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As the name suggests, a Writing Colleague is a partner in learning through writing. A Colleague is not a tutor, editor, proofreader or evaluator. He or she lends support and acts as a sounding board for ideas. Writing Colleagues embark on an academic adventure with students and professors. Students themselves, Writing Colleagues are peers of the students in the class. Yet through teaching reading and writing, they are also colleagues of professors. A Colleague acts as an academic bridge between students and professors and, particularly for first-year students, provides an intellectual connection to college life.
A student first applies to the Writing Colleagues program by contacting the program director. Once accepted as a candidate colleague, the student enrolls in the Writing Colleagues seminar and, by earning a B or better, becomes a Writing Colleague. The colleague is then qualified to work with professors in a series of field placements, associated with courses the professor is teaching. Completion of the Writing Colleagues program is valuable preparation for work in teaching, law, journalism, public policy, advertising/marketing, public relations, and publishing.
If you'd like to view a full listing of our course options in writingcoll Area Studies or any other subject, please visit the Online Course Catalogue.
The Writing Colleagues program offers both a disciplinary and an interdisciplinary minor. Students who major in Writing and Rhetoric and minor in the Writing Colleagues program must have a second minor.
disciplinary, 6 courses
WRRH 305 Writing Colleagues seminar; two field placements, one of which must be a first-year seminar; three courses from the Writing Colleagues core or approved electives.
interdisciplinary, 6 courses
WRRH 305 Writing Colleagues seminar; two field placements, one of which must be a first-year seminar; one approved course from the social sciences or natural sciences; two additional courses from the Writing Colleagues core courses or approved electives.
Our students choose from a variety of introductory and advanced courses, each designed to help the creative process of writing/redrafting, rethinking, and reflecting.
Below are some of our most popular classes, as well as suggestions for making the Writing Colleague program a part of your larger interdisciplinary experience at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Learn how gender differences often constitute a barrier both to effective self expression and interpersonal communication, and discover new opportunities for personal expression and communication with others. Then, debate whether an author's gender defines his or her voice in ENG 238 Flexing Sex: Crossing the Gender Divide in Contemporary Literature.
Creative ideas for writers often begin with jottings that remain out of sight when final artistic creations are unveiled. Explore the connection between private and public texts and the value of private writing as a creative activity, and examine private writings of published authors. Then, delve deeper into your creative side by enrolling in ENG 260 Creative Writing.
Learn how to write about science, in science journalism, and strengthen your research and writing skills. Produce weekly articles and read and discuss articles by major science writers. Next, study the translation between English and artificial languages by enrolling in PHIL 240 Symbolic Logic. | <urn:uuid:9fa74f7d-52a1-41e6-8cbe-20a4386400cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hws.edu/academics/writingcoll/curriculum.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944365 | 660 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Dr. Billy Graham at 93: "The Father's Love," This Child's Gratitude
About six years ago, when I was writing my first book – a collection of spiritual profiles of well-known people based on face-to-face conversations I’d had with them about faith – folks often would ask me who I most wanted to talk to if given the chance.
At the time, my answer was three-fold: Billy Graham, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.
In the intervening years, I've been blessed to have met and talked with, however briefly, Tutu – “The Arch,” as we call him. But I have yet to meet Graham or Mandela.
It is my hope and prayer that, Insha’Allah as my Muslim friends would say, I might have the chance to do so before both men – true heroes of mine and no doubt millions of others around the globe – go home to Glory.
Both Madiba and Billy are 93 years old. In fact, yesterday (11/7) was Dr. Graham’s 93rd birthday.
The world is richer to have these Lions of Grace walking among us still on this side of the Veil.
I can say with all honesty and without any exaggeration that I can think of no one alive today whom I respect more than Dr. Graham. Although I do not know him personally, he is more dear to me than I can express. It is always an honor to say that the great preacher and I share an alma mater, Wheaton College in Illinois. It was while I was an undergraduate that I came closest to meeting Graham -- on the steps of the student cafeteria. He was going in for lunch as I was going out on the way to class.
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A brush with greatness. A glimpse of grace, if you will.
On the wall of my home office hangs a photograph of Dr. Graham taken by a USA Today photographer at the evangelist’s home in Motreat, N.C. I won the framed photo in an auction at a Religion Newswriters Association convention a few years back and it is among my most prized possessions.
In the photograph, Dr. Graham is seated in a wooden chair, dressed casually in dungaree-blue slacks, an open-collar shirt and red sportcoat, and he looks straight ahead, his face in profile to the camera lens. “America’s Pastor,” as he is often called, is looking into the distance, to a place out of frame – his gaze fixed on something we cannot see.
I cherish that photograph of Dr. Graham for myriad reasons, but perhaps most importantly because it reminds me of the gift of vision – spiritual vision – to see things that are not of the physical realm. A sacred and holy perspective. An orientation of the heart and mind that looks beyond itself, to the Big Picture. To the More.
It is, perhaps, a vision of faith – the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen – seen through a lens colored by grace, mercy and divine love.
Surely Dr. Graham has such a vision – a mighty gift he has shared with the world for more than six decades. It is a gift he imparted to me as a child, sitting in the balcony of an old auditorium at Yale University in my native Connecticut in the mid 1980s, watching him preach during one of his famous crusades.
Unlike so many other famous preachers and evangelists, when I think of Dr. Graham my mind goes to only one place: Jesus. His message has rarely veered from the simple and simply powerful message of the singular Gospel. What sets Graham apart from many of his colleagues and contemporaries in ministry is that singularity of vision. He has largely avoided the lure of political (read: worldly) power and glory. His gospel message rises above petty partisanship (of any flavor), presenting a crystal clear picture of God and God's love for all of us and God's redeeming grace for all of creation.
In that sense, there is Dr. Graham and then there is everybody else.
He stands alone like C.S. Lewis' Aslan, a mighty voice for love, redemption and second chances, at once roaring and tender, fierce and yet authentically welcoming.
Back in 2005, when I was writing that book I mentioned earlier, The God Factor, I had a conversation with another brother in the faith who felt the same way I do about Dr. Graham. That brother, Bono of U2, is another vessel God used to speak life-changing grace into my young ears.
Because Bono's story has stayed with me so vividly since he first shared it with me, I wanted to share it with you, as together we give thanks for Dr. Graham's 93 years as a sojourner in this realm.
“Over the years,” Bono told me, “I met some preachers who did connect with me, for sure, and whose words return to me. I remember hearing about this fellow called Billy Graham. Church people would push him on you like your friends at school would push Elvis Presley records. Actually, they looked kind of similar – both stars from the South who spoke with a twang and had giant crowds come to see them.”
Back in 2002, Bono received a surprise phone call from someone in Dr. Graham’s office saying that the preacher wanted to give Bono and his U2 bandmates a blessing.
“I told them, I said, ‘This is a big deal. This is BILLY GRAHAM!’ And they all said, ‘That’s great. But we’re in the middle of a tour.’ So I rented a plane and flew there right away in case he might forget. I was picked up by his son, Franklin, and driven a couple of hours up to their house. I met briefly with himself and his wife, Ruth. I think I’ve mentioned to you before that the blessings of an older man mean a great deal to me. Particularly this man.
“I gave him a book of Seamus Heaney poetry, and I wrote a poem for him in it,” Bono said.
That poem – handwritten on a piece of 8 ½” x 11” paper in black felt-tip pen – now resides in the Billy Graham Library’s permanent collection.
Bono’s poem for Dr. Graham reads:
The journey from father to friend
is all paternal loves end.
it was sung in my teenage ears
in the voice of a preacher
loudly soft on my tears
I would never forget this
or its lyric voice that gave my life
a meaning, that wasn’t there before.
a child, born in dung and straw
with The Father's love and desire to explain
how we might get on with each other again. …
We give you thanks and praise for the gift of your child Billy.
May you protect and keep him, strengthen him in body and mind,
May you give him a peace that surpasses all understanding,
A vision that never strays from your perfect Love,
And a voice that will continue to declare your grace, mercy and redemption,
All the days of his life and beyond.
Happy Birthday, Dr. Graham.
Thank you for blessing all of us. | <urn:uuid:74510c32-af1a-4b4b-8847-1b089f7dd0b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/11/08/dr-billy-graham-93-fathers-love-childs-gratitude | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972083 | 1,558 | 1.523438 | 2 |
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - Maryland's flag and the American flag are being flown at half-staff in honor of the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service taking place in the state.
Officials in Maryland joined President Barack Obama in ordering flags to fly at half-staff Sunday. That's when Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg is hosting the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service.
The school is a short distance from the National Fallen Firefighters Monument which is located on the campus of the National Fire Academy, also in Emmitsburg. The names of firefighters who have died in the line of duty since 1981 are inscribed on plaques surrounding the monument. More than 3,500 names are listed.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) | <urn:uuid:35d018c8-c0a3-4544-b881-ecaf28489ef7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtop.com/41/3068848/Md-flags-at-half-staff-in-honor-of-firefighters- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945985 | 172 | 1.523438 | 2 |
I refinished the floors in my house (built in 1940's and originally hardwood floors). At some time, carpet had been put over the top in all rooms.
When I purchased the house, there was carpet in one room and the previous owner had ripped up the carpets in the other rooms and only used an ugly wood stain in their pathetic attempt to "refinish".
I ripped out the carpet in the one room and sanded all rooms down. Naturally, the unstained room is a bit lighter than the rest of the rooms. However, it doesn't matter that much, because;
It's a different room with different paint colors, different lighting, and different furniture.
If you're using a drum sander and the wood strips are oriented across any of your doorways, then regardless, you won't be able to make it exact. (You'll have to use the edge sander in that area.) Just use the same pass techniques and sand grits and each room and it should turn out well.
- Use a box fan in the window and pointing OUTward to help suck out sawdust.
- If your floor is uneven, do diagonal/angled passes, then the normal passes.
- Don't nitpick while you're sanding; a mark that looks severe when you're sanding may add character when refinished.
- After the first finish coat, do a high-grit LIGHT sand and wipe.
