time to walk away, and when is it time to run? This week we have the story of an entire country deciding whether to give up on just one of its citizens, when to hold 'em in order to win nearly a million dollars in poker, and a new story from Dave Dickerson.
- David Ellis Dickerson tells the story of heading home to Tucson after six years away, having rejected the evangelical Christianity of his family. David came prepared for war, armed with new beliefs. But his family had something else in mind. David is author of the memoir House of Cards. (11 1/2 minutes)
- One of the principles of treating alcoholism is that there's hope for everyone. You never fold your cards. But there are also places known as "wet houses," controversial shelters for alcoholics where they are allowed to keep drinking. Reporter Marc Sanchez visited St. Anthony House, a wet house in St. Paul, to learn how it works. Marc is a producer at Minnesota Public Radio, where he works on a feature called "Minnesota Sounds." (10 1/2 minutes)
- There's a part of Brazil that was almost all rainforest until the 1970s, and over the next few decades a million people moved in, cutting down the forest and building towns and cities. Monte Reel was the South American correspondent for the Washington Post in the mid 1990s, when he started hearing rumors of a "wild man," the last member of a tribe, who lived completely alone in this area's remaining forest. Reel's book about the quest to find and save this man is called The Last of the Tribe. The book also has a video trailer. (14 1/2 minutes)Song: "The Gambler", Elmer | <urn:uuid:0fe54798-7630-4bf8-8e2c-f06dcc186c24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/432/know-when-to-fold-em | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977433 | 373 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Grower markets small straw bales for dog bedding
When Bob Walton first thought about selling to a niche market, he considered packaging small bales of hay in boxes for horse owners. Instead, he ended up selling bagged straw bales for use as dog bedding.
Last year, this Rosebush, MI, hay grower and quarterhorse breeder sold six semi loads of his Straw Dogs, 12- to 15-lb bales that he makes by rebaling conventional small square bales. He and his wife, Susie, do the rebaling in their indoor horse arena in winter, using the same baler that originally baled the straw in their wheat fields.
They stack the bagged bales on pallets, then a family friend helps Walton wrap the pallet loads in stretch-wrap plastic. A local pet supply distributor picks them up a truckload at a time and delivers them to over 400 stores in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.
He got the idea several years ago while discussing his boxed hay idea with a horse-hay client who has dogs.
“He said: ‘You ought to do that with straw because dog owners buy it by the bale and only need half a bale’,” Walton recalls.
He bought some straw, printed labels off his computer and began making small bales. He stretch-wrapped every bale at first, attaching handles made from packaging tape. After a year, he switched to clear plastic bags purchased from a local packaging company. Each bag is closed with a cable tie, and the gathered top serves as a handle.
“The bags are a lot less time-consuming than stretch-wrap,” says Walton. “We stuff the label inside.”
He did the marketing himself the first few years, selling them at the local elevator and in nearby pet supply stores. He and Susie also had them in their booth at the Michigan Horse Council's annual Horse Expo, where they promote their farm and horses. A woman who has horses and also works at the pet supply distributor saw them, and that company started buying the bales about a year later.
Walton gets $3.33/bale, picked up at the farm. His costs include more than 20¢ for the bag, 8¢ for the tie and about 25¢ for the label. Twine and labor costs are additional.
Five labels are used, each featuring a photo of a set of Walton grandchildren and their dog. The labels also state that the straw is home-grown in Michigan.
Walton figures the attractive labels and clean straw are key selling tools, along with bales that break apart in definitive flakes. That trait is attributed to his Hesston baler.
“I've found that the Hesston center-line, for our hay marketing and also for this straw, makes a clean flake; there's no carryover between flakes,” he says. “They just throw it in the doghouse and it basically spreads itself.”
Rabbit owners buy the bales, too, and so does a woman who raises ducks in her basement, says Walton.
The husband-wife team does most of the rebaling. Walton removes the twines from existing bales and forks the straw into the baler, which ties every 12-15”.
