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Off-Campus Study For Mathematics Majors
Mathematics Immersion Programs. These are programs in which the main focus is mathematics, particularly pure mathematics. Students typically take all of their courses in mathematics, except for a course in language or culture in the overseas programs. If you are interested in continuing your study of mathematics after Wabash, these programs will give you a taste of what graduate school will be like. If you are interested in being simultaneously immersed in both mathematics and a foreign culture, the first two programs are for you.
Other Overseas Programs. A number of mathematics majors have participated in the following two programs. In these programs students take a more typical selection of courses, probably one in mathematics and three or four in other subjects. For more information on these and other programs, see the brochures in the Off Campus Study Office. You are not limited to these.
Applied Mathematics Programs. If you have a second major in one of the natural sciences or economics, you might consider one of these programs. They are like summer research internships for the most part, but you also take one or two classes on some of them. Some of them also have summer internship programs.
Talk with the faculty about their "off campus study" experiences. Many of us have had experiences studying or doing research abroad or in special programs.
Off-Campus Study in Computer Science
A variety of opportunities are available to several students in computer science. These take place during the summer months as wells as throughout the academic year. During the junior year, some students have spent a semester involved in computer science research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory while during the summer, students have worked as interns at other academic or research institutions. These internships are often funded by organizations such as the National Science Foundation. Wabash College also funds a number of summer interns who conduct research on campus during the summer months under the guidance of a Wabash faculty member. | <urn:uuid:f32d428b-6074-452d-a598-a1090619b05f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wabash.edu/academics/math/research | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965273 | 394 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Thales and ASV to develop Unmanned Minewarfare Vehicle
Thales UK has signed a contract with Autonomous Surface Vehicles Ltd (ASV Ltd) to develop a re-configurable Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) to meet the challenges of future off-board Mine Countermeasures (MCM) operations.
The vessel has been jointly designed to meet a number of key requirements and drivers:
- Deployable from military platforms, craft of opportunity and from shore/harbour
- Air transportable
- Payload flexibility for all MCM systems – unmanned underwater vehicles, towed sonar, disposal systems, minesweeping
- Stable platform with excellent slow speed and towing capabilities
- Highly reliable & cost effective
The low signature USV, which is 11.5m in length and 3.6m in beam, will have a maximum speed of around 25 knots. The vehicle is now under construction and will be undergoing acceptance trials later this year. A series of payload trials will be conducted from early 2013 onwards, drawing on experience gained in previous off-board system programmes.
ASV Ltd is a UK company and part of Global Fusion, a privately owned international marine services group. Formed in 1998, ASV Ltd provides rugged, reliable and effective unmanned systems using cutting edge marine technology from its operating base near Portsmouth.
Dan Hook, Managing Director at ASV, in welcoming this contract says: “We are pleased to be developing such an advanced capability with Thales UK and are confident in the system’s performance for the wide range of roles.”
Phil Naybour, head of Thales UK’s naval business, says: “As the MCM capability integrator of over half the world’s in-service fleet of minehunters, Thales brings many years of experience and understanding of mine warfare operations alongside world-class sensors and systems.
“As we head into an era that heralds a step change in the delivery of mine warfare, moving from dedicated MCMVs to off-board systems and sensors, Thales’s extensive capabilities in mission system integration are being brought to bear.
“The Unmanned Surface Vehicle will be central to the success of these new concepts of operation in mine warfare; being able to demonstrate and de-risk both the vehicle and its potential payloads is a clear benefit to both our customers and ourselves. We welcome the news of this contract signature with ASV as it represents a critical step towards the delivery of future off-board MCM capability.”
Unmanned Maritime Systems for Defense and Security: UUV and USV Current Vendors, Products, Markets, ...
Source : Thales Group (Paris: HO.PA) | <urn:uuid:b35d5cb9-a109-4093-9b84-9a2895651c9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asdnews.com/news-43636/Thales_and_ASV_to_develop_Unmanned_Minewarfare_Vehicle.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938617 | 566 | 1.539063 | 2 |
photography by Rich-Joseph Facun
It’s the start of a day that will take him, as most days do, 20 miles to the west, where he will partake of another round of animated discourse in a darkened urban movie theater with like-minded film enthusiasts.
This is the yin and the yang of Phillips – a man who in his youth turned to Eastern philosophies, hoping to find meaning and purpose. In a sense, he is still searching.
As Phillips and Greenspan walk the beach, there’s a hint of fall in the air. Phillips’ dogs, Lily and Sophia, rescue animals from the Norfolk SPCA, seem to sense something.
“Dogs don’t just read our emotions of the
moment,” Phillips says. “They read the whole history of our emotions. They feel it, they act it out.”
If Lily and Sophia can indeed divine their master’s emotions, they know that he is conflicted, a man confronted by a dilemma that will profoundly affect his life’s work.
For 35 years he and Thom Vourlas, his friend since childhood, have breathed life into the Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk, one of only about 250 single-screen art-film theaters still operating nationwide.
Phillips and Vourlas must soon make a decision that will determine if the Naro will continue to operate. As early as next year, the movie industry will stop using 35mm film, the standard for more than a century and the only format the Naro uses. It will be replaced with movies in a digital format.
For the Naro, that will mean an expenditure of about $75,000, money that is not in their budget. Phillips and Vourlas have not decided what they will do. Phillips recently turned 62 and became eligible for Social Security. Vourlas is also 62, and a grandfather.
“This is happening at a very bad time,” said
Phillips’ wife, Angela. “If it had happened 15 or 20 years ago it wouldn’t have been as difficult.”
Legions of Naro fans are dismayed that the screen in the 76-year-old theater could soon go dark. They view it as the soul of Ghent. Several dozen pledged on Facebook in September that they would be willing to fund an ad-hoc campaign to save it.
Without the Naro, Ghent “would slowly begin to wither,” Angela says. The Naro “attracts street musicians. It brings life to Ghent.”
Tench H. Phillips III sits at a desk in his large, cluttered office above Chipotle restaurant next door to the Naro on Colley Avenue. He’s a lean, intense man with a head of unruly graying hair, dressed down in shorts and plaid shirt. Among the items scattered about the room is a dog dish. Phillips has just finished ordering supplies for the Naro’s concession stand. Now he’s talking about the forces that have shaped his life.
His father and uncle both owned local auto dealerships, and Phillips worked summers starting at age 13 washing cars at his dad’s businesses on Military Highway and Little Creek Road – “long enough to discover I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life.” His uncle, G. Conoly Phillips, was a longtime Norfolk city councilman and often a vocal champion of religious causes in the community.
Even as a young man Phillips was something of a lovable apostate in a family that hewed to conservative Christian values.
“They would say, ‘He’s the smart one, the arty one.’ But I was just the curious one,” he says.
His days of social consciousness date to the Vietnam War, a conflict he felt was based on “lies and insanity.” It was an era during which college students were granted deferment from the draft. He studied engineering at Georgia Tech, then returned to Norfolk to pursue a pre-med curriculum at Old Dominion University.
But his quest to become a doctor ended in disillusionment. While working during the summer at a hospital psychiatric ward, he was repulsed by the treatment of patients there.
“The doctors would give them meds and spend five minutes with them and leave. They used electric shock therapy. I got the idea of becoming a doctor out of my system.”
He set out on a spiritual quest that took him to Europe and South America. He dabbled in Buddhism and shamanism, intrigued by concepts of alternative consciousness, including plant medicines that Native Americans “used for psychic and spiritual healing.”
In 1975 he moved to Boulder, Colorado, and enrolled in Naropa University to study Buddhist philosophy. He became energized while sitting in on a six-week course taught by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
“He was always authentic, impassioned and caring – and never put on an air of superiority over his students,” Phillips wrote in a 2010 essay. “His class teachings were at times like enigmatic prose and he broached wildly eclectic subjects in a running stream of consciousness. … I was an attentive student, much more than I had been as an undergrad studying systems engineering.”
He returned to Ghent within a year, “having been inspired by the free-wheeling energy of an expanded human potential movement.”
In 1977, intellectual and cultural crosscurrents were stirring in a newly revitalized Ghent. Phillips and Vourlas saw potential in the old theater. They decided to rent it and open an art-film house. Frankie Blue, a longtime local movie-house impresario who was then turning a buck showing porn films at the Wells Theatre in downtown Norfolk, warned them that the city would not support an art movie house.
“He said, ‘This town will break your heart,’ ” Vourlas recalls.
But they have proved him wrong; 35 years later, restaurants and shops have come and gone along Colley Avenue, but the only things that have changed at the Naro have been the ticket prices and the titles on the marquee. The theater’s halcyon days were the 1980s, before cable TV, home theaters that featured high-definition images, and the Internet, Netflix and Hulu.
When the theater needed major repairs in 2001, the city of Norfolk and Naro supporters stepped up to help. The city provided $70,000 and the public raised $150,000. Each donor was given an engraved placard on one of the theater’s 500 seats. Today, even as attendance has fallen off, the two men continue their labor of love at the Naro, which seems to have found its voice – Phillips’ – possibly channeling Allen Ginsberg.
Every Wednesday night at 7:15, the theater shows documentaries that tackle social issues or
examine human aspirations and frailties. Afterward, Phillips or experts on the evening’s subjects host debates. Vourlas calls the events “talk movies.” The subjects have included an art project created at the world’s largest garbage dump in Brazil; a behind-the-scenes look at the Madoff Ponzi scheme; Phil Ochs’ quest to balance his musical fame with his passion for social justice; the controversy surrounding proposed coal-fired power plants like the one in Surry County; how The New York Times is coping in a radically changing media environment; and an examination of a phenomenon that is killing off honeybees at an alarming rate.
Phillips lends support to many social causes, including animal rights (it is not a coincidence that the company he and Vourlas operate is called Art Repertory Films, or ARF). He supports the Occupy movements.
But he disavows any definition as an activist except “media activist.”
“I view the theater as a small press,” he says.
The long-running relationship between Phillips and Vourlas has prospered perhaps because each has a clearly defined role. Vourlas, with an accounting background, is the “nuts-and-bolts guy” who pays the bills, deals with film distributors and produces the theater’s bi-monthly calendar.
Phillips provides the karmic vision.
“What Tench does,” says Vourlas, “helps define us as the force we are in the community.”
The $75,000 question now, however, is how long that force will endure. A Wednesday night “talk movie” that played in September had an ominous title: “Side by Side: Can Film Survive Our Digital Future?”
Aaron Burgess is busy in the Naro’s projection booth, preparing for a midweek matinee showing off the Jack Black comedy Bernie. This is the way it’s always been done by Burgess and other projectionists: They thread a reel of 35mm film stock onto the projector’s take-up reel, then start the show.
The image that flickers to life on the screen below emanates from one of two Simplex projectors sitting side by side in the booth high above. As the film in projector No. 1 begins to run out, projector No. 2 whirs into action in a seamless maneuver the audience never notices, and the second half of the movie begins.
Just outside the projection room, Hysteria, a comedy about the birth of the vibrator in Victorian England, still sits in its shipping crate in eight reels. That film, like the one now showing, will eventually be loaded onto the theater’s two 22-inch reels for screening.
Burgess is one of three projectionists at the Naro. A lifelong cinephile, he’s wearing jeans and an
orange T-shirt with the likeness of a cobra flicking its tongue.
In the digital future, he says, his job of 11 years may become obsolete. “You’ll just need somebody to load the thumb drive or the hard drive” onto a computer that will produce the image on the screen.
He rues the coming change. “There’s nothing like watching 2001 in 70mm,” he says. “And did you know the Library of Congress archives movies on 35mm film?”
The changeover from film to digital is happening rapidly, driven primarily by finances: Digital is simply cheaper than film. The cost of silver, a key component in the processing of film, has soared in the past few years, for instance.
Norway, Luxembourg and Hong Kong have already gone all-digital, according to Film Journal
International. Most large theaters in the U.S. have made the conversion. The National Association of Theatre Owners estimates that one in five art-film houses like the Naro will go dark rather than convert.
And as for the Naro, “We’re fighting it. We’re not investing,” says a defiant Phillips. “We don’t want to pay a penalty fee just to stay in business.”
But he admits that he and Vourlas ultimately may have to yield to industry pressures or shutter the old theater.
“There is a chance the Naro will close. We don’t want anyone to take us for granted.”
Phillips says he and his fellow Boomers may be the last generation that reveres the time-worn
verities of genuine filmmaking – storytelling, dialogue, character development. The market for feature films today is 14- to 24-year-old males who create a demand mostly for action films and broad comedies, he says.
But there’s more at stake than just the movies themselves. In Veer magazine, he wrote, “Ghent’s multi-culturalism and progressive values didn’t just happen in a vacuum, but were cultivated through large doses of the liberal arts provided by ODU, the area’s arts and performance groups, the Naro Cinema, Naro Video, and Prince Books.”
The way his wife tells it, Phillips was dragged kicking and screaming out of Ghent in the late ’90s. At the time they lived there, close enough to the Naro that he walked to work.
Someone had told her of the house on 62nd Street in Virginia Beach, but he refused to go with her to see it, “so I had to come by myself,” she says.
But now he has no regrets about the decision to embrace the suburban lifestyle he once reviled. The house is bright and airy with hardwood floors, skylights and a well-furnished kitchen where Angela perfects her gourmet recipes (she has published a cookbook and teaches cooking and yoga).
The backyard is awash in English ivy beneath a canopy of towering trees. “This is my sanctuary,” he says.
Every morning he and the dogs enjoy their sojourn at the Oceanfront, a five-minute walk away.
But as noon approaches, Phillips gets an itch to head into town. So he gets into one of the couple’s two matching white Mercedes purchased from the family dealership and drives to the Naro.
And that’s the way it should be, Angela Phillips says.
“He can’t just stay home.
“I don’t know what Ghent would do without the Naro. And I don’t know what Tench would do without the Naro.” | <urn:uuid:0d76bc9e-7da1-435a-948a-38db45009484> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.distinctionhr.com/2012/11/the-naros-tench-phillips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965208 | 2,881 | 1.632813 | 2 |
A deal would apparently end the state's attempts to force the company to collect sales taxes. Comptroller Susan Combs accused the company of ducking $269 million in sales taxes it should have paid from December 2005 to December 2009. The company threatened to close a warehouse operation in Irving that it said employed about 120 people.
The comptroller's office had no immediate comment about the talks.
"There are meetings going on, but I can't tell you much else about it," said state Rep. John Otto, R-Dayton. He's been involved in the online sales tax issue at the legislative level, but said he isn't directly involved in current negotiations.
This week, the company reached agreement in a similar dispute in Nevada and is reportedly negotiating sales tax agreements with other states. No hard estimates are available on what such an agreement would bring into the Texas treasury. In its lawsuit, the state put the annual number at about $70 million. In Nevada, where the sales tax ranges up to 8.1 percent, officials expect the Amazon deal to bring $16 million annually into state coffers.
Retailers with Texas operations have to charge sales taxes of up to 8.25 percent and argue that Amazon and other online retailers without brick-and-mortar stores here are gaining a price advantage by not collecting sales taxes from their customers.
"As long as they'll start collecting sales taxes this fiscal year or within the next four or five months, that's really what's important," Otto said. "We've got to level this playing field."
Customers, under state law, owe the tax whether the retailers collect it or not. But that law is widely ignored and rarely enforced, except when very large purchases are involved.
Amazon.com has said in corporate and court filings that the state's estimate of its tax liabilities are incorrect. And it has argued that it doesn't have the types of physical locations in Texas that would require it to collect taxes like other companies such as Apple or Barnes and Noble. The Legislature amended that so-called "nexus" requirement last year, specifically including facilities like the one Amazon.com was operating in north Texas.
Near the end of last legislative session, the company offered to invest $300 million in five or six warehouses employing 6,000 people in Texas, if the state would agree to let it go four-and-a-half more years without collecting sales taxes. It also agreed to print on each customer invoice how much those customers should pay in sales taxes, without agreeing to collect those taxes itself. Gov. Rick Perry, who had vetoed an early version of the nexus legislation, was in favor of that deal, but lawmakers wouldn't go along. South Carolina agreed last year to a five-year moratorium on collections. The company got a one-year moratorium in California.
"I told Susan [Combs] I just want a better deal than California got," Otto said.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at http://www.texastribune.org/texas-taxes/budget/amazon-comptroller-negotiating-sales-tax-deal/. | <urn:uuid:f9a3b744-15f7-4140-bc55-4a6655f6002e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bigcountryhomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=492402&nxd_237113_start=15 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975681 | 640 | 1.570313 | 2 |
By Sam Conner
Winslow School District Assistant Superintendent Lance Heister advised the school board last week that the solar power projects being constructed at no cost to the district would save an estimated $400,000 in 20 years of use.
Arizona Public Service (APS) Co. has received considerable federal money for grants such as the one the district received, and needed to use the funds or return them. Aneresco, formerly APS Energy Services, will build an 84,000 square foot solar panel unit east of the baseball field. There will be solar use on the main Winslow High School build-ings, with three electrical panels planned. There are meters to measure the usage.
Heister said that there may someday soon be solar panels used on a covered parking area similar to some others in Arizona such as at the Carl Hayden Veterans Administration Hospital in Phoenix.
Board members offered praise for Heister’s report on the solar power project, and saw this as an important asset for the district.
In other business Aug. 15, the board approved the hiring of Leland “Bubba” Billie and Quentin Hayes as eighth grade football coaches; Kyle Johnson and Anthony Petranovich, seventh grade football coaches; Brianna Conatser, seventh grade softball coach; Becky Barris, seventh grade basketball coach; Gina Williams, Winslow Junior High School Student Council sponsor; Cassie Schumacher, WJHS Honor Society; Kelli Fifelski, head WHS softball coach; Steve Sartain, freshman football coach; Cassandra Schumacher, stage manager at WHS; Karen Clay, emergency sub-stitute teacher; and April Jacot, sub and trip driver for the district.
A transfer was approved for Rudy Aragon from sub and trip driver to part-time bus driver for the district.
Approved as volunteers were Carlos Zamora and Daphne Barton as volunteer softball coaches, and Jason Hartnett as volunteer football coach at WJHS; and Leif Seed as volunteer cross country coach and Jim Keller as volunteer sub-stitute teacher at WHS.
The board approved acceptance of two musical instruments valued at $200 each from Cassie Schumacher for use at WJHS.
The sale of two used buses was authorized by the board.
Superintendent Doug Watson said that the district was in the process of purchasing a new bus and wishes to sell the old ones, which are around 20 years old and have high mileage.
Deletion of metals and precision metals courses at WHS was approved, as these are now part of the agriculture courses. Many of the concepts in these courses are taught in the agriculture courses.
Watson asked each board member to prioritize his or her top 10 legislative issues before the next meeting so that a consensus could be reached.
The first readings of a long list of Arizona School Boards Association policy advisories were heard.
Watson spoke briefly on most of the 21 items and said that some of them could be handled at the nest meeting, but that some would take two or more meetings.
By Sam Conner | <urn:uuid:46071869-306a-4f91-a3a5-fc09820205aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.azjournal.com/2012/08/21/solar-power-projects-may-save-winslow-schools-cold-cash/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966044 | 639 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The rollout of Reason Foundation's Annual Privatization Report 2011 continues today with the local government section, which provides an overview of the latest on privatization and public-private partnerships at the local level. Highlights include:
- 57 percent of city finance officers report their cities were less able to meet their financial needs in 2011 than in 2010 while general city revenues declined for the fifth straight year, according to the National League of Cities. This “new normal” fiscal condition is hitting local governments across the U.S. that continue to feel the squeeze of the prolonged economic downturn.
- Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and former White House Chief of Staff to President Obama, hit the ground running during his first year in office. He implemented managed competition for the city’s Blue Cart recycling program allowing private companies to compete with the public sector, the move is projected to provide Chicagoans cost-savings exceeding 50 percent. The city began outsourcing the water bill call center in summer 2011 and is considering outsourcing the collection of city ambulance fees to improve collection rates.
- Parking assets remain the hot item in local government privatization. Chicago and Indianapolis are realizing substantial gains from their reforms and were joined in 2011 by a host of cities (such as New York, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Memphis and Harrisburg) that are considering similar efforts.
- San Diego, California is finally implementing the managed competition mandate approved by voters in 2006. City employees won bids for the Publishing Services Department and Fleet Services Division, with new contracts expected to save y 30 percent ($5.2 million) and 13 percent ($22 million) respectively over the separate five-year contracts. Officials are also exploring street sweeping services, utilities call centers, street and sidewalk maintenance and landfill operations.
- Toronto Mayor Rob Ford championed efforts to privatize trash collection in District 2 could save residents anywhere from $35-$92 million over the course of the seven-year contract. Half the city’s trash collection is now provided by the private sector, allowing for cost and service comparison before further privatization.
- New mayors in Tulsa and Jacksonville have quickly moved to apply competitive forces to public service delivery. In Tulsa, Mayor Dewey Bartlett is implementing 1,134 strategic opportunities compiled by KPMG to realize cost savings, enhance revenue collection and improve efficiency. In Jacksonville, Mayor Alvin Brown appointed a new public-private partnership commissioner who will oversee a wide range of streamlining initiatives.
- Contract cities in Georgia continue evolve, with the latest improvement coming in the form split service contracts that saved taxpayers almost 30 percent, or over $7 million, in Sandy Springs for example.
- A 2011 survey conducted by American University found that 93 percent of city officials support government contracting with the private sector, and 63 believe that most public agencies do a good job at contract management.
- Jefferson County, Alabama filed the largest government bankruptcy in American history. The county held approximately $4.23 billion in debt owed to more than 5,000 creditors that traced back to a 1996 federal judge ruling that obligated the county to rebuild its sewer system.
» Annual Privatization Report 2011: Local Government [pdf, 1.7 MB] | <urn:uuid:2d2f6486-bfc6-4858-8229-bae6fda14391> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/blog/show/local-government-apr-2011-bp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939324 | 640 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Recently, an editorial in the Mercer Island Reporter suggested that public transit is a solution to Island traffic problems.
I agree with the Reporter on this point, but I don’t see the possibility of public transit as a solution unless our civil servants and elected officials start promoting public transit on the Island.
The City Council acknowledges public transit, but has done little to promote it on Mercer Island. While the city is spending heavily on a re-design of Island Crest Way, it is ignoring public transportation as a way to make Island Crest Way safer. The Council should not overlook ways to get Islanders out of their cars into safe, professionally driven public buses.
As far as I know, only one Council member has ever taken the bus to work, so ideas for public transit enhancement may be limited. Given the limited time available to the Council persons, it might make the most sense for them to create a citizen committee that provides them with recommendations for public transit improvement.
A neighborhood that selfishly tries to get better bus service for itself is much more effective for the county as a whole than one that doesn’t pay attention at all.
Metro and Sound Transit do provide bus service, but the philosophy of these organizations is biased against Mercer Island. They have determined that bus ridership is mainly determined by the affordability of parking at the destination. They think that Mercer Island as an affluent community can afford parking and thus is not a good candidate for bus service. (I have been told this directly by Metro.) As a result, we have token bus service as demonstrated by the empty, local shuttle buses one can see shunting around the Island. These bus routes with empty buses are provided by Metro, but they are not adapted to Island commuters, and so they remain empty.
Contrary to Metro thinking, Island commuters do have the potential to use public transit, but they demand convenience and speed while cost is not a major determinate.
Sound Transit is even less effective in providing public transit for Mercer Island.
The Eastlink Light Rail, for which the Island is losing the I-90 express lanes, will change nothing for any Islander who wants to use public transit. Any service that it will provide is already offered by the 550 bus route, so if you’re not using it now, don’t expect anything to change in the future.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but until our elected officials pay attention and require that Metro and Sound Transit provide usable service for Mercer Island, we will have to settle for “back of the bus” service from those organizations.
W. Clark Powell is a longtime resident and former candidate for City Council. | <urn:uuid:4048a3bd-1e0d-4a5d-a577-c0b2963134ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mi-reporter.com/opinion/173545541.html?mobile=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956677 | 545 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The Geography of Verbs: Commencement Remarks by Patti Digh ’82
My dear Friends,
A few years ago, a young family appeared on the Oprah show. A mom, a dad and two young kids. The mom was dying of cancer. And she had decided in her last months to make videotaped messages for her young children teaching them what she so wanted them to know as they grew older. Simple things like how to steam an artichoke, and more complex things like how to know when you’re in love. It was heartbreaking to watch her think ahead to leave these messages behind. What strength that must have taken.
And they also took the kids on all kinds of adventures, to swim with dolphins, to Disneyland and beyond, hoping to impress on the minds of these young kids the memory of this mother who wouldn’t be with them long.
After she died, Oprah welcomed the family back to her show and asked the kids a question: “What is one of your favorite memories of your mom?” I’m sure Oprah imagined they would talk about swimming with dolphins or one of their big adventures with her, but the little girl said very quietly, “I remember one time when my mom asked me to get her a bowl of Cheerios, and we ate them together.”
It’s not the big things, it’s those little ones. This is a big day, and it is an important one to celebrate, but truthfully, the bowls of Cheerios in your life – those quiet moments with people you love – are far more meaningful and memorable and grounding in the long run.
I asked my 8-year-old daughter, Tess, what I should say here today, and this is what she suggested I tell you: “Be free, have fun, bye.”
And while I imagine that 5-word speech might be more memorable than a longer one, I do feel compelled to elaborate just a bit on what Tess suggested.
My talk is entitled “The Geography of Verbs” for two reasons: First, I believe our lives are atlases of experience. The different maps we walk and live into – our work map, our friend map, our partner or spouse map, our passion map, the maps of our deep sadnesses and greatest joys, the maps of those shadow selves we dare not show anyone else – all these are loose pages, seemingly unconnected sometimes, and yet they are bound together in ways we cannot fully appreciate until we reach the end of this life. There is a messiness until the volume gets bound. And the binding often comes only with the ending, that last map into a frontier we might fear or welcome, but never know. A paradox, that.
A few years ago, my stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he died just 37 days later. Those last pages of his atlas of experience were bound very quickly. It was a time frame that shocked me, and humbled me. I woke up on day 38, the morning after he died, asking myself one question: “What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?” It is a question that changed my life. I recognized that I needed to change my maps, that the atlas I was living was an atlas created by other people, not me.
At that point, I had written two business books on global leadership and global diversity, and when each of those books appeared in my mailbox from the publisher, and I ripped into them to see my work made whole, I felt nothing. The first of them was a Fortune magazine “best business book” for the year it came out, so it was applauded by many people, but as I sat on my front porch with it in my hands – my first book! – I felt nothing. I knew after my stepfather’s death that I needed to create my own maps, find my own voice, follow my own heart.
“Map-making is almost as old as human beings,” writes John Noble Wilford in his book Mapmakers. “No one knows where or for what purpose someone got the first idea to draw a sketch to communicate a sense of place, some sense of here in relation to there.”
Where is your here right now? And where is your there? How can we map between those places, through the gorgeous place in which you sit today – this liminal, in-between space that is so potent, and so feared. I believe these liminal spaces are where the power is. On a map they might appear as a desert, but in a desert there is much life and much learning.
We orienteer through our lives like explorers, or not. We leap, or we don’t. We see the space at the edge of our seeing as either a boundary – or horizon. And explorers are only explorers if they don’t know. Safety is not part of the explorer’s world – it is not knowing that forms their ground truth. That’s what it means to explore and to map new places.
If our lives are maps waiting to be drawn, the longitude and latitude of those human maps are story. As Jerome Bruner has said, “We are story-making animals. We make meaning of our lives through story. We tell the stories of our travels from here to there, both literal and metaphoric. We journey into dark caves and bright sunlit mountain tops in our lives – and our lives are made up of the stories we tell about those journeys – and what we bring back from those places, and how we are changed by them, just as your journey here to Guilford has changed you.
And as writer Robert Olen Butler has said, “The definition of story is a yearning meeting an obstacle.” The story of our lives is the story of what we wish for and the obstacles we must overcome and learn from in order to get there. But we try to avoid those obstacles – and yet they are vital to our story moving forward. Little Red Riding Hood needs what character to be a compelling story? The wolf. But we try to minimize the wolf in our lives, keep it in a cubicle far, far away from us, ignore it, deny the wolf – when the wolf is the catalyst for movement forward in the story.
The verbs we live – that is, the actions we take – create the landscape of our lives. The verbs we live, the actions we take, the story we frame over those actions – all those things together create the structure of our land – those valleys and mountains of our atlas of experience. And like any hike up any mountain or through any landscape, the process is messy while you’re in it, and there is just no way you can see a clear path, not until you’re finished. So it is okay to be lost. That is what I’m telling you. It’s okay to be lost and not know – because that’s what learning is, that’s what life is.
The great and beautiful physicist Herman von Helmholtz talked about something he called “the royal road.” The royal road is the straight line back to where you started that you can only see once you reach the top of the mountain. In the journey up, you zig-zag back and forth, and it isn’t a straight line.
Three short stories with three verbs:
Squeeze in next to someone arm to arm
The first is a story about the Jungian analyst and writer Marion Woodman.
During a stay in India, Marion became very sick with dysentery, captive in her hotel room for weeks. Finally, desperate to escape the room, she gingerly made her way to the hotel foyer one afternoon to sit and write a letter to her husband. Sitting near the end of a long, empty couch, she began to write.
Soon, though there were many other seats available, a very large brown woman came and squeezed between Marion and the end of the couch, so close that their arms were touching, so close it made it difficult for Marion to write.
Marion scooted away, angry at the invasion of her space. The woman scooted closer, pushing up against her. “Every time I moved, she moved,” Marion said, “until we ended up at the other end of the couch.”
Once she stopped moving away, Marion realized what a nice, big, warm arm the woman had, and so they sat, a thin bird of a sickly white woman and a big brown woman, arm to arm. Not sharing a common language, they couldn’t speak, but sat in silence. Marion gave in to the broad warm arm, the presence of the other, and relaxed into her.
The next day, she went again to the hotel foyer to write. And, again, the woman came and sat touching her, next to her, silently. And the third day. And the fourth day, as Marion’s health improved.
This couch dance continued for a week. And one day, a man appeared as the two women finished their silent, warm-armed vigil.
“You’re all right now. My wife won’t come back tomorrow,” he said to Marion, nodding toward her couch compatriot. “Your wife?,” she thought to herself, startled at his intimacy. “Why is she here in the first place?”
She was unprepared for his quiet and simple answer.
“I saw you were dying and I sent her to sit with you. I knew the warmth of her body would bring you back to life,” he said.
It took a moment for the magnitude of his message and the enormity of what these two strangers had done for her to sink in.
“She did save my life,” Marion said quietly in recounting the story. “That this woman would take the time to sit with me…and, most importantly, that I could receive it…” That is relatedness.”
That is what it means to hold presence for others.
So the first verb is to squeeze in next to someone, arm to arm – to hold presence for others.
Follow your desire lines
In the park where we play, there are nicely laid-out concrete paths leading from the swings to the picnic tables, from the castle to the soccer field, from the water fountain to the bridge. And then there are the real paths, the dirt ones, the ones that shoot out from the concrete to connect where people really go. In the business of landscape architecture, these impromptu, unofficial, renegade paths have a poetic, wonderful name.
They’re called “desire lines.” Desire lines indicate a yearning to go our own way, to make a new path, to see the results of our own agency through space. Some have suggested that desire lines are an ultimate expression of human longing and natural human purpose. As Frank Zappa has said, “Without deviation, progress is not possible.”
Thanks to the generosity of my publisher, Globe Pequot Press, headquartered in none other than Guilford, Connecticut, every graduate here has received a copy of my latest book, “What I Wish for You: Simple Wisdom for a Happy Life.” I’d like to read a short excerpt from that book to explain what following your desire lines looks like, a piece by a woman named Carol Sanders, who writes, in part: “Follow the idea that calls you. As you start on your own life’s passage, follow the idea that makes you wake in the morning without an alarm, that calls you to scribble ideas on napkins and scrap paper and to lose all sense of time, that makes your heart beat faster at every corner with the endless possibilities.”
It’s great to have a map. But don’t forget to follow your desire lines, whether they are on the map or not.
