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ABSTRACT: To conduct an open-label, multinational, multicenter study examining the safety and efficacy of recombinant human acid alpha-glucosidase (rhGAA) in treatment of infantile-onset Pompe disease.
We enrolled 8 infant patients who had Pompe disease with GAA activity <1% of normal, cardiomyopathy, and hypotonia. In the 52-week initial phase, rhGAA was infused intravenously at 10 mg/kg weekly; an extension phase continued survivors' treatment with 10 to 20 mg/kg of rhGAA weekly or 20 mg/kg every 2 weeks for as long as 153 weeks. Safety measurements included adverse events, laboratory tests, and anti-rhGAA antibody titers. Efficacy evaluations included survival, ventilator use, echocardiograms, growth, and motor and cognitive function.
After 52 weeks of treatment, 6 of 8 patients were alive, and 5 patients were free of invasive ventilator support. Clinical improvements included ameliorated cardiomyopathy and improved growth and cognition. Five patients acquired new motor milestones; 3 patients walked independently. Four patients died after the initial study phase; the median age at death or treatment withdrawal for all patients was 21.7 months, significantly later than expected for patients who were not treated. Treatment was safe and well tolerated; no death was drug-related.
rhGAA improved ventilator-free survival, cardiomyopathy, growth, and motor function in patients with infantile-onset Pompe disease compared with outcomes expected for patients without treatment.
Journal of Pediatrics 07/2006; 149(1):89-97. · 4.11 Impact Factor | <urn:uuid:51083148-bf19-42a4-a5df-1ba53a85ad14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/62470938_Gail_E_Herman/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947647 | 348 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Stephanie Steinberg, wtop.com
WASHINGTON - Special advisers, lawmakers and lobbyists chirp into the president's ear all day, persuading him on decisions that could change the course of history. But at the end of the day, the person who has the most sway is the one who kisses him goodnight.
"Anytime that you're sleeping with the president," as first lady Betty Ford once put it, "You're bound to have an influence."
The impact the American first ladies had on their husbands and nation will be explored in a yearlong series, "First Ladies: Influence & Image," produced by C-SPAN and the White House Historical Association. The first 90- minute episode premieres Feb. 25 with Martha Washington, and the series will highlight each first lady in chronological order, ending with Michelle Obama on Feb. 10, 2014.
C-SPAN Executive Producer Mark Farkas describes the first-of-its-kind series as a "chance to walk in the shoes of the first ladies" and see how they shaped the direction of the Oval Office.
"Some of these (men) wouldn't have been president if they hadn't had this partner who was urging them on, and sometimes may have been more of a drive for them to be governor, or a politician or even a president then they may have had," says Farkas in a conference room at C- SPAN headquarters on Capitol Hill.
In his 28-year career at C-SPAN, Farkas, 52, has produced award-winning series on United States presidents, libraries, authors and even presidential candidates who lost the election but may have been a better president in hindsight. "First Ladies: Influence & Image" is the first production led by Farkas in which women will get time in the spotlight.
Farkas, who lives in Fairfax, Va., says there is no comparable series on the first ladies that explores topics ranging from the dresses they wore to the causes they championed during their time before and after the White House. While many Americans may know about Jackie Kennedy's iconic fashion sense or Lady Bird Johnson's beautification efforts, Farkas promises the program will delve into stories not written in history books.
"There is another side to every single one of these first ladies," he says.
Richard Norton Smith, a presidential historian and head of five presidential libraries, has worked with Farkas on previous productions and proposed the idea for the series.
"It's been over 10 years since C-SPAN did a landmark series on all the presidents," he says. "It's in many ways a logical sequel to that."
Smith put the role of first ladies into perspective: Most wives influence their husband's lives, he explains, "just at the White House, the consequences are sometimes historic."
The President's Closest Adviser
Though some first ladies chose to stay out of their husband's political arena, many entered it full- force.
Sarah Polk was one of them. Historians say she refused to marry James Polk until he gained political office. Once he became president in 1845, she lobbied in the halls of Congress for her husband's causes, took notes on newspaper articles for him and edited his speeches.
"There are women like Sarah Polk throughout this series who behind the scenes are very, very active in helping their husband form opinions about cabinet secretaries, bills on the Hill (and) different congressmen," Farkas says.
Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson had no trouble giving Lyndon B. Johnson her honest opinion on presidential matters. After one of his speeches, Mrs. Johnson called her husband in the Oval Office and ruthlessly critiqued his performance.
President Johnson took the criticism like a school boy, Smith says.
"There's no one else in Washington who could have talked to LBJ that way," he explains.
Then there's Dolly Madison, who was known as a glorious entertainer with an ebullient personality. During James Madison's presidency from 1809 to 1817, the political tension in Washington was stifling. Mrs. Madison helped her husband soften the partisan divide by taking advantage of the non-political meaning of "party."
Edith Mayo, curator emeritus of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, describes Mrs. Madison's entertaining as a form of politicking.
"She provided that kind of congenial atmosphere in which views could be aired and problems could be solved in a way that was not possible if (lawmakers) only had the political sphere in which to do that," Mayo says.
The Face of American Fashion
Though it may sound like fun to dress up and host White House soirees, the role of first lady is far from fun and games. First lady Margaret Truman once said it was the second-hardest job in America.
As Smith explains, the "job is undefined" and certainly not spelled out in the Constitution. The women who hold the title are subject to criticism about their taste in furniture, the causes they adopt and the way they raise their children.
But the one topic that gets all of America talking: their fashion. And even on that subject, history tends to repeat itself.
"Mamie Eisenhower set off a rage for Mamie bangs 60 years before Michelle Obama's bangs were being talked about," Smith says, referring to Michelle Obama's hair cut that recently made national headlines.
Mayo, who curated the first ladies exhibit at the Smithsonian from 1992 to 2006, says Michelle Obama, like many first ladies before her, is changing the fashion landscape. By shopping at stores like H&M, Mrs. Obama is making a statement that women in America don't need to purchase designer clothes to look classy.
"In other words, you don't have to be Nancy Regan and have been a previous movie star, or Jacqueline Kennedy with all the Kennedy wealth, in order to dress well," Mayo says.
Family Tragedy and First Triumphs
Fashion accessories -- like earrings made from Elizabeth Monroe's hair that she gave to her sister - - will make an appearance in the series, but Farkas says it's the descendents who help humanize the women.
For example, the production crew visited a man in his 80s who lives in Sherwood Forest, Va. The man, Harrison Ruffin Tyler, is the grandson of John and Julia Tyler, who lived in the White House in 1845. Family stories that come straight out of relatives' mouths bring an element to the show that the historians on set can't provide, Farkas says.
"To hear John Tyler and Julia Tyler's grandson talk about the story of how they met out on the Potomac on a boat when her father was killed, it's touching and it feels personal," Farkas says.
He adds that tragedy and family loss are two themes that thread through the series.
Take Franklin and Jane Pierce. The couple lost two sons before Franklin Pierce took office in 1853. On the train ride to Washington, their only remaining child, an 11 year old named Bennie, was catapulted out of the train during a crash and died before their eyes.
Mrs. Pierce, who didn't want her husband to be president in the first place, connected her husband's presidency with losing her son. "It completely taints her time as first lady," Farkas says.
First lady Anna Harrison didn't even make it to Washington. Her husband William Henry Harrison died 32 days into his term after catching pneumonia.
In addition to the private moments, the series highlights the causes championed by each first lady. While historians say it's difficult to point out one first lady who had the largest impact on the nation, many say Eleanor Roosevelt -- who spoke up for women, African-Americans and the working class -- set the example for her successors.
"Mrs. Roosevelt, as a campaigner and crusader for causes, laid the groundwork for everything from Mrs. Johnson's interest in the environment, to Barbara Bush's interest in literacy, to Michelle Obama's interest in promoting health and nutrition," Smith says. "In that sense, she's sort of the grandmother of first ladies."
Mrs. Roosevelt was also the first first lady to hold press conferences -- but only for an audience of female reporters. The significance wasn't lost on Farkas.
"Think about what that did for female reporters out there," he says. "Newspaper editors had to hire women reporters."
Farkas calls the first ladies "good barometers" of important issues affecting women in the country. The series is a chance to showcase women's history, and the first ladies provide a hook that will reel in an audience, he says.
"I've got two teenage daughters and they may not be interested in a lot of what I've done at C-SPAN over the years, but when I told them about first ladies, their ears perked up," he says.
One of Farkas' goals it to form an image of each first lady by using her own words. The first half of the series -- which ends with Ida McKinley on June 10 -- will rely on letters and written materials. As the shows transition into the 21st century, the live program and taped portions will incorporate audio and footage of the women. The crew also plans to interview the six living first ladies.
While Farkas could describe the first episode on Martha Washington which opens at Mount Vernon, he's not sure what Michelle Obama's segment will entail a year from now.
"Her story is still being told," he says.
Watch the trailer for "First Ladies: Image & Influence":
A special preview episode airs Feb. 18 at 9 p.m. on C-SPAN.
Follow @WTOPLiving on Twitter.
© 2013 WTOP. All Rights Reserved.
What you probably shouldn't buy your kids on Amazon. (Photos)
Conn. zoo officials don't know how this baby got born.
More cursing happens in Maryland than across the Potomac River.
Would you give this guy your number? Most likely, says a new study. | <urn:uuid:7da77deb-39f4-42d0-953d-7a8ede617ba6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtop.com/41/3226300/C-SPAN-series-gives-first-ladies-their-time-in-the-spotlight?nid=1229 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974178 | 2,094 | 1.632813 | 2 |
[MLton] Int Overflow detection
Sat, 19 Mar 2005 10:46:24 -0800
> But I think the "problems" it exposes could help the typical SML
> program as well. All programs have loops, and most computation time
> is spent in loops. In SML people don't see them as much since they
> are hidden behind our folds, and maps but they are there.
You are correct. In fact, transforming functional programs into loops
is something that MLton does very well.
> And given the high tech representations that mlton has perhaps some
> of these optimizations would not be incredibly difficult to
Unfortunately, we haven't taken advantage of loops nearly as much as
we should have. Some folks gave a pretty good try at implement
SSA-PRE in MLton, which in principle should enable a lot of code
motion. But it never got beyond the experimental stage.
One problem with code motion in SML is that precise overflow detection
disables a lot of it, or at least makes it a lot harder. And it's
probably not worth the effort to focus on the 'detectOverflow false'
case, since that violates the semantics of SML.
Anyways, X86 definitely comes to our rescue. Even for your pretty bad
case, we see a slowdown from 2.44s to 3.51s, i.e. 44%. BTW, how much
worse is it with overflow detection on? | <urn:uuid:f6fc681d-366a-40f6-9493-2214096134cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mlton.org/pipermail/mlton-devel/2005-March/026881.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964382 | 314 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Apr 25, 2006, 3:00 PM
Post #1 of 4
Skydiving history in Russia?
First, I apologize for not putting this in Russian. My Russian is very poor, and dificult to understand. I am hoping someone here can help me with something. I am taking a russian class, and will be giving a short presentation on skydiving in Russia.
I was mainly wondering what the differences between skydiving as a sport now in Russia and prior to the colapse of the Soviet Union. Have there been significant changes in the sport, regulatory or otherwise?
Jun 13, 2006, 11:36 AM
Post #3 of 4
Re: [fc2spyguy] Skydiving history in Russia?
[In reply to]
the backpack parachute was invented by a Russian officer in 1911, and the sport flourished greatly during the Soviet Union. It was driven by the military reformers during the 20th and 30th who understood the vast changes in warfare strategy and tactics long before the Western military establishment (here there is an interesting parallel to fascist Germany). Later many of those military people fell victim to the Stalinist purges but parachuting had already started to become popular by then. During all the communist years, it was taught to teenagers 15 an upwards at paramilitary camps, which helped to identify a lot of fine talent. Til today, parachuters enjoy a high image among the military and the general population as a daring elite force, much like the marines in the US. The annual parachuters' holiday usually turns into a free for all with blue barrets everywhere and the police keeping a polite distance unless they really become VERY rowdy.
Still today most of the 30 somethings with thousands of jumps started in the military. The paramilitary camps are gone and the sport turned commercial, as everywhere, barring a lot of youngsters from entering it. Also, the remaining non-commercial organisations are operated in an old-fashioned way that is not very attractive to a young generation used to the trappings of a globalized lifestyle.
But as you can see from the 400 way world record participation, Russia will continue to play a major role in the sport. And with the gung-ho mentality of many here, skydiving is sort of designed for this place. | <urn:uuid:98201211-8dc7-47e7-bf59-dd2dd5c39702> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2192941;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;guest=96552475 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959687 | 471 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Q: When I phone a business and a recording comes on and says, "This call may be recorded for quality-control purposes," does that make it legal for them to record any and everything discussed?
- H.J., Playa del Rey
Answer: Under federal law, there usually is a one-person consent rule (if one consents, the call can be recorded). California trumps federal law, and requires each party to consent. The "recording for quality control," however, can create an implied consent (i.e., you have been told the call may be recorded, and, if you do not hang up, then you may have given implied agreement to the recording. This does not automatically mean the recording loses all elements of confidentiality.)
It is one thing to record a call for "quality control," but quite another to broadcast the content to others. A recent case that is still playing out is a class action that includes a claim made by a man who called his pharmacy, ordered medication for erectile dysfunction, and later learned that the call was recorded. He has sued for alleged violation of California's ban on recording confidential communications without the consent of each party.
The pharmacy has arguments that could eventually defeat the claim. Among the questions to be resolved are the propriety of the recording, the consent or lack thereof by the caller, and just what became of the recording.
Q: Can my conversation be recorded without my knowledge or consent when
- G.A., Rancho Palos Verdes
A: California Penal Code Section 632 proscribes recording or eavesdropping of any confidential communication without the consent of all parties. Confidential communication means one in which a party has an objectively reasonable expectation that no one is listening in, or overhearing, the discussion. The reasonableness of an individual's expectation that no one else is listening in, or able to hear what is being said, turns on the particular circumstances. Hence, if you are in a public place, you cannot blithely assume your conversation is off limits to others and, thus, prohibited from recording. I am thinking, for example, of you talking out loud on your cellphone within earshot of others at a restaurant.
Q: Can a phone conversation that was unlawfully recorded nonetheless be used at trial?
- G.K., Lawndale
A: California Penal Code Section 632(d) typically treats an illegally recorded conversation as inadmissible in any court proceeding. There are some exceptions, such as (a) it should not be interpreted to allow a witness who testified to commit perjury; and (b) it might come into evidence to impeach inconsistent testimony by someone seeking to exclude it.
Ron Sokol is a Manhattan Beach attorney with more than 30 years of experience. His column appears on Wednesdays. Email questions and comments to him at [email protected] or write to him at Ask The Lawyer, Daily Breeze, 21250 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 170, Torrance, CA 90503. This column is a summary of the law and not a substitute for legal consultation on any particular case. | <urn:uuid:01eb3398-32b6-449b-92d8-61a5a1271605> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_22725077/ask-lawyer-is-it-legal-businesses-record-phone?source=pkg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95749 | 642 | 1.625 | 2 |
It's Your Biz - by Susan Wilson Solovic and Ellen R. Kadin
Millions of employees parked in cubicles dream about starting their own businesses. And in today's economy, countless unemployed professionals are becoming entrepreneurs out of necessity. They may have good skills and ideas, but do they really understand what it takes to build a profitable venture? As owner and co-founder of the award-winning It'sYourBiz.com (formerly SBTV.com, or Small Business Television), Susan Solovic has years of experience in the small business trenches. In It's Your Biz she shows prospective entrepreneurs how to sidestep the pitfalls that doom more than half of all new businesses while dramatically improving their odds of success. The book strips away the usual dreamy calls to "pursue your passion," supplying the kind of candid, real-world advice readers truly need, such as how to: * Gauge whether you have the qualities required to succeed * Prepare for drastic culture shock * Build a business plan that works * Focus on providing market solutions * Choose partners, advisers, and employees wisely * Promote your business on a shoestring budget * Protect your company and yourself * Make the most of bootstrap financing. From planning and funding to promotion and pricing, It's Your Biz is packed with the practical, honest, expert guidance that budding entrepreneurs need before they set out on their own. | <urn:uuid:4466387d-f770-46a7-93a3-440ae104be43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://richlandlibrary.org/richland/nytlist3.asp?tynid=786 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954621 | 285 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Calling all book people!
By Guest Blogger on May 31st, 2012
Recently, one of our literacy partners, Reading Is Fundamental, launched Book People Unite, a campaign raising awareness about childhood literacy. Today, Jay Brown, RIF’s director of integrated marketing, is here to tell you more about it. Thanks. Jay!
I have a horrible memory. My wife can recount vivid narratives from her childhood, but my brain works in pictures and flashes – often brought on by my own kids. And it was like that when my daughter brought home her first Scholastic Book Club flyer from pre-school.
Checking off the boxes on that thin newsprint to mark my selections. Carefully spending down the allowance my mom would give me for each order. Remembering the excitement of taking home those new books every month.
I was one lucky kid. Fast forward a few decades and my daughters now have their own Scholastic books on the shelf. And I’m now at Reading Is Fundamental, where we’re working with partners like Scholastic to give kids who otherwise wouldn’t have books on their shelves the ability to pick out books of their very own.
But there are more kids than we can reach. Millions more.
With 16 million kids living in poverty today, there are countless kids whose parents have to make the difficult choice between a monthly book selection and putting food on the table.
That’s why we’re unveiling Book People Unite, a bold new campaign to raise awareness about children’s literacy and help put books in the hands of kids who need them most. It’s anchored by a new PSA featuring beloved storybook characters – including Clifford – coming together on a journey to unite as Book People.
Will you join us? Visit www.bookpeopleunite.org to watch the video and the pledge. Every kid deserves the memory of choosing a book of their very own. | <urn:uuid:a8500810-ae4d-4c3d-ae84-d7a90ef5e695> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oomscholasticblog.com/2012/05/calling-all-book-people.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95939 | 405 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Lauriston Girls' School
Lauriston Girls' School is an independent non-denominational school for girls from Kindergarten to Year 12. Founded in 1901, Lauriston has a proud tradition of excellence in educational, sporting and cultural pursuits. As a leading girls' school, we are committed to creating an environment that optimises each student's ability to learn.
Students learn best in an environment where they feel nurtured and valued for the individuals they are. Our pastoral and academic care programs encourage students to develop a sense of belonging, resilience, personal integrity and social responsibility.
Underpinning every aspect of school life are our five core values: relationships, courage, creative reflection, intellectual inquiry and engagement in life. Lauriston is a 'School for Life'. Our students are encouraged to develop independent learning skills from a young age within a supportive atmosphere. This fosters a lifelong love of learning providing a solid foundation for students to continue their educational growth in the future.
At the start of this journey, Lauriston offers Kindergarten for three- and four-year old boys and girls, based on the Reggio Emilia philosophies. In Junior School, our emphasis is on building the foundations of literacy and numeracy. In the early primary years, we implement the Australian Developmental Curriculum: a teaching and learning approach designed to stimulate children's natural curiosity. In the middle and upper primary years, an inquiry-based approach ensures students remain actively engaged in their learning.
In Years 7 and 8 our innovative middle years teaching and learning programs are delivered in a purpose-built learning centre. We offer a unique Year 9 program - a residential experience at the magnificent Howqua campus in the Victorian high country. The Year 9 program challenges students academically and physically, and enables them to develop life skills well beyond their years. At Senior College students have the option to choose from the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), VCE with Lauriston Honours, or the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme.
The School balances outstanding academic results with a range of exciting co-curricular activities: sports, arts, music and drama and community service. Lauriston is an internationally minded school that encourages cultural exchange and welcomes students from all over the world.
Our students learn in an environment which nurtures important life skills thus ensuring that when they leave Lauriston, they leave as well-rounded, self reliant and confident young women.
Why not see what Lauriston can offer your daughter? Attend a Ptincipal's Morning Tea and School tour, or visit our Howqua campus on the dates below:
- 16 February-Scholarship testing
- 19 February - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
- 22 March - Blairholme (Prep - Year 2) Morning Tea
- 26 March - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
- 21 April - Howqua Open Day and 20th Anniversary celebration
- 23 April - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
- 21 May - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
- 18 June - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
- 23 July - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
- 19 August - Year 7/8 Showcase (evening)
- 20 August - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
- 20 October - Howqua Open Day
- 23 October - VCE/IB Art Exhibition opening night
- 29 October - Principal's Morning Tea and School Tour
Visit our website for more details and to book. | <urn:uuid:b89da55f-7982-49da-9660-fcfdb93b25d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kidspot.com.au/parenting-directory/Private-and-Independent-Schools+142/Private-and-Independant-Schools+36579/Melbourne.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936806 | 718 | 1.5 | 2 |
It has grossed more than $1.3bn (£800m) worldwide, wowed the critics, and spawned a new generation of fans, the so-called Avatards, who have taken to painting their faces blue.
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 161 mins
- Directors: James Cameron
- Cast: CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Zoe Saldana
Cinema audiences in Russia have been quick to point out that Avatar has elements in common with The World of Noon, or Noon Universe, a cycle of 10 bestselling science fiction novels written by the Strugatskys in the mid-1960s.
It was the Strugatskys who came up with the planet Pandora – the same name chosen by Cameron for the similarly green and lushly forested planet used as the spectacular backdrop to Avatar. The Noon Universe takes place in the 22nd century. So does Avatar, critics have noticed.
And while there are clear differences between the two Pandoras, both are home to a similarly named bunch of humanoids – the Na'vi in Cameron's epic, and the Nave in Strugatskys' novels, read by generations of Soviet teenagers and space-loving scientists and intellectuals.
Arkady Strugatsky died in 1991. Last week Boris, the surviving brother, said he had not yet seen Avatar, which – only four weekends after its release – has become the second-highest grossing film after Cameron's Titanic.
Strugatsky, 76, appears to have shrugged off suggestions of similarities between Avatar and his Noon Universe, and denied reports circulated last week that he was accusing Cameron of plagiarism. On Monday, however, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper devoted an entire page to the affair, and carried out its own close comparison of Avatar with the World of Noon.
Both Pandoras were "warm and humid", and densely covered in trees, the paper remarked. It conceded that in the Strugatsky books two humanoid species live on Pandora, a health resort. In Avatar there is only one species.
Writing on Monday in Russia's leading liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the author and journalist Dmitry Bykov pointed out there were a lot of similarities. St Petersburg's communists, meanwhile, have condemned Avatar as a gung-ho rip-off of Soviet science fiction.
"The Na'vi are unequivocally reminiscent of the [Strugatskys'] Nave,' Bykov wrote. Speaking to the Guardian, though, Bykov said: "My point is that the film is harmful for western civilisation."
Cameron has defended himself from accusations that he has borrowed from other writers in the past, a claim made after the release of his Terminator films and Titanic. He insists the idea for Avatar is an original one. He wrote an 80-page screenplay for the film back in 1994.
Today one film critic said there would inevitably be similarities between Avatar and the Strugatskys' intellectually demanding novels as both were anti-utopian fantasies. The brothers' work sold millions of copies, with many reading their intricate fantasies as a thinly disguised satire on the KGB communist system.
"Avatar is a great technological leap forward. It's a very clever, multi-layered film, and politically highly relevant," a film critic, Yuri Gladilshikov, said. "It depicts the fate of indigenous minorities in countries such as Peru or Venezuela. And there are associations with Vietnam and the war in the jungle."
Asked about the Noon Universe cycle, he said: "In any genre you can find plenty of parallels. Of course there are similarities between the Strugatskys and Cameron. But I think in this case the parallels are marginal."
The Strugatskys' science fiction has inspired several high-profile movies – notably Andrei Tarkovsky's 1977 Stalker, loosely based on the brothers' novel Roadside Picnic. Another Strugastky work, The Inhabited Island – in which a 22nd-century space pilot crashes on an unknown planet, was made into a two-part film in 2008.
There was no comment today from 20th Century Fox, the UK distributors.
This week the film became the first since The Dark Knight two summers ago to hold on to the top spot in the US film charts for four consecutive weekends. It grossed an estimated $48.5m to boost its running total to $429m, putting it at No 7 in America's all-time box-office hits.
It continues to do well around the world. After taking $143m in ticket sales last week it has grossed $906.2m internationally and has also topped the international film charts for the fourth weekend in a row. It is now in second place to Titanic in the all-time overseas chart and second in the global hall of fame with international and North American tallies combined. | <urn:uuid:f3ef71a5-571d-43f0-a902-7872e70a0163> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/13/james-cameron-avatar-plagarism-claim | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963593 | 1,039 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Under the ruling, trailers manufactured before December 1, 1993, must be outfitted with red and white retroreflective tape or reflex reflectors.
The rule covers trailers that have a gross vehicle weight of 10,001 lb. or more and are at least 80 in. wide applies only to trailers used in interstate commerce. Conspicuity tape must be applied to at least 50% of the length of both trailer sides and the full length of the rear of the trailer.
The only fleets exempt from Friday’s deadline are those that used tape that was not red and white when they voluntarily retrofitted their trailers for conspicuity before the ruling went into effect. Those fleets have until June 1, 2009, to replace their current tape with the red and white colors mandated by the federal government.
According to a study released last month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, reflective tape reduces side and rear crashes into heavy trailers, particularly at night "when even a vigilant motorist might not see an untreated trailer in time for a crash." The tape reduces non-daylight side and rear impacts into heavy trailers by 29%.
The study, based on data collected by the Florida Highway Patrol and the Pennsylvania State Police between 1997 and 1999, estimates that fully implemented federal visibility requirements for heavy trailers will prevent 7,800 crashes annually. The study also estimates that 191 to 350 fatalities per year will be prevented, along with 3,100 to 5,000 injuries, once all heavy trailers in the U.S. have been equipped with the tape. | <urn:uuid:5f098fdd-b26d-4afd-a932-3fdd4341d80b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fleetowner.com/news/fleet_trailerconspicuity_retrofit_requirements | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949353 | 310 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Oscar-winning actor TOMMY LEE JONES has contributed to a documentary about a cinema he managed back in his student days.
The Men in Black star ran the Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts while he was studying at Harvard University in the 1960s.
Filmmaker Garen Daly, who managed the cinema after Jones, is making a movie about the avant-garde picture house and he interviewed the actor about his time in charge.
The director reveals Jones told him a number of stories about his stint as the venue's first-ever manager, including a time when he asked "a bunch of stoned hippies" to paint the theater's lobby.
Daly tells the Boston Herald, "It was his first job 'in the business'... He had quite a few amusing stories... They painted it (the lobby) purple, which was a very hippie color at the time. Eventually, they ran out of paint, and Tommy sent one of the hippies to the store to get more. He was stoned and came back with just the lid - no paint. Jones told him, 'Well, you got it partially right.'"
The Orson Welles Cinema was the first theater in America to showcase independent movies and foreign films.
Copyright WENN.com - World Entertainment News Network
Water Cooler News
Pat Robertson handed out more of his unique brand of advice recently when he told the wife of a cheating husband to get over the infidelity and start doing more on her end to ensure he doesn’t “want to wander.”
Top Entertainment Headlines
Three of the actors from "The Brady Bunch" television series are returning to Kings Island for an anniversary celebration. | <urn:uuid:f902036d-bca4-43d0-bd0d-1e574344097c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/entertainment/celebrity/Tommy-Lee-Jones-supports-cinema-documentary_76239587 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979758 | 355 | 1.609375 | 2 |
There has been much talk about making U.S. weapon systems “affordable.” We most certainly have a right to expect value for our money. The question seems to be, are we getting it?
Many in the Department of Defense acquisition leadership seem to believe that we are not. Congress most certainly does not. My belief is that once the new space systems (Advanced Extremely High Frequency, Space Based Infrared System and GPS 3) have the opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities to the war fighter, there will be little doubt that we are the beneficiaries of a quality acquisition system that, in the end, provides an incredible product.
We haven’t heard ourselves described as the “Centers of Excellence” for some time, but I expect that to change in the near future.
Why? No. 1 would be the GPS program, which has given the war fighter, and also the commercial, civilian population, an incredible capability that is the stuff of legend. However, if we go back to the initial development phase of that system, we would find that it was fraught with criticism, called too costly, too much behind schedule and had technical challenges that seemed hopeless.
How about the Defense Support Program? It was first developed to provide missile warning capabilities during the height of the Cold War. It too went through developmental challenges, with critics warning that it would “break the bank” for the DoD and could not possibly overcome the technical challenges of extending surveillance into space. Perhaps people have forgotten many of the challenges because the system was classified until well into its operational phase.
How about the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program weather satellite, which was fielded during the 1960s and has performed so well that it is outlasting its predicted life expectancy, giving the DoD several additional years to develop a replacement? When it was first developed, many people did not believe it could provide the capabilities that it has clearly exceeded.
Our next generation of major programs is in the production and deployment phase. Their underwear is showing in that many of the technical, cost and schedule challenges are the gist of Government Accountability Office reports. Several have alleged that the DoD has wasted billions developing these systems.
I have not seen a program director who was satisfied with the programmatic overruns and Nunn-McCurdy breaches that many systems have faced in the past 15 to 20 years. Having said that, I am also confident that government program managers and contractors expended due diligence to meet often unrealistic cost, schedule and technical goals, and incorporate efficiencies in fielding the final product.
We are moving toward another period of fiscal frugality in the development of our next generation of DoD weapon systems. Each time this has happened, we have attempted to resolve the crisis by moving to more commercial-like ways of buying. Several administrations have incorporated myriad ideas designed to reduce costs and increase effectiveness; acquisition reform is the most recent example.
One suggestiongathering steam in Washington is to have the program offices get more involved at the major subcontractor level within sole-source proposals. This would give the government visibility into how much profit the prime is allowing the major subcontractors.
What is the actual profit rate that major subcontractors have experienced over the past five years or so? The Federal Acquisition Regulation requires the prime contractor to provide the government with an assessment of the subcontractor’s proposal, but to some, this is akin to asking the fox to guard the chicken coop.
The prime will be allowed to have the cost of the subcontractor — including profit — as an allowable cost against the contract. These costs are the basis for the prime’s profit, and so it is asking the prime to reduce its cost if it reduces the subcontractor’s costs — including profit. Why would the prime act against its own interests this way?
To determine whether the subcontractor has received undue profit as a result of this situation, the government is asking for the data to determine the actual profit rate the subcontractor received. On an incentive contract, the subcontractor would receive additional profit in the event of an underrun. This would be relatively easy to determine. The additional consequence of this underrun is that the prime contractor would also underrun its contract, increasing its profit.
If the prime had a firm, fixed-price subcontract, any underrun would be hidden in the price since there is no sharing. This means that every dollar of underrun on that contract would be a dollar of profit.
Perhaps it would be a better plan to provide an incentive to the prime contractor to reduce the cost to the government of the subcontractor, rather than inflate it. This could be accomplished by increasing the fee applied against the subcontractor based upon the job that the prime did in reducing the cost to the government of the subcontracted effort. This might involve positive and negative incentives for prime and subcontractor.
Contractors react to our incentives in different ways. Some rush out to negotiate their major subcontracts prior to negotiating with the government, while others wait until negotiations with the government are completed before negotiating more stringent arrangements to their subcontractors.
The ultimate goal is a fair and reasonable deal for both prime and subcontractor. Often, the best deal is the one in which both parties walk away feeling they didn’t get everything they wanted but did get everything they needed.
We are continually on the lookout for ways to reduce costs, while ensuring mission success. We have to ensure that, in the rush to minimize cost, we do not add undue risk to the ultimate goal, which is to provide the very best systems to the war fighter.
By James Gill, who works at the U.S. Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, and is a former professor in the CSSB National Security Studies Program. These views are his own. | <urn:uuid:8457e039-8ef6-4b61-8880-79d09d23ec1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130210/DEFFEAT05/302100018/Getting-Best-Deal?odyssey=mod%257Cnewswell%257Ctext%257CTopics%257Cs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976096 | 1,189 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Service Projects and Hours
Record your projects & hours
Units are encouraged to contribute to this effort by recording their community service efforts on the Good Turn for America website.
An access code for your unit was sent with your unit's annual charter. To get a copy of this code, or with any questions, contact our council registrar to get your code!
Good Turn for America is a national call to service by the Boy Scouts of America to address the issues of hunger, homelessness, and poor health in our nation. In this effort, the Boy Scouts of America is partnering with some of the nation's most respected service organizations, including The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, the American Red Cross, the American Cancer Society, America's Second Harvest, and the Department of Homeland Security. These organizations and thousands of others will work to provide opportunities for youth and volunteers to fight hunger and homelessness, and teach the habits of healthy living.
Youth and volunteers are looking for ways to serve their communities. At the same time, service organizations need dedicated volunteer help. By working together, we can improve our young people, our communities, and the nation. | <urn:uuid:3de92f13-6e3e-4566-a7d2-7211cff2923a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trappertrails.org/Programs/Activities%20and%20Civic%20Service/Service%20Projects%20and%20Hours | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94393 | 233 | 1.625 | 2 |
Since its creation in 2007 The Big Bang Theory has captured a steady viewer-ship of nearly 17 Million people. After the first four seasons the network added an additional three without hesitation. The show is more popular than ever before and it stands to reason to analyze why this is the case. Does its popularity stem from the show's quirky but lovable characters? Can it be attributed to the clever mixture of science and popular culture? Is it the combination of down to earth scientist and the world of an aspiring actress? Who knows? There are many aspects that make the show a success; however, there are certain facets that need to be addressed since the presentation of the characters often is problematic. Throughout its run the show has shown a remarkable capability to reduce women to bed fellows, which do not necessarily need a brain and/or self-esteem. Penny's (who, alarmingly enough, does not yet have a last name) naivety from the first few seasons was hard to stomach for many viewers, and it wasn't until the introduction of Amy Farrah Fowler that the cast was equipped with a long-term female character whose function did not reduce her to being eye candy or a sex object. Bernadette, however, plays into the blond and dumb (even though she has a PhD) stereotype. Bernadette is bimbo-ized even though she has the PhD and her counterpart Amy is asexualized (though not masculine-ized) even though she „dates and enjoys sex“.