“We idle the baler back; I found that I don't need to run it wide open,” he reports.
Susie bags and piles the finished minibales as they leave the baler, then, after a certain number have been made, they shut off the tractor and take time to tie the bags and stack the bales on pallets.
Walton doesn't worry about somebody else stealing his market. “People say they'd never do it; it's too much work,” he says.
But he doesn't see much opportunity to grow the business, either. His distributor only covers the three states, plus hauling the light bales long distances is expensive.
“With the shipping costs, it's not feasible to expand the market,” he says. “We'd have to do some different packaging.” | <urn:uuid:50deb95c-9c5c-4fb3-96a1-fa4a72f9365d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hayandforage.com/print/hay/0301-dog-bedding-market | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966814 | 874 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Author: Tsumori Tokio | Artist: Katou Eriko
Chapters: 16 | Updated: Apr 17 2013 | Status:
Summary: The world is said to exist with yang, the world of humans and yin, the world of mythical beasts in conflict with each other. A long time ago, two clans who were involved in an unending war exchanged an inviolable pledge and started living in their own worlds. At that time, the king who ruled over all the mythical beasts gave his own sword to the human queen whom he dearly loved and vowed that if the queen or her descendants ever fall into danger, he himself and his descendants will surely come to save them...
And now, when the third war is about to begin, a beautiful swordsman with the blood of the king of beasts had a fateful encounter with the aloof king of mythical beasts, and the story begins! | <urn:uuid:853aa500-8efa-4bcd-833a-bf2751b494f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ourmanga.com/Yasashii_Ryuu_no_Koroshikata/13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965604 | 184 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The same day a woman was attacked this month while trying to keep her small dog out of reach of a charging pit bull in an Olinda pine forest, another dog was attacked in the Makawao Forest Reserve.
Casper, an 11 1/2-year-old female Dalmation, was recuperating and out of commission for several days after being attacked by two dogs at midday Aug. 2, said owners Scott Stephens and Janet Ghiselin of Kihei.
"We're really lucky they didn't kill her," Ghiselin said. "She was bleeding horribly."
Stephens said he was walking with Casper in the forest when he saw the two dogs approaching and put Casper on her leash.
When Stephens yelled out, "Are your dogs friendly?," they began running toward Casper, he said. One dog was a shepherd mix weighing about 80 pounds, the other was a mixed breed weighing about 60 pounds - about the same as Casper.
"The way they were looking at us looked a little intimidating," Stephens said. "I could only slow the big dog down. That's why the little one jumped on her first."
He said the owner of the two dogs "came running around when all hell broke loose.
"That's when we got control of the small one," Stephens said.
But then he said the larger dog jumped in, tumbling Casper to the ground. The larger dog had its mouth on Casper's neck when Stephens said he feared the worst.
"I had to stick my hand in the dog's mouth and prop it open" to get it off Casper, said Stephens, who also was bitten.
"Casper went running away. She didn't even fight back," Stephens said. "That's the sad part. She was basically yelping and trying to run away."
Stephens had to first find Casper, then he carried her out of the forest.
The other dogs' owner went with Stephens to the Makawao Veterinary Clinic, paying the $500 cost for the visit. The attack wasn't reported to police or the Maui Humane Society.
"My immediate concern was more about getting her fixed up than getting the police or Humane Society on him," Stephens said. "I just was making sure she got all the attention and was better."
Added Ghiselin: "This dog is the love of our life. We didn't report it because the man loves his dogs. It might have been just a real freak kind of incident."
Casper required stitches to her neck, side and thigh, as well as a tube to drain fluid from her thigh. She also suffered bruises and a hematoma on the bottom of her belly. Five shaved areas on her body required medical attention.
When she's healthy, Casper accompanies her owners while they work at an activity sales business at Maalaea Harbor. While she was recuperating from the attack, regular visitors at the harbor activities business were concerned that she wasn't there, Ghiselin said.