- Once your furniture is in the room, it looks a lot better. | <urn:uuid:009f884b-7f3a-41ee-b18d-a3cea0c5bdb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/13420/is-it-possible-to-refinish-floors-one-room-at-a-time?answertab=votes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957814 | 314 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Arizona Students Stage Walkout To Protest Immigration Bills
WASHINGTON -- Students from eight Phoenix, Ariz.-area high schools walked out of class and toward the state capitol on Friday to protest a wave of new bills proposed by state Sen. Russell Pearce, the principal backer of last year's controversial law, SB 1070.
Undeterred by the spate of lawsuits challenging that legislation, Pearce introduced new bills this session aimed at driving unauthorized immigrants out of the state, in part by depriving them of services that their tax dollars go to support. His omnibus immigration bill, SB 1611, would require schools to report students who cannot produce documents verifying their U.S. citizenship or legal residence, which legal scholars say would violate the right of children in the United States to attend public school.
"This is all aiming for Supreme Court test cases by doing something that is over the constitutional line," Gabriel Chin, a law professor at the University of Arizona, charged last month. "It's really alarming and astonishing that they would deliberately violate the Constitution in this way."
The student protesters aren't thrilled about it, either. "What they're trying to do with SB 1611 is violate human rights," Ana, a 17-year-old high schooler, said in a phone interview during the protest (she declined to give her last name, citing possible legal repercussions). "We have a right to an education."
Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982's Plyler v. Doe that schools cannot discriminate based on a would-be student's immigration status, meaning SB 1611 is almost certainly unconstitutional.
The students who gathered at the Phoenix Capitol building said they hoped to convince lawmakers to abandon Pearce's bills, leading chants such as, "Education, not deportation" and "We are students, we have rights, we are here to stand and fight."
Luis Osorio, a community organizer who works with the group Puente Arizona, said the walkouts were planned by high school students, many of whom have been protesting Arizona's immigration laws since before the passage of SB 1070 last year.
Pearce has banned some protests from the building, claiming the state's constitution gives him the right to bar certain people, including Puente's Sal Reza, from the grounds. Pearce also banned the public from news conferences within the state legislature.
Immigrants who entered the country illegally have few options for gaining legal status, particularly after the Dream Act failed in the U.S. Senate in December. That bill would have allowed students who came to the United States as children to stay legally if they attended college or served in the military for two years. Students who are not citizens must pay out-of-state tuition in Arizona, even if they are longtime residents, and under Pearce's SB 1611 would be turned away from community colleges.
Ana, the high school protester, declined to say whether she would be immediately impacted by the latest Pearce bills, telling HuffPost she is a "citizen of the Earth" and has lived in Phoenix for virtually her "entire life."
"These bills would hurt everyone," said Ana, who wants to attend college after she graduates from high school. "Keeping students out of schools hurts the schools and the teachers, too. It hurts everyone in the state."
Pearce and other advocates of his immigration bills say they'll save the state money by driving out undocumented immigrants. Critics of the bills counter that they are a waste of money: Arizona's state government has spent more than $1.5 million defending SB 1070, and business associations reported losing millions from boycotts of the state and canceled travel.
Undocumented immigrants do pay taxes, whether through sales tax on items they purchase, government withholding from paychecks or by filing income taxes using alternatives to a Social Security number provided by the Internal Revenue Service. | <urn:uuid:34f3c8b7-2831-4eab-aac1-5f8de34065ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/04/arizona-students-stage-walkout_n_831659.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973927 | 781 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Charles Dixon born abt 1834 in either Ala or Ga: resided in Marshall Texas according to the Texas Voter Rolls when he registered to vote in 1867.
Elizabeth Tolbert/Tolliver Dixon born Abt 1839 in Ky.: resided in Marshall Texas,wife of Charles Dixon. They had three children. Silas, Frances and Charlie Jr.who later was known as Dickerson.
Lucy Tolbert: Born abt 1805 in Maryland according to the 1900 Harrison County Texas census. She is the mother of Elizabeth. Lucy was the mother of 15 children with 4 children still living. Besides Elizabeth one another child Robert has been identified. There are other possibilites of other Tolberts living around the same area.
Lucy was found on the 1870 census taken in Harrison County Texas was the wife of Joseph Tolbert was born in Indiana. | <urn:uuid:a84cd7a8-08f2-418f-957d-3edfae73c746> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mariahszepher.blogspot.com/2010/04/surname-saturday-dixondickersontolliver.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973299 | 176 | 1.507813 | 2 |
|Those same 19 terrorists all had photo ID’s. (The photo ID is the most forged document!)
What about those National Guard troops with their M-16’s? Have you ever noticed how close you can get to them? Anyone trained in hand combat could easily take them out and then have their weapons. Besides, has anyone seen the movie, The Matrix? If someone wanted to get past the security gates it would not be a difficult task. In The Matrix the alarms are set off, but before the security personnel can react they are dead.
So why do they ask for photo ID’s and post the military at our airports? Anyone ever heard of a National ID card that would be required for everyone? Or better yet, how about an injectible microchip that has all of your biometric data encoded on it?
A scanner reads it and you are immediately identified. The scanner can be tied into a national (international) database that instantly provides your whole history. Science fiction? No. The technology is there and is being developed. It is only a matter of convincing the public that this system is needed for protection and security.
As for the National Guard troops, it is a conditioning process to get the public used to seeing military personnel in the public domain, and not just on the military bases.
So how do we insure that 9/11 won’t happen again? How about leaving the little, grey-haired ladies alone? Why don’t we – I know this is going to be politically incorrect, but – why not use profiling to determine who a real threat might be?
The 19 terrorists of 9/11 have been identified as all of Mid-East descent. Most are reported to be from Saudi Arabia (a supposed friend). Since we know where the terrorists are coming from, we should ban from the United States all non-U.S. citizens fitting the terrorist profile until this “war on terrorism” is over. Virtually all of the terrorists are young males and all of them profess the Muslim faith.
Real security would entail identifying the nationality of the person – if they are from the Mid-East, what country? What is their religious belief? Are they male or female? What is their age? Discriminatory? We’re at war, right? (At least so we’re told).
If they are a young, male Muslim of Mid-East descent, then go through their luggage (carry-on and checked) with a fine-tooth comb. For those that believe Israel is involved and is using men who pose as young, male Muslims of Mid-East descent, this procedure will find them, too.
When the “war on terrorism” is over, then we can stop using this type of security measure, but in the meantime let’s use common sense security measures and let the rest of us go through security easily and rapidly. Air travel would increase, the airlines might be able to stop declaring bankruptcy and we might actually find the skies are safer.
Will 9/11 happen again? Doubtful. The passengers would act to stop any terrorist hijackers just as they have in several instances since 9/11.
One thing is for certain, 9/11 was a victory for the terrorists and the government.
Kirt Poovey, former gubernatorial candidate, firefighter, and business owner, is the author of Prophecy - 2024 - which can be purchased at http://www.prophecy2024.com. He welcomes your comments at [email protected].
Permission to reprint this article is granted providing the original author is cited and a link to PRISON PLANET.com is included. The views expressed in this article may not necessarily be those of Alex Jones or Paul Joseph Watson.
PRISON PLANET.com INFOWARS.com
|Airport Security: Rational Solutions In An Irrational Climate
By Kirt R. Poovey
In the wake of September 11, 2001, is there anything that we can do that would really make our airports and flights more secure? We know the formerly stupid questions asked at the ticket counter did no good – all of those questions were asked the 19 terrorists and they passed easily.
How about photo ID’s? Do they work to help security at our airports? | <urn:uuid:b0ae8df2-c3d0-4fe5-a13b-e3add79ee606> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_poovey_012203_airport.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959378 | 897 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Illustration: Brett Ryder
Good news for any mother dreading the empty nest: A little bird told us it's not so bad.
Jane Shure wasn't surprised by her grief—the sense of deep loss, the resonating silence in the house—when her youngest daughter left for college; what shocked her was how quickly it dissipated. "At first simply driving past a soccer game would make me weepy," says the 54-year-old mother of two from Philadelphia, who officially became an empty nester in August 2007. "But by December, I remember thinking, "I've adjusted." Suddenly she and her husband were going on impromptu dates and getting together with friends. And Shure, a family therapist, threw herself into editing a clinical treatment book—something she would never have time for if the girls were still home. "I absolutely miss my kids," she says, "but I'm enjoying a really full life now."
Research is confirming what many mothers have been discovering—that "empty nest" syndrome isn't so empty after all. These days, the classic description of lingering depression, apathy, and loss of identity ("Who am I if I'm not taking care of the kids?") is no longer typical. "Our mothers talked mainly about their pride and joy in watching their kids make this transition and the relief they felt in seeing the fruits of their labor realized," says Christine M. Proulx, PhD, a University of Missouri professor whose 2008 study found that mothers took their children's departure no harder than fathers. (According to another 2008 study out of Wheaton College, fathers were actually less emotionally prepared.) One reason for the shift is the growing number of women with fulfilling careers; another is the advance of communication technology like cell phones, PDAs, and computers. "When I went to college, I had to schedule one day a week when I could call home from the dorm phone," Shure says. "Today I chat away on Skype with my oldest in Madrid as if she were sitting next to me."
But the empty nest isn't just survivable—it can even be beneficial. When Sara Gorchoff, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, and colleagues tracked marital changes in 123 women from their 40s to their early 60s, they found that empty nesters reported greater satisfaction with their partners than did mothers with children at home. "It wasn't simply having more time for each other that made the difference," Gorchoff says. "It's what they did with their time that counted." A fall Sunday with the kids can now become a chance to go hiking together; raucous family meals turn into intimate dinners for two. And sex can regain some of the old abandon of the pre-children days.