Look over the edge
The son of one of my husband’s colleagues was killed recently while rock climbing. A renowned climber, Pete Absolon has gone with a friend for a challenging climb, but not a serious one. He had a six-year-old daughter at home, and wasn’t taking any changes. Right in the middle of a conversation as they climbed, something came hurtling down from above. There was no warning, his friend recalled. Just a sudden crack, and then he saw Pete hanging from the ropes, staring straight ahead. “His face was perfect,” he said, “but I just knew he was dead.”
This would be a tragic story even if the rock has simply come loose and fallen on its own. It is all the more tragic because the rock was thrown by someone on the ledge above them. Only after throwing the rock did the young man look over the ledge and see two men in white helmets, 200 feet beneath him. And at the same moment he registered their presence, the plummeting rock struck Pete directly on the head.
We must see ourselves as part of an intricate ecosystem. Before you throw that rock, look over the edge.
Hold presence for others
Follow your desire lines
Look over the edge
All of these require love: love for others, love your yourself, and love for community.
As the great 21st century philosopher, Johnny Depp, has said, “There are four questions of value in life … What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.”
Love is the most important verb.
Change your verbs and you will change the landscape of your life:
Instead of knowing, I hope you will question.
Instead of accumulating, I hope you will give.
Instead of playing to win, I hope you will play to learn.
Instead of competing, I hope you will collaborate.
Instead of hating, I hope you will love.
Instead of remaining silent about inequities, I hope you will speak up.
Instead of despairing, I hope you will be happy in advance.
Instead of fleeing, I hope you will walk straight into all the days of your lives.
Instead of avoiding, I hope you will sit next to someone arm to arm.
Instead of diminishing, I hope you will know, deeply, that every human being you meet is as fully human as you are.
Instead of asking, ‘what will I get from this’, ask ‘what am I bringing to this’?
In addition to working, play.
In addition to protecting, open.
In addition to saving, give.
In addition to dreaming, do.
In addition to doing, dream.
Because it is your dream that matters now. Don’t feel panicked if you don’t know what that dream is yet. It is like those old roadside signs that used to spell out an advertisement one sign at a time as you went down the highway. While you’re navigating the landscape, the atlas of your life, the signs will come to you one by one. The way they connect isn’t known until you get to the last sign. The map is only complete when you stand at the final page of the atlas.
David Orr has written: “The plain fact is that the world does not need more successful people, but it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.”
I would ask you to choose being significant over being successful.
Wisdom sits in places. And it is clear that Guilford College has been for 175 years a place in which wisdom sits. But it doesn’t remain here, that wisdom. It wanders through landscapes unknown and unmarked, doesn’t it? And the wisdom that sits in this place now sits in you. I hope you will follow the desire lines of your life, through the geography of all those verbs that will make up your life, knowing deeply and fully – and without a doubt – that the wisdom from this place goes with you as you create your own atlas of experience.
My older daughter, Emma, is with me here today. When Emma was six and in the first grade, I picked her up from school at the end of the first week and we stopped by my husband’s bookstore. He came running out and said, excitedly, “How was school today, honey?”
She answered immediately and very happily: “I had my first test today!” Oh, good, my husband and I were thinking, a whole lifetime of testing has just opened up for you! Of course, what was our first question? “How’d you do?” What’s the bottom line, we both wondered. Again, without hesitation, Emma shouted, “I got 30 percent!” The body language between me and my husband was undeniable. We were looking over this tiny girl in the backseat at each other thinking, “Oh my god, she’s an idiot!”
I’m thinking, how hard could the first grade be? Wouldn’t they make it really possible to succeed on your first test? I nearly said the first thing that came to me, which was “Oh, honey, you must feel terrible.” But instead, what I did say, through some divine guidance, was “How did that make you feel?” “I GOT SOME RIGHT!” she shouted.
What a great way to see the world. I’m not suggesting that you shoot for 30 percent, but as you leave on your next journey, you’ll get some right, and you’ll get some wrong. Here’s another verb for you: Celebrate them both.
To the parents and loved ones of these men and women before me, congratulations on being the willing sherpas for this amazing journey.
And above all, congratulations to this beautiful Guilford College Class of 2012.
Risk your significance.
And as my daughter, Tess, said: Be free, have fun, bye.
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(By Chris Mayer) Kicked off by a surge in mining, real estate prices have soared in Mongolia's largest city. But there is a long way to go. Ulaanbaatar illustrates a great principle of emerging-market investing: Buy real estate close to the city center early in the bull market.
You can apply this same analysis to the U.S., which is increasingly a motley mix of states in very different economic circumstances. You have to answer two questions: Where is the Mongolia of America? And how can you own the real estate?
The answer to the first question is North Dakota. The answer to the second is below…
North Dakota and Mongolia have a few things in common. Both are wide-open spaces and relatively sparsely populated. (North Dakota-born CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid called his home state "a large, rectangular blank spot on the nation's mind.") Both are resource rich. And both are in the early stages of a boom.
In the case of North Dakota, it already had some of the richest agricultural land in the U.S. Now it has oil — lots and lots of oil. North Dakota has become the second-largest producer of oil in the U.S., behind only Texas — thanks to the Bakken.
The Bakken is the biggest oil discovery in at least 40 years. It is part of the Williston Basin, which is a giant 300,000-square-mile patch that extends under North and South Dakota and Montana in the U.S, as well as Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada.
Though discovered in 1951, the Bakken was — for years — too costly to develop. Then in the beginning of the 2000s, new technologies began to deliver promising results. It was the beginning of a revolution. Various estimates put the Bakken as one of the largest oil fields in the world. And oil companies can get it out profitably at under $70 a barrel under current conditions.
As a result, oil companies are going to drill the you-know-what out of it. Already, North Dakota alone doubled its output of the black stuff in the last two years. With 7,000-plus producing wells and more than 50,000-plus possible (just with current technology), this bull is still young.
The boom is sucking up available bodies anywhere it can get them. North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Basically, there isn't any. An anecdote: Denny's had to close its restaurant in Minot, N.D. It wasn't for lack of business. It was because it couldn't afford to pay people to staff it. Denny's was paying people as much as $16 an hour to work there. (If you're young and you want to start your working life in a boomtown without leaving the U.S., head over to North Dakota.)
Other anecdotes give you a flavor of the boom. The McDonald's that had to close in the middle of the day because it ran out of food. Or the Wal-Mart that stopped stocking the shelves. First, because it can't find people to hire to do it. And second, because nothing stays on the shelves for long anyway. Now the company just drops the pallets directly in the aisles. People take what they want and go the registers.
Last year, the state legislature approved $1 billion for new roads, water and sewer lines. The roads can't handle the thousands of heavy trucks running over them every day. There are ruts 4 inches deep at some intersections caused by the force of the trucks when they stop. Sewage lagoons are full and the system strains to process the waste.
There is a ton of money and men and machines headed to the Peace Garden State. Just look at the number of people flying to the cities in the thick of the Bakken this year compared with last. Traffic to Minot is up 62%; Williston, up 41%; and Dickinson, up 73%.
As you might expect, there is a big housing shortage, too. I've never been to the Bakken — at least, not yet. But the numbers are unbelievable. You can rent a metal box in a "man-camp" for $2,400 per month — that includes food. Rental rates for apartments are similar — but they don't include the food.
People who have been to the Bakken tell me the shortage is there for the eye to see: RV parks and "man-camps" and full hotels. A simple motel room in Williston can set you back $200-plus per night — provided you find a vacancy.
Recently, a publicly traded real estate company completed a 145-unit apartment complex. Overnight, renters tied up 133 of them for 36 months. There was a 350-person wait list for the last 12 units. The initial yield for the property owner is 16%!
Knowing a good thing, the company also grabbed 40 acres of land that can support another 850 units.
That company is Investors Real Estate Trust (IRET). Its headquarters are in Minot, N.D. Management declares it "the gateway of the Bakken." Founded in 1970, IRET is the lone REIT in the upper Midwest. It has a mixed portfolio of property — office, industrial, retail, residential and medical. Unfortunately, about half of the portfolio is in Minnesota — which isn't in the Bakken. Other property is spread around in Nebraska, Kansas, Montana and other states. Only about 20% is in North Dakota, but it's all within the radius of the Bakken. That's where the growth is. (Although the upper Midwest economies are doing better than the rest of the U.S., on average.)
I'm not recommending IRET, because it has too much debt for my tastes. And though the dividend is fat, cash flows don't cover it. But it is one to watch. At some point, it will right its balance sheet, and that might provide a window to grab a toehold in Bakken real estate — in the Mongolia of America.
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London, UK (PRWEB UK) 22 February 2013
- New research from money saving website VoucherCodesPro.co.uk has revealed that the Welsh are the savviest weekly grocery shoppers in the UK.
Site statistics from http://www.VoucherCodesPro.co.uk suggests that shoppers living in Wales have the most financial nous when it comes to shopping online.
The money saving website determined the findings by looking at the results of online searches and purchases on the site over the past twelve months. Geographical information was provided by the IP address of those using the site.
The statistics suggest that Welsh residents claim the biggest discount per shop, saving between £20 and £30 on average. Scottish consumers also fared well, with the average save per weekly shop being between £10 and £15. English dwelling shoppers were the least discount savvy as they only saved an average of between £5 and £10 per online spending spree.
Search results revealed that the Welsh are most likely to use vouchers on grocery shopping, with Tesco being their favourite supermarket. The same results when applied to England suggest that Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are jointly the most popular supermarkets when it comes to grocery shopping. However consumers based in England were more likely to search for discounts from clothing retailers rather than for grocery discounts.
Further trend analysis implied that, despite making the smallest savings, it was English website users that made the most searches for discount codes.
George Charles of http://www.VoucherCodesPro.co.uk made the following comment:
“It’s always a source of interest in our office when we get the opportunity to analyse site statistics. It often throws up surprising trends or suggestive results. This case was certainly no different as it suggested a difference in shopping habits between the various nations of the UK.”
“The Welsh seem most on the ball when comes to being thrifty. There really are some worthwhile discounts out there that can add up to a considerable sum over the course of a year. It literally takes a few minutes to search for reductions, but it seems that whilst English shoppers are willing to put the time into searching, they’re just not getting the same saving results as their Welsh counterparts.
Could it be they lack the eye for a bargain? Or are the English just pickier about what discounts are to their liking? With the average Welsh discount being between £20 and £30, it could be worth asking any Welsh friends for a few pointers...” | <urn:uuid:fdb0350e-6d9d-46ac-b64d-7345917bc04d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/2/prweb10458916.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97012 | 521 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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(Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, France) -- A monument in the likeness of the late Major Dick Winters was unveiled in France on the 68th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. witf's Tim Lambert filed a series of reports from Normandy, including this one about the dedication ceremony for the statue of the midstate native and leader of the Band of Brothers.
(Nat sound of congregation singing, "Glory, glory, hallelujah...")
Dozens of people from different nationalities gather in a huge church that marks the center of the tiny French town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont to pay tribute to the men who helped liberate their community 68 years ago. A church confessional still bears the signs of the struggle between U.S. and German troops. Several bullet holes are noticeable on the wooden door. Reporting from Sainte-Marie-du-Mont as part of our "Hang Tough: Dick Winters in Normandy " project, I'm Tim Lambert.
(Nat sound church bells)
As the church bells rang out, marking the end of mass, hundreds of people made their way down a narrow road to catch a glimpse of a monument dedicated to all junior U.S. military officers...the first and second lieutenants as well as captains....who led their men during the Allied invasion of Europe. A couple of miles from this spot is Utah Beach, one of two landing areas for U.S. forces during the invasion. The leadership monument was made in the likeness of the late Dick Winters of the 101st Airborne Division and leader of the Band of Brothers. Winters, who lived outside Hershey, gave his approval for the project before his death.
Herb Suerth is one of 19 living Easy Company veterans. He says Winters was a humble guy, who would have been overwhelmed by all the attention from the large crowd. But when it came to leading his men into combat, Suerth says Winters never made a tactical error.
"As one of our vets wrote home to his mother, when Dick was appointed as company commander, he said, 'Mother...we now have a company commander that can lead us to Hell.'"
Winters did lead his men through hell, starting with the assault at Brecourt Manor that successfully destroyed four German artillery pieces and likely saved the lives of hundreds of U.S. troops landing at Utah Beach. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for the attack and earned the lifelong respect and admiration of the family who lived there.
Charles de Vallavieille now owns the manor, as well as the Utah Beach Museum. He says his family will always remember what Winters and his troopers did for them.
DE VALLAVIELLE SPEAKING IN FRENCH FADES INTO ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
"I had the chance to meet Dick Winters many times. The visit, which marked me the most, was his last in 2001 for the premier of "Band of Brothers" at Utah Beach. We spent a great deal of time together. After the ceremonies, before leaving, I offered him a medal made specially for the occasion. He refused it. From his pocket, he produced a well-worn out medal, which my father had given him 30 years before. He said he always kept it with him and that it was his good luck charm. I was so moved."
The crowd on hand, undoubtably was there because Winters is so well known across the globe. But, speaker after speaker made sure to mention it was the leadership of men, like the central Pennsylvania native, who helped turn the tide of the war. Former Governor and federal Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says Winters is an example of a generation that lived through the Depression and found themselves in a fight for humanity.
"We dedicate a monument to the leadership of noble men, who after battle, became quiet men...who did not dwell on their experiences, but drew from them. Humility is the hat they prefer to wear. But, pride in them is the banner that we wave."
Jordan Brown of Lebanon County was the youngest speaker on the stage. The 13-year-old has played an enormous role in making this monument a reality, by helping to raise more than $99,000 through the sale of wristbands that bear Winters' motto, "Hang Tough."
"To me, Hang Tough means to hold on. To keep going even when things get hard. To never give up until you reach your goal. They inspire me."
Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster is hoping Winters will continue to inspire young people, like Brown. President Daniel Porterfield, addressing the throngs of people, has announced the "Dick Winters Award" for perseverance and leadership. It will recognize one undergrad annually who demonstrates the greatest determination and strength of character.
Those are all qualities the speakers mentioned when talking about Winters. But, they also mentioned such qualities in leaders in other units that took part in the invasion, 68 years ago. And that's why U.S. troops made it of the Utah and Omaha beaches and airborne units opened the causeways to make Operation Overlord a success.
Tim Lambert, witf News, Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, France.
Support for witf is provided by:
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- Korea is a leading export market for the California walnut industry, accounting for more than 46 million in-shell equivalent pounds annually, valued at over $70 million.
The California walnut industry welcomed the news of the passage of the United States and South Korean Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), which is expected to bring immediate duty reduction to walnuts exported to the Korean market.
The import duty on shelled walnuts will fall from 30 percent to zero over six years and the in-shell duty to zero over 15 years. Once ratified, an immediate reduction will drop the duties 5 percent, effectively phasing out the shelled duty in five years and the in-shell duty in 14 years. "The agreement as structured will greatly benefit agriculture and specifically California agriculture. We have been engaged in this process since the beginning and appreciate the hard work it has taken to get here," states John J. (Jack) Gilbert, Chairman of the California Walnut Commission's (CWC) Issues Management Committee. Jack Mariani, Vice Chairman of the CWC's Issues Management Committee adds that "Our industry has made significant investments in the South Korean market and we eagerly anticipate the new opportunities for growth the agreement provides."
Korea is a leading export market for the California walnut industry, accounting for more than 46 million in-shell equivalent pounds annually, valued at over $70 million, contributing to walnuts rank as the 5th leading export from the state. "This agreement will mean that California walnuts are a better value to the end users. Our industry will benefit. The trade as well as consumers have demonstrated their acceptance of our product as a healthful and flavorful addition to their daily diet," states CWC Executive Director Dennis A. Balint.
In 2010, the Korean market accounted for 4.5 percent of the industry's total shipments, with 19.7 million shelled pounds and 853,000 in-shell pounds shipped. Over the last five years the Korean market has grown 39 percent despite high import duties. This strength in demand and consumption is expected to continue. The duty reduction allows new opportunities for market segment growth for California's 4,600+ walnut growers and 78 walnut processors. | <urn:uuid:ce0dc5ac-5d63-4aac-8af0-d3cb44e69d62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westernfarmpress.com/government/south-korea-golden-export-market-california-walnuts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946867 | 447 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Is anything sadder than yesterday's bestsellers? Once they were shiny and unblemished, promising pleasure without risk, at once virginal and passionate, like the latest actress or new cars in the showroom. Now, ranked on dim shelves, they look faded, not entirely resigned to being forgotten. New books are odorless. Old bestsellers seem shamed by the must they emit when you riffle their pages. They remind me of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.
My in-laws own thousands of books, arranged without order in almost every room. On Sunday, while cleaning the closet under the stairs leading to their basement, pulling out luggage, sleeping bags, a wicker picnic basket, Christmas decorations, a baby stroller and boxes of old Life magazines, I found another pile of books. Among them was Lake Woebegone, by Garrison Keillor, already in its 17th printing in the year of its publication, 1985.
Here are some of the authors, spanning two or three generations of bestsellerdom, whose names I noted on their shelves: Thomas B. Costain, Jimmy Breslin, R.F. Delderfield, Taylor Caldwell, Ernest K. Gann, Irwin Shaw, Mary Stewart, Leon Uris, Pierre Salinger, James Michener, Nevil Shute, Herman Wouk, Elia Kazan and the Irvings (Stone, Wallace). Each of these names is familiar to me, like brands of discontinued laundry soap, yet the only work by any of them I can remember reading are some newspaper columns by Breslin and a story by Shaw, "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses."
Sharing shelves with the bestsellers are some of the books my father-in-law accumulated in his student days -- 23 volumes of Rudyard Kipling in leather bindings, nine volumes of George Meredith and eight of Robert Browning -- evidence of an admirably Anglocentric sensibility now as extinct as the antimacassar.
I also found a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and awarded to my father-in-law in 1953 for coming in first in his class at a boarding school in Canada. It's a beautiful volume, with binding the color of ox blood, gilded end papers and a sewn-in marker. It's compact but dense, with the heft of a paving stone. The first poem is the anonymous "Cuckoo Song," famously parodied by Ezra Pound: "Sumer is icumen in,/Lhude sing cuccu!" Today it reminds me of the old Clarence Ashley song, "The Coo Coo Bird."
The last poem, after selections from Sassoon, Owen and Blunden, the Great War Poets, is "Dominus Illuminatio Mea," by a poet I have never heard of, Richard Doddridge Blackmore. Its final stanza begins like this:
"For even the present delight may pall,
And power must fail, and the pride must fall..."
That's a fitting epitaph for yesterday's bestsellers. | <urn:uuid:d0a68fec-23e0-4e76-aedd-b8da17659dbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2006/07/yesterdays-bestsellers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95097 | 653 | 1.640625 | 2 |
France calls for UN Security Council meeting over 'worrying' Iran nuclear report
French FM says ready to toughen sanctions on Iran to 'unprecedented' levels after IAEA reveals Iran is working to develop atomic weapons.
France said on Wednesday it wanted to convene the UN Security Council and could push for unprecedented sanctions against Iran after an International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran had worked to develop an atomic bomb design.
"Convening of the UN Security Council is called for," Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told RFI radio.
In a statement, Juppe said diplomatic pressure needed to be ramped up.
"If Iran refuses to conform to the demands of the international community and refuses any serious cooperation, we stand ready to adopt, with other willing countries, sanctions on an unprecedented scale," Juppe said.
Juppe told RFI radio tough sanctions were needed to "prevent Iran from continuing to obtain resources that allow it to pursue its activities in violation of all international rules".
The IAEA report - citing what it called credible information from member states and elsewhere - listed a series of activities applicable to developing nuclear weapons, such as high explosives testing and the development of an atomic bomb trigger.
Calling the report "a real source of worry," French Defense Minister Gerard Lonquet also called for tougher sanctions.
He told Canal+ television it was necessary to convince China and Russia, which are likely to oppose a fifth Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran.
China, meanwhile, called for a peaceful resolution of the Iran nuclear issue. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China was still studying the IAEA report, but urged Iran to show "flexibility" and "sincerity".
"China advocates using peaceful means to resolve the Iran nuclear issue," he told a daily news briefing.
The report, which was handed over to the 35-member states of the IAEA Board of Governors, details a series of tests, acquisition of materials, and technology that suggests Iran has continuously worked to produce a nuclear weapon since 2003.
A diplomatic source in Vienna told Haaretz that this is "the most damning report ever published by the IAEA and the conclusion arising from it is one: Iran is working to acquire a nuclear weapon."
Israel did not rush to respond to the IAEA report. The Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Tuesday that Israel is studying the report and will issue a response later. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his cabinet ministers not to discuss the report with the media until further notice.
Government officials said that Israel is waiting with its response because it wants to evaluate the world's response to the IAEA findings and does not want to appear to be leading the international community. | <urn:uuid:348c69b6-88a5-4092-b810-1d8556590662> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/france-calls-for-un-security-council-meeting-over-worrying-iran-nuclear-report-1.394550 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968942 | 560 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The old city
Trip Start Jul 16, 1975
16Trip End Jul 15, 1976
Street crime in Israel is a third of that in America. Violent crime is significantly lower too. I rode Israeli and Arab buses by myself without incident. My parents never worried. One of my favorite pastimes was walking around the old city after school. Lots of winding streets. Vendors selling falafels, woodcarvings of the nativity and more exotic stuff I'd never seen before. About all I could afford were postcards and pita bread but it didn't matter.
The old city is also known as East Jerusalem
My favorite part of East Jerusalem is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Built on the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion. Who knows for sure where it really happened. I liked walking through the maze of musty corridors. Lots of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. And saturated by the smell of incense. It sure looked and smelled holy to me.
The most famous part of the old city is the Temple Mount. It's easily recognized by the golden Dome of the Rock. This is the site of the second temple built by King Solomon. The Western Wall is one of the few remnants of it still standing today. Jews like to pray there. I put on a yarmulke and walked up to the big stones too. Pretty strange experience being that close to history.
Archeologists discovered two of the four original gates that led into the temple. During a tour, I saw a staircase that had just been excavated outside the south wall of the temple mount. One theory, according to the guide, was that Jesus might have ascended these stairs on his way to judgment by Pontius Pilate. Who knows? But for a kid learning these stories for the first time, it's pretty easy to visualize.
Underneath the dome is a rock that's important to three major religions. According to Islam, it's where Mohammad was taken by angels. According to Judaism and Christianity, the rock originally rested inside the holy of holies. It was the site where Abraham sacrificed his son. You can see a hole through which blood was believed to have flowed into the cavern below. Also visible is a rectangular engraving. It has the exact same measurements as the Ark of the Covenant.
How did Jerusalem survive so long? Through countless sieges? An underground tunnel that allowed troops to sneak in and out of the city. More importantly, the tunnel also tapped into an underground spring. Jerusalem's residents could rely on water at one of its pools. I thought it was fascinating. One of my tours was scheduled to walk through the tunnel, about 300 yards long. It was canceled, unfortunately, due to dangerously high water levels. But the tunnel, built a few thousand years ago, is still in use today. | <urn:uuid:53b49d5c-169b-40f8-bb59-27f878a0f4a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/eric/israel_1975-76/175296420/tpod.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981477 | 584 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Help salute our unsung heroes!
- Last Updated: 7:36 AM, July 18, 2011
- Posted: 3:02 AM, July 18, 2011
* Courage Medal
For a notable act of bravery by a civilian that contributed to saving human life.
* New York’s Bravest Medal
For the firefighter or EMS technician whose performance in the line of duty best exemplifies the department’s unflinching heroism; to be selected in consultation with the FDNY.
* New York’s Finest Medal
For the police officer whose on-the-job performance reflects the department’s honor and selflessness; to be selected in consultation with the NYPD and the Port Authority Police Department.
* Educator Medal
For an administrator or teacher who excels at preparing the next generation of New Yorkers for their future challenges.
* Young Heart Medal
For the youth under 17 who most impressively manifests adult resolve — not for a physical feat, but for behavior that displays moral character or mature judgment during the past year.
* Lifetime Achievement Medal
For the individual whose accomplishments reflect the very best of our city.
9 years of Medal winners
On Sept. 11, 2001, rookie cop Shaun McGill, ran into the north tower’s lobby and saw a woman on fire begging for help. He tore off his uniform shirt and put out the flames, and then helped escort dozens from the building (Finest medal). FDNY firefighter Jeffrey Johnson rescued three men trapped in the partially collapsed Marriott hotel, even though rubble blocked the exit. He tied curtains together and they shimmied down through a hole in a wall (Bravest medal).
She was alone inside a Staten Island riding stable’s barn when the roof blew off, but despite Ashley Martinez’s fright, the 16-year-old equestrienne helped lead 16 panicked horses to safety. “It was smoky and hot. The horses were scared,” she said of that morning after a barge offloading gasoline at Port Mobil exploded (Young Heart medal).
Manhattanite Paul Nicholls was battling multiple myeloma and wanted to help needy folks with cancer pay their nonmedical bills. In 2003, he created Team Continuum to run in the NYC Marathon to raise funds. Nicholls, who ran that race and two more, passed away in 2009, but the nonprofit continues his legacy (Leadership medal).
Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone has helped kids break the cycle of poverty with innovative cradle-to-college education, social-service and community-building programs (Leadership medal).
Chef-turned-teaching fellow Walter Morrison set up a 1940s-style diner in his classroom to teach math, history and self-esteem along with recipes (Educator medal). Rachel Robinson started the Jackie Robinson Foundation to honor her late husband by granting scholarships to minorities and providing mentoring and leadership training (Lifetime Achievement medal).
Wesley Autrey jumped from a subway platform to rescue a stranger who had collapsed onto the tracks. He rolled the young man into a trough between the tracks and shielded him as the train jerked to a stop above them (Courage medal). Nooria Nodrat, an Afghani immigrant who lost her eyesight and her husband in unrelated tragedies, worked with blind students and did volunteer work with both the Catholic and Jewish guilds for the blind (Freedom medal).
FDNY paramedic Craig Roeder crawled under the mangled wreck of a car that had flipped on the Van Wyck Expressway and teetered on a guardrail. He treated a teen under the car and pulled him to safety, then inched his way through the smashed rear windshield to aid the injured driver (Bravest medal).
When Brooklyn cop Susan Porcello responded to a 911 call, an 84-year-old former Marine told her, “I’m all alone. I have nobody.” She became the World War II vet’s health proxy in the last months of his life, then paid for his funeral and headstone (Finest medal).
Alison Wasserman, 13, raised $303,250 for brain-cancer research to honor her dad, who was valiantly battling a malignant brain tumor. “I’m so proud of Ali,” he told The Post in August, just days before he died (Young Heart medal). | <urn:uuid:75327452-3655-4277-85c4-e5b0311be3a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/the_th_annual_liberty_medal_awards_LXksGCADkqMI6nr2HDcCwN/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941951 | 915 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Discussion of the much-overdone Chick-Fil-A controversy has shifted from the First Amendment rights of corporate President Dan Cathy to the stupidity of LGBT civil rights movement in picking a fight we couldn’t win. Even a sympathetic correspondent from New York magazine thinks we blew it by having small groups of activists exchange kisses at Chick-Fil-A locations around the country: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/chick-fil-a-counter-protest-was-sort-of-a-bust.html
But engaging the controversy–kicked off by Dan Cathy’s inflammatory opposition to marriage equality and the reactions of several big-city mayors–has been the only opportunity LGBT advocates have had to speak for ourselves in this context. Otherwise the ongoing debate about our lives, liberties, and pursuit of happiness would have happened without us, and we’d just be caricatured.
One of the most frustrating aspects of being a gay activist today is being told that our movement has prevailed or will prevail inevitably so we should just chill and wait things out when something like the Chick-Fil-A brouhaha happens. That was the thrust of Jon Stewart’s otherwise positive segment on Thursday. Meanwhile, gay kids still get bullied and driven to suicide, even with the Promised Land in full view. Their tormentors more clearly perceive the reality of hatred in 21st century America than do many of our friends.
The simple fact is that homophobia remains prevalent enough to inspire bullies and bashers even in liberal Massachusetts. Why–because hate groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association get a media platform the KKK could never aspire to, and have millions of dollars to propagate their muck due to the largesse of corporations like Chick-Fil-A. Can we stop them from being heard? We wouldn’t even try: unpopular minorities would be wrong to take on the First Amendment when that’s the only mechanism that would allow us to hold Pride Parades in most of the South. But we will continue to shine a light on the connections between American fundamentalists and the Uganda “kill-the-gays” bill, attracting media attention as best we know how. It’s a given that homophobes get their say, in school hallways and dark alleys throughout the country. We have an uphill climb with allies like Jon Stewart telling us the fight is over and we’ve already won.
This point is best articulated by this article at the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/guy-branum/chick-fil-a-boycott_b_1731169.html?ref=topbar Perhaps my feelings are too personally engaged, since I was one of those bullied gay kids growing up in rural Mississippi in the 1970′s who is lucky to be alive today. Our movement will make mistakes, to be sure, and can count on being called on every one of them. But silence equals death and we’ve had too much of both of those. | <urn:uuid:a28f7850-3432-49e1-b4d2-6678046fc66d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bluemassgroup.com/2012/08/why-the-chick-fil-a-fight-was-necessary-for-the-lgbt-civil-rights-movement/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950385 | 638 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Below is the second of four reading samples from Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. These samples were first published as part of a series on the P2P Foundation Website, where the book was honoured as Book of the Week.
In this series:
Wikipedia, and the environments of produsage more generally, can serve as vehicles for moves beyond established and increasingly ossified structures of knowledge and expertise; they pay respect not to abstract certificates of expert accreditation, but to the active display and embodiment of expertise through constructive participation in their communities of content and knowledge creation. At their best, therefore, they are by no means anti-elitist, but instead openly invite elites and experts to share their knowledge with the wider community so that the community overall is able to gain knowledge; they are opposed, however, to any tendency to take established expertise for granted and to use one's status as an accredited expert to refrain from answering legitimate questions and challenges, wherever they may originate. Thus, for example, in journalistic produsage the lack of special prestige accorded to experts "does not mean, however, that deliberative journalism should reduce all discussion to common sense. Rather, the perspectives of 'ordinary people' should be allowed to transform the analytical distinctions of established experts as well as define new questions."
Such engagement between 'experts' and 'non-experts,' or indeed between the varying levels of expertise existing throughout the continuum, does not operate best through the facilitation of journalists, editors, or other intermediaries, but must be managed by the communities themselves; "in general, the most net-like solution … is going to be to bypass the notion of third parties and instead to find ways of putting the users' hands directly on the dial." What emerges from this community-based model may well be what Van Doren described as "an entirely new organization of scholars" : a community of knowledge creators and curators which involves those in the higher reaches of the continuum of expertise just as much as those further down the scale, and enables all to make contributions to the communal process as is appropriate to their skills and abilities - much in line with Bauwens's principle of equipotentiality which, as we have seen, assumes "that there is no prior formal filtering for participation, but rather that it is the immediate practice of cooperation which determines the expertise and level of participation."
The other side of the equipotential coin, however, is also the realization by individuals that with the right to participate openly, that is, with the acceptance of a communal stance that all participants have a useful contribution to make, regardless of their level of accreditation as experts, comes also a responsibility: the responsibility to ensure that contributions are made only where individuals have a reasonable indication that their contribution will be constructive and useful to the common aim. In other words, "equipotentiality is the assumption that the individual can self-select his [sic] contributions, which are then communally validated." This, then, is perhaps the full implication of the fundamental produsage principle of open participation and communal evaluation: an individual right, but also an obligation to the community, and a question of what we may describe as the individual's participatory capacity.
Such principles are clearly at work in many forms of collaborative content creation through produsage processes; in open source software development, for example,
the contributors for any given project are self-selected. … Contributions are received not from a random sample, but from people who are interested enough to use the software, learn about how it works, attempt to find solutions to problems they encounter, and actually produce an apparently reasonable fix. Anyone who passes all these filters is highly likely to have something useful to contribute.
Indeed, such filters are necessarily more appropriate than any filters based on expert accreditation as "nobody but the individual concerned knows better the precise nature of the skills he [sic] can contribute" , but the precision of such self-selection processes also depends crucially on individuals choosing to assess their own skills and abilities honestly. This question of self-awareness of one's own abilities and limitations provides perhaps the greatest hurdle to constructive community participation in produsage, as many disruptive contributions are nonetheless made in good faith and from a sense of having something useful to contribute;
the prevalence of misperceptions that individual contributors have about their own ability and the cost of eliminating such errors will be part of the transaction costs associated with this form of organization. They parallel quality control problems faced by firms and markets.