"People from all over the world know her," Ghiselin said of the fun-loving and beautiful black-and-white spotted dog. "They will come back for their activities every year."
Casper had her stitches removed Wednesday and has been back with Stephens at her work post for the past six years and pleasing customers.
"She's back at work in the harbor, so her friends can see her," Ghiselin said. "So she's happy and acting almost normal."
Stephens said he has hiked in the forest reserve often for the past five years, and it was the first time he had experienced a dog attack.
"It's just sad that people can't control their dogs, and they're going to let them off leash to attack people or animals," he said. "It's a pretty simple solution - keep your dog on the leash, or train them."
* Lila Fujimoto can be reached at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:3fc2b962-114a-4e27-8931-735a3fb470ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/552578/Dalmation-owners--lucky--two-dog-assault-not-fatal.html?nav=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989657 | 833 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Robert Sherman (left in the above photo), one of the most revered and loved Disney songwriters, has passed away at home in London at age 86.
Robert Sherman along with his brother, Richard, wrote some of the most iconic Disney songs, including Walt Disney’s personal favorite, “Feed the Birds”. Even if you have never heard of the Oscar Award Winner, or the “Sherman Brothers” you’ve definitely heard their music. “it’s a small world” (after all) is probably the most well known piece of Disney park music. Love it or hate it, the theme song to the iconic and loved Disney attraction is one of the most recognized musical scores in the world. Robert Sherman and his brother were also the musical geniuses of the 1964 classic Mary Poppins, including the zany ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’.
It’s tough to look anywhere at Disneyland park with seeing a section that was touched by Robert Sherman. The Sherman Brothers wrote, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”, “Miracles for Molecules”, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, ‘it’s a small world (after all)”, “Magic Highways” from the Rocket Rods, “Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room, and many more that can be heard at other Disney theme parks as well.
Robert Sherman’s work was highly recognized as he won or was nominated for 9 Academy Awards in the categories of Best Original Song and Best Music and Score. They included Mary Poppins’ “Chim Chim Cher-ee”, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, “The Age of Not Believing” from Bedknobs and Broomsticks and the original scores for Tom Sawyer and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. And these awards only scratch the surface. Sherman was also nominated for 5 Golden Globes and won a Grammy. The song writing team also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame in 1976 . In 2010 the “Sherman Bothers” were honored with a window on Main Street USA. The window is dubbed, “Two Brothers Tunemakers” and can be found on a door next to the 20th Century Music Company.
In 1990 Robert Sherman was honored with the title, “Disney Legend”, and a legend he will always be. Most children don’t know the men behind the songs, but every child who sings ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, or “it’s a small world” will always do so with a smile and some laughter, and that makes him a legend to us all. | <urn:uuid:0db86901-818b-4c0e-9c6e-38f88c704fc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dlandlive.com/2012/03/robert-sherman-disney-songwriter-dies-at-age-86/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960557 | 591 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Operating While Intoxicated Can Include Using Prescription and Other Drugs
Michigan State Police Sgt. Mark Thompson discusses the consequences of driving a car while under the influences of drugs and alcohol.
Hey, how about those Tigers! A win is always a great way to start the baseball season. And like most people I’m looking forward to an interesting and successful regular season, with an extension in October. Put me in coach, I’m ready to play!
Teresa Lyden, Speech Pathologist, from the University of Michigan Hospital, Department of Otolaryngology/Speech Pathology contacted me for information regarding the operation of a motor vehicle while taking medication. She was seeking information for patients who may be issued medication for various treatments and then drive.
Everyone knows if a person drinks alcohol in excess, then makes the poor decision to drive their vehicle and is stopped by the police, that person is likely to go to jail for Operating While Impaired (OWI). This is never a good thing to do.
Lyden asks a very important question, what happens to a driver who is not under the influence of alcohol but is under the influence of drugs?