Most of the male characters in this show hardly fare any better. Raj's inability to address women without being drunk, and Howard's desperate attempt to find and shag a woman no matter the costs, as well as the latent sexual desires both characters seem to harbour for each other opens them up to a lot of criticism as well. Sheldon's inability to function in the real world also requires some investigating. Society seems to have reached a state where it appears to be impossible to have it all, the brains, the personality, the social aptness, and the beauty to go with it. Recent TV shows proposed that smart is the new sexy, but what if this attitude comes with a price too high to pay? This depiction of perceived smartness to an audience that may have needs to elevate nerds is complicated by that smartness being depicted as flat and two-dimensional. At the same time, the show also developed a kind of hierarchy for nerd-dom, some nerds are better than others, some kinds of smart are better than others, but above all, those nerds who can have sex are still better than all the other nerds.
This collection will focus on gender and sexuality and I welcome all papers that are related to these topics.
Please send one page (around 500 words) abstracts to the following E-mail address [email protected]
And include the following information:
Writers submit a 1-page synopsis of their proposed chapter to us clearly stating:
[a] the research question
[b] the methodology
[c] the findings
[d] the bibliography (5 sources)
Deadline: 1st of June 2012
Send comments and questions to H-Net
Webstaff. H-Net reproduces announcements that have been submitted to us as a
free service to the academic community. If you are interested in an announcement
listed here, please contact the organizers or patrons directly. Though we strive
to provide accurate information, H-Net cannot accept responsibility for the text of
announcements appearing in this service. (Administration) | <urn:uuid:6783f10d-db20-4bea-a471-d97ffd1e08a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=193769 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969296 | 731 | 1.523438 | 2 |
New York City voters overwhelmingly support the New York Police Department’s anti-terrorism campaign even as provisions of it have come under criticism from civil rights groups who question the legality how police target Muslims. The Quinnipiac University poll, released on Tuesday, found respondents approved by 63 percent to 31 the way New York police are doing their job and said by 82 percent to 14 percent the NYPD has been effective combating terrorism.
The poll of 964 New York City voters showed Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly won better than 2-to-1 approval ratings and voters said police act appropriately in how they deal with Muslims by a margin of 58 percent to 29 percent. Kelly won an approval rating of 64 percent to 25 percent, according to the poll, which was taken March 6-11 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.
Support among New Yorkers comes as questions have been raised about the constitutionality of the anti-terrorism campaign, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Justice Department was reviewing letters expressing concern over the NYPD’s surveillance program.
Legal experts say any court challenge based on claims of racial or religious profiling would face high hurdles. Instead, they say, any successful case would likely come down to a single paragraph in a longstanding court order that governs the department’s surveillance of political activity. The paragraph, part of the “Handschu guidelines,” sets conditions for NYPD officers who visit public places or events during anti-terrorism investigations. It prohibits them from keeping records of their observations unless the information is related to “potential unlawful activity” – a ban that critics say the NYPD has ignored. | <urn:uuid:6d9ae3ea-a655-4e42-b129-3402e0091032> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/tag/usa-new-york-police-muslim-surveillance-poll-law/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96433 | 339 | 1.546875 | 2 |
|Jackson to direct UNCís Institute of African-American Research|
|Tuesday, July 21, 2009|
Jackson recently was appointed director of UNC’s Institute of African American Research, which advances and connects scholarly investigation on campus of the history, experiences, biology, culture and thought of people of African descent, particularly black Americans. The institute conducts research; holds conferences and seminars on research findings; awards competitive research grants; and offers fellowships for faculty and internships for students.
An expert on the health of African Americans and Africans, Jackson also will be an anthropology professor in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. She has studied genetics, demographics history and dietary patterns and researched health disparities. Conducting research in Africa, she cofounded the first human DNA bank on the continent. The bank has archived more than 2,000 DNA samples, which will help with studies of African heritage.
Already, Jackson has spearheaded development of a periodic e-newsletter from the institute, Carolina Catalyst, which she said is being distributed to black alumni and faculty, staff, students and institutes across the country that work in the area of African American research.
Institute of African American Research Web site: http://www.unc.edu/iaar/
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589 | <urn:uuid:68b5c563-5609-44e3-88a2-fa8d06d23b01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uncnews.unc.edu/content/view/2715/138/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950673 | 274 | 1.617188 | 2 |
President Obama announced late Wednesday that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steve Miller, has resigned in the wake of a report that employees at the agency engaged in partisan scrutiny of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.
The president, appearing for a brief statement at the White House, said he had directed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew "to accept the resignation of the acting commissioner of the IRS."
MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, BYLINE: And I'm Audie Cornish.
The Obama administration is doing some intensive damage control this evening. Tonight, the president announced that the acting commissioner of the IRS, Steven Miller, is being pushed out over heightened scrutiny given to Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations.
Revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted some conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny have put a spotlight on a part of the tax code increasingly popular with political groups: section 501(c)(4).
But what's the benefit for organizations to get approved for 501(c)(4) status? | <urn:uuid:3c86495f-49ad-4f31-ba0a-ad8665607bbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kunc.org/term/internal-revenue-service-irs?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940461 | 236 | 1.648438 | 2 |
For mathematically inclined researchers (or students who wants a hands-on way to familiarize themselves with the Hodgkin-Huxley equation or Hidden Markov Models), XPP is a fantastic and free virtual playground! Incredibly vast in its computing capabilities, this app will solve differential equations, run simulations such as those mentioned above, solve boundary value problems, and more. The XPP app uses plain text files called ODE files, some examples of which are preloaded in the app, and thousands more of which are available from the internet or via iTunes import. Conveniently, the “help” section of the app is quite comprehensive and includes a section to familiarize users with the ODE syntax. Users can create and edit their own code within the app. | <urn:uuid:6fc45b62-20af-4413-b028-314bd118d3ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://genengnews.com/best-science-apps/xpp/106/ | 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 | 0.933361 | 157 | 1.703125 | 2 |
How to Escape Reward Card Spending Traps
I've talked before about how rewards cards are created specifically to make even the most frugal of card-holders take on debt. Our brains are wired so that even a little incentive to spend (like getting 1% cash back or a few airline miles) will make us decide to buy something we would otherwise leave at the store. While some super-savvy card-holders are able to make a lucrative game of rewards cards, the majority of us neither have the time nor the inclination to play the system, which is the very reason why these rewards cards are so prevalent.
For those of us mere mortals who will never make a living by milking rewards cards for all they're worth, it is still possible to stay out of the traps that these cards represent. The key is keeping purchases to a minimum and always paying off the credit card bill each and every month. Those two behaviors will ensure that you keep every penny of the (admittedly modest) rewards you earn, rather than seeing them burnt up in interest payments.
Of course, doing those two things are easier said than done. Here are four tricks you can use to make sure you stay on top of your rewards card. (See also: Which Type of Rewards Card Is Right for You?)
1. Pay Attention!
Rewards cards count on consumer psychology to earn profits. In particular, rewards card issuers know that people are inattentive and unlikely to keep careful track of each purchase. Our inattention is the reason anyone can feel surprised by a large credit card bill at the end of the month — “Surely I didn't spend that much!”— and it is much easier to lose track of our credit card spending than it is to do so with cash.
That's why it's imperative to know how much you owe your credit card at any point in time during the month. If you budget $600 for your credit card purchase every month, you need to know when you've reached $585 — long before your receive your statement. (And frankly, your statement should only be telling you information you already know.) There are several ways of paying closer attention to your spending:
Keep a Credit Card Journal
Adam Baker of Man vs. Debt suggests carrying around pencil and paper and jotting down the amount and purpose of each purchase you make at the moment of the sale. Once every couple of days, go through the journal to total up your numbers and see where you stand. It may feel awkward or be kind of a PITA when you first start doing this, but it can quickly become a habit.
When I first got a credit card in college, I held onto all of my receipts in my wallet and used them to double check the itemized purchases on each of my statements. (Yes, I have always been a money nerd.) If writing down your purchases is too difficult, then start stashing your receipts in your wallet (or, if you really want to go OCD, in a coupon organizer). Then, at least once a week, add up all of your receipts to know how much you owe.
Use a Money Management Website Like Mint
If the idea of dealing with that many receipts has you breaking out in hives, sites like Mint will take care of adding up your credit card purchases for you. Just be sure to log in at least once a week to see the numbers.
For all three of these options, schedule a time on the calendar for when you will do your weekly addition — and stick to it. You can't keep your spending in check if you don't know how much you've already spent each month.
2. But Keep Yourself in the Dark About the Rewards for Various Categories
Human beings tend to very selectively pay attention. It may be difficult to remember exactly how much you owe your credit card at any particular point in the month, but many rewards card-holders know exactly how much cash back they earn in various spending categories. And that's precisely what the credit card issuers want. If you're focused on how much cash back you'll earn by having brunch — “and why yes, I will have a fourth mimosa” — then you're going to feel good about spending money you might not be able to afford. Not to mention being a bit tipsy.
The trick is to only use your credit card when you want or need to, rather than being tempted to spend because of the reward. An important way to reduce temptation is to opt out of all advertising correspondence from your issuer. Not receiving the information from the source will help you to stick your budget rather than let yourself be tempted by a temporary spending category percentage hike.
The other part of this is deciding ahead of time exactly what you will use your credit card for. For example, you may have gotten your credit card for online purchases and rental cars, even though you generally pay cash in person. Getting 3% cash back for groceries or restaurant dining might make you rethink your credit card plan, but it truly shouldn't. Use your credit card only for the reasons you need it, even if it means your rewards are much more modest. Better modest rewards than crippling interest.
3. Open a Second Checking Account
One way to make certain you have all the money you need to pay your bill at the end of the month is through a second, dedicated checking account. Open a free checking account (one of the truly free ones that does not require you keep a minimum balance) and plan on using that account for paying your credit card bill. Each week, when you go over your credit card journal, your receipts, or your Mint account, transfer the amount you owe into your dedicated checking account. By the end of the month, you will have the full amount of your balance already set aside.
4. Pay Your Bill Weekly Instead of Monthly
While this trick would never have been possible back in the bad old days of paper statements, it's a great method for staying on top of both your spending and your balance in the new millennium. Basically, plan on logging into your credit card account once a week — say every Friday — and paying off whatever it is that you have charged as of that time. Not only will you not be stuck with a large bill at the end of the billing cycle, but you will also never be adding new charges to a large balance that you have not yet paid off. You will always remain current with whatever you have charged.
This method has an added benefit of helping to remind you of just how much you have spent. The same individual who budgets $600 a month for credit card spending might be horrified to see that they spent $300 in the first week of the month and will be much more careful with their credit card for the next three weeks.
The Bottom Line
Making sure you get the most out of your rewards card spending is all about developing financially-savvy habits. Your card issuer is counting on you to be forgetful and to get in over your head. But getting in the habit of regularly checking on your balance and setting aside the money you need for your bill will leave you with no interest, and a pile of credit-card funded rewards. That's a pretty sweet place to be. | <urn:uuid:5f62b7d9-0ef9-434d-b703-e9c2e4945c5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisebread.com/how-to-escape-reward-card-spending-traps?wbref=readmore-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962958 | 1,480 | 1.554688 | 2 |
When all the payments from the Indian trust settlement are completed, members of tribes in North Dakota and members of other tribes who live in the state will have received more than $67 million.
The first checks of $1,000 each from the historic Cobell lawsuit (Cobell v. Salazar) were mailed in mid-December to nearly 264,000 people nationwide and also worldwide who are in the Historical Accounting Class.
Members of the Trust Administration Class will be paid later this year.
The lawsuit was filed in 1996 by lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell against the U.S. Department of Interior for mishandling Indian trust funds and accounts.
David Smith, an attorney with Kilpatrick Townsend, the Washington, D.C., law firm representing the plaintiffs, said members of the tribes on the four reservations in North Dakota Fort Berthold, Turtle Mountain, Spirit Lake and Standing Rock, and members of other tribes who live in North Dakota, will receive the following, in totals:
Historical Accounting Class: $13,169,000.
Trust Administration Class: $54,548,000.
According to Smith, following are the amounts paid or to be paid to members of tribes from the reservations in North Dakota who live in the state (the amounts are approximate numbers):
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa
Historical Accounting Class: $6.6 million.
Trust Administration Class: $16 million.
Three Affiliated Tribes
Historical Accounting Class: $2.7 million.
Trust Administration Class: $26 million.
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
Historical Accounting Class: $2.4 million.
Trust Administration Class: $5.2 million.
Spirit Lake Tribe
Historical Accounting Class: $2 million.
Trust Administration Class: $4 million.
Tribal members who have questions or to update their contact information on their Individual Indian Money accounts can visit the Cobell website at (www.cobellsettlement.com) or call its toll-free number at 1-800-961-6109. People can also call the law firm at 866-383-6554. | <urn:uuid:56b27285-581e-4af5-aec3-b0ccc1fa1e4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/572275/Tribal-members-to-receive-more-than--67-million.html?nav=5010 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932352 | 444 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Does the Tucson massacre justify tighter gun control? Don't be silly. Second-Amendment advocates never look at mass shootings that way. For every nut job wreaking mayhem with a semiautomatic weapon, there's a citizen with a firearm who could have stopped him. Look at the 1991 slaughter in Killeen, Texas, where 23 people died in a restaurant while a patron's handgun, thanks to a dumb law, was left outside in her car. Look at the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, where 32 people died because under the university's naïve policy, nobody in the invaded classrooms was allowed to carry a firearm. Guns save lives. So the argument goes.
Now comes the tragedy in Tucson. And what do gun advocates propose? More guns. Arizona already lets people carry concealed weapons without requiring permits. The legislature is considering two bills to expand this right, and as Slate's David Weigel reports, the Arizona Citizens Defense League is preparing legislation that would require the state to offer firearms training to politicians and their staff. The bill is tentatively titled the Giffords-Zimmerman Act in honor of the wounded congresswoman and her slain aide. "When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a victim," argues the state's top pro-gun legislator. Beyond Arizona, at least two members of Congress say they'll brings guns while traveling their districts.
The new poster boy for this agenda is Joe Zamudio, a hero in the Tucson incident. Zamudio was in a nearby drug store when the shooting began, and he was armed. He ran to the scene and helped subdue the killer. Television interviewers are celebrating his courage, and pro-gun blogs are touting his equipment. "Bystander Says Carrying Gun Prompted Him to Help," says the headline in the Wall Street Journal.
But before we embrace Zamudio's brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let's hear the whole story. "I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready," he explained on Fox and Friends. "I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. "And that's who I at first thought was the shooter," Zamudio recalled. "I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!'"
But the man with the gun wasn't the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. "Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out.
"I was very lucky. Honestly, it was a matter of seconds. Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of [the real shooter], holding him down. So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. … I was really lucky."
When Zamudio was asked what kind of weapons training he'd had, he answered: "My father raised me around guns … so I'm really comfortable with them. But I've never been in the military or had any professional training. I just reacted."
The Arizona Daily Star, based on its interview with Zamudio, adds two details to the story. First, upon seeing the man with the gun, Zamudio "grabbed his arm and shoved him into a wall" before realizing he wasn't the shooter. And second, one reason why Zamudio didn't pull out his own weapon was that "he didn't want to be confused as a second gunman."Video: Inside the mind of Jared Lee Loughner (on this page)
This is a much more dangerous picture than has generally been reported. Zamudio had released his safety and was poised to fire when he saw what he thought was the killer still holding his weapon. Zamudio had a split second to decide whether to shoot. He was sufficiently convinced of the killer's identity to shove the man into a wall. But Zamudio didn't use his gun. That's how close he came to killing an innocent man. He was, as he acknowledges, "very lucky."
That's what happens when you run with a firearm to a scene of bloody havoc. In the chaos and pressure of the moment, you can shoot the wrong person. Or, by drawing your weapon, you can become the wrong person—a hero mistaken for a second gunman by another would-be hero with a gun. Bang, you're dead. Or worse, bang bang bang bang bang: a firefight among several armed, confused, and innocent people in a crowd. It happens even among trained soldiers. Among civilians, the risk is that much greater.
We're enormously lucky that Zamudio, without formal training, made the right split-second decisions. We can't count on that the next time some nut job starts shooting. I hope Arizona does train lawmakers and their aides in the proper use of firearms. I hope they remember this training if they bring guns to constituent meetings. But mostly, I hope they don't bring them.
© 2013 Slate.com | <urn:uuid:7e6105c9-a411-4191-9c19-e8cddca1d360> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41018893/ns/slate_com/t/armed-giffords-hero-nearly-shot-wrong-man/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984833 | 1,088 | 1.65625 | 2 |
When Essential Public Media announced Monday that it had signed an asset purchase agreement with Duquesne University to buy the licenses currently being used by WDUQ, it set a goal of taking over operations by July 1st. (See story posted May 2, 2011) With the sale pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission, it seemed to some like a near impossibility, however, at least one group working on the deal says it may not wait for the approval.
Susan Harmon is the Managing Director of Public Radio Capital and a Board Member of Public Media Company. She says a lack of FCC paperwork will not slow the process, “I think that we won’t have FCC approval by [June 30th] but if we can work on an operating arrangement with [Duquesne] University then that will be possible.” Public Radio Capital created Public Media Company to purchase and manage public radio stations across the country with the help of local partners. In the case of 90.5 FM, PMC partnered with WYEP to form Essential Public Media to purchase the WDUQ license.
Harmon says it typically takes the FCC 60 to 90 days to sign off on a license transfer so she does not expect the operating agreement to be in place for long. She says all the groups involved are working to quickly build the agreement.
At the same time, EPM is interviewing candidates to fill the post of general manager and has posted other job openings. Harmon says more job listings are expected in the coming weeks. | <urn:uuid:3e3e7554-390d-4e9d-a027-8494d6a511ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wduqnews.blogspot.com/2011/05/essential-public-media-not-waiting-for.html | 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 | 0.970131 | 308 | 1.664063 | 2 |
WAF is deeply concerned about the fate of Iman Al Obeidi, the Libyan woman who tried to expose rape as a war crime by telling her own story and that of her friends to the international press in the Rixos Hotel, Tripoli, on March 26th 2011. Since then she has been detained and then slandered on Libyan TV, and various contradictory stories have been told about her to the international press. She is now herself accused of slander.
The Libyan woman who burst into a Tripoli hotel to tell western reporters she had been raped by Muammar Gaddafi's militiamen is now facing criminal charges herself, a government spokesman said. Iman al-Obeidi was detained on Saturday after she entered the capital's Rixos al-Nasr hotel and told journalists she had been beaten and repeatedly raped by 15 troops at a checkpoint. With TV cameras rolling, she was tackled by waitresses, security men and government minders and dragged away struggling. At least two journalists were beaten or punched in the fracas.
Marking International Women’s Month and 8 years since the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq (March 2003), the UK based group of Iraqi and non-Iraqi women Act Together - Women’s Action for Iraq held a talk on 22 March at SOAS on women and violence in Iraq today. Professor Nadje Al-Ali and Dr Nicola Pratt presented some of the latest research findings on gender-based violence and the issues women are facing in Iraq at present. With the numbers of civilians who have lost their lives since the war begun still being contested, they both feel the need to draw attention to the human side of the story behind these numbers, especially when it comes to women’s experiences and ordeals, nowadays seldom reported and studied.
Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month. After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.
As everyone knows, today is International Women’s Day, and it is the first day for the celebration of women rights after the success of the Egyptian Revolution, which forced the former president Mubarak out of power in February. For the past two weeks, a call was made for citizens to participate in a million women march in Tahrir square to celebrate the day and honour the martyrs of Egypt: women and men. The march was supposed to be between 2:00- 6:00 PM on March 8 and the square was chosen as a symbol for the determination of the Egyptian pro-democracy movement.
Rape and sexual assaults: the National Congress Party uses the weapons of the Darfur war against the women and girls of Khartoum. Tens of thousands of Sudanese women and young girls in Darfur and in the south of Sudan were exposed to crimes of gender based violence, including rape and sexual abuse that were practiced by the National Congress Party (NCP) for more than two decades. Now, and following the victory of racial and sexual cleansing policies which drove the South of Sudan to separation and could drive Darfur on a similar path, the regime of the NCP is employing the weapon of rape and sexual abuse against women and girls in their peaceful struggle. The NCP’s security forces targeted the women and young girls who took part in the recent demonstrations in Sudan, asking for justice, peace, democracy and an end to discrimination.
Women's rights activists and pro-change protesters in Egypt have rallied to condemn a serious sexual assault on an American news reporter, Lara Logan, which took place in Cairo's Tahrir Square in the moments following Hosni Mubarak's resignation last Friday. "Lara Logan … and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration," Logan's employers, CBSnews, said in a brief statement. "It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy. "In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers."
The recent move by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women Affairs (MoWA) to take control of women’s shelters is deeply worrying. I have spoken to NGO workers who run these shelters, and they have been outraged by the new legislation. Over the past few years I have personally been able to see the work of five of these shelters out of a total of 14 set up around the country by NGOs after the Taleban’s fall. The shelters house hundreds of Afghan women and girls whose lives are at risk due to forced marriage, underaged marriage, and other forms of violence. Amnesty International urges the Afghan government to reconsider this terrible piece of legislation and, instead, recommit itself to protecting the women of Afghanistan and those courageous human rights defenders, many of them women, who are trying to counteract years of discrimination and sexual violence against the women of Afghanistan.
Rhaya, 19 ans, est une jeune femme issue d'une famille pauvre de Sumatra. Elle a arrêté l'école à 16 ans, ayant dans l'idée de chercher un emploi de domestique. Rhaya s'occupait de laver du linge pour différentes familles, tout en habitant chez sa sœur Enny. Enny est la quatrième épouse d'Abang Setia, avec lequel elle a un jeune enfant. Environ trois mois après s'être installée chez sa sœur, Rhaya a été violée par Abang Setia. Après l'avoir violée, il lui a enjoint de ne rien dire à personne et a menacé de la tuer si elle parlait. | <urn:uuid:3284a7c8-a37b-49f2-a2c1-a3a6a84446aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wluml.org/ar/taxonomy/term/21?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94639 | 1,299 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The School of Public Policy realizes that there is much more to your student life than the time spent in the classroom. With that in mind, we want to ensure that you are aware of all the campus resources, programs, student organizations and local organizations that are available to you. The list below contains links to the web pages for several of these services and programs. We encourage you to take advantage of these helpful resources to further enhance your student experience.
Please contact the Student Services office for information about these or other GMU student resources.
If you are a Master’s student, remember to visit SPP101 for important resources to help you navigate, and be successful in, your graduate program in the School of Public Policy.
Around the Area
SPPSA – School of Public Policy Student Association
ISLP – International Student Liaison Program
MPPFS – Mason Public Policy Film Society
NVPP – New Voices In Public Policy | <urn:uuid:c83c496d-636c-4e0d-bfa0-b2b251a76303> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://policy.gmu.edu/Home/StudentCareerServices/StudentLifeResources/tabid/81/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930582 | 191 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A major re-write of how Colorado funds K through 12 schools is now making its way through the state legislature. As part of our capitol conversation series Bente Birkeland talks about how it would change school funding and its prospects for passage.
State lawmakers are a little more than halfway through the legislative session, and there’s been no shortage of drama and divisive issues. Bente Birkeland takes stock of what’s happened so far and what’s ahead as part of our capitol conversation series.
Lawmakers are nearing the midpoint of the state’s legislative session. So far a discussion on gun violence has dominated much of the debate under the gold dome. But, as part of our capitol conversation series, Bente Birkeland takes a look at some of the other big issues lawmakers will tackle.
Colorado’s gun control debate is making national news because of remarks from one Democratic lawmaker about rape. The comments came during a debate on banning concealed carry weapons on college campuses. As part of our capitol conversation series Bente Birkeland takes a look at the political ramifications and what's driving the story.
Governor John Hickenlooper is getting push back for recently telling members of Congress that he once drank flack fluid and touting Colorado as a national model for balanced energy rules. The state's oil and gas commission has increased the statewide buffer zone between drilling sites and homes and buildings, but many Democratic state lawmakers say the rules are still too lenient. Bente Birkeland takes a look at the issue and the Governor’s comments as part of our capitol conversation series. | <urn:uuid:310cae03-a310-4f88-b012-6c64140ed0d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kvnf.org/term/capitol-conversation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956711 | 336 | 1.726563 | 2 |
As you well know the action of a turbulator is different and because of that many suppliers use smaller tanks with turbulators--or use more resin. I believe one of the other posters on this board has posted that he does the latter.
There are many approaches to water treatment and very few "requirements". Rather there are practices, good practices, etc. Just because you do things one way does not mean that there are not other ways and just because someone does things differently than you recommend does not make them wrong. | <urn:uuid:9d449887-2960-4a72-9345-544ca78c6ba2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.terrylove.com/forums/showthread.php?36001-Water-softener-selection-help/page5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978412 | 105 | 1.546875 | 2 |
January 11, 2013
What we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will give us later.
–Romans 8:18 (TLB)
Nowhere does the Bible teach that Christians are to be exempt from the tribulations and natural disasters that come upon the world. It does teach that the Christian can face tribulation, crisis, calamity, and personal suffering with a supernatural power that is not available to the person outside Christ. The early Christians were able to experience joy in their hearts in the midst of trials, troubles, and depression. They counted suffering for Christ not as a burden or misfortune, but as a great honor, as evidence that Christ counted them worthy to witness to Him through suffering. They never forgot what Christ Himself had gone through for their salvation; and to suffer for His name’s sake was regarded as a gift rather than a cross. Christians can rejoice in tribulation because they have eternity’s values in view. When the pressures are on, they look beyond their present predicaments to the glories of heaven. The thought of the future life with its prerogatives and joys helps to make the trials of the present seem light and transient.
Prayer for the day
Father, help me to go beyond the afflictions and tribulations of our age, and to look toward the inheritance reserved for us in heaven. | <urn:uuid:bf8e44a9-ad5a-4e16-a83a-594589aa1091> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://billygraham.org/dailydevotion.asp?ArticleID=7138 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96764 | 280 | 1.75 | 2 |
SALT LAKE CITY // Normally basketball is an afterthought for Iranian sports fans, given the popularity of football, weightlifting and wrestling. But with Iran's national basketball team preparing for its first Olympic appearance in 60 years, that has changed. "For every athlete, it is like a dream to participate in the Olympic Games - especially for us because basketball in Iran is not that ... important," the captain and forward Samad Bahrami said. "Everyone is looking for you and taking care of you."
By beating Lebanon for the Fiba Asian Championship last year, Iran clinched their first Olympic berth since 1948 - a different era for both the Olympics and the world. The '48 Games took place in London, which was still cleaning up the rubble left by years of bombing raids during World War II. Iran itself was only a decade removed from being known as Persia. Sixty years later, Iran's relations with much of the West is strained. The team's success comes as the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deals with increasing pressure from world powers to freeze its uranium enrichment programme.
At the Olympics, the basketball team has little chance. It is in the same group as the defending gold medallist Argentina, Australia and Russia - all featuring at least one NBA player. Iran, which open against Russia on August 10, don't have the international experience of its opponents. The coach Rajko Toroman, a Serb, is pointing more toward the 2010 world championships than next month's Olympics. In Beijing, he fully expects his players to be awed before the array of international talent.
Toroman is putting his team through a difficult pre- Olympic schedule. He said his players have the physical ability but lack the skills and knowledge that come from playing at levels not found in the Iranian professional league. "In my opinion, that's only way to improve these players because the Iranian League is not so strong. They don't have enough tough games," he said. "Genetically they have good abilities. They have good body skills but they do not have enough good technical games in the Iranian league."
A part of Toroman's preparation has been a visit to the Rocky Mountain Revue, the summer league for the NBA rookies and other young prospects, hosted by the Utah Jazz. The talent doesn't compare with that of the US team, but Toroman sees it as a valuable part of his accelerated lesson plan. Iran played the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday and lost 79-62. The Iranians held their own early, taking a 20-18 lead after the first quarter, but the Mavericks overwhelmed them with a 25-8 advantage in the third. Iran have also played two games against the NBA D-League Ambassadors, a team that played in the developmental league last season.
The NBA commissioner David Stern welcomed the Iranians and hopes this is a step in showing "how something as simple as a game of basketball can promote understanding." Bahrami and his teammates are thrilled to be heading to Beijing. The players have spoken to Abolfazl Solbi, a member of the 1948 team. Now in his 80s, Solbi still visits the team and offers advice to the new generation of Iran's basketball Olympians.
Bahrami said: "If you participate in the Olympic Games, after 40 years you can say I was in Olympic Games. I was in Beijing. Solbi said, 'that's very good. Take care of yourself and try to show your character to the whole world because at the Games everybody is looking at you."' Iran will leave the medal expectations to others. Reaching Beijing is enough of an accomplishment. "Everybody knows we cannot win medals," Bahrami said. "But it's going to be a good experience."
* Associated Press | <urn:uuid:5714ab7d-a0d3-4229-922f-c411381938e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenational.ae/sport/irans-hoop-dreams | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98261 | 764 | 1.828125 | 2 |
By Brian Vaszily, Author of the #1 International Bestseller, The 9 Intense Experiences -- named one of the Top 5 Most Motivational Books Ever.
I created this inspirational video after I created what has become known as the old age poem, but which is actually titled, "The Old Grey Chair."
Be sure to watch this particular inspirational video to the very end!
And if you care about anyone who has reached an "old age" ... if you are included in those classifications yourself ... if you also have a deep love for these beautiful souls in general ... or if you are inspired to do so by the time you finish watching this as I truly hope you will be ... please pass this inspirational video on to everyone you know!
ALSO, please "Like" this video at the bottom of this page, share your Comments, and be sure to see the other inspirational videos.
To say the video and old age poem below are "about" old age wouldn't quite be accurate, as there are as many dimensions to old age as at any age. That said, it IS about a crucial aspect of old age that we in this youth-dominated culture all too often overlook ... and that I believe is one of our greatest tragedies.
The rest is self-explanatory when you watch below. You may find it initially sad but ultimately inspiring when you watch to the very end.
I hope you appreciate and enjoy this inspirational video!
p.s. If you are new to IntenseExperiences.com, be sure to get your free gift after watching the video! | <urn:uuid:9e25e269-c984-4141-843d-693dc88dc2d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intenseexperiences.com/beautiful-video-inspirational.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965867 | 328 | 1.585938 | 2 |
By Deborah Rogers
Aubrey McClendon, the disgraced CEO of Chesapeake Energy, has chosen to “retire”. Chesapeake Energy stock values have plummeted, the company faces funding shortfalls in excess of $10 billion, significant assets, including midstream assets which are virtual cash cows for a company, have been sold to cover a reckless debt ratio, the company has not had a positive cash flow since 2001 and the company and Mr. McClendon are being investigated by multiple authorities.
Nevertheless, Mr. McClendon’s retirement package consists of approximately $47 million in compensation, including $33 million in stock options and use of the corporate jet for the next 4 years. This is presumably to reward Mr.McClendon for his stewardship of the publicly traded company. One can only imagine what he might have been “entitled” to had the company actually performed. Yet again, it becomes crystal clear that Americans have forgotten that it is they who own publicly traded companies. Until shareholders accept more responsibility for their companies, actions such as these will continue. | <urn:uuid:681d2931-5a8e-4980-9de3-43583796eb56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://energypolicyforum.org/2013/02/02/chesapeake-energy-ceo-retires/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976053 | 221 | 1.515625 | 2 |
For someone so thoroughly entrenched in the social elite, Wharton maintains a sense of perspective – and a sense of humor – while portraying the crowd she knows so very well. This is one of our favorite droll Wharton moments:
The couple in question were engaged in the same kind of romance. […] Miss Van Osburgh was a large girl with flat surfaces and no high lights: Jack Stepney had once said of her that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had been reduced to a crust. (1.4.69)
Wharton recognizes the absurdity of money-driven marriages, as well as the insipid "jobs" that those in society are forced to fill if they want to keep their spot among the social elite. For example,
Lord Hubert Dacey, a slender shabby-looking man, with a charming worn smile, and the air of having spent his best years in piloting the wealthy to the right restaurant. (2.1.13)
She also keenly identifies the hypocrisy of the society she's observing:
Like many unpunctual persons, Mrs. Gormer disliked to be kept waiting. (2.6.32)
Ha! Funny stuff. At the same time, Wharton is incredibly sympathetic to the young Lily Bart; more so in Book II when the world around her protagonist has crumbled completely. There's nothing funny about Lily's social demise or her physical death at the novel's conclusion. She is every bit a victim of the society Wharton so cleverly exposes in Book I, and House of Mirth makes sure that, when we're done chuckling, we really feel the tragedy of her death in Book II. | <urn:uuid:31439a79-5bf1-428d-b98e-7a8d0d1660db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shmoop.com/house-of-mirth/tone.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97363 | 382 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The experts said that recent decline in global funding costs have increased prospects for major Australian banks to lower rates out of cycle, and if the lower funding costs were sustained, the major lenders could lower rates independent of RBA decision by mid-2013.
Nomura banking analyst Victor German said if the reduced funding pressures are sustained, the banks may cut their rates in the next three to six months. In 2012, the big four pocketed part of the rate cuts made by the Australian central bank, earning them an additional $2.4 billion.
As a result of the several key lending rate cuts made by the RBA in 2012, it removed about $2,000 from the yearly cost of servicing a typical mortgage in the last 12 months.
The October and December rate cuts reduced by $75 the monthly amortisation of a $300,000 home mortgage, but it could have been $94 had the big four fully passed on the rate cut to borrowers.