Here, of course, communal evaluation and filtering comes to play an important role both in policing participant contribution and neutralizing any potentially deleterious effects, and (through this process) in socializing participants to community values and needs in order to ensure that future contributions are more closely and directly aligned with the community's interests and goals. What is necessary, then, is a recognition and strengthening of community procedures by the communities themselves, and a sharing of knowledge about such processes throughout the entire project.
A stronger recognition and quantification of individual reputation and merit may help in this process; as Raymond notes for open source, "the … community's internal market in reputation exerts subtle pressure on people not to launch development efforts they're not competent to follow through on" , and the strengthening of similar 'markets' in reputation in Wikipedia and elsewhere is likely to provide further support for these other projects. Especially as such markets develop and are better recognized, then, it is also necessary to ensure that new community members are being made aware of the environment they are entering as they begin to participate; indeed, as Japanese Wikipedia administrator Kizu Naoko points out, already "on several wikis we have a 'welcoming committee', a group of users who inform newcomers of a principal set of policies and guidelines." Ultimately, indeed, in keeping with the 'reputation market' metaphor Jenkins argues that what emerges from such community self-policing tendencies "might be called a moral economy of information: that is, a sense of mutual obligations and shared expectations about what constitutes good citizenship within a knowledge community." | <urn:uuid:975dbcbe-298a-4799-aca7-564fa031de51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://produsage.org/index.php?q=node/28 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960641 | 1,254 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The war is on and it will be heck of a show! Yes. We are talking about smartphone Operating Systems. In this exciting time we find smartphone Operating Systems themselves battle against each other!
While the mobile industry is flooded with ideas like comprehensive mobile platforms, the consumers prefer a simple, useful but innovative platform. Meanwhile unveiling operating systems is a plus that itself creates the differentiating factor.
Let’s take a look on what is going on OSs at this moment! Apple recently showed off the next version of the iPhone OS, version 4.0 to collect more demanding crowd. As Apple has been so far criticized due to lack of multitasking and other essential features etc., they have increased focus on filling the holes at all.
Many of the market experts say that the smartphone market is mostly influenced by the battle between different mobile operating systems available on handsets now-a-days. Experts say that Symbian is trying to remain the leader on all charts over the next few years while Android is trying to cut away at the Symbian market share.
As Android is an open source OS, nobody can ignore this platform. Android itself is also developing at an amazing pace. Since the launch of its OS 1.5 in 2009, Android has tried to let users have better experience. And it came up with OS 2.5 in 2010.
RIM’s Blackberry is perfectly positioned for a strong growth in 2010 and afterwards with a diverse OS portfolio. And it has seen a growth in market share in the non-enterprise segment.
As network connectivity and speed is increasing day by day, experts think that Google Android will be the dark horse in this race and projected to achieve double digit market share by end of 2012. Then the likes of Microsoft Windows Mobile would face the challenge to maintain their market share unless they take some major steps in regards to the design and the OEM partnership.
According to Canalys research the global sales of smartphones will increase from around 165.2 million in 2009 to 422.96 million in 2013, and escalating the total numbers of smartphones using community to 1.6 billion. The firm’s market research also forecasted that the global market for smartphone applications and games is worth $4.66 billion in 2009, which will rose to $16.60 billion, in 2013.
So let the OSs’ battle keep on! | <urn:uuid:07e93505-4bc0-422c-9723-564b430f5abb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.rapidsofttechnologies.com/index.php/the-battle-of-smartphone-oss-is-on/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944649 | 483 | 1.523438 | 2 |
I came across a couple of interesting things related to mindfulness recently and thought perhaps they are all linked and talk about the context of learning languages. In fact, these stuff have given me an opportunity to reflect on how I approached languages in the past.
The first trigger came yesterday when I was reading an interesting Chinese book, “留学博客” and a paragraph stayed with me:
“不能辜负自己的角色。这世上有多少人都每天每夜辜负着自己的各种角色？可能他们仍然很出色，即便不是很敬业却仍然做得不错， 但是过去的一个学期教会我，敬业本身就是一种最高境界的出色， 跟结果无关， 如果光有能力， 却不尽心尽力、踏踏实实， 想来也是一种出色的躯壳， 没有心。”
“Don’t let your role (that you are playing) down. Just how many people are letting their different roles down everyday? There is this possibility that they (these people) are still outstanding as they are still doing very well though they are not professional enough. And this past semester has taught me that being professional is the highest realm of excellence. Being professional has nothing got to do with results. If one has the abilities but do not do one’s best and is not down to earth, this person is only but an outstanding shell, one without a heart.” — pardon me for the lousy translation~
Well, I identified with this immediately and have to say that I am guilty of this. Guilty of not being “professional” to language learning or any role that I hold. Well, I’m not going to dwell on the other roles I hold, rather I am going to focus on language learning. There’re so many things to say about immersing oneself in the foreign language. Well, I’m not saying that one shouldn’t do so, instead, you should. Anyone who’s learning a language should. But what I want to say is how you commit to it. Are you going to do it half-heartedly? Or just merely enjoy it? OR being mindful of this process when you are having fun? I like to think this could be the reason why some people progress faster than others at language learning. Seriously I wasn’t really sure if my way of thinking is right until I read this interesting article from Slate about being mindful (while waiting for my turn at the dentist~ LOL), “How to think like Sherlock Holmes“.
The simple statement (by Sherlock) that got me was, “You see but you do not observe.” I was reminded of my days in high school of a teacher who said a similar thing to a classmate of mine, “You hear but you do not listen.” This might sound mean but up till this very day, I can’t deny that there is so much truth to this statement. Anyway, the article talked a lot about how being mindful helps us in many areas and I feel that knowing mindfulness can help us in our language learning.
“The confluence of seeing and observing is central to the concept of mindfulness, a mental alertness that takes in the present moment to the fullest, that is able to concentrate on its immediate landscape and free itself of any distractions.”
“It (mindfulness) can also strengthen connectivity in the brain, specifically in a network of the posterior cingulate cortex, the adjacent precuneus, and the medial prefrontal cortex that maintains activity when the brain is resting. Mindfulness can even enhance our levels of wisdom, both in terms of dialectism (being cognizant of change and contradictions in the world) and intellectual humility (knowing your own limitations). What’s more, mindfulness can lead to improved problem solving, enhanced imagination, and better decision making. It can even be a weapon against one of the most disturbing limitations that our attention is up against: inattentional blindness.”
And while reading this, I also realized another thing about myself. Just how mindful am I when it comes to learning languages? I have to confess that I am guilty of reaching out my phone or tablet or computer to tweet or blog instead of focusing on my language immersion process whole-heartedly. Yes, not being mindful, not concentrating, not giving my best. And strangely, that process of tweeting and blogging about the language learning process brought me to think a TED video I watched two or three years ago.
“Repeated psychology tests have proven that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen. Any time you have a goal, there are some steps that need to be done, some work that needs to be done in order to achieve it. Ideally, you would not be satisfied until you had actually done the work. But when you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it, psychologists have found that it’s called a “social reality.” The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it’s already done. And then, because you felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary. (Laughter) So this goes against the conventional wisdom that we should tell our friends our goals, right — so they hold us to it.”
I have no idea how true it is but I do think there is some truth in it. I am guilty of telling my goals and the things I was doing at a specific instance to others and yes, probably I did lesser actual hard work so DUH. Maybe I should get someone to kick my ass whenever I do things like that. LMAO.
Well, I’m not sure if this post is supposed to make sense to others but it sure makes a great deal of sense to me so here am I putting all my ideas together. Till the next post~ | <urn:uuid:4815589a-42cb-4b88-b2f2-257a3b2f4375> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://creativityjapanese.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/learning-languages-what-has-learning-languages-got-to-do-with-mindfulness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957612 | 1,410 | 1.640625 | 2 |
THE University of Buckingham will become the home of the town’s new community herb garden.
Earlier his year the Buckingham Transition Towns Group started looking for volunteers to help cultivate the garden while they searched for a location.
Although the precise spot is yet to be decided the university and its head gardener have given the thumbs up and have several locations in mind. The aim for local people to tend the garden and the plants will be non-toxic and non-allergenic and chosen in consultation with a trained herbalist. Work is due to start on the borders in the coming months.
Nigel Adams, programme director of BSc business enterprise at the university is also a member of the Green Buckingham Group, and helped promote the idea with the institution.
He said: “I was very pleased to help it get to the point where it could be developed. I think it is good for the university to be working with the community and I think Transition Town’s idea of looking at sustainability from a local angle is good.”
In June Louise Smith of Buckingham Transition said she hoped the garden would become a peaceful place where people can take time to relax and revitalise themselves in the re-energising atmosphere created by the herbs.
She said: “Imagine walking on a chamomile lawn, sitting amongst the herbs that are associated with your needs or just chatting with a friend whilst insects buzz around the healing plants. We also see it as a place where gardening, herbal and vegetable growing talks can be held and a community space for poetry and story telling.
“We are in discussion with regards to a potential place for the herb garden and are now looking for people who would like to help shape the vision of the garden and bring it to fruition.”
Transition Towns is a movement which aims to build resilience against rising fuel prices, peak oil, and climate change with a close emphasis on the principles of peramaculture.
Anyone interested in helping with the Buckingham Herb Garden can contact Louise Smith on 07828860104 or via email at [email protected].
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Weather for Buckingham
Sunday 19 May 2013
Temperature: 10 C to 19 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North
Temperature: 11 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: North | <urn:uuid:457b4a66-843d-4f80-8d0e-fb23ac6b76e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buckinghamtoday.co.uk/news/local/community-herb-garden-comes-one-step-closer-1-4214423 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953849 | 496 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
UFC fighter Antonio Nogueira (L) battles UFC fighter Randy Couture (R) during their Heavyweight bout at UFC 102: Couture vs. Nogueira at the Rose Garden Arena on August 29, 2009 in Portland, Oregon.
The first two weeks of the NBA's season have been canceled after failed negotiations between owners and players. What's a fan of the Lakers — or any of the NBA's other teams — to do? Here's a look at a few other sports that haven't faced lockouts or strikes.
While there have been soccer strikes in other nations, soccer is such an international sport that it's less dependent on any nation's labor laws, so you're likely to be able to watch world class soccer at almost any point. Here in the United States, there is a Major League Soccer players union, but they have yet to strike. Major League Soccer was founded in 1993, with the union founded in 2003, so they haven't been around long. In 2010, contentious negotiations did raise the possibility of a strike, but eventually a 5-year agreement was reached. | <urn:uuid:fe180054-15d8-4cdf-b45a-697aa9fe53b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scpr.org/blogs/newmedia/tagged/soccer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974166 | 230 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Hassan Ammar, Associated Press
CAIRO — The official approval of Egypt's disputed, Islamist-backed constitution Tuesday held out little hope of stabilizing the country after two years of turmoil and Islamist President Mohammed Morsi may now face a more immediate crisis with the economy falling deeper into distress.
In a clear sign of anxiety over the economy, the turbulence of the past month and expected austerity measures ahead have some Egyptians hoarding dollars for fear the currency is about to take a significant turn for the weaker.
The battle over the constitution left Egypt deeply polarized at a time when the government is increasingly cash-strapped. Supporters of the charter campaigned for it on the grounds that it will lead to stability, improve the grip of Morsi and his allies on state institutions, restore investor confidence and bring back tourists.
"In times of change, politics are the driver of the economy and not the other way around," said Mourad Aly, a media adviser for the political arm of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, the backbone of Morsi's presidency and the main group that backed the constitution.
But there are already multiple fights on the horizon.
The U.S. State Department bluntly told Morsi it was now time to make compromises, acknowledging deep concerns over the constitution.
"President Morsi, as the democratically elected leader of Egypt, has a special responsibility to move forward in a way that recognizes the urgent need to bridge divisions, build trust, and broaden support for the political process," said Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy spokesman. "We hope those Egyptians disappointed by the result will seek more and deeper engagement. "
He said Egypt "needs a strong, inclusive government to meet its many challenges."
After a spate of resignations of senior aides and advisers during the constitutional crisis, Morsi appeared to have lost another member of his government late Tuesday night when his communications minister posted on his Twitter account that he was resigning.
The minister Hany Mahmoud said he "couldn't cope with the culture of government work, particular in the current conditions of the country." The resignation could not be immediately verified because it came so late at night.
Morsi signed a decree Tuesday night that put the new constitution into effect after the election commission announced the official results of the referendum held over the past two weekends. It said the constitution has passed with a 63.8 percent "yes." Turnout of 32.9 percent of Egypt's nearly 52 million registered voters was lower than most other elections since the uprising nearly two years ago that ousted authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak
Morsi is expected to call for a new election of parliament's lawmaking lower house within two months.
In the meantime, the traditionally toothless upper house, the Shura Council, will hold legislative power. But the chamber is overwhelmingly Islamist-dominated so any laws it passes could spark a backlash from the opposition. Many fear a legal crackdown on independent media, highly critical of Islamists.
In a bid to reach out to opposition, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood said he hoped the charter will be a "good omen" for Egyptians.
"Let's all begin to build the renaissance of our country with free will, good intentions and strong determination, men, women, Muslims and Christians," Mohammed Badie said on his Twitter account.
But the opposition said the passing of the document is was not the end of the political dispute. Critics fear the constitution will usher in Islamic law in Egypt and restrict personal freedoms.
"This is not a constitution that will last for a long time," said Khaled Dawoud, a spokesman for the main opposition group, the National Salvation Front, vowing to fight for more freedoms, social and economic rights.
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- IRS official: Washington scrutinized... 15 | <urn:uuid:599344fd-1e5c-4864-a139-41123760efae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765618665/Egypt-constitution-passes-economic-crunch-looms.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937222 | 917 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Successfully parenting our kids with FASD's isn't about making the right decisions in every situation or handing every behavior in one certain way. I tried that and it's an understatement to say that I failed. I failed spectacularly because parenting the kids under our roof well (both those with FASD's and those without) needs to be a big picture understanding of where each one started, where they are today and where they are headed. It's about knowing the tendencies and potential (good and bad) of each one and making the necessary course adjustments as they go through daily life. This type of parenting isn't about 'rules' and 'standards' it's about flexibility, knowledge and determination.
It's like being a cowboy working out on the range vs an employee at a commercial milk production facility. The cowboy responds to every storm cloud, injury, rattle snake and potential stampede while the milker follows rules, washes hands, reads handbooks and keeps the herd moving smoothly through the shoot.
I like to think of my kids with FASD's as free range long-horns. Wildly beautiful, unique and just a tad unpredictable.
I love my wild things. | <urn:uuid:6c826b83-c600-4b2e-bfad-1528a5712d51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://urbanservant.blogspot.com/2012/04/fasd-parenting-it-isnt-about-doing.html?showComment=1333811690755 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965513 | 245 | 1.5 | 2 |
The islands of the Mediterranean have captured human imagination since the beginning of time. The following six Mediterranean islands, often overlooked by outsiders, epitomize the distinctiveness of the region’s history, culture, cuisine and natural beauty.
Geographically detached from Italy and geologically older, this autonomous region has a distinct story to tell, if you can decipher the secrets gnarled into its stones and the treasures lying beneath its waters.
By definition, a ghost town is an abandoned town or city. Some cities become ghost towns because the economic activity that supported them has failed; others are abandoned after natural or human-caused disasters such as earthquakes, floods, or war. Ghost towns can be found all over the world, but some of them have become very [...]
Volunteering on organic farms can mean a lot of different things. When Jaclyn Einis WWOOFed in Liguria, it meant dirty fingernails, multilingual meditation and discovering that the next best thing to wine was right under her feet.
We're pleased to announce BootsnAll Train Tickets - a new tool that gives you access to big discounts on Italy rail tickets and lets you book tickets easily and quickly for train travel throughout Europe.
Back in 2009, BootsnAll brought you Europe’ s nine most disappointing attractions, those over-hyped, over-rated attractions that we felt just didn't live up to their promise. Here is Part 2, with more sites which make you wonder whether they deserve the hype or not.
As you might imagine, BootsnAll's Italy expert, Jessica Spiegel, gets a steady stream of reader questions regarding Italy. In this round-up, she answers some of the most common - including itinerary and budget questions. | <urn:uuid:e6ebabfb-2b5a-4fdd-a849-1e4943acb3be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/tags/italy/page/4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956029 | 356 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Ned Kelly's family gets funeral go-ahead
The family of the Victorian bushranger Ned Kelly will bury his remains in private, now that a property developer has to give them up.
The Victorian Government has issued a new exhumation licence, which means the developer of the Pentridge Prison site in Melbourne will not be able to use Kelly's remains for a museum or memorial.
The family says it will be a private burial and has appealed to the person who has Ned Kelly's skull to return it.
Kelly was hanged in November 1880 after a shootout with police and his gang at the Glenrowan Inn.
His body, missing most of the skull, was put into a wooden axe box and thrown into a mass grave with the corpses of other prisoners.
The bodies were transferred from the Old Melbourne Gaol to Pentridge Prison in 1929 and then exhumed again in 2009.
Last year, the Victorian Government announced that remains recovered from Pentridge Prison belonged to Kelly.
This isn't your average burial.Anthony Griffiths, great-grandson of Ned Kelly's younger sister Grace
His body was identified through a DNA sample taken from a Melbourne school teacher, who is the great grandson of Kelly's sister Ellen.
Now, the Victorian Attorney-General, Robert Clarke, has issued a new exhumation licence meaning the remains will be returned to the Kelly family.
Ellen Hollow, the great-granddaughter of Ned Kelly's sister Kate, said Kelly always wanted to be buried near his family.
"Both the Kelly and King families are glad to have matters resolved and to be granted the variation to the exhumation licence to have Ned's final wish granted," she said.
In a statement, she said the Kelly family will now make arrangements for Ned's final private burial.
"We also appeal to the person who has the skull in their possession to return it to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine so that when the time comes for Ned to be laid to rest, his remains can be complete."
Anthony Griffiths, the great-grandson of Ned Kelly's younger sister Grace, is hopeful the skull will be returned.
"If the rest of the skull can be retrieved that's great, because there are some fragments of it there. So it obviously doesn't appear to have been a whole skull missing," he said.
"If that can be rectified that's great, but we're certainly aiming, for the vast majority of his remains, [to] lay them to rest."
Last year the family suggested there may be a public memorial.
"That's exactly some of the items that have to be finalised now. We wanted to wait until we had this decision so we knew exactly what we could and couldn't do," Mr Griffiths said.
"Now we can fine-tune our thinking on all those things and I think like anything, most families in these situations like to have a measure of privacy and ours will be no different, I imagine."
Mr Griffiths says the remains will probably be buried near other family members at Greta, near Glenrowan, in north-eastern Victoria.
Editor's note: (October 2) Ned Kelly's family was originally described as 'descendants' in the story. As he had no children, this statement was incorrect. | <urn:uuid:825db781-b8bf-4d4a-96b1-25d674e7f0ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-02/ned-kelly27s-remains-to-be-finally-laid-to-rest/4171134 | 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 | 0.979738 | 681 | 1.625 | 2 |
Archive for the ‘architecture’ Category
Taking its cue from traditional Tibetian architectural techniques and local materials along with the bight Tibetian colours, standardarchitecture manages to modernise the Tibetian vernacular without losing its soul.
Some new work by Spanish architects ParedesPino Architects exploring the interesting relationship of scale of public spaces.
Its location close to the railway station of the AVE high speed train in Cordoba city can take advantage of this gap as a unique opportunity, giving the character and scale necessary to assume as a new focus of interest not only confined to the neighborhood, but as a magnet in conjunction with the city.We opted for a solution that allows a wide variety of uses. It offers a covered area, protected from the weather, which will house a temporary market two days a week and other activities at other times.It therefore poses a solution based on prefabricated circular elements that vary in height and diameter and arranged in a flexible manner to allow a similar vision of an urban forest of shadows. The parasols also solve the artificial lighting in the same item and allow drainage of water inside.
A great example of how the humblest material can often yield the most amazing results, Matthias Loebermann‘s structure is made up of piled up shipping wooden pallets, ground anchors and tie rods.
Although currently just an installation by PUSHAK for the London Moss Your City exhibition, I am hoping to see this here at home where moss grows naturally anyway. Beautiful!
The Le Galilée Green Office is a beautiful wooden clad structure that has a beautiful sweeping roof/entrance. by Studio Bellecour
Beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful.
Beautiful. via Gizmodo
RUX just won an international design competition to build a mosque in the UAE. Their concept of having an open space with the inside of the structure being the outside is nothing new, but to apply it to a mosque in such a dramatic way, utilising forced perspective to dramatise the vanishing point in a god-like manner, and to focus your entire vision towards Mecca, and the gigantic compass pointing the way is just so modern and stunning. Churches have long had the brand name architects’ touch to bring it to the new millennia and it is such a refreshing change to see the same forces shaping mosques in the same way.
What if a mosque was not a building? What if it vanished into the fabric of a city? Seamless with the streets, connected directly to the pulse of daily life, and open to anyone and everyone at anytime, The Vanishing Mosquebecomes more visible, more iconic, and more integral to the spiritual and cultural workings of a community than any building with doors and walls ever could.
This design strategy was created as a “developer’s tool” for integrating spiritual space within new urban developments in the Middle East. Superimposing the function of a mosque within an urban plaza maximizes the value of public spaces, increases the value of adjacent properties, and fosters a powerful sense of community for residents.
While the image of The Vanishing Mosque is new and seemingly unfamiliar, its driving design principles are inspired by those that have ruled mosque-building for centuries.
A new boutique hotel, The Club, in the center of Singapore, designed by the ever hip Ministry of Design, with illustrations by Wynlyn Tan. Some how this one misses the mark for me, as far as Ministry of Design goes. Everything seems a little bit too contrived, and not pushed far enough. Thoughts? via Contemporist
Colin Seah, Design Director says, “Searching to ground the hotel in the context of Singapore as well as the historically rich conservation area of Club Street and Ann Siang Hill, we drew its inspiration from 2 sources.”
“The first is Singapore’s colonial past, which we have made modern tongue-in-cheek references to through art installation like features such as an larger-than-life statue of Raffles with his head in the clouds as well as through some key furniture pieces and artifacts.
The second inspiration was drawn from the area’s popularity as a remittance center for turn of the century Chinese immigrants where hard earned money and wistful letters were sent back to the homeland. We have taken the memories of these exchanges and created features that hint of this legacy in the rooms of The Club, where the modern day nomad and the nomad of yesterday cross paths for a moment.”
I am loving the off-kilter roof and the idea of intersecting two spaces into one.
“A vernacular dry stone house in the Pyrenees and the aim to transform it into a comfortable and utilitarian second residence are at the origin of this project. Fathers and sons want separated homes but shared experiences.
The project elaborates on the physical connections between these two homes coexisting in a single rehabilitated envelope. The programmatic scheme and the interrelations of spaces of both houses are tided up to these vertical connections. What qualifies those spaces, however, is unique in each unit. The roof on the top unit is build up to be a sculptural yet neutral continuous element that resolves space, lighting, and views. A human scale continuous linear window faces amazing views over the valley, while an identical window located on the top of the roof, enables to view the summit of the mountain. In the lower unit, a wide and off-scale opening will focus light, views, and therefore activity on an interior-exterior space.
The project is sympathetic of vernacular architecture by respecting not only the envelope, but also its construction and operational logics and its esthetics. By preserving the envelope and doing a minimal yet contrasted intervention, the idea is to reinforce the historical values of vernacular architecture. Moreover, the project is design to be sustainable. New technologies and old vernacular knowledge are implemented to make the Pyrenees houses two sustainable houses in an extreme climate.”
Designed and built by the students at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, this intriguing twisting, turning structure is suppose to be “an architectural artefact intervening on the panorama surrounding Zermatt.” via the Science of Creativity
In typical Frank Gehry style, his latest outing for the Las vegas Cleveland Clinic delivered the now expected contours and impossible surfaces, wrapping a dramatic space within. Costing USD 100 million, this is no cheap building, but that is no cheap cladding either! via Hypebeast
Interesting idea from a long time ago, where a book telescopes to provide depth of field. via the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Part of the Pantone Universe Campaign, Pantone has decided to start being hoteliers and got Michel Penneman and Oliver Hannaert to design “the hotel of colors… showcases the color of emotion with a distinctive hue on each colorous guest floor.” My one questions… is colorous a real word or just made up marketing speak?
Simple stunning angles and glass and spaces and photography! Makes me happy. by Office for Word and Image.
An amazing building by the masters, Herzog & de Mueron. I love the starkness and the lightness and the subtle balance between a monolithic design and one that is suitable for its surroundings. via archdaily
Copper is such a beautiful metal, especially when it rusts, so I am keeping my eyes on this Copper-clad house designed by Archivision Hirotani Studio.
Now you can truly live the MMM lifestyle at Smith Haut-Lafitte château, hotel and spa. Read more at tmagazine
I am not sure of the fate of this building, considering the turmoil Dubai World is in, but we can all adore its glory in 2.3 gigapixels of 381 stitched images. via Archidose | <urn:uuid:bba3621c-0aee-43de-88e4-bc969227fb41> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://urbantaster.wordpress.com/category/architecture/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940433 | 1,646 | 1.804688 | 2 |
One of the painters continuing the legacy of Albert Namatjira has visited the site of the twin gums for the first time since they were destroyed by fire.
Now a popular spot for tourists and painters, Albert Namatjira's paintings of two ghost gums about 20km west of Alice Springs made the site famous.
But if you go to there now all you will see is the remains of what is being investigated as an act of arson.
Peter Taylor's father was Namatjira's cousin and is one of many descendents continuing the famous artist's legacy by painting their own watercolours.
"It's a sad today to see the trees burnt down and it's sad for the artists.
"Let's hope one day they can rejuvenate or something, grow a couple of other gums trees here," he said.
Mr Taylor says before the road was built he used to travel from Tempe Downs and Hermannsburg with his father to meet family there.
"The family would say 'we'll meet you here at certain times, like next week or week after we'll meet you at Twin Gums', so it's a landmark.
"It has been a part of our lives, all our lives," he said.
Peter Taylor has painted the Twin Gums many times himself over the years; he says it's a popular choice for art collectors.
Listen to an interview with Peter Taylor at the twin gum site by clicking on the audio. | <urn:uuid:ce803234-72bb-4f38-916c-294442534ef5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/01/11/3668063.htm?%26section%3Dnews?h=vAQF2ber6&s=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982306 | 306 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Here we introduce the PureYield™ Plasmid Miniprep System that allows researchers to isolate high-quality plasmid DNA suitable for a broad range of downstream applications, including transfection, in vitro expression, sequencing and cloning. The system allows direct purification of plasmid from as much as 0.6 ml of bacterial culture without cell harvesting for from up to 3 ml of culture when the cells are pelleted. The entire procedure can be completed in as little as 10 minutes.
Cell Notes 21, 3–5.
Don Smith and Eric Vincent | <urn:uuid:80a9d93c-2c4d-4c3f-ab7d-40625e17103e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nld.promega.com/resources/articles/pubhub/cellnotes/transfection-quality-plasmid-dna-in-ten-minutes-using-the-pureyield-plasmid-miniprep-system/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939475 | 117 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Ochratoxin A in cocoa and chocolate sampled in Canada.
In order to determine the levels of ochratoxin A (OTA) in cocoa and cocoa products available in Canada, a previously published analytical method, with minor modifications to the extraction and immunoaffinity clean-up and inclusion of an evaporation step, was initially used (Method I). To improve the low method recoveries (46-61%), 40% methanol was then included in the aqueous sodium bicarbonate extraction solvent (pH 7.8) (Method II). Clean-up was on an Ochratest™ immunoaffinity column and OTA was determined by liquid chromatography (LC) with fluorescence detection. Recoveries of OTA from spiked cocoa powder (0.5 and 5 ng g(-1)) were 75-84%; while recoveries from chocolate were 93-94%. The optimized method was sensitive (limit of quantification (LOQ) = 0.07-0.08 ng g(-1)), accurate (recovery = 75-94%) and precise (coefficient of variation (CV)
Version: za2963e q8zaf q8zbe q8zc8 q8zde q8zeb q8zfe q8zgd | <urn:uuid:67346d8d-2aab-4d47-9f32-bd879db2d985> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pubget.com/paper/21623500/Ochratoxin_A_in_cocoa_and_chocolate_sampled_in_Canada | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936804 | 268 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The most important decision when creating a website is likely to be the domain name. When the time comes to make this selection, there are two schools of thought. The first is creating a domain that comes close to a popular search term people use to find a companies product or service. The opposing concept is to brand a company by creating a domain name that is company specific. This article talks to both approaches and weighs the benefits of each.
A fearless forecast of the latest web trends typically marks the beginning of a new year for the online community. During this early time of the year, numerous online specialists and analysts take advantage of the opportunity to identify as early as possible, the innovative web trends that online community ought to watch out for in the coming months.
Because the online business context is ever changing, built with rules and provisions that are persistently shifting from time to time, it is an imperative for anyone to stay updated with the recent changes. Listed below are the top SEO and Web design trends that are projected to take effect in 2012.
SEO Trends In 2012
This 2012, fresh and newsy content will be the star of the show. With the freshness algorithm out raising content creation standards, Google will certainly have high regard for websites that talk about current global issues.
SEO is the most excellent approach for getting traffic and income. That being said, you will need to understand the inherent conflict that can arise with SEO. Search engine optimization is both the technical endeavor and art of getting your site ranked highly in search results on Google, Yahoo and Bing. There are actually two competing factors in the effort, time and volume of traffic, which can lead to clients having unreasonable expectations. The conflict giving rise to misunderstood SEO expectations deal with keywords. Perceptibly, an optimization program is designed to get you high in the rankings on various keywords. The problem, of course, is the more traffic a keyword produces, the higher the number of sites competing for rankings under the phrase. Inevitably, this translates to a longer period of time required to get top rankings.
Pay Per Click sounds like it is an unproblematic task to do.There are around 400 million searches at most important search engines everyday. This causes 89% of world wide web traffic. Insertion your web pages on these search engines is very important in reaching as many possible consumers as possible. But in order to be seen and clicked most often, your web site should be viewed at the top most of the search list. Most people only reach up to the third page of a search engine so the lower your rank, the slighter the chance you will be clicked. In “Pay-Per Click” marketing, you pay to be always visible on the internet. You pick keywords or key phrases about your web site, and the highest bidder ranks the best. There is no upfront cost. You only pay after a visitor clicks your link. This is why it is called “Pay-Per Click”.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization
You could without difficulty lose sum of the number of SEO businesses and independent SEO specialists in Singapore. A Singapore SEO company offers its services to worldwide firms which have put up their regional bases in Singapore, but which promote their products to neighboring international locations as well. SEO in Singapore has made it easier for many businesses yield great revenue basically by making their goods and services amply noticeable on the foremost search engines.
What does it take to be a Singapore SEO corporation? Primarily, there needs to be a sharp comprehension of how search engine technique works. The algorithms are distinctive to every search engine. Google, which owns 60% of the entire search market, has 200 standards which boil down to two factors: on-site and off-site ranking. These components are all dependent on significant and quality content which consumers can locate on the site. In straightforward language, Google assigns a higher page rank to a site that has appropriate and unique content.
Many people have realized that they are able to earn a substantial income online. This is very true, although it requires a bit of knowledge in order to succeed in online business affairs. You first need an attractive business website for you to get started. The site should be optimized in order to increase its visibility. For all this to be fulfilled, a professional SEO service is actually a requirement.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is actually very important when an entrepreneur wants his business website to get to the top pages in search engines. There is stiff online competition and thus getting your site to the top pages in Google or any other search engine entails a process. For that reason, you need to look for an experienced firm to help in the search engine optimization process.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization
There are many unorthodox methods of getting a web site positioned highly by search engines. This is often often called Black Hat search engine optimisation or Black Hat SEO. It can be a fast but short lived means of elevating a website’s ranking. However, it can cause a website to be blacklisted altogether.
Shadow Domains and Doorway Pages – A keyword rich webpage can be produced under a different domain name to gain a higher rank within the search engines like google. It then forwards visitors on to another website, therefore becoming a Doorway Page. Doorway Pages can sometimes include links to other websites which can divert users and also search engines away from your site and as a consequence give your rivals an improved ranking whilst lowering yours. | <urn:uuid:89f91567-3ff7-4461-abc4-d129352eec36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mdsaves.org/tag/search-engine-optimization/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951799 | 1,113 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Quebec’s two largest cities award billions of dollars’ worth of contracts every year. Those contracts are paid for with public money — your money.