Michigan Compiled Laws (MCL) 257.625 answers that question clearly. MCL 257.625(1) states, in part, “A person, whether licensed or not, shall not operate a vehicle upon a highway or other place open to the general public or generally accessible to motor vehicles, including an area designated for the parking of vehicles, within this state if the person is operating while intoxicated. As used in this section, "operating while intoxicated" means any of the following:” (a) “The person is under the influence of alcoholic liquor, a controlled substance, or a combination of alcoholic liquor and a controlled substance.”
If a driver of a motor vehicle is consuming some sort of legal or illegal medication, which results in a diminished ability to operate the motor vehicle they could be arrested for OWI.
Something else every driver should be aware of is contained in MCL 257.625 (2), which states, in part, “The owner of a vehicle or a person in charge or in control of a vehicle shall not authorize or knowingly permit the vehicle to be operated upon a highway or other place open to the general public or generally accessible to motor vehicles, including an area designated for the parking of motor vehicles, within this state by a person if any of the following apply:” a) “The person is under the influence of alcoholic liquor, a controlled substance, or a combination of alcoholic liquor and a controlled substance.”
This means if you are the owner, or ‘person in charge’ of a motor vehicle, you could be held responsible for allowing someone to operate that vehicle if that driver is under the influence of alcohol or controlled substance.
We also need to remember the operation of a motor vehicle, upon a highway or ‘other place open to the general public’ or generally accessible to motor vehicles, including an area designated for the parking of motor vehicles. This means a driver could be arrested for OWI in parking lots and other places which may be not be roadways but vehicles can be operated upon.
Mrs. Lyden has requested a Trooper to attend a meeting and present information regarding the repercussions of operating a motor vehicle while impaired by the use of alcohol, controlled substance or combination of both. Trooper Duane Zook, of the Michigan State Police – Brighton Post has been assigned to develop this presentation for a meeting, in the near future, with Mrs. Lyden, her patients and co-workers.
I must mention to the segment of drivers who think they can have a few drinks, pop a pill, inject something into there arm, or snort something up their nose and then drive because they are only “buzzed.” You are only deceiving yourselves; “buzzed driving” is Operating While Impaired.
If you have questions or comments please email them to [email protected], or mail them to Ask A Trooper, Michigan State Police – Brighton Post, 4803 S. Old US-23, Brighton, MI 48114. | <urn:uuid:8df9e092-142c-4717-8628-1a79b5fbc71c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hartland.patch.com/articles/operating-while-intoxicated-can-include-using-prescription-and-other-drugs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951723 | 872 | 1.65625 | 2 |
We add that, even if one could somehow imagine that the list is intended merely as an historical report, the implication respecting the Catholic identity of the University would be little better. How pro-life is a university that insists on spreading the word that its students have been in the service of pro-abortion organizations? If Notre Dame students had served internships with the Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazi Party, would this have been dutifully publicized?
Gender Studies Program internships
Then came an even more disturbing revelation by Catholic blogger Kathy Schiffer.
As Ms. Schiffer discovered, Notre Dame’s Gender Studies Program at Notre Dame has funded internships to pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and pro-embryonic research organizations. They are described in some detail in a report by the Cardinal Newman Society.
It suffices here to note that a 2008 grant went to a student interning with the notoriously pro-abortion National Organization for Women (NOW). NOW describes itself as the “largest organization of women feminists” in the country and lists “championing abortion rights” as a top priority.
The University’s reaction
These disclosures and protests and, we hope, our communications had some effect, though it is impossible to tell whether in the end any significant improvement will result.
In brief, one organization, Emily’s List, was removed from the list, a study will be made and a policy established for internship matters, and a disclaimer was attached to the list. (“Listing here does not constitute an endorsement of the mission of [sic] agenda of these organizations.”)
While these actions are welcome, they fall well short of remedying the current problem and they trigger concern respecting the outcome of the study.
The list is still headed “Summer Internship Opportunities” and students are still directed to the list in the “How to Find a Summer Internship” section. And the fact that only Emily’s List was removed is both troubling and perplexing.