Of course, the passage to a childless household is not a happy time for everyone: It can be particularly tough on some single mothers who, overnight, find themselves completely alone, and for those in fragile marriages that have been held together mainly by the glue of raising a family. And there are mothers (about 10 percent) for whom empty nest syndrome does become a long-term issue, according to a survey of about 1,000 women by Carin Rubenstein, PhD, author of Beyond the Mommy Years: How to Live Happily Ever After…After the Kids Leave Home. "But these women are likely already prone to depression, and the change tips them over." For most mothers, says Rubenstein, this next stage of life is one to look forward to, especially if you start planning before it arrives. "Join an art class, volunteer in your community, look into continuing-ed classes, renew friendships. Engage in other roles and ways of living, and you'll discover the confidence and rich well-being that can blossom with this freedom."
From the June 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine
We Hear You! | <urn:uuid:4660ce57-e77b-415c-918e-0aec277af1c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oprah.com/relationships/The-End-of-Empty-Nest-Syndrome | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978595 | 799 | 1.679688 | 2 |
With SMM 2012 as backdrop MAN Diesel & Turbo unveil technical advances to reduce harmful ship exhaust gas emissions & increase engine efficiency.
The highlight of the MAN trade fair booth is the large dual-fuel diesel engine, which is on show as part of a complete engine train: The propulsion system, which comprises an engine, clutch, gears and propeller, spans an impressive 14 meters.
With the 35/44DF engine MAN Diesel & Turbo has developed a highly efficient engine which, in gas mode complies with the emission standard Tier III of the International Maritime Organization that will enter into force in 2016, when the emission of nitrogen oxides in certain coastal regions must be reduced by 80 per cent compared to the Tier I standard in the year 2000.
MAN Diesel & Turbo’s trade fair presence is very much inspired by the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) set down by the International Maritime Organization. From 2013, all newly built ships must meet the specifications of the EEDI which specifies how many grams of CO2 a ship may emit per transported ton and traveled nautical mile. The EEDI is aimed at reducing fuel consumption and the resulting CO2 emissions not only through engine technology measures, but also through changes in the ship’s geometry.
MAN Diesel & Turbo is also providing information about the technical options available to comply with EEDI’s specifications, inclluding for example its G-type two-stroke engine range, which provides first-class support with its extra-long strokes for slow steaming. Further fuel efficiency is obtained in combination with MAN's range of Variable Turbine Area (VTA) turbochargers. | <urn:uuid:ef669452-5d7e-4f30-be6f-5f9497cbfb3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marinelink.com/news/technologies-highlighted347489.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933688 | 337 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Prior to New York City’s soft drink regulations being thrown out by the State Supreme Court, I’d actually participated in a panel where I shared my own thoughts as to why I thought a ban was senseless.
“I’ve built a community on my blog around educating ourselves, and being able to make our own decisions.”
That being said, let me be clear: soda is disgusting. But you should kick the habit on your own.
It’s one thing to occasionally want something with a hint of flavor to it, but your glass of coke is giving you much more than that. At an average rate of 29 grams for every 8 ounces you drink, your 20oz is housing a full 18 teaspoons – more than a third of a cup - of sugar.
That’s almost enough sugar to make a batch of cookies. It’s more sugar than you’ll find in a pound of apples. A pound of peaches. Two pounds of grapefruit. You could have a salad, a bottle of water, a scone and a pear for less sugar than you’ll find in the 20 oz of tragedy sitting on your desk right now.
In fact, I’m willing to bet that if I sat a 20-ounce glass of iced tea in front of you, right now, that you would not put 18 teaspoons of sugar in it. That’s right – you would not scoop your spoon into a sugar bowl 18 times, no matter how much better the glass of tea would taste with it, simply because it’d make you feel gluttonous.
But, really, it’s about so much more than feeling greedy. It’s about our old friends, Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.
What, you didn’t know that soft drinks contribute to high blood pressure? Look at that label, baby – why is there sodium in your soda? Sugar, by itself, is ineffective in providing the brain with the “Ahhhhh” feeling that makes you feel attached to a certain brand or recipe; it must come in conjunction with a fat or a salt. It appears that the soft drink industry chose to pair its sugars with salt.
Recently, a rather lengthy study appeared in the medical journal PLoS drawing a correlation to the flooding of sugar into the nutritional market, and the rise of diabetes in America. There’s one part of the research that made quite a damning statement: for every 306 million cans of sugary drink packaged and shipped for sale within the US, the rate of diabetes goes up at least 1%. And no, that’s not just pop – that’s juices, “smoothie drinks,” and anything sugar-sweetened.
Correlation doesn’t automatically equal causation, of course, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t make you think. The more sugar there is in our market, the more diabetes there is in our homes. A quick look at the New York City Board of Health research that compared self-reported soda consumption rates to the rates of obesity in any given neighborhood shows an even more disturbing comparison – the higher the sugary drink consumption, the higher the rate of obesity.
(There is, without a doubt, also the reality that the most obese parts of NYC are also among some of the poorest which also contributes to an inability to eat healthily, but that’s even worse; what kind of world do we live in where some of the only stuff you can afford is sugary, non-nutritious caffeinated product?)
There is, however, hope.
As disgusting as I find soft drinks – really, all sugary drinks, to be honest – I can understand how they’d be difficult to give up. I tell my clients all the time, don’t be afraid to give up your sodas for tea. Anything from vanilla to hibiscus can give off fantastic flavor that, even if sweetened with a bit of sugar, can help you trade off your nasty little habit. If you’re missing that carbonation, add a little seltzer water to your tea. If you’re missing the caffeine, drinking black coffee – even if you sweetened it with a pack of sugar – is still infinitely better for you than that bottle on your desk. And, if you want something different, a kombucha will provide you with a nice probiotic boost with a little fizz, naturally occurring sugars and even a bit of nutrition.
Don’t wait for your elected officials to overstep their authoritative bounds. Give up the nasty stuff on your own. It’s the best thing you can do for your body.
Erika Nicole Kendall is the writer behind the award winning blog, A Black Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss, where she blogs her journey of losing over 150lbs. A trainer certified in women’s fitness, fitness nutrition and weight loss coaching, she can be found taking over your Internet on | <urn:uuid:9cad6f48-5046-4efd-bad2-d294913b348f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ebony.com/wellness-empowerment/get-life-put-down-the-soda-now-405 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951909 | 1,048 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Here is a sample of some of the folk art prints on display. There are several more pieces to this set that depict various festivals and folk celebrations. I think these would make a lovely set of note cards or greeting cards!
There are a number of religious icons around the room. These mostly reflect the largely Catholic population in Poland, on campus, and among Polish Americans. Some of these pieces are relics donated by local Catholic churches.
Below, next to the religious banners, there is a sample of wycinanki (paper cutting). This is a popular and colorful art form that brightens every wall it is hung on. It takes real talent to create one of these!
There are some lovely pictures that capture everyday life in Poland. This one shows villagers attending church.
These are just a few of the many pieces of folk art that surround the room. You will delight in exploring them all when you visit PARI at Orchard Lake. For times and the location, see PARI, Part 1.
The Complete PARI Series:
PARI, Part 1, Who, What, When, Where, and Why
PARI, Part 2, The Computers and Databases
PARI, Part 3, Special Collections
PARI, Part 4, The Art
PARI, Part 5, The Wall
PARI, Part 6, The Panorama Room | <urn:uuid:6c021fe1-6852-47f6-8981-237930bb7351> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://creativegene.blogspot.com/2011/03/pari-part-4-art.html?showComment=1319726899091 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933942 | 281 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The Lebanese-Israeli border has been calmer during the last two and a half years than it has been in decades. Hezbollah replenished its arsenal of rockets after the 2006 war, but has chosen to lay low in the meantime. Not one Israeli soldier has been kidnapped since the war’s end, and not a single Hezbollah rocket has landed in Israel. Nothing stays the same in the Middle East for long, though, and Israel and Lebanon may be headed for confrontation again.
One year to the day after Hezbollah military commander Imad Mugniyeh was assassinated by a car bomb in downtown Damascus, Alice Fordham published a piece at NOW Lebanon that makes for sobering reading. She quotes a number of analysts in both Lebanon and Israel who fear another round of violence is coming. Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah blames Israel for killing Mugniyeh, and he vows vengeance. His threat appears to be credible. Terrorist attacks against Israeli interests by Hezbollah cells have been foiled on three continents — in Europe, Egypt, and Azerbaijan.
I wrote recently that Nasrallah appears to have been deterred by Israel’s devastating air and ground assault in July and August of 2006. “We did not believe,” he said on Lebanon’s New TV station, “even by one percent, that the captive operation would result in such a wide-scale war, as such a war did not take place in the history of wars. Had we known that the captive operation would result in such a war we would not have carried it out at all.” Not even during the recent war in Gaza, while the Israelis were busy and distracted fighting Hamas, did Nasrallah think it wise to risk a repeat of 2006. Unless every reported terrorist attempt since Mugniyeh’s assassination is fictitious, though, Nasrallah still seems to think it’s okay to attack Israel outside Israel.
Click here to read the rest of this COMMENTARY Web Exclusive. | <urn:uuid:20f66b9a-59f0-4fd0-a7d9-912472d237d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2009/02/18/a-third-lebanon-war/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978292 | 410 | 1.585938 | 2 |
SACRAMENTO -- The California Department of Insurance advised residents statewide to watch out for fraudulent checks after officials discovered that some bogus checks bearing the department's name and a forged signature of Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones were circulated.
The checks were marked as "payment" or "refund" from the Insurance Department, which does not issue such checks. Officials warned consumers and businesses to be on alert those types of fraudulent checks.
Investigators reported that the fake checks, with values between $2,000 and $7,000, were found in two states outside of California.
Any consumer or business that questions the validity of a check or any person with information about this fraudulent activity should contact the Insurance Department at 909-919-2200. | <urn:uuid:d395bfdd-9a7e-4186-be6f-ab55f0ad808f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.record-bee.com/digitalextras/ci_22681415/california-department-insurance-warns-bogus-checks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962519 | 150 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Are you serious?
We've finally gotten to the point where it is socially acceptable to be of any race, religion, ethnic background, sexual orientation, or gender. We have gotten rid of the stigma associated with mental illness, addiction, and disability, and now we have to deal with someone who thinks it's not ok to be fat?