The Gazette believes the public should be able to track that spending. In 2011 we built an online database of municipal contracts awarded by the city of Montreal to provide a gateway to that information and now we have expanded it to include contracts awarded by Laval.
Years before the Charbonneau Commission began, The Gazette was already investigating allegations of corruption, collusion and the mismanagement of public funds. In a series of articles published in 2009 Gazette civic affairs reporter Linda Gyulai detailed irregularities in the city’s $355-million water meter contract. The contract, the largest in the city’s history, was eventually cancelled but it raised larger questions about the lack of accountability of municipalities, their elected officials and their civil servant.
The format of The Gazette’s database allows anyone to analyze the data contained in the contracts by contractor, amount, category, decision-making body (i.e. executive committee or city or borough councils) or the type of work that was outsourced.
We urge you to explore our database and comment on and flag items that you think should be investigated. You can send us any story ideas or report any possible inaccuracies in the database by clicking the Report Item button under each contract. We’re looking forward to hearing from you. | <urn:uuid:7b69cc28-26ac-415a-806a-8374341b68b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://documents.montrealgazette.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943518 | 292 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Wax P. T. Barnum sizes up the purses of passing rubes as tiny wax Tom Thumb and huge wax mammoth look on. Barnum's first hoax was passing off a blind and paralyzed African-American woman as the 160 year old George Washington's former nurse. As 1500 paying spectators found out during her public autopsy (!) she was only 80. His next African-American spectacle was Man-Monkey William Johnson, a microcephalic who was taught to speak a "mysterious" gibberish language. He tried to purchase William Shakespeare's birth home. Two days before his death, Barnum gave the local newspaper permission to print his obituary so he wouldn't miss it. Before passing, he paid for a "life-sized statue" for Tom Thumb's grave.
Number twelve in my "Horrors in Wax" series. Click blue subject heading below to see them all.
Postcard, c. 1970 Collection Jim Linderman
Just a brief reminder that reviews of TAKE ME TO THE WATER: IMMERSION BAPTISM IN VINTAGE MUSIC AND PHOTOGRAPHY 1890-1950 are being collected HERE along with press information, the film, selected images and more. The recent reviews here are from organizations I admire and am taking the opportunity to link their sites. Additional material (and much, much more) is available at the incredible Dust-to-Digital. There have been dozens of reviews, all glowing, and I am grateful for every one.
Living Blues is an institution, over 200 issues have been published since 1970. The magazine of the African-American blues tradition was incorporated into the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in 1983, an organization of considerable importance. We know what has happened to many "hard copy" music publications, but this one has a solid rock of authenticity behind it. See their website and programs HERE.
The Michigan Photographic Historical Society is one of the longer running and more active regional photography organizations. Since 1972 they have "focused" on the collection and preservation of photographic equipment, images, literature and history. Their coverage extends far beyond the Mitten State and I am proud to be a member, if you are interested in collecting photographs or the art of photography, membership is recommended. See their website and join HERE.
Charles Forbes Taylor, Boy Preacher.
During more than 80 years of preaching, Rev. Taylor lectured in more than 1,000 US cities and visited all 50 states and five continents. In the 1950s, he was also billed as "the jet-propelled evangelist."
Original press photograph with crop mark embellishment, 1913 Collection Jim Linderman
To follow my blog of similar material, click OLD TIME RELIGION
(click image to enlarge)
The current issue of Antiques & Fine Art profiles Frank Maresca. It also shows his apartment in Manhattan, which is always a treat not only because I love Frank's collection and his skill of design, but because there is often shown an object or two which speaks particularly loud to me, the primitive and powerful work of Herman (Bridgets) Bridgers. More than anyone Frank has shown how to present American folk art sculpture as the art it IS. Well-lite, on pedestals, with room to be seen, appreciated and to breathe. Frank has been an influential gallerist. writer, curator and designer for nearly 30 years, and through his books and exhibits he has literally changed how a country looks it its own art. No small feat. Mr. Maresca has always championed the work of a modest artist who lived in Enfield, North Carolina I wrote about in 1996. Seeing some of his work again in the magazine reminded me it should be archived online, so here it is.
(Click to Enlarge)
The esteemed Elmer Anderson. Or as he is known anywhere a stamp would reach, the GENUINE Elmer Anderson. Biographical information on the prolific post card Picasso is precious... but his primary genres have been identified:
Why did I get Married?
Occupationals and Situationals (Bars, Fisherman, Doctors)
Animal Kingdom (Peeing Dogs and Unwelcome Storks)
And most notable, the renowned "Ugly People" series done at the peak of his Elmer powers in 1951. (Interestingly, the year before Mad Magazine debuted) Early Elmers were self-published with a plain reverse. As his fame spread, Elmer created a "stamp here" logo, presumably a self-portrait. All seem to have come from Waterloo, Iowa, certainly an artistic hotbed of the 1950's.
Group of Genuine Elmer Anderson Postcards, c. 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
(For previous entries in the World's Worst Cartoonist Series click blue subject heading, or use search box above)
The show Jackass aired on MTV for only two years, but they left big, self-inflicted footprints. The show originated from Jeff Tremaine's "Big Brother" skateboard magazine which employed Johnny Knoxville and later brought the world former Florida clown Steve-O and the single greatest television performer of all time, (except for the now sullied Kramer)....Wee-Man!
To see the press release of whiny, disloyal Democratic senator Joe Lieberman's attempts to censor the show click HERE
Two Press Photos, New Jersey 1939. Collection Jim Linderman
I have trouble imagining the bitter rancorous old goat who came up this idea. "Prize Sap" indeed. At least they weren't mailed.
Set of Insult Postcards, 1945 Privately Printed in Chicago Collection Jim Linderman
Zoom: To simulate movement rapidly away from or toward a subject using a zoom lens. To cause text or other graphics in a window or frame to appear larger on the screen.
Lite: To avoid copyright problems with "Light" or to indicate a beer, food, brand or physical object with no taste, substance or significance.
Zoom Lite Real Photo Postcard c. 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
CAMERA CLUB GIRLS: Bettie Page and the Work of Rudolph Rossi
These are cropped detail portions of the extraordinary hand-painted photographs of Rudolph Rossi. Rossi was an informal member of the New York City Concorde Camera Club in the repressive 1950's. For a ten dollar fee, he photographed Bettie Page and a plethora of interracial models, then later meticulously hand-painted the photographs creating the illusion of color photography. An exceptional body of work by a previously unknown and unrecognized photographer and erotic artist from a time when such activity was taboo. Bettie Page, who passed away last year, is the most famous and most recognizable pin-up model of all time. You'll have to trust the first image here is indeed Ms. Page. A new website publishes some of the photographs, hopefully the first step in generating interest in the previously unknown and unseen work. To see the original works, you will have to "click through" a mature audiences page. visit "CAMERA CLUB GIRLS"
Rudolph Rossi Original Hand-Painted Photographs (detail) c. 1950, Collection Jim Linderman
"This young member of the sect finds a little bit of heaven on earth, in the shape of a juicy watermelon slice"
Original Press Photograph, 1953. Collection Jim Linderman
To Follow my blog of similar material, click OLD TIME RELIGION
Someone gave it a try but never mailed it in. This organization not only still exists, it is accredited! Known as the "Draw Me" school, they have an Alumni Gallery HERE.
Art Instruction Inc. Folded "post card" Application Form. c. 1935 with pencil embellishment. Collection Jim Linderman
Not only is Stanley Smolak's creation, the Legs Inn still operating after 80 years, it is thriving! Live bands and the greatest Polish food outside of Poland. You HAVE to read the menu HERE. Only in America? Nah...only in MICHIGAN!
Three real photo post cards, c. 1950? Collection Jim Linderman
The Newsweek double issue last week was devoted to true crime, supposedly. Whadda ripoff...is anyone doing any research anymore? I paid $6.95 at the airport and received a mere ONE PAGE from the genius James Ellroy...but several more from Vincent Bugliosi...a yawn every paragraph from this whitewash writer of decades ago who couldn't even take a literary punch from tough-guy Truman Capote. Then a few vintage mug shots, the likes of which photo collectors on Ebay found so long ago they carry about as much shock as a hearing aid battery. I'd rather look at the new ones they post on the Smoking Gun showing pimps smiling through police brutality wounds and gold grills. Please...the reason magazines are going under is because they now "write" them with press-releases from publishers and wire stories linked on Drudge the week before. Don't they even have any INTERNS who know what is cool over there? The real true crime is the price I paid for this snore which crept over me faster than my sonata.
Here, however, is the real deal. David Jacobs, shown as "the man I would most like to have dinner with" compiles tales of true crime when it meant hoodlums, hopheads, hepcats, convicts, jailbirds, reform school girls, hellcats, vixens and vice dolls. All are true stories swiped from the SOURCE...pulp magazines from the 1950's Detective Rags. Each morbid tale written with few words over 7 letters and a punk gets what was coming to him at the end of every damn one. Each story a GEM edited tighter than the lyrics to a Hank Williams weeper. From back when hacks pounded typewriters..that's right....typewriters... on speed and had to backspace to cross out the mistakes in between gulps of vodka and smoke. Back when the spouse was the spell-checker. I link to the fattest one here..355 pages of greasy gals with gats in their garters. Now that's summer reading!
Lurid heaven from David Jacobs.
Labels: Dull Tool Dim Bulb
Victor Minx Profile Sultan of Vintage Sleaze and Retro Graphics with Sexy Style Forgotten Illustrators and Photographers of Sleaze
Bettie Page, Anonymous Artists, Cocktail Napkin Nudes and Dirty Drawings combine for space on the sites (and books) maintained by Victor Minx, a collector and Garage Sale shopper who collects and presents a mind-boggling array of, as he says, Gals Gams and Garters . Actually, like purveyors of filth from the Fifties, Minx is a suitable pseudonym for a well-known vintage photography collector and published author who believes hidden ephemera and detritus of the past tells us a great deal about who we are today, and his products resemble more an art project than simple sleaze. To date, he has published two books , one a compilation of vintage vernacular erotic photographs (which means amateurs who could barely handle a shutter release, much less proper lighting) A 1950’s Scrapbook of women models in Stockings posing for barely capable hacks who fed the girlie magazines to the men’s market while trying to cash in on Hugh Hefner’s empire. At times hilarous but just as often beautiful or heartfelt, the sites are all worth following simply for audacity sake. The most recent, Vintage Sleaze , documents not only extraordinary forgotten illustrators, cartoon artists and erotic doodlers, it contains essays on noted artists such as Gene Bilbrew and other School of Visual Arts students who went bad. Another site chronicles he extraordinary hand-painted photos of the Fifties produced by one Rudolph Rossi, who joined Camera Clubs who hired models such as Bettie Page for naked outings, he then meticulously colored each photo with vibrant colors. A major discovery, the work is striking as well as odd. Two books have been self-published, more are promised and all are fabulous. There is no real guide to the sites, but several are linked here. More of an art publishing house than a pornographer, all the output is colorful, harmless and although much, as they say, “not safe for work” none will harm you. The books are published in limited edition on demand, links are provided on the sites, and the blogs themselves are free to browse, subscribe to or comment on. | <urn:uuid:5e335b85-2a68-4bc7-be98-c0754d6d9656> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949006 | 2,611 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Is MySpace Your Space? Not If You're In The Military
The memo says that the use of social networking and recreational websites "strains network capabilities and present operational risks." Never mind that they provide a connection for troops to family, friends, home.
The sites to be blocked worldwide include MySpace and YouTube as well as MTV, Pandora, 1.fm, Live365 Internet Radio, Photobucket, hi5, Metacafe, ifilm, BlackPlanet, StupidVideos, and FileCabi. Some curious choices. BlackPlanet, the "largest online community for African Americans," is now offline, undergoing maintenance. Photo-sharing sites, funny videos, a few music sharing outfits, all banned. Why not iTunes? You can get music there too. Some say the list is longer than the 13 announced last week and this is only the beginning.
YouTube, for one, plans to meet with the DoD to discuss the ban. For now troops overseas, and those on base here at home, can't access their own social networks, cutting off yet another lifeline for those who need them the most. | <urn:uuid:4b4a6913-fde8-4f15-b7ea-7f4c1b335a1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2007/05/myspace-your-space-not-if-youre-military | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943119 | 230 | 1.703125 | 2 |
It seems many people are finding Lightroom to be a bit slow, which I find rather curious. I have had the opposite experience, especially when I compare my current Lightroom workflow to my older Adobe Camera Raw workflow, which seemed glacially slow by comparison.
In Lightroom 4, Adobe engineers have really worked hard to make the software run faster than ever before, and I can see it. Even so, in this article I’ll offer up a few insider tricks, tips, and techniques that will enable Lightroom to run as smoothly as possible.
#1: Check for Hard Drive and Scratch Disk Space
First off, check to see that you have at least 50 percent of your hard drive space on your computer available. If you are working with a hard drive that is more than 75 percent full (i.e., you only have 25 percent or less of your hard drive memory left), that can slow down all applications and especially Lightroom. And of course, a fast computer is a major factor, but Lightroom will work on any computer with Mac OS X 10.4 or later. | <urn:uuid:57b717bc-0dae-4ea9-a90f-0218ebcdae38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1885122&WT.rss_f=Article&WT.rss_a=Six+Ways+to+Speed+Up+Lightroom&WT.rss_ev=a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96888 | 225 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Old network and servers may seem reliable, but the “they don’t make it like they used to” philosophy does not apply well to computers and technology. I will touch on a few areas of importance to consider if your small business is operating on a server that is more than three years old.
The performance of the equipment is the most notable factor. An older server is equipped with older technology. Significant gains in data access and task processing can be had by upgrading the server hardware, and efficiency gains in newer Operating System design will provide additional enhancements at the software level.
Computer warranties will generally extend for three years – there is a reason for this. Once devices reach a certain age their failure becomes more predictable. This is especially true for Hard Drives and Power Supplies, which – along with the cooling fans – are the only moving parts. Having old server hardware means there is a higher chance of failure of one of the components, and a higher risk of down-time or even a disaster-recovery scenario.
Old server hardware is lacking in a lot of technology advancements that have really opened the doors for new improvements that re-shape the way the technology is utilized, increasing the power of hardware exponentially with features like hypervisors and virtualization, which allows for the operation of several “virtual” servers that tasks can be split-out to, maximizing it’s potential and available resources. It also provides for incredibly fast maintenance, since system reboots of a virtual machine do not require re-initialization of the hardware, which slows down the loading time. An older server may not be capable of virtualization, and the reboot times for the operating system can be as much as thirty minutes or longer.
The time is 3:00 AM. You are fast asleep – then the phone rings. “Hello?” you say. “Server is down,” you hear through the tiny (and tinny) cellular phone speaker. This means one of two things: You will either have a very bad morning in a few hours when you have to go fix it, or you are going to have a very bad morning starting immediately when you have to go fix it (more often the latter, of course.) Why must we suffer so?
Well, for several years we haven’t had to, but not everyone realizes this yet. For a relatively cheap investment that easily covers its return after the first server-down scenario, a remote access card can be included with your server that allows for offline-servicing and direct console and KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) connection to a server that is either in an offline or “hung” state. This offers several advantages in the world of IT. An entire infrastructure can be deployed by an expert from anywhere in the globe starting from the ground-up with the operating system install. A server that needs you to press the “F1” key during a reboot because of a failed component can be brought online by the technician on-call before the official start of the business day even draws near.
Not sold yet? Imagine what the means if you outsource your IT support – response times can be greatly reduced because blocks of time do not need to be set aside for the dispatch. Travel & boarding costs are reduced tremendously or eliminated entirely.
Look for integrated baseboard management and lights-out cards from server manufacturers such as HP, Dell and IBM.
- by Jon, "GingerSnap", Pentecost
With the advancement of multi-core processors, hot-swappable RAM and hard drives, the server you buy today may last into the year 2020 or beyond. So says the article written by Paul Venezia for InfoWorld. Paul talks in his article about using virtualization in order to host multiple servers on one piece of hardware, which will cut down on the number of physical servers you will need and all the cost savings that go along with it (less power needed and less heat generated, increasing a server’s lifespan).
Paul also talks about how cheap servers have become, sighting Dell’s “My First Server” as having a quad-core processor option and another only costing $299 for 2.26 GHz dual-core processor and 1 GB RAM. With prices like these and the cost savings stated above, why wouldn’t you want to replace a number of your aging servers with a single hardware box that can support multiple virtual servers and still provide a speed boost?
Another article from InfoWorld, indicates that a new processor from Intel is due out in the first half of this year that boasts 10 cores. Can you imagine having that in your new virtual server – a 10-core processor? You could assign one core to 9 virtual servers and get rid of 9 physical boxes. Imagine the cost savings in your Data Center from only running one server, rather than 10. Even if you are a small business and only have a small handful of servers (say 4 servers), you could assign two cores to each one and still have two cores left over for the physical server.
Are you interested in replacing some of your aging physical servers with one virtual server? Talk with our IT Strategy Specialists at Trigon Technology who can talk with you about our Data Center IT Solutions. Or contact us about our Small Business IT Solutions that can move some or all of your older servers into a single physical box and greatly reduce your IT overhead. | <urn:uuid:beb5233c-bdab-45a1-8860-0ee82df68b7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trigon.com/tech-blog/?Tag=server+support&Preview=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951802 | 1,113 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Monday, 25 July 2011
Home-for-all design proposal
In response to a call for a design proposal for a small community house to be constructed at temporary housing areas in northeastern Japan, we have submitted our design. This event was organized by the 5 established Japanese architects (Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, Kazuyou Sejima, Riken Yamamoto, Hiroshi Naito). Instead of designing a building, our idea was to design an environment where the shelters’ residents could come together to grow plants and nurture the spirit of community; as a result, they grow architecture. | <urn:uuid:cbd90e38-1849-4d19-a3b9-b5136b807876> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://obuchi-lab.blogspot.com/2011/07/home-for-all-design-proposal.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961997 | 124 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Dr. Lawrence Crooks began his career in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology at the prompting of engineering science professor Jerome L. Singer (1976). During the 1970s Crooks and Singer overturned widely held beliefs about the maximum magnetic field possible for MRI, advancing its use in detecting tumors and diseases.
Dr. Crooks served on the faculty of the University of California, San Francisco, for 13 years, and also as Assistant Director of the Radiologic Imaging Laboratory. Dr. Crooks’ professional background includes engineering and R&D roles at Toshiba America MRI and Digital Electronics Corporation.
His professional honors include the International Taylor Prize from the John P. Robarts Research Institute, a Gold Medal from the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and membership in the honor societies Phi Beta Kappa, Eta Kapp Nu and Sigma Xi.
Dr. Crooks has served on the Board of Trustees of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and has chaired the San Francisco area chapter for the IEEE Group on Engineering in Medicine and Biology. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications, and has served on the editorial board of the journal Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.
Dr. Crooks holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering from Berkeley. | <urn:uuid:c0e3ea87-bfe8-4bc4-9ca1-ce476507c05c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iheartcenters.com/about/scientific-advisors/lawrence-e-crooks-phd/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934114 | 281 | 1.554688 | 2 |
High winds, tornado trap Georgia residents, turn over cars
By Michael Pearson. Phil Gast and Vivian Kuo
January 31, 2013
(CNN) -- Powerful winds and a tornado spawned by a 1,000-mile-long storm system pounded communities in northwest Georgia on Wednesday, overturning dozens of vehicles and trapping residents.
The tornado caused significant damage in Adairsville, Georgia.
One person died in that town and another died in Tennessee, authorities reported. At least 17 people were injured in Georgia, two critically.
The Adairsville death marks the first person killed by a U.S. tornado in 220 days, a record for most consecutive days without such a fatality, said CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen.
In the mountains of North Carolina, iReporter Matt Able said most of the roads around Appalachian State in Boone were impassible because of flooding. He sent in video of people driving down U.S. 321, which was under several inches of water.
Earlier, in Alabama, the storms blew the metal roof off a building in Sheffield, CNN affiliate WHNT said. The storm also damaged a church steeple in Rogersville, the station reported.
In Kentucky, winds blew off much of the roof of the Penrod Missionary Baptist Church and damaged several homes, CNN affiliate WFIE reported.
In Nashville, the weather service listed dozens of damage reports across the region: a funnel cloud was reported early Wednesday in Jackson County, there were dozens of reports of downed trees and power lines, and law enforcement reported damage to homes and businesses.
CNN affiliate WSMV also reported the partial collapse of an office building in Mount Juliet, Tennessee.
"I built it myself to take an event like this. And it looks like a freight train hit it," the station quoted building owner Dewey Lineberry as saying. "It's just destroyed. It laid the building down on top of cars, it put the building on top of people. It's unbelievable."
List of Senators voting against helping Hurricane Sandy Survivors
Sessions (R-AL)Boozman (R-AR)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsFlake (R-AZ)McCain (R-AZ)Rubio (R-FL)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsChambliss (R-GA)Isakson (R-GA)Grassley (R-IA)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsCrapo (R-ID)Risch (R-ID)Kirk (R-IL)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsCoats (R-IN)Moran (R-KS)Roberts (R-KS)McConnell (R-KY)Paul (R-KY)Blunt (R-MO)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsBurr (R-NC)Fischer (R-NE)Johanns (R-NE)Ayotte (R-NH)Portman (R-OH)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsCoburn (R-OK)Inhofe (R-OK)Toomey (R-PA)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsGraham (R-SC)Scott (R-SC)Thune (R-SD)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsCorker (R-TN)Cornyn (R-TX)Cruz (R-TX)Hatch (R-UT)Lee (R-UT)Johnson (R-WI)
FEMA Disaster DeclarationsBarrasso (R-WY)Enzi (R-WY) | <urn:uuid:57097387-9ab9-42c8-adb5-def4a947565d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://woundedtimes.blogspot.jp/2013/01/list-of-senators-voting-against-helping.html | 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 | 0.939891 | 733 | 1.632813 | 2 |
It gives a whole new meaning to making a family event out of a graduation.
Frances Smolen and her two daughters, Ann Marie Penrow and Elizabeth Hope Raines, all recently graduated together from Augusta Technical College's General Equivalency Diploma program.
"It was a great experience," Raines said. "Having my family there with me really kept me motivated."
Smolen was first to begin the literacy class, held at Marvin United Methodist Church in Martinez, which prepares students to successfully pass the GED test.
After raving about the program to her daughters, they soon followed suit.
The literacy class, instructed by Leola Bouchard, teaches the basics skills needed in each area of the GED test.
All three women chose to pursue their GEDs to improve their employment outlook and possibly to go on to higher education.
"I wanted to get a better, higher-paying job," Smolen said. "And getting my GED could help me do that."
After having a child, Raines wanted to pursue her GED to help better provide for her baby.
The women said the class was a wonderful resource in preparing them for the test.
"The class was really great," Raines said. "Ms. Bouchard was just wonderful. Anytime I needed help, I could call her and she'd do whatever she could to help me."
All three said passing the GED test and their graduation day were proud moments.
"It felt really good," Smolen said, "especially having my daughters there with me."
Obtaining their GEDs was just a beginning for the women, who plan to continue their educations.
"The class was a great way to get started," said Smolen, adding that she would like to attend Augusta State University, followed by law school at Mercer University.
Raines hopes to become an occupational therapist.
"This has allowed me to go on to do what I really want to do with my life," she said.
The Columbia County News-Times ©2013. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:fbdd4d74-351a-4161-b792-f6001f3285a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newstimes.augusta.com/stories/2006/07/16/new_88940.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985884 | 431 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Playing For Change - Bringing Peace to the World Through Music
It started off a decade ago, by Grammy winning producer/engineer Mark Johnson, as a simple documentary about uniting the planet through music and song.
They've now released a CD/DVD package (available at Starbucks, Amazon.com and your local music store), featuring 37 musicians from around the globe. It highlights musicians from the USA, India, Ireland, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Israel, Ghana, Tibet, and the Congo.
The Playing For Change Foundation donates a major portion of the monies collected towards building music/art schools around the world..
The brainchild of producer Mark Johnson, who traveled the globe collecting clips from musicians from all over (New Orleans, Moscow, Zimbabwe, Tibet), and then distilled them all into a single video, the clip has since garnered nearly 10 million views on YouTube.
Now, musicians from all over the world are brought together to perform benefit concerts that build music and art schools in communities that are in need of inspiration and hope. In addition to benefit concerts, the Playing for Change band also performs shows around the world. When audiences see and hear musicians who have traveled thousands of miles from their homes, united in purpose and chorus on one stage, everyone is touched by music's unifying power.
Music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.
Most Recommended Comment
New York, New York, United States | <urn:uuid:e603c3d7-5420-41a2-b3db-eb2790b63844> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/playing-change-bringing-peace-world-through-music | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937594 | 313 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Flashback: Read McCain's 'Mission Accomplished' Iraq Speech
UPDATE: John McCain said on Thursday that President Bush shouldn't be blamed for the "Mission Accomplished" banner:
Republican John McCain says President Bush should not be held responsible for the much-criticized "mission accomplished" banner five years ago, but he should be blamed for bungling the early months of the Iraq war.
Thursday was the fifth anniversary of Bush's dramatic landing on an aircraft carrier where the banner hung. The certain GOP presidential nominee said he thought the banner was a mistake at the time.
As a refresher, here is the first paragraph of Bush's speech in front of the banner: "[M]y fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."
Moreover, McCain himself defended the banner in June 2003 on Fox News:
NEIL CAVUTO (host): Senator -- after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn't over.
McCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier? Look, the -- I have said a long time that reconstruction of Iraq would be a long, long, difficult process, but the conflict -- the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it's very appropriate.
And on May 22, 2003 -- just three weeks after Bush spoke on the aircraft carrier -- McCain offered a mission accomplished speech of his own. On the Senate floor, McCain proclaimed "massive victory" in Iraq and credited combat-readiness for "our victory" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Here's the extended excerpt from that speech:
Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom demonstrated to the world what we saw just 12 years ago. We went to war as the most combat-ready force in the world. The value of that readiness is clear. We won a massive victory in a few weeks, and we did so with very limited loss of American and allied lives. We were able to end aggression with minimum overall loss of life, and we were even able to greatly reduce the civilian casualties of Afghani and Iraqi citizens.
In order to understand the issues involved, it is necessary to recognize just how difficult it is to achieve the kind of readiness we had during Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Readiness is not solely a matter of funding operations and maintenance at the proper level. It is not only a matter of funding adequate numbers of high quality personnel, or of funding superior weapons and munitions, strategic mobility and propositioning, high operating tempos, realistic levels of training at every level of combat, or of logistics and support capabilities.
Readiness, in fact, is all of these things and more. A force beings to go hollow the moment it loses its overall mix of combat capabilities in any one critical area. Our technology edge in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been meaningless if we did not have men and women trained to use it. Having the best weapons system platforms in the world would not have given us our victory if we had not had the right command and control facilities, maintenance capabilities, and munitions. | <urn:uuid:737afe58-3881-4973-8006-56f9745302cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/01/flashback-read-mccains-mi_n_99585.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968741 | 650 | 1.773438 | 2 |
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Hiring accelerated in November, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly plummeted to its lowest rate in nearly three years.
Employers added 120,000 jobs in November, the Labor Department reported Friday, marking a pick-up in hiring from October.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 8.6%, the lowest rate since March 2009 and a significant decline from 9% just a month before.
Sounds great, right? Well not so fast there Bunky (from the NY Times):
Still, serious concerns remain about the economy’s ability to weather a potential meltdown in Europe.
American governments at all levels continued to bleed workers, for one. And the decline in the unemployment rate had a down side: It fell partly because more workers got jobs, but also because about 315,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. That left the share of Americans actively participating in the work force at a historically depressed 64 percent, down from 64.2 percent in October.
Even excluding these hundreds of thousands of dropouts, the country still had a backlog of more than 13 million unemployed workers, whose spells of unemployment averaged an all-time high of 40.9 weeks.
Think about that for a moment. There were 120K new jobs for November while 315K left the workforce because they had given up on finding a job. It takes nearly 100K new jobs each month just to maintain the status quo. 120K new jobs for the month, while positive, is still a pittance of what is needed. And more than 2 1/2 times the numbers of folks who got jobs left the workforce discouraged.
MSNBC notes that even the “good news” needs to be tempered as:
The average number of hours worked remained flat in November, while wages fell by 0.1 percent.
More than half the new jobs November were added by retailers, restaurants and bars. Retailers added 50,000 jobs, the sector’s biggest gain since April. Restaurants and bars hired 33,000 new workers. The health care industry added 17,000.
“The quality of jobs is not as great as you would like to see,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities. “A lot of the jobs were probably part-time positions and that is one of the reasons average hourly earnings fell.”
Besides the fall in the official unemployment rate from 9% to 8.6%, the U6 number as reported has also fallen for November from October’s 16.2 to November’s 15.6. I’m not at all sure how this can be unless the U6 has been undercounting folks (which is my supposition). Without having been undercounting people for both the U3 (official unemployment number) and U6 (un and underemployment along with ‘marginally attached’ i.e., those who have given up looking), it just does not seem like both U3 and U6 could fall for November when so many have left the workforce.
Wednesday (November 30), the LA Times had this opinion piece that seems to have a clearer perspective than the official number.
Yesterday’s weekly Initial Unemployment Claims report was back above 400K.
While my prediction of a double-dip recession by the end of the year (made back in June) may not happen quite as soon as I thought, the overall economy is still struggling and there are still millions of people wanting to work, without work available.
Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich apparently wants to make children the primary wage earners for their families.
And because I can:
Cross posted from Just A Small Town Country Boy by Richard Taylor | <urn:uuid:5d024384-78bb-403e-b305-28ab23b9d86e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://my.firedoglake.com/dakine01/2011/12/02/sorry-but-these-numbers-do-not-add-up/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967506 | 809 | 1.523438 | 2 |
ok i have all the motors working and spinning in the correct direction. I had to swap some of the leads from the esc to the motor.I know have all motors spinning. I have the ESC calibrated. Now if i could get my phone to focus on the laptop screen so i could show you the output from the radio to what the motors are actually spinning. The only time i have full control ( what i mean is making the motors spin very very slow to very very fast ) is when i am in the calibration mode or when i have the esc and motor connected directly to the receiver.
Yes has been calibrated through mission planner.
I just want to throw this out there. Thank you guys very much for being so patient with me. This is my first build and i have realized that i am a little quick to post a question and then it seams like i figure it out mostly on my own.
I am going to try and make a video of the input on mission planner to show you with the throttle and the motor output.
Video . first one is during the esc calibration, last part is after calibration is finished and it is relying on the apm to control the output.
Let me repeat for clarification - I am no expert. In fact I was about where you are six months ago.
A screen photo would tell me next to nothing as I have so little experience reading logs and graphs from our machines. But instead of taking a photo why not simply do a screen capture?
From the video, I am tempted to say that this looks normal. Here's my speculation: You don't need low-speed control if there's no hope of lifting the copter, so why waste that much throttle throw? Additionally if the throttle PWM goes low, as if you lost radio contact, the APM goes into FailSafe. You certainly don't want to be able to throttle down into failsafe. On my hex I get liftoff with about ten percent of the throttle and hover at about 45%. If I ever went full throttle, this thing would disappear like a rocket. If I am wrong, I hope that someone would correct me, but as I said, this looks normal to me. | <urn:uuid:b7aa2247-cba8-4b4d-a6e9-ad8b929a33a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/ardupilot-2-5-1-board-and-power?page=3&commentId=705844%3AComment%3A1073844&x=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975187 | 449 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Monday, May 20, 2013
The Associated Press
Willie Evans remembers the things his mother tried in order to quit smoking: the patch, the gum and even hypnotism.
Her attempts all failed. Marie Evans died of lung cancer in 2002 at the age of 54.
Willie Evans sued Lorillard Tobacco Co., arguing that the company got his mother hooked on smoking by giving away free cigarette samples to children in her Boston housing project in the 1950s and '60s.
A jury awarded $152 million in damages, an amount that was later reduced to $116 million.