We are told that Emily’s List was removed because it is a single-purpose organization. If that is to be the criterion, the emerging policy will be a bane rather than a boon, for it will license a host of organizations hostile to Catholic teaching.
One need merely look at some of the organizations that remain on the list. They are every bit as objectionable as Emily’s List.
Consider the Feminist Majority Foundation (“FMF”), an especially pernicious organization because of its focus on students. It is dedicated to promoting “abortion, contraception, and family planning, including Medicaid funding and access for minors” (as well as “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights).”
And to advance that program, FMF “started the Campus Program to inform young feminists about the very real threats to abortion access, women’s rights, affirmative action, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights posed by right wing extremists.”
Arguably even worse is the National Women’s Law Center because of its anti-Catholic agenda. One of its principal goals is “to ensure that women have access to abortion care by protecting and advancing this fundamental right.”
In pursuit of that goal, the organization assails the Church’s "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" and Catholic doctors and hospitals for following them. They thereby deny pregnant women, the Center asserts, “a range of reproductive health services including surgical sterilization, family planning, infertility treatment and abortion.” More, of current interest the Center supports the Obama mandate for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient health insurance coverage for religiously affiliated institutions such as Notre Dame.
There might be legitimate questions as to one or another of the remaining organizations, but the extent of the University’s tolerance is to be tested by the most, not the least, objectionable that it is willing to list.
Finally, the reason for not delisting is unfathomable, at least for us. There is no issue of academic freedom, the organizations have not asked to be listed, Notre Dame owes them nothing, and the students are free to take internships wherever they wish.
There is nothing at stake, that is, except Notre Dame’s reputation as a Catholic university, which has suffered another blow.
A word about the Political Science Department. Our criticism should not be taken as directed to the department, a solid academic unit that has significant strength in terms of Catholic identity. We have no reason to believe that the matter was committed to faculty vote and believe it is not of the sort that ordinarily would be.
Indeed, the department deserves high praise for bringing to Notre Dame next year from Georgetown an outstanding Catholic Scholar, Dr. Patrick Deneen, the founder and director of Georgetown’s splendid Toqueville Forum. As his arresting open statement explaining his decision suggests, the move will be a serious loss to Georgetown and a major gain for Notre Dame.
On the other hand, we do not suppose the chairman acted on his own. Both Fr. Jenkins and Provost Burish received copies of our letter to the chairman and doubtless were familiar with the matter from many other sources. In addition, since the prospective policy evidently will govern all Arts & Letters departments, someone in an A&L leadership position was probably involved. In short, the disposition of the matter can, we believe, properly be assigned to the university.
Let us hope that this works out well in the end.
The Deneen statement. Read the Deneen statement and take heart. In part: “Notre Dame has recruited me explicitly because they regard me as someone who can be a significant contributor to its mission and identity, particularly the Catholic identity of the institution .... It has been a hard and disappointing conclusion to acknowledge that my work at Georgetown was more appreciated and supported by the leadership and a broader swath of faculty in the Notre Dame community than by that of Georgetown.”
Komen and Notre Dame. Several years ago we spotlighted the basketball team’s fund-raising for the Komen fund and Komen’s support of Planned Parenthood. So far as we can tell, the team shifted to a different beneficiary the next year.
But Komen is not so easily shaken at Notre Dame. Despite Komen’s recent notorious divorce from and shotgun remarriage to Planned Parenthood, the University is advertising the women's lacrosse team’s April 28 fundraiser for Komen and is inviting donations. (With a different voice, the Center for Ethics and Culture lamented Komen’s spiritless retreat.)
Bishop Jenky, Notre Dame, and the Obama mandate for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient health insurance coverage. In his homily delivered at a Mass during a 'Call to Catholic Men of Faith' event, Bishop Daniel C. Jenky, C.S.C., one of the Fellows of the University and a member of the board of directors, compared President Obama with Hitler and Stalin in terms of hostility to religious liberty.
"Hitler and Stalin ... would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path."
One hundred Notre Dame faculty members have called for Bishop Jenky's resignation as a Fellow and board member.