We still have work to do.
Poor Buf. First the poster child for black players, now the poster child for fat players.
It is NOT ok to be fat. It is unhealthy. It has nothing to do with bias. If you are fat you are not healthy and in 99% of the cases it is preventable.
None of the things you mentioned above are preventable. Your comparison is not valid. This is exactly the problem. Society wants to compare being fat with a disability. Granted that there are a small % of people that because of medical reasons are pre-destined to be fat but they are in a small minority. Most of the people just don't eat right and exercise enough and that should be discouraged. | <urn:uuid:6ba4a817-5036-4acc-a137-d0861f0747ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.letsgowings.com/forums/user/9344-chrisdetroit/?tab=reputation&app_tab=forums&type=received&st=60 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974054 | 221 | 1.632813 | 2 |
I Cajastur International Prize for Soft Computing
In the first edition of this prize, it was awarded to Dr. Marco Dorigo for his outstanding contributions to field of Bio-inspired Computing. His main achievement was the development of "Ant Colony Optimization" algorithms, a set of methodologies inspired by the behaviour of ants to solve complex process optimization problems.
Professor Dorigo is Director of the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research and Development in Artificial Intelligence at the Université Libre de Bruxelles” and he has authored over 300 scientific publications in high impact journals, books and conferences.
A recently published analysis identifies Dr. Dorigo as one of the most prominent and influential figures in his area of research with applications in bio-computing science, energy, production, logistics, economic analysis, health care, etc.. International magazines (such as National Geographic and The Economist) have dedicated articles to the computing tools developed by Dr. Dorigo.
Download the news release in pdf | <urn:uuid:f8df7ab4-93ab-4c5b-abe2-6c0787cc0ccc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.softcomputing.es/metaspace/portal/3/122-i-premio-internacional-cajastur?pms=1,7,28003,view,normal,0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932855 | 203 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Contributor: Laura Beerman
Topic: Medicare, hospitals
As with hotels, having “heads in beds” is a central way to gauge hospital revenue. But the game is changing under healthcare reform. Medicare has stopped reimbursing for select preventable medical errors and is now turning its attention to preventable readmissions. With the advent of accountable care organizations and payment bundling, hospitals are starting to jump on the cost-control bandwagon—partnering with physicians and commercial payers as well as with CMS to generate shared savings by delivering better care. Best of all, there is evidence that these strategies are working.
They are also generating a new category of healthcare quality measures: the all-cause readmission rate. Prior to 2010, CMS began measuring readmission rates in its Medicare fee-for-service program. For 2011, the National Committee for Quality Assurance also added an all-cause readmission measure to its HEDIS measures, an evolving set of metrics that is used to accredit health plans, physicians and medical groups in the United States. And in April 2012, the National Quality Forum endorsed both of these metrics. A study published the same month, however, calls such measures into question.
Researchers at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center reported that the all-cause measure inflated readmission rates by 25 percent in their study of 320 spinal surgery patients. In other words, one of every four cases was improperly measured as a readmission—either because it was misclassified or had actually been the result of a planned procedure. The dollar value attached to those misclassifications was more than $1 million.
These results follow other studies that criticize the accuracy of the measure. Granted, these concerns are being voiced by the very stakeholders (hospitals and health systems) that will be held accountable for preventable readmissions. But the criticism also comes at a time when hospitals will face penalties for high readmission rates.
There is no question that preventable readmissions play a role in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, as much as $15 billion per year for Medicare beneficiaries alone by some estimates.. Keeping patients out of the hospital will be good business—and better treatment—under healthcare reform. This question is how we get there.
And whether there will be a mint on the pillow when we do. | <urn:uuid:e1c89561-f694-42cc-973e-1a3e4349724a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hl-isy.com/Healthcare-Reform-Blog/April-2012/Medicare-hospitals-042712 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957413 | 475 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Henri Desiré Landru
aka The French BluebeardIn 1914, veteran conman Henri Landru hatched his all-time greatest "get rich quick" scheme. He placed a singles ad in the Paris newspapers:
Widower with two children, aged 43, with comfortable income, serious and moving in good society, desires to meet widow with a view to matrimony.
He planned to seduce a wealthy respondent, con her out of her fortune, and kill her. It worked like a charm, and proved to be extremely lucrative. Over five years, Landru received more than 300 inquiries from interested women, out of which he pursued ten.
All told, the enterprise necessitated the deaths of 10 women, a young boy, and two dogs. He used poison to kill them. Then he cut up the bodies with a handsaw, incinerated the pieces in his stove, and dumped the ashes in his garden.
Eventually, of course, the gendarmes caught up with him. Landru had always assumed that without either a body or a confession, the courts were incapable of convicting someone of murder. But things didn't turn out that way.
At trial, the prosecution admitted charred bone fragments taken from Landru's garden. They also hauled his large, cast-iron stove into court. Even more damning was the notebook Landru kept, which contained his activities going back several years. The names of missing women appeared again and again in his calendar.
He was finally convicted of 11 murders in November 1921, and executed by guillotine on February 25, 1922.
Before the sentence was carried out, Landru gave his lawyers some artwork he had created in prison. 46 years later, someone cracked open the frame and found an inscription Landru had left on the back of the drawing:
I did it. I burned their bodies in my kitchen oven.
Landru's story later became the basis for a number of films, including Charlie Chaplin's 1947 dark comedy Monsieur Verdoux. | <urn:uuid:9f00fd21-d8a5-40d7-89c3-b34a880149d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/criminals/henri-landru/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98379 | 415 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Grifman wrote:I don't believe anywhere I discussed probabilities. I merely said that there are many more factors required by life than mere liquid water. That said, the more factors something requires, the more rare it will be compared using only one of those factors.
See? You are
Grifman wrote:Actually we have no reason or evidence that there is anything more than this composition since life as we know it is all we have evidence for. I think the burden of proof is on you for this one.
Just once, would it be possible to just have a friggin' conversation around here without pretending that we are debating at the Royal Academy of Science using the Queen's Rules? Holy Underpants.
There is no burden of proof on me because I am not making a positive assertion. I'm not telling you that there are other compositions of life. I'm saying that you (or rather the side that you are representing here) hasn't met the burden of proof that this is the only possible composition of life. We don't know because we are far too ignorant as to what is going on out there in the universe. And if "all we have evidence for" is good enough, then clearly *all* solar systems have a rocky planet in the habitable zone that sustains an "advanced" civilization, since right now, 100% of solar systems that we have detailed information about have them. Right?
Grifman wrote:You're assuming your sample size (the universe) is large enough to outweigh the improbabilities. But the problem is you don't know that.
I know that in the context of the statement that I actually made (with the disclaimer that you removed). As long as the probability of hosting advanced life is greater than 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 then advanced civilizations are abundant in the universe.
Grifman wrote:Indeed, you're merely assuming what you need to prove.
No, as I provided the necessary qualifier to my probability calculations.
You can make anything appear likely if you stack the odds in your favor
Kraken used a 1 in 2 chance to stack the odds in his favor. Presuming a probability of 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is not stacking the deck in my favor. A 1 in 10 sextilliion chance is several orders of magnitude more remote than other estimates I've seen (which are in the trillion scale).
Grifman wrote:Until you establish the likelihood of life developing more than once, you've only got one side of your analysis.
Again, all I said was "*IF* the chance of advanced civilization developing around a star is 1 in 10 sextillion, there are enough stars in the sample set such that there are a hella lot of advanced civilizations (according to the probabilities). And I even simplified it down for you. If you flipped a coin 200 times, you'd probably end up with a lot of heads. That's the kind of frequency we are talking about - *IF* the probability of an advanced civilization developing around a star is as remote as 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Grifman wrote:It is entirely possible that the likelihood of life developing more than once is so low as to outweigh the size of the universe. Maybe, maybe not. But nowhere have you attempted to quantify this probability based upon any scientific basis.
Actually, I did calculate exactly that in the other thread, in the context of my incredibly remote estimate of the probability of life. Given the number of iterations available, the probability that life would develop only once, was twice as remote as the possibility that it would develop at all (1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Or, to simplify it so that one could process it in a reasonable fashion, the probability that life would develop once and only once is equivalent to the probability that you would flip a coin 200 times and get only one head.
Assuming that the probability of life is as remote as 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of course.
I'll give you a perfect example from the links I gave above. According to scientists, not only do solar systems have a habitable zone but so do galaxies. In our own Milky Way only 10% of the stars exist in this habitable zone. So in just one fell swoop, looking at one variable
, science has knocked out 90%
of your septillion stars (assuming for the moment that this also applies to other galaxies - we can go futher into galaxy types if you want to). The universe just got a lot smaller
Uh, no, it doesn't quite work that way. Your statistics really is rusty.
You are providing the data points that go into calculating the "1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000" probability of life, not directly reducing the number of iterations. You don't get to double down and do both. You can reduce the sample set of stars to 100 sextillion, but if you do that, you have to remove that factor from the probability of life side, which increases the probability of life to 1 in one sextillion.
And thus the equation ends up with the exact same results as before. | <urn:uuid:f1e17f53-fd53-4a94-811a-e7ea0f53268b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1834608 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965627 | 1,127 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Over a year ago, Mozilla announced its plans to work on its own mobile operating system, dubbed Firefox OS. The company officially made a prototype simulator available for developers and anyone curious enough to play around with it (though it's still in early alpha). The OS does take some of Android’s core functionality so it works on Android-capable handsets, but Mozilla also built the UI and application stack around Gecko, the Firefox HTML rendering engine.
Though it’s not technically a 1.0 release, the simulator will make it easier for developers to stay current with future updates to Firefox OS. It's easy to install—all you have to do is download the file from Mozilla and then right-click and open it up in the latest version of Firefox. The browser will then install the Simulator as an add-on. Once it's finished, you'll be able to launch the simulator yourself with a one-click button.
As soon as we launched the simulator, we were greeted with the lock screen. It looks similar to Android's, and users can either quick launch the camera apps or go straight to the Home screen.