Over the weekend, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs changed their previous forecast that the RBA would make another 25 basis points cut in the benchmark rate, but the two moved the probable date to May.
The big four - ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac - earned more than $25 billion profits in 2012 and are among the 10 most profitable banks in the world. The Australian Institute attributed the profitability of the big four to their ability to exploit bank customers, particularly home mortgage holders.
The institute pointed out that for every dollar spent in Australia, 2.3 cents became bank profits because of the lenders pocketing a portion of rate cuts made by the RBA. On the average, the institute estimates that mortgage holders have been shortchanged by 39 basis points on the average since the central bank rate cutting cycle started in November 2011.
However, Steven Munchenberg, chief executive of the Australian Bankers Association, said that while borrowing cost from the global market has decreased, large Australian banks compete for deposits, which represents about 60 per cent of banks' borrowings. He said savers or two-thirds of Australian households are actually the big winners for now.
Here are more explanations about the RBA rate cuts in this video. | <urn:uuid:166bc3c3-fec5-4eb6-923e-5b75b9590b85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/430977/20130204/experts-forecast-rba-will-keep-3-overnight.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970001 | 451 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Walter E. Williams
by Walter E. Williams: It
Just Ain't So
at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the
lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn't meet U.S. Department
of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious.
She replaced it with school cafeteria chicken nuggets. The girl's
home-prepared lunch was nutritious; it consisted of a turkey and
cheese sandwich, potato chips, a banana and apple juice. But whether
her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental
usurpation of parental authority.
In a number
of states, pregnant teenage girls may be given abortions without
the notification or the permission of parents. The issue is neither
abortion nor whether a pregnant teenager should have an abortion.
The issue is this: What gives the government the authority to usurp
Part of the
problem is that people who act as instruments of government do not
pay a personal price for usurping parental authority. The reason
is Americans, unlike Americans of yesteryear, have become timid
and, as such, come to accept all manner of intrusive governmental
acts. Can you imagine what a rugged American, such as one portrayed
by John Wayne, would have done to a government tyrant who confiscated
his daughter's lunch or facilitated her abortion without his permission?
I believe that
the anti-tobacco movement partially accounts for today's compliant
American. Tobacco zealots started out with "reasonable" demands,
such as the surgeon general's warning on cigarette packs. Then they
demanded nonsmoking sections on airplanes. Emboldened by that success,
they demanded no smoking at all on airplanes and then airports and
then restaurants and then workplaces – all in the name of health.
Seeing the compliant nature of smokers, they've moved to ban smoking
on beaches, in parks and on sidewalks in some cities. Now they're
calling for higher health insurance premiums for smokers. Had the
tobacco zealots demanded their full agenda when they started out,
they would not have achieved anything.
Using the anti-tobacco
crusade as their template and finding Americans so compliant, zealots
and would-be tyrants are extending their agenda. Why not control
what we eat? San Francisco, Chicago and several other cities have
outlawed or are seeking to outlaw serving foie gras in restaurants.
Here's my challenge to these people: Don't be a coward and use the
state to accomplish your agenda. If you see Williams eating foie
gras, just come up and take it off his plate.
tyrants want to stop us from eating Dove and Haagen-Dazs ice cream,
Mrs. Fields cookies and McDonald's Chicken McNuggets. San Francisco
has already banned McDonald's from selling Happy Meals with toys
in them as sales pitches to children. Seeing San Franciscan compliance
may have been the source of inspiration for the North Carolina schoolteacher
who took the 5-year-old girl's lunch.
have become compliant in nation-crippling ways. Over the past several
years, gasoline prices have been shooting through the roof, but
not to worry. President Barack Obama's current secretary of energy,
Steven Chu, said in December 2008, "Somehow we have to figure out
how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." That
translates to $8 or $9 a gallon. During a recent hearing on the
Department of Energy's budget, Rep. Alan Nunnelee, R-Miss., asked
Secretary Chu whether it is the DOE's "overall goal" to lower gasoline
prices. "No," Chu responded. "The overall goal is to decrease our
dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy."
are so compliant and willing to suffer silently at the gasoline
pump, the Obama administration is willing to press on as handmaidens
of environmental extremists who want to halt the exploration of
our country's vast oil supplies, which are estimated to be triple
those of Saudi Arabia. The Obama administration would rather pour
more taxpayer dollars into risky alternative crony energy suppliers
and electric cars. The OPEC nations have to be laughing at us, and
I wouldn't be surprised if it were revealed that they are making
under-the-table payments to environmental wackos.
E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics
at George Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist.
To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other
Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web page.
© 2012 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Best of Walter E. Williams | <urn:uuid:bbe161bb-cc69-490b-975e-df15839ef7a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams116.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934135 | 1,015 | 1.6875 | 2 |
While he was alive, I claimed that Steve Jobs changed the world more than any other living person.
I still believe it.
You could list the technologies that Apple pioneered and/or popularized (continually, since the beginning of personal computers). And then talk how dependent we are on those technologies.
You could list the design ideas that Apple pioneered and/or popularized. And then talk about how far those ideas reach — into print, automobiles, household appliances, etc.
You could list the principles that Steve Jobs never wavered from. And then look at the products and success that his discipline wrought.
You could also just look at the shameless copying that other tech companies do:
(via: Daring Fireball) | <urn:uuid:e42e1f1f-2c8b-414a-841c-dba96c80b0fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://granthuhn.wordpress.com/2012/08/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944448 | 150 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Pakistan Navy: The Fourth Dimension
By Raja G Mujtaba
Normally thinking of a navy one can only think of two dimensions i.e. surface and subsurface fleets but some advanced navies have acquired the third dimension i.e. naval aviation but very few have the fourth dimension and that is marines or soldiers meant to fight land battles. Pakistan Navy (PN) is one of those few navies to have all the four dimensions.
During my visit to Pakistan Navy, I had the opportunity to visit its bases along the Makran Coast and at Karachi. The marines were visited in the Creeks where they were deployed to defend the border line with India. The significance if this border is that it extends into the sea that determines our economic zone. If Pakistan loses a few kilometers on land it would translate into thousands of Sq kilometers in the sea. Besides the economic zone, it is also said that this basin has strong prospects of oil.
This visit afforded me with an opportunity to practically witness the three dimensions of PN but could not visit the fourth dimension maybe at some other occasion. The dimension that I missed was the sub-surface, could not get into a submarine and dive deep into the sea to see how it feels and operate under sub-surface conditions. PN has one of the most modern sub-surface weapons short of nuclear submarines.
Visiting the marines in the creeks was a life experience. Took off in a Sea King Helicopter from PNS Mehran, in about forty minutes we landed at Sajawal in District Thatta, close to Indus delta.
When arrived at Saidpur, Captain Shahid Mehmood was there to receive at the helipad, after brief pleasantries, moved into the briefing room where the entire operatioanal as well as in aid of civil power were explained.
Over this stretch, Pakistan has already fought war with India in April 1965 that led to 1965 war. During this skirmish, 2nd Lt Raja Nadir Parvez who had just joined his unit for his operational performance was awarded Sitara-e-Jurrat.
During the skirmish, the Pakistan Air Force was fully vigilant to prevent the Indian Air Force (IAF) from entering Pakistani airspace and
attacking Pakistan Army positions. On 24 June 1965, an IAF Ouragan fighter (Serial No. IC 698), flown by Flt. Lt. Rana Lal Chand Sikka of No. 51 Auxiliary Squadron from Jamnagar Air Base entered Pakistani airspace. A PAF F-104 Star Fighter intercepted the IAF fighter near Badin in Sindh, Pakistan. Just as the PAF pilot locked on to the Indian fighter and was about to release his Sidewinder Air-to-Air Missile, the Indian pilot lowered his aircraft's landing gear (an internationally recognized sign of aerial surrender). The IAF pilot landed at an open field near Badin. The IAF pilot was taken prisoner and released on 14 August 1965 – as a goodwill gesture on the 18th Anniversary of Pakistan's Independence Day. The IAF Ouragan fighter was retained by the PAF as a trophy and flown by a PAF pilot to an airbase in Karachi. (NOTE: This event is not to be confused with the surrender of an IAF Gnat on 4 September 1965 during the 1965 India-Pakistan War, which is on display at the PAF Museum Karachi).
Now since 1992, this area is with Pakistan Navy, first with their Special Services Group and now with their Marines, the Fourth Dimension. PN Marines are not only defending the borders of Pakistan but also extending humanitarian services during natural disasters and calamities.
Going over the Indian mindset it never wants peace but wants to expand and hegemonies over the neighbours. Keeping this in mind, Pakistan can never and must never trust India that can attack anytime anywhere to cause more issues; Siachen is one such example where it moved in 30 years back and still is causing friction between the two neighbours.
It was here in late 1999 that when a PN Maritime Surveillance aircraft, Atlantic on a routine mission flying within Pakistani territory was shot down by the Indians, all the crew on board died. After the shooting, the Indians tried to drag the wreckage into their area that they could not.
Why the marines are deployed there in those conditions that have nothing friendly for the humans needs to be studied. When I visited the Creeks, there were no signs of life except snakes in those marshy and brackish areas. Even birds were not seen there, imagine how and why these marines were living there.
It is because of the Rann of Kutch that falls astride the Pakistan-India border and comprises some 30,000 square kilometres (10,000 sq mi) between the Gulf of Kutch and the mouth of the Indus River in southern Pakistan.
In summer monsoon, the flat desert of salty clay and mudflats, which average 15 meters above sea level, fills with standing waters. The greatest extent between the Gulf of Kutch on the west and the Gulf of Cambay on the east get united during the monsoon.
The area was a vast shallow of the Arabian Sea until continuing geological uplift closed off the connection with the sea, creating a vast lake that was still navigable during the time of Alexander the Great. The Ghaggar River, which presently empties into the desert of northern Rajasthan, formerly emptied into the Rann of Kutch, but the lower reaches of the river dried up as its upstream tributaries were captured by the Indus and Ganges thousands of years ago.
There are sandy islets of thorny scrub, forming a wildlife sanctuary and a breeding ground for some of the largest flocks of greater and lesser flamingos. Wildlife, including the Indian wild ass, shelter on islands of higher ground, called bets, during the flooding.
During the 2010 floods, which were unprecedented PN Marines did a tremendous job. They with their hovercrafts, boats and helicopters covered a very area to rescue and provide relief to the stranded people. In many cases, even their animals were recovered.
Just a brief rundown on flood relief, in 2010 Rescued 223,000 people, provided 1145 tons of food supplies and treated over 46,000 patients and in 2011, 17270 people were rescued, 1900 tons of food supplies along with 1200 tons of goods were distributed. In 2011, there was a sharp increase in number of sick that rose to 46,400 people. Not only this, PN has also initiated housing projects for the displaced persons who lost their houses. To such people, 252 have been distributed and 40 houses are awaiting allotment.
While visiting the Saidpur area, there we were shown the Saidpur Model Village comprising of some 36 houses. It was an excellent effort where 1 room houses with approximately 6 marlas of land each belongs to each allottee. This colony has a mosque and a water filtration plant installed by PN. The entire expenses for this model village were borne by Pakistan Navy. Kudos Pakistan Navy. | <urn:uuid:d1105f9d-cc43-4816-b7c8-481851f47455> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opinion-maker.org/2012/04/pakistan-navy-the-fourth-dimension/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976721 | 1,454 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Other Obstacles to Disarmament Exist Besides States Holding on to Nukes
It's true that Russia seems to feel that it can't divest itself of many more strategic nuclear weapons (the kind you're familiar with). In his notes from the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., the Arms Control Association's Greg Thielmann explains.
The 1000 warhead central limit posited for a New START follow-on agreement by numerous American analysts was also endorsed by Russian participants on two separate Carnegie panels. [But] Sergei Rogov of Russia's USA and Canada Institute predicted that Russia would be willing to reduce to "something like 1000" in the next round. He said this would be a likely floor for bilateral arms control because of Russia's concern with maintaining clear superiority over Chinese and other third-party strategic systems.
Equally as circumscribing to further disarmament, though, are issues other than strategic nuclear weapons. There was also fresh evidence in the Carnegie discussions . . . that future enhancements of U.S. strategic missile defenses and Russian resistance to tactical nuclear weapons limits threaten to derail further progress. Indeed, [Carnegie Moscow's] Alexei Arbatov assessed "dim prospects" for a New START follow-on agreement. . . . not because of any problems inherent to a 1000 warhead limit [but] because of the difficulty of resolving the "thorny" issues [such as] missile defense . . . and tactical nuclear weapons.
It's ironic that ancillary issues tie the hands of nuclear negotiators as much as reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons proper. This is especially the case in light of how laughable those issues are. Everyone knows that missile defense isn't effective against the warheads of any nuclear state except maybe, on a good day, North Korea's. As for tactical (scaled down for battlefield use) nukes, does Russia really foresee a time when it will be lighting those suckers off in the middle of a firefight, thus sowing radiation to all, friend or foe? | <urn:uuid:befe9bc8-a21e-47b6-84d5-7674741bc25a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fpif.org/blog/other_obstacles_to_nuclear_disarmament_exist_beside_how_anal_states_are_about_holding_on_to_them?q=Tag%3ANuclear+Energy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941457 | 414 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The FCC on Friday took a preliminary step forward with a plan to auction television airwaves for wireless networks that run smartphones and tablets.
The five-member Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal for how the auction of broadcaster’s airwaves will be collected and then resold to eager wireless carriers. The airwaves will be used to expand mobile broadband Internet networks and beef up coverage where carriers already operate to meet the explosive growth of mobile Internet use.
The FCC’s move is the first step in a long and complicated process that could take at least three years before consumers see any difference in their wireless service, analysts say. The agency will take public comments on its proposal before voting on a final rule. The FCC aims to begin its auction to wireless carriers in 2014.
There are many components to the FCC’s proposal, and many analysts question its success.
Broadcasters will first be asked to voluntarily sell airwaves. The FCC then has to repackage channels to prepare the spectrum for auction. Then the FCC will conduct its auction to sell the airwaves and hopefully raise billions of dollars that will be used to build a separate network for public safety emergency first responders and fatten the coffers of the U.S. Treasury.
Smaller carriers and public interest groups have asked to give preference for competitors to the biggest providers AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The FCC on Friday also approved a proposal to consider new caps on how much spectrum any single carrier can own in a given local market.
“It is no coincidence that immediately after the FCC scuttled its previously-imposed spectrum caps a decade ago, the mobile wireless industry entered into a phase of hyper-consolidation that has winnowed down the choice of service provdiers available to Americans,” said Carri Bennet, general counsel of the Rural Telecommunications Group.
But first, it’s unclear what spectrum will be up for grabs.
“We expect many smaller broadcasters to participate in the reverse auction, as it is a good opportunity to monetize underutilized spectrum licenses,” James M. Ratcliffe, an analyst at Barclays Equity Research wrote in a report. “However, we also believe the portfolio of those spectrum licenses will be uneven in size and geographic coverage, given that broadcasters will decide individually what they are willing to give up.”
It will be the first major auction of public airwaves since 2008, when the FCC raised nearly $20 billion after giants Verizon Wireless and AT&T snapped up choice blocks of spectrum that they are now using to fuel their mobile 4G high-speed Internet networks. | <urn:uuid:47c72991-ba81-4587-ab66-a425d99f435a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/fcc-moves-ahead-with-airwaves-auction/2012/09/28/ed35132c-0988-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939382 | 534 | 1.828125 | 2 |
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FOCUS is a Web-based career and educational planning system that can help you make career decisions, choose an academic major, and map out your career and/or educational plans. If you are selecting a major, looking for career options related to your major, or are seeking a career change, you will benefit from using this system. If you are a Bellevue University student or alum, contact Career Services at [email protected] to request the access code.
It is helpful to look at some examples of occupations/job titles that are typically associated with the various academic majors offered at Bellevue University. Use these lists to get ideas, then do research to discover which ones seem to fit with your interests, values and skills/qualifications.
We also encourage you to meet with a Career Coach to answer any questions you might have. If you are unable to meet with us in person, we can assist you via phone (800-756-7920, Ext. 557-7423) or via email.
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Ethics Information for Members of Boards & Commissions (AS 39.52)
This is an introduction to AS 39.52, the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. This guide is not a substitute for reading the law and its regulations. State board and commission members who have further questions should contact their board chair or staff.
The Ethics Act applies to all current and former executive branch public employees and members of statutorily created boards and commissions.
Scope of Ethics Act (AS 39.52.110)
Service on a state board or commission is a public trust. The Ethics Act prohibits substantial and material conflicts of interest. Further, board or commission members cannot improperly benefit financially or personally from their actions as board or commission members. The Act does not, however, discourage independent pursuits, and it recognizes that minor and inconsequential conflicts of interest are unavoidable.
Misuse of Official Position (AS 39.52.120)
Members of boards or commissions may not use their positions for personal gain or to give an unwarranted benefit or treatment to any person. For example, board members may not:
- use their official positions to secure employment or contracts;
- accept compensation from anyone other than the State for performing official duties;
- use State time, equipment, property or facilities for their own personal or financial benefit or for partisan political purposes;
- take or withhold official action on a matter in which they have a personal or financial interest; or
- coerce subordinates for his/her personal or financial benefit.
- attempt to influence outcome of an administrative hearing by privately contacting the hearing officer.
Terry knew that a proposal that was before the board would harm Terry's business competitor. Instead of publicly disclosing the matter and requesting recusal, Terry voted on the proposal.
Board member Mick has board staff employee Bob type an article for him that Mick hopes to sell to an Alaskan magazine. Bob types the article on State time.
Improper Gifts (AS 39.52.130)
A board member may not solicit or accept gifts if it could reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the board member's action or judgment. "Gifts" include money, items of value, services, loans, travel, entertainment, hospitality, and employment. All gifts from registered lobbyists are presumed to be improper, unless the giver is an immediate family member of the person receiving the gift.
A gift worth more than $150 to a board member or the board member's family must be reported within 30 days if:
- the board member can take official action that can affect the giver, or
- the gift is given to the board member because he or she is on a state board.
The receipt of a gift worth less than $150 may be prohibited if it could reasonably be inferred that the gift is intended to influence the board member's action or judgment. Receipt of such a gift should be disclosed.
Any gift received from another government, regardless of value, must be reported; the board member will be advised as to the disposition of this gift.
A form for reporting gifts is available at www.law.alaska.gov/doclibrary/ethics or from the board or commission staff.
This restriction on gifts does not apply to lawful campaign contributions.
The commission is reviewing Roy's proposal for an expansion of his business. Roy invites all the board members out to dinner at an expensive restaurant. He says it will be okay, since he isn't excluding any of the members.
Sam buys a holiday gift every year for Jody. Jody was recently appointed to a board, but Sam has no business that is up before the board.
Improper Use or Disclosure of Infromation (AS 39.52.140)
No former or current member of a board may use or disclose any information acquired through the board if that use or disclosure could result in a financial or personal benefit to the board member (or a family member), unless that information has already been disseminated to the public.
Sheila has been on the board for several years. She feels she has learned a great deal of general information about how to have a successful business venture. So she sets up her own business and does well.
Delores has always advised and assisted the other doctors in her clinic on their continuing education requirements. After Delores is appointed to the medical board, she discloses this role to the board and continues to advise the doctors in her clinic.
Improper Influence in State Grants, Contracts, Leases or Loans (AS 39.52.150)
A board member who can affect the award or administration of a State grant, contract, lease, or loan may not apply for, or have an interest in that State grant, contract, lease, or loan. This prohibition also applies to the board member's immediate family.
A board member (or a family member) may apply for or be a party to a competitively solicited State grant, contract or lease, if the board member does not serve in the same administrative unit awarding or administering the grant, contract, or lease and so long as the board member does not take official action in the award or administration of the grant, contract, or lease.
A board member (or a family member) may apply for and receive a State loan that is generally available to the public and has fixed eligibility standards, so long as the board member does not take (or withhold) official action affecting the award or administration of the loan.
Board members must report to the board chair any personal or financial interest (or that of a family member) in a State grant, contract, lease or loan that is awarded or administered by the agency the board member serves.A form for this purpose is available at www.law.alaska.gov/doclibrary/ethics or from the board or commission staff.
John sits on a board that awards state grants. John hasn't seen his daughter for nearly ten years so he figures that it doesn't matter when her grant application comes up before the board.
The board wants to contract out for an analysis of the board's decisions over the last ten years. Kim would like the contract since she has been on the board for ten years and feels she could do a good job.
Improper Representation (AS 39.52.160)
A nonsalaried board or commission member may represent, advise, or assist in matters in which the member has an interest that is regulated by the member's own board or commission, if the member acts in accordance with AS 39.52.220 by disclosing the involvement in writing and on the public record, and refrains from all participation and voting on the matter. This section does not allow a board member to engage in any conduct that would violate a different section of the Ethics Act.
Restriction on Employment After Leaving State Service (AS 39.52.180)
For two years after leaving a board, a former board member may not work on any matter on which the former member had personally and substantially participated while on the board. This prohibition applies to cases, proceedings, applications, and contracts and similar matters.
Former members of the governing boards of public corporations and former members of boards and commissions that have regulation-adoption authority, except those covered by the centralized licensing provisions of AS 08.01, may not lobby for pay for one year.
This section does not prohibit a State agency from contracting directly with a former board member.
With the approval of the Attorney General, the board chair may waive this prohibition if a determination is made that the public interest is not jeopardized.
The board has arranged for an extensive study of the effects of the Department's programs. Andy, a board member, did most of the liaison work with the contractor selected by the board, including some negotiations about the scope of the study. Andy quits the board and goes to work for the contractor, working on the study of the effects of the Department's programs.
Andy takes the job, but specifies that he will have to work on another project.
Aiding a Violation Prohibited (AS 39.52.190)
Aiding another public officer to violate this chapter is prohibited.
Agency Policies (AS 39.52.920)
Subject to the Attorney General's review, a board may adopt additional written policies further limiting personal or financial interests of board members.
DECLARATION OF POTENTIAL VIOLATIONS BY MEMBERS OF BOARDS OR COMMISSIONS (AS 39.52.220)
A board member whose interests or activities could result in a violation of the Ethics Act must disclose the matter on the public record and in writing to the board chair who determines whether a violation exists. A form for this purpose is available at www.law.alaska.gov/doclibrary/ethics or from the board or commission staff. If a board member objects to the chair's ruling or if the chair discloses a potential conflict, the board members at the meeting (excluding the involved member) must vote on the matter. If the board chair or the board determines a violation would exist, the member must refrain from deliberating, voting, or participating in the matter. For more information, see Ethics Act Procedures for Boards and Commissions available at the above noted web site.
When determining whether a board member is involved in a matter that may result in a violation of the Ethics Act, either the board chair or the board or commission itself may request guidance from the Attorney General.
ATTORNEY GENERAL'S ADVICE (AS 39.52.240-250)
Board chairs or the board itself may request a written advisory opinion from the Attorney General. These opinions are confidential. Versions without identifying information may be made available to the public.
A former board member may request a written opinion from the Attorney General interpreting the Ethics Act.
REPORTS BY THIRD PARTIES (AS 39.52.230)
A third party may report a suspected violation of the Ethics Act by a board member in writing and under oath to the chair of a board or commission. The chair will give a copy to the board member and to the Attorney General and review the report to determine whether a violation may or does exist. If the chair determines a violation exists, the board member will be asked to refrain from deliberating, voting, or participating in the matter.
Complaints, Hearings, and Enforcement
COMPLAINTS (AS 39.52.310-330)
Any person may file a complaint with the Attorney General about the conduct of a current or former board member. Complaints must be written and signed under oath. The Attorney General may also initiate complaints from information provided by a board. A copy of the complaint will be sent to the board member who is the subject of the complaint and to the Personnel Board.
All complaints are reviewed by the Attorney General. If the Attorney General determines that the complaint does not warrant investigation, the complainant and the board member will be notified of the dismissal.
The Attorney General may refer a complaint to the board member's chair for resolution.
After investigation, the Attorney General may dismiss a complaint for lack of probable cause to believe a violation occurred. The complainant and board member will be promptly notified of this decision.
Alternatively, if probable cause exists, the Attorney General may initiate a formal proceeding by serving the board or commission member with an accusation alleging a violation of the Ethics Act.
CONFIDENTIALITY (AS 39.52.340)
Complaints and investigations prior to formal proceedings are confidential. If the Attorney General finds evidence of probable criminal activity, the appropriate law enforcement agency shall be notified.
HEARINGS (AS 39.52.350-360)
An accusation by the Attorney General of an alleged violation may result in a hearing. An administrative law judge from the state's Office of Administrative Hearings serves as hearing officer and determines the time, place and other matters. The parties to the hearing are the Attorney General, acting as prosecutor, and the accused public officer, who may be represented by an attorney. Within 30 days of the conclusion of the hearing, the hearing officer files a report with the Personnel Board and provides a copy to the parties.
PERSONNEL BOARD ACTION (AS 39.52.370)
The hearing officer's report will be reviewed by the Personnel Board. The Personnel Board is responsible for determining whether a violation occurred and for imposing penalties. An appeal may be filed by the board member in the Superior Court.
PENALTIES (AS 39.52.410-460)
When the Personnel Board determines a board member has violated the Ethics Act, the member must refrain from voting, deliberating, or participating in the matter. The Personnel Board may order restitution and may recommend that the board member be removed from the board or commission. If a recommendation of removal is made, the appointing authority will immediately remove the member.
If the Personnel Board finds that a former board member violated the Ethics Act, the Personnel Board will issue a public statement about the case and will ask the Attorney General to pursue appropriate additional legal remedies.
State grants, contracts, and leases awarded in violation of the Ethics Act are voidable.
Loans given in violation of the Ethics Act may be made immediately payable.
Fees, gifts, or compensation received in violation of the Ethics Act may be recovered by the Attorney General.
The Personnel Board may impose a fine of up to $5,000 for each violation of the Ethics Act. In addition, a board member may be required to pay up to twice the financial benefit received in violation of the Ethics Act.
Criminal penalties are in addition to the civil penalties listed above.
DEFINITIONS (AS 39.52.960)
Please keep the following definitions in mind:
Benefit - anything that is to a person's advantage regardless financial interest or from which a person hopes to gain in any way.
Board or Commission - a board, commission, authority, or board of directors of a public or quasi-public corporation, established by statute in the executive branch, including the Alaska Railroad Corporation.
Designated Ethics Supervisor - the chair or acting chair of the board or commission for all board or commission members and for executive directors; for staff members, the executive director is the designated ethics supervisor.
Financial Interest - any property, ownership, management, professional, or private interest from which a board or commission member or the board or commission member's immediate family receives or expects to receive a financial benefit.
Immediate Family - spouse; another person cohabiting with the person in a conjugal relationship that is not a legal marriage; a child, including a stepchild and an adoptive child; a parent, sibling, grandparent, aunt, or uncle of the person; and a parent or sibling of the person's spouse.
Personal Interest - the interest or involvement of a board or commission member (or a family member) in any organization or political party from which a person or organization receives a benefit.
Official Action - advice, participation, or assistance, including, for example, a recommendation, decision, approval, disapproval, vote, or other similar action, including inaction, by a public officer.
For further information and disclosure forms, visit our Executive Branch Ethics web site or please contact:
State Ethics Attorney
Alaska Department of Law
1031 West 4th Avenue, Suite 200
Anchorage, Alaska 99501-5903 | <urn:uuid:ff04bc21-b6aa-4724-ac44-3f2da987e070> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.alaska.gov/doclibrary/ethics/EthicsInfoBC.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957663 | 3,168 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Alloy 52, for strings that are out of this world.
52% iron mixed with 48% nickel is the formula for Alloy-52. This magnetically active alloy makes for an extremely durable, highly responsive string, with awesome resonance characteristics. It resists tarnish up to 3 times over its nickel-plated steel predecessor and delivers more sustain and overtones. Alloy-52 is a mysterious metallic substance found in the desert just outside Pahrump, Nevada and is believed to have fallen from space. | <urn:uuid:46a7dd89-9bef-4800-bf4d-774e6de53e1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guitarcenter.com/Everly-B-52-Rockers-Alloy-Medium-Hybrid-Electric-Guitar-Strings-106028-i1123299.gc | 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 | 0.943142 | 103 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, January 12, 2004
China suspends oil exports to Japan
China has suspended oil exports to Japan due to a stalemate in sales negotiation, risking the future of a three-decade long oil shipment programme. The sales talks were on hold as China, the world's second largest oil importer, demanded a price increase and a cut in volumes to justify exports from its aging Daqing Oilfield.
China has suspended oil exports to Japan due to a stalemate in sales negotiation, risking the future of a three-decade long oil shipment programme.
The sales talks were on hold as China, the world's second largest oil importer, demanded a price increase and a cut in volumes to justify exports from its aging Daqing Oilfield, industrial and company officials said.
Analysts said the economic relationship between the two neighbouring countries is unlikely to be affected by the event as the export are small.
"Our price quota has not been replied yet, and we have stopped the January crude export," said a PetroChina official.
"We don't known whether we will continue the export this year."
PetroChina, the owner of the Daqing field, represented the Chinese Government to sell the crude from Daqing, which is China's largest oilfield.
The official refused reveal the price quote PetroChina has offered.
Earlier reports said China wanted to raise the premium for the crude to US$6.30 a barrel over the average price of Indonesia's Minas and Cinta crude from a premium of just 45 cents per barrel in 2003.
PetroChina also told Japan to cut Daqing supply in 2004 to 500,000 tons from 3 million tons in 2003 as the output of Daqing is declining, the report quoted an unnamed Japanese trader as saying.
"It won't be exported to Japan again based on long-term contracts," the Japanese trader was cited as saying.
China started to export Daqing crude to Japan since 1978 under a long-term government-to-government agreement to promote bilateral trade.
In 2000, the two nations renewed a 5-year contract to export 3-4 million tons of Daqing crude in the first three year starting from 2001. Negotiation on the 2004-2005 contract term started last year.
Export from Daqing now accounts for about 1.5 per cent of Japan's crude imports.
An official from the Ministry of Commerce denied that talks between the two governments have broken down. He added that PetroChina and Japanese companies are holding "some loose contacts."
The PetroChina official indicated that the price hike is understandable since China itself has to import a large amount of oil.
China's oil imports has been surging in recent years as the economy booms. The country imported nearly 100 million crude oil last year, accounting for almost 40 per cent of its consumption.
Analysts said the price hike also reflects the cost rise of exporters after China introduced new tax policies this year to removed a 13 per cent rebate on crude export. The rebate cut is the result of China's reform on its entire rebate system.
Experts said the production decline of Daqing also forced China to reduce its crude export. Daqing, which represents one-third of the nation's oil output, last year saw its production fell for the first time in 27 years below the benchmark 50 million tons.
Daqing had planned to cut oil output this year by another 2 million tons from 2003 and output may drop to 30 million tons by 2010. | <urn:uuid:e3d7b76c-9316-4b32-b21c-1480a64133a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200401/12/eng20040112_132329.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964024 | 731 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Two weeks into starting her job as Florida's new Insurance Consumer Advocate, Robin Westcott questioned the massive sinkhole rate hike proposed by the state's insurer of last resort.
Citizens Property Insurance recently proposed raising the sinkhole portion of its rate by a statewide average of 429 percent.
Westcott said Citizens should factor into rates projected savings from a sweeping new property insurance law intended to reduce sinkhole claims costs – an idea floated this week by Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty.
"It does not seem either prudent or necessary to make the policyholders of Citizens that are required to have sinkhole coverage or have the greatest need for this coverage...pay an increase in rates that does not contemplate these changes," she wrote to Citizens Executive Director Scott Wallace.
She said if Citizens can prove it needs a huge rate hike, it should be phased in over several years, as suggested this week by Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater. "In my experience, companies have always embraced the concept that affordability is a factor for policyholders when implementing rate increases," she wrote, adding her office will thoroughly review the rate request and ask Citizens for information on sinkhole claims.
Average premiums in parts of South Florida and the Orlando area would increase 13-fold and 21-fold, on average, respectively. There are 84,908 policies in South Florida with sinkhole coverage, largely because it costs very little, about $3 to $20 on average. Citizens automatically adds sinkhole coverage to policies except in Pasco and Hernando counties. | <urn:uuid:983ab2e7-f387-4cfc-b389-ace32e36405a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-08-04/features/sfl-citizens-insurance-sinkhole-consumer-advocate-20110804_1_rate-hike-sinkhole-coverage-rate-request | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957673 | 307 | 1.515625 | 2 |
|Major BCRFA Gifts Enables Groundbreaking Breast Cancer Research|
February 6, 2013
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama (BCRFA) has presented its largest donation yet, $550,000, to the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. Since its inception in 1996, the BCRFA has made an annual donation to UAB’s Cancer Center with the proceeds from all fundraising efforts during the previous year, including BCRFA events and corporate and individual donations, as well as sales of specialty breast cancer license plates (Alabama no. 86). This year’s contribution brings the Birmingham-based organization’s cumulative total donations for research at UAB to nearly $4 million.
“These are tough economic times, and federal budget cuts will adversely affect research projects already under way at the Cancer Center,” says Edward Partridge, M.D., director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Philanthropic giving is absolutely critical for continued progress. We are thankful for this substantial gift, as it enables us to receive additional, high-profile grants, as well as recruit and retain world-renowned breast-cancer researchers.”
The Cancer Center is able to generate an average of $16 in federal and other funding for every dollar it receives from charitable contributions.