Father Jenkins has yet to endorse the bishops' condemnation of President Obama's meretricious "accommodation" respecting the mandate for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient health insurance coverage.
Notre Dame should immediately strike from the Political Science website list of internship possibilities the names of all organizations whose missions include aims hostile to fundamental Church teachings and should develop a policy against encouraging, funding, or giving credit for internships in such organizations. If you agree and would like to help with our mission of Catholic renewal at Notre Dame, please click here. | <urn:uuid:d235f950-4959-42c6-be07-1e77226e40ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sycamoretrust.org/bulletins/120421.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960326 | 1,680 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Schmotzer's Office to Assist with Obtaining Voter IDs
'There are no cases of voter impersonation fraud in Pennsylvania, so I am glad to see these changes being made to help people vote.'
State Rep. Martin Michael Schmotzer, an opponent of Pennsylvania's controversial voter ID law, is encouraging local residents to take advantage of statewide programs that could assist them in obtaining valid identification for voting purposes.
Pennsylvanians can obtain non-driver's license photo identification cards for free at any of the state's Department of Transportation driver's license centers, Schmotzer points out in a news release from his office.
"In addition," Schmotzer says, "the Pennsylvania Department of Health is now issuing free birth certificates if you need one to get an ID that will be acceptable for voting. The health department is also giving refunds to those who have already obtained their birth certificate for voting and paid the $10 fee.
"The certificate must have been issued between March 14, 2012, through June 12, 2012."
More information about obtaining a Pennsylvania birth certificate for voting is available here.
"I believe these developments amount to an admission by the (Gov. Tom) Corbett administration that the voter ID law, which the Republican-controlled Legislature passed and the governor signed, was a mistake," Schmotzer says, "and they are trying to backtrack.
"There are no cases of voter impersonation fraud in Pennsylvania, so I am glad to see these changes being made to help people vote."
According to information released by the Department of State, registered voters who do not have verification documents necessary to get a Pennsylvania non-driver photo ID will be able to obtain a new Department of State ID card for free at any PennDOT driver's license center.
The documentation needed to obtain a Pennsylvania non-driver photo ID includes:
- Social Security card
- One of the following: Birth certificate with a raised seal, valid U.S. passport, certificate of U.S. citizenship or certificate of naturalization
- Two proofs of residency, such as a lease agreement, current utility bills, mortgage documents, a W-2 form, tax records, bank statements and/or credit card bills
College students may also use room assignment paperwork and one bill with their dormitory address on it.
If a voter cannot produce any of these documents, he or she is eligible for a free Department of State ID card. The Department of State ID card is valid for voting purposes only and is intended only for people who cannot produce proper documentation for other types of photo ID.
Registered voters who want the new Department of State ID card must provide a name, address, Social Security number, proof of residency and previous name and/or address if changed within the past 12 months.
"This new ID may help people whose names have changed due to a recent marriage, for example," Schmotzer says.
An applicant must complete a Department of State ID application form and sign a document affirming that he or she is a registered voter but has no other form of identification that can be used for voting. Once the voter's information is verified, the person will receive the free Department of State ID card, which is valid for 10 years.
Additional information on voting and the types of photo IDs that can be used at election polls this November is available online at www.votespa.com.
Schmotzer, a Democrat whose 22nd House District of Pennsylvania includes Brookline, said that any resident of the 22nd District who encounters problems with obtaining a voter ID or the documents needed for a voter ID should contact his office at 412-343-2094. | <urn:uuid:0a465ecf-91f6-4907-afeb-f577981cde38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dormont-brookline.patch.com/articles/schmotzers-office-to-assist-with-obtaining-voter-ids | 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 | 0.94864 | 747 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Information security professionals are among the most stable of tech workers. They are paid well, the majority got raises last year — 20% of them of more than 5%. Plus the demand for security specialists will grow 11% annually for the next five years.