Lorillard's appeal is set to go before the highest court in Massachusetts next month. The company argues that the trial judge made a series of rulings that prevented the company from getting a fair trial.
For Willie Evans, the appeal is another step in the process for finding justice for his mother.
"We think today of what our reaction would be if a tobacco company were to go into a playground and give cigarettes to kids, and we would be outraged," he said.
The company denied giving away cigarette samples to children.
In its appeal, Lorillard said it was denied a fair trial, in part because the judge allowed the jury to hear about Evans' claim that the company marketed its cigarettes to African-Americans and children. | <urn:uuid:9ada03c4-d731-4f6b-acab-3099ed090927> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pressherald.com/news/bay-state-court-will-hear-appeal-in-tobacco-case_2012-11-26.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985263 | 269 | 1.570313 | 2 |
With his recent suggestion that the 27-year-old federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling should be abandoned, would-be president John McCain shows once again he’s no maverick, and certainly not a straight shooter.
Going back to his presidential campaign of 2000, and more recently this December, and then just this past May, McPander has consistently supported the moratorium. But now, with gas approaching $5 a gallon in some parts of the country, W.’s clone, reading the polls no doubt, has done a complete turnaround and called for the federal ban to be lifted.
To be clear, it is not necessarily wrong for an elected official to change his mind when the facts and realities of the moment require it. But McCain’s decision to reverse his long-held belief supporting the offshore moratorium actually flies in the face of the facts.
There is no question that the price hikes in gasoline that have occurred this past year are having a significant deleterious impact on Americans, especially for the low-income and those in the transportation sectors. However, the call to open up pristine areas off our coasts to drilling is not the answer. With their reversal, McCain and the other Republican politicians like Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who are simply trying to score political points, are risking the health of our environment, the economy and of the people.
McCain was reported to have said in support of his flip-flop on the moratorium that drilling (offshore) “would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis.” His statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Indeed, the well-respected federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) has said that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030,” and even then, “Because oil prices are determined on the international market … any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.”
McCain’s argument is also fallacious because it only considers the supply side of the equation and not the more important demand side. The truth is, the demand for oil is substantially outstripping our ability to produce it, and that will continue to be the case no matter where we drill. With the burgeoning middle class growth of China and India, there is simply no way the production of the finite resource of fossil fuels can keep up. The other factors affecting the current price of oil that McCain seemingly fails to consider are the impacts to the price caused by speculators in crude oil futures and the falling U.S. dollar. His failure to acknowledge these impacts may be because he has done so little to control either one.
For a moment, let us go back to the supply side of the question. The fundamental reality is that any way you cut, or drill it, the US only has 3 percent of the known oil reserves (while it consumes 25 percent), while the Persian Gulf countries hold 65 percent of the world’s oil reserves. So even if we dropped the moratorium, the mean estimates from the Minerals Management Service indicate that the total recoverable resources currently off-limits in the lower 48 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) totals 18 billion barrels of crude oil.
At America’s current rate of consumption (20.8 million barrels of oil per day), the oil that would flow from lifting the offshore drilling ban would only last this country of consumers less than two-and-a-half years. Clearly such a relatively small amount of oil, when considering the world market, would do nothing to protect U.S. consumers from price hikes, neither in the short nor long term.
Even if we could drill our way out of the energy crisis, it wouldn’t be the right or wise thing to do. Frankly, suggesting an end to the offshore drilling moratorium only promotes the false and dangerous premise that America’s long-term energy problems could be solved if only those mean and selfish environmentalists would just let us drill where we want. Such thinking simply postpones achieving what is the true remedy for meeting our long-term energy needs in a healthy and sustainable manner.
Only by focusing on the development of clean renewable energy and conservation will we ever create an energy future that keeps us safe, secure and sustainable for generations to come. While the transition from fossil-based fuels to a renewable energy future will be painful for some, the longer we wait to begin the transition in earnest, the harder it will be on us all. Rather than producing and consuming more oil that is bad for our health and exacerbates the global warming and climate change problem(s), we need to put our money, thinking and effort into the rapid development of renewable energy. To now propose drilling for oil off our coasts while Cape Wind has been fought all these years is just reprehensible.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, if we switched to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the country would save 3.8 million barrels of oil a day, roughly twice what new drilling would provide. The Union of Concerned Scientists has said raising fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks to 40 MPG over the next decade would yield cumulative oil savings of three billion barrels by 2012, and more than 12 billion by 2020. Raising the standard would also save each driver approximately $3,500 to $6,500 over the life of the vehicle.
Oil consumption should be cut, not increased. Any politician who would be president should have the courage and wisdom to tell us so. It would appear that John McCain has neither the wisdom nor the courage required.
The writer is president of Clean Power Now, an organization that supports the Cape Wind project. | <urn:uuid:24efe973-bf4d-40b2-9bfb-13fae5cd5749> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15402&Itemid=92 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951748 | 1,171 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Maybe Infidelity Isn't Such A Huge Deal
Women enjoy sex. Often, they like it as much as men do - if not more. As much as this seems obvious to us, this is still in many ways a radical statement. Just ask Holly Hill.
Yesterday, Sadie dove headfirst into some of the worst stereotypes about men, women, and sex - all brought to us courtesy of professional mistress-turned-author Holly Hill. Key to Hill's argument against monogamy is the idea that men need sex, while women simply like it. If you deny your man the loving he deserves, he will just go get it somewhere else. Or so the logic goes.
But there is another argument against monogamy that makes a lot more sense than Hill's retrobabble. In the new book Sex at Dawn authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá argue that we might be programmed to cheat (and here's the shocking thing) equally. Instead of viewing women as the unwilling gatekeepers of male satisfaction, Ryan and Jethá suggest that evolutionary psychologists have drunk the misogynist Kool-Aid and missed the point entirely, as shown in this excerpt, published at Nerve:
And yet, despite repeated assurances that women aren't particularly sexual creatures, in cultures around the world men have gone to extraordinary lengths to control female libido: female genital mutilation, head-to-toe chadors, medieval witch burnings, chastity belts, suffocating corsets, muttered insults about "insatiable" whores, pathologizing, paternalistic medical diagnoses of nymphomania or hysteria, the debilitating scorn heaped on any female who chooses to be generous with her sexuality . . . all parts of a worldwide campaign to keep the supposedly low-key female libido under control. Why the electrified high-security razor-wire fence to contain a kitty-cat?
Female sexuality has been a source of fear for centuries. It's been repressed and pathologized to the point where many women like Hill have come to believe that women seek sex for "intimacy" and not orgasm.
Interestingly, both camps boil it down to a single statement: Humans aren't really meant for monogamy. Infidelity, ugly as it may be, is actually kind of normal. Everything about us, from the shape of our genitalia to the way we have sex, points toward a more open view of sex and love. But does that mean we should just scrap the modern model and move onto polygamy or something of that sort? Hill might say yes, but Ryan and Jethá aren't moving that fast. In an interview published last week at Salon, Ryan explained:
All we're really hoping for is to encourage more tolerance and more open discussion between men and women about sexuality and about marriage, and to come to see that marriage isn't about sex. It's about things that are much deeper and more lasting than sex, especially if you have children. And the American insistence on mixing love and sex and expecting passion to last forever is leading to great suffering that we think is tragic and unnecessary.
Separation of love and sex is not exactly a new idea, but the underlying context, that maybe sex isn't that big of a deal is something that bears repeating. As a society, we're pretty obsessed with sex. And though talking, thinking, watching, and engaging in sexual activity is all fun, sometimes it's worth restating that being good in bed isn't the most important thing in the world and it really doesn't matter to anyone but yourself if you choose quality over quantity (or vice versa). Maybe monogamy goes against our nature, but I suspect this doesn't matter nearly as much in a relationship as honesty and communication. No one, under any circumstances, needs to cheat - sex may be a driving force, but we are all more powerful than urges. Instead of promoting "tolerance," which is dangerously close the the crap Hill is shilling, maybe we should focus on the "open discussion" part of the equation. | <urn:uuid:b9da21d8-a666-4333-b41e-e8717afa68ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sexatdawn.com/page1/page17/page36/page36.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960583 | 828 | 1.710938 | 2 |
You and I both have met enough smart people who are not social. And while social has many meanings, what I am referring to is social at the fundamental level – to invest ongoing time and energy in conversations with people that fall under a broad spectrum of relationships (from strangers to close friends.) Social media simply happens to be a more efficient (may not be more effective all the time) medium for those conversations.
I went on a journey to explore the reasons for the same. Some of the reasons are obvious but some would definitely surprise you.
But, before we go there, let us look at the smart and social landscape. If we put them all in a graph, we can slot people into four quadrants namely:
1. Not Smart and Not Social: These people are Invisible and except for people that have relationships with them, others won’t notice that they are missing.
2. Not Smart and Social: These are Noise Generators. With the barrier to entry for any social media tool being so low, they talk a lot but the value of what they say is questionable.
3. Smart but Not Social: These are Hidden Gems. I have to be careful here as there are many people in this category that are not “hidden.” Their work is so valuable that others will amplify it for them.
4. Smart and Social: These are Amplifiers. They bring a lot of value and being social they know how to amplify their value.
Our focus in this blog post is on #3 – Hidden Gems.
Why are these smart people not so social. Here are reasons that I got:
1. They never felt the need to be social:
Many people that I spoke to expressed that they haven’t felt the need to be social and they would rather prefer relationships with a close-knit group than spreading their energy. They are social in their own limited circle but not the way others expect them to be. If you have to choose between quality and quantity, you should go for quality when it comes to building relationships.
2. They are super busy:
Some expressed that they are so busy with their current projects that they don’t have ANY time to engage with new people. That is not to say that they don’t meet with new people – but these new people they meet come via one-to-one introductions via their trusted sources.
3. They don’t believe ROI story (completely):
They don’t believe the general explanation of ROI. Their logic – the general ROI explanation “assumes” that one does not have a better use for the time invested in being social. These people don’t buy that and say that the alternatives (for example, inventing something new, writing a book etc.) available are equally or more powerful.
4. They are not easily “box”able
This is a problem more for others who are “dealing” with these smart people. Human beings have a need to “box” other people – that gives them the comfort knowing “who they are dealing with.” Many smart people (ex: polymaths) are not easily “box”able – increasing the difficulty to being social.
5. Signal discovery is expensive in the social world:
Time is precious for these people and for some of them, time is more precious than money. Investing time means they are investing more than money so they expect to get a better ROII (return on investment for an interaction.) Unfortunately, many places where people hang out are filled with noise and these people have no interest in investing their time to “discover” the signals from the social world.
They believe that being social will help them discover some gems. However, they are not convinced of the investment they need to make to discover those gems.
6. They believe that amplification will be automatic if the contribution is valuable enough
One advantage of being social is the reach and amplification that comes with it. Many people that belong to the above category were of the opinion that if the work is truly valuable, it automatically get the amplification. When I countered them quoting the case of Apple products that are marketed heavily, their response was that they are not against marketing but they want to create something that is marketing-worthy first. One of them said that it is best to spend 90% of the time creating and 10% marketing it than to do it the other way round.
7. Big frequency mismatches frustrate them:
In a classroom, a teacher has to deal with students of all levels of intelligence. He or she needs to have the patience to construct the message so that (hopefully) ALL the students will understand it. The teacher is happy to accomodate this and adjust his or her communication. That is not the case with these smart people. They have no interest or to time to engage where there is BIG frequency mismatch.
Have a great week ahead! | <urn:uuid:b2f6a0bb-c28f-4fb0-84c7-28177cc41d2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2011/11/13/why-many-smart-people-are-not-social/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972435 | 1,031 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Most beginning players start with an acoustic guitar as they don't require an amplifier and are often (though by no means always) less costly than an electric model. There's no need to break the bank when you're just getting started; but of course, you also need to choose your starter guitar carefully. Otherwise you may end up with a model which makes it more difficult to learn then fundamentals of playing guitar. When you choose your first guitar wisely, you'll find that learning the art of music is easier and much more fun. Instruments like the Cordoba C5 nylon string acoustic guitar provide the best of both worlds: low price with easy to play, great sounding quality
These low quality guitars are prone to problems including improperly set action (this is how high off of the fret board the strings are set) and poorly made tuning pegs, which result in the instrument getting out of tune so quickly that you could end up spending more time trying to tune your guitar than actually playing. These bargain basement, poorly made instruments are hardly what you want from a starter guitar.
Instead, it's best to look for a starter acoustic guitar at a specialty retailer which carries quality brands and whose staff are knowledgeable enough to stock only the highest quality starter instruments, such as the Fender CD60 acoustic guitar. You simply won't find the staff at your local big box store to be well versed in musical instruments, let alone which brands and models make a good choice for a starter acoustic guitar.
You're probably wondering which models may be a good choice for a beginners guitar which are high quality enough to learn to play on yet not so pricy as to be prohibitive to the beginner. We'll cover a couple of models you may want to consider below – these are all instruments which make an excellent choice of starter acoustic guitar.
If you're going to learn to play the guitar, it makes sense to look for quality over a low price; while you don't need to clean out your bank account to get a starter acoustic guitar, it is important to remember that when you buy a cheap, no-name guitar, you do get what you pay for. | <urn:uuid:7b28c02e-3681-4a58-9db0-7c30873145be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.samash.com/opencms/opencms/samash/buyers-guides/starter-acoustic-guitar-buyers-guide.html?cm_sp=Buyers+Guides-_-Guitar+Buyers+Guides-_-Starter+Acoustic+Guitar+Buyers+Guide | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973509 | 433 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Interest in gold and gold prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Who has gold? Where is it found? And what is it used for? These are the questions N.C. State University economist Mike Walden answers in today’s Economic Perspective.
Economic Perspective, featuring N.C. State University economist Mike Walden and host Mary Walden, focuses on economic issues facing North Carolina and the nation. The 1- to 2-minute segments are issued each week day.
North Carolina’s economy and quality of life are linked inextricably with natural resources — the air, land and water upon which we all depend. To help protect the environment today and into the future, CALS faculty members have wide-ranging expertise they put to use through teaching, research and extension programs. Read More >> | <urn:uuid:751725c0-c32e-4aae-8ff3-43a45ef0005e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/news-center/2010/10/page/3/?cat=13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946314 | 166 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The ice remains here in Ohio - and the weather is truly crazed. The temperature when I woke up this morning: 36F. Temperature an hour and a half later: 25F … and continuing to fall on its way to somewhere in the teens.
Got some quick hits to make before trying to figure out what to do with my classes after having two days worth of classes/labs cancelled due to this storm:
Kirishima: The Japanese volcano is still going strong - be sure to keep an eye on the webcams to see the action (6th and 7th from bottom on right hand menu) - including a new webcam on the volcano. So far there has only been one reported injury from the eruption (caused by glass from broken windows), but the eruption has been impressive nevertheless (video). Kirishima has two more larger explosions that reverberated through the communities near the volcano, creating plumes that reached 500-1000 meters / 1500-3000 feet (see image below). The Telegraph has some video of lightning from the eruptive plume ... and if you ever need a reminder of how potentially hazardous watching an erupting volcano can be, check out this tweet from Eruptions reader James Reynolds who was on the scene (video). UPDATE: If Kirishima isn't enough for you, try out this video of Sakurajima from Eruptions reader Matt B.
Taal: Last year we were all watching to see if Taal, the caldera in the middle of the Philippines, was going to start erupting again after PHIVOLCS raised the alert status at the volcano. This concern was based on increasing seismicity and hydrothermal activity at the vents in the caldera lake. Well, as 2011 begins, it appears that some seismicity is back on the upswing after calming down at the end of 2010. PHIVOLCS has not changed the alert status from "1" (lowest) but they did note 10 earthquakes under the caldera over the last 24 hours - something to keep an eye on to see if that trend increases. All is quiet at the Philippines two other volcanoes of interest (right now): Mayon and Bulusan.
Tarawera: I mentioned last year that research was being done to find any remains of the Pink and White Terraces at Mt. Tarawera in New Zealand. These former natural wonders were buried in the 1886 basaltic fissure event from Tarawera and were assumed to have been destroyed in the process. Well, apparently sonar mapping and remote underwater cameras imaging of the Lake Rotomahana has found at least the Pink Terraces - albeit under some rock and sediment. The terraces are now under 60 meters of water, making them a little harder for the tourists to visit, although the underwater camera system being used by the research team lead by Cornel de Ronde did get some pictures of the Pink Terraces, along with finding active hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the lake (not surprising considering the activity at the nearby Waimangu Valley).
Santorini: Oddly, this week was (and is still going to try to be) Santorini week in my Volcanoes class. Why is that odd? Well, because I stumbled across this trailer (video) for a new BBC One TV movie supposedly based on the eruption of Thera in the 17th century B.C. I say "supposedly" because it is called "Atlantis" and, well, just watch the trailer. I mean, looks like the movie might be great eye candy, but I'm not holding my breath about a faithful retelling.
Top left: Bathing in the now-buried Pink Terraces near Tarawera in New Zealand. The terraces, thought to have been destroyed in 1886, have been located 60 meter under the surface of Lake Rotomahana. | <urn:uuid:29da762c-d5c5-48ef-993c-6d98f23d281e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bigthink.com/eruptions/wednesday-whatzits-kirishima-update-taals-restlessness-new-zealands-pink-terraces-found-and-atlantis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962548 | 803 | 1.6875 | 2 |
I received my property tax bill and see that once again, the county has contracted with the ‘Point & Pay’ service to give property owners the option to pay their taxes online by credit card or direct debit.
There’s a catch, however: Point & Pay charges 2.5 percent for credit card payments and $1.50 per electronic check.
While I do appreciate that the county is trying to give me more options to pay, I don’t think that is is wise to contract with a third party who charges a fee for a direct debit from a bank account.
Can’t the county negotiate a better deal than this?
I do virtually all my bill paying online these days, and this is the only case I know of where a business entity, government or otherwise, wants to charge me extra to pay from my checking account.
The property tax office is a big operation with thousands of customers. I am quite sure that it is more cost effective to process e-payments vs paper checks. If the office factored the cost of this convenient option into their operating budget, I am certain that they will get many more taxpayers using this service, which will drive efficiency in the whole system, while making Cincinnati a greener, more livable city.
Can’t they encourage people to pay online from their bank accounts by making this a free service instead of charging fees that will drive people away? | <urn:uuid:bf089118-20c5-4b3a-9ac4-748624f86779> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cincinnati.com/blogs/letters/2013/01/10/insult-to-injury-on-tax-bill/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959354 | 294 | 1.625 | 2 |
Today should not be such a surprise. At Seasonal Odds we examined the average historical performance of the Dow Jones in the first trading week of February over the last 15 years.
The beginning of February is typically weak for the Dow, with the market declining 60% of the time over the period, losing an average of .53%. Also included are three of the oldest Dow components, XOM, PG, and GE—all begin the month negatively, with PG and GE declining almost 70% and 75% of the time, respectively.
Seasonal Odds is a live-updating stock market Almanac and real-time back-testing engine developed at Harvard and MIT. It was created by Daniel Nadler (PhD Candidate, Harvard) and Pete Kruskall (S.B. and M.Eng., MIT). | <urn:uuid:d7e63340-d60f-4292-b384-00eab4ef189a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/over-the-last-15-years-dow-drops-in-feb-2013-2?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950894 | 169 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The dark cornish chicken comes in many colors and is quite a popular show bird, though it
has a tendency for bad legs due to widely spaced hips. Though
aggressiveness is a common characteristic they are relatively easy to
handle and make good mothers. Indian Game require more space than most
other breeds so they may not be suitable for suburban producers or
enthusiasts. The Indian Game is however highly prone to parasites, the
Cornish must also be provided with extra shelter as their feathers tend
to be thinner than other birds. | <urn:uuid:243ff0f6-6e0c-447c-828f-267b3e5f7aed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.californiahatchery.com/Dark-Cornish-Chicken-_p_39.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960262 | 112 | 1.664063 | 2 |
What is the effect of Leopoldo Lopez dropping out of the Venezuelan elections?
On January 24th, 2012, Leopoldo Lopez, one of the strongest opponents against President Chavez, dropped out of the Venezuelan elections. He pledged to support candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.
What was the effect of this move on the other candidates’ support base? To answer this question, we analyzed the flow of communications via twitter, Facebook, and other platforms. The effect of Lopez’s withdrawal from the race was interesting, and was similar to a something that happened recently right here in the USA.
A few months ago, Herman Cain, a conservative Republican candidate, dropped out of the US Republican primary race. Ttwick had been watching the raise of Cain, even before it was noticed by major media outlets. One effect of Cain’s withdrawal was an increase in Obama’s ranking, as measured by our algorithms.
Going back to the Venezuelan elections, intuition would suggest that Lopez’s base would switch to supporting Capriles. However, the ebb and flow of information that we are monitoring indicates that the single largest (in percentage terms) beneficiary of Lopez dropping out of the race was candidate Maria Corina Machado.
Nevertheless, Chavez still maintains a high popularity. Capriles leads the opposition, and the other candidates don’t have enough “momentum” to catch up with either Chavez or Capriles.
Another phenomenon we have observed are the different “Social Network Structures” that the opposition and the Chavismo show.
In the “Chavismo” structure, there is a predominance of unidirectional communication, sort of like military structures where commands are given and obeyed. There is no voicing of opinions, as can be seen from the flows of communication between the PSUV node and the other satellite nodes. Practically, we don’t see crossing of arrows, which is an indication of hierarchical “barriers” typical of military structures. This sort of structure shows zero flexibility and are prone to breakdowns – if the top nodes are affected, followers wouldn’t know what to do, since they hardly communicate with each other. The chart below, left, shows the SNV of Hugo Chavez, as an example of hierarchical structure. The only exception to this generalized SNV in the “Chavismo” side is the SNV of Nicolas Maduro, which looks genuine and prone to bi-lateral communications.
The opposition’s network is more flexible, with a great deal of flow between the different participants, still around a central node (the candidate). The example above right, shows the SNV of Diego Arria, where open dialogue and communication is evident, indicated by the multiple arrows in and out of the different nodes, and crossing each other. These are also typical of the SNVs of Maria Corina Machado, Pablo Perez, Pablo Medina, and Henrique Capriles.
There is another type of structure present in the “Chavismo” side, around the SNV of Elias Jaua and Diosdado Cabello, which may indicate polarization inside the PSUV, but that will be the topic of another blog.
The science of Artificial Intelligence applied to Social Network Analysis is in its infancy, but provides a great deal of insight into human interactions and an edge to the savvy user.
Please write your comments and questions in the space below. We would love to hear from you. | <urn:uuid:98a1c205-46bb-466a-b3f7-24c423f4da81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ttwick.com/blog/what-is-the-effect-of-leopoldo-lopez-dropping-out-of-the-venezuelan-elections-social-media-intel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945276 | 731 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Burlesque on Carmen was intended by Charlie Chaplin to be a two-reel film, but to his annoyance additional material, shot by Leo White and featuring Ben Turpin, was added for its release after Chaplin left Essanay. It is a parody of two contemporary films based on Bizet's opera, by Cecil B. De Mille (starring opera star Geraldine Farrar) and Raoul Walsh (starring vamp Theda Bara). Chaplin plays Darn Hosiery (Don Jose) the Corporal of the Guard who is seduced by Carmen (engagingly played by Edna Purviance) so that Gypsy smugglers can get their swag through the city gates. His chief rivals for Carmen's affections are Escamillo, the Toreador and a fellow soldier of the guard, Leo White.
The interjection of the Turpin sections and the use of outtakes of the Chaplin material makes the plot rather murky. Don Jose is charmed by Carmen and ignores his military duties. He allows the smugglers to enter the city gates but other guards, alerted by his rival White, give chase. Later, as the guards and gypsies struggle at a village gate, Don Jose gets into a duel for Carmen's attentions with White, during which Don Jose engages in some Chaplinesque fencing and wrestling, but aided by Carmen he kills White. Realizing the depth of his deed he pursues Carmen who has taken off out a window. He catches up with her, but the Toreador interrupts his accusations and takes Carmen away. Sometime later they are seen arriving at the bull ring. Don Jose catches up with Carmen and, playing it perfectly straight, he chillingly accuses her of infidelity and when she mocks his love, he stabs her and then himself. They are discovered by the Toreador, but Don Jose revives, mule kicks Escamillo back into the arena and picks up Carmen who also comes back to life. Looking into the camera, they smilingly show the audience the collapsible knife as the camera irises in. | <urn:uuid:18d7c7f6-17ea-4120-bdb8-94cf4a343186> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-burlesque-on-carmen-v7586 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970681 | 435 | 1.515625 | 2 |
PALO ALTO, CA –Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut down in May of 2013. Managing the site has become too stressful.
“Facebook has gotten out of control,” reportedly said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”
Zuckerberg reportedly went on to explain that starting May 15th, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts. That gives users (and Facebook addicts) a year to adjust to liwithout Facebook.
“After May 15th, 2013 the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back after Facebook goes out of business.”
Zuckerberg said the decision to shut down Facebook was difficult, but that he does not think people will be upset.
“I personally don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said in a private phone interview to a source close to a friend. “And to be honest, I think it’s for the better. Without Facebook, people will have to go outside and make real friends. That’s always a good thing.”
Pages: 1 2 | <urn:uuid:b0a86d31-6e2c-4afd-a0ee-4c4672a1edc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/27321/facebook-will-end-on-ma-15th/comment-page-875/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96118 | 307 | 1.734375 | 2 |
How To Survive Living Abroad by English Teacher X
Price: $2.99 USD. 45170 words.
Published on January 31, 2012. .
The good news? It's now easier than ever to move abroad to live and work. The bad news? It's now easier than ever to move abroad to live and work.
In response to the mass exodus of the disaffected from Western countries, English Teacher X is back again, to cast his cynical but always perceptive eye on the concept of life abroad, with this hilarious survival guide for once and future expats. | <urn:uuid:3347a93e-e3df-4f2d-a723-8bada1ffb34f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smashwords.com/books/tags/surival_guide_for_expatriates | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953383 | 119 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Romney backs away from gay adoptions
A day earlier, Romney, in an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto, had indicated that while he does not support same-sex marriage, he considers the adoption of children by same-sex couples a "right."
He said on Thursday: "And if two people of the same gender want to live together, want to have a loving relationship, or even to adopt a child -- in my state individuals of the same sex were able to adopt children. In my view, that's something that people have a right to do. But to call that marriage is something that in my view is a departure from the real meaning of that word."
But then on Friday, he was asked, in an interview with CBS' WBTV in Charlotte, N.C., how his opposition to same-sex marriage "squared" with his support for gay adoptions. Romney told anchor Paul Cameron, "Well actually I think all states but one allow gay adoption, so that's a position which has been decided by most of the state legislators, including the one in my state some time ago. So I simply acknowledge the fact that gay adoption is legal in all states but one."
Romney did remain consistent on one point: He said he does not intend to use President Obama's flip flop of same-sex marriage against him in the campaign. Obama, who opposed same-sex marriage when he ran for president in 2008, said this week he now supports it. Romney said, "I think the issue of marriage and gay marriage is a very tender and sensitive topic. People come out in different places on this. The president has changed course in regards to this topic. I think that's his right to do that. I have a different view than he does. I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, but I just don't think that this becomes a hot political issue dividing our nation."
On another topic, Romney said that he thinks the Occupy Wall Street protesters who targeted the Bank of America in Charlotte this week are all too young to understand what banks do or how banking works.
Asked what message he had for the protestors, Romney said, "Unfortunately, a lot of young folks haven't had the opportunity to really understand how the economy works and what it takes to put people to work in real jobs and why we have banks and what banks do. I understand it's a very understandable sentiment if you don't find a job and you can't see rising incomes, you're going to be angry and looking at someone to blame. But the people to blame and the person to blame is the president and the old school liberals that have not gotten this economy turned around.
" ... This is a time for new direction for America and for someone who understands how to get the economy going again and I do and to get good jobs again and to make sure that kids coming out of school whether high school or college can find a good job. I know how important that is. I know how angry people are that they can't find those jobs."
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- GOP Rep.: Obama elected because of Reagan's immigration reforms | <urn:uuid:beda6abb-987d-49af-b64d-4e837ba359f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57433104-503544/romney-backs-away-from-gay-adoptions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980519 | 723 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale (RQIC) has sent a questionnaire on the Canada-EU trade negotiations to political parties competing in the Quebec election. The network says it is worried that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has not yet become an election issue, and it is asking parties to make their views on the proposed treaty known before electors go to the polls on September 4.
"For the first time, provincial and municipal governance will be subject to the constraints and clauses of an international trade deal and we're acting as if this will have no considerable consequences on our social, political or economic existence in Quebec. This is unacceptable," says Claude Vaillancourt, a spokesperson for RQIC and President of ATTAC-Quebec. (Translations mine.)
"Certain parties as well as social movements have raised serious concerns about CETA over the past months. Québec Solidaire reflects these concerns in its platform while the Liberal Party of Quebec, a big promoter of CETA, includes the deal in its economic plan. But the other parties need to publicly state their positions."
An RQIC press release on its questionnaire to party leaders mentions that according to recent studies from both the Institut de recherche en économie contemporaine (IRÉC) and CUPE, CETA is a highly imbalanced agreement for Quebec and in fact all provinces. The EU is trying to protect the powers of its member states and municipalities to regulate and legislate on matters of public services and public monopolies -- at least it's doing a much better job than the provinces. Only Ontario is trying to keep control and protect policy flexibility in the area of renewable power, says RQIC, which is asking 10 questions of political parties vying for office in the Quebec elections.
Those questions include:
- Will you agree to make the text of CETA public and allow for a frank, transparent and democratic debate prior to Canada signing the deal?
- Do you support the inclusion in CETA of an investor-state dispute settlement process which would allow foreign investors to sue governments and to challenge public health and environmental policies?
- How will you ensure that public services and public procurement is protected, and assure that the search for profits by European firms does not displace the interests of the users of public services or the interests of Quebec's workers?
- To what extent should municipal water services be protected in CETA?
- Does your party support a general exemption for health services that stipulates that nothing in CETA should be interpreted in any way to apply to the provision of health or health insurance?
- Does your party support extending patent terms for pharmaceutical products that would delay the introduction of generic competition, as supported by the European Commission and the Canadian and Quebec brand name drug lobby?
- Will your party push for a general cultural exemption in CETA for book publishing, magazines, news, broadcasting, film, video, performance art and all other aspects of Quebec's cultural industry?
- What will your party do if supply management is not entirely safeguarded in CETA?
- Will your party obtain a guarantee that the province will maintain the right to screen foreign investment to make sure it brings a net benefit to the citizens of Quebec?
- Finally, if rigorous analysis of CETA and its clauses concludes that the deal will bring a net disadvantage for the people of Quebec, or compromise the province's power to legislate in the public interest, will you promise to reject the deal?
Vaillancourt asks, "What good are electoral promises if CETA risks impeding their realization? If nothing is done to adequately protect our public services, health insurance, education, public transit and local jobs? If we give private European firms unprecedented control or say over public contracts without being able to favour local companies or local jobs in general?
We hope RQIC gets answers to these questions and will post them here if they do. | <urn:uuid:2256bebc-2409-43e4-99d9-8c13aef38691> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/council-canadians/2012/08/trade-activists-grill-quebec-election-candidates-canada-eu- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939816 | 813 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Shots - Health Blog
Wed December 7, 2011
Teenage Girls Will Still Need A Prescription For 'Plan B'
In a surprising twist, the Obama administration has overruled the Food and Drug Administration and will not allow teenage girls to buy the emergency contraceptive Plan B One-Step without a prescription.
The decision punctuates one of the longest-running public health sagas in recent memory. The FDA had decided that a version of the morning-after emergency contraceptive pill could be sold without a prescription regardless of the age of the buyer.
As FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said in a statement Wednesday:
"I reviewed and thoughtfully considered the data, clinical information, and analysis provided by [FDA's Center For Drug Evaluation and Research], and I agree with the Center that there is adequate and reasonable, well-supported, and science-based evidence that Plan B One-Step is safe and effective and should be approved for nonprescription use for all females of child-bearing potential."
But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (Hamburg's boss) disagreed with the FDA's assessment in this memo. Sebelius wrote:
"Based on my review, I have concluded that the data submitted for this product do not establish that prescription dispensing requirements should be eliminated for all ages."