We launched the contacts app from the home screen and it allowed us to send a fake text message to a fake number.
Firefox OS borrows a lot of its design elements from Android. You'll notice the time stamp and battery indicator in the upper right-hand corner and the prominently displayed launcher icons at the bottom. Those icons do scroll over to the left to reveal another icon, which launches a feedback form so that users can send the things they liked, as well as their concerns, to the Mozilla crew.
Right-clicking on the simulator allows users to change the background wallpaper or launch the Gallery or Camera app. Swiping to the left on the home screen reveals more app icons, including the aforementioned Gallery and Camera apps, plus a nifty FM radio functionality. The Camera app does not work at all, and instead pops up the Gallery app. That then proceeds to load any photos available on your computer.
The FM radio application is a total novelty and looks like an old school analog dial from a generation ago. Users can find favorite stations as they move along the dial, but there's no functionality yet available for the simulator.
Also on this page are icons for the Mozilla Marketplace, Maps, and Settings. The Maps app does work, but because we were on a computer, it pinpointed the location at our ISP's headquarters nearby. Otherwise, Maps was sublime: satellite and live traffic views were available as well as Transit reviews. We were also surprised to discover the map data is actually provided by Nokia. Seems like Mozilla is pulling in as many third-party services it can to make its mobile platform viable.
In the marketplace, applications like Twitter are already available to try out. Others, like a free Thesaurus application, prompted download errors. But frankly, the sort of applications that are already available are impressive, including a few simple games like Solitaire and a Galactians II, a Galaga-style arcade game.
Over in the Settings, users can turn on GPS, Wi-Fi (which we were not able to test because we were using an Ethernet-connected PC), and a few other common features. There's even evidence of the ability to set up a Wi-Fi Hotspot then customize the security options for it. Again, the layout of the Settings looks a lot like Android's. In the Sounds settings, users can click to hear the proposed alert tones and ringtones for Firefox OS (though they're really quite jarring at the moment).
The Notification settings only show they can be viewed from the lock screen. But after some careful clicking, we noticed there's actually an Android-like Quick Settings panel that drops down from the top, in addition to two blank bars, though we're not entirely sure what they'll be used for. Perhaps a battery power indicator?
The Settings panel also provides users with the ability to set application permissions and to set their phone to Do Not Track—a feature that's based off of the Firefox's similar functionality. Do Not Track tells every website and application (as well as any advertisers or other content providers) that the user does not want their behavior tracked. We tried turning it on but there was no indication it was working while we were scouring the Web through mobile Firefox.
Lastly, there's the Everything.me panel, which can be engaged by swiping to the right from the home screen. This part of the Firefox OS appears to be an app explorer with various bookmarks tabbed for easy access. It's also possible to search for a specific category. Unfortunately, this feature wasn't usable, so we were unable to go much further than the search function.
Even in its alpha stages, Firefox OS definitely shows promise as a worthy mobile operating system. Still, it's hard to have an opinion about where it's going knowing the OS still has quite a journey ahead. At least it's letting consumers get a sneak peak, should they be interested. | <urn:uuid:d882b1f1-d44d-4ce3-9dab-75eaeeda39e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/who-wants-a-firefox-phone-take-a-visual-trip-through-firefoxs-mobile-os/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956322 | 1,030 | 1.5 | 2 |
I'm pleased to share a new blog with LEAP supporters. Walter McKay's blog is titled Police Accountability and Reform. It's been around for a while, but recently he started posting on it more regularly. He lives in Mexico and so much of his writing focuses on the violence of the drug cartels in that country. He keeps a close tab on the latest developments, especially in terms of the daily killings, the weaponry used, the police corruption, the methods of intimidation, etc.
I was first introduced to McKay's work sometime around 2004 when I watched a documentary called Through a Blue Lens. This movie is certainly one of most powerful films I have ever watched about the horrors of drug abuse. It was produced by a group of Vancouver police officers who were part of a non-profit society called Odd Squad Productions. McKay was one of the founding members of this group. And I didn't know it at the time - I wasn't even a police officer back then - but we would eventually end up working together as members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
After twelve years in policing, McKay left the Vancouver Police Department to pursue his interests in criminal justice reform. He received an M.A. from Simon Fraser University and then began his PhD studies with a focus on police ethics. He now lives in Mexico City where he is project director for the Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia (INSYDE), a non-profit organization focused on police reform.
I'm reasonably certain that Walt is qualified to talk about the War on Drugs. Please take a moment to visit his blog and say hello. | <urn:uuid:e5aab685-0f27-4f6f-9d40-5dff820e4262> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://copssaylegalize.blogspot.com/2010/01/walter-mckay-on-police-accountability.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982427 | 325 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Who Needs Tom Sawyer?
Knight Paint Baseball Field Fence
December 14, 2012
CEDAR HILL, Texas - The outfield fence at Northwood’s otherwise drop-dead beautiful baseball field needed painting. So baseball coaches Jeremy Kennedy and Bobby Garza had an idea.
“In late October and early November, at the end of our abbreviated fall season, we have a best-of-five inter-squad contest we call the ‘World Series,’” head coach, Jeremy Kennedy explained. “So this year assistant coach Bobby Garza and I got our heads together and decided that whichever of the two teams lost would have to paint the fence.”
Garza’s “Black Knights” squad took it to the wire, but lost to Kennedy’s team on a walk-off home run in Game 5 by junior catcher, Mario Cardona.
“Next thing I know, we’re at Home Depot picking up rollers and 20 gallons of outfield-fence-green paint,” Garza recalls. “Then, on a cool but beautiful Friday afternoon, half the baseball team painted our fence.”
And did Garza’s painters manage to “spread the fun” by tricking Kennedy’s team into picking up a roller or brush?
“We tried that,” Garza smiled. “It didn’t work.”
ABOUT NORTHWOOD UNIVERSITY
Northwood University is committed to the most personal attention to prepare students for success in their careers and in their communities; it promotes critical thinking skills, personal effectiveness, and the importance of ethics, individual freedom and responsibility.
Private, nonprofit, and accredited, Northwood University specializes in managerial and entrepreneurial education at three full-service, residential campuses located in southern Florida, mid-Michigan and northern Texas. Adult Degree Programs are available in eight states with many course delivery options including an online option. The DeVos Graduate School offers day, evening and weekend programming in Michigan, Texas, Florida and Switzerland. The Alden B. Dow Center for Creativity and Enterprise provides system-wide expertise in family enterprise, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and new business development. International education is offered through study abroad and in Program Centers in Switzerland, China, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. | <urn:uuid:3be1ed7f-7f6a-4c14-9f71-5f0d7552938a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northwood.edu/media/pressroom/newsarchives/article/2012/who-needs-tom-sawyer.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941487 | 487 | 1.59375 | 2 |
48 Hours Left to Save the Slave Theater
If the theater company has not received $200,000 in pledges by 10 PM on Thursday, October 4, all of the nearly $40,000 pledged to date will be lost -- along with 102 years of Brooklyn history and a treasure house of African-American folk art.
On November 5th, 2013, the Slave Theater, at 1215 Fulton Street in Brooklyn, will be auctioned to the highest bidder. If the NBT Kickstarter campaign is successful, it will be in position to bid up to $2,000,000.
Larger donors are waiting in the wings to see if NBT can reach its Kickstarter goal before deciding to bolster the theater company's offer. Everything now depends on the results of the next 48 hours.
So please, do everything you can to spread word and generate donations, large and small.
Give, and see the results.
Do it for art, for history and for Brooklyn.
Posted by Kip at 10:29 AM | <urn:uuid:176a334f-7e57-4acd-97b1-66b678d09adc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bayridgejournal.blogspot.com/2012/10/48-hours-left-to-save-slave-theater.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93548 | 208 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Pridelines Gets $17K For Youth Cyber Center
Pridelines Youth Services of Miami got quite a boon when they recently received a $17,500 grant from The Miami Foundation’s GLBT Community Projects Fund. The grant will be used for Pridelines’ David Bohnett CyberCenter and Drop-In Center operations, which provide a safe place for LGBTQ youth.
"With the grant we are supporting a safe space for LGBTQA, including questioning and allied youth to learn, grow and work together to support each other," The Miami Foundation President and CEO Javier Alberto Soto told EDGE. "The ultimate goal is to provide the support that these youth need to keep them in school."
Pridelines Youth Services began in 1982 as a group of concerned citizens with a goal to provide a safe space for young LGBTQ people to meet, interact and support each other during a time when being gay was socially unaccaptable. They were one of the first community-based HIV testing sites in Miami-Dade county and for more than 28 years they have provided safe space, social support, skill building, leadership development and referrals to mental health, health care and support services for LGBTQ youth and their straight allies.
"Thanks to the progress that we’ve made toward LGBTQ equality people are discovering their sexuality and being more vocal about it at earlier points in their lives," said Pridelines Youth Services Executive Director Victor E. Diaz-Herman. "As a result, Pridelines programs are more essential than ever today because it is important to provide support and education during the more formative years of a person’s life."
According to the 1989 "Report on the Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide" issued by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, a majority of suicide attempts by LGBT citizens occur during their youth. Gay youth are reportedly two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than other youth.
In a 1987 study conducted by Georgetown University, half of all lesbian and gay youth interviewed reported that their parents rejected them due to their sexual orientation. In a 1993 study, 33 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth reported that they were not comfortable being open at school and 49 percent reported hiding their sexual orientation from their teachers. Sixty-three percent said that they felt overwhelmed to the point that they couldn’t get things done.
And eighty percent reported severe isolation problems including having no one to talk to, feeling distanced from family and peers because of their sexual identity, and lack of access to information about sexual orientation and homosexuality. According to the Georgetown University study, those who knew about their sexual orientation for longer periods had lost more friends and reported more mental problems.
"Unfortunately, we are still living in a time when families, friends, communities and religious institutions have not fully embraced sexual diversity in an effort to keep our young LGBTQ people safe," said Diaz-Herman. "Pridelines remains the only organization that is dedicated to providing services directly to LGBTQ youth only throughout South Florida. We empower and embrace them for who they are while also being candid about LGBTQ culture and health. We are also the safety net when many of them face the hard reality that society doesn’t always accept them for who they are."