Those are findings from the most recent survey of IT security professionals conducted by (ISC)2, the world’s largest not-for-profit information security professional organization. More than 12,000 members and non-members took part in the biennial Global Information Security Workforce Study, reporting on matters ranging from salaries and workload to their views on the current state of information security and protection.
Among the key findings:
- Average salary globally is $92,835. Salaries in the developed countries of the Americas are among the highest in the world, with 79% of workers earning more than $80,000 annually.
- Worker stability is high; 83% of the global security workforce had no job change in the last year, a percentage virtually unchanged from the previous survey in 2011. Only 11% reported leaving a job for another employer in the last year.
- Both staff tech security specialists and C-suite executives agree their organizations have too few workers doing the job. Remarkably, more executives believe that — two-thirds of the respondents — than do the workers themselves (56%).
- One reason for the under-staffing: a shortage of qualified workers. Security analysts, said 47% of respondents, topped the list, followed by security engineering-planning and design (3%), and security auditor (31%).
- 30% of all respondents, and 34% of executives expect spending on personnel to increase this year, while about the same percent of respondents expect increases for training and education.
In hiring security specialists, technical knowledge is essential as might be predicted, but even more important, the survey found, is a broad understanding of the security field and communication skills. Respondents in different industries ranked some skills differently, but across the world technical and communication skills and a broad understanding of the field always ranked in the top three.
The survey also asked the world’s security specialists what most worries them. Hackers, state-sponsored spying, which has been much in the news recently, and cyber-terrorism all made the list, but not at the top. Of most concern is the vulnerability of the various applications and programs — many of them commercially popular products most of us use. Next is the malware Internet users get tricked into downloading, followed by mobile devices and internal users, meaning company employees. | <urn:uuid:11c7d3b8-4dc0-4f79-aeff-85de153f13ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ere.net/2013/02/26/it-security-professionals-well-paid-and-staying-where-they-are/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954424 | 524 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Security forces and bystanders tried to extinguish the flames before the man was rushed to hospital, witnesses said.
Officials named the man as 27-year-old Adel Khadri and said he hails from an extremely poor family in Jendouba in northwestern Tunisia. He arrived in the capital a few months ago to look for work.
Witnesses told AFP that Khadri eked out a living peddling cigarettes in the streets of Tunis.
"This is a young man who sells cigarettes because of unemployment. Allahu Akbar! (God is greatest!)," he shouted before immolating himself on Habib Bourguiba avenue in front of the municipal building, according to a witness.
He was still conscious when he was rushed to the Ben Arous hospital in a Tunis suburb by emergency services, the witness said.
"His life is not in danger but he has third-degree burns to the head and the back," said emergency services spokesman Mongi Khadhi said, adding that Khadri was under constant medical surveillance.
"He was demoralised," said Khadhi, "His father died four years ago. He has three brothers and the family is very poor."
Interior ministry spokesman Khaled Tarrouche too attributed Khadri's desperate action to poverty.
"He is unemployed and came to Tunis a few months ago. He was very fragile, psychologically broken, and that is why he set himself on fire."
Passers-by rushed to douse the flames but not before Khadri had suffered serious burn wounds.
Initially a hospital source said that "only his feet were not burned."
He also quoted Khadri as telling a doctor: "I am sick and nobody wants to take care of me."
Habib Bourguiba avenue in central Tunis is the Mecca of the 2011 revolution that ousted former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and is lined with vendors trying to scrape together a living.
The number of people committing suicide or attempting to take their own lives has multiplied in Tunisia since a young street vendor set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, in a drastic act of protest against police harassment.
Mohamed Bouazizi's death in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a mass uprising that toppled ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali the following month and touched off the Arab Spring uprisings.
Economic and social difficulties were the key factors that brought down Ben Ali's regime and two years since his ouster unemployment and poverty continue to plague the north African country.
The simmering discontent has in the past few months sparked strikes and protests which often degenerate into violence. In November around 300 people were wounded in a week of clashes with police in the northwest of the country.