The BCRFA provides pilot funding for several key breast cancer projects that have potential to translate into new discoveries for cures and disease modifying treatments. Current research projects range from developing a method to prevent DNA repair in breast cancer tumor cells, to creating antibodies against triple negative breast cancer, to studying the genetic content of breast cancer cells collected from women from Africa that will be correlated with the same analysis with African American patients. | <urn:uuid:7d71fbe7-8574-4e7a-a861-3a01ccf9f4ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www3.ccc.uab.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=579%3Amajor-bcrfa-gifts-enables-groundbreaking-breast-cancer-research&catid=45%3Anewsroom&Itemid=201 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944839 | 350 | 1.664063 | 2 |
'What Goes Up Must Come Down' on CNN's 'In the Money'
“What goes up must come down. But how will we know when the housing market has hit rock bottom?” Allen Wastler started off “In The Money’s” gloomy housing story with a dose of doom and it only went downhill from there. The March 3 show found negatives in recent housing numbers and added to recession fears.
“Well, you know I wish I had better news, but the numbers this week were just horrific,” said CNN correspondent Gerri Willis. “…I don’t have happy news here,” Willis continued, saying that home prices and new-home sales were down. She mentioned that existing-home sales – a large share of the market – were up, but quickly dismissed that news.
Wastler and Willis wrapped up the housing segment playing on viewers’ fears of a recession after an up-and-down week on Wall Street. Willis said the question wasn’t simply what happens in the housing market, but in the overall economy.
“The conversation about recession this week isn’t just bad for the stock markets; it’s also bad for housing,” Willis said. “When people lose their jobs, we know what happens.”
Among the chief worries was people defaulting on high-rate mortgages. “…Mortgages and mortgage lenders are having trouble, and particularly with subprime,” Willis said. “But now the problem with subprime is so pervasive, so out there everywhere that it’s starting to affect lenders who lend to other segments of the marketplace as well.” She said people would have trouble refinancing, especially those with adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs).
Willis said banks were looking to reduce their exposure after getting heavily involved in subprime lending, but didn’t explain the market, the banks’ position and the personal responsibility behind getting an ARM.
Home buyers who don’t read the fine print have been shocked when their adjustable rates actually adjusted – and went up drastically.
As the Business & Media Institute has noted, the media have played up fears of adjustable-rate mortgages before, without emphasizing the pros and cons of mortgage buyers’ decisions. However, network news in the fall of 2006 did caution viewers to pay attention to their home buying and reminded them that foreclosure is not exactly an attractive option.
But Willis included the fear factor as she talked about folks in Detroit who walked away from their mortgages when they had trouble selling. “They’re under water completely,” she said. | <urn:uuid:31a6c301-ed17-43c5-9c8f-dd540cabbe9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mrc.org/articles/what-goes-must-come-down-cnns-money | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976206 | 555 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Music Industry Fears Apple and is also Subject to iTunes Popularity Rankings
Apple, however, was said to have a strong upper hand in the negotiations according to music executives:
In interviews, several high-level music executives, who spoke on the condition that they not be named to avoid angering Apple, said they operated in fear of Apple's removing a label's products from the iTunes store over a disagreement, even though that has never happened. The labels do not have much leverage in negotiating with Apple.Steve Jobs, himself, was reportedly responsible for a particularly heated exchange with Sony Music on Christmas eve.
Also interesting is that Apple holds another powerful bargaining chip with the control over the iTunes homepage itself as well as the popularity rankings.
"Whether the industry likes it or not, the iTunes chart showing the most popular songs in America is a major influencer of how kids today discover and communicate with their friends what kind of music they like," said Charlie Walk, the former president of Epic Records, a unit of Sony Music. "It's a very powerful thing right now in American pop culture and immediately validates a hit song."The influence of Apple's home page promotions and popularity charts has been the subject of much debate amongst App developers, but it seems Apple may be well aware of their impact. | <urn:uuid:40206a7e-e0bc-4b1f-b7c5-81dffdd58a4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/02/music-industry-fears-apple-and-are-also-subject-to-itunes-popularity-rankings/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976486 | 262 | 1.671875 | 2 |
I wrote out this detailed answer, then realized I could not CITE how much each city increase the cost of social policies. I have not yet found it in either the Manual or the Civilpedia. The only reference I found quickly is that on duel maps the increase is 30%. Since we need to know for sure to properly answer this question, I've posted a new question on exactly that.
But, rather than not answer, I post this with the qualifier: this applies best to duel maps, until we know the numbers for larger maps.
There are two basic competing forces to your question: Socical Policies cost more for each city you control, but each city you control gains you more production/gold/science. So you're trying to balance. Where is the balance?
3 or 4 Cities
That's a pretty definite answer to what would usually get an "It depends!" answer. Why?
Because each city increases the cost of social policies by 30%, for your next city to be worth it, it needs to increase the cultural output of your civilization by more than 30%.
Now lets pretend every city in your empire is the same... they'll grow into having the same food, same gold, same science, same production, and, because of all that, the same culture as well. How much does each city improve your cultural output, eventually?
City | Culture | Change
2 | 2x | +100%
3 | 3x | +50%
4 | 4x | +33%
5 | 5x | +25%
6 | 6x | +20%
Now its not looking to good for cities 5 & 6 there. All
things cities being equal, they don't add at least 30% to your civilization's culture, not even considering culture that doesn't come from cities. (like from City-states)
But, of course, cities are not equal. If you've played any Civilization game for any amount of time, you know cities are not all equal, and you know which ones are better: the earlier cities. Exceptions do occur, but you try to build cities in the best spots first don't you? That makes city number 4 look not so good either, because if city 4 is off by just a little, its a loss.
Still, if city 4 is decent, even if its a net loss, it will still probably pull a lot of its own weight so as not to be too much of a loss, and it will be a win for production, gold, & science. So build it if you have a good spot, or don't if you're happy with 3 cities. And, of course, don't build city 4 if you are going for Bollywood.
Conquer Puppet Cities
Puppet cities do not add to the cost of Social Policies, but can still add culture, when they get around to producing such buildings. Easy win! Especially good for such things as +Culture/city/turn (social policy & France). Note however, you can not achieve Bollywood with puppet cities.
City States are your Cities you don't own
I risk sounding like a broken record mentioning city-states for a cultural victory again, but I like to think about city-states in a way that relates directly to this: Each city-state is an extra in your empire, that isn't in your empire. All the benefits, none of the (normal) costs. Make friends. | <urn:uuid:5428c315-38df-4a36-ac47-3b515268c254> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/8805/how-many-cities-should-i-build-for-a-cultural-victory/10277 | 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 | 0.960992 | 710 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Quick: What do these books have in common?
The Sea Around Us. The American Way of Death. The Best and the Brightest. Dispatches. All Things Bright and Beautiful. Thy Neighbor’s Wife.
They are all bestsellers, and all, if not classics, at least milestones of popular culture from the 1950s to the 1980s. And they all lack something they certainly would have if they were published today: a subtitle.
As a publisher, there’s one moment I dread in the list-planning meetings where editors present their upcoming titles to colleagues. It’s when someone says, "We need to talk about the sub." Back in the 20th century, a subtitle might have told you the genre of a book (“A Memoir”) or supplied a setting (“Across the Pacific in a Raft.”) Today, as I'm hardly the first to observe, a subtitle often becomes an ungainly skein of phrases clattering along behind the title like tin cans on a newlyweds' limousine:
The great love affair of the Enlightenment, featuring the scientist Emilie du Châtelet, the poet Voltaire, sword fights, book burnings, assorted kings, seditious verse, and the birth of the modern world
A Season of Brawling, Boozing, Bimbo-chasing, and Championship Baseball with Straw, Doc, Mookie, Nails, The Kid, and the Rest of the 1986 Mets, the Rowdiest Team Ever to Put on a New York Uniform--and Maybe the Best
How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West
How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Self-Serving Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us…And What To Do About It
The Amazing True Story of a Missing Military Puppy and the Desperate Mission to Bring Her Home
It's as if, instead of drawing a reader to a book with indirection and allusion, we feel the need to spell out the reasons to buy it. Twenty years ago, I remember a very smart colleague of mine telling an author, "You don't have to write 'Horse' under the picture." Today, perhaps, we do.
It’s tempting to see in this a dumbing-down trend in our culture. A less jaundiced view might be that subtitle-mania simply reflects the changing marketplace for nonfiction. In the days of The Sea Around Us or Dispatches, readers could find book reviews—with a few hundred words of description—in newspapers and magazines; they might even see authors talking about books on television. Today, printed book reviews have all but disappeared, and good luck finding a non-celebrity author on a talk show. Our best shot at communicating what a book is about might be throwing it all on the jacket so that a customer—browsing in a bookstore or online or, just as likely, Googling the '86 Mets or Fred Harvey—can't fail to see it.
One fact of publishing life has not changed, from the putative golden age to the brazen present. If you’re a celebrity, you can skip a “sub” altogether, no matter how terse or idiosyncratic your main title. From Laugh and Live by Douglas Fairbanks (1915) to Reminiscences (1964) by Douglas MacArthur, from Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin (1979) to See, I Told You So (1993) by Rush Limbaugh, the more famous you are, the fewer words you need on your jacket. The ne plus ultra in this direction was the 1992 work that combined a single-name author and a single-word title in one nuclear blast of notoriety. Perhaps that’s why titles and subtitles have been getting longer and longer. After MADONNA: SEX, what less can you say?
[Many thanks to Creative Nonfiction magazine, for whom I wrote this piece and who kindly permitted me to repost it here. It appears in CNF's current issue (number 39) along with many other meatier essays. You can find the table of contents and some sample articles here.] | <urn:uuid:718af61e-c148-4baa-abfd-ac3252c882e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.doctorsyntax.net/2010_10_28_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930687 | 899 | 1.546875 | 2 |
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A regional water agency approved a contract Thursday to buy the entire output of what would be the Western Hemisphere's largest seawater desalination plant, clearing the way for construction to begin early next year.
The San Diego County Water Authority board backed the 30-year deal with Poseidon Resources LLC, which needed it to sell investors on bonds that will finance more than 80 percent of construction of the $984 million project. The plant in Carlsbad is designed to produce 50 million gallons of highly purified drinking water a day, enough to supply about 8 percent of the region in 2020.
The agency will pay $2,042 to $2,290 for an acre-foot of water, more than twice what it cost to bring water from Northern California and the Colorado River on hundreds of miles of aqueducts. But backers of the project say the premium is well worth the protection it provides against drought and predict the price differential will diminish over time. The region imports about 80 percent of its water.
"It's absolutely critical to our region's water reliability and economic stability. It's another historic step toward making us less vulnerable to drought and the severe competition for water that we import," said San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders.
The decision was being closely watched, especially in California, where the plant is the furthest along among about two dozen proposals in various stages of planning. Desalination has helped quench demand in Australia, Saudi Arabia and other countries lacking fresh water, but it has been slow to catch on in the U.S.
Peter MacLaggan, a senior vice president at Poseidon, said the Carlsbad plant would likely make it easier for other projects to get approved in California.
"We just need to look closer to home for our future resources, and this is a small toward a long-term transition," he said.
The San Diego agency, which acts as a wholesaler to 24 cities and agencies including the city of San Diego, struck a tentative deal in September with Poseidon, a Stamford, Conn.-based company that also wants to build a huge desalination plant in Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles. Since then, skeptics have questioned the cost.
Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based group that studies environmental issues, said in a report this week that San Diego should consider lowering its minimum annual purchase of 48,000 acre-feet, or enough to supply about 96,000 homes. It said large plants built in Australia over the last several years are unused in response to lower demand and cheaper alternatives. Likewise, a big plant in Tampa, Fla., that was planned during boom times in the 1990s was completed in 2007 after long delays and is operating well below capacity.
The San Diego agency estimates that the average household bill will increase $5 to $7 a month when deliveries begin in 2016. It figures the cost is comparable to other new, local sources of drinking water.
Poseidon proposed the plant in 1998 and began negotiating with potential customers shortly after the California Coastal Commission approved it in 2009, clearing the last major regulatory hurdle. The company overcame challenges from environmentalists concerned about the plant's massive electricity needs and harm to fish and other wildlife from intake filters and brine that is dumped back into the ocean.
Backers of the project averted a last-minute snag when the city of San Diego proposed shifting costs shift more costs to smaller agencies that don't have their own water treatment facilities. The board agreed to decide later on how the costs will be shared.
"I guess we're going to fight over the next couple years about how all this gets divvied up," said Mark Watton, general manager of the Otay Water District, one of only four agencies that opposed the contract, in part, because it felt the costs will prove higher than expected.
San Diego began to consider desalination in the early 1990s, when a drought led it to conclude that it needed a more diverse, reliable water supply. The agency is also considering giant desalination plants at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base and Playas de Rosarito, Mexico, just south of the U.S. border. | <urn:uuid:4b759c4a-cefd-422f-aeab-e7caacbf6f46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whas11.com/news/national/181325191.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960729 | 856 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Mobile Devices Changing Consumer Media Habits in Germany
The average mobile web user in Germany consumers 6.5 hours of media per day, with 2 hours and 5 minutes are spent on mobile devices versus only 1 hour and 25 minutes spent watching TV, according to a survey commissioned by the mobile ad agency, InMobi.
Mobile has surpassed TV and other traditional media in terms of time spent consuming media. More than half of mobile web users (64%) use their mobile device while watching TV, driving the multi-screening trend. With almost half (42%) of respondents stating mobile as either their primary or exclusive means of going online; the opportunity for advertisers to deliver relevant messaging to targeted audiences is vast.
Mobile data users are using their free or spare time on their mobile devices. Surprisingly, the research also uncovered 76% of females use their mobile device while in bed versus 65% of men.
Mobile web users typically use their mobile device in casual settings, through out the day, this includes:
- 38% use their mobile device in the bathroom
- 87% while waiting for something
- 40% while shopping
Mobile advertising driving mobile commerce
Over half of respondents (57%) find that mobile advertising has introduced them to something new, with 87% noticing mobile ads through various channels. Mobile ads are now beginning to influence in-store purchases, according to 23% of respondents. In-app ads are the most popular location where consumers identify mobile ads (64%), second to search engine ads (41%). | <urn:uuid:08acaa06-adb0-4e86-97d0-e2e38260b2f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cellular-news.com/story/56347.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937963 | 306 | 1.75 | 2 |
Will Fed move help LI housing?
That was the consensus of local real estate experts in the wake of the Fed's announcement that it would extend "Operation Twist," a program that aims to encourage borrowing and spending, through the end of this year.
The Fed also reiterated that it would keep short-term rates at historic lows until at least late 2014.
The outlook for U.S. growth has worsened, according to the Fed. The central bank now thinks the economy will grow no more than 2.4 percent this year, down from its prediction in April that the economy could grow up to 2.9 percent. And it thinks the unemployment rate, now 8.2 percent, won't fall much further in 2012.
Through Operation Twist, the Fed has been selling $400 billion in short-term Treasurys since September and buying longer-term Treasurys. It said it will extend the program through December using $267 billion in securities.
But extending the program might not provide much benefit. Long-term U.S. rates have already hit record lows.
Operation Twist could decrease mortgage rates by 0.10 to 0.20 percentage points, predicted Irwin Kellner, chief economist with MarketWatch .com, a financial news website based in Port Washington.
"That should help the Long Island housing market, which is in the process now of bottoming out," Kellner said. "The issue before us is not whether rates are low enough but rather whether people have the confidence to borrow and whether banks are willing to lend money."
Increasing consolidation in the banking industry means a few powerful players can impose standards that may have become too strict, said Michael McHugh, owner of Continental Home Loans in Melville and president of the Empire State Mortgage Bankers Association.
"Maybe it's gone overboard, where good loans are not getting a fair shot of being done," he said.
As for mortgage rates, McHugh predicted they would remain unchanged.
Even if rates don't fall by much or at all, the extension of current low rates through 2014 will help the local housing market, since working through the Island's backlog of foreclosed homes is likely to take 18 months, said Richard Guardino Jr., executive dean of Hofstra University's real estate center.
"As we work off that inventory, the market will start to rise and people will still be able to get mortgages at exceptionally low rates," he said.
With The Associated Press | <urn:uuid:c4d8afbd-3292-4378-8da9-960969f9b903> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsday.com/business/will-fed-move-help-li-housing-1.3794293?qr=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970185 | 502 | 1.796875 | 2 |
LiveScience has a spectacularly bad article that covers the toxicology results of Rudy Eugene, the ‘Miami cannibal’ who was immediately labelled as being high on ‘bath salts‘ and was predictably, not high on bath salts.
But don’t let the Parp! Parp! Clown Taxi notion of drugs causing cannibalism put you off from suggesting that drugs cause cannibalism because the article makes a point of carefully considering which substances were responsible for the face eating.
Eugene tested positive for marijuana. Could that have been the cause? Definitely not says the article.
“Some people have said, ‘Well, it must have been the marijuana that triggered Eugene’s behavior.’ That, in my opinion, is outrageous, and out of the question. Marijuana will not cause this type of behavior,” said Dr. Bruce Goldberger, professor and director of toxicology at the University of Florida.
Goldberger said that although a significant amount of research has found a link between marijuana use and the onset of schizophrenia or psychosis in at-risk individuals, this isn’t what happened to Eugene. “This behavior exhibited by Eugene is well beyond the scope of someone suffering from acute psychosis,” he told Life’s Little Mysteries. [Could Cannibalism Solve a Future Food Shortage?]
The ‘Could Cannibalism Solve a Future Food Shortage?’ link is genuinely in the original article by the way, presumably inserted by an automatic algorithm with an unintentional genius for badly timed inappropriate humour.
But one of the major points of the article is to report the toxicology results which found no evidence for ‘bath salts’ drugs in Eugene’s body.
Conclusion: the cannibalism was caused by bath salts. Secret bath salts. That no-one can detect yet.
There’s probably a cognitive bias that leads people to believe in impossible causal mechanisms in the face of evidence that all but rules out the presence of the supposed trigger – but I’m damned if I can find it.
Hang on. I think it’s called the Living Elvis Makes Me Girlfriends Out of Gatorade bias. | <urn:uuid:c9323eb0-2bc4-4d6e-bba2-3bd4465f30d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mindhacks.com/2012/06/29/feed-your-head/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946056 | 457 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Join us in welcoming Monica Lee and Megumi Inouye as they share unique gift-wrapping techniques using repurposed and found materials. Just in time for the holidays Monica and Megumi have treasures of ideas for gift-wrapping inspired by SCRAP materials. Participants will learn simple and easy to master techniques that will come in handy for any gift giving occasion. Transform toilet paper tubes, bottle caps, twine, buttons and scraps of fabric into elegant and exciting designs to present your packages and gifts. You will never look at gift-wrapping the same way again!
About Monica and Megumi
Megumi Inouye is known for her exquisite and unique gift-wrapping using repurposed, found, and organic material. In 2008 Megumi was named Runner Up Finalist in a national gift-wrapping contest: The America’s Most Gifted Wrapper Contest sponsored by 3M Scotch Brand in NYC. Following the contest Megumi appeared on the Ellen Degeneres Show with a Wrap Off with Ellen!
Monica Lee has been a professional photographer for 30 years, a life long crafter and a long time SCRAP shopper. Monica loves re-creating and teaching workshops from found and re-purposed materials.
Together Megumi and Monica have spent the last decade volunteering in San Francisco public schools doing fundraising and classroom art projects. Last December they flew to NYC to put on a charity Gift Wrap event at the Felissimo Design House. Most recently they worked on the Japan American Grassroots Summit alongside Dorothy Yuki bringing 250 people from Japan for a cultural exchange to the Bay Area. SCRAP was a supporter of the event and provided materials for their creative reuse art projects. | <urn:uuid:0fc7517b-c9e0-433b-b765-e5b8f0a792bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scrap-sf.org/workshop-scrap-wrap-w-megumi-inouye-monica-lee | 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 | 0.936027 | 350 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Out There is a monthly segment from WTIP volunteer and commentator Shelby Gonzalez.
Lake Superior diver Mark Wick tells stories of steamship America, which sank off Isle Royale nearly 100 years ago-
Matthew Brown visited with diver Mark Wick Oct. 26 about the steamship America. His third cousin was first mate on the ship when it sank off Isle Royale after hitting a submerged reef; everyone aboard was saved. The wreck is a popular dive site today, as it is in fairly protected water, and the bow is just a few feet from the surface. Mark speaks at this year's Gales of November conference in Duluth, Nov. 2 & 3.
Not so long ago, northern Minnesota forests offered endless room to roam.
Deane Morrison is a science writer at the University of Minnesota, where she authors the Minnesota Starwatch column.
In the world of television hunting shows, the hero always gets his deer. Most often we see footage of the mighty stag prancing around near the hunter’s stand like a cow in a pasture.
Why is Antarctic ice growing if the planet is warming? Scientist from Nat'l. Snow & Ice Data Center explains-
Walt Meier, research scientist at the National Snow & Ice Data Center at the U of CO, Boulder, joined Buck Oct. 12 to help explain how it is that ice cover in Antarctica is growing, even as Arctic ice is melting and the planet is warming.
Otters are painting at the Great Lakes Aquarium! Bob chatted recently with Tara Lieberg, otter keeper at the aquarium in Duluth, about how the otters, Zhoosh & Anang, are making art with childrens' finger paints. Their paintings are for sale at the aquarium and online. | <urn:uuid:2f3c7e9f-1106-4db5-b737-c223de4fb62a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtip.org/drupal/taxonomy/type/346?page=8 | 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 | 0.948986 | 358 | 1.53125 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate committee investigating the deadly outbreak of meningitis wants to know how regulators in all 50 states oversee specialty pharmacies like the one that triggered the illness.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions sent letters Monday to all 50 state boards of pharmacy, seeking details about their oversight of compounding pharmacies.
Contaminated injections from the New England Compounding Center have been blamed for an outbreak of fungal meningitis that has killed 34 people and sickened 490.
Compounding pharmacies, which mix customized medications based on doctors' instructions, are traditionally overseen by state pharmacy boards. But larger compounders like the NECC have emerged in the last two decades, mass-producing thousands of vials of drugs that are often shipped nationwide. That trend has prompted calls for more federal oversight by the Food and Drug Administration.
The NECC shipped more than 17,600 doses of a pain injection to 23 states. Public health officials later identified fungal contamination in two of the lots.
An investigative report issued by the Senate last week concluded that both state and federal regulators missed multiple opportunities to shut down NECC over more than a decade of problematic operations.
"Bureaucratic inertia appears to be what allowed a bad actor to repeatedly risk public health," the report states.
The committee's letter asks state pharmacy boards key questions that might help spot companies like the NECC:
The meningitis outbreak has reignited long-standing questions about who should be responsible for overseeing large compounding pharmacies.
All pharmacies, including compounding pharmacies, have long been regulated by state pharmacy boards, many of which date back to the 19th century. The 1938 law which created the FDA excluded compounding pharmacies and gave the agency power to regulate drug manufacturers.
But in the 1990s, FDA regulators began to more closely scrutinize compounding pharmacies, as some grew into large businesses that resembled manufacturers. However, efforts by FDA to regulate pharmacies have been repeatedly challenged in court.
At congressional hearings last week, the head of the FDA asked lawmakers to draft new laws that would give the agency direct authority over large compounders.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read the original story: Senate questions pharmacy boards after meningitis cases | <urn:uuid:bd29b277-106b-4eab-9c49-219f9a7e35e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marshfieldnewsherald.com/usatoday/article/1715701?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959583 | 475 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Coming Soon: Dems Climate and Energy Plan
Democratic Senators will discuss the prospects for climate and energy legislation at today's caucus lunch, a topic that was also on the agenda during last week's meeting, which ended before lawmakers could actually debate policy. Today's sessions is expected to provide guidance for what a package of energy and oil-spill related measures might look like. Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he expects to begin debate on the legislation after the July 4 recess.
Ahead of the meeting, 64 state and national environmental groups issued a joint statement to senators calling for the bill to include a cap on carbon dioxide, which remains one of the biggest questions on the package:
Thursday's caucus meeting will be a milestone in the effort to transition America to clean energy and finally address the dangers of carbon pollution. We expect our environmental allies – and all Senators who want to cut America's addiction to imported oil, create jobs, and reduce pollution – to speak out strongly for a truly comprehensive clean energy and climate bill.
With millions of gallons spilled in the Gulf of Mexico and a billion dollars a day going overseas for imported oil, we can no longer afford to delay our transition to clean energy. As President Obama told the nation last Tuesday night, "For decades we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires" and we must not "settle for the paltry limits of conventional wisdom." The time has come to act.
The League of Conservation Voters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Sierra Club, and VoteVets.org Action Fund also announced an $11 million campaign on Thursday to push for comprehensive climate and energy action. The ads will start running next week, targeting key senators from both parties, the groups said.
The caucus meeting is supposed to end around 2 p.m.; I'll have more after that. | <urn:uuid:fe58d970-9d7d-4839-b579-247f323e182c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/coming-soon-dems-climate-and-energy-plan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954586 | 376 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Rays Touch Tank presented by the Florida Aquarium, is the first of its kind at a professional sports venue. The 35-foot, 10,000 gallon tank is located just beyond the right-center field fence at Tropicana Field. The Rays Touch Tank experience is free to all fans attending home games.
This unique fan experience has been created through a partnership with the Florida Aquarium. The rays were caught in the waters of Tampa Bay and have been cared for by the Florida Aquarium staff since. The Florida Aquarium staff continues that role while the rays are at Tropicana Field.
"This is a community partnership that creates a win for all of the parties involved," said Rays President Matt Silverman. "It not only gives our fans, particularly families, an experience unlike any other at a Major League ballpark, but also creates awareness for the Florida Aquarium, a Tampa Bay landmark and non-profit institution that provides cultural enrichment and education to our community."
"We felt this opportunity with the Rays would not only add to the entertainment value of fans attending their games, but also help broaden the educational outreach of the Florida Aquarium," said Thom Stork, CEO of the Florida Aquarium. "Sure, people will enjoy seeing and feeding the rays while attending the game, but they will also learn about these interesting animals and possibly want to see more exotic and interesting fish available to them here."
For every ball hit into the tank during a game by a Rays player, the Rays will donate $5,000 to charity with $2,500 going to the Florida Aquarium and $2,500 going to that player's charity of choice.
To make it most convenient for all fans, there is a limit of 50 people in the tank area at any time. Fans may purchase Ray food with the proceeds going to the Florida Aquarium and the team's charitable foundation. | <urn:uuid:1528abff-2746-4488-9eb4-c91441d4ccb0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/tb/ballpark/information/index.jsp?content=rays_tank | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964474 | 382 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Oil & Gas Companies Worry Most About Volatile Energy Prices, Regulatory Compliance and Environmental Risks
June 22nd, 2012
67% Worry that Ever-Increasing Energy Prices Could Negatively Impact their Business
Respondents Also Feel that Oil & Gas Will Remain Leading North American
Energy Source for Years to Come
FREDERICTON, New Brunswick – April 17, 2012 – Remsoft, a leading provider of asset optimization and supply chain analytics solutions, recently announced the findings of a survey of executives that manage upstream oil and gas analysis and planning operations for their organizations.
The most interesting finding of the research was that volatile energy prices was the single potential risk that worried oil & gas companies most. With the ability to affect almost every aspect of an oil & gas company’s business—from exploration to drilling to shipping—it is no surprise that 67% of respondents cited energy prices as their biggest potential risk.
In addition to energy prices, respondents cited regulatory compliance and environmental issues as the next potential risks that worried them the most. Some 54% of respondents felt that regulatory compliance problems could drive their business off-track, while 51% worried that environmental risks would hurt their company. Political upheaval and safety rounded out the top five.
Just over half of the respondents (54%) are using technology, such as predictive analytics or advanced planning and modeling software, to help them analyze and manage these risks for their businesses. By doing this, they are able to be better prepared to navigate the business through a troubling issue if/when one arises. Not surprisingly, there is an almost exact match between what respondents are most worried about risk-wise—and what they are actually measuring and analyzing in their everyday lives.
Environmental risks are what respondents analyze most often, with 77% modeling these. That was closely followed by 76% of respondents looking at potential outcomes of rising energy prices and 72% planning for potential problems with regulatory compliance.
"Risk management has become an integral part of running a modern business. With budgets planned out exactly and resources stretched as far as they can go, companies need to verify they have factored in all possible situations, outcomes and consequences when making critical business decisions,” said Andrea Feunekes, co-CEO of Remsoft. "The fact that volatile and regularly changing risk factors such as energy prices or the environment are at the top of the oil & gas industry’s most worried about risks is not surprising."
Of those oil & gas companies still considering whether or not to use a technology solution to analyze risks, 53% are worried about volatile energy prices and the same (53%) are worried about regulatory compliance issues. Those evaluating technology solutions are also concerned about the potential for technology failure (46%)—and are more concerned about that than environmental risks or safety issues, both at 33%.
In addition to which risks respondents were most worried about and were already analyzing, the survey looked at several other issues of importance to those in the oil & gas industry. Some of those responses included:
Managing Risk is of Growing Importance to Industry Executives
- Respondents felt strongly that the number and nature of the risks/constraints on their businesses is of increasing concern (71%).
- Security of supply is very important to oil & gas companies. In fact, 81% of respondents feel that securing energy will increase in importance over the next decade.
Energy Sources Impact Decisions Across the Oil & Gas Industry
- 64% of oil & gas companies feel that oil & gas will remain North America’s primary energy source for the next 50 years or more.
- 66% of these executives also feel that alternative or renewable energy sources will make up 10% or less of North America’s energy in the next decade. It should be noted that even 10% of the continent’s energy coming from alternative fuels is still a major increase over how much has previously been the result of alternative fuels.
- Oil & gas companies are fully behind Tar Sands oil recovery projects. When asked about the environmental risks of the process, 54% of respondents felt the risks were significant, but that they could be managed—while another 26% felt that the risks were only minimal.
- Respondents were even more hopeful of Shale Gas recovery’s prospects. Some 40% felt the risks associated with the process were significant but manageable; while another 26% felt that the risks were only minimal.
The Oil & Gas Industry Expects Future Growth
- Respondents (45%) also feel that the price of oil will continue to rise and will hit $150 a barrel or more in the next decade.
- Oil & gas executives were also very hopeful that the economy would continue to recover and that their companies would be increasing their employment levels in the next 3-5 years. 78% expected employment levels to increase—with almost 30% of that group feeling that employment would increase “significantly.”
As a provider of advanced analytics, modeling and spatial planning solutions, Remsoft helps companies in industries such as forestry, oil & gas and transportation analyze and plan for the potential risks that could befall their companies. By using Remsoft’s optimization technology to review all potential decisions and “what if” situations, customers can make the most of their assets and ensure that there are fewer surprises, no matter the situation.
In the first quarter of 2012, executives were queried about their risk management practices, how (or if) they analyzed potentially detrimental situations and about general industry issues. A majority of respondents had mining and drilling operations located in the United States (79%) and Canada (20%).
For an overview of the SURVEY RESULTS, or for more information email [email protected].
Remsoft provides asset optimization and supply chain analytics solutions that empower executives to maximize the performance and value of land-based and infrastructure assets. Through advanced analytics, modeling and spatial planning technology, Remsoft simplifies complex, high-variable decisions to fuel long-term sustainability. Hundreds of organizations worldwide utilize Remsoft software to make the most of their resources and assets.
For more information, please visit www.remsoft.com.
# # #
506 450-1511, ext. 231 | <urn:uuid:ba40aae2-9226-431f-8b2b-234fe426eb85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.remsoft.com/news.php?id=133 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965653 | 1,276 | 1.710938 | 2 |
"We need to explain something about rap. People always say we've adopted a Western style of music.
Of course, our music has its roots in America's current hip hop. But rap is rhythm and poetry. Poetry is an Arab creation. It started in pre-Islamic times.
Arabs used to meet in the market and play tambourine. They used to improvise, just as Eminem does.
This all happened both before Islam and thereafter. Some of the world's best poets are Arabs, such as al-Mutannabi and Ahmed Shawqi.
The only difference is that we sing this poetry to music.
Our music is not Western. It has Arabic rhythms. We sing in Arabic and sometimes in English so that our music reaches people in the West and corrects the wrong idea they have about us.
I began rapping in 1999 in English with a band called Mad Skills Empire. Then I met Sphinx and E-Money, and I started to write lyrics in Arabic.
I wanted to express in my own language the daily life of people around me. Not only in Egypt, but in the entire Arab world because I grew up in several places there. Then came the idea of incorporating the theme of Arab unity into our music.
This was the seed from which Arabian Knightz was born. And also what is called the Arab League which includes Arabian Knightz, MC Amin and other rappers from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Morocco, the Gulf, and from the entire Arab world.
As much as we try to reflect the state of our society, we also try to solve our problems in the Arab world. We try to portray the real Arab character to counter the false image presented in propaganda to the West. We try to bridge the gap."
"I'm MC Amin, from Mansoura. I represent Egypt. I try to explain what's happening in our life, to our people. We sing about the reality of our problems and our lives."
When I started singing,
I erased a lot of people in my life.
I don't need to say anything, it's clear.
When you listen to me, you'll like me.
Listen to my madness.
It's difficult to catch me, so leave me.
This is how I was raised.
It's difficult for me to change.
Let's have peace as life is short.
In my music, you'll see your life.
No one can hurt me as long as my people trust me.
"I'm Sphinx from Arabian Knightz. I came to Egypt on a vacation. And I met with the guys. Somebody was telling me about Arabic hiphop and I didn't want to believe the situation. I didn't really think that it could happen. But when I heard the guys I saw something different in the hiphop that was going on here in Egypt and in the Middle East in general.
It was pure still, it wasn't corrupt by the money and the bling bling and the girls and whatever nonsense else that it's flooded with in the industry, in the hiphop out in the States. I saw it still in its pure form like where and when it started back in the day, with Public Enemy [...], just hiphop from where it started and why hiphop came out, political content and what was being said.
And besides that the Middle East right now needs a voice because the point of view of the Middle East generation of today needs to be heard, because what's going on outside of the Middle East is just propaganda about us when the story should be heard from the people who are actually living the lives. So we try to give that mirror to the rest of the world."