Pridelines Youth Services provides weekly programs, youth enrichment activities, specials events and referral services for at-risk LGBTQ youth. Their weekly programs consist of peer-led, psycho-social discussion groups, financial literacy, art and safer sex educational programs. Youth Enrichment Activities and Special events include their annual CampOUT leadership camp, trip to Gay Days at Disney, holiday dinners and parties and their annual LGBTQ youth prom, which is going on its 18th year, among many others.
Most importantly, they operate South Florida’s only LGBTQ youth drop-in center, open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. where youth receive warm meals, can use the David Bohnett CycberCenter and can receive services or be referred to partnering agencies when they’re at-risk.
"Pridelines Youth Services belongs to the community and therefore their support is essential to our success," Diaz-Herman told EDGE. "All of our funding comes from individual donors, foundations that are invested in the success of Miami-Dade and/or Broward Counties, and/or corporations that receive recommendations to fund us from their local Employee Resource Groups. Additionally, Pridelines relies on the support of community based volunteers to assist our small team with administrative and programmatic projects. Community support is extremely important to us and to the LGBTQ youth we serve."
Diaz-Herman says that The Miami Foundation is, and has always been, a champion for Pridelines Youth Services. "We are honored that they have bestowed such a generous grant to support our CyberCenter and Drop-In Center services and operations," said Diaz-Herman. "The LGBT Community Projects fund allows us to continue providing safe spaces and nurturing environment for Miami-Dade’s LGBTQ youth where we can educate and empower them to be strong individuals."
Hundreds of people have been able to create personal, powerful and permanent legacies, thanks to The Miami Foundation. They have fostered the arts, awarded scholarships, championed diversity, taught kids to read, provided food and shelter for the hungry and the homeless, and much more.
In their 45-year history, more than $150,000,000 in grants and scholarships has been awarded. Today, they steward more than $160,000,000 in charitable assets. Through community programs, they invest in effective nonprofit organizations that share their vision of a greater Miami.
"The Miami Foundation provides civic leadership, bringing stakeholders together to tackle issues of concern in our community," Soto told EDGE. "Working together with our donors and community partners, we leverage collective knowledge, creativity and resources for a greater impact than any one of us could make alone. By connecting philanthropy with community needs and opportunities we make Miami a greater place to live, work, and play."
The Miami Foundation isn’t alone in supporting Pridelines Youth Services and their noble mission of equality and support for LGBTQ youth.
Diaz-Herman told EDGE, "This year was our 30th anniversary and we received great support from politicians and celebrities such as State Representative David Richardson, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, City of Miami Beach Mayor Matti Bower and Commissioner Michael Gonogora, and from Sharon Gless, our Honorary Board Member and LGBTQ Youth Advocate. We thank each of them for their support!" | <urn:uuid:88208fbd-b7e6-4ddf-a751-bda3e63421e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgeftlauderdale.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=local&sc3=&id=139428&pf=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966163 | 1,353 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Marie and Hortense Mancini, two of five nieces of Cardinal Mazarin are gorgeous and affluent. Fresh from Rome, the girls amaze the French Court of the Sun King. Marie, the elder sister, catches the eye of the King. Their love is forbidden by her uncle and the Queen Mother. To help Louis forget Marie, she is sent to Rome to marry the Prince Colonna. Though the marriage is a happy one at first, it decays into a relationship fraught with distrust and tension. The dying Cardinal bestows the title of Duchesse of Mazarin on Hortense. But the title comes with a price, a boring husband. The unhappy couple take possession of Palais Mazarin, home to sumptuous quarters and one of the largest art collections. Hortense begins to cause a scandal in France, stemming from her desire to be rid of her husband and his fanatical behavior. Escaping France, she returns to Italy and her sister. The two quickly become the scandal of Rome. When the tension in Rome becomes unbearable, the two sisters begin their lifelong journeys around Europe, dodging jilted husbands, jealous women and the law.
These educated females became the envy of women everywhere. They fought the main stream conviction that women were subservient to men, deciding their own destiny and escaping for freedom. Marie seems more docile at first, but puts up a harrowing fight to preserve her life. Hortense, the wild child sister, never gives up or compromises. Even when she is out of options, she still fights. I have to say, while both sisters were relateable, I loved Hortense. Both lived fascinating lives, accomplishing many deeds. Both published memoirs in their own names, and fought for the right to live free of their husbands' will.This nonfiction book reads like fiction, as the sisters' antics keep the reader engaged. | <urn:uuid:30d99a39-e60b-4a84-9d4b-d343c09ca405> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://themusingsofabookjunkie.blogspot.com/2012/06/kings-mistresses-liberated-lives-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959457 | 384 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The bearish decline in solar energy stocks that began in 2011 was broken in the last two months. Solar energy stocks broke up to the upside after MidAmerican Energy, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), said it was paying nearly $2.5 billion for solar projects from SunPower (SPWR). The Antelope Valley Solar Projects ("AVSP") is 579-megawatts and will create around 650 jobs when the solar photovoltaic power development is constructed.
Construction will begin in the first quarter of 2013, and will be completed by the end of the year in 2015. The impact of Berkshire's purchase to solar energy stocks was immediate. For the trading week, the sector was helped by the fiscal cliff resolution: Trina Solar (TSL) rose over 18%, SunPower rose 56%, LDK Solar (LDK) rose 60%, and Yingli Green Energy (YGE) rose 20%. First Solar (FSLR), recently reviewed when shares were around $26, rose 12% and traded recently at $33.57.
Is it time yet to invest in solar energy? The purpose of this article is to analyze two drivers required for the solar energy sector to improve: (1) Excess inventory and capacity, and (2) demand.
- Excess Inventory and Capacity
The solar sector remains weighed down negatively by excess capacity and inventories from China. The State Council recently said it wants to reform the industry by encouraging firms to merge. In addition, weak firms need to go bankrupt. Without bankruptcies and mergers, oversupply will continue into 2014. Firms like First Solar will still operate normally despite the oversupply, since the company relies on grid-connected utility scale markets for sustained sales. SunPower is also more likely to survive after the deal with Berkshire's unit.
Last fiscal year, debt reached the highest level for SunPower:
Long Term Debt
Values in millions USD
Data Source: kapitall.com
After shares doubled, LDK Solar shares could drop again as speculators take profits. The company has a bigger debt problem than that of SunPower. LDK doubled its debt to $1.23 billion in fiscal 2011, compared to the previous year.
Below is a chart illustrating the debt ratio for SunPower, First Solar, Yingli, Trina, and LDK Solar:
Data Source: Kapitall.com
Trina Solar has the greatest risk, as excess capacity remains in the industry. In its last fiscal year, Trina's inventory levels rose to $249.77 million, up from $79.12 the year before.
In the past, demand was driven by subsidies around the world. With these subsidies cancelled, solar energy demand will depend on China. The sector rallied in November 2012 when Reuters reported that domestic sales in China would support growth. Domestic demand will need generous subsidies from the Chinese government. This expectation was already priced in stocks at the start of last year in January, 2012.
Below is a chart illustrating the quarterly sales for SunPower, First Solar, Yingli, Trina, and LDK Solar:
Solar energy stocks are likely close to a bottom for companies like First Solar and SunPower, but investors should not expect Trina or LDK shares to hold all of their gains. Investors should expect profit taking in the short-term. Excess capacity and high inventories remain a problem, which will make it difficult for the weaker players. Rising demand in 2013 will depend on more government subsidies.
China already doubled its solar subsidies in December 2012. This acted as the first catalyst for a rebound. China would benefit most from improving demand, so investors should expect the region to add subsidies again to help the domestic industry in the medium-term. If this happens, solar energy stocks could jump again.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. | <urn:uuid:dbc19bd4-0d11-493a-93ab-40c6b8a00594> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingalpha.com/article/1095911-2-worries-that-remain-after-the-solar-energy-rally?source=reuters | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941437 | 809 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Page 1 of 2
Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s
Introduction by Michael Dowers
Before we get started it must be said that this book is not about all
mini comix. This book is about a small group of comix creators who were
inspired by an alternative comix art form known as underground comix.
With no other way of getting published they became their own publishers
and went on to produce handmade mini comix themselves. This book
is certainly not the last word about mini comix. Mini comix themselves
would cover every comic book genre imaginable... This is the story of
the underground mini comix of the 1980s...
October, 1982... My first introduction to mini comix was an article
in Jay Kennedy’s Underground Comix Price Guide. An article about “how
that point it
dawned on me that this could be done. Immediately after reading this
article I went to work and within 48 hours had written, drawn, folded,
very good but I was blown away with the 12 pages with cardstock covers
that I had created. Not very long after that I made a second issue and
started to pass these little booklets around. I don’t remember how I
found a few addresses, but it became obvious that there was a circle
of creators doing the same thing. I mailed out a few copies and actually
got a few responses back along with copies of mini comix made by
of these people
some very positive feedback, saying I should do more. For me, that was
all it took, one person to give me some positive input, just one. My
life was never the same again. I never told Brad Foster this and right
now want to say to him, “Thanks... for completely messing my life up.”
Seriously, though, Brad, your words were like getting sprinkled with
magic fairy dust. It was a very kind thing to say to somebody who had
no idea what he was doing.
mini comix I was making.
and cutting became an
friends. I can
fantasies going on in my head while
fingers were collating pages to be folded and bound together. Fantasies
of expanding the production of these little pieces of paper into
something that was real. A real comic book, perhaps, with color covers
printed with ink on newsprint. All I knew was that if this continued
that someday, I didn’t know how and didn’t know when, I was going to
work as a professional in the comic book industry one way or another.
I felt like I had finally found my calling in life.