Sebelius told the FDA to tell the maker of the drug that its marketing application is "inadequate to support approval." In other words, its bid to sell Plan B to teens without a prescription has been officially rejected.
The present product, Plan B One-Step, didn't even exist when the FDA's advisory committees on over-the-counter medicines and reproductive health drugs voted 23-4 to recommend that the original, two-pill product, be made available without prescription to all age groups. The single-pill version was approved in 2009.
Both the original Plan B and Plan B One-Step contain the same ingredients as regular birth control pills, but in higher doses. They are highly effective at preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, but will not interrupt an already established pregnancy. They aren't the same as the abortion pill mifepristone.
The FDA, however, which normally follows the advice of its advisory committees, did not in the case of Plan B. As the months dragged on with no decision, women's health groups and Democratic women lawmakers on Capitol Hill accused the George W. Bush administration of playing politics with the issue.
Finally, in 2006, the FDA issued a split decision of sorts. It said Plan B could be sold to those over the age of 18 without a prescription, but younger women would need a doctor's permission first.
The FDA in 2009 ordered that age lowered to 17 to comply with a federal judge's order. And that's where it will remain.
Update 2:18 p.m.: Teva Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Plan B, commended FDA for recommending an easing of restrictions on over-the-counter access to the drug. "We are disappointed that at this late date, the Department of Health and Human Services has come to a different conclusion," Teva said in a statement. The company said it will determine its "next steps" after receiving the official letter from FDA on the decision. | <urn:uuid:b305dd5f-aeff-4048-a8c7-2c7bfedaf4a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wnku.org/post/teenage-girls-will-still-need-prescription-plan-b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949555 | 673 | 1.78125 | 2 |
"The Three Coffins"--This author is known as the Master of the Locked Room Mystery, and he does not disappoint his aficionados in "The Three Coffins." In fact Carr's serial detective, Gideon Fell takes a chapter off from the plot to present his famous 'locked room' lecture to a handful of long-suffering friends.
I can just picture myself with his friends after a nice lunch in the pub, throwing myself about and moaning, "Not THAT lecture again. Let's get on with the plot." All I got out of the lecture were the many ways ice and frozen blood could be used to kill someone who is supposedly alone in a sealed room.
Plus if you ask me, the murders in this book were cheats done with smoke (actually snow) and mirrors, and a clock that only the lumbering Dr. Fell had the brains to notice was incorrectly set. However, I don't read this author for his intricate murder set-ups. I read his books for their wonderfully ominous atmosphere. Here Carr does not disappoint. In "The Three Coffins," three brothers, jailed in Transylvania for bank robbery fake their deaths during an outbreak of the plague and are buried alive. The one with the shovel in his coffin digs his way to freedom, then leaves his brothers in their graves and runs off alone with the hidden bank loot.
Let's just say that the two brothers who are left behind play important roles in the murder and counter-murder many years later in London. I don't want to give away the plot, gimmicky though it is. Read "The Three Coffins" for a few good shudders.
Note: this mystery is also published under the alternate title, "The Hollow Man" (1935).
"The Burning Court"--This is an unusual mystery for John Dickson Carr in that none of his serial detectives take a hand in solving it; it is set in Pennsylvania rather than Great Britain (after all, the author was American); and there is a strong whiff of the supernatural in this story.
A young 20th century editor is working on a book of nineteenth century murders, when he finds the photograph of a murderess who was guillotined in 1861. The woman exactly resembles his wife. And as it happens, the editor's uncle recently died under mysterious circumstances, with an oddly knotted piece of string next to his pillow.
What did you think of this review?
Fun to Read
What's your opinion on The John Dickson Carr Treasury: The Thre...? | <urn:uuid:80da7a4a-924c-433e-965b-5b4fb7225400> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/book/The_John_Dickson_Carr_Treasury_The_Three_Coffins_The_Burning_Court-1511829.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977834 | 525 | 1.5 | 2 |
Mikhail Kuzmin: Selected Writings
Michael A. Green and Stanislav A. Shvabrin (Eds.)
This book consists largely of previously untranslated work. Kuzmin was a master of many genres: poet, dramatist, writer of narrative prose, and influential literary manifestos. All these facets of Kuzmin's creativity are represented in this volume, which traces his development from a "decadent" to a key figure of Russia's artistic underground during the repression of the Soviet period. A cycle of poems, "Thrall" (1919), published here for the first time in English, provides the book with its dominant theme. "Thrall" is a leitmotif of Kuzmin's early love poetry, where it signifies a lover's impassioned submission. Kuzmin the playwright is represented here by his only full-length drama, The Death of Nero (1929); Kuzmin the prose writer by two short stories that exemplify contrasting periods of his evolution. The collection also contains two literary manifestos that played pivotal roles in the development of Russian letters. Michael A. Green formerly directed the Program in Russian at the University of California, Irvine. Stanislav A. Shvabrin is a doctoral student and teaching associate with the UCLA Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures.
About the editors:
Michael Arthur Green received his BA from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and wrote a PhD on the theater of Mikhail Kheraskov (1973, UCLA). He had already made his mark as a translator with the experimental prose of Boris Pilnyak (Mother Earth, 1968). Green has long devoted himself to the work of Mikhail Kuzmin, another victim of Soviet prudery, bringing out in 1972 the first substantial English collection of a writer then unpublishable in the Soviet Union. Green is a recognized authority on eighteenth-century Russian drama and the theater of Russian Symbolism. His translations include work by Innokenty Annensky, Andrei Bely, Aleksander Blok, Valery Bryusov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Yury Olesha, Aleksei Remizov, and Fyodor Sologub. Professor Green has been director of the Program in Russian at the University of California, Irvine.
Stanislav Shvabrin received his BA from Nizhny Novogorod State Pedagogic University, Russia, and an MA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Shvabrin is now a doctoral student and teaching fellow with the UCLA Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He is engaged in research on the multilingual translations of Vladimir Nabokov, while working with the author on a Russian version of Vladimir Markov's Russian Imagism: A History. | <urn:uuid:48965604-184f-4dff-b348-7f5a028f4f89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bucknell.edu/script/upress/book.asp?id=127 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952743 | 591 | 1.71875 | 2 |
One last thought about defying stereotypes. When it comes to fitness facilities, stereotypes are everywhere. From the grunting supplement-popping guy in the weight room to the spandex-covered perky woman on the stair climber to the triathlete who comes in your club twice a day and never runs under an 8.0-mph pace on the treadmill, health clubs provide good fodder for those who don't want to exercise. Members like those just mentioned (we all have them; in fact, at most facilities, they make up the base membership and are often the most loyal members) intimidate the “normal” people of the world, hampering many people's best intentions of losing weight and getting fit.
Many fitness facilities are aggressively trying to change the stereotype that exercise and health clubs are only for the already fit by marketing with advertisements that feature average looking people and verbiage that is welcoming to all for reasons of health rather than physical beauty or sports performance. Some fitness-related centers are successfully defying stereotypes.
Time to brag: I teach group exercise at one of them.
Time to be honest: It threw me for a loop.
I currently teach a core training class at a facility that is one-third fitness, one-third yoga, one-third massage therapy. The space isn't very big, but it's calming. The lights are low, soft music plays, a vertical water fountain gurgles. The place exudes serenity. As someone with experience teaching group ex in very high-energy studios with loud music and bright lights, I appreciated the tranquility…but had absolutely no idea how to teach in the environment. The classes I had taught at other clubs were lively and energetic, beneficial to the spirit but rarely described as peaceful.
The facility's owner gave me the freedom to teach the core training class in whatever format I wanted. I could go high-energy cardio (what I knew best) or straight up Pilates or yoga. I couldn't decide, so I spent two weeks preparing a variety of moves suited to both types. After all, I had little idea as to who would come to my class, what they would expect and what would make them want to come back.
That first class was interesting. Most participants wore flip-flops to the class, and no one wore athletic shoes. Everyone brought a mat. Most surprisingly, everyone was male, and none of them listened to Top 40 radio. Talk about defying stereotypes in the group ex room.
I quickly thanked my lucky stars for having the foresight to come prepared and threw together the best barefoot yoga-Pilates-fitness fusion class I could. I played the one CD I owned that had only beats and no lyrics, spent half the class doing standing balance work, the other half doing mat-based yoga and fitness-related core moves, played Enya for a cool down and thanked everyone for coming.
It was by far the most untraditional class I'd ever taught, and it reached a market that is usually completely uninterested in group ex: your average, middle-aged man. And guess what? They liked it. I've kept the fusion format, and they keep coming back each week.
Is it odd that an untraditional class attracted members who don't normally show an interest in fitness? No, it's common sense. Traditional fitness programming and facilities attract traditional members. Untraditional classes, services and facilities attract those elusive untraditional — and many times deconditioned — members. When it comes to defying stereotypes, it looks like our industry needs to stop putting the blame on intimidating members and start taking a closer look at ourselves. | <urn:uuid:63aa9d36-650f-4aa9-b411-48643bd64423> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://clubindustry.com/forprofits/defy_stereotypes_expectations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975936 | 758 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Pottery & Porcelain Marks – Words & Initials –R: Roseville Pottery Co., the most popular art pottery with collectors, made dinnerware, kitchenware, and decorative items. The company, from Roseville and later Zanesville, Ohio, used many different marks. But beware, the name Roseville was used by other potteries in Roseville, Ohio. The "R.S." marks were used by potteries owned by members of the Schlegelmilch family known for their porcelain and figurines during the 19th and 20th centuries. Watch out for marks saying "Schlegelmilch" that were used by Oscar, Erdmann, and Reinhold. | <urn:uuid:a1a72fe6-f782-493c-a338-6b7ce1a1c0cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kovels.com/marks/pottery-porcelain-marks/words-initials-r.html?eid=10975&fontstyle=f-smaller | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970895 | 147 | 1.640625 | 2 |
If the Gators can get past Georgia in Jacksonville they should cruise into their final regular season still undefeated for their showdown with Florida State.
But regardless of what happens against the Seminoles, Florida would already be locked into the SEC championship game, despite the fragile condition Meyer left the program.
If you're wondering, there are only upperclassmen starting for Florida's ferocious defense, which holds opponents under 12 points per game - or about half of what Ohio State's currently allows.
It's the same story on the offensive side of the ball, which is now somewhat competent following the departure of Charlie Weis. (who knew?) (everybody did) (except Kansas) (Mark Mangino laughing)
Will Muschamp has done a masterful job of cobbling together a championship contender out of the five dozen blue chip players that Meyer left behind when he escaped Gainesville to let someone else clean up his mess.
Wipe the sarcasm off your screen! It's time to get Situational!
THE DEAD PRESIDENT
The historical consensus is uncontroversial: Abraham Lincoln was America's greatest president. Historians are equally unified in ranking Lincoln's predecessor and successor as two of the absolute worst leaders in our country's history.
Andrew Johnson abruptly took over for Lincoln following that unfortunate evening at Ford's theater. His presidency is one of the more popular catastrophes in DC politics, which included the only non-Lewinsky impeachment in history.
Less renown in disaster lore is the service of James Buchanan, our only POTUS hailing from the state of Pennsylvania.
Were it not for Presidential caboose Warren Gamaliel Harding, Johnson and Buchanan would be sidled together at the very bottom of history instead of on infamy's doorstep. Consider Buch's highlights:
- He supported the Dred Scott SCOTUS decision which ruled that Africans brought into America as slaves had no protections under the Constitution. It is now remembered as the worst ruling in Supreme Court history.
- His response to southern threats of secession was to shrug long enough for the next President to have to deal with it.
- He wanted America to annex Cuba from Spain for the purpose of creating a slave state.
- He was hated so much by his own party that he didn't seek re-election and barely appeared at the convention.
Were it not for Buchanan's presidentially-unique bachelorhood (he would take his neice to state functions that required a date) there would be no element of his presidency to debate. While everyone agrees he was terrible, not everyone is convinced that he was a homosexual. That's the only controversy that remains in his legacy.
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner, and as the political landscape got choppy Buchanan completely abandoned ship. He and our republic were mercifully bailed out by Lincoln's stewardship, but only after over 600,000 citizens died in the most tragic event in American history.
So the Keystone State's sole contribution to the President was an completely fumbled disaster. Here's hoping the flagship university of Buchanan's home state achieves his level of competence on the football field this Saturday.
THE SITUATIONAL WAGERS: THE OYSTER BOWL, STEER, FEATHERED PHALLUS, FEATHERED FICTION, GAS N' SIP MURDER SUSPECTS
THE STEER: TEXAS LONGHORNS (-23) over Kansas, because betting against Chaz Füpa never gets old.
THE FEATHERED PHALLUS: SOUTH CAROLINA GAMECOCKS (-14) over Tennessee because a soda machine that's already been tipped can't un-tip itself.
THE FEATHERED FICTION: MIAMI REDHAWKS (+9) against Ohio since the MAC isn't allowed to have anything nice, which is sad.
THE GAS N' SIP MURDER SUSPECTS: UTAH UTES (-1.5) against California, because Ohio State's strength of schedule can't have anything nice either, not that it matters.
LAST WEEK: 4-1 | SEASON: 18-22
My days as a permanent citizen of Columbus ended in the early 1990s, so I don't really know who "Common Man and the Torg" are. I'm more familiar with their 11W contemporaries.
As you've probably heard, early last week "the Torg" tweeted that he wished former Michigan star Desmond Howard would be fired or die so that he could watch Gameday again. Predictably, it went over about as well as a bomb joke in the airport security line.
It only took a few hours for the original Honey Boo Boo Kirk Herbstreit to valiantly come to Howard's rescue. What started as a little unplanned vacation from the radio has since turned permanent: Mr. Torg has been dropped by his employer.
Openly pining for the death of a public figure is generally unadvisable, but in doing so Torg unwillingly provided convenient cover for Howard, whose contribution to football analysis resembles the empty Ohio State punt coverage that produced his famous Heisman moment.
As the valuable Gameday franchise continues to expand - the show is now twice as long as it originally was - more heads are required to take on the workload. Howard presents a unique addition to the panel: He had a wildly successful college career. That said, he should be more capable of executing on his job description.
Howard consistently offers analysis from a different, fictional universe. That's not worth openly wishing for his demise, but his contributions to Gameday are almost exclusively of the unintended comedic variety.
You probably remember a couple of weeks ago while offering insight into the upcoming Iowa/Michigan State game Howard matter-of-factly stated that the Spartans "had run all over Ohio State." He used that event to shape his game prediction.
Now, if you can get past the fact that Sparty ran the ball 22 times against the Buckeyes for a prodigous 34 yards, you'll arrive at the realization that his prediction was based on something that categorically did not occur. He seems to be easily confused by...details. This isn't an isolated example. Just watch the show (you probably do; it's Gameday).
The best part of that particular Howard fact-check is that he actually attended the OSU/MSU game along with his show mates, who just sort of let it pass. They're used to it by now.
But the angst coming from the Torg's termination is more directed at Herbstreit, who injected himself into the controversy and is believed to have contributed to the decision to make his suspension permanent. It was unnecessary on Herbie's part, who has made a handsome living saying and making empty gestures.
Regardless, wishing for Howard's demise was dense, and the Torg can ultimately blame himself for being out of work. If one could tolerate watching the 2011 Buckeyes despite how bad they were every Saturday, one can easily tolerate watching Gameday with Howard saying stupid things with the same frequency.
Besides, there's no guarantee that Howard's replacement would be any better, though Gameday does have a history with upgrades. Herbstreit wasn't always Gameday's golden boy. He actually replaced Craig James.
There is a bourbon for every situation. Sometimes the spirits and the events overlap, which means that where bourbon is concerned there is typically more than one worthy choice.
St. Germaine elderflower liqueur is a prominent wingman in mixology circles. It is the John Stockton of drink recipes, hogging the spotlight for its expert assist-fu. It also comes in handy during clutch time, i.e. when you're pouring beverages for two.
Yes, we all know that bourbon can create its own shot. It makes plays in space, looks good in any uniform and is a grown man, son. That said, St. Germaine expertly feeds the inbound pass in this week's bourbon cocktail, which shares a name with your favorite promiscuous Golden Girl.
The Devereaux takes the middle-tier working class bourbon of your choosing (Bulleit, Elijah Craig, Basil Hayden's - you know, those lunchpail guys) and transforms it and potentially you into a leading scorer. Start with a 2:1 ratio of bourbon to elderflower in a shaker or glass.
Gloria Ferrer is the Bulleit of sparkling wines; there is no better value in its class. Pop the cork and pour two to three times the amount of bubbly to the bourbon/elderflower into the glass. Now add simple syrup, or don't - the elderflower is decently sweet already.
Squeeze a lemon and pour the entire mixture into two glasses half-filled with ice cubes. Toss in a couple of mint leaves as pictured. Enjoy your Devereaxeses.
The sparkling wine feeds the St. Germaine, which assists the bourbon that creates the Devereax. Your visitor will appreciate the role players you've introduced to her palate, and it's more than likely she'll thank you for being a friend.
Somewhere on the Internet there exists a hilarious video of a bartender making a Devereaux instructing the viewer how to do so in what could best be described as a Yat dialect accented by 50 years of chain smoking.
I tried to find this video for you and embed it within this week's Situational Bourbon instructions but alas, I failed to locate it. Instead, thanks to using "Devereaux" in the keyword search, I found this:
Whether you're a GILF enthusiast or you prefer your meat a little less aged, there is nothing negative that can be said about The Golden Girls television program. It enjoyed a ratings run that rivaled that of Florida State's during peak of the Bowden years.
The show did remarkably well across all demographics, proving that funny old ladies have multi-generational appeal. The writing and character development for the show were both so good that television executives were intimidated from attempting to create a copycat during the show's run.
Hollywood finally got brave seven years after the run ended when it green-lighted Sex and the City which was basically the same show set in Manhattan, but with the outrageous gay character that was written out of the Golden Girls' pilot appearing in every SATC episode as multiple outrageous gay characters. Like its inspiration, SATC also performed quite well across all of the demos.
See you next week, when Urban is one Saturday closer to creating a copycat of the mess he left in Florida. | <urn:uuid:9f84128d-567c-4341-b964-e9a7d32aad6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elevenwarriors.com/2012/10/15057/the-situational-week-9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9694 | 2,201 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Back in the late 1950s and early 60s, when bachelors were luring secretaries up to their "pads" to impress them with their new "hi fis" (Mike Nichols and Elaine May did a great comedy sketch about that), conductor Morton Gould's name was a familiar one. Like Arthur Fiedler – both were recording artists for RCA Victor – Gould comfortably crossed between the classical and popular genres, and he always seemed to be at the forefront of sonic innovations of one sort or another. (There was a Bolero for RCA Victor which breathlessly advertised not one but two drums!) Most of the time, however, the innovations were related to recording technologies, and Gould was firmly on board during the era of "RCA Living Stereo."
Something of that sonic razzle-dazzle is present on the current ReDiscovery reissue. Lehár's Gold and Silver Waltz is nothing if not resonant (these are Hollywood Bowl-style acoustics), and Bach's Air on the G String, as played by Gould, seems to have been destined for the soundtrack of a Stanley Kubrick film that never was. Although Gould generally was not a controversial conductor (yet see below), he made his performances distinctive through unanticipated subtleties. The Boccherini Minuet is unexpectedly cute, and Chabrier's España abounds with chunks of garlic and red pepper. With the blink of an eye, though, Gould captures the gravity of Ravel's Pavane without becoming bathetic, and Grieg's Norwegian Dances are full of unaffected nationalistic spirit.
At the time, Gould's version of Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia drew howls from some quarters, including from critic William Flanagan, who, according to ReDiscovery's annotations, called it "souped-up," continuing, "One does not probe the Thomas Tallis Fantasy for Tristanesque climaxes and lard its textures." My reply to that is, "Why doesn't one?" All kidding aside, this is a terribly Romantic and unbuttoned interpretation of this work, but dull it's not, and like Dimitri Mitropoulos' recording of the same work, it does something with the music – whether one likes it or not – that few conductors have dared to try.
The sound on this release, like the performance of the Tallis Fantasia, borders on the self-consciously spectacular, although sometimes the climaxes are a little cluttered. (This is particularly true in España.) Nevertheless, this is a powerfully enjoyable CD, even if the original program probably was put together for people who might not have had much of a taste for classical music.
The all-Bianca release contains somewhat older material – all from the mid 1950s, I am guessing. (During this decade, she was a prolific recording artist in Hamburg, and made quite a few LPs for different labels.) These recordings obviously are very dear to the folks at ReDiscovery; this time around, there's even a real booklet, including a statement by the pianist herself, who still is "alive and well in New York City." Bianca was a child prodigy who studied at Mannes and at Curtis. Her debut at Carnegie Hall came in 1950, and her long career also has included "Music Minus One" recordings, and producing LPs (not just in the classical genre) for CBS Records' "Columbia Special Products" series.
The Massenet and Field concertos are not as well known as they deserve to be. Massenet is remembered as an opera composer, of course, but his piano concerto is very idiomatically written for the piano, and it mines the same vein of charm that Saint-Saëns accessed in his five piano concertos. A very serious first movement is followed by a prayerful Largo, and to bring the concerto to a close, there's an Allegro finale based on "Slovak Airs." The almost frivolous mood, however, speaks more of Paris and a great night on the town than Eastern Europe. Massenet's "Slovak Airs" are answered by the "Scottish Airs" in the middle movement of Field's concerto. (The movement is subtitled "Within a mile of Edinburgh town.") This Dublin-born virtuoso came one generation before Chopin, and, at least to a degree, blazed the trail that Chopin was to clear. (It was Field who laid the groundwork for the solo piano nocturne, for example.) While Chopin went west – from Poland to Paris – Field went in the other direction, ending his career in Czarist Russia. Bianca was the first pianist to record Field's concerto, and she must have been one of the first – if not the first – to record Massenet's. Bianca blends strength, agility, and grace in the correct proportions, and there's an element – forgive the phrase! – of "feminine intuition" in her understanding of the music's stylistic requirements. The monaural sound is a bit dull, but still very serviceable.
In the Grieg, the competition is formidable, and Bianca's playing is, once again, very classy, with plenty of heft for the concerto's big climaxes, and also plenty of poetry when required. Here, however, the piano's tone is hard, there is some distortion, and the music doesn't rest as comfortably under Bianca's fingers as in the Massenet and the Grieg. It's not a bad recording – and it is in stereo - but it is not as distinguished as the rest of the CD.
It's back to Hamburg for a recording of Dvořák's second most popular symphony. (If only it had had a nickname!) The coupling of Mackerras' Hamburg reading with Perlea's recording from Bamberg (once on Vox) invites a compare-and-contrast essay, but really, the two conductors are on the same page with their respective interpretations, and their orchestras have a similar sound. (The tonal blend in Bamberg is better than in Hamburg, but that might have more to do with the engineering – specifically, the microphone placement – than anything else.) Mackerras, who subsequent decades have established as a specialist in Czech repertoire, is more brilliant and animated, although Perlea is significantly perkier in the third movement. Perlea, on the other hand, is more affectionate, and when the music laughs, he laughs right along with it. (Listen, for example, to the giggles at the end of the third movement.) Mackerras gets the brasher engineering, and there is some pre-echo here as well. Reel-to-reel tape was used as the master for the Perlea; the Mackerras was taken from the Checkmate LP. Between the two readings, I'd choose Perlea's, although both conductors clearly adore this symphony – as well they should – and many a conductor in the year 2005 could take lesson from either Mackerras or Perlea about putting personality in their musicianship.
As with other Rediscovery releases, this is a CD-R, and the packaging is minimalist. CD-Rs will play in most machines that play CDs, although there are a few holdouts. If you encounter any problems, ReDiscovery will make good. These discs are available from the ReDiscovery website (www.rediscovery.us) for $15 each, which includes shipping.
Copyright © 2005, Raymond Tuttle | <urn:uuid:a8c5b49c-0879-40fa-ae6e-775b08b07ae9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/r/red00092a.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97333 | 1,580 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Valuations case study
How one company was able to effectively document fair value for both tax and financial reporting purposes
Our client was a global public company looking to complete a strategic acquisition as part of its expansion strategy. The company needed to value all tangible and intangible assets for financial reporting purchases and legal entities for tax purposes. The company also needed to review specific long-term contracts from an accounting perspective.
We worked closely with management to understand all the issues related to the deal that would affect financial and tax reporting. We met with the company and their audit team regularly to understand the framework of the valuation analysis. We also helped the company understand the deal issues that would affect accounting and taxes such as fair value of inventory and long-term contracts, complex accounting issues like embedded derivatives, FAS 109, transfer pricing planning ideas, and tax capitalization vs. expensing of transaction costs. PwC also developed an innovative methodology for the valuation of customer relationships.
The company was able to effectively document the fair value of assets for financial and tax reporting purposes as well as manage their internal (corporate) and external (auditor) process effectively without any late issues.
for more about our valuations services.
Return to case studies | <urn:uuid:20c3ff1b-b5ee-4a42-8100-b340ca7a7485> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pwc.com/us/en/transaction-services/case-studies/valuations.jhtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963997 | 248 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Thoughts on Paper
written by Bernard L Herman
The University of North Carolina Press | ISBN 9780807835296
Hardback – 224 pages
Member’s price: $54.90
Usually ships within 2–11 business days.
Thornton Dial (b. 1928), one of the most important artists in the American South, came to prominence in the late 1980s and was celebrated internationally for his large construction pieces and mixed-media paintings. It was only later, in response to a reviewer's negative comment on his artistic ability, that he began to work on paper. And it was not until recently that these drawings have received the acclaim they deserve. This volume, edited by Bernard L. Herman, offers the first sustained critical attention to Dial's works on paper. Concentrating on Dial's early drawings, the contributors examine Dial's use of line and color and his recurrent themes of love, lust, and faith. They also discuss the artist's sense of place and history, relate his drawings to his larger works, and explore how his drawing has evolved since its emergence in the early 1990s. Together, the essays investigate questions of creativity and commentary in the work of African American artists and contextualize Dial's works on paper in the body of American art. The contributors are Cara Zimmerman, Bernard Herman, Glenn Hinson, Juan Logan, and Colin Rhodes.
Artist: Thornton Dial | <urn:uuid:61a415ec-8efa-490c-960e-397012a72618> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/shop/item/9780807835296/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966664 | 284 | 1.734375 | 2 |
|Dr Douglas attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh and is a graduate of University of Aberdeen. After hospital jobs in Aberdeen, he became involved in off-shire medicine in Aberdeen and researching the illnesses of deep-sea divers.
In 1979, he moved to Fort William to train in General Practice and to become the Medical Officer for the Underwater Training Centre in Fort William, where he continued his research interests.
He became involved in postgraduate medical education and the training of GPs.
He also became the Medical Officer for the newly emerging fish-farming industry in the West Coast of Scotland and was the first to describe the Occupational Health problems associated with that industry. In 1995, he gained his MD Thesis after describing a new cause of Occupational Asthma, which had been affecting his GP patients who were working at the new salmon processing factory.
In 1997, his General Practice became one of the first GP Research Practices in Scotland and he founded the Highland Primary Care Research Network. He continues to research flu immunisation and diagnosis in his Fort William patients and other primary care research projects.
In March 2000, he was appointed Director of the Remote And Rural Areas Resource Initiative (RARARI) on behalf of the Scottish Executive. This Initiative is tasked with addressing the many challenging issues, which face the NHS in the remote and rural areas of Scotland, by means of education, research and service re-design. The Initiative completed in March 2004.
In 2004, he was then appointed to Locality Clinical Lead for the Lochaber Local Healthcare Partnership, which aims to obtain better working relationships between national health service and local authority care systems. He remains in this post to date.
He continues to work part-time as a GP and is married with four children. His leisure interests include sailing and swimming. | <urn:uuid:a2b57dad-0edf-4052-9279-b898407343a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rrh.org.au/profile/profilenew.asp?UserID=302 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98423 | 365 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Kachin rebels sceptical over Myanmar ceasefire
NAYPYIDAW (AFP) - Kachin rebels cast doubt on Saturday over a Myanmar government pledge to end a military offensive after weeks of intense fighting that sparked international concern, amid reports of fresh shelling.
The government move on Friday came after the country's fledgling parliament called for a halt to the fighting, which has left dozens reported dead in northern Kachin state and marred optimism about the country's political reforms.
The conflict between government troops and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has escalated in recent weeks with the use of air strikes by the military, prompting the United States and the United Nations to speak out.
A KIA official, requesting anonymity, said the military had gained "the upper hand" by surrounding the rebel stronghold of Laiza and was therefore able to declare an end to the offensive from a position of strength. | <urn:uuid:adf66615-93c2-4f1f-9f4b-26b12793872c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/se-asia/story/kachin-rebels-sceptical-over-myanmar-ceasefire-20130119 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952377 | 185 | 1.6875 | 2 |
No, that’s not a misspelling of “macroeconomics”.
Matt O’Brien beats me to it: Marco Rubio’s SOTU response also included a shout-out to Say’s Law:
Every dollar our government borrows is money that isn’t being invested to create jobs. And the uncertainty created by the debt is one reason why many businesses aren’t hiring.
I know where he gets this stuff: it’s what the Heritage Foundation guys were saying four years ago. It was obviously wrong even then: we have an excess of desired savings over desired investment — that’s why the economy is depressed! — so it makes no sense to assume that government borrowing must crowd out private investment dollar for dollar, or indeed at all.
But some things have changed over these past four years. Back then, the Heritage guys, Niall Ferguson, etc. made a prediction: those government deficits supposedly competing for funds with business would send interest rates soaring. Instead they hit record lows. And we also have evidence on what happens when government try to slash deficits in a depressed economy. Here’s IMF data for all advanced countries, where austerity is measured by the change in the structural budget balance as a percentage of potential GDP:
Contractionary policy has proved contractionary.
So Rubio has embraced an economic doctrine that was fairly stupid to begin with, and has produced ludicrously wrong predictions these past four years; this on top of accepting a completely bogus story about how we got into this mess in the first place. The GOP’s savior! | <urn:uuid:e14f18ef-ec04-4e13-a3d3-bff85ae41810> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/more-marcoeconomics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961635 | 334 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The soybean market has been waiting on Chinese demand for U.S. soybeans to pick up for weeks, but sales to that top buyer continue to be limited by competition from South America and other factors.
USDA reported new U.S. soybean sales to China of only 91,800 metric tons during the week ended Oct. 20. Largely as a result of the lack of Chinese demand, that week’s total soybean export sales were the lowest of the new marketing year to date.
U.S. soybean export sales commitments to China through Oct. 20, at roughly 468.5 million bushels (nearly 12.751milion metric tons (mmt)), are down 23.5% from a year earlier.
Sales to China are also being shipped at an even slower rate. Actual U.S. soybean shipments to China, at about 99.7 million bushels, are 33% behind a year earlier.
Amid the slow Chinese demand, total U.S. soybean export commitments for 2011-2012 have slipped 33% behind a year earlier with USDA only forecasting an 8.3% drop in yearly exports.
According to the China National Grain & Oils Information Center (CNGOIC), a Chinese government-backed think tank, China has bought 1.34 mmt of U.S. soybeans over the past four weeks, only about one third of the 4.03 mmt it bought during the same period a year ago.
The CNGOIC cited a lack of profits in China’s crushing industry, high stocks of soybeans at Chinese ports and competition from South American supplies, as reasons for the decline in U.S. purchases.
Judging from the latest estimate of October soybean imports from China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOC), continued South American competition, primarily from Brazil, is the biggest reason for slow U.S. sales to China.
The MOC said last Thursday that based on reports from importers during the Oct. 1-15 period, China's October soybean imports will likely total 4.83 mmt, up from its earlier forecast of 4.19 mmt.
That import figure would be up 17% from actual September soybean imports of 4.19 mmt and 29.5% from October 2010 imports of 3.73 mmt.
It’s not clear just when U.S. soybean sales to China and actual export shipments may pick up. The MOC sees China’s total soybean imports easing to 3.9 mmt in November.
Editor’s note: Richard Brock, Corn & Soybean Digest's marketing editor, is president of Brock Associates, a farm market advisory firm, and publisher of The Brock Report. | <urn:uuid:80e025d0-3591-4735-a6b5-3fc8d979d7a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/blog/chinese-purchases-us-soybeans-disappointing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945142 | 575 | 1.539063 | 2 |
For the Native American Indian, butterflies symbolized joy, life and rebirth; using butterflies as your design element for back piece tattoo is a way of making the statement that you find great joy in life. This stylized symbol of transformation and new stages in life would be perfect to mark a new beginning in your personal life. Perhaps you recently went through an emotionally trying time, having back piece tattoo designed to reflect your belief that you came out stronger and better for it, would be the perfect way to herald in a new phase in your life.