Next Music Station airs at the following times GMT each week: Tuesday: 2000; Wednesday: 1200; Thursday: 0100; Friday: 0600; Saturday: 2000; Sunday: 1200; Monday: 0100; Tuesday: 0600.
Click here for more on the series. | <urn:uuid:e9bf0c63-6175-48de-94cb-dea907e292be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/nextmusicstation/2011/05/201155163245495844.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975244 | 827 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Tom Donohue, has gone from a well respected trade organization to an extremist political organization dedicated to corrupting American democracy by elevating the profits of big corporations over the well being of the citizens they serve. Recent examples of this corrupt behavior is the Chamber's spending of more than $100 million to defeat initiatives to protect the environment and provide affordable health care to everyone, and its massive attacks on democracy through the use of secret money in the 2010 election.
The Chamber is the biggest lobbying operation in the United States, spending billions of dollars on behalf of big business over the past decade to corrupt the political system. Polluters like Big Coal, Big Asbestos, and Big Oil only need call the Chamber to stop any accountability for their toxic destruction. Wall Street banks and CEOs need only make sure that they have paid their Chamber dues to ensure that they can continue to rip off the taxpayers. And killers like Big Tobacco need only form a partnership with the Chamber to ensure that they will be given immunity from lawsuits that seek accountability for the death and sickness of millions of Americans.
Tom Donohue has turned the once respected and even-handed Chamber into an extremist organization, bragging that the Chamber gutted the Clinton tobacco settlement, killed the Clinton health care plan, and scuttled previous oversight of Wall Street and the banking system. Now the Chamber is spending tens of millions on ads and lobbyists to repeal health care for all, protect polluters from accountability, and shield the financial industry from government regulation.
Sign On To This Campaign. Sign on to this campaign and your name will be added to the thousands who have complained about the conduct of the Chamber. We will send this letter letter to all the members of the Chamber board and others asking that they quit and condemn the Chamber.
Sign on to the campaign here
-By Bryce Covert
May 7, 2013- The factory collapse in Bangladesh has now claimed upward of 700 lives, making it the worst industrial disaster in Bangladesh and the most deadly one in the history of the garment industry. As has been widely reported, workers were hesitant to enter the building on the day of the collapse due to visible cracks in the building.
Since the disaster, many have urged large retail corporations to upgrade the working conditions in the factories from which they source their products. Three hundred large companies had previously refused to sign a pledge to do so before the collapse, citing costs. The need for low prices and fast production is driven in large part by American demand for cheap clothing. So how much would clothing prices rise for the average consumer if all of the costs of upgrading Bangladesh factories were passed on to them?
-By Mark Karlin
April 26, 2013- Marc Mauer is the executive director of The Sentencing Project, and the author of "Race to Incarcerate", which has just been released in graphic format, illustrated by Sabrina Jones, as "Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling" (The New Press).
Mauer's knowledge about the prison-industrial complex in the United States - which has the highest percentage of incarcerated individuals in the world - is extensive. "Race to Incarcerate" is considered a landmark indictment of a system that locks the poor and minorities up with abandon, while largely neglecting support systems for reintegration back to society.
Furthermore, a large percentage of US prisoners are jailed for nonviolent drug "crimes," and they are largely black and Latino males. This creates a perpetual cycle of incarceration and re-incarceration for what one could argue are largely crimes of economic need or committed in environments where the only hope lies in drug use. And the imprisonment is at great cost to the American taxpayer, with funds that could be better spent improving the job prospects of those who are commodities for the prison-industrial complex.
-By Richard Eskow
April 21, 2013- Corporate interests and their elected representatives have created a world of illusion in order to resist paying a decent wage to working Americans. They'd have us believe that minimum-wage workers are teens from '50s TV sitcoms working down at the local malt shoppe.
It's a retro-fantasy where corporate stinginess creates minority jobs, working parents can't possibly be impoverished, and nobody gets hurt except kids who drive dad's convertible and top up their allowances with a minimum-wage job slinging burgers.
But then, you probably need to resort to fantasy arguments when you're arguing against a minimum-wage increase supported by nearly three-quarters of the voting public. That's also why it's important to demand that Congress allow an up-or-down vote on the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise it to $10.10 and then index it to inflation.
Here's the truth: Most minimum-wage workers are adults, the majority of them are women, and many are parents who are trying to raise their children on poverty wages.
-By Lynne Tuohy
April 9, 2013- A jury in New Hampshire has ordered Exxon Mobil to pay $236 million in damages after finding the oil giant liable in a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination by the gasoline additive MTBE.
Jurors sat through nearly three months of testimony in the longest state trial in New Hampshire history, but deliberated for only 90 minutes on Tuesday.
The state sought $236 million to monitor and remediate groundwater contaminated by MTBE — which travels farther and faster in groundwater than gasoline without the additive.
Addicting Info: Bank Of America Wrongfully Foreclosed On Service Members: Will Now Pay In The Millions
-By Lorraine Devon Wilke
April 8, 2013- It’s been a long slog for a group of service members fighting to keep their homes while serving in the military of this great United States. Between the years of 2006 and 2010, a particular group of over 300 military members were served foreclosure notices, resulting in the accrual of greater debt, home equity lost, and the general stress of wondering if one’s home was going to be pulled out from under them while on active military duty.
The Justice Department didn’t like the sound of what was going on and got involved and in 2011, a settlement was reached with Bank of America to compensate 142 of those military members for wrongful foreclosures. A win, certainly, but the investigation continued and after the Bank of America handed over information about additional foreclosures made between mid-2009 and 2010, it became clear that 155 more service members had been impacted. The Justice Department added these parties to the settlement, making the amount Bank of America (and to a lesser extent, Morgan Stanley) will pay out for illegally foreclosing on 300+ service members the robust amount of $36.8 million. From Reuters:
The battle for food sovereignty is a battle we cannot afford to lose.
-By Ronnie Cummins & Katherine Paul
April 8, 2013- Big Food’s greatest fear is materializing. A critical mass of educated consumers, food and natural health activists are organizing a powerful movement that could well overthrow North America’s trillion-dollar junk food empire. Savvy and more determined than ever, activists are zeroing in on the Achilles heel of Food Inc. -- labeling.
But as consumers demand truth and greater transparency in labeling, it isn’t just Big Food whose empire is vulnerable. The biotech industry, which makes billions supplying junk food manufacturers with cheap, genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, has even more to lose. Monsanto knows that if food producers are forced to label the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food products, they’ll reformulate those products to meet consumer demand for GMO-free alternatives. That’s why companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow, along with Coca-Cola and Pepsi, last year spent more than $46 million to defeat Proposition 37, California’s GMO labeling initiative.
-By Stephen C. Webster
April 7, 2013- Activists with the group Tar Sands Blockade published new videos on Sunday showing oil from the Arkansas pipeline rupture purportedly diverted from a residential neighborhood into a wetland area to keep it out sight and, most importantly, out of the media.
While it’s not clear if the oil was intentionally moved into the wetland, the company says it is cleaning pavement with power washing devices, which could cause some of the oil to be pushed off neighborhood streets and into other areas.
A letter sent by ExxonMobil to residents of Mayflower on March 31 claims the oil did not reach Lake Conway. | <urn:uuid:fe2159fa-353f-47a6-b049-46b42d56724c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.velvetrevolution.us/stop_chamber2/index.php?q=node | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955627 | 1,751 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Her son’s Bris.
A friend of ours helped arrange for a bris at the house, because we couldn’t go [to a hospital for the procedure]. The mohel [a person trained in the practice] came to us. You have never seen adults more panicked about what was about to happen to their son, but the celebration and the amount of love we felt and the pride in the little man whom we love so, so much became the greatest moment I have ever had in my life.
A bris is not the same thing as a regular circumcision. It is a religious ceremony within Judaism to welcome infant Jewish boys into a covenant between God and the Children of Israel through ritual circumcision performed by a mohel.
Is Sandra Bullock Jewish? My sources (i.e. Google search results) tell me probably not. And I’m guessing from the photo that little Louis isn’t either.
So the question is: why on Earth would she decide to give her son a Jewish tip-off?
Perhaps the answer is found in this article on the phenomenon of non-Jewish Brit Milahs.
When his son was born, Reverend Louis DeCaro Jr. was dismayed to learn that none of the doctors on call at Manhattan’s Allen Pavilion hospital had time to perform the circumcision. At a loss, the DeCaros turned for advice to their Manhattan pediatrician, Andrew Mutnick, who offered a simple solution: Hire a Jewish ritual circumciser, known as a mohel.
Mutnick put the family in touch with Cantor Philip Sherman, an Orthodox mohel working in the tri-state area. Sherman says he has performed more than 18,000 circumcisions in his 30-year career. There were no piles of bagels and lox waiting in the next room, no family members on hand to celebrate, but the DeCaros developed an admiration for the ancient tradition informing Sherman’s work.
“When [a circumcision] is done by a mohel, you appreciate the gravity, the beauty of the religious connotations,” DeCaro said in an interview with the Forward.
Although commonly recognized as performers of the brith milah, or Jewish circumcision, an increasing number of mohels are finding themselves handling the rituals for non-Jewish babies (even when, as in the DeCaros’ case, the father happens to be an ordained minister). Sherman, 51, may be one of the most prolific circumcisers in the tri-state area, but others — including Emily Blake in New York and Joel Shoulson in Philadelphia — have also found their services called upon by non-Jewish families. While it’s not clear exactly how many mohels offer nonritual circumcisions, the practice is, according to Shoulson — an Orthodox-trained mohel who has circumcised Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists and Hindus during his 50-year career — very widespread.
“Almost everybody else does it,” he said.
According to Blake and Shoulson, non-Jews make up between 2% and 5% of their clientele. Some, like the DeCaros, are motivated initially by practical circumstances, but others seem drawn to the mohels for spiritual reasons, if not explicitly religious ones. Both Blake and Sherman have even been approached by “Torah-observant Christians” — those dedicated to observing Old Testament commandments — seeking to have their sons circumcised on the eighth day after the birth. In all cases, families say they are drawn to the intimacy and convenience of a nonritual circumcision performed at home.
Manhattan pediatrician Susan Levitsky makes a point of recommending non-Jewish patients to mohels. Levitsky said she’s been passing out Sherman’s number more often these days, because concerns over hospital-bred infections are rising. “Why would you want to be around an environment with germs?” she asked.
That’s precisely the question posed at www.holisticcircumcision.com, a site that Sherman set up for non-Jewish parents. On it, he describes a “quicker, gentler, and more humane” circumcision carried out without the use of “drugs, injections or creams” (he suggests sugar water or wine) in an environment that’s “spiritual and meaningful” instead of “clinical and cold.”
Certain families have been won over by this nonritual gospel, despite the added cost.
While fees for hospital circumcisions are absorbed by the family’s health insurance, mohels charge between $700 and $750 for circumcisions performed in the New York area.
Two months ago, Nate Sadeghi-Nejad and his wife, Janine Foeller, were denied a circumcision at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital because of a staph outbreak. After the first mohel the couple contacted refused to operate because they weren’t Jewish, Foeller’s postpartum doula gave them Sherman’s number.
Their son’s circumcision was a success. Foeller was comforted that Sherman used sugar water as a mild anesthesia instead of a topical pain reliever, while her husband — who worried about the “see one, do one, teach one” circumcision practices at hospitals — was impressed by Sherman’s know-how. “I’m a firm believer that any procedure, minor or major, should be done by the person who does it the most,” he said.
Mohels aren’t always second choices. Nearly two years ago, Jeannie Noth Gaffigan and Jim Gaffigan gave birth to their first son at home through the assistance of a nurse-midwife. Though the decision to circumcise wasn’t a religious one, as Catholics the Gaffigans wanted more than a simple medical procedure. “We felt a mohel would lend a high level of dignity and significance to this very important moment in our lives,” Noth Gaffigan said in an e-mail to the Forward.
Blake, 52, arrived at a house packed with food, drink and family — a gathering that, were it not for the priest in the corner, would have looked like nothing less than a Jewish bris. While James waited for his big moment — his gauze pacifier soaked in sugar and Manischewitz — Jeannie read a passage from the New Testament describing Mary and Joseph dedicating the infant Jesus to God. After this, the priest gave a common Catholic benediction, known in Judaism as the Priestly Blessing, followed by Blake’s rendition in Hebrew.
Noth Gaffigan attributed the evening’s success to its cooperative efforts. “The fact that there was a priest and a mohel giving blessings side by side was such a celebration of unity in what can be a very divided culture,” Noth Gaffigan said.
As a former obstetrician/gynecologist, Blake said she saw her work as a commitment to her patients as well as to her own faith. “I feel a calling to be a mohel; I feel a calling to do God’s work on Earth,” she told the Forward. “But I feel a human calling to do a good job for anyone I’m doing a surgery for.”
Alternatively, she is getting back at her soon-to-be-ex husband who seems to have a thing for Nazis.
And Nazi skanks.
Whatever the reason, mazal tov Sandra and Louis!
About the AuthorAn Australian immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave has been blogging since early 2003.
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The Italian village of Vernazza is located in the region of Cinque Terre, and the province of La Spezia. Vernazza allows no automobile traffic inside its city limits, and provides a parking lot at the edge of town for the convenience of those who live here and own a car, or who have rented a car during their trip to Italy. Vernazza is considered to be the most authentic of fishing villages that is located in this area, known as the Italian Riviera. Though small, Vernazza has many attractions that will be of interest to visitors. There are cheap hotels in Vernazza, but they look expensive. EasyToBook.com can save you an unbelievable amount on a sweet hotel room that will please you greatly.
Attractions in Vernazza include the wonderful beach that is located in the protected part of the Vernazza harbor. Water sports are very popular here. The Church of Santa Margherita d’Antiochia that dates back to 1318 is a classic example of Italian architecture. Originally constructed as a protection from pirates for the citizens of Vernazza, Doria Castle was built during the 15th century. The Shrine of Santuario di Nostra Signora di Reggio, which is located on the hill that overlooks Vernazza is an attraction that you will long remember. The view from the shrine is amazing. There are discount hotels in Vernazza that are steps away from some of these attractions.
Please provide this reference number to our customer service center representative on request, so we can help you better | <urn:uuid:3872d9ab-af2d-4b27-82e4-5c108c057996> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.easytobook.com/en/italy/la-spezia/vernazza-hotels/?currency=DKK | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973639 | 324 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Keep in mind that "buttercream" covers an awful lot of area, ranging from the simple cold-process buttercream that's been on the back of the C&H powdered sugar box since before most of us were born (my choice), to complex recipes involving eggs, simple syrup, and lots of whipping.
Also, keep in mind that there's no law that says you have to practice on real cakes.
Last April, when I was trying to work out the right consistency for writing on the nearly-vertical sides of an unfrosted Bundt pound cake (my father's birthday cake), I used the heels of a loaf of bread: they were a fair approximation of an unfrosted cake crust.
If I were a complete beginner, and needed to get to know and love a piping bag, I'd do what all the experts seem to be saying: practice on an inverted cake pan, then scrape it off, and put it back in the piping bag.
If you want to try edible printing, I suggest you find someone who does it, and sells unmounted images, and that you start with an image that's less than a full sheet, so you can have it printed at least 2-up on the sheet. This gives you a spare, in case you have to scrape it off and start over. It's not just for photographs; anything that's too complicated or too precise to hand-pipe is a good candidate. | <urn:uuid:1151e839-eecc-4316-a393-0cf621e42407> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cakecentral.com/t/754333/new-to-cake-decorating | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980491 | 296 | 1.515625 | 2 |
ABSTRACT: Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the leading causes of death for compensated chronic liver disease.
The evaluation of technical success as primary ablation rate, local tumor progression, safety, and long--term patients outcome of radiofrequency ablation in single (less than 3.5 cm in diameter) or multiple nodules (up to 3, sized less than 3 cm) of hepatocellular carcinoma associated to chronic liver disease without cirrhosis. MATERIALS AND METHods: 25 consecutive patients, mainly chronic hepatitis C, with surgical unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma due to comorbidity or tumor location recruited from a local sonographic screening, were treated.
Primary ablation was obtained in 96% of patients (24 out of 25) and in 93 % of nodules (27 out of 29). 1, 3, and 5-year local tumor progression rates after treatment were 4, 14, and 14%. Survival rates at 1,3, and 5-year were 92, 72, and 64%. No treatment-related deaths and severe complications were recorded.Conclusions. Radiofrequency ablation is effective with 96% of primary ablation with few tumoral recurrence and limited morbidity in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma associated with chronic liver disease without cirrhosis, it could represent a valid alternative treatment whenever surgical therapy is not safe.
International journal of medical sciences 02/2008; 5(6):327-32. · 2.24 Impact Factor
ABSTRACT: Gallbladder polyps represent a frequent and asymptomatic finding on abdominal sonography. We describe the ultrasound features of an asymptomatic 13-mm gallbladder polyp in a 29-year-old male. Video-laparoscopic cholecystectomy was performed, and histological examination of the lesion revealed a severely dysplastic tubular adenoma and chronic cholecystitis. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a gallbladder polyp already presenting severe dysplasia in a young Caucasian male without risk factors.
Recenti progressi in medicina 11/2007; 98(10):506-8.
ABSTRACT: Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the leading causes of death for cirrhosis, and patients are often not eligible for surgery. To evaluate the effectiveness of radiofrequency ablation in single (less than 3.5cm in diameter) or multiple nodules (up to 3, sized less than 3cm) in respect of acceptability, applicability, primary ablation rate, local recurrence, complications, and long-term patients outcome.
184 hepatic nodules detected in 156 consecutive patients recruited from a local sonographic screening were treated. In 10.2% of patients under study, a laparoscopic or laparotomy guided technique was preferred to the percutaneous approach. Overall and tumor-free survivals were estimated by Kaplan-Meier method. For the multivariate analysis, the hazard ratios and their 95 percent confidence intervals were computed by Cox model regression analysis.
No treatment-related deaths and a severe complication rate of 3.2% were recorded. Primary complete ablation was obtained in 83.7% of nodules (87.1% of patients), and in a significantly higher rate for nodules up to 2cm (91.3%; p<0.013). Acceptability was 100%, and eligibility was very high (156 out of 160 cases). Local recurrence rate at 1 and 3 years was 10% and 25% respectively. The overall 3- and 5-year survival rates after treatment were 69.3% and 34.6%. Higher survival rates were obtained in the Child A cirrhosis subgroup (p<0.03) after complete response (p<0.001) and in the absence of new lesions (p<0.023).
Radiofrequency ablation has great acceptability and applicability, and is a safe and effective treatment to be used after sonographic screening for small hepatocellular carcinomas.
Hepato-gastroenterology 55(81):191-6. · 0.66 Impact Factor | <urn:uuid:070ee0dc-e642-4cca-9147-de16db8523bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.researchgate.net/researcher/39500018_Renato_Turrini/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931055 | 865 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Smartphone cameras have gotten to the point of being able to stack up well against digital cameras — at least when viewing the photos at smaller sizes. Zoom in, and there’s still a pretty big gap in quality due to the smartphone’s smaller lens and sensor. BuzzFeed’s John Herrman writes that the emergence of ultra-high res displays displays is converting people back to digital cameras:
Sometime in the last year, I gave up on carrying a camera. My phone is compact, quick, has the ability to share photos directly, and, at least to my eye, produces photos that are nearly comparable to my $700 interchangeable lens camera. In most contexts, I stand by that — on Facebook, in iPhoto, or on Instagram, my iPhone photos look fine. Great, even.
But one thing I noticed when I first used a Retina iPad, which automatically pulled in my old iPhone shots from the cloud, was that these “good enough” photos looked awful. Grainy, blotchy, and even kind of blurry. Evidently the new Retina MacBook has the same effect. Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, says it’s driving him back to his DSLR.
According to Nikon Rumors, Nikon has introduced a new Unilateral Pricing Policy on DSLR gear sold in the US that will take effect on October 16th. Saying that the policy is “designed to allow customers to make purchasing decisions based on service provided and not have to worry about hunting for a better price”, Nikon plans to withhold sales to any store caught pricing equipment below “national prices” that the company will set for each product. Read more…
CNBC ran this short segment a couple days ago in which they invited CNET’s Dan Ackerman to explain the changing landscape in the digital camera industry. He thinks point-and-shoot cameras may soon become extinct due to the rise of camera-equipped phones, but also that DSLRs are the cameras here to stay. A recent study found that phones have replaced digital cameras completely for 44% of consumers, and that number seems bound to rise as the cameras on phones continue to improve.
My guess is that in five years, we’ll see digital camera users divided into three camps: mobile phone, interchangeable lens compact, and DSLR. What’s your prediction? | <urn:uuid:d0e8d36a-f482-4341-86fa-a8c5d17a040f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://petapixel.com/tag/consumers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955766 | 490 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Friday, 27 January 2012
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
The old Su-30MKI front cockpit (left) with Thales MFDs. At right is the same cockpit with Samtel MFDs
Friday, 20 January 2012
by Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 20th Jan 12
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
by Ajai Shukla
Saturday, 14 January 2012
Friday, 13 January 2012
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Monday, 9 January 2012
By Ajai Shukla
This year could end with a new president in Washington, but it will certainly see a brand new Chinese leadership. A fifth generation of Chinese leaders will take power this autumn at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
China has moved beyond Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping; no single strongman controls all the levers of power. Instead, power is distributed between nine senior leaders who make up the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). Watchers of Zhongnanhai (Beijing’s equivalent of the Kremlin and South Block) agree that even Hu Jintao --- China’s president and general secretary of the CCP --- is merely the “first amongst equals”. Collective leadership is now the norm; the 2007 Party Congress defined this as “a system with division of responsibilities among individual leaders in an effort to prevent arbitrary decision-making by a single top leader.”
This autumn, seven of the PSC’s nine members, including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are expected to step down, having reached retirement age. The two who will continue are Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, both in their late 50s, who were elevated to the PSC at the 16th Party Congress in 2002, when the current fourth-generation leadership was anointed. Reared thus for leadership, Xi is set to be president while Li will be China’s next premier.
How will the rest of the PSC be chosen? In theory, the 350-odd members of the CCP’s Central Committee elect 25 members to the Politburo. These then elect the 9 gentlemen of the PSC (ladies, stand aside please!), which then elects its own general secretary.
But the CCP’s internal democracy approximates that of the Indian National Congress. In what is actually a top-down process, China’s most influential leaders confabulate beforehand and allocate amongst themselves quotas in the Central Committee. They also “approve” in advance the members of the Politburo and the PSC; their decisions are later rubberstamped up the election chain. The outgoing PSC will reportedly meet this summer at the resort of Beidaihe to nominate the next Politburo, PSC and general secretary. Also influencing these decisions will be retired supremos like Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Zhu Rongji who all back protégés to retain proxy influence and continue their favourite policies.
While nobody can accurately predict the factional bargaining and deal-making that will produce the new elite, it is clear that the next PSC will be drawn from the 204 full members of the 2007 Central Committee. After eliminating members who have retired, or will soon, the less experienced, and military leaders -- who are ineligible for the PSC -- there are just a few dozen candidates left.
A key determinant will be the faction or coalition that each candidate represents. After the growth of the last three decades, China includes the nouveau riche of the coastal regions and marginalised and disadvantaged groups from the inland provinces. The party has deftly accommodated both interests, creating the slogan “one party, two coalitions”. The “populist” coalition to which Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao belong, are dubbed the “tuanpai”. They speak for the farmer, migrant worker and urban poor. The “elitist” coalition, headed by Wu Bangguo and Jia Qinglin, include the so-called princelings (descendents of powerful party elites) with successful careers in the economically developed industrial zones.
The CCP balances these two coalitions, marrying tuanpai expertise in rural administration, propaganda and organisation with elitist skills in economic policymaking, foreign trade and investment and banking. This accommodation is set to continue: Xi Jinping is from the elitist coalition, while Li Keqiang is from the tuanpai. Both coalitions agree on fundamentals: ensuring the survival of CCP rule; ensuring socioeconomic stability; and enhancing China’s status as a global power.
After applying all these filters, Zhongnanhai watchers like Cheng Li of the Brookings Institution believe that there are 14 favourites for the next PSC. Seven of these candidates, i.e. exactly half, are tuanpai with close ties to Hu Jintao: Li Keqiang; Li Yuanchao; Liu Yuanshan; Liu Yandong; Wang Yang; Ling Jihua; and Hu Chunhua. Two of these --- Li Yuanchao and Liu Yandong --- are also princelings. They could play crucial mediating roles if factional infighting escalates, giving them a potential power advantage.
Of the seven “elitist” candidates --- Xi Jinping, Bo Xilai, Wang Qishan, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Zhang Gaoli and Meng Jianzhu --- five are princelings, while Zhang and Meng draw their power from Jiang Zemin.
Along with Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, Wang Qishan and Li Yuanchao are likely to emerge as China’s top four fifth-generation leaders. Wang, a Politburo member and the party chief in Guangdong, is a bold reformist who wants more political and media freedom. Li, too, is a reformist who advocates a crackdown on corruption.
Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang and the CCP’s propaganda chief, Liu Yuanshan have both served two terms on the Politburo and so are “entitled” to move up to the PSC. Shanghai Party Secretary Yu Zhengsheng has also served two terms, but only just makes it in the age cut-off. Given his formidable political clout, however, there is apprehension that the tuanpai might negotiate for his retirement (along with that of Liu Yandong, also born in 1945), arguing for a younger leadership.
That still leaves a couple of seats to be filled. All eyes on the Middle Kingdom!
Saturday, 7 January 2012
by Ajai Shukla
Business Standard, 7th Jan 12
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Features of the FMBT
- Weight: 50-tonnes
- Engine: 1800 Horse Power
- Transmission: CVRDE-developed
- Armour: Active Protection System (APS)
- Gun: 120 mm smoothbore
- Suspension: Hydro-pneumatic
- Active suspension after 2030
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Paperback: £16.99 / $24.95
2012, 234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in, 400pp
ISBN: 978-1-84905-890-2, BIC 2: JMC JKSF VFVK
"Gray, a clinical social worker specializing in attachment, grief and trauma, has penned a comprehensive guidebook for adoptive parents, taking an in-depth look at how children and families adjust. The author notes that many of today's adoptions involve older children, who may have been abused or neglected, or who may have spent years in institutions or various foster situations; due to their past experiences these children may have difficulty attaching to their adoptive parents. Explaining that attachment forms the template for future adult relationships, Gray stresses how important it is for adoptive parents to be patient in forging this new bond. She advises creating a high structure/high nurture environment for the child, and instructs parents to find out about their child's background. The book covers many issues, including cross-cultural and interracial adoption, religious concerns and other complications for attaching, such as ADHD and learning disabilities. Gray also includes a detailed exploration of development delays common in kids who have been adopted later in life. While the book is densely written, it will nevertheless be invaluable for adoptive parents. Gray compassionately helps readers form realistic expectations, while offering a myriad of suggestions for families and children striving to form lasting, loving relationships."
- Publishers Weekly
"I have no idea what percentage of a personality is determined by genes. I don't know what a percentage of personality is. But if there's anything I can do to load the dice of fate in my child's favor, I will do it. Most adoptive parents feel the same. 'Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents' is for us.
I wish this book had been around a decade ago, when my husband and I first started thinking about adoption. I wish it had been around when we brought our daughter home two years later. And I wish it had been around when our daughter was 21 months old and the babysitter quit and a new one started and our forlorn, frantic child screamed all day, every day, for a week.
How we searched Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Richard Ferber, and all the other illustrious names in childrearing literature! Their advice, while sometimes helpful, didn't quite fit. What we needed was a Deborah D. Gray to set out - in straightforward, unthreatening language - practical tips for responding to the challenges all adopted children face when they leave one home (their birth parents', their foster family's, or their orphanage) and enter another. Our child's adjustment was relatively easy. But if we'd known more, it could have been easier.
'Attaching in Adoption' covers the full range of attachment challenges - from the transitory to the traumatic and from infancy to adulthood. Gray's approach is positive, practical and realistic, providing age-specific advice with clear explanations of developmental stages for adopted children and checking age-specific advice with clear explanations of developmental stages for adopted children and checklists to help parents assess how their child is doing at each stage. The best part, for those of us who adopted before this book was published, is that it's never too late to learn. For those struggling with serious attachment disorders, this book could be a lifesaver. I agree with Nancy Thomas [the author of 'When Love Is Not Enough: A Guide to Parenting Children with RAD] who wrote: 'This is the most comprehensive work on the subject I have ever enjoyed reading...My wish would be that every adoptive parent could read this book before beginning the journey to adopt.'"
- Adoptive Families
"This positive, but realistic book is an important resource for all adoptive families, at any stage of pre and post-adoption. The information on attachment challenges will allow prospective adoptive parents to understand the possible issues of their new children. Those that have adopted will be able to recognize some behaviors of their children and learn methods of parenting that will help all to achieve success.
As an adoptive parent and adoption professional, I found the vignettes heart warming and at other times, heart wrenching, but realistic and achievable within a hectic family setting. The clear explanations of the phases allows parents to easily measure where they are, where their children are and how they can improve their parenting and health of entire family.
'Attaching in Adoption' is also a valuable resource for professionals who work with parents. It will assist them to help parents to manoeuvre the sometimes-challenging path of adoptive parenting. Deborah's focus on the health of the family helps to normalize the specialized skills and techniques taught.
- Yolanda Comparan, MSW, Program Manager, Adoption Resource Center Northwest Region (Seattle) Children's Home Society of Washington
"'Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents' is a brilliantly written sensitive educational journey into the development world of attachment. The book is a comprehensive and clear depiction of the importance of attachment, the challenge faced by parents adopting high risk children, and the negative effects of trauma and grief on the development of a secure attachment.
The book reflects Ms. Gray's depth of perception, understanding of child development, empathy, and attunement with the children and families she has served in her therapeutic practice.
Ms. Gray provides practical common sense tools for parents that can support them in developing skills that will enhance healthy relationships and connections with their children. Ms. Gray is realistic and honest as she speaks to parents. She empowers them to take charge in a nurturing way. She respects the importance of the balance of nurture and structure.
The chapters building emotional intelligence, forming a team of support, and suggestions of when and where to seek professional help prove a hopefulness that there is a way out of the darkness of emotional chaos into the light of safety and trust for children suffering from attachment problems.
Although "Attachment in Adoption" is written primarily for parents. I would encourage my fellow professionals to include this book on their "must read" list. It will assist them in their overall understanding of attachment and in their therapeutic work with adoptive parents and children"
- Beverly Cuevas, LCSW, ACSW, Co-founder of Attachment Center Northwest, Founding member and Board member of ATTACH, Founding Board member of ADI (Attachment Disorder Institute)
"This book is a must for adoptive parents, adoption professionals and therapists. It stands out because Deborah writes with tremendous empathy and a profound understanding of challenges faced by children who have experienced trauma, attachment and neglect issues. It is a valuable resource for all types of adoption, including infant adoption.
Adoptive parents will feel understood, supported and encouraged. Professionals will find therapeutic techniques that promote attachment and increase the likelihood of success during the course of therapy. Deborah conveys a positive and hopeful outlook based on her extensive experience in working with hurt children and their families.
Throughout the book, there are a multitude of practical suggestions for managing and strengthening attachments. Her guidance is easily understood, each page offering insight and useful tools for a wide array of situations. She emphasizes the importance of working with skilled therapists and provides guidelines on how to find them. Always respectful of the issues surrounding the adoption experience.
Deborah has produced a gem which should become required reading."
- Patricia Martinez Dorner, MA, LPC, LMFT, Adoptive Parent, adoption professional, co-author of 'Children of Open Adoption', author of 'How to Open An Adoption - A Guide For Parents And Birthparents of Minor Children; Talking To Your Child About Adoption' and 'Search: An Ethical Guide For Professionals
"In 'Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents', Deborah Gray is able to translate into the written word the same caring, compassion, and respect that she shows toward both child and parent in her person-to-person contacts. In this book she returns again and again to the importance of both nurturing and structure in working to form close family relationships; the striking part is how well she is able to provide both for parents in the writing of this book. She emotionally nurtures parents while providing clear structure for them in creating a family environment that will promote attachments.
In identifying ways to promote attachment, she follows a clear developmental approach, recognizing the needs of children of varying ages and helping parents identify how and where their child might be stuck in earlier stages of development. This is very important aspect of this work; what is necessary at one stage may be inappropriate at another.
My favourite chapters of the book, however, are two of the shorter ones. Both fill gaps in the adoption literature for parents. The chapter on 'Trauma and Traumatic Loss' translates the more recent information on the physiologic and psychological effects of trauma, as reported in the professional literature, into material that parents can understand and use in their day to day parenting.
The second chapter that I particularly like is the one on 'Building Emotional Intelligence'. In this section, Deborah again takes the material from non-adoption sources and translates it into very practical ideas for adoptive parents to use in helping their child build and maintain healthy friendships. She identifies the gaps that children may have in their skills and provides ideas for remediation. As Deborah points out, "Skill in building and retaining healthy friendships is highly correlated with future happiness in life - much more so than are academic skills."
Although this book is primarily written for parents, most professionals in the area of adoption will find a wealth of practical ideas for helping parents be successful in building attachments with their adopted children."
- Vera I. Fahlberg, M.D., author of A Child's Journey through Placement
"Deborah Gray had written an excellent book on parenting adopted children who resist being parented. It is not a cookbook, but rather a comprehensive book on parenting adopted children with attachment problems. That is why it is excellent. Deborah does not take the easy road of simply giving recommendations for various behavior problems. Instead she takes the more arduous route of first trying to help parents understand the meaning of their adopted child's behaviors. After helping parents to understand the reasons for their child's behaviors, she then gives them the tools for developing interventions that are most likely to fit their unique child.