Now in a way this was kind of pathetic. I was already 32 years old. I
was married, working odd jobs, struggling and trying to keep our lives
afloat. I had been living the life of an irresponsible musician/crazed
hippie with no other desires but to fuck around and play the guitar. All
of a sudden there was focus in my life.
thoughts running through their
heads as I did.
books with cartoons and drawings in them have such a powerful effect?
you don’t include
in their history,
that mini comix came about through what was known as “fanzines.” In the
early ’60s fans of comic books started publishing handmade zines about
their favorite comic books and comic book characters. Some of these fans
drawings they had
of their favorite superheroes. And some of these guys even became very
famous comic book artists because of the drawings they were making. By
the late ’60s and early ’70s the underground comix movement had hit hard
and the do-it-yourself spirit was born. While it is almost impossible to
nail down who was the very first to publish his own comics, my guess is
that this task had already been accomplished by the early fanzine creators.
While I have not personally seen much I can almost guarantee that
some of these
quick to publish stories of their own
superhero creations. The undergrounds broke everything wide open with a
cartoon art movement that said, anything goes. That would include making
your own comic books or art ’zines too. While a lot of people credit Gary
Arlington for publishing some of the first mini comix, there were a few
others who had already begun the task. This book starts with a duo from
started publishing their own
and all the pages would be bound together into a small chapbook or
“zine.” I feel this phenomenon might have been a “collective consciousness”
type of thing where a handful of people living in different areas
across the country all got the
comix was born. By the mid to late ’70s underground comix had run their
cartoonist to go, by the
’70s the NEWAVE mini comix scene
into existence. Different groups of people like Artie Romero’s Everyman
Studios sprang up and started taking on new and different artists. Clay
Geerdes started up his Comix World group and was encouraging fresh young
artists to be a part of this self-made movement. By the early ’80s the
shit had hit the fan and there were creators all over the world that were
drawing, folding, and stapling their own creations in an attempt to show
some ink. By the early
’90s NEWAVE had turned into something different. While the same sense of
independence was and still is rampant in mini comix, tastes changed and
mini comix became more socially accepted and easier to find.
personally have made an incredible amount of these
While I never kept exact records of how
I would give a lowball estimate that I alone, under my own steam, have
handmade about 45,000 comics. Yes, I said 45,000.
I did a series of 15
mini comix back in the early ’90s distributed through Diamond Distributors
that totaled over 16,000 comix
must have been completely
nuts to have wasted so much time. You know what? I’m still hand-making
titles. If there is anybody out there who thinks he can beat this figure
I would really like to know and personally shake his hand for being even
crazier than me.
Across the whole scene there have been so many mini comix created it
would take 50 or more books like this just to cover most of it. Nobody
could ever really know how many mini comix have been made and by how many
creators. At least 60% of all mini comix have fallen into obscurity. A
lot of them had print runs as low as 25 copies, while for others there
might have been only three or four copies made. Because of space alone,
there are many creators that had to be left out of this project and to
I apologize. But maybe
you are one of the
few who could
the immensity of a project like this.
What you hold in your
hands is just a brief
overview of some of the
they were ever to get their work published they were going to have to do
it with their own willpower. They not only had to write
and draw their
work but collate,
fold, staple, and
to the photocopy
alone would be enough to
some crazy... I want
dedicate this book to anybody out there
who has had the sense and wits about them to fold, staple, and trim their
own book. To you I bow respectfully, in humility. | <urn:uuid:e99d76bf-70e2-42f7-a2fc-7987d6e4ffe9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fantagraphics.com/books/newave-the-underground-mini-comix-of-the-1980s-introduction-table-of-contents.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970685 | 1,633 | 1.570313 | 2 |
New Haven, home to illustrious Yale University, is in 12th place in CNBC's slideshow "20 Cities You Don’t Want to Live In ... Yet," sandwiched between Memphis, Tenn. in 11th place and Baltimore, Md. in 13th.
The reasons? CMBC reports that New Haven struggles from high crime, high costs of living, high taxes, a high unemployment rate, and sub-par schools. But it's not all bad. Listed among New Haven's few redeeming factors is the perk that the city is just 90 minutes away from Manhattan by train. To students of Yale University, this knowledge may bring some small comfort, as they are usually confined to the 12-block bubble of academia that surrounds campus.
Yalies may also find some solace in New Haven's initiative to "attract more videogame makers," according to CNBC, as part of their plan to diversify the economy. In a city where the alternate forms of entertainment are the Kmart down the street and the library's vast collection of 17th century German literature, a booming video game industry may help turn things around for college students looking for a more efficient method of procrastination.
CNBC also noted that the unemployment rate has fallen from 9.7 percent to 9 percent, giving Yale College graduates a slightly more secure foothold in today's competitive job market. | <urn:uuid:2d06cc18-de2d-4503-b622-6a23330c050e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/22/new-high-yale-more/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959365 | 279 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Wednesday, 24 November 2010 14:16
The Pilgrims came across the sea,
And never thought of you and me;
And yet it’s very strange the way
We think of them Thanksgiving Day.
We tell their story old and true
Of how they sailed the ocean blue,
And found a new land to be free
And built their homes quite near the sea.
The people think that they were sad,
And grave; I’m sure that they were glad-
They made Thanksgiving Day-that’s fun-
We thank the Pilgrims every one!
Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 November 2010 14:17
Page 4 of 4 | <urn:uuid:f2b4547c-9913-426d-8a48-28c9d1e680ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.themanchesterenterprise.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=1&Itemid=15&set_width=wide&set_color=red&limitstart=15&set_color=green | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963008 | 144 | 1.71875 | 2 |
January 16, 2003
At least they're trying - Foreign affairs ministers from Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia met in Nairobi, Kenya on the 16th, to discuss the obstacles facing the ongoing Somalia peace talks. The Somali leaders participating in the talks had recently lost hope.
Meanwhile, the Suleyman and Murusade subclans who have been killing each other in Mogadishu recently reached a comprehensive and supposedly final agreement at city's Sahafi Hotel on the 14th. Peace activists, wise men and religious leaders from both sides attended the signing, which was a culmination of series of meetings between elders of the two subclans. The subclans agreed to have their affairs run in accordance with the sharia law. The Murusade and Suleyman, who have been involved in persistent gun battles in the city, have set up committees to monitor activities of the two subclans.
However, there is always someone willing to set things back a step or two. The 14 January attack on the bus may be more than simple banditry, since those killed and wounded are said to include Asharaf clan elders and intellectuals who had been mediating between rival leaders Shaykh Adan Madobe and Hasan Muhammad Nur Shatigadud (the ousted leader of the southwestern Somali regional administration). These two had been fighting in Bay Region.
HornAfrik Radio, a major broadcasting station in Mogadishu, went off the air at 4:30 PM January 10th and didn't resume broadcasting until the 11th, because heavily armed militiamen in several "technicals" shot up the station and terrorized the staff on duty. The attacking forces allegedly included guards of interim president Abdiqasim Salad Hasan under the command of infamous Mogadishu business tycoon Muhammad Daylaf. The privately-owned Hornafrik Radio and Television station had quoted a book by an Ethiopian author, in which it is alleged that Mohamed Daylaf has business relations with a militant Somali Islamic group known as Al-Ittihad al-Islamia. The United States has charged that this group has links to Al-Qaeda. The interim president had been threatening to arrest the HornAfrik radio station management. - Adam Geibel | <urn:uuid:f3801c6f-9c2e-4b9b-8f10-c37cb691232d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/somalia/articles/20030116.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97385 | 458 | 1.578125 | 2 |
We’re in a perspex walled box. Black floor, a faint glow from a large ceiling screen creating reflections of reflections. Boundless space. Projections of bare trees surround us, even above our heads. A man walks toward us between the trees, goes away. Another man looms in the extreme foreground. One wall is a close-up of his ear, leaking bloody poison. The image echoes around us.
A man wakes with a start. His ultra-modern bedroom is a brightly lit box beyond our perspex wall. He steps through the door to his bathroom, an adjoining box, rehearsing the speech Claudius makes to Hamlet, urging him to get over his father’s recent death and join his new parents in a united front. Overhead, we see him through the plughole as he tries out phrases and inflections above his basin.
Rooms appear on all sides. A fashionable young woman nervously straightens her jacket; her brother does a few press-ups before slipping into an expensive business suit; an attractive older woman brushes on foundation. Multiple video images from advertising and politics are projected onto other walls. A large room, one whole side of our own, is set up with a minimalist sofa for what looks like breakfast TV.
Behind us, a young man sits on the edge of his bed in the gloom, reflections creating the impression he’s underwater. He wrings his hands, and stares.
dreamthinkspeak’s expressionistic take on Shakespeare’s well-known tale of murder, revenge, grief and guilt, The Rest is Silence uses sound, video and cleverly created reflections alongside nine actors’ work to foreground the play’s underlying themes. Site-selection and inspired theatre design create a space which could be anywhere, and is therefore nowhere. Nowhere solid, anyway.
We’re now experiencing Hamlet from the point of view of Hamlet. As he joins his mother and her new husband in front of the camera, we share his waking nightmare.
While this would stand alone, it’s not one for the school parties. The familiar narrative is disassembled, pared down to its essence and rearranged to bring the unconscious to the surface. The text is present, but as artist’s material. Characters self-consciously rehearse familiar lines. Hamlet’s speeches are reported by others, or delivered to the wrong characters in ways that betray their motivation. The famous soliloquy, read in a round by the other characters, becomes voices clamouring in Hamlet’s head. Minor characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern provide a tragi-comic counterpoint to all this illumination as, oblivious to feeling, they deconstruct Hamlet’s distressed confidences beyond sense.
Hamlet’s madness is not the spectacle here; he’s the eye of a storm of power-lust and unsustainable denial. Although a ghost does appear to him silently offering a weapon, its exhortation to revenge, heard in complete darkness, registering as Hamlet’s own thoughts. When the lights go up there is only Hamlet, holding a gun.
Ophelia’s descent is trickier to render subtly, but she retains our sympathy and understanding as she seems to drown in grief and guilt, her corpse floating in ominous close-up above our heads.