Choosing the right Butterfly for your Back Piece Tattoo
Butterflies have a wide variety in their selection of styles and colors to choose for your back piece tattoo. The color could play as important a role as the symbol of joy itself. When you choose the color for your butterfly back piece tattoo, remember that colors have meanings and could add depth to your personal choice of the butterfly.Yellow is also a symbol of joy, blue is tranquility and confidence, green is the color of renewal, and red of course for strength and power. Adding a butterfly that has hints of these powerful colors will only enhance the beauty and symbolism of the butterfly back piece tattoo you are looking for.
Butterfly Back Piece Tattoo for Man…
Using butterflies as the embellishments for other powerful ritual tattoos, only brings a sense of gentleness to the more masculine back piece tattoo. For instance the bold forms and lines of tribal tattoos can be softened and made more delicate in appearance when butterflies are added to their curves and free-form designs. It will not make the graphic tattoos less appealing to have them enhanced by images of beauty.
Butterfly back piece tattoos are perfect as upper or lower back piece tattoo, and should be a part of your design element choice, if you are looking for a more feminine tattoo.
Make sure you comment below and share our Butterfly Back Piece Tattoo Gallery with your friends. | <urn:uuid:69efa183-1261-456f-ae87-eea50ad03231> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://free-tattoo-designs.org/declare-your-joy-of-life-with-butterfly-back-piece-tattoos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935371 | 393 | 1.75 | 2 |
One Quick Handwriting Transcription Challenge Every Day-for the genealogist in you
To me it looks like "Sam Gibson"
I agree with Gibson but the S in State doesn't look like the first name. Perhaps it begins with A though there is not a capital A represented. Maybe Asm though that makes no sense.
It looks like "James Gibson" to me.
Samuel Blain and James Luby?
the first letter is not constant with other "s" in the pharagraph, first letter more like "a" so I think its written "aom" or possibly "a.m" with a last of "Gilson" third letter more closely matches with this writers "l" than "b"
Maybe "Ian" or "I am" Gibson...
I think that what we "see" is only a portion of the document. I would transcribe this portion as:"...know all men by these presents, that I am - Gibson of Harford County of State of Maryland being in a very..." | <urn:uuid:9196e1c5-7857-474d-a275-9983b7830f6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://genealogytranscriber.blogspot.com/2011/05/whose-will-is-this.html?showComment=1306132851970 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956895 | 216 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Fifteen months ago, we tried to show you a video of the amazing carbon fiber loom Toyota invented to weave parts for the Lexus LFA. Lexus yanked that video, concerned competitors would steal the technology. Now it's back online.
The video below, part of a passel of commercials Lexus loosed on the internets earlier this month, highlights the dual-tube loom in action, which is used for the A-pillars on the LFA and which Toyota says will be used to build parts for future models. Given the Japanese automaker was originally founded as a loom builder in 1926, it may have a historical advantage if the auto industry's future includes more weaving or knitting.
(H/T to Jared from the 904!) | <urn:uuid:76246887-c1fd-4ef5-a7d1-88f4e3665618> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jalopnik.com/5737631/the-amazing-carbon-fiber-loom-toyota-didnt-want-you-to-see?tag=lexuslfa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930349 | 158 | 1.71875 | 2 |
- Your News
By Mike MacLaren
Paying for baseball umpires is more important than protecting your property from foreclosure.
That is in essence what elected officials across the country are saying as they push for “cost saving” legislation to allow government to post notices of legal actions on government-run websites.
“Baseball umpires? … You can’t be serious,” you say.
I am serious; I’m also worried. You should be too. Here’s why:
Government officials say such legislation saves money that could be spent on police and fire fighters. But there are government programs that cost more than publishing these notices, such as umpires for city baseball leagues. It’s a fact: the City of Niles (MI) spends more each year for baseball umpires than for publishing legal notices in the local newspaper.
But there’s a larger issue at stake. These public notices are legal documents. News-on-paper notices give citizens an independent, authentic and verifiable record of what their government has done. If questions arise regarding ordinances, actions or any other municipal decision, courts will not accept a copy — they want the original document as proof. This news-on-paper publication requirement was put in place to protect public and municipal officials so that there’s no question that a document had been doctored.
Requiring legal notices to be published in a venue independent of government is a form of insurance for taxpayers. How can you get “beyond the shadow of doubt” proof of the contents of a legal document from a website that can be altered with a click of a mouse, or hacked?
When was the last time you visited your local government website? Is it something you do weekly?
By contrast, according to American Opinion Research:
Eighty-seven percent of Michigan Adults (6.7 million) read a Michigan newspaper during an average seven-day period.
Let me be clear: Under the guise of saving money, such “pull public notices out of a newspapers and post them on a government web site” legislation will make it easier for municipalities to have special meetings, make assessments and other important decisions with nearly no knowledge or input from the community. Yes, newspapers charge to publish these notices. More often than not, they are done at cost. But without these notices, more than a few community newspapers face the specter of shutting down. So on top of posting these public notices where the public won’t notice, there may be no local paper to report on the results of the actions.
— Mike MacLaren is executive director of the Michigan Press Association in Lansing. | <urn:uuid:af2418b8-6b58-492e-8b7f-eae3aff4bd06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.manchestertimes.com/?p=4524 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942081 | 558 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Posts Tagged ‘MacKinlay Kantor’
December 5, 2011 | by Sarah Funke Butler
In 1963, a sixteen-year-old San Diego high school student named Bruce McAllister sent a four-question mimeographed survey to 150 well-known authors of literary, commercial, and science fiction. Did they consciously plant symbols in their work? he asked. Who noticed symbols appearing from their subconscious, and who saw them arrive in their text, unbidden, created in the minds of their readers? When this happened, did the authors mind?
McAllister had just published his first story, “The Faces Outside,” in both IF magazine and Simon and Schuster’s 1964 roundup of the best science fiction of the year. Confident, if not downright cocky, he thought the surveys could settle a conflict with his English teacher by proving that symbols weren’t lying beneath the texts they read like buried treasure awaiting discovery.
His project involved substantial labor—this before the Internet, before e-mail—but was not impossible: many authors and their representatives were listed in the Twentieth-Century American Literature series found in the local library. More impressive is that seventy-five writers replied—most of them, in earnest. Sixty-five of those responses survive (McAllister lost ten to “a kleptomaniacal friend”). Answers ranged from the secretarial blow off to a thick packet of single-spaced typescript in reply.
The pages here feature a number of the surveys in facsimile: Jack Kerouac, Ayn Rand, Ralph Ellison, Ray Bradbury, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer. Each responder offers a unique take on the issue itself—symbolism in literature—as well as on handling a sixteen-year-old aspirant approaching writers as masters of their craft.
Even if he approached them en masse, with a form letter.
And failed to follow up with a thank-you note. | <urn:uuid:a905bbcf-3eb5-462f-8c24-6efc8d020af0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/tag/mackinlay-kantor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951692 | 424 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Our Top Stories
Weekly Address: The End of Combat Operations in Iraq
06:00 AM EDT
With the end of combat operations in Iraq days ahead, the President salutes our troops for their service and pledges to fulfill America’s commitment to them as veterans. 90,000 troops have left Iraq since the President came into office, and by the end of next year even the troops taking part in the non-combat mission will be home. The administration is upholding the sacred trust with our veterans by building a 21st century VA, making it easier for veterans with PTSD to receive the benefits they need, funding and implementing a Post-9/11 GI Bill, and devoting new resources to job training and placement to help those veterans looking for work in a tough economy.
- Join the President, Dr. Jill Biden, and even Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints in saluting our troops for their service. | <urn:uuid:f44e1c4a-af7d-4b5c-ab09-80cd7331464b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/08/28/weekly-address-end-combat-iraq | 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 | 0.946758 | 187 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Before going to a puppy breeder, it is important to decide which breed of dog is the best match. A dog breeder at a kennel will ask you questions, so a good idea would be to research some of the breeds that you are interested in. One option may be
he smaller dogs such as the Pomeranians, Shih Tzu, Cairn Terriers, Poodles, West Highland White or “Westies”, Tibetan Terriers, Pekingese, Papillion, Japanese Chin, or the Lhasa Apso.
If you are interested in a larger dog consider the Great Dane or a Mastiff, or a medium-sized dog such as an American Cocker Spaniel or a Border Collie. Research different breeds according to their size and personality so you get the right match. Many large dogs are at shelters and pounds, unwanted and neglected by their previous owners. About 25% that are abandoned are purebreds, with the remaining as mixed breeds either of known or unknown backgrounds. You may be able to adopt a large or small breed from a shelter rather than purchasing one through a dog breeder or a kennel.
Local dog breeder clubs usually have a list of the different puppy breeders in your area and the breed of dogs that they raise. Phone numbers are generally listed with the clubs as well as information their kennel, including their location. Now that you have decided on the breed you want, it would be a good idea to check them out with breeders and owners of that breed. You need to make sure this is the breed you want.
Another good ideas is to check with veterinarians in the area. They can refer excellent breeders and kennels who raise that particular breed, as compared to you checking out unknown breeders through the want ads or magazines, with no experience about that breed. Many perspective puppy buyers get information from pet shops, newspapers, national dog magazines, and websites. Sometimes this is not a good thing, especially if you lack knowledge about the breed you want. If you can, find someone close by who has a puppy or an adult dog of the breed you want. Visit with them, watch the dog, and learn about the dog’s personality and who he actually is. Do not be afraid to ask questions; make a list before you visit. You may find there are traits about the dog you don’t like but didn’t know about, traits that may change your mind about that breed.
One example is the American Eskimo. Everybody wants one of those cute little white fluffy puppies; they cannot keep their hands off them. But once they grow up, they like to play in the water, splashing in their water dishes until the water is out of the bowls and onto the floor – and them, digging holes if they get too hot on a daily basis, and defend their owners to a fault. They shed twice a year, blowing their coats and look awful during this time. They need lots of brushing and care, and are very affectionate and want to be with people. Many owners eventually may change their mind down the road, wanting either to return the dog around one year of age, or give it away. It is best to check this out before purchasing the puppy, as it is a hardship on the dog and the family, when the dog is removed from a family he has learned to love and care for. A responsible dog breeder that runs a good kennel will always share the good and more challenging points of the breed.
Visiting The Kennel And Puppy Breeder
There are many types of dog breeders who raise puppies to sell. Some sell because of money, some sell because they love the breed, and some sell to supply pre-orders of their line. Either way, you should choose approximately three puppy breeders to visit with, in order to get a good comparison of the breed you want. Any hesitation or avoidance of your questions on the part of the breeder needs to be looked at carefully. Maybe that is the breeder you do not want to do business with. But generally, between the three breeders most of your questions should be answered.
The breeder of choice should be the one who has the most knowledge about the breed you want, does not hesitate but is open and honest with you, supplies a health guarantee, and really seems to like his animals. If you are at the breeders’ establishment, the puppies should look healthy and have lots of energy. Make sure you view the parents of the puppy, as that is what it will eventually resemble.
Finding good dog breeders and puppy breeders does take time and effort, but a well run kennel is more likely to produce healthy, happy and well socialized puppies, which is what you really want. | <urn:uuid:70d58a95-6795-43d2-9432-5e6a3221a6cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://doggylogic.com/choosing-a-puppy-breeder/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972724 | 993 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Company Sues Cancer Scientist for Fraud, Says EPCA-2 Prostate Test Never Worked
Dr. Robert H. Getzenberg, a leading University of Pittsburgh and Johns Hopkins cancer researcher who claims to have developed superior new blood tests to detect prostate cancer, colon cancer, and bladder cancer has been accused of making false claims over a period of years and selling these false claims to keep his laboratory working.
Onconome, Inc. a biotechnology company, earlier this month filed an action in Federal court charging that from 2001 to 2005 the University of Pittsburgh and one of its researchers, Dr. Robert H. Getzenberg, committed scientific research fraud and breach of contract.
Dr. Getzenberg has also worked at Johns Hopkins, a leading US center for treatment of prostate cancer and other urological diseases.
Dr. Getzenberg’s best-known scientific project is the EPCA-2 biomarker, a discovery claimed to detect prostate cancer better than the currently used PSA blood test.
In 2007, in a study published in the April issue of the journal Urology, Getzenberg and his team of Hopkins researchers published evidence in support of EPCA-2 testing as a more accurate way to identify cancer in the prostate.
The study claimed to show that EPCA-2 is potentially superior to any biomarker currently in use for detection of prostate cancer. EPCA-2 was judged better than the PSA test at predicting whether a biopsy will show that a man has prostate cancer, simple benign prostatic enlargement (BPH), or a healthy prostate.
According to Onconome, Inc., Dr. Getzenmberg also claimed that EPCA-2 biomarker can distinguish between early stage and late stage, metastatic prostate cancer.
Onconome says that Dr. Getzenberg’s laboratory reports and other statements and claims led them to fund his work “for over five years, spending millions of dollars and devoting virtually its entire anti-cancer effort to the Getzenberg technology.” Onconome says:
Dr. Getzenberg represented to Onconome that the data from his laboratory showed ‘amazing’ results for his immunoassays for prostate and other cancers, and showed the assays were working, reproducible and demonstrated ‘sensitivities’ (meaning few false negatives) and ‘specificities’ (few false positives) approaching 100 percent.
But these representations were false. Dr. Getzenberg misrepresented the research results and data from his lab in order to claim these spectacular results. Even in the last year of his research for Onconome, Dr. Getzenberg’s researchers recorded, in laboratory records that Onconome only recently obtained: ‘the assay didn’t work as expected. . . . Because we don’t have the whole peptide sequence, all of this work may mean nothing’; ‘Everything has fallen apart.. . ; ‘I’m having to throw out samples’; ‘Results A) EPCA 2.22 didn’t work.’
The lawsuit states: “Notwithstanding the spectacular (and false) results proclaimed by defendants, the Getzenberg assay was no more accurate in distinguishing cancerous tissue from normal tissue than flipping a coin.”
Onconome filed suit in Pennsylvania on grounds that Dr. Getzenberg was “employed by and an agent of” the University of Pittsburgh during much of the time covered by the contracts at issue. He was the Director of Urological Research of the Department of Urology, a Co-Director of the Prostate and Urologic Cancer Center of the university’s Cancer Institute, and a Professor of Urology, Pathology, and Pharmacology at the Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Dr. Getzenberg currently holds the position of Professor and Director of Urology Research in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at Johns Hopkins.
A request to speak with him about the case was answered by an associate at Hopkins who said yesterday that he is in California and will call back, adding: “The charges are not true, Dr. Getzenberg is a wonderful researcher.”
Onconome, a private company based in Redmond, WA, is an in-vitro diagnostics company focusing on the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative biomarkers for the early and accurate detection of various forms of cancer and other major diseases with unmet diagnostic needs. The company lists prostate cancer technology and specifically “IHC tissue test based upon staining of tissue from prostate biopsy samples” among its pipeline projects. IHC, or immunohistochemistry, uses biopsy tissue to develop immune-system antibodies to latch onto and identify specific antigens present in various health conditions ranging from normal to cancer. | <urn:uuid:39154054-3350-476c-aa29-eabe15dae966> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.psa-rising.com/blog/2009/09/onconome-sues-for-fraud-in-epca-2-prostate-test-case/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947181 | 1,011 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Essay: Towards a universal language
As much as I love Catalan, I wonder whether Internet may be an inflection point towards the gradual emergence of a universal language.
I have mixed-feelings regarding the premise that human languages have a value as cultural patrimony. Languages are a historical accident, they arise essentially because people communicate with people in a small radius and that makes things diverge. It happened that evolution gave us languages, but for me that's heritage with no intrinsic value. On the contrary, for me it means separation.
Languages are a symbol for nations as well, when someone gets conquered the language of the victorious is imposed, and the one of the defeated persecuted. That's destruction. No value over here to look for, well not for me anyway.
When communication is the goal people forget about that, and just jump to whatever works. Normally that's English. If you speak English with people at a conference you are not perceiving your local language as being attacked, or your rights as a citizen of somewhere being violated. You just speak with people and whatever works is fine, because language is then just a mean.
I think it could be the case that the globalization in communications brings as a consequence a fix for Babel. When my daughter grows up she will be able to make online friends in the entire globe. I think next generations will gradually detach from the emotions we associate to languages nowadays, and by themselves derive towards something that works. I mean that's not going to be imposed, decided, or voted, in my idealization that just happens. English may be the de-facto standard due to its inherited inertia.
I believe that's gonna happen, and that would bring us to an epoch where humankind is bilingual in general. Communication and transportation will be much ubiquitous, and people will naturally speak some universal language, together with their mother tongue.
I wish those mother tongues eventually die or last as a cultural curiosity of past times, and people can freely communicate all over the Earth. | <urn:uuid:02bafbf2-cd9a-4ae3-aea5-21e26e624234> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.advogato.org/person/fxn/diary.html?start=501 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961257 | 410 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Cheap air fare ads: smallprint catch under fire
The consumer watchdog today urged the federal government to force airlines to return to advertising airfares which include taxes and charges in the one price.
Recent rulings by the Federal Court cleared the way for airlines to advertise fares as cheap as $1 and note in the fineprint any extra taxes and charges.
However the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is calling on the federal government to tighten up the Trade Practices Act to stop the two-part prices trend.
"We would much prefer a situation where the law required a single price," ACCC chief executive Brian Cassidy told a Senate committee.
"And we have written to both the Treasury and treasurer drawing to their attention these recent court decisions and our view that there is a need for the law to be changed."
Mr Cassidy said since the Federal Court's decision, a range of businesses, such as white goods retailers, had also used two-part pricing in their advertisements.
In some instances, fridges and other whitegoods were being advertised without the GST being included in the main price featured in the ad.
Mr Cassidy said as a result any future law changes by the government should be broad and not only apply to airlines.
"While airlines is the one that's come under notice ... it is occurring in a number of areas.
"So what we believe is required is for the relevant section of the Trade Practices Act to be amended to make it clear that it should be the final price that's advertised."
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said while two-part advertisements were legal, they were confusing for consumers.
"The commission doesn't consider it as best practice," he said.
"It would be our strong preference for airlines to adopt an all inclusive pricing (advertising models).
"It would be obvious to any observer that the two-part pricing process adopted by the airlines at the moment causes confusion and, at the very least, great concern on the part of consumers."
Communications Minister Helen Coonan told the committee the government was aware of the ACCC's concerns that two-part, or component, pricing could be misleading.
"The government has requested information from the ACCC on the impact of component pricing on consumers and competition," she said.
"When it's received, the government will consider whether legislative amendment is necessary and no doubt would consider then what type of amendment would be required and how complex it may be." | <urn:uuid:d456f628-067c-49f9-8371-edd182fdd27d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Cheap-air-fare-ads-smallprint-catch-under-fire/2005/02/17/1108609328946.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974208 | 500 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Search Engine Optimization is vital for any business that decides to make its presence felt in the market through the Internet. However, when venturing out into the SEO world, it is important to choose the right SEO keywords and optimize them. Mining for the right SEO keywords may take a considerable amount of your time and effort, but the fruits of it will be rewarding.
First, it is important to understand the importance of keyword selection and how to use your keywords on your website in order to enhance your marketing strategy.
Keyword research is one of the most basic steps in a good search engine optimization design and without it all SEO efforts will be wasted. Also, it is important to perform a thorough keyword research before you start placing keywords on your webpage.
SEO Keyword Research
Keyword Research is the process of identifying a list of keywords and then selecting those keywords that accurately reflect your products and services. It involves finding out which are the most popular terms searched by Internet users, how widely they are searched and how many and which other websites run on those keywords.
It is also important to think in terms of how your target audience would search for products or services on the Internet. For instance, if you have a website promoting a golf club, then it would not make much sense for you to target keywords like “golf” or “golfing” because these keywords are extremely general and have tons of competitors. Also, since you are targeting only people who are looking out for a golf club, using a general keyword like “golf” will bring in a lot of irrelevant traffic. This is because visitors may be looking for anything related to golf, such as golf history, golf tips, golf news, and so on. Typically a person who is looking out for a golf club will type in “golf club” and related terms instead of the single term “golf.” So from this example it is evident that the best choice of keywords for you would be to use phrases like “golf club” instead of single and general keywords.
You can use keyword research tools (free and paid) that are available online in order to see what users are searching for. There are several such tools which contain data on search queries performed by users over a period of time. These tools will help you get an idea on the kind of terms that are searched for and also their frequency of search. Any keyword research tool will let you enter a word and show results on similar terms including variations, synonyms, misspellings, singulars, and plurals. Not only do these tools provide information on search volume but also show data on the advertiser competition for keywords.
Once keyword research is done and you have built your keyword list, these keywords can then be placed at appropriate places in your webpage content to achieve a high ranking in search engines. However, avoid placing too many on the same page as search engines consider this practice as keyword stuffing and may penalize your site for it.
SEO Keyword Tactics
Keyword Research will help you get the most popular, lucrative, and top SEO keywords which may be searched by thousands of users in a day. However, if there are several competitors for the keywords you have chosen, then it will be very difficult to beat those sites and get the top ranking in the search results. Conversely, if you choose keywords that are very specific or niche that no one searches on them, then top ranking for your site is wasted as there would be none to see it. The idea behind choosing the right SEO keywords is that they should help you achieve top ranking with reasonable efforts and budget. If your site fails to show on the first or second page of the search results then it would really not be worth the time and effort that would have gone in optimizing those keywords.
You will most often find that the best SEO keywords are already being used by a large number of competitors and these high volume keywords may be very tempting to use but may not always fetch you the ranking you desire. Therefore, the catch here is to fish out those keywords that have strong relevance to your website, high search volume, and relatively less competition because these keywords will be more rewarding than just high volume competitive keywords. It is quite possible to achieve a good search engine ranking while staying within your budget and with minimal effort using low volume less competitive SEO keywords when compared to high volume ones. To do this, you need to find out how tough it is to get a good ranking for a specific keyword and this can be done using keyword difficulty tools. | <urn:uuid:95097e4d-1f03-4398-887b-18b721f55519> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itsyllabus.com/tag/top-paying-keywords/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949594 | 931 | 1.617188 | 2 |
February 11, 2013 — Vol. 29 No. 5
The Idaho State University Health Fair 2013 - celebrating its 33rd year - is scheduled from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday and Friday, March 21-22, and organizers are looking for private and public health enterprises to set up learning centers.
The fair will be in the ISU Pond Student Union Ballroom.
Portneuf Medical Center (PMC) will provide laboratory services and blood draws at the fair on March 21-22. Blood draws will be available on a walk-in basis from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Monday through Sunday from March 1 - March 30 at the PMC lab located at 777 Hospital Way with access to the lab through the main entrance. Participants who have their blood drawn on or before March 15 can pick up their blood profile results at the ISU Health Fair where health care professionals will help interpret results. Otherwise, results will be mailed to participants. A 14-hour fast is required prior to a blood draw for the lipid profile and general chemistry profile.
PMC offers a general health blood profile for $43. The screening will include a chemistry profile, assessments for cardiac risk based on cholesterol levels, a complete blood count and a thyroid screen. Optional tests include a $22 confidential HIV screening and a $18 prostate antigen test. Other tests that will be offered this year include thyroid function screen for $16, iron level for $5, uric acid level for $5, glycohemoglobin for $27; insulin level for $25; and vitamin D level for $18, a test for osteoporosis, $17.
Last year's Health Fair featured more than 65 learning centers, providing services to hundreds of participants. ISU students from health care and health science disciplines will be available for consultation on medications, healthy teeth and gums, nutrition and other health-related topics.
For more information on learning centers, contact Stephen Wright, [email protected] or 208-282-2325. | <urn:uuid:80cf89e9-071b-4912-8641-e2ce2983d00b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.isu.edu/newsandnotes/130211/healthfair.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931102 | 419 | 1.585938 | 2 |
EMPLOYER, JOB: Edinburgh Premium Outlets, maintenance,
DIAGNOSED: December 2010
TREATMENTS: Mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation
PARENTS: Joe (deceased) and Wilda Jean Boas
SIBLINGS: Brothers, Randy, Greg, Tracy; sisters, Della Dolan, Susan Johnson
Mark Boas thanks a man he never met and the color pink for saving his life from a disease he thought affected only women.
In October 2010, a pink newspaper at his mother’s house caught Boas’ attention. The Oct. 15 edition of The Republic contained a special breast cancer awareness section, and the entire paper was the color that has become synonymous with the cause.
But had it not been for a story about Hope resident Larry Shepherd’s ordeal with breast cancer, Boas might have continued to ignore a lump in his sore left breast that had been bugging him for a month.
“I didn’t dream I’d get it,” said Boas, a 56-year-old Columbus resident. “If he hadn’t been in the paper, if it was just women, I never would have thought about it.”
Instead, Boas became concerned. His older sister contracted breast cancer, and a cousin had died from it.
Within a month, Boas went to a health clinic for a mammogram. An abnormal result prompted the need for a biopsy. A positive result for breast cancer necessitated a mastectomy on Dec. 22, followed by chemotherapy starting in January and radiation starting in August.
The past year has been a whirlwind for Boas, but he says he’s at peace with the fact that he has breast cancer.
“Once I knew the truth, I knew what I’ve got to do,” he said.
Boas first noticed how sore his left breast was in September 2010, when leaned over a toolbox on his truck to get a tool he needed for a construction job. He didn’t think too much of the pain.
When he read Shepherd’s story a month later, he reconsidered what the pain could mean and took action.
A Dec. 7 telephone call from Tammy Creech, a nurse navigator at Columbus Regional Hospital’s Breast Health Center, confirmed what was suspected after the mammogram and biopsy: Boas had early Stage 3 breast cancer — which meant it had not spread throughout his body.
“His reaction was really positive, like it’s just something I’ve got to take care of, so get it done,” Creech said.
Days before Christmas, Dr. David Thompson, a surgeon, removed Boas’ left breast, including a 2.2-centimeter tumor, and 22 lymph nodes — 10 of which tested positive for cancer. A port was inserted in his chest for the chemotherapy drugs.
“Once you have cancer in the lymph nodes it means you need some type of chemotherapy because there’s the likelihood that the cancer has spread beyond the lymph nodes to elsewhere in the body, and the chemotherapy treats the whole body,” Thompson said.
Patients who undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation after cancer is found in the lymph nodes have about a 60 percent chance of avoiding a reoccurrence of cancer over five years, Thompson added.
Boas started chemotherapy Jan. 17, receiving a dose of drugs once a week every three weeks, at CRH’s Cancer Center. Each treatment lasted about 90 minutes, and he received the last one in late June.
The first three or four doses weren’t too bad, Boas said, although he had trouble sleeping, lost his appetite because food tasted bland and lost all his body hair.
He lost only 5 pounds because he mixed a protein powder with his milk.
Only after the last two chemotherapy treatments did Boas feel sick.
Radiation treatments took place on a different schedule. Treatment took about 20 minutes a day Monday through Friday, for a total of 28 sessions. Each used photons to kill cancer cells in his left breast area. Those sessions were followed by radiation treatments just for the scar from his mastectomy. It used electrons — which don’t penetrate as deeply as photons — to kill any cancer cells hiding in the scar tissue.
The treatments were easy, he said, except that he needed to remain still throughout.
Donna Christian, Boas’ boss at Edinburgh Premium Outlets, understands what Boas has endured, because she is a breast cancer survivor.
Christian, general manager of the outlet mall, considers Boas an inspiration to his co-workers.
“He continues to work while undergoing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. He has kept a positive attitude through the whole process,” she said.
Boas said breast cancer served as a wake-up call.
“You make every day count and not take things for granted,” Boas said.
Shepherd lived the same philosophy after developing breast cancer. Unfortunately, he never fully defeated the disease and lost his life to it Sept. 24.
Boas will have to take Tamoxifen, a drug that interferes with the activity of estrogen, for five years, to help stave off a reoccurrence.
That’s fine with him. He’s just doing what needs to be done.
That includes sharing his story with men if he thinks they need to know it.
Just like a man from Hope did.
Think your friends should see this? Share it with them!
All content copyright ©2013 The Republic, a division of Home News Enterprises unless otherwise noted. | <urn:uuid:263827fd-e2a9-4a6e-83ac-6c76e69125dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.therepublic.com/view/local_story/One_man_s_ordeal_prompts_anoth_1318344317 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973076 | 1,191 | 1.695313 | 2 |
OSLO, Norway — They gathered by the tens of thousands, aiming to face down terror with the power of music.
Inspired by a Facebook-organized protest, Norwegians flocked to public squares across the country Thursday, ignored the drenching rain and lifted their voices in song.
Their target: far-right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik, on trial for a bombing-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people. Their weapon: a children's tune he claims has been used to brainwash the country's youth into supporting immigration.
Defiant sing-alongs of Children of the Rainbow were staged in Oslo and other major Norwegian cities, while in court survivors of Breivik's attacks gave tearful testimony in the ninth day of his trial.
In downtown Oslo alone, about 40,000 people chimed in as Norwegian artist Lillebjoern Nilsen played the song — a Norwegian version of American folk music singer Pete Seeger's My Rainbow Race.
They sang the Norwegian lyrics:
"A sky full of stars, blue sea as far as you can see
An Earth where flowers grow, can you wish for more?
Together shall we live, every sister, brother, you and me
Young children of the rainbow, a fertile land and seashore."
In testimony last week, Breivik mentioned the tune as an example of how he believes "cultural Marxists" have infiltrated Norwegian schools and weakened its society.
Later, the crowd marched to the Oslo courthouse, where they laid a carpet of red and white roses on the steps and the fence.
Reached at home in Beacon, N.Y., the 92-year-old Seeger told the Associated Press he had heard about the mass gathering from Nilsen, who called him Thursday morning.
"I said, 'Oh that's wonderful,' " Seeger said. "It's a tremendous honor, really."
Breivik has admitted setting off a bomb on July 22 outside the government headquarters that killed eight people, and then shooting to death 69 others, mostly teenagers, at the Labor Party's annual youth camp on Utoya island.
Shocked by Breivik's lack of remorse, Norwegians by and large decided the best way to confront him is by demonstrating their commitment to everything he loathes. Instead of raging against the gunman, they have manifested their support for tolerance and democracy. | <urn:uuid:899b41d7-f5fb-4b51-9de3-8f0cec2dde0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/thousands-defy-accused-norway-mass-killer-breivik-in-song/1227109 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965112 | 498 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The State House passed legislation Thursday to allow an increase in the number of Michigan cyber schools.
A cyber school, also called a virtual school, is an educational institution that provides instruction by way of the Internet. Currently there are two cyber schools operating in Michigan that are accepted as being part of the state's school system.
Eight Republican representatives voted against the bill (Senate Bill 619), which passed 56-54. Republicans voting against the expansion were Reps. Jeff Farrington, R-Utica; Anthony Forlini, R-Harrison Twp.; Ben Glardon, R-Owosso; Ken Goike, R-Roy Township; Ken Horn, R-Frankenmuth; Joel Johnson, R-Clare; Paul Muxlow, R-Brown City, and Peter Pettalia, R-Preque Isle.
One House Democrat, Rep. Shanelle Jackson, D-Detroit, voted for the legislation.
In December, Rep. Jackson was the only House Democrat to vote in favor of lifting the cap on the number of charter schools in Michigan.
“What this legislation does for me; is give people - working class people – more choices,” she said during the House floor debate. Can this legislation, like almost all the legislation that we deal with here be improved? Yes, and we can work on it, and we can improve it in the future.”
Rep. Jackson talked about the differences between her brother - who ended up going to a charter school - and herself, who went to a traditional school.
“I did fine in a traditional public school,” she said. “ But what we should recognize is that all of our students are not the same. Parents need to be provided with more opportunities. Today, what I believe we are doing is putting more options on the table.”
Rep. Joel Johnson had the following explanation for his opposition to the bill.