Deborah asks us to go beyond concluding that an adopted child has Reactive Attachment Disorder because they manifest a list of symptoms. She asks us first to also understand the impact of grieving and trauma on a child's functioning. She also asks us to know more about the effects of anxiety, cultural changes, and various other diagnoses, such as ADHD, FAE/FAS, and Learning Disorders. Most importantly, Deborah teaches us about the seven stages of attachment, beginning at birth and extending through adolescence, and she helps us to be aware of various interventions that can facilitate development at each stage. Finally, she tells us about emotional intelligence, its failure to develop following early abuse and neglect, and the importance of understanding ways to facilitate it.
Deborah's contribution to parenting adopted children with attachment problems is substantial. It is based on understanding and having empathy of the meaning behind a child's symptoms, along with effective, sensitive, and well-matched parental interventions. At the same time, she addresses the necessity of parental self-care, is parents are to persistently provide the quality of care that their adopted child requires.
After reading her book, many parents will feel certain that Deborah understands their child and their family. These same parents will also be likely to understand their child more deeply themselves, and at the same time be able to develop the unique practical skills that parenting their child requires."
- Dan Hughes, Ph.D. author of 'Facilitating Developmental Attachment and Building the Bonds of Attachment
"Deborah Gray's work captures theory, practicality, and sensitivity toward traumatized children - all in one book. Too many books have only one of these components, and her integration of may important facets of all three, comfortably leads the reader to a clear understanding of how children are hurt and how families help them heal.
I will be extremely comfortable recommending 'Attaching in Adoption' to parents and professionals. I also think it is suitable for adolescents to read. It would help them understand so many of their issues - particularly around the entire birth family "web' and issues of shame and self-blame. I like this book!"
- Gregory C. Keck, Ph.D., Founder, Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio and co-author of 'Adopting the Hurt Child' and 'Parenting the 'Hurt Child'
"'Attaching in Adoption' is a valuable resource for parents not only as they contemplate building their family through adoption, but also as they travel child's emotionally challenged path towards mental health and happiness. Deborah Gray has described attachment and all of the skills and responses that relate to an individual's attachment style and degree of attachment, and she has done do in a manner easily understood by non-professionals. The chapter on developmental stages is an invaluable tool for parents to assess their child's emotional age and determine what tasks have yet to be mastered. Parents who understand and implement what tasks have yet to be mastered. Parents who understand and implement the wisdom and methods described in this book will certainly strengthen their families!"
- Nancy Spoolstra, D.V.M., adoptive and foster parent and Executive Director of the Attachment Disorder Network
"This is the most comprehensive work on the subject I have ever enjoyed reading. Deborah's incredible insight from her years of experience with difficult kids shines through in this enlightening book. No stone is left unturned in her effort to give a clear understanding of attachment. This book will be a powerful tool to help families with their children wounded by attachment breaks. My wish would be that every adoptive parent could read this book before beginning their journey."
Nancy Thomas, founder of Families by Design, parent trainer, presenter, and author of 'When Love is Not Enough - A Guide to Parenting Children with RAD.'
Deborah D. Gray
Improving Child and Family Assessments: Turning Research into Practice
Danielle Turney, Dendy Platt, Julie Selwyn and Elaine Farmer
Safeguarding Children Across Services: Messages from Research
Carolyn Davies and Harriet Ward | <urn:uuid:41f19b49-3066-420c-bfdb-01abf836da50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book/9781849058902/review/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957578 | 2,970 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Early American Coppers (EAC) is a not-for-profit numismatic specialty organization founded in 1967 to serve as a point of contact for collectors of early U.S. copper coins – Colonials, Half Cents, Large Cents, and Hard Time Tokens. Today EAC comprises over 1,200 members located throughout the United States. EAC members are deeply interested in the historical background, attribution, grading, rarity, and related aspects of the early coppers, as well as collecting and trading. Many EAC members are highly knowledgeable and prolific contributors to the numismatic literature of this country.
EAC publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Penny-Wise, with most issues running over 50 pages. Penny-Wise contains numerous original articles pertaining to early coppers. A number of articles which appeared first in Penny-Wise have subsequently been reprinted in The Numismatist. Three of the reprinted articles are Heath Award winners.
ANA summer meeting
Regional as announced | <urn:uuid:6a98f1a8-3f02-4563-b27f-38fac12c7b76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coinweek.com/Clubs/coin-clubs/early-american-coppers-eac/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951384 | 205 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Chandra Asri adds value
Market demand is driving PT Chandra Asri Petrochemical Tbk. to add value by becoming the first in the country to make butadiene, the raw material for synthetic rubber. With steady economic growth pushing demand for synthetic rubber in the automotive industry. The company has invested $145 million in a plant operated by subsidiary PT Petrokimia Butadiene Indonesia.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world travel billions of kilometers every year on tires made mostly from synthetic rubber. That substance is made from butadiene, a petrochemical product that can be processed to become styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), styrene butadiene latex (SBL) and other useful compounds. It is SBR that is used to produce tires.
According to the Association of Indonesian Tire Companies (APBI) demand for motorcycle tires in 2011 reached 42 million units, while 47.2 million car tires were sold. Growth in sales figures for tires inevitably keeps pace with the total number of vehicles – with two, four or even more wheels – on the roads.
The Indonesian Automotive Industry Association (Gaikindo) states that retail car sales totaled 888,335 units last year, a 19.2% increase from 744,895 units in 2010. Further rises are expected this year, though they won’t be as dramatic as 2011.
Sudirman Maman Rusdi, a Gaikindo chairman, states that although there is concern over the global economic crisis, Indonesian automotive sales will continue to grow a modest 3-5%. Yet despite all of the tires being made from butadiene, all Indonesia’s supply has been imported up until now.
Minister of Trade Gita Wirjawan, speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new plant at Cilegon, Banten province’s heavy industry center, emphasized that even though Indonesia’s road infrastructure is still very poor, automotive sales continue to grow. “This means that production of butadiene is necessary to meet demand from the synthetic rubber industry, which continues to grow in line with the growth of the automotive industry.”
The new plant will start production in the second quarter of 2013. With the operation of the butadiene plant, the production chain of the tire industry in Indonesia will have been connected from upstream to downstream.
Djongkie Sugiarto, who also sits on the Gaikindo board, welcomes the expansion of Chandra Asri into butadiene production, saying this will increase the competitiveness of the domestic automotive industry. Domestic production means cheaper prices for butadiene, allowing the automotive industry to reach a higher percentage of local content.
To build the plant, the company will use a combination of internal cash and bank loans. Chandra Asri has already won a commitment on a $150 million syndicated loan from DBS Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Bank Danamon and HSBC.
For Erwin Ciputra, the president director of Chandra Asri, the aim of the new plant is twofold. First, to increase the value-added aspect of production; second to move further toward a fully integrated petrochemical operation. The plant will have a production capacity of 100,000 tons per year and will also be equipped with butane-1 extraction equipment to produce 40,000 tons per year of butane.
“The plant will process C4, one of our products that has only been exported as a raw material, into butadiene and butane-1. The butadiene product will be sold to meet domestic market demand and for export. Butane-1 will be used as an auxiliary material in our production of polyethylene. Up until now, the synthetic rubber companies have had to import butadiene.”
Suryandi, the senior vice president of Chandra Asri, adds that production of butadiene will potentially double revenue at the company, rather than exporting unprocessed C4. “As an illustration, the average price of C4 recently has been $1,450 per ton, while the price of butadiene can reach $3,000 per ton,” says Suryandi. With the internal rate of return expected to reach between 20% and 25%, the investment is expected to break even in a mere four to five years.
Erwin notes that the investment represents the benefit of the entry to the company of SCG Chemicals. The Thai-based company spent $442 million in September last year for a 30% share in Chandra Asri.
It purchased 7.13% from Chandra Asri’s parent, Prajogo Pangestu’s Barito Pacific, and a further 22.87% from Appleton Investment Ltd., a subsidiary of Singapore government investment vehicle Temasek Holdings.
SCG Chemicals is a unit of Siam Cement Group, where the Thai royal family’s Crown Property Bureau owns 30% of shares. Its entry into Chandra Asri leaves Barito Pacific with 64.87% of the expanding operation. A further 5.13% is held by the public.
Cholanat Yanaranop, president director of SCG Chemicals, says Indonesia’s petrochemical market is wide open compared to Thailand. He compares olefins production between both countries: Thailand with a population of 65 million produces 6 million tons, while Indonesia with 240 million people produces only 1 million tons.
“There is great potential for us to enter the market. In the short term, our concern is to support the Chandra Asri plan for the expansion of its downstream operations,” said Yanaranop.
With its track record as the leading petrochemical company in Asia, Erwin hopes that the entry of SCG Chemicals will improve synergies and add value in the Chandra Asri operation to support development of the business. “This is our first step after the entry of SCG Chemicals toward building an integrated petrochemical operation, from upstream to downstream.”
In the first nine months of 2011, Chandra Asri booked sales of $1.745 billion from products including polyethylene, polypropylene, styrene monomer and various olefins. GA | <urn:uuid:6a1ff6bf-aa78-4457-89ea-5712ed1301c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/archive/chandra-asri-adds-value/495410/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931971 | 1,308 | 1.585938 | 2 |
In light of the Mets’ disappointing loss to the San Fran Giants last night, many are pointing fingers at Pelfrey’s three balks being the reason for the loss after winning the first three games of the series (though the lack of runs certainly didn’t help). If you’re any other average baseball fan, you know exactly what I’m talking about and are probably shaking your head with me. But just in case you happen to be a casual fan and might think a balk is a sound an angry chicken makes, here’s a quick history lesson for you.There are several qualifications (13 subsections) and motions a pitcher can make that constitute a balk, but I will try to summarize for simplicity’s sake. In baseball, there are two legal pitching positions: the Windup Position and the Set Position. Each has a specific set rules of motion that the pitcher can carry out, and if any rules are broken or an illegal motion is made, a balk can be called. With runners on base, some of the balks we see include beginning the delivery and not completing (which Pelfrey did with balk #1 after tripping), delivering a pitch while not in contact with the pitching rubber, throwing or feigning a throw to a base without stepping in the direction of the base, and not coming to a complete stop in the set position before beginning motion of delivery. Why would this rule exist? Mainly to protect the runners from being unfairly deceived.
Though mentioned in earlier publications, the balk rule pertaining to runners on base was first recognized in 1898. Probably one of the most memorable seasons for balks had to be the balk crackdown in 1988. The National League was already seeing a higher number of balks than the AL and only saw an increase from 219 to 336 from 1987. The American League however saw an increase over 400%, going from 137 to 558. Why were so many called this year? The wording was changed to “single and complete discernable stop, with both feet on the ground” once the pitcher comes in to the set position. The spike raised such concern that year and had every pitcher on their toes that the wording was restored to its original “complete stop”, dropping “discernable”, and balks have not seen that large of a hike since.
At least the Dodgers were able to prevail amidst the crazy balk rule in just five games against Oakland that October.
Pelf seemingly couldn’t help the first of his three balks last night, and looked rather surprised by one of the other two. However, he did manage to tie a 46 year old Mets record set in 1963 by Don Rowe with three balks in one game, and was also the first major league pitcher to do so in fifteen years since Al Leiter did in 1994. The balks did cost the Mets the two runs which did eventually contribute to their 2-0 loss, though not all of the weight can be put on Pelf. After such a stellar display of hitting Saturday, they will need to pull things together offensively as well as taking more care defensively, and generally taking better care of themselves. Between the balking and nearly everyone playing in positions they aren’t usually seen in due to several injuries, Sunday proved to be a great disappointment after such a promising start to the series.
Don’t worry, Big Pelf. This Met lady still loves you! | <urn:uuid:7bd05cc8-6687-497d-8c95-cddc8555925f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ladiesdotdotdot.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/once-twice-three-times-a-balking/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=eb9f8a7f00 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978088 | 707 | 1.632813 | 2 |
|Russian, Romanian and Latvian held for infecting a million PCs for online thefts
The United States charged three young East European men with running an international cyber theft ring that broke into a million computers, including at the space agency NASA.
The trio used a malicious computer code or malware, dubbed the Gozi Virus, to infiltrate computers across Europe, then America, causing “millions in losses by, among other things, stealing online banking credentials,’’ the federal prosecutor’s office said, AFP reports.
The alleged designer and “chief architect’’ of the virus, Russian national Nikita Kuzmin, was detained on US soil back in 2010 and pleaded guilty the following year, agreeing to cooperate with investigators. The 25-year-old's alleged partners were nabbed at the end of 2012.
Deniss Calovskis, known as ‘Miami,’ 27, was arrested in his native Latvia in November, and charged with writing some of the computer code in the Gozi Virus.
Mihai Ionut Paunescu, nicknamed ‘Virus,’ was charged with running a so-called “bulletproof hosting’’ service that enabled distribution of the Gozi and other viruses. Paunescu, 28, was arrested in his home country of Romania in December.
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos said: “This long-term investigation uncovered an alleged international cybercrime ring whose far-reaching schemes infected at least one million computers worldwide and 40,000 in the US, and resulted in the theft or loss of tens of millions of dollars.''
Manhattan chief federal prosecutor Preet Bharara likened the alleged gang to the notorious American bank robber William ‘Willie’ Sutton. But, he added, “as we have seen with increasing frequency, cyber criminals' bank heists require neither a mask nor a gun, just a clever program and an internet connection.
“This case should serve as a wake-up call to banks and consumers alike, because cybercrime remains one of the greatest threats we face, and it is not going away any time soon.''
Prosecutors say the ultra sophisticated scam unfolded between 2005 and March 2012 and that the virus was “virtually undetectable in the computers it infected.’’ First, it was implanted in computers across Europe “on a vast scale,’’ then around 2010 it spread to the United States, the Calovskis indictment said.
In the United States, “more than 160 were computers belonging to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,’’ the indictment said.
The FBI worked with Britain, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Latvia, Moldova, Romania and Switzerland over a two-and-a-half year period, seizing 51 servers in Romania alone, and 250 terabytes of information.
Paunescu operated what's known as a “bulletproof hosting’’ service that allows cyber criminals to operate beyond the reach of law enforcement, the indictment against him says.
The Romanian would rent thieves safe IP addresses and servers which were then used to spread malware, including the Gozi Virus, the Zeus Trojan and SpyeEye Trojan, the charges said.
Collectively, these viruses “have infected millions of computers around the world, targeted numerous banks in the United States and elsewhere, including at least one major United States bank headquartered in Manhattan,'' the indictment said.
Kuzmin, the indictment against him says, “hired a sophisticated computer programmer to write the virus' source code’’ for the Gozi, so that he could embark on large-scale theft.
“After months of work, [the unnamed programmer] completed work on the source code for the Gozi Virus and provided it to Kuzmin,’’ who in turn rented the virus out to other criminals, the indictment says.
These co-conspirators were enabled to tailor the Gozi Virus to their own goals, whether for stealing passwords or other data. Kuzmin allegedly called this business the ‘76 Service.’
Calovskis, the Latvian, was described as having used his expertise in computer programming to create ‘web injects,’ a code that alters how banking websites appear on infected computers, prompting victims into revealing more personal information, such as Social Security numbers. | <urn:uuid:dec8d7bb-265f-45d5-a079-6ebc47470e43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=30984 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951837 | 926 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The Wisbech Society
The Society was founded in 1939 with the aim of maintaining Wisbech's historic heritage. We care deeply about Wisbech and demonstrate this through our concern for its future as well as its past. The Society is recognised by Fenland District Council as needing to be consulted and allowed to contribute to all Planning Applications relating to Listed buildings and all proposals within the conservation areas.
We are members of the national Civic Trust, The Georgian Group and The Council for the Protection of Rural England, and link with such organisations as the National Trust. We work closely with local organisations such as the Wisbech and Fenland Museum and the Tourist Office. The Trustees include local Councillors, and individuals with a wealth of local knowledge, enabling them to act as a body of informed opinion.
Members enjoy social activities, organised visits, monthly talks in the winter by interesting speakers. The Society encourages local research which it publishes in its Annual Review and special publications. | <urn:uuid:27549040-0572-4856-ac8a-f11d1e63bd3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisbech-society.co.uk/html/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952411 | 199 | 1.796875 | 2 |
A few days ago, one of my new Myspace friends, Sheri Welch Hilbun, expressed an interest in knowing more about her Welch ancestors. Specifically, she asked me if I knew where Welch Landing is located. Since I don’t, I decided to put the question out to readers of Renegade South.
While we’re on the subject of the Welches, let’s remember that they, like the Collinses to whom they are closely related, were major participants in the Free State of Jones—just look at the Knight Company roster, and you will see four Welch men listed there: T.L. (Timothy); R. J.; H. R. (Harrison); and W.M. (William). I’m thinking that R. J. Welch, who is described on Newt’s 1870 roster as having fled to New Orleans and joined the Union Army in the wake of Lowry’s raid on Jones County, is actually Richard T. Welch, whose military records describe the same actions. Can someone out there help me with that identification?
Meanwhile, Timothy, Harrison and William Welch were all captured by Col. Lowry (as was Simeon Collins and his three sons), and forced back into the Confederate Army. Like Simeon and sons, they too fought at Kennesaw Mountain and ended up in Yankee prison camps.
According to the records and family histories I used to write Free State of Jones, Timothy L. and Harrison R. Welch were brothers, sons of John Ira and Catherine (Bynum) Welch. William M. was their cousin
one generation removed, and the son of Henry and Sarah Welch. and the son of James Richard and Mary Valentine Welch (thanks, Russell!). If my suspicions are correct that R. J. Welch is actually Richard Thomas Welch, that would make him the brother of William M. Welch son of Henry and Sarah Welch.
In 1895, William M. Welch gave a deposition in support of Newt Knight’s petition for compensation from the federal government.
But I digress. Back to the original question: just where is Welch Landing located? | <urn:uuid:1be97710-6d29-46d5-884b-221912ce7096> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/where-is-welch-landing-located/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=c7a699f16c | 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 | 0.956975 | 444 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Since the launch of iOS 6, Apple Maps have been getting a lot of attention. Users and industry professionals are frustrated by Apple Maps. They are claiming that Maps have not exceeded, let alone met, their expectations. In some cases, Apple Maps is even being referred to as “Mapplegate.”
In light of the frenzy created by Apple Maps, we took a look at something industry experts and iPhone users have not yet considered: Is it possible that Apple Maps is actually better for iPhone users? Is the app more data efficient? Will using Apple Maps actually help users save their precious and limited megabytes, as well as being more responsive and faster to operate?
The answer to this series of questions is an enthusiastic YES!
Apple Maps are Maptastic!
Onavo’s team of data experts set out to compare the data consumed by Apple Maps on iOS 6 to that of the Google-based iOS 5 Maps app. We compared a number of scenarios and investigated how both apps use data over the cellular network. The data we evaluated proved: Apple Maps is up to five times more data efficient than Google Maps.
Standard Map View
In Standard Map view, every time you search for or open a new location, such as a restaurant or the address of your next meeting, your maps app has to download the street map data you see on the screen. If you pan or zoom in or out, that data needs to be downloaded as well.
Our data experts performed an identical series of activities on Google Maps and Apple Maps that included searching for several US cities, addresses and airports and zooming in and out to locate specific locations. On Google Maps, the average data loaded from the cellular network for each step was 1.3MB. Apple Maps came in at 271KB – that’s approximately 80% less data! On some actions, such as zooming in to see a particular intersection, Apple Maps’ efficiency advantage edged close to 7X.
Apple Maps’ overwhelming data advantage in Standard Map views is because of Apple’s use of vector graphics. Instead of downloading map tile images every time users zoom in or out of a map view, Apple’s vector graphics approach resizes dynamically, resulting in the drastically reduced data usage we observed, as well as smooth resizing and fast responsiveness.
However, it seems that even in Satellite View, Apple has considered data usage. Our tests found Apple Maps uses only half as much data as Google Maps for the same Satellite searches and views (an average of 930KB for a single page load on Google Maps vs. 428KB for Apple Maps).
Why this matters
Maps, a staple of iOS since the very first iPhone, is also one of the most popular apps on the device. According to our data, a whopping 70% of iPhone users use the Maps app. Furthermore, the Maps app alone is responsible for 5% of the iPhone data traffic on mobile networks today. Apple’s drastic improvement in data efficiency will be welcome news both for consumers watching their megabytes, but also for the mobile networks that are transferring all those megabytes.
So while iPhone users and industry experts may still be waiting for the perfect map app, at Onavo, we recognize that Apple Maps brings something needed and fantastic to iPhone users: a map app built to make it faster, more inexpensive and more efficient for users to get around. And that is pretty Maptastic! | <urn:uuid:466bfc2a-17d0-47d1-82c9-df2f1b7ed4ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.onavo.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941415 | 703 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Looking for a Northern Virginia Private School that Goes Far Beyond the Basics?
You may have found what you are looking for: A classical curriculum that prepares your child for success in the 21st century. Westminster School, located in the heart of Fairfax County, offers something that is rare these days—a classical education for elementary and middle-school students, which also addresses the unique personal development of each and every child. This rich, accelerated program is based on high academic standards, with an emphasis on personal responsibility, courtesy, and upright conduct. Westminster’s well-rounded program both nurtures and challenges children’s development in all areas: intellectual, physical, and—through its infusion of the arts and creativity—spiritual. With its classical curriculum, challenging academics, and expectations for genuine effort and good manners, Westminster turns out graduates distinguished by their knowledge, responsible study habits, good citizenship, and self-confidence.
Tom Foster Recognized as Outstanding Supporter
and Donor to Westminster School
Westminster School wishes to officially recognize and thank Tom Foster for his magnanimous donation of the current, newly designed school web site. The Westminster community is full of gratitude and admiration for Mr. Foster’s expertise and creativity, as well as that of the talented staff at Foster Web Marketing.
Mr. Foster, father of three Westminster alumni [Victoria - 2005, Samantha - 2007, Thomas - 2009] and one current student [Madeleine – Pre-Kindergarten], has long been a passionate advocate for the school. He joined the Board of Trustees in 2011 and has been active in promoting the reputation of Westminster School throughout the Northern Virginia area. | <urn:uuid:14efb939-ac18-44fc-b590-5f09c96ca3c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westminsterschool.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956942 | 338 | 1.53125 | 2 |
We’ve written a lot on this blog about CDTA, including an examination this summer of the authority’s bus service and a compilation of the many reactions it spawned.
Higher gas prices caused increased ridership on the authority’s busses, as well as increased use of public transit around the country. But fiscal crisis loomed, and the CDTA board voted last month to raise the base fare from $1 to $1.50 — the first increase since 1995. “It’s not fun stuff, I know, but I think the balanced approach we are trying to put forth is probably the best we can do right now,” board Chairman David Stackrow, of Rensselaer County, told transportation reporter Cathy Woodruff at the time.
The authority also justified the increase as not out of line with other inflation:
For perspective, the CDTA staff drew up a list of comparative prices for other items in 1995 and 2008: gasoline, from $1.75 to $3.75 per gallon; milk, from $1.40 to $3.75 per gallon; and a slice of pizza, from 75 cents to $3.
With inflation, “one could argue that a $1.50 fare in 2009 is less expensive than $1 in 1995,” said CDTA Executive Director Ray Melleady.
But that’s precisely the problem, Albany resident Leah Golby argues today in an opinion submission.
That analogy falls short when we consider the purchasing power of low-wage earners — those who rely most on CDTA.
There’s no doubt Capital Region residents of all income brackets are taking a close look at their finances, and many are making plans to live more frugally by cutting vacation spending, socking away less in savings or using cars less frequently.
For those who don’t have the luxury of planning vacations, stashing savings or keeping a car on the road, that extra 50 cents for each bus ride is cash that adds up quickly.
Golby runs some quick numbers and determines that if you don’t have the cash to pay for a monthly swiper pass, the fare hike could mean an extra $10 a week in costs. Or two gallons of milk for the family.
Transit authorities walk a tight line with fare increases: they are sometimes needed to offset the costs of providing reliable, extensive service, but they may lead potential riders to turn elsewhere and decrease ridership. That in turn reduces revenues, and in a worst-case-downward-spiral can lead to even more fare hikes.
The effect of CDTA’s hike, which will take effect in April, remains to be seen. | <urn:uuid:04d2ce9e-446e-4a2c-b3fe-68945d657484> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.timesunion.com/gettingthere/date/2008/10/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952953 | 563 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Reviewed by Kristen R. (age 11)
Abby?s class was putting on a play, ?Peter Pan,? for her whole school. She wanted to get a good part like Wendy or Peter Pan. Everyone wanted the same parts, so she must standout at the tryouts. She needed to learn everything to become a star! Did Abby get a big part or would she not be able to reach the stars?
I like this book because you never knew what was going to happen next. It was funny when she wrote in her diary. This let you know what Abby was thinking and how she felt about events and people in the book. This book makes you never want to stop reading. I think you should read the first two books before you read this one. You will appreciate this one more.
I recommend this book to people who like to read diaries because half the book is Abby?s diary. Also if you enjoy funny books, you will love this book. I really enjoyed this book, and I hope you will too! | <urn:uuid:fd0e865d-cd77-41f4-b232-9d57baf1d8fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spaghettibookclub.org/review.php?review_id=9408 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988871 | 213 | 1.648438 | 2 |
If you’re one of those people who like to save the margarine tubs and mayonnaise jars for use as leftover containers, you now have a new source for these things. Your local KFC restaurant.
The chicken chain is introducing what’s believed to be the fast food industry’s first consumer-reusable food container and it’s getting some notable attention. The container was recently honored as a winner in the 2010 Greener Package Awards.
The containers were first introduced in five markets this spring, and plans call for them to be available at KFC locations nationwide by early 2011.
The introduction of the container is just one element of a larger packaging initiative the country’s largest chicken restaurant chain is undertaking. Paper serving boxes are also replacing plastic plates as part of KFC’s plan to reduce its use of nonrenewable resources and to eventually eliminate foam packaging from its restaurants.
The award-winning side container features a clear bowl with a red lid embossed with a “reusable” message, as well as a reminder that the container is both microwaveable and top rack dishwasher safe. Not as visible, but equally important is a patented “ventless vent” technology that enhances product quality by allowing moisture to escape without the need for a hole in the lid. The result is a leak-resistant lid that provides a secure fit and keeps food fresh. The combination of features impressed the judges who bestowed the Greener Package Award on KFC.
For more information on KFC packaging, you may visit www.kfc.com/packaging.
For more insights and innovations check out CultureWaves®, the place to go for the latest observations in the World Thought Bank – events, ideas, trends and more. Add your own thoughts about anything in life – entertainment, design, technology, well-being and, yes, food. And, take a look at a few of our other Hot & Cool Trends.
Have you seen an innovative product that will impact our food lives in the future? Let us know at Editor. | <urn:uuid:ff8f2422-cc9e-435b-beba-850dd2712f4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/kfc-introducing-greener-containers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939343 | 430 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Move over, brainiacs, new bookworms are taking over the library: metro-intellectuals.
Offering experimental-film and creative workshops designed for "urbane urban dwellers," The Creative Life is the latest installment of Fresh City Life at the Denver Public Library -- and this series is straight-up phat. "A paradigm shift in library usage and the interests of users has begun," says the library's cultural programmer Chris Loffelmacher. "So roll up your sleeves and prepare to get your hands dirty."
Knead dough with Greg Bortz of the Denver Bread Company; critique films with Denver film reviewer Walter Chaw; click into a photography workshop with Marianne Martin; grab a seat in a how-to class on adapting screenplays or illustrating children's books. "This programming gives the community a chance to experiment with their own creative voice," Loffelmacher explains. "It's like that old starving artist's mantra of 'process over product.' Our customer's journey is much more important than the actual destination."
That journey begins at 10:30 a.m. today with "Starting From Blank: The Process of Creating Art" with local artist Michael Gadlin, or try the Screenwriters Author Panel, with Darren Foster, Pamela Cuming and Gary Jonas, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 10.
Creative Life events run through June 5 at the Central Library, 10 West 14th Avenue Parkway, and all are free and open to the public; some require advance registration. For more information, call 720-865-1206 or visit www.denverlibrary.org/programs/creative. -- Kity Ironton
Girls' Day Out
There are so many fundraisers in Denver, from the staid to the outrageous, that Helene Steinberg, director of special events for National Jewish Hospital, was struggling to come up with a concept that was unique and wonderful to celebrate women. So she went with the more-the-merrier theory of event planning and launched InSPAration: A Day of Health and Beauty. "What I found when we were discussing what to do was that women have so many different issues and ideas that we tried to bring as many together as we possibly could," Steinberg says. That includes fourteen speakers on topics ranging from alternative medicine to plastic surgery, tons of booths (including a mini-massage station) and a 200-item silent auction. InSPAration kicks off today at 9:30 a.m. and runs until 4 p.m. at Invesco Field at Mile High. Tickets start at $150 (price includes lunch), but the goodie bag is worth $600! For more information, call 303-398-1122 or visit www.nationaljewish.org/fr/insparation/2005. -- Jerri Theil
On the March
Mothers let it all hang out.
Generally speaking, when you hear about some mother "acting up," you know the words "soccer mom" won't be far behind. You know the story: The game's in full swing, Highlands Ranch Bleached-Blonde Thunder is up one against the Cherry Creek Aryan Lightning, when all of a sudden some mother just loses it. Water bottles and obscenities are hurled, and by the time authorities contain the irate woman, one coach has usually been completely emasculated and three players have vowed never to play soccer again. I've seen it a million times. Fortunately, a group of committed mothers is working to alter this unruly image, with the Mothers Acting Up Mother's Day Parade, beginning today at 1 p.m.
Costumed mothers and anyone else who wishes to participate will meet outside the Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Boulevard, and parade to the courthouse in an effort to mobilize the political strength of mothers. This year's parade theme is "Connecting the Dots," to help people realize how interconnected we are as individuals and nations, as well as the connection between one child's labor and another's plenty. For more information, call 303-442-7628 or go to www.mothersactingup.org. -- Adam Cayton-Holland
La Vida Loca
The East L.A. barrio comes to life at the Tattered Cover.
The East L.A. barrio has a decidedly industrial-blue-collar history. While the stereotype is of Chicano migrant workers toiling in the fields, the truth is that many Mexican immigrants in the post-World War II era bypassed agricultural work and planted themselves in an urban setting, choosing to toil in factories instead. It's a story that's been aching to be told for decades, a chapter of Latino history that deserves to stand tall alongside John Steinbeck's workingman sagas.
Leave it to Luis Rodriguez, who knows the territory, to write just that sort of narrative. The former L.A. gang member, award-winning poet and community organizer rose out of the barrio and authored the acclaimed 1993 gang-life memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. He's now turned his pen to a sometimes-polemic new novel, Music of the Mill, that spans sixty years among the Salcido family, a multi-generational clan of steel-mill workers who fight to get by in a small, smoke-belching world ruled by racial inequality. Think of it as Mi Familiawith a backbone of steel.
Rodriguez will discuss and sign the epic tale tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Tattered Cover Book Store, 2955 East First Avenue. For more information, call 303-322-7727 or visit www.tatteredcover.com. -- Susan Froyd | <urn:uuid:e2adb748-0bab-40a6-a9a0-eb1cd21aaa55> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.westword.com/2005-05-05/calendar/quiet/ | 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 | 0.941828 | 1,195 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Oct 30, 2012
My friend B. is a body psychotherapist. She’s explained what this means more than once, but I never quite get a handle on it.1 I gather that, where traditional psychotherapy is focused on talking, body psychotherapy treats us as the soul-body composite we are.
One of the tenets of the discipline is that past trauma can manifest itself, not only in our thought patterns, but in our patterns of movement. So the therapist is trained to tune in on the body language of the client, to sense when his movements reveal something his conscious mind would rather avoid, or when his body is somehow trapped in a pattern it learned from some disaster.
As with most things B. has introduced me to — stevia, glossolalia, aikido — it sounded kooky at first. Due in part to my my father’s inveterate intolerance for any and all forms of bullsh★t, I’ve spent most of my life with my kook-o-meter turned up to eleven. It’s been a tricky business, learning to turn the thing down notch by notch: learning to keep an open mind, as the saying goes, but not so open that my brains falls out.
I owe so much of my kookiness to you, B., and I’m forever grateful.
Like traditional psychotherapy, it seems to me that body psychotherapy is something that anybody could do, but that some people have a natural gift for; a gift which can of course be sharpened by training. We’ve all had (or been) the friend who is always on the receiving end of intense personal revelations, from friends and coworkers and even from strangers on airplanes. That friend is a kind of therapist, or maybe every therapist is a particular kind of friend.
B. is gifted. Her native sensitivity makes it impossible for her to ignore the energy, good and bad, that radiates from people. If I’m in a horrible mood and my roommate C. walks into the room, he’ll be completely oblivious (God bless him). But for B., walking in the door will be like stepping off a lead-lined Chernobyl tour bus. Her Geiger counter is finely tuned, and the gain is all the way up.
I was explaining all this to my dad once (sorry, Abba,2 it may have been a sort of passive-aggressive act of rebellion; I’ve noticed that I seem to enjoy doing things in front of you that I imagine flout the Gershom code) and concluded by saying something like “It seems like a good idea to me. I bet it helps people.” He replied: “Yeah; I think pretty much anything does.”
My father is always lamenting his inability to hand out fatherly words of wisdom. It’s true that when he tries to come up with sage advice, it usually amounts to the Gershom family motto: It could always be worse. But he doesn’t realize how often, when he isn’t trying at all, a phrase of his will stick in my mind, slowly dissolving over the next five or ten years.
It’s fun to talk about our chronic problems as if they were monsters, or maybe dragons: it lends an air of heroism to things that, for anybody on the outside, would seem achingly mundane. It’s also comforting, because a dragon might be big and scary, but one well-placed sword-thrust and the thing is conquered for good.