Tunisia has also been struggling to emerge from a political crisis exacerbated by the daylight murder on February 6 murder of Chokri Belaid, a leftist opposition leader.
Later Tuesday, premier-designate Ali Larayedh was to seek a vote of confidence on his new cabinet line-up from lawmakers in the National Constituent Assembly. | <urn:uuid:f054975f-4cc4-4589-bf65-7f3a7024c26b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tunisia/9924660/Poverty-stricken-Tunisian-man-sets-himself-alight.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98113 | 643 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Low-cost Aakash tablet from India not living up to its billing
Touted as a low-cost technology for even the world's poorest people, the $50 price tag attached to a highly publicized Indian mobile tablet doesn't appear to be enough to make it a success. According to media reports, India's Aakash is struggling to make headway with its tablet venture.
The New York Times reported on Dec. 29 that DataWind, the London-based company run by Indian-born entrepreneurs that won the contract to build the devices, is "deeply in the red" based on financial statements filed with British regulators. In addition, the newspaper said DataWind would not even come close to meeting a year-end deadline for shipping 100,000 tablets promised to India's colleges and universities. Making matters still worse, despite DataWind's' pledge to manufacture the tablets in India, most of the 10,000 or so tablets delivered through early December were made in China.
Consequently, according to experts quoted in the Times article, the project's "entire premise —that India can make a cheap tablet computer that will somehow make up for failures of the country's crippled education system — is fundamentally flawed."
A Dec. 20 Tech2 article says the government of India's ambitious Aakash project to provide low cost Android-powered tablets to Indian students has "been embroiled in controversy right from the word go." The article details a litany of Aakash's snafus including the fact that the original Aakash version 1.0 had a slew of outdated specs, a gigantic number of pre-orders (over 3 million which haven't yet been delivered), and faulty shipped devices, among other problems.
Nevertheless, despite Aakash's troubles, the Times of India reported Jan. 7 that the Indian government is looking to create a software ecosystem to continuously release applications for Aakash, primarily related to learning and education. According to the article, approximately 25 academic institutions and private companies in India have signed up to build Aakash apps, with plans to double that number by March.
India tries again for low-cost tablet | <urn:uuid:89ec2b31-ebfa-49ac-a83a-42065037231f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fiercemobilegovernment.com/story/low-cost-aakash-tablet-india-not-living-its-billing/2013-01-09 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964046 | 438 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Welcome to our Database Search Zone. As an Oxford Ancestors customer you are entitled to Full Membership of the Zone with unlimited access to our extensive databases and the opportunity to make contact with other customers with matching results. Please remember that you will need to log in before each session.
Oxford Ancestors customers from before October 2008 need to register by following the link on the right or by CLICKING HERE before accessing the databases.
Oxford Genetic Atlas Project
You can now search the results of the Oxford Genetic Atlas Project (OGAP) in both our mitochondrial and Y-chromosome databases. This project, which ran from 1996 to 2000, involved ten thousand volunteers from all over Britain and the results formed the basis of Prof Sykes' 2006 book Blood of the Isles (published in the US as Saxons, Vikings and Celts).
You will recognise an entry from OGAP by the acronym in the "Country" column of your search results. Britain was divided into geographical regions which appear under the DKPA (Deepest Known Paternal Ancestor) or DKMA (Deepest Known Maternal Ancestor) columns depending on which of the databases you are searching. Assigned maternal clans are the same throughout the database but paternal clan assignments differ due to the earlier numerical classification system in use at the time the OGAP samples were analysed. These are approximately equivalent to the current system as follows: 1 = Oisin (R1b), 2 = Wodan (I), 3 = Sigurd (R1a), 9 = Re (J) and 21 = Eshu (E).
Unlike our customers who opt to share their results, all OGAP subjects are anonymous. | <urn:uuid:a3330e84-d5e8-4c2a-aeb5-ea0e91db8017> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oxfordancestors.com/content/view/72/105 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935257 | 339 | 1.6875 | 2 |
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