Edward Hogg as Hamlet and Bethan Cullinane as Ophelia excel. Ruth Lass deftly delineates Gertrude’s inner conflict, although she seems too young to be Hamlet’s mother – then again, perhaps that was always the point. But this is an ensemble tour-de-force: director Tristan Sharps knows how to get the most from his theatre-as-installation medium, and each and every cast member rises to the challenge.
We’re a little spoilt here in Brighton – we expect to be treated to a spectacular, genre-stretching theatrical experience at least once a year. But this Brighton Festival commissioned piece for The World Shakespeare Festival certainly doesn’t disappoint. Brilliantly conceived, skilfully executed, thought-provoking and visually stunning, it will haunt your dreams.
(originally published by Guide2Brighton) | <urn:uuid:730bdf83-65c2-4595-b0d6-dfc534f1ba2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://brightonlite.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/dreamthinkspeak/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945653 | 893 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
St. Joseph’s Hospitalmedical ward serves both adults and children (6 to 18 years old) who are hospitalized to receive medicine and treatment. The current bed capacity in medical ward(by the end of April 2011) is 109beds; 86 beds are in the main ward, 10 in private wing and 10 in children section. Private section is meant for isolation cases and for those who demand for privacy.
The staff working in medical ward has a wide variety of trainings and experiences; among other trainingsthe staff underwent included routine HIV counseling and testing. The ward is headed by a Registered Nurse andit has a Medical Officer attached to it plus Medical Assistants. The team works on the principle of love for humanity with respect for patients and their attendants and with honesty. The services rendered are not on political, cultural, social, or religious affiliation. Patients are given holistic services (physical, psychological, and spiritual care according to their faith) to facilitate their quick recovery.
According to the financial year (July, 2009-June, 2011), Medical ward admitted 2,940 patients with 28,911 patient days. The bed occupancy rate was 84.04% with the average length of stay of 9 days.
Malariawas recorded in the financial year to be one of the top ten diseases commonly received in medical ward; Black water fever, pud, pneumonia, asthma, anemia, ascites, liver cirrhosis, hypoglycemia, typhoid, peripheralneuropathy, gastritis, peritonitis, hepatitis E/A, nephritis syndrome, hyperpyrexia, gastritis, ruptured esophageal version, urinary tract infection, upper respiratory tract infection, septic shock, meningitis, arthritis in diabetes, leukemia andappendicitis are some of the cases commonly admitted in Medical ward. It was also noted that most of the medical cases were complication is HIV/AIDS late stage. HIV complication rang up to 23% of the total admission in medical ward during the year
The consumption of medicines, utilities, and sundries in medical ward during the above financial year was estimated at Ush. 345,000.000.
Philosophy of care
· We provide services with love and honesty in the light of Christian solidarity
· Patients are helped to realize that the hospital is a holy ground where one encounters the Creator (God) and realize the hands of God at work.
· We strive for excellence in the services we do without any discrimination
· Chronically ill patients are supported and are consoled by professional clinical pastoral care givers
· Implicit in the care delivered is the promise that confidentiality, open communication, and respect for religious and cultural beliefs will be maintained by all staff involved.
· Patients and their attendants are encouraged to participate in the process of decision making especially during critical moments.
· We gain confidence in our patients and their attendants by being reliable and professionals in the work we do.
· Patients and their attendants are provided health education on the principle of prevention is better that cure.
The ward operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Below are the categories of staff working in Medical ward. | <urn:uuid:a3f8703c-b1b8-4474-8f28-d929cfcb642f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sjhkitgum.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=223&Itemid=237 | 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 | 0.951688 | 662 | 1.703125 | 2 |
The Council has adopted three sets of Criteria applicable to study abroad: Criteria for Approval of Foreign Summer and Intersession Programs Established by ABA-Approved Law Schools (revised August 2010); Criteria for Approval of Semester and Year-Long Study Abroad Programs (revised August 2010); and Criteria for Student Study at a Foreign Institution.
Standard 307 provides that a law school may not grant credit toward the J.D. degree for studies in a foreign country unless those studies are approved in accordance with the Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools and Criteria adopted by the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
The ABA’s oversight role with regard to study abroad programs is designed to provide assurance of a sound educational experience in a study abroad program sponsored by an ABA-approved law school.
The Criteria related to study abroad provide a framework for law schools to grant students credit toward the J.D. degree for studies abroad. They seek to provide flexibility for a school to design programs and to permit study abroad consistent with the law school’s mission while maintaining a level of oversight of the school’s program of legal education that is consistent with the role and scope of the Standards for the Approval of Law Schools.
These Criteria recognize that the primary responsibility for determining the quality of the educational experience that students receive during a study abroad experience rests with the faculty and administration of the law school.
The ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for the Approval of Law Schools shall apply to study abroad programs except as modified by the Criteria or by necessary implication.
Students currentlyenrolled at an ABA-approved law school who desire to receive credit toward their J.D. degree for study abroad should read carefully the applicable criteria for their course of study and should consult with members of the law school staff or faculty who advise students about foreign study. These programs are only open to students who have successfully completed their first year of study and are enrolled in an ABA approved law school. Under the approved Criteria, students enrolled in ABA-approved law schools may earn credit toward the J.D. degree for participating in an approved Semester or Year-Long Study Abroad Program, an approved Foreign Summer or Intersession program or through school-approved individual study programs, sometimes within an approved Cooperative Program between an ABA-approved law school and a foreign institution. | <urn:uuid:e6e1f8d7-facf-456a-bf3a-548a3aac1681> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_education/resources/foreign_study.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953078 | 508 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Crabs are sold by size: small, medium, large, jumbo and occasionally colossal. They can be very expensive (especially if you buy them already steamed) and the price difference between the sizes can be significant. I recommend getting at least the medium size. The size difference between medium and large is often slight but the price difference is frequently about $10 a dozen.
Picking crabs is time consuming. Unless you are a professional, plan to spend the bulk of an afternoon or evening picking crabs.
Your hands will get very dirty. I find it is difficult to eat anything but crabs while you are picking unless you're willing to get up and wash your hands frequently. If you want to serve other food, I suggest serving it before or after the crabs.
Avoid touching your eyes while picking, seafood seasoning burns. Also, it is not uncommon to cut your finger on a shell but it is generally no worse than a papercut.
Cover a large dining surface with a thicker than you would think layer of newspaper. It really is best to do this outside on a picnic table if at all possible. If not, resign yourself to cleaning the floor afterwards.
Pick out a crab. Try and get one that has both claws and feels "heavy" before someone else does.
Bend or twist the legs and claws to snap them off at the body. Some times a bit of crabmeat will come off with the legs or claw. Eat it. Set the claws aside. There is not much meat (if any) in the legs so I just push them aside.
Pull off the "apron". Some people use a butter knife for this but I am a purist and only use my hands. Simply slip your finger under the edge of the point and pull down. It should pull off easily.
Pry the shell away from the body. The easiest way is to use both hands and pull the crab halves in opposite directions.
Flip the crab over.
Remove the squishy, grey gills. They pull off very easily. Discard them. The yellow stuff is colloquially known as the "mustard" and is edible.
Crack the crab in two. Pull out any loose crabmeat and eat it.
Crack the halves and extract the meat. Again, some people use butter or crab knives but I find that fingers work just fine. Eat the meat as you go.
Hold both sides of the crab claw and break off the part that I am holding in my fingers.
The meat should come off on the claw. If not, break the claw with your mallet.
The other half of the claw has meat as well. Break it off at the joint. If this doesn't yield meat, hit it with your mallet.
Repeat, repeat, repeat. | <urn:uuid:4daf40e4-e2e2-4f58-baec-5c483bcb945b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coconutandlime.com/2009/07/how-to-eat-steamed-blue-crabs.html?showComment=1247032579690 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954611 | 576 | 1.796875 | 2 |
- Common issues which couples bring to a session of pre-marriage counselling include stress around wedding plans, different approaches to financial management, nerves, cultural differences and the impact of step-families.
- However, not every couple who attends pre-marriage counselling does so in order to resolve a particular issue. Rather, couples often attend pre-marriage counselling as a way of giving thoughtful consideration to their individual expectations of marriage and of married life, and to strengthen their skills in communication and conflict resolution prior to marriage.
When a couple becomes engaged, they are looking forward to the future and to a lifetime of happiness and commonality ahead of them. However, during the engagement period, they may face high amounts of stress (particularly in relation to wedding planning), conflicts about approaches to money and finances, feelings of anxiety or nerves, issues arising from cultural or religious differences, and issues relating to step-families, in laws and children.
In many cases, working with a relationship counsellor or psychologist who specialises in pre-marriage counselling can not only help the couple develop stress management skills and improve their communication, but can also help them with issues they may face as they begin their life together as a married or committed couple.
How Can we Reduce Stress During Our Engagement?
As amazing as it may sound, one of the most stressful periods in a person’s life can be during their engagement and right after they get married. Planning a wedding is a big event with lots of corresponding big decisions. Money is involved, especially if the wedding is on the large side and families can easily begin squabbling about what they believe should happen during the wedding celebration. All of this can lead to stressful outbursts and frustrations for the engaged couple.
Pre-marriage counseling can help a couple reduce stress in a number of ways. One way in which stress can be reduced is by talking openly about what you want and do not want in the wedding. A pre-marriage counsellor, psychologist or therapist can help you and your fiance learn improved communication and listening skills that will assist in discussions with family members as well as help you talk more effectively with each other. Hopefully with improved communication skills, your talks about the wedding will not turn into frustrated and angry shouting matches!
Another way in which pre-marriage counselling can reduce pre-marriage stress is by simply providing an unbiased and neutral space for you and your fiancé to talk about the wedding. As simple as it sounds, having what is basically a sounding board to talk to and vent at can be extremely helpful. In the process, you will also develop skills in how to vent without being emotionally destructive to each other or to yourself.
How Can We Take Control of the Wedding Budget?
A common area of contention during an engagement is often the budget. Girls and/or their mothers dream about their wedding from the time they are little and even if it is a second marriage, many women have very clear ideas about what they want to happen at the