Solving real problems, or anyway the big ones, is rarely like that. It’s less like killing a dragon and more like kneading3 a huge, heavy lump of dough. You can stop and ask yourself whether you should be using a rolling pin4 or just your hands, or whether you should be wearing gloves, or whether it’s got enough flour, or whether maybe you should buy a special as-seen-on-TV kneading implement. Those are okay questions, but kneading is by its nature a slow process: there’s no such thing as flash-kneading. And the lump is huge, huge.
The best thing is to try one approach until it stops working, and then try another. One approach might work better than another, but nearly anything helps. And nearly everything teaches you something worth knowing.
That pretty much sums up how I feel about reparative therapy, and why I don’t put too much stock in it, at least no more stock than I put in any single solution to any complex problem. I’ll probably always be attracted to men, but — O listen well, 18-year-old self — I’m no longer frantic, no longer miserable, no longer desperate.
When people ask me how I got from there to here, I want to tell them: Everything. Family, friends, meds, therapy; praying to God, cursing Him, threatening Him and making up with Him and just sitting still; writing, reading, laughing, crying, living. It all helps. Life helps, reality helps.
The one sure way to stay miserable is to do nothing at all. | <urn:uuid:e52a9077-9f3f-4bcc-887f-56432e4c7ccf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stevegershom.com/2012/10/nearly-anything/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961431 | 1,099 | 1.5 | 2 |
News for All the People
Juan González and Joseph Torres
From colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so often, combated—racial oppression. This acclaimed book—called a “masterpiece” by the esteemed scholar Robert W. McChesney and chosen as one of 2011’s best books by the Progressive—reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans have received, even as it depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press.
Written in an exciting, story-driven style and replete with memorable portraits of journalists, both famous and obscure, News for All the People is destined to become the standard history of the American media.
“Juan González and Joseph Torres have rendered a splendid public service with this highly readable and engrossing story of how the press sees—and doesn’t see—who we are as a people. Race and ethnicity, power and privilege, the visible and the invisible are at the core of our democratic crisis today, and it’s hard to imagine a better way to face the challenge than to be armed with the story this book tells so well.” -– Bill Moyers, Public Affairs Television
“News for All the People is truly a masterpiece; I could not put it down. After years of research, Juan González and Joseph Torres have produced a book that will be nothing short of mandatory reading for all who care about the media or democracy. It will change how you think about media and American history.” -– Robert W. McChesney, coauthor of The Death and Life of American Journalism
“A ‘first-of-its-kind’ rendering of the causes, contexts, and consequences of the American media system across the fault line of race. Haunting and prophetic, this is a must-read for all the people.” -– Malkia Amala Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice | <urn:uuid:f2625bc0-59a6-409f-b32c-69b7d82c7475> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.democracynow.org/books/news_for_all_the_people | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932227 | 453 | 1.835938 | 2 |
|The exhibition was inaugurated by our principal on the Feb 24th '09 in the music room|
|Only the project member's collections were on display( Philatelic items and some coins).|
Also on display was an incorrect way of stamp preservation and display. Pasting stamps on any medium is just not the right method.
|All the teachers and our schoolmates came to see the grand show.|
|All looked at the things on display with amazement. They asked us a number of questions .|
|We answered to all their queries. Our happiness knew no bounds.|
|To Know More About Us Click Here| | <urn:uuid:39d5c6e9-027a-481a-b33e-1ff4ffa41f5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/00420/exhibition.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942687 | 134 | 1.5 | 2 |
Metropolitan Avenue’s positive influence on the community is undeniable. Yet it seems that Metropolitan Avenue is also the root of many Middle Village traffic dilemmas. Just as Metropolitan Avenue is a staple in Middle Village, so is the traffic.
Last week’s accident in Middle Village on 76th Street and 69th Road is a case in point. In the wake of the incident that involved an overturned school bus, eyebrows were raised when residents called traffic regulations (or the lack of traffic regulations) into question.
Middle Village citizens are quick to point out that 69th Road is often used as a means of avoiding heavily congested Metropolitan Avenue. While many drivers opt to use the small road to evade traffic, residents are concerned with the seemingly voracious need for speed that so many drivers possess.
According to complaints made by Council Member Elizabeth Crowley to the Department of Transportation over the last year, several accidents have occurred on residential roads in Middle Village, 69th Road in particular, that could be avoided with traffic calming measures.
Some of these mishaps include a fatal motorcycle accident, a child’s foot being run over, an Access-A-Van being hit and tipping on to another vehicle, and the recent overturning of a bus of preschoolers.
However, many residents feel that short cuts like 69th Road are necessary to reduce the time that they spend stuck in traffic. One Middle Village resident said she avoids Metropolitan Avenue at all costs.
“Instead of driving on Metro, I use residential streets,” said the resident, whose experience speaks for many people’s. “I will only use it if it’s very early in the day or very late.” She said
Many adjustments need to be made to ameliorate the traffic conditions in Middle Village. Each resident and passer-by has their own personal gripes and opinions on what can enhance both traffic safety and the flow of traffic, but let’s just hope that appropriate amendments can be made before more people get hurt.
In the meantime, drivers should do their part by abiding by the speed limit on the residential roads. | <urn:uuid:9abf2b06-f3be-4153-8d3e-5b5fec1ab356> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.queensledger.com/view/full_story/5042136/article-In-Our-Opinion-?instance=lead_story_left_column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972205 | 438 | 1.5625 | 2 |
GOD SELF REALIZATION: THE GREATEST DISCOVERY ON PLANET EARTH
The voices of Sages, Philosophers and Prophets’ have echo to us throughout the ages that we ought to know our self. But instead we all try to pattern ourselves after someone else and try to duplicate their achievements. For the most part we are reluctant to be original. We want to be like Mike or WEAR everybody’s number on our chest but our own. We simply don’t look at ourselves as being an individual with genes of greatest waiting to be discovered and born.
Most people think it a bit too farfetched to place great value on themselves; we have been beaten down with the idea that we ain’t all that. Maybe you have been asked at times when using our ingenuity and unquineness, “oua you think you’re something don’t you” and we have shunned and denied our very greatness for fear of further confrontation to our character and answered the question with an “emphatic No” I don’t think I’m something.
Everyone’s response to such slanderous inquiries should always be “Yes” I do think I’m something and somebody! I’m the child of the king! I am wonderfully and marvelously made fashioned and furthermore, I’m special in the sight of God!
Listen; Yes we are that and much, much more. But with meekness, modesty and humility we carry out our mission and daily duties for God and humanity.
We are not puffed up even though we can float like a butterfly and sting like a bee or can sing like an angel, preach like Peter or pray like Paul we are not puffed up, but remain humble. Our greatest appreciation is our love for God, because we understand our relationship to him and him to us. And together with the stuff we use we can’t lose.
So let me say to those that don’t have that Spiritual dog tenacity and Spiritual steadfast determination you can discover and reclaim your God self realization.
Start where you are today. Start with appreciating yourself. Your shortcomings, the good, bad and the ugly are you. Own up to it. Accept you and stop rejecting you.
Once you have accepted you; your journey can begin anew.
Facing each day with this new attitude is a choice and not a chore. The problems that are face each day are no longer seen as negatives, but as positive challenges and hurdles to be jumped and cleared; that will carry you towards the goals you have set out to achieve.
Remember that every misfortune and setback is a setup to a hook up, to God’s blessings for you.
One of the greatest challenges in our daily walk is to find ways to be of service to others; for service sake. Not because you are paid or seeking to render service because of rewards and certainly it never should be to win friends and influence people, but our service is done because you now know that the bible is right.
11. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.
12. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. Listen to me.
God has genetically place in all of us a gene of possibility and greatest, but it must be discovered; like a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered by a treasurer seeker you must find it. In other words your “Kingdom of God is at hand”; but if you are not looking for nothing you are not going to find nothing, because nothing from nothing still adds up to nothing. But on the other hand something from something will always make something.
Again, one of the reasons we are not making this GREATEST DISCOVERY ON PLANET EARTH is because we have been trained from our youth and are continuing to teach ourselves to watch others greatness and applaud their efforts; while in most cases ignoring our own gifts and uniqueness. Let’s check out Jesus!
It is easy to see the unfolding of self realization in Jesus as He starts his ministry. Jesus ministered three and a half years of his thirty three year life span. This self realization is visible to us. Do you remember when Jesus was twelve years old and was found in the Temple of Wisdom with the wisest of men; and His baptism at the river Jordan? Have you not read about his test with the devil on the mountain of temptation; and of course His triumphant entry into Jerusalem on that palms Sabbath; and His miraculous bodily recovery from death on resurrection Sunday. He started out like he finished up in his ministry.
In Jesus display of self realization He knew from whence he came, who he was and from whence he would be returning.
In other words he displayed total control over his life and the events surrounding him. He was never caught off guard, but was able to meet the adversary head to head and toe to toe and blow for blow. He won the victory.
I dare you to shout, sing or say; Victory, Victory shall be mine. I told Satan get thee behind; Victory, Victory shall be mine.
How did Jesus do this and why? Can we do it too! These are questions I will be addressed here today.
We first need to know that Jesus did all he did for you and I. His life driven purpose and mission was to undo the original sin; which resulted in the identity crisis that permeates all of mankind after the fall of Adam.
Do you recall the reason causing the fall of mankind and when the original sin occurred?
9. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
15. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. My friends.
What is the “thou shalt surely will die”. We should ask ourselves what is this referencing? Is it referring only to our physical body or can we further examine its spiritual meaning. If so, then let me continue with my enlightening revelation for you today.
I do believe that it was the God Concept of Good that dies on that horrid dark day in the garden. Listen to me now.
When our God Concepts are in doubt we are like a ship without a rudder, a kit without a wind, a bird without a song and a man without a loving God.
This is what the enemy of God, the serpent purported. Saying, “God was hiding something from them”. His subtle attempt to created mistrust and doubt in God is still with us today. He is saying, that God is a bad boy, because He is not telling us the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
What the devil was saying during his interrogation of Eve in the Garden of Eden he is still telling us today that there was something better that God didn’t want us to know, and that he (the serpent )alone has it for us. Satan is telling the world that he has the goods for your lives; while claiming God’s design and plan is faulty and not worthy trusting. Listen.
The Devil thinks he has the answer for the world today, but I stop by here with some good news for you today; “and it’s that I found the answer and sure enough I know way”. It is Jesus. Jesus is the answer for the world today; besides him there is no other; Jesus is the way.
He is the way; the truth and the life. John 14:6
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. Heb. 13:8
Unfortunately we have lost our victory cry and are not shouting from the roof top very loud anymore, because our God Concept has been clouded and diluted by the new day serpent’s who are and the anti-Christ.
When Satan interrogated Eve in the Garden of Eden he challenged her God Concept using the power of suggestion. Let’s take a closer look and learn our lesson so we don’t make to same mistakes.
This is where you and I have to be very careful not to give into suggestions that are contrary and contradictory to God’s Word for our lives.
Let me give you some food for thought as we consider next passages. Do you know that the USA Congress has been debating about a interrogation practice called “water boarding”. It is used when a combatant is captured and is interrogated, but will not comply or talk. It simulates a never death experience.
It is at this time the use of “water boarding” seems most useful in changing a person total Concepts and views. This practice is now being discussed as to whether or not it is torture. I’ll leave that up to you to determine for yourself, but I will ask that you to pray about our nation’s use of torture techniques.
There is a phrase that I call “word boarding”. This is what I believe occurred in the garden and the technique used on Eve. The Serpent took God’s pure word and diluted it with poisonous venom and dumped Eve head long into confusion and uncertainty, which resulted in self denial.
* **1. Now the serpent was more subtil (Suggestive) than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
2. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
*** 4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: (Auto-Suggestion)
***5. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
***6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, (Mental food- Concept food) and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. (God’s Concept of Good Aborted)
*** 7. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew (Conception Change) that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
9. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10. And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
11. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
12. And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
***13. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
(Interrogated me, Tortured me, Word Boarded me)
The destruction of the God concepts was accomplished during this terrorist’s interrogation between the Serpent and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
You See; the serpent offered what she thought to be a more abundant and perfect life. She accepted the serpent’s version of self realization and denies her God realization and eventually persuaded her husband Adam to look outside himself and away from God for self fulfillment. Satan had accomplished his master plan of mass deception of self realization. His Identity thief plan is still working today.
Satan’s tree of knowledge is more preferable to man than God’s tree of life and perfection.
Adam now follows a concept other than what God had ordained for him.
This is the greatest error of creation. It is called God self denial.
OUR PARADISE IS LOST BUT OUR PARADISE MUST BE REDISCOVERY. BUT WHO WILL RECOVER IT, WHO WILL RESTORE IT; WHO WILL DELIVER THE GOD SELF REALIZATION AGAIN TO MANKIND.
Luke 2: 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
11. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
Jesus shows us that we can be saved, redeemed and restored to our rightful place in the kingdom of God by identifying with Our Heavenly Father. He tells us it is not about Satan’s will; or even his own will, but that He has come to do the will of his Father. His Father tells him what to do and he obeys Him only. He is in the Father and the Father is in Him.
Jesus identifies with God’s and understands the genetic code of the universe; and all through life He is more than a conquer over the adversary;
He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and at His name every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Can We Do It? Can we make the GREATEST DISCOVERY ON PLANET EARTH?
YES; YES WE Can! We can discover the God self realization whether we are young, old, broken or whole, male, female, rich or poor, educated or not; it is within your reach. It is the door to your spiritual future.
Here is one thing that we must establish today in your spiritual belief system. You must know that there is no one ever been born or ever will be just like you. There is no one with your samemind, heart, eyes, ears, hands, hair, mouth or DNA.
Therefore is no one that can duplicate anything just like you or has the ability to achieve anything just like you. You alone are God’s rarest gift to the world. You are a unique creation; and the design and pattern in your genetic code ordain by God is the greatest discovery that you can ever make. Then you can say when asked, who are you? “I am That I am”, because “He Is Who He Is In Me”.
Once you discover and reclaim the God self realization you will know that He is ever present, ever knowing and ever powerful in your life and you never lose sight of this awareness again.
This new revelation defies all knowledge of logic about bad; because all is GOOD IN GOD.
28. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36. As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39. Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
19. But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
God is good all the time and all the time God is good.
God is Love all the time and all the time God is Love.
God and Self Discovery is Good all the time and all the time God and Self Discovery is Good.
Rev. Sylvester Williams, Jr.
March 10, 2008 | <urn:uuid:897e38bd-bfe5-4384-9eba-2f6966440633> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wubs.org/god_self_realization.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964058 | 3,504 | 1.554688 | 2 |
I would like to provide the best care for my cat, who is 14 1/2 years old. About six months ago, he was diagnosed with FIV and FIP. He has been an indoor cat for the past 10 1/2 years. He now weighs about 10 lbs., and shows to me a healthy coat and eyes, bowel movement, mobility, etc. Oh, he also has arthritis. Ever since he was a baby, he has had, and still has a heart murmur/or arrythmia. I feed him: Holistic Natural Feline Formula Feline Kibble from Bench and Field. I still have not found a very good wet formula that is healthy and that he enjoys. Can you recommend a few? Do you think it's best that I make his food? (I tried the raw food diet years ago, and he absolutely hated it, so I don't want to go down that road again).
I have to be careful, because his brother is prone to urinary infections, so the food has to be compatible as well. (His brother is a senior also, is prone to on and off, non-serious bladder infections, and is very overweight - he weighs about 18 lbs.) Besides a good wet diet, are there any other supplements I can give him? I am thinking about a good multi-vitamin and a good immune booster…
Any good quality canned food would be appropriate for both of your cats. Nature’s Variety Prairie, Wellness, and Merrick Gourmet are all made with high quality ingredients and offer a wide variety of flavors so that you can usually find several that your cat will enjoy. Home prepared food is, of course, an excellent part of your cats’ overall diet.
Cats are creatures of habit, and frequently protest changing to a healthier diet, especially if they are used to dry food or foods with sweeteners and additives. To help encourage your cats to try new healthier foods you can crumble treats over the food to get them eating. I did this with my own cats (and still do), that were “addicted” to dry kibble to encourage them to eat raw food and healthier canned food. The freeze dried all meat treats are perfect for this. They crumble easily almost to a powder and just a small amount can be sprinkled over the food. Halo Liv-A-Littles & Whole Life Pet Treats offer freeze dried meat treats (cats seem to favor chicken & fish flavors).
Here are a couple high quality supplements that can help enhance your senior cats' immune systems:
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Election dispute big test for Kenya’s top judge
ABOVE PHOTO: Chairman of the election commission Isaak Hassan, left, speaks to the media after handing over a certificate of the recent election results, a matter of protocol, to Kenya’s Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, right, at the Supreme Court in downtown Nairobi, Kenya Monday, March 11, 2013. Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s founding father, was named the winner of the country’s presidential election on Saturday with 50.07 percent of the vote, but his opponent Raila Odinga refused to concede saying he had plans to petition the Supreme Court, alleging multiple failures in the election’s integrity that he said has put Kenyan democracy on trial.
(AP Photo/Sayyid Azim)
By Rodney Muhumuza and Jason Straziuso
NAIROBI, Kenya — Confidence was so low in Kenya’s courts after its 2007 election that people preferred to settle their disputes with machetes and bows and arrows. After this year’s disputed presidential vote, there has been no violence, in part because of the faith the country has in its highest-ranking judge.
Chief Justice Willy Mutunga will soon preside over the biggest case of his short judicial career. Last weekend the country’s election commission named Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta the winner of the March 4 presidential election with 50.07 percent of the vote.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga is challenging that result, saying there has been massive rigging. Odinga’s camp said Tuesday that the prime minister was cheated out of 1.8 million votes, a margin that would give him an outright win.
The March 4 election was the first since postelection violence killed more than 1,000 people in 2007-08. This postelection period has not seen any violence. Odinga asked his supporters for calm, and Kenyans seem to have more faith in their government.
Mutunga on Monday said the election case would be heard “impartially, fairly justly and without fear, ill-will, prejudice or bias and in accordance with our constitution and our laws.”
Mutunga’s career as a social and political activist has placed him near Kenya’s top politicians for decades, and he’s shared his opinion on them. One quote from the 2006 book “Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics” may become an issue for the case he soon presides over.
“I am convinced Kenya’s transition needs Raila as the president of this country,” author Babafemi A. Badejo quotes Mutunga as saying.
Mutunga has been “a committed activist in the pro-democracy movement in Kenya since the 1970s,” according to a biography posted on a Kenyan government website.
Unlike other judges in Kenya, many who know Mutunga believe his independence is genuine, and is unlikely to be persuaded by bribes or threats. Mutuma Rutere, of the Nairobi-based Center for Human Rights and Policy Studies, said fairness is Mutunga’s “biggest asset.”
“There is enough evidence that he can be depended upon to preside over this issue in an independent manner,” said Rutere, who worked with Mutunga at the Kenya Human Rights Commission. “His whole life has been about promoting justice and democracy.”
Mutunga knows Odinga well. In the late 1970s, as former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi consolidated his hold on power, Mutunga was jailed in 1982, the same year Odinga was detained for alleged treason. Later the two joined a pro-democracy group called the Young Turks.
In the book “Raila Odinga,” Mutunga is quoted as saying Odinga “is a nationalist and a patriot. He has always struggled against dictatorship and oppression and been for social justice.”
“Though it may sound contradictory, he is also an ethnic baron. He has not sorted out this contradiction in his life. He uses both nationalist and ethnic cards for the advancement of his political projects,” the book quotes Mutunga as saying.
Kenya’s 2010 constitution was passed in the wake of the 2007-08 tribal violence. It gives Odinga until Saturday to file his election petition and Mutunga’s court two weeks to rule. Kenyatta cannot be sworn in until the case is closed.
On Tuesday, Odinga’s team said it is seeking an order from Kenya’s High Court to compel the election commission to produce electoral registrars and other documents used in the vote count. Odinga’s team says the documents can help prove Odinga was cheated out of 1.8 million votes. It said the election commission is operating under a cloak of secrecy.
“This is a serious indictment on the integrity, ability and above all honesty of the” election commission, Education Minister Mutula Kilonzo said.
Though Mutunga has a reputation for fairness and independence, the Odinga case will present new, difficult tests in a country with a history of extra-judicial executions and unexplained disappearances. Even before Kenyans voted, a letter attributed to a violent gang circulated throughout the country warning of “dire consequences” if Kenyatta was blocked from running.
Kenyatta faces charges of crimes against humanity at The Hague-based International Criminal Court, and his eligibility to run for president was being tested in court.
“If anybody, any candidate, any party, any agency, or any other actor thinks that it will bend the ear, mind and resolve of this chief justice to do anything that is unconstitutional or illegal, then they are mistaken,” Mutunga said in statement in February.
Mutunga, 65, was born into a poor family among the Kamba people of Kenya’s eastern province and has degrees from universities in Kenya and Tanzania. He has taught constitutional law at the University of Nairobi. After his 1983 release from prison he went into exile in Canada, where he earned a doctorate in law at Toronto’s York University.
He returned to Kenya in the early 1990s. Before being named chief justice, he had never been a judge. He has spoken out in defense of homosexuality in a deeply conservative society and is described as a proponent of “neoliberal” judicial reform. He wears a stud in his left ear, an item that became a publicly debated issue as he was named chief justice.
Out of 10 contenders for the job, Mutunga’s name was the only one forwarded by the Judicial Service Commission to President Mwai Kibaki. Mutunga’s appointment was approved by lawmakers in June 2011.
Gladwell Otieno of the Africa Center for Open Governance, a pro-democracy group in Nairobi, said Mutunga has been a good chief justice. She notes that he is one of only six justices, however. A seventh seat is vacant, opening the possibility of a split decision.
“Ever since he took over the judiciary public confidence has been rising steadily. It’s quite high now,” Otieno said. Odinga supporters “may expect him to rule in their favor... but he’s not alone there and it depends on the quality of evidence they present.”
+ Top Story
With the defeat of apartheid, a new Black leadership runs South African ministries, businesses, and schools but an abusive police force appears to have survived the cultural and social changes. Last year, five thousand complaints were lodged against the South African police...
One of Africa’s wealthiest nations, the home of Africa’s first woman billionaire, turned its bulldozers on the homes of some 5,000 people in an early morning raid close to the capital, Luanda, in an action fiercely condemned by international rights organizations.
The traffic is there, grinding life to a halt as the middle class pound out messages on BlackBerry mobile phones and worry about Facebook. The heat, the sweat and the daily tragedy of unclaimed bodies lying alongside roadways, passers-by hurrying past for fear of someone else's misfortune...
I’m moved to write about Tuskegee Airman Dabney Montgomery of Harlem, who celebrated his 90th birthday on April 18th. I first met him in 2004 at the Harlem Book Festival when a friend asked him about the Tuskegee Airmen, whose cap he wore so proudly.
A series of raids by Nigerian authorities in recent days has brought fear to Katangua Market in Lagos, where immigrant labor makes the market thrum amid piles of secondhand clothes, shoes, purses and other accessories that are laid along narrow dirt alleyways.
The British Prime Minister, known as the Iron Lady, was a warm friend of South African dictator PW Botha who was welcomed at No.10 Downing Street in 1984. With this, Botha became the first leader of the Apartheid regime accorded the privilege of a state visit to UK since 1961...
Thousands of people attended National Action Network’s (NAN) annual national convention April 3-6 in New York City including delegates from over sixty NAN chapters across the United States. The convention concluded with major announcement by Rev. Al Sharpton...
Nelson Mandela’s children have launched a court case against several longtime associates of the former president in a dispute over the control of two companies, a South African newspaper reported Wednesday. | <urn:uuid:a64bd450-2b16-4f72-8972-cd378e6a759b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.philasun.com/news/4017/21/Mandela-close-to-medical-care-at-home.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974578 | 2,027 | 1.539063 | 2 |
A range of symptoms that sufferers of electromagnetic hypersensitivity feel include acute headaches, skin irritation and chronic pain.
The $40 million dollar fund made a profit of almost two percent in its first month of trading by using Tweets to gauge public's mood.
As states face cutbacks in budgets, some are shutting down unemployment offices and replacing unemployment councilors with computers.
The National Research Council identified some 22,000 space junk objects orbiting the Earth, and is looking for a way to remove the potentially dangerous debris.
Travelers will be shot into space on a Soyuz rocket and will orbit 217 miles above earth in a hotel with massive windows for expansive, intergalactic views.
Smart phones and wi-fi make some people feel overwhelmed with information, but the problem has been around for thousands of years.
Dozens of engineers and enthusiasts are trying to figure out how to build a mile-high mountain in a very flat, low country: the Netherlands.
WikiLeaks recently chose to release documents without removing the names of diplomatic sources and other contacts.
How Western companies like Nokia Siemens Networks have allowed their technology to be used to suppress dissent in countries like Bahrain.
Hacker Gary McKinnon's lawyers say Asperger's influenced his actions and that he shouldn’t be charged for hacking military computers. | <urn:uuid:35617794-14f2-460f-b38e-be29da064bcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pri.org/keywords/technology/index.19.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930855 | 269 | 1.625 | 2 |
Get inspired by local CODEPINK actions by viewing photos, report backs, news links, and YouTube videos below! To get the latest news about what CODEPINK is doing in Washington, DC, check out our Pink Tank Blog.
Bringing the Pink to the ProcessionNovember 7, 2011
Last night was Tucson's annual All Souls Procession, and CODEPINK Tucson participated by carrying panels from the internationally touring memorial Peace Ribbon exhibit.
This is the third year in a row that the Peace Ribbon has visited Tucson to be a part of the All Souls Procession. Each of the hundreds of hand-crafted 3'x2' fabric panels commemorates lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are ties on each of the corners, so the panels can be tied together to form one long ribbon of peace. It is not only mobile, it is very moving.
A band of us gathered to walk the Ribbon again in Tucson's unique All Souls Procession. This event is hosted by Many Mouths, One Stomach and has grown in size, colorfulness, and creativity over the past 3 decades. Thousands of Tucsonans dress up in elaborate costumes, put together ingenious mechanical contraptions, gather their music-making instruments or sage or incense, and congregate to honor the lost souls who are dearly remembered.
As I marched the CODEPINK Peace Heart and took in the astounding variety of people who came out to participate or just to watch, it struck me that this noisy mob might be seen as a real threat to the public safety if we put on the same glasses to view the event as the decision-makers behind the Occupy Ouster in Armory last Thursday must have been wearing.
Here was a HUGE crowd, many of whom were masked, and many were carrying mechanical implements that could be used as weapons.
But the police presence last night was minimal. I counted fewer police there, along the parade route, than I saw amassed in a show of force around Military Plaza last Thursday to address the "problem" of 50 or so sleepy campers in a public park after dark. And after 2 weeks of Occupation, the TPD certainly had background information on all those Occupiers, knew who was who, and were pretty certain there was no physical threat from any of them. | <urn:uuid:a2ada3a4-0a88-4d0a-a17f-625d0d15af09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://codepinkalert.org/userdata_display.php?modin=54&uid=12570 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961975 | 469 | 1.539063 | 2 |
(NBC) - Boeing says it has a temporary fix for its battery problems that have grounded its new flagship Dreamliner and will present the plan to the Federal Aviation Administration later today.
The FAA ordered the worldwide grounding of all 50 of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners on January 16th after there were problems with the plane's batteries on two separate flights.
A lithium ion battery caught fire on this plane in Boston and a smoking battery led to an emergency landing of another plane in Japan.
Analysts estimate Boeing is losing about $200 million a month in delivery payments while spending as much as $1 billion a month to keep the 787's production line running.
The grounding is also costing airlines, like United, which has had to cancel new routes while federal safety regulators inspect the planes.
Publicly the company says it is still investigating the problem and is being tight lipped on the specifics.
However, industry insiders expect Boeing's fix will include putting the batteries inside of a fire resistant container that will prevent overheating by having more space between the batteries and improved ventilation.
If the plan is approved Boeing hopes to have the Dreamliner back in the air by April.
The problem has been isolated to one of four possible issues and engineers are hoping the temporary fix will lead to a permanent solution. | <urn:uuid:0ae0426e-42e1-44c8-91ea-7b858aed4bd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlbz2.com/news/national/article/232326/45/Boeing-has-temporary-fix-for-Dreamliner | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968809 | 264 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The mission of Student Life at Tacoma Community College is to provide cultural, educational, recreational, and social learning opportunities that will enhance a student's personal experience.
Student Life at TCC is committed to active participation in the college’s diverse learning community and providing programs that enhance student learning outcomes. Students are challenged to expand upon their learning through the programs and activities in which they become involved, the resources they use, and interactions with the college’s multicultural community.
Student Life at TCC is committed to developing student leaders. We believe the following are essential qualities of leadership:
- Self awareness
- Ability to work well with diverse people
- Ability and willingness to take action
- Commitment to service
Students are encouraged to contribute to the campus community in ways that can make a difference. Student leadership opportunities enhance student success and campus community. | <urn:uuid:8d5b0792-6d23-4cb8-b82a-d2f6d8ba05a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tacomacc.edu/catalog/12-13catalog/student-life_0.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950654 | 173 | 1.632813 | 2 |
May 25, 2007 Panvel: Dr. Sachchidanada Shevade, Pravachankar paid a visit to Sanatan Sanstha's Ashram at Panvel. He had discussions with Dr. Durgesh Samant, the national spokesperson of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti. One Hindu organization claimed that they follow Savarkar's Hinduism but not Hindu Dharma. On which Dr. Shevade said that Hinduism can not be alienated from Hindu Dharma. Can there be Islamism without Islam religion? He said that the word 'Hindu Taliban' was devised by electronic media and was picked up by newspapers. A Hindu can never be 'Talibani'. 'Talib' means training on religion. Training imparted by Islamic propagators is to kill followers of other religions. Has any Hindu done anything like this?
Dr. Samant explained to him about the websites of HJS, www.hindujagruti.org as also about SSRF site. Dr. Shevade has high regard for Sanatan Sanstha. He told one incident that a member of RSS complained to him that Sanatan always criticizes Sangh through 'Sanatan Prabhat'. On this Dr. Shevade explained to the RSS member that a mother curses her child when the child misbehaves; but it is only to bring improvement in the child.
Notice: The source URLs cited in the article might be only valid on the date the article was published. Most of them may become invalid from a day to a few months later. When a URL fails to work, you may go to the top level of the source's website and search for the article.
Disclaimer: The news published are collected from various sources and responsibility of news lies solely on the source itself. Hindu Janajagruti Samiti or its website is not in anyway connected nor is it responsible for the news content presented here. | <urn:uuid:9042d740-6cd8-4e79-8806-afec898e6fdb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/2240.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961775 | 395 | 1.5625 | 2 |
WHO TO WATCH: HEALTH CARE
What the health care community is saying
4:30 am, January 21, 2013
DR. DAVID PERSE, president and CEO, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center
The attributes of a successful health care leader are no different than any leader. You have to have a vision in the organization's course, a passion for that vision and an ability to articulate that vision to others. But beyond that you must also engender support from your leadership team. When you have those components in place, you can move an entity forward.
The CEO position requires a boldness of action; CEOs should not be managers. It is the role of the leader to set course. And then it's important to empower operational staff with the freedom to run their areas of expertise as defined by that course.
There is a significant advantage to being a health care leader with an active clinical practice because one has intimate knowledge of the product (patient care) and credibility among key customer groups (physicians).
The obvious but oversimplified challenge is financial. We must provide quality care through mandated mechanisms with less reimbursement. The fundamentals of health care will never change. There will always be sick patients and providers to care for them. In contrast to other industries whereby new paradigms and incentives are created through the process of delivering service, health care providers are limited in how they can innovate. Because the paradigm is one of control via government mandate, as leaders we must focus on quality and efficiency. It's the only way to survive regardless of what the reimbursement model dictates. GREG SANDERS, executive director, Lake Health Foundation
The attribute I believe is most necessary to be a leader in health care today is the ability to collaborate with community partners who share a common vision of providing health and wellness services to the communities we serve. Health care is a shared responsibility that ideally engages corporate, civic, community and business leaders as well as health care providers that truly understand the needs of the families we care for. A leader with a collaborative spirit is positioned well to succeed with this task.
The most challenging issues facing health care today involve the way we now care for individuals and how we, as health care institutions, adapt to new economic realities. Health care systems are in the midst of a transition from providing episodic care to providing prevention and wellness opportunities that improve patients' overall health. The other major challenge facing health care today involves increasing economic pressures due to stagnant or decreasing reimbursements coupled with additional regulatory obligations. Philanthropic support will undoubtedly continue to grow in its importance in order for these challenges to be met. CLAIRE ZANGERLE, president and CEO , Visiting Nurse Association of Ohio
Energetic: Health care leaders must have an endless supply of energy to survive in health care. It is a 24/7 business and constantly changing — that takes energy. And where there are goals, passion and positive attitude, there is energy, which leads to success.
Balancer of dichotomies: A savvy health care leader knows this is serious business, employing the same principles as Fortune 500 companies. At the same time, the humanistic side of health care must be taken into consideration.
Be a “doer”: Don't just watch — do! As a leader, always prioritize and understand that 20% of daily activities have 80% of impact on the business of anything —including health care.
Positive attitude: A sincere orientation of seeing challenges as opportunities.
Sales skills: Health care leaders are not used to “selling their products.” If someone is sick, of course they will choose us to care for them — not true anymore. Health care leaders must convince potential patients and referral sources to “buy” what you are “selling.”
Personality: Have one! Relationships are key in health care, and leaders must cultivate and nurture them.
Bridging the gap between the acute care setting and the post-acute care setting. Patient care does not stop at discharge — it is a continuum. Planning for care after discharge must start at admission. If that truly occurs as it should, there would be significant strides in patient outcomes.
Providing care to the uninsured and underinsured with limited gap funding.