"A big part of success in life is learning how to show up," Johnson said. "We need our children to learn how to show up - part of that principle is that they show up at a brick and mortar school. In the case of students with ongoing health challenges or a need for more course availability, I am confident in my discussions with area teachers and administrators that brick and mortar schools are already provided those services. This is in addition to providing an educational home for students with the added benefit of extracurricular activities like band, the arts, and student clubs. I also find this legislation premature given that the state is in the middle of a study cycle that will provide important information on the outcomes we’re seeing under this mode of instruction."
However, Rep. Lisa Brown, D-West Bloomfield, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee, argued that increasing the number of Michigan's cyber schools was premature. She said the issue was really about sending additional dollars to the private companies that operate cyber schools.
“This will mean more money going to CEOs who make as much as $5 million a year,” Rep. Brown said. “I don't understand why we're moving so quickly on this. We had agreed to an experiment with two cyber schools. We were supposed to get a report on them after two years. Now, we're doing this even before we've seen the report.
“K-12 Inc., the company with the CEO who makes $5 million, did not even meet Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements,” she said. “It was recently reported that the Pentagon doesn't even want recruits who are from nontraditional schools.”
With enactment of Senate Bill 619, the allowable number of Michigan's accepted cyber schools could increase over the next few years. There could be no more than five until 2014; no more than 10 until 2015; and the cap would be set at 15 after that.
In addition, the legislation limits the number of students (or members) a cyber school could have. They would be limited to 2,500 for the first year; 5,000 the second year and 10,000 for the third and subsequent years.
The vote in the House was a long time coming. Senate Bill 619, is sponsored by Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton. It was passed by the Senate with a 20-18 vote on Oct. 27. Typically, if it takes that long for a bill to be brought up after moving from one chamber to another, it means changes had to be made to garner enough support for passage, which was the case in the House. That means the bill has to be sent back to the Senate for a concurrence vote before it would be sent on to Gov. Rick Snyder.
During the House floor debate on the bill, Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, argued that the issue came down to trusting parents or trusting the government.
“I love empowering parents,” Rep. McMillin said. “It comes down to this – I trust parents to do what's best for their child.”
House Democratic Floor Leader Kate Segal, D-Battle Creek, argued against the bill, claiming that increasing the number of cyber schools in the state would be experimenting with the lives of Michigan children.
“Very simply, the fact is that the children of our state are not mice or lab rats,” Rep. Segal said. “Study after study shows that cyber schools do not give students the education they need.”
Many of the studies Rep. Segal referred to – however – were done by or paid for by entities that have traditionally opposed the movement toward more schools of choice.
The Republicans who voted no were contacted and offered the opportunity to comment.
“I voted no on this bill for a very straight-forward reason,” Rep. Farrington said. “I do not believe in cyber schools or e-education as a 100 percent component of education. If there are some courses offered, I'm in favor of that and I think schools should go that way.
“I also believe that, as a society, we need to learn how to get together more,” he said. “One of the things this (cyber school expansion) does is separate people.”
Rep. Goike argued that cyber school costs are less than those of traditional schools – therefore Senate Bill 619 should not have notched per pupil spending for each cyber school student at the same level as the per pupil rate for regular schools.
“I have been following you (Capitol Confidential) on this and other issues,” Rep. Goike said. “I look at this from the view of a true conservative, I don't think we should be spending $6,800 per student (roughly the state's per pupil spending level) on this. When you figure out what it actually costs; it's about $1,000 per pupil. If we're going to do this, it should be as a cost savings; not as a cost shift.”
Rep. Forlini said he opposed the bill because it should have had language preventing cyber schools from collecting money for dropouts.
“We have no definition of a dropout,” he said. “A big concern I have with cyber schools is that we'll end up paying for students who never even login. I had an amendment to fix this. ...But, for some reason, my amendment didn't get into the bill. Without that accountability, I couldn't support the bill.”
Rep. Glardon argued that before approving additional cyber schools, the legislature should have waited for the report on the state's two current experimental cyber schools.
“I would like to state that I am not opposed to virtual or on-line learning and I support giving parents more options,” Rep. Glardon said. “ However, the cyber school legislation was passed (in 2009) with the understanding that there would be two years of data to evaluate before considering new legislation. I would have preferred to wait until we received the two years of data before considering expanding cyber schools in Michigan.” | <urn:uuid:e067d804-3590-460e-ae33-6a44549501e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mackinac.org/16825 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980065 | 1,696 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Corn prices are nearing the record highs of last summer as the U.S. Midwest suffers its worst drought since 1956. Shoppers should expect higher grocery bills. Smart Money's Jack Hough has details on The News Hub. Photo: Reuters.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... the the ... drought in the Midwest descending corn prices to record highs ... the impact on food prices ... Jack L from SmartMoney's here to tells about it when Jack that morning ... so ... the short answer to your question is they will go higher they will tell I know corny course humans in your piece is used in this blows my mind seventy five percent of ... really the U of U S ... food stock or the way you see in the grocery store ... three quarters of it has corn in a Yemeni estimates vary pretty widely and I suppose it depends on the supermarket in on the air and they certainly know whether ... this a lot of processed goods are a lot of holes appear to ... be in in the porn is a lot more than you think ... that is made with corn his keeper mind corn is used in sweeteners is using store to see thickening agents Susan food color so touched ... things were you see ... Dino quarters as a primary Marina course ... really drought is causing prices to key red hit record levels this record also for soybeans ... hitting record levels that we saw I guess last summer yet now ... but you argue that actually the impact on food prices will be somewhat muted ... the idea in how we always talk about the highly processed some ... American diet and it turns out that ... that the actual food content of many of the things a wee supermarket is not that I dash will cost the portion of a cost that goes ... to the farmer so the USDA figures that ... lesson sixteen cents of each food dollar MidAmerican spend actually goes the former ... the share collected by the food processing industries action ... from double that Colin and on field service companies all look like a lot are triple so ... yet when you take a look the actual core content corn is used in a wide variety of fruits when you take a look at the actual content ... it's not that big ... the way you wanna think about is from less processed foods as high risk high its higher for Derry entire form meets ... on you know we talk about baked goods things like that ... it's it's not that much corny I would expect ... the prices on your cornflakes are going to go much to my for things like Angus for poultry for beef in a just world see at ... Adobe were the first things we have will see these effects in a couple of months ... we are close to the corn harvest season and eggs ... because chickens are fed with corn effectively what happens is it's a shorter time between when the animals consume the food when the products hit the shelves so we do when you talk about dairy and eggs also be among the first products be had ... eggs ... are talking about your core ring of fourteen cents a pound or talk about four pounds to make a dozen eggs so ... here you can work them out there on how big your increase might be ... and then you'll see the effect that meets according to the size of the animals more animals chickens their prices will rise first ... and then the dogs and cows but ... in the short term you might actually see prices come down a bit to some of these farmers are rushing to number in these animals to market because they don't want to pay the higher the price is right now ... but in any impact from from soybeans is a conditional anything or similar so again we're also seeing record high prices there as well to the drought yes soybeans are on a little bit of a leader groans Kevan fleas could see the same thing delayed ... aam I guess the key takeaway here for shoppers is ... yes your prices are likely to rise I don't think it's ... dinner time for some sort of alarmist view and offended by the way in an off secure from energy prices ... why is that I guess on the price of oil is come down a little bit and that ... is ... when input it had come down but now we've seen a reversal of a new look like we're going to get a little bit of relief from energy prices but now that doesn't seem as likely ... no one of the things that might help your is just on onthe retell under such fierce competition right now among grocers look to Walmart and Target so this was a ... was seized legal grocery chains talk about bring their prices down so that might be a little bit of a mitigating factor but ... here I think that this with the USDA says one Isaac was up fifty percent ... the average American's grocery bills can go off about one percent so we seen them of about fifty percent increase that summer so ... Europe is aren't you paying between one percent the crew ... when you're from any one thing you mention it ... will have to endure sought to keep their eye and of course will be next week's ... update USDA report which will give that same USA in its war July twenty fifth USDA will give projections about what's gonna happen with food prices I mean they're not always spot on the kids to the future ... of this report will factor | <urn:uuid:a885070d-2faa-44d6-81df-e60a8c158385> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://live.wsj.com/video/rising-corn-prices-and-your-grocery-bill/9FCD73EB-D5DD-4AB8-937D-5E501D57E506.html?mod=BOL_error_video_barrons-markets | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974008 | 1,056 | 1.820313 | 2 |
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03-01-2013, 08:33 PM #1New Guest
- Join Date
- Mar 2013
Help needed... Honeywell Truesteam wiring
edit: I realize that this site frowns on DIY questions... all I can offer is that I am familiar with safe wiring practices (I am an industrial instrumentation technician by trade) and I hold no one, including this website or anyone affiliated with it, in any way responsible for the advice that is given. I hope that satisfies the requirements of this forum... if not, I apologize for breaking the rules.
I recently installed a Honeywell Truesteam 6 gallon unit.
I wired using "CONFIGURATION 2 - using a humidistat separate from the thermostat" (I am using the H8908), however, I couldn't seem to find a "C" wire so I didn't wire it. I'm guessing that is my problem...
Everything else I did agrees with the wiring diagram for "CONFIGURATION 2"... but after I send the call for humidity (which I know the humidifier is receiving properly, as the "Humidifying" light starts to blink after I adjust the humidistat, just like the manual said it should) and then press the "GO" button on the Truesteam, the Service LED blinks 7 times. According to the manual, the issue is "HVAC power not present". Again, I am guessing this is because of the lack of a "C" wire...
So, I guess my question is, where is my "C" wire? I opened up my furnace (which is an A.A.C Lenox HW/HWC Series model 26HWC123A-2B "Magic-Pak" Thru-the-Wall Unit) and I can't seem to find one... and in fact I found a connector on the circuit board with a "C" pin labelled, and there is no wire connected to it! The following album has images of that circuit board, and the connector in question: http://imgur.com/a/lH9Cl
I do have the manual for the "Magic-Pak" which has 3 wiring digrams for that system (one for 208/230 Volt Single Phase, another for 208/230 Volt Single Phase w/Low Ambient Control and the third for 208/230 Volt Single Phase HW Series... not sure which of these three is the one for my unit, however, I can tell you that all three diagrams indicate what is shown in my images; there are "C" terminals on the circuit board, but nothing connected to them!)... if needed I could take pictures of those diagrams and upload as well.
Thanks in advance,
03-01-2013, 08:56 PM #2
I am very familiar with both your TrueSteam and MP unit, as I have worked on lots of both
I can tell you that a qualified tech can very easily hook your C connection.
This site does not however permit DIY
If your unsure as to where to get your C wire from, I would suggest getting a qualified tech to finish the installation, as a miss-installed steam humidifier can cause you a lot of problems, and will be way more headaches than you want to deal with
03-01-2013, 10:32 PM #3New Guest
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- Mar 2013 | <urn:uuid:6b5be47f-30b2-4894-8af8-6a5d996bc684> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?1270291-Help-needed-Honeywell-Truesteam-wiring | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951978 | 706 | 1.5625 | 2 |
US criticized at nuclear arms control conference Tom Henry at 8:45 AM ET
[JURIST] As the monthlong UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament [UN website] comes to a close this Friday, the US is being criticized for its stance on nuclear development and deployment. One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US would never limit its options during a time of war. According to observers, the meetings have been bogged down with disputes over the agenda and a continuing feud between US and Iranian officials over Tehran's nuclear goals. The Bush administration has also been criticized for renouncing the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty [text]. Though the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia are making progress on a joint statement, diplomats were pessimistic about the conference agreeing to any consensus final statement. Reuters has more.
Paper Chase is JURIST's real-time legal news service, powered by a team of 30 law student reporters and editors led by law professor Bernard Hibbitts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. As an educational service, Paper Chase is dedicated to presenting important legal news and materials rapidly, objectively and intelligibly in an accessible, ad-free format. | <urn:uuid:a7e69bdb-7935-4c8d-adc6-9c43b7110b4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jurist.org/paperchase/2005/05/us-criticized-at-nuclear-arms-control.php | 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 | 0.956756 | 245 | 1.570313 | 2 |
It has long been said that there are wars of necessity and wars of choice. But enemies always adapt, especially in our world of terrorists, failing states and delinquent regimes. Every war is a war of choice.
If the trenches of the First World War were not enough to cast doubt upon the idea of progress' prospects, certainly Auschwitz and Hiroshima more than sufficed. The holdouts thereafter--those liberals and Marxists still upholding the Enlightenment
Marton's qualifications to write a book about the Middle East are slightly higher than Bernadotte's were to make peace there, but in the end it comes to the same: two boy scouts setting up pup-tents in minefields. | <urn:uuid:4249a111-6ff6-4fc3-a8e4-fd89351e27bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nationalinterest.org/tag/israeli-jews | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957179 | 139 | 1.617188 | 2 |
It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but
it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue.
If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good
play needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes;
and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues.
What a case am I in, then, that am neither a good epilogue nor
cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! I am not
furnished like a beggar; therefore to beg will not become me: my
way is to conjure you; and I'll begin with the women. I charge
you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of
this play as please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love
you bear to women;--as I perceive by your simpering, none of you
hates them,--that between you and the women the play may please.
If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that
pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied
not; and, I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces,
or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy,
bid me farewell. | <urn:uuid:638955a0-cf20-476f-b227-f98e03b3e538> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.literaturepage.com/read.php?titleid=shakespeare-as-you-like-it&abspage=85&changecolor=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968399 | 309 | 1.773438 | 2 |
February 2, 2012
Whale Shark, New Guinea
Photograph by Michael Aw
This Month in Photo of the Day: Animal Pictures
"Suddenly he just jumped in!" says photographer Michael Aw. Sarmin Tangadji, the Papua police officer who escorted the photographic team to where the sharks congregate, "was so excited to see them up close." Aw shares that excitement when it comes to diving with a dozen whale sharks: "You are sandwiched in, sharks ahead and behind, but you want to be there," he says. "They make eye contact with you and then charge by. It blows your mind."
See more pictures from the October 2011 feature story "Sharing With Sharks."
See pictures of sharks shot by our readers »
See pictures of ocean wildlife » | <urn:uuid:275ce6e3-8f0b-47c3-95d3-dd3715f43fdd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/whale-shark-aw/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939134 | 160 | 1.59375 | 2 |
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In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, CNN published an excruciatingly bizarre oped by New York University professor Mitchell L. Moss. In the oped, titled “Sandy debunks ‘nanny state,’” Moss does indeed do some debunking. But only of his own understanding of what people mean when they complain about the nanny state.
Moss is right to note, early in his piece, that all of us do in large measure depend on state (or provincial) and local governments. There’s always a fringe of anti-government types who go around insisting that darn state ain’t never done anything for them, while conveniently forgetting such minor conveniences as clean water, sewage, education, medical care and, oh yeah, an orderly, safe society. Excepting all but a few hard-core, off-the-grid survivalist types, even the most independent among us are only independent relative to others. We all start with a foundation under our feet, and that foundation, more often than not, is supported by thousands of government employees quietly doing their taxpayer-funded jobs to keep everything humming along quietly in the background.
Fair enough. What has made the developed world the developed world is, loath as we sometimes are to admit it, stable government. Granted. But the things that Moss cites as fundamental to that task — “clean water, reliable transportation systems, and emergency services when floods, fires and power outages force [people] to abandon their homes” — aren’t what people get their backs up about in defiance of the nanny state. They’re what people consider the government’s basic, core responsibilities.
When governments go beyond those responsibilities into micromanaging what our children must be taught about sex or how big a soda pop I can order with my quadruple-bacon-cheeseburger and gargantuan side of fries, that’s when the nanny state accusation gets trotted out. No one has ever rolled their eyes and scoffed at the nanny state when police arrested a local drug dealer or a road crew painted fresh lines down the middle of a road. That’s what government is supposed to be doing. That lets the rest of us go about our jobs and lives without having to think about all the hard work needed just to keep the lights on and the taps running.
Strangely, even Moss seems to understand this, even while somehow reading a validation of the nanny state into recent events. “There is one simple lesson we can learn from Hurricane Sandy: We cannot ignore the essential infrastructure that moves people, information and goods,” he writes. Precisely. “Essential infrastructure” (emphasis mine). A state that sees to essential needs isn’t engaging in nanny statism. It’s doing its job.
And if we look beyond the mere necessities of a functional modern society — the roads, the pipes, the first responders — and actually get right down into emergency management and disaster relief, we find … still no evidence of nanny statism. Disaster relief and contingency planning is done first by local governments as part of their daily duties, and at progressively more senior levels of government after that, in case of major incidents. But most of this work involves planning, writing chains of command, agreeing to protocols and running the occasional planning exercise. None of that interferes with the daily lives of the citizens. Even major disaster contingency planning efforts such as live training exercises and stockpiling reserves of vital supplies goes on behind the scenes. Sticking a few million MREs into a warehouse doesn’t tread on anyone’s liberty.
Even people who lament and resent the encroaching nanny state will admit, even grudgingly, that they like some of what government does for them. And that’s why they resent silly nanny state efforts so much — it’s a diversion of resources and attention away from what governments should be doing with our money. That includes things like transportation, and it includes things like planning for massive hurricanes and floods.
That Americans governments have responded well to Hurricane Sandy thus far is to commended. But to suggest that that proves that governments should do even more than keep the roads paved and the power on is simply bizarre.
Do you have an opinion to share with other readers? Then send us a letter. | <urn:uuid:2685b257-802a-4626-b7e6-2fcc0fed1e46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/10/31/matt-gurney-disaster-responses-arent-signs-of-the-nanny-state/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95009 | 954 | 1.75 | 2 |
By Caitlin McGlade, CQ Staff
November 30, 3012 -- It's state budget submission season for governors, and as they struggle with whether to expand their Medicaid programs under the health care law, some policy experts recently said that each state leader is crunching the numbers and trying to decide what makes the most financial sense.
At a panel discussion hosted by the Alliance for Health Reform, much discussion centered around a report by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured that calculated state savings at just $8 billion collectively if all of them decided to forgo expansion.
But Krista Drobac, director of the health division at the National Governor's Association Center for Best Practices, said the governors have not had any reaction, at least publicly, to the Kaiser study, which was by John Holahan, a researcher with the Urban Institute.
Some are wondering whether their states could just partly expand, while others are curious if they could expand later. Some have wondered what the effects would be if they reduced eligibility after expanding.
Many are particularly worried about how concrete the 90 percent reimbursement federal officials promise would be after a few years and in subsequent Congresses. When states first expand, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs for new enrollees. That contribution will be phased down to 90 percent.
"It's weighing hugely in the minds of state officials—when you look at the numbers that John presented and say to yourself, 'Well this looks like a good deal,' state officials say to themselves, 'Well what if we get wrapped up in deficit reduction and the costs shift to the state so that 90 percent match, in three years, becomes 75?' " Drobac said.
Another question on the table is how areas with few providers would handle a surge in Medicaid users. In many cases, regions home to high proportions of uninsured have the fewest provider options, she said.
Mississippi—which has already tossed out the prospect of expansion—is one of these cases. If the state were to expand its Medicaid program, it would potentially have 310,000 new enrollees, bringing its number of Medicaid recipients to more than 1 million people. The state leads the country in poverty, adult obesity, teen birth rates, infant mortality and traffic deaths. It comes in second for hypertension and inactivity and third in diabetes and cancer mortality. Mississippi comes in last when it comes to physicians per capita.
But James Keeton, dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, said last week that hospitals are going to be in trouble if the state opts out of Medicaid expansion.
Fourteen percent of the patients his system treats are uninsured.
"So I go talk to civic groups and I say to the civic groups, how would you like to run a company where you give away 14 percent of your business?" Keeton said. "That's what we do."
Federal Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital funding is available to cover these types of situations, but the health care overhaul is phasing out such payments because, in theory, the law should reduce the number of uninsured people and the need for hospitals to pay for such patients.
Medicaid expansion or not, Keeton figures, the state would lose the disproportionate share payments. Without insuring more people, the hospitals might have to pay more out of pocket eventually. Keeton expects the small hospitals to start talking to their state senators and representatives in January about "going into the red" and the implications that would have as a large employer in their areas.
"And that's when the rubber will hit the road," Keeton said.
The health care overhaul originally had mandated that all states expand their Medicaid programs to cover those who are within 138 percent of the federal poverty line, and pledged to withhold Medicaid funding to states that didn't comply. But in June the Supreme Court said states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion without losing their other Medicaid reimbursements.
Some states, such as New York and Delaware, are poised to save money with the health care overhaul's Medicaid expansion provision, while others, such as Mississippi, say the program would cost too much.
"Expenditures related to health care are crowding other state expenditures, and the governors have just come out of an extremely intense time period where they had to find savings in all of their programs," Drobac said. "It's coming at a time when its fresh in their minds how much Medicaid costs."
She pointed to a chart delineating that K-12 education spending, as a share of total state spending, dropped from 22 percent to 20 percent from 2008 to 2011. During that same period, Medicaid spending rose to 23.5 percent from 20.5 percent.
"When they think about these things, they're thinking about the trade-offs," Drobac said. "So, what other parts of our budgets are potentially crowded out by increased Medicaid costs?"
Holohan's findings showed that states will be paying more than in previous years regardless of whether they expand Medicaid. Much of this would be driven by the slew of people who discover they had already been eligible, largely because of increased publicity, and sign up for Medicaid to comply with the health insurance mandate.
"It's just hard for me to imagine that states can not adopt this after a certain period of time," Holahan said. "Because with the pressure of hospitals, business communities and just a lot of people saying 'Why are we giving up all this money while our taxpayers are paying federal taxes, which are going out to people in other states?'" | <urn:uuid:fea4db29-3dba-4396-b1e7-8939d94e1276> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Newsletters/Washington-Health-Policy-in-Review/2012/Dec/December-3-2012/Some-States-Still-Crunching.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969376 | 1,137 | 1.664063 | 2 |
A Delicate Balance
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who argues that balance is a bad thing, but in this time of austerity versus growth and political us-versus-them, you’d be equally hard-pressed to find agreement on how to achieve balance. Right now the U.S. economy is teetering on the edge of the much-publicized so-called “fiscal cliff,” a one-two punch of automatic spending cuts and tax increases set to go into effect in 2013, and which threaten to tip the nation into recession. Will the U.S. speed off the cliff and into the abyss? Or will politicians pull together to prevent this economic Weeble from wobbling?
At Cliff’s Edge
Ed Perks, Sr. Vice President and Director of Portfolio Management for Franklin Equity Group®, has a thing or two to say on the question of balance and potential economic cliff-dives. Says Perks:
“If nothing were to be done, forecasters have projected a potential hit to GDP of about 3.5%, and that is very meaningful. Certainly we do have concerns about that, but when we really look at the issues that comprise parts of the fiscal cliff —whether it is the expiration of tax cuts or extension of unemployment benefits—many of these things can be dealt with over a number of years. Thus, the immediate impact on the economy could be much more muted. Ultimately, we do need to see some cooperation in Washington, which I know is hard to envision given the (politicians’) recent track record. Ultimately a government’s ability to live more within its means is very important long term.”
Achieving growth alongside austerity seems like a balancing act requiring the skills of a master yogi. In some European countries, attempts at fiscal balance via severe austerity have resulted in social and economic fallout. But Perks believes growth and austerity are possible to achieve in tandem, as long as politicians are willing to bend a bit.
“I’m in the camp that believes they (growth and austerity) aren’t mutually exclusive. I think you can have the government on a long-term path to sustainability and balancing budgets, and there will likely need to be some combination of revenue increases for government as well as spending reforms or spending cuts over the long-term. As we move to a more balanced or sustainable fiscal path in the U.S., it’s important that the private sector be in a position where it is supported with good underlying policy to generate employment growth. I think that could be a very important offset to any negative drag or fiscal drag from austerity measures and would enable a more balanced path as well as growth in the economy.”
Further, Perks notes that while many countries in Europe have gone down the austerity path, the U.S. must find its own best course.
“I think the situation in Europe is very different country by country, so extrapolating what’s happening and in, say, Greece today or Italy or Spain is a very different situation, and I would expect that the U.S. situation certainly will be very different. As we go down this (austerity) path in the U.S., I would not expect any specific European country’s model to necessarily be a perfect match for what we need to do.”
On Balance Sheets and Portfolios
As the market pendulum swings, rebalancing is often a part of the investment process. Perks is tasked with finding and adjusting a mix of stocks, bonds and convertible securities in his portfolios seeking current income and long-term capital appreciation potential. Many investors seeking the former in a yield-scarce environment have gravitated toward dividend-paying stocks, which are also part of Perks’ strategy. Just a few years ago, an income investor looking at the broader equity market in search of attractive dividend-paying stocks might have found the pickings rather slim. They were generally limited to fewer sectors—mainly utilities, pharmaceuticals and telecom services. Perks says these sectors are still important today, but there has been a fundamental broadening of the dividend-paying equity universe.
“Over the last several years, we saw companies come out of the financial crisis (in 2008 – 2009) and really focus on their balance sheets—deleveraging, extending debt maturities and reducing interest expense. But we think we have seen a fundamental shift in that much of that activity has been completed. And today, companies are more focused on deploying cash to equity owners. It might be dividend initiation, it might be a dividend increase and it might be a share buyback—and that’s something that I think is fundamentally positive for what we’re trying to do, which is find attractive opportunities for income. And it’s not just about the absolute level of dividend yields—it’s certainly important and we like high dividend yields—but we also like when the underlying company is on a nice path and has a real prospect for dividend growth over time.”
Baby Steps, Not Big Jumps
Fears about economic stability in Europe have caused some investors to shy away from the region, just as fears about volatility have driven many investors from equities just about everywhere in the past few years. These reactionary extremes don’t generally lead to balance, and as Perks points out, they can also mean that investors accidentally avoid opportunity as they attempt to avoid risk. In fact, in the equity market, Perks is finding opportunities today not only in dividend-paying companies, but in multinational names—even from some based in Europe.
“An example might be an issuer that might be based in Europe and has some business in Europe, but also participates in businesses around the world—different geographies—maybe a play on Latin America for example. These are really global multinational companies. So it’s really driven by our research, where we are following industries that have become truly more global, and in many instances that U.S.-based companies that are competing look very similar. We really want to find what we think is the best opportunity.”
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What are the Risks?
All investments involve risks, including possible loss of principal. Bond prices generally move in the opposite direction of interest rates. Thus, as the prices of bonds in a portfolio adjust to a rise in interest rates, the value of the portfolio may decline. Changes in the financial strength of a bond issuer or in a bond’s credit rating may affect its value. Floating-rate loans are lower-rated, higher-yielding instruments, which are subject to increased risk of default and can potentially result in loss of principal. These securities carry a greater degree of credit risk relative to investment-grade securities. Stock prices fluctuate, sometimes rapidly and dramatically, due to factors affecting individual companies, particular industries or sectors, or general market conditions. | <urn:uuid:9fd79e72-c80b-4cdf-937f-fd8e166585b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://global.beyondbullsandbears.com/2012/11/07/a-delicate-balance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960447 | 1,460 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The mission of the State University of New York Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (SUNY AGEP) is to provide an important means of access to qualified underrepresented minority students who are interested in graduate study and careers in the professoriate in science, engineering, and mathematics. SUNY AGEP seeks to enrich student's academic experience by creating an effective network of faculty, students, and administrators who embrace academic excellence and diversity. We believe that these interactions will prove to be a valuable experience, which will aid retention and promote their success.
SUNY AGEP plans to meet program goals by:
- Increasing interest in graduate study through SUNY LSAMP activities and Summer Research Institutes at University Centers and Brookhaven National Lab.
- Improving recruitment of doctoral students through alumni outreach, departmental incentives, recruitment visits, participation in professional conferences, and identification of barriers to admission.
- Improving retention of doctoral students through tracking and intervention by program staff, increasing faculty awareness of diversity issues, and community building among graduate students.
- Increasing the number of students entering the professoriate through the establishment of mentoring programs, providing teaching experiences, and providing opportunities for students to engage in research. | <urn:uuid:bf51df4e-4fd9-426e-8f39-b96c88e903b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albany.edu/agep/ | 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 | 0.934441 | 246 | 1.523438 | 2 |
ADD LIFE —
VetSCOPE demonstrates that VETMEDIN helps dogs feel better
The primary goal of the VetSCOPE1* study was to evaluate the efficacy of VETMEDIN (pimobendan) compared with the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor, benazepril hydrochloride, in improving the quality and quantity of life in dogs suffering from overt congestive heart failure (CHF) due to atrioventricular valvular insufficiency (AVVI). Data were also collected to evaluate VETMEDIN safety.
Important safety information
VETMEDIN should not be given in case of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, aortic stenosis, or any other clinical condition where an augmentation of cardiac output is inappropriate for functional or anatomical reasons.
VETMEDIN improved quality of life
VETMEDIN rapidly improved clinical signs of CHF in the VetSCOPE* trial1
- Dogs with CHF due to valvular disease that were treated with VETMEDIN showed significantly faster and greater improvement in clinical signs than those on an ACE inhibitor.1
- Dogs treated with VETMEDIN showed significant improvement at Day 56 in exercise tolerance, demeanor, and respiratory effort.1
There were 3 adverse events in the VETMEDIN group and 1 in the ACE inhibitor group. Diarrhea, soft stool, and vomiting occurred in the VETMEDIN group (1 dog each) and colitis occurred in the ACE inhibitor group.
The most common side effects reported in other field studies were poor appetite, lethargy, diarrhea, dyspnea, azotemia, weakness, and ataxia. If side effects should occur, pet owners should contact their veterinarian.
VetSCOPE study design
VetSCOPE was a blinded, randomized, positive-controlled, multicenter, 56-day study. Dogs were examined on study Days 0 (prior to first treatment), 7, and 56. All dogs alive at the end of the 56-day study period were entered into the optional long-term study.
Study dogs were randomly selected to receive either VETMEDIN plus a placebo (n=41) or benazepril plus a placebo (n=35). A subpopulation of dogs on VETMEDIN (n=31) and benazepril (n=25) also received concurrent furosemide therapy.
The study animals included 76 privately owned dogs representing 31 different dog breeds. The dogs were presented by owners to 11 different veterinary centers in Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland). All dogs selected for the trial showed clinical signs of heart failure secondary to AVVI.
VETMEDIN reduced the required diuretic dose
- With VETMEDIN, the overall dose of diuretics decreased from Day 0 to Day 56, whereas with benazepril the overall dose of diuretics increased during the study period.
VETMEDIN decreased mean heart size
With VETMEDIN use, mean heart size decreased.
- –0.13±0.64 mean reduction from baseline values.
With ACE inhibitor use, there was a slight increase in mean heart size.
- 0.36±0.58 mean increase from baseline values.
A decrease in heart size has been linked to increased survival.
*Clinical studies were completed using VETMEDIN capsules. In the US, only the chewable tablets are licensed. Both the capsules and chewable tablets contain the same pharmaceutical ingredient, pimobendan, and are considered equivalent for clinical use. Bioequivalence, however, has not been shown. | <urn:uuid:597db414-2637-486d-9a16-cdd25abeef33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vetmedin.com/efficacy/vetscope.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933137 | 762 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Endoscopic dacrocystorhinostomy: long-term results and evolution of surgical technique
This study evaluated the long-term results of endoscopic dacrocystorhinostomy (DCR) performed as a day-case procedure under local anaesthesia. It assessed the patient satisfaction with the procedure by retrospective review and a questionnaire survey.
Seventy patients were referred for endoscopic DCR to the senior author between 1997 and 2000. A success rate of 92 per cent was achieved at three months and it was possible to perform 85 per cent of cases under local anaesthetic; 91 per cent were discharged on the same day. Long-term follow up by postal survey revealed that the watering eye had improved following surgery in 83 per cent (follow up range = eight to 66 months; mean = 28.6 months). Eighty-eight per cent were satisfied with the tolerability of the procedure under local anaesthesia.
The authors describe changes in technique, which evolved with their experience of the procedure. Endoscopic dacrocystorhinostomy can be performed safely and successfully as a day-case procedure under local anaesthesia with excellent results and with great satisfaction to the patients.
Key Words: Lacrimal Apparatus Diseases; Surgical Procedures, Operative; Endoscopes; Treatment Outcome. | <urn:uuid:81ada31f-4dfa-4645-ab05-549eece69ba0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=403437&previous=true&jid=JLO&volumeId=118&issueId=08 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936981 | 273 | 1.773438 | 2 |
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