Replacing the aging health care worker with competent, dedicated workers with a similar work ethic and dedication to the profession. DR. ROBERT KENT, president and CEO, Summa Western Reserve Hospital
The ability to deconstruct historical approaches to health care is an attribute that will prove valuable as we move into the future. Leaders must rethink the way in which we deliver care — the patient's needs and desires are paramount, their choice of not only who delivers the care, but how and where, will drive our success, and we have to anticipate those choices and stay ahead of them in our actions.
Leaders will also need to focus on organizing care versus simply targeting growth as a goal in the future. Understanding the long-term implications of changing health care legislation and how those changes affect reimbursement, means we must be able to organize care — delivery, staff and locations — to improve the wellness of our communities. We must focus on redefining what we do in more efficient and effective ways, not simply add layers, buildings and people to our organizations.
Thoughtful, positive and productive collaboration among and between multiple health care institutions will be a significant challenge in the next several years. The past 18 months have seen a record number of closings as well as purchases and mergers, often by health care industry partners that, before this time, would not have been identified as a candidate for that role. This activity is only going to increase, and for the partnership to offer long-term value to the participating institutions, and more importantly to the communities served, the collaboration must offer more than lip service.
Patient engagement will become an even more important challenge as meaningful use and accountable care come fully into our operations. Educating and providing patients with tools they can use to understand, track and better control their health, and ultimately their care, is a responsibility we must address. PATRICIA DEPOMPEI, president, UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, UH MacDonald Women's Hospital
Health care is an ever-changing business. Health care delivery is extremely complex and requires provision of preventive care, care for minor illness, technologically complex critical care, care for chronic diseases and end-of-life care for patients with extremely diverse needs and backgrounds. Our team must be ever ready to provide excellent, quality care.
Health care leaders must empower and coach all team members to be their best. This requires a leader willing to truly listen and create an approachable, supportive environment. It is important leaders nurture strong, collaborative relationships among multiple roles and departments. Leaders must be able to inspire a shared vision, and this requires passion, energy and enthusiasm.
The successful execution of a vision requires a leader who is also pragmatic, and willing to take calculated risks. The leader must role model expected behaviors and be ever vigilant and attune to the little things that make a difference.
Lastly, a great leader absolutely must be honest, compassionate and trustworthy. We take care of patients often during vulnerable points in their lives, and it is important that we meet their unique needs in a caring and professional manner.
As care providers for women's and children's services, our team shares the common goal of making certain all women and children have access to high-quality, medically appropriate and cost-effective care, despite the challenging economic environment.
Another significant challenge for us is there are specific health issues related to women and children that impact the manner in which we structure our care delivery. For example, rising rates of obesity have contributed to a sharp increase in pregnancy complications in the United States. While many efforts are under way nationally to address the underlying causes of obesity, we have worked diligently to train our staff to implement an evidenced-based teamwork system to optimize patient outcomes and ensure rapid responses to delivery room emergencies.
Lastly, we need to remain focused on training the next generation of health care providers, and finding cures for diseases so that we can optimize the health of patients we care for today, as well as our future population.
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- Prince Regent Nature Reserve & Malubirindji Cave: It had been six years since our last trip to the Kimberley ... read story
- Jenolan Caves Tour.: The Lucas Cave, the first discovered of the intricate caves complex, was opened in 1860. It has ... read story
- Mt sims cave: I am interested to know who built the steel door on the upper left ledge inside the cave. The ... read story
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Prince Regent Nature Reserve & Malubirindji Cave (23 May 2012)
contributed by BrianGeue
(contact BrianGeue about this story | see more stories from BrianGeue)
It had been six years since our last trip to the Kimberley region, once again plans were made around camp fires and after dinner discussions.
The challenges were set;
Drive to Kununurra as quickly as possible, 800 kilometres per day 4 days.
Drive to Mt Elizabeth Station above the Gibb River Road and then on their track to the northern most point of the track to Bachstens camp.
Leaving the car walk into Prince Regent River via Pitta Creek, down stream to Wulunge Chasm and Malubirindi Cave and return to the car via the headwaters of Prince Regent and a food drop on the final day. Eleven days in all.
Return to Kununurra, restock and visit the Bungle Bungles and Pontifís Paradise again and maybe an underground creek north west of the bungles.
Then return to Adelaide.
Once again we had to leave three weeks later than planned due to unseasonal rain in the Kimberley. We set off in Brianís new 100 series Landcruiser on Tuesday the 5th June 2007.
After five and a half days sitting in the car for nine hours plus per day we arrived as planned and found a spot to leave the car far enough off the track so nobody could see it but also in a spot where it would not get burnt by the random fires in the area. A sand bar in the middle of the creek seemed ideal. Arriving at lunchtime allowed us the afternoon to pack our rucksacks for tomorrow checking and rechecking everything was packed to plan.
Prince Regent River Hike.
We woke early to find a mist over the riverís surface, it was delightfully cool due our elevation of around 420 metres above sea level. After crossing the creek and putting our boots back on we headed north and after four kilometres of careful navigation we found the elbow of a tributary of Pitta Creek. Here we ceremoniously poured out our water bottles because the creek was flowing and we were following it down stream. Two more kilometres and the creek entered a gorge from the plateau we had been on all morning. With red escarpments on either side the tree lined creek looked spectacular. We arrived at a junction in the creek and the map showed a waterfall off to the left. Over lunch we decided to press on rather than wasting valuable time looking at the waterfall. This turned out to be a good choice because the going got tuff in the creek bed due to the thick vegetation so we climbed up the escarpment and followed itís edge for another four kilometres, with numerous ups and downs we finally came to an ideal campsite. After setting up our tents we went for an explore walk without packs and soon found that we were close to the top of a huge waterfall which tumble down a 45 degree ramp of rock for about thirty metres.
The packs seemed heavier this morning when we heaved them up on to our backs, and soon we were clambering down the edge of the waterfall we found last night. A kilometre down stream we were confronted with a huge pool which stretched out of sight and completely covering the bottom of the gorge which now has shear cliffs 80 metres high on each side. We each had small inflatable mats with us to float our rucksacks on while we swim across these pools, well, that was the plan.
We stood looking at the pool for some time but nobody volunteered to get in, we just could not be sure there were no salt water crocks lurking in the deep water. We consulted the map and decided not to follow the creek as planned but to back track a little then climb over a saddle into another creek then climb out of that creek up onto an undulating plateau and cross the plateau to pick up Pitta Creek about five kilometres down stream. This meant missing an interesting section of Pitta Creek where a pinnacle of rock stood in the middle of the creek between the cliffs. It was a hard climb and difficult walking through the waist high dry grass up on the plateau. We descended via a tributary creek and down numerous waterfalls into Pitta creek. The only place to camp was on the other side so the creek was crossed and we found a great campsite on white sand. The fire was lit and it was time to try some fishing. We had included some small hand lines in our gear and with cheese as bait we soon landed a small barramundi. Six were caught in all and we cooked them in wet paper bark on the coals of our fire. Two fish each with a little pasta what a meal.
Once again walking down Pitta Creek was too difficult with thick vegetation from the edge of the water to the shear cliffs on each side. The alternative was to climb out of the creek again and cross more undulating plateau country to the brim of Prince Regent River Gorge and then descend into the gorge via another tributary creek. It was around lunch time when we viewed the great Prince Regent Gorge for the first time. We spent some time on the escarpment admiring the view and soon decided on a creek just up stream from our viewing point, on the decent Paul bumped a tree full of green ants most of which ended up down his neck. The pack came off in a flash along with the shirt and the ants were cleared and we were soon sitting on rocks in the middle of the river eating our lunch. We were able to cross this rocky section of the river easily so we proceeded down the northern bank to the Pitta creek junction. At the junction the river was deep and wide held back by a rocky outcrop and hundred metres down stream. A small stream entered the river from our side as well, it was a great camp spot and we had made it to the end of Pitta Creek. More fish were caught that evening Rob had extra butter in his pack in anticipation of frying fish in his old frying pan so the fish were filleted and fried.
Day 4. We were now a days walk from Malubirindji Cave and there was definitely excitement in the discussion of whether we were going to go up and over again or try to walk down the creek not knowing if we could get through on this side of the creek to our destination. Up and over more undulating country seemed the only sure way to achieve our goal. We started by walking north east up the small stream we were camped on then climbed a side creek north west to the top of a range traversing several serious undulations before finally descending into Prince Regent Gorge again. It was an extremely hard day with very difficult rocky terrain up on top and a view of an easily traversed river bank down below to let us know we had made the wrong decision that morning. The descent was made difficult by thick shoulder high grass with random rocks and logs to trip us up as we struggled to the river bank, Brian falling flat on his face several times in the process. A kilometre further along the bank we reached a perfect campsite with another small stream entering from the north. After resting a short time we decided to visit Malubirndji Cave that evening. We caught a few fish, Rob had a fancy stop watch function on his watch, so he timed Brian on how long it took to land a fish from casting the line. The first fish was eleven seconds, the second was eight seconds and they were a good size so we only needed three fish to feed us. We kept them live in a plastic bag in the creek while we walked to the cave. A good kilometre up the next tributary of the Prince Regent River we entered a gorge which had an overhanging pulpit rock high on the escarpment. The floor of the gorge was scattered with rocks which made crossing easy, the other side was like an amphitheatre with natural rock steps facing the bottom of the creek. Above the steps under a long and deep rock overhang was a rock face about two metres high with a shelf recess above. The rock face was covered with a wide variety of rock paintings mostly of human heads and full figures, the shelf was scattered with human bones, sculls and most interestingly, small parcels of bones wrapped in paper bark cylinders tied off at the ends like Christmas crackers, a totally amazing sight very authentic, just incredible. We each walked the length of the rock face, individually, saying nothing, touching nothing, taking only a few photos, knowing we were viewing something sacred. There was an obvious sense of achievement and satisfaction that night as we sat around the camp fire eating our fish. It had been a long and exhausting morning getting to the campsite but the pressure was off now, because our main goal for the trip had been achieved.
Day 5. We set off up the river bank to the previous campsite, an easy walk apart from a small section of rapids where we had to crawl on a rock shelf at the base of a cliff for twenty metres and then do a bit of rock hopping over some fast flowing water where the river was held back by a rocky outcrop. A couple of kilometres further up stream we crossed the river for the last time in the same spot as day three. We stopped for lunch where a large tributary creek entered Prince Regent. It was at this point we made the decision not to follow the original hike plan which was to continue up stream on Prince Regent exploring the head waters but to follow this new tributary and climb up onto the plateau we crossed on day two and return to the waterfall at the entrance to Pitta Creek Gorge. Here we would set up camp and spend a day walking to the tee junction on Pitta Creek and hopefully view the pinnacle from the top of the cliffs. We had missed this opportunity on day two and it looked too good on the map to miss altogether. We caught some fish for dinner, filleted them and carried them up the tributary creek to the next camp sight.
Day 6. Paul found some more green ants while climbing up an almost vertical waterfall on our way to the top. Once up on top of the plateau the going was reasonably easy, the grass was waist high and Brian only fell on his face a few times, but it was hot and dry on this section. It was about eight kilometres later when we picked up the creek which lead to the gorge and we had to follow this creek three kilometres down stream and then climb out of this creek system over a saddle into the opening of the gorge. This was our biggest day and we were all tired when we arrived at the base of the waterfall to make camp. Fish again for dinner.
Day 7. Rob decided to have a rest day and soak up the shear splendour of this location. We were camped on at least an acre of white sand dotted with huge paper bark trees, we had used large sheets of this paper bark as mats outside our tents to keep the sand out. There was a huge plunge pool about two hundred metres long adjacent to the sandy camp sight. Paul and Brian started early, crossing the creek and heading north west up the side of the gorge then sidled around to a point where they could see down the main stream of Pitta Creek. The view was spectacular, we could see the huge pinnacle in the middle of the main stream as well as the huge one hundred and fifty metre high cliffs on both sides of the tee junction which rolled around the ninety degree corner into both sides of the main gorge. There were lots of photos taken while we ate our scroggin and admired the view. On the way back to camp we work towards the edge of the gorge entrance for another breath taking sight. After recuperating and swimming in the pool at the campsite we all went fishing down in the gorge.
Day 8. After a steady climb south west from the campsite we plotted a course to the car over largely flat country. We crossed our path of day one and tackled a swampy area from a new angle which resulted in a few wet feet but on the last day of the walk who cares about wet boots. The last five kilometres was through low sparse scrub, easy walking but no reference points in sight but thanks to GPS navigation we arrived right on the vehicle. We had late lunch at the car and commenced the drive out of Mt Elizabeth Station. We recovered our unused food drop and went onto a campsite we used on our previous trip out of this area seven years earlier. Here we washed in the creek put on clean clothes and sat around the campfire with a bottle of red we had for such an occasion.
That was the end of the walk into Malubirindji cave and Prince Regent River. In the morning we were woke by rain drops on our tent. We packed up hastily and started on the long drive back to Kununurra. During the day the rain slowly increased in intensity, by lunchtime at the Kalumburu turn off it was steady heavy rain. The Gibb River Road was getting a bit wet but we kept driving because we knew it would be closed next day. It was dark when we arrived at Kununurra and still raining heavily. We found a tent sight in an over crowded caravan park pitched our tents and went out to dinner. After dinner it was still raining, the caravan park was getting a bit waterlogged. During the night Brian noted the water level was about seventy five millimetres deep by his tent door another ten millimetres and it would have come through the zips. The ground sheet was bulging up along side our sleeping mats just like sleeping on a water bed.
The next morning the rain had eased and the pool level around the tents had dropped but it was still raining. We later found all the dirt roads in the area were closed and in particular the road into the Bungle Bungles would not be open for at least a week. We drove around to Wyndham and back for the day and it was still raining. The next day down to Halls Creek and back to the Argyle diamond mine camping on the Wilson River, here we made the decision to drive south to Alice Springs via Kununurra. To this day we talk about what would have happened if we spent one or two more days in Prince Regent Nature Reserve and speculate on how deep the water may have been around Brianís car where it was parked in the middle of the creek!
This story was uploaded into the Bonzle Digital Atlas of Australia entry for the Cave 'Malubirindji Cave'.
- add a story about Malubirindji Cave: click here to add a story about Malubirindji Cave
- info about Malubirindji Cave: click here for the Bonzle entry on Malubirindji Cave (open in new window)
- map of Malubirindji Cave: click here for the Bonzle map of Malubirindji Cave (open in new window)
- pictures of Malubirindji Cave: click here for pictures of Malubirindji Cave (open in new window) | <urn:uuid:e499cbf6-3652-4318-920a-29d34f69e927> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bonzle.com/c/a?a=stories&mo=32692180 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974566 | 3,312 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The first Vietnam veteran to be U.S. defense secretary is spending his first overseas trip on the job thanking soldiers and Marines.
Around 11 a.m. ET Friday, Chuck Hagel touched down in Kabul, Afghanistan.
"I think it's always important when new leadership comes in to any office in our national security organization, that we recognize the people who make it all possible and who are the ones on the front lines securing this country," he said while en route.
A one-page letter from him will be handed out to troops.
But Hagel is also there to "better understand what's going on" in the 11-year war -- America's longest. That will help him "better advise the president, and to do my job as well as I can, to make my own assessment and listen to our commanders," he said.
Hagel told reporters that he's known Afghan President Hamid Karzai for 11 years and he expects to talk with him about many topics, including Karzai's recent restrictions on U.S. Special Operations Forces.
"We're still at war in Afghanistan," he said, although it was never the United States' intention to stay indefinitely.
Many in Congress, including several high-ranking members of his Republican Party, opposed Hagel's nomination; the final vote in the Senate was 58-41.
Besides not liking his past comments about Israel and Iran, they bristled at his comments over the years about Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which came after Hagel went with Barack Obama, then an Illinois senator, to Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Kuwait in 2008.
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appropriately supervised, in relation to an individual, has the meaning given by rule 4A.4.3.
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authorised firm (or firm) means a person that has an authorisation.
CII Award in General Insurance means the award (AGI) for passing the examination given by the Chartered Insurance Institute on general insurance, as revised from time to time; or
CII Award in Financial Planning (AFP) means the award for passing the examination given by the Chartered Insurance Institute on financial planning, as revised from time to time.
CISI Regulatory qualification means the award for passing the examination on the QFC Rules and Regulations, developed by the Regulatory Authority in conjunction with the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments, as revised from time to time.
competencies, for a controlled function, has the meaning given by rule 4A.2.3.
conditional approval means an approval under rule 4A.4.2.
controlled function has the meaning given by the FSR, article 41(2).
customer facing function has the meaning given by rule 2.1.10.
document means a record of information in any form (including electronic form), and includes, for example—
FSR means the QFC Financial Services Regulations 2005.
INAP means the Interpretation and Application Rulebook.
month means calendar month.
QFC means the Qatar Financial Centre.
regulated activity means an activity that is a regulated activity under the Financial Services Regulations.
Regulatory Authority means the Regulatory Authority of the QFC.
senior management, of an authorised firm, means the firm's senior managers, jointly and separately.
senior manager, of an authorised firm, means an individual employed by the firm or a member of the firm's group who has responsibility either alone or with others for management and supervision of 1 or more elements of a firm's business relating to regulated activities.
training and competency programme means the programme required under rule 4A.1.1.
training and competency document means the document required under rule 4A.1.3.
writing means any form of writing, and includes, for example, any way of representing or reproducing words, numbers, symbols or anything else in legible form (for example, by printing or photocopying).
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RESCUERS have picked up 110 survivors from an asylum seeker boat that capsized on its way to Australia from Sri Lanka with up to 200 people on board.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is working with Indonesia's search and rescue authority BASARNAS, says search and rescue operations have continued throughout the night.
Two Australian navy patrol boats, HMAS Larrakia and HMAS Wollongong, and a number of aircraft are heading the search.
The 110 survivors have been taken to Christmas Island, which quickly activated its emergency management plan and prepared its hospital and medical staff.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard spoke with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Rio de Janeiro, where they are attending a UN environment conference. | <urn:uuid:bebe7ca8-3890-49c1-bf2f-9bfd5f47bc64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.qt.com.au/news/110-plucked-asylum-boat/1427495/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959632 | 154 | 1.625 | 2 |
Mongolian Mumbles 7
After one of the coldest winters for 25 years, Mongolia has lost over 9.7 million head of sheep, goats, horses, cattle, yaks and camels but who knows what the human cost will be or has been already. Sadly much of that loss could have been avoided with a little preparation but it seems the Mongols have the same philosophy as many of the Arab world…. preparation invites disaster. Some of the blame can go back to Communist times as well when none of the herders owned their stock, they belonged to the ‘Party’, so it was the ‘Parties’ loss and the herders would be recompensed and given replacement stock.
We have personally survived the winter very well and rarely felt cold although you didn’t stay out in it too long and we had the appropriate clothing when we did go out, with that being the biggest hassle, dressing with so many layers to go out and then shedding when indoors. As I said in the previous MM, Nigel walked to work & home every evening, taking about 20 minutes one way and managed to avoid frostbite.
Nigel has been incredibly busy, working long hours trying to make a difference but at times it seems as if there is a very big brick wall comprising of all those things that thwart many in developing countries – greed, corruption, stupidity, ignorance, laziness…come to think of it all those things effect developed countries as well!!
As I have said before Nigel has a job with a German company paid by the EU for six and a half months a year until 2012 and he has to try and bring the Veterinary services in Mongolia into the 21st century which means helping all aspects of vet services – pathology, drugs, husbandry, knowledge, business acumen, etc which is a huge task working 52 weeks of the year let alone 27 weeks, so a huge task and very frustrating as well, as there is no continuity of service with Nigel not being there five and a half months a year.
Nigel was also asked to do another job for two months of this year with \FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation paid by the UN) helping out with the ‘Zuud’ which is the term for the cold conditions that cause high loss of stock. The ridiculous part of this, or the best part, is that he works three weeks for FAO and then one week for the German company and then back with FAO for three weeks which now means there will be fairly continuous service to the areas where it counts and is needed the most.
I have been busy with IWAM (International Women’s Association of Mongolia) projects which I have found to be very rewarding. We are really doing something to help and will give you a quick breakdown of the things that have happened in the past year. It is never a huge amount we give but hopefully it does make a difference.
Verbist Care Centre - Orpganage– beds and craft items
Notre Dame Orphanage – washing machine, fridge and stove plus clothes
Special School for Vision Impaired Children’s School 29, - 60 plus beds
Beverly Rhoads - beds
St Peter and Paul Cathedral - beds
Blind library, - computer
Uudrug Ehlel Horshoo Blind Cooperative, - 2 sewing machines and 1 overlocker
Family Vegetable program in conjunction with Khan Bank – vegetable seeds, fertilizer and fruit bushes
Metropolitan Police Child Care Centre – 3 sewing machines and 1 overlocker plus time and craft items
Educational & Cultural Utilisation Youth Development Centre – video camera, projector and white screen
Patients at the Cancer Hospital - quilted bags filled with many items for the mothers and children from the country who are having cancer treatment
Rainbow Centre for Autistic children – books and craft items
My Home Kindergarten, Erdenet City – books for their library
Faith, Hope & Love Kindergarten – 5 desks, 20 chairs, 2 washstands and 20 matresses with blankets
4H – Nomiin And – books for a summer reading programe
Patients at Mother and Child Hospital with baby blankets, baby clothes and toiletry bags.
All of these items have been given since I arrived in Mongolia and IWAM has been in operation since 1992, (two of the six founding members still belong to IWAM) so it really is pretty special to be part of and I think you can imagine what has been done over the years to help disadvantaged women and children. It is also our social network as generally we are doing something with IWAM at least 3 days a week and of course we need lunch as there is usually about 4 to 6 of us doing a visit or knitting or having a meeting. Although there is a core group of people many others come to help on an irregular basis.
Seeing as it has been months and months and months since I have written a Mongolian Mumbles I am going to send this off now as promised to several people and then I will try and finish the others that I have started and catch you up with where we are today. In actual fact we are just about to catch the train to the Chinese border to do a visa run so that should be fun.
Love to all and take care. | <urn:uuid:0797aad7-bfa8-4f1e-93c5-4f61024ea7ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mongolianmumbles.com/2011_02_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971791 | 1,098 | 1.578125 | 2 |
[Domestic repression is always linked to the economic system, and in China the link is especially perverse because the CCP promises worker's control but forbids workers from striking. While working conditions and wages in most of China remain appalling, the underclass is just beginning to receive rewards for its generations of thankless labor. But at this same moment, the cheap energy that makes industrial society possible is disappearing. --JAH]
South China dispute over wind power plant turns deadly
By Larry Chin
12 December 2005
© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact [email protected]. May be circulated, distributed or transmitted for non-profit purposes only.
Armed police cracked down on the village of Dongzhou, China on Friday (December 9, 2005) to quell protests and riots over the confiscation of land for a wind-powered electricity plant. Villagers claim that at least 14 have been killed.
Residents of Dongzhou say that their village had been occupied and blocked off by security forces since the summer. China, with its booming economy and population, is desperate for energy and is resorting to desperate and violent measures (from unprecedented internal measures, such as the damming of the Yangtze River and the potentially disastrous Three Gorges Project, to fighting the equally desperate United States over scarce external supplies all over the world) for the very survival of their society. According to the Washington Post account of the Dongzhou incident, “the use of live ammunition to put down a protest is almost unheard of in China,” but a significant increase in disturbances (“rebellions”), particularly over land-use, environmental and property rights issues, has pushed nervous Chinese officials and security forces to more lethal tactics.
This violence pushes the horrific fact of world resource scarcity, Peak Oil and Gas, front and center again. For the smug and ignorant who think the unprecedented violence in Dongzhou “couldn’t happen here,” “over nothing more than a power plant,” think again.
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The role of expert witnesses in criminal prosecution remain pivotal, to the fair dispensation of justice. The testimony of an expert might actually be the linchpin, in tilting the decision to convict or acquit an accused person. The real question therefore is, when is an expert not an expert? How much weight, or probative value, should a judge and/or jury place on the expert testimony of an ‘acclaimed expert’?
We may never be able to know the number of cases or accused persons that have been languishing in prison; who’s conviction(s) were solely reliant on expert testimony that were never really challenged. Instances like these, remain fertile grounds for defense counsel to truly engage in the ‘battle of the experts’. The quality of legal representation, the high cost of litigation, and of securing the right experts poses challenges for accused persons and counsel. Rev. Gordon MacRae’s conviction, it seems, appears to harbor some of those lingering doubts. For a full analysis of the peculiar facts of his case, read article entitled: ‘How Psychotherapists helped send an innocent priest to prison’
The case dwells on the professional and care responsibilities of persons placed in a position of trust; how those responsibilities are discharged; the vulnerability of the care-giver and the carer, especially when it bothers on religion and faith. All of these however must be read against the avalanche of cases involving priest and the laity in the catholic church. Still, the issues in the Rev. Gordon MacRae case, are troubling enough to raise legal and procedural concerns. For one, the psychotherapist’s professional conduct and expertise remain open-ended to further probing questions. For a conviction to be safe, ‘we must clear all shred of doubts’; that is why the burden is ‘primarily’ placed on the prosecution, and the standard of proof is set at a very high bar. | <urn:uuid:0b6813c2-ab6e-4515-8b95-2c71945838d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2012/05/18/the-intersection-between-innocence-expert-witness-and-religionthe-case-of-rev-gordon-macrae/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953499 | 408 | 1.726563 | 2 |
April 6, 2011
Redlands, CaliforniaRealtors and others interested in the residential real estate market are invited to visit the Spatial Roundtable blog to discuss the impact that smart applications have on helping customers find their dream house. Esri director of commercial solutions Simon Thompson began the conversation by asking, "Do you think lifestyle search and smartphone apps will change the way we buy homes?"
"In the United States, we've been accustomed to buying homes based on their physical characteristics instead of our lifestyle and neighborhood preferences," says Thompson. "While the number of bedrooms and the size of the garage are important features, more and more people want their dream home to truly reflect their needs, aspirations, and social connections."
Using the latest technology, Realtors and their clients can take to the streets searching for homes that match their lifestyle based on information including demographics, psychographics, and neighborhood attributes. Using this type of "lifestyle search," the best candidates can be highlighted and ranked according to how many client preferences are met. This gives those interested in buying a home the ability to quickly understand the areas they are looking in and compare similar homes.
What do you think? Share your point of view on Esri's online forum. Visit spatialroundtable.com to join the conversation.
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The following interview was conducted in January 2010 and focuses on current and future economic issues, specifically those pertaining to small- and medium-sized business owners.
I want to preface my first question, Ben, by explaining that GPS’ clients are small- to medium-sized businesses. The economy is affecting all the businesses we work with. Can you give us some of your predictions regarding 2010, such as how the economy is going to impact these business sectors? What impact on the business sector will changes in inflation, interest rates, marginal tax rates and gross domestic product potentially have?
I will, first of all, say that I’m not a fortune teller, I’m not a magician, I can’t tell the future. I can tell you, as of now, that we’re sitting here in my study in the middle of January 2010—it looks as if we’re in a recovery. The GDP numbers for the United States for the last quarter are quite strong. It has, so far, been a very painful recovery for the ordinary citizen because jobs are not coming back. In fact, the job rate is stagnant, and the number of people jobless is not improving at all. The number of people looking for jobs and not able to find them is cruelly large. Usually, this is true of a recovery, and recovery from a recession as severe as this will take a long time.
People always say to me, what would you do if you were Mr. Obama and you were asked to do whatever you could as fast as you could to bring about a recovery? I think what I would do is go on vacation for a year and take Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid with me because they have injected so much uncertainty into the business process in this country that it is very difficult for people to hire. Even if you think there is going to be a recovery in your business, do you want to hire someone knowing that there may be a substantial liability for that person’s health care costs? Do you want to hire somebody knowing that there may be a substantial liability for environmental costs, cap and trade costs, carbon tax costs, any kind of emissions cost? Do you want to hire that person knowing that President Obama has already said that he’s in favor of higher taxes on well-to-do people so your taxes may go up? There is too much darned uncertainty.
Usually, to get a recovery, what you need is the Federal Reserve churning out money—that they’re doing very, very well. But, you also need some predictability and stability. We are not getting that from President Obama. We are getting a tremendous flow of uncertainty, and that is very bad for hiring and for the recovery.
Are you concerned about all the churning out of money—that it may have a negative impact on inflation?
Typically, economic theory would predict that this level of an infusion of money rising, at this rate of speed, would generate inflation. Inflation is generated by a combination of factors: money plus the velocity of money—the rate at which money turns over, so to speak. The latter has a lot to do with consumer confidence. We are in a situation of extremely poor consumer confidence. There is extremely poor lender and investor confidence, so that is hobbling the velocity of money. The volume is growing very fast; however, the velocity is static because it is neither growing nor shrinking.
I will give you, if I may, a personal example. A few months ago, I bought a condominium located in the very beautiful area of north Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille. It is an astoundingly beautiful place. The people who made that loan to me came back a few days later and said they had cut their interest rate and could make a loan at a lower interest rate. Of course, I said go ahead and do it. I would rather have a lower interest rate. They called me back and said their lender is only lending 50 percent on the value of condominiums in this part of Idaho; keep in mind, we are talking about a beautiful location. This is a perfect example of what has gone wrong in this country. Real estate volume is just dying out there and that has lowered interest rates. The willingness to lend is very, very poor and in a situation in which the lender will only lend 50 percent of a property’s value, this is extreme. That is an example of the difficult lending circle that we are in.
Do you have any fears of raising interest rates to try to counter potential inflation? Might that have a negative impact on a recovery or worse?
I hope Mr. Bernanke is savvy enough to know not to do that. Mr. Bernanke’s great skill, supposedly, is his understanding of the causes of the Great Depression. A large mistake made was tightening money, way too fast, in the early stages of that depression’s recovery. When it looked like they were in the beginning of a recovery, they started turning screws too fast. The cause and effect was a terribly sharp downturn from 1930 to 1931. In 1937, when it looked like we were having a recovery, we were actually having inflation. They again reacted by turning on the monetary brakes; they stepped on the monetary brakes very hard, and that caused a really, really bad recession within a depression. I believe—I hope and pray—that Mr. Bernanke will not repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression. There are plenty of voices telling Mr. Bernanke to do that, but those voices have not read the history. The voices belong to the brains that have not read the history of the Great Depression. I think it would be folly for Mr. Bernanke to start raising interest rates at this stage of economic uncertainty.
What do you think are the positives business owners can look forward to in 2010?
Well, I hope the recovery will get moving. It looks like it is already starting to get moving in the automobile industry, which is a very, very important part of the total American industry. The real question is, will the recovery get moving in the shelter area—residential shelter—for sale or for rent. That’s where there’s just been a terrible drag on the economy. I don’t see any sign of recovery there yet. I had dinner last month with Warren Buffett and he has very large interests in homebuilding, carpet making, brick making, furniture and jewelry. Warren said he’s not seeing recovery in those areas. He doesn’t see it, I don’t see it and I don’t think anyone else sees a lot of recovery in the shelter sector. I know eventually that it will happen. Geoff, there is no such thing as a housing bust from which there’s not a recovery, but it can take years. We hit our peak, roughly, in the spring of 2005. From that point, the market stayed on a plateau for awhile and then it started to crash down in 2007. Will we see prices again as they were in 2005? It could easily take until 2015. That would not be even a little bit surprising.
Do you see any changes for 2011 from 2010?
There will be continued recovery unless something unexpected comes along to stop it. Once the recovery starts, it usually doesn’t stop. There could be serious monetary policy and mistakes that would stop it, but absent monetary policy and mistakes, the economy should continue to improve for years to come. I do not think there is likely to be a double-dip recession. We have already had the longest recession of the post-war period. We have had a very severe recession; although, not as severe as the one at the beginning of the 80s. It would take serious monetary policy mistakes, serious fiscal policy mistakes, to put us back into a downward movement. This could happen, though, and I’m very worried about this administration’s fiscal policy. I’m very worried about Mr. Obama trying to raise taxes too much. I am especially concerned that he will raise taxes on business owners. Small business owners are EXTREMELY susceptible to the level of taxation.
What do you think the greatest economic hazards are out there for the next five years?
The greatest risks would come from the flawed monetary policy of tightening too fast or not fast enough. We could go from a state of a sort of sluggish recovery, to a very rapid recovery, to a very fast rise in inflation. I do not see that happening. It has not happened anywhere else in the Western world and I do not see it happening here.
At some point, if the Feds keep printing money, there has to be inflation, at least, so we think. I don’t see it coming yet. I do not see it coming any time soon. I certainly could be totally wrong. I believe all people should hedge against inflation. I recommend Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) from the U.S. Treasury with a mix of some commodities and smart real estate. There has already been commodities inflation. I do not recommend gold. Gold is way too risky and fluctuates way too much and pays no interest or dividends. The watchword is “prudence.” I’m afraid all this uncertainty keeps people from getting hired.
Japan has proved a challenge to economic theory. Economic theory would say if you are running large deficits, creating huge amounts of total national debt, if you are generating huge increases in the money supply, you will get inflation. Japan has done all three of those things and they have no inflation at all. Just exactly why that is, we don’t know. How and why we would differ from that, I don’t know. There is a huge amount of money surging into Western Europe, China and in Japan and there’s, so far, not much inflation. There is some commodity inflation, but, in terms of finished goods, prices and finished services prices, there is not much inflation. I think there is too much slackness in consumer demand for there to be inflation any time soon.
Filed Under: Featured
About the Author: GEOFFREY GABOR is an executive vice president. He has been invited to speak at Harvard’s Graduate Business School and, on multiple occasions, has been asked to instruct Harvard’s MBA students during their final semester of their graduate program. His speaking engagements focus on the perils of today’s small- and medium-size businesses. Geoff has worked with hundreds of companies completing an array of application projects. | <urn:uuid:4bc7e514-6bdf-4fc1-bfa6-7571154fe166> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanbusinessmag.com/2010/03/r-r-time-with-ben-stein/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9772 | 2,192 | 1.539063 | 2 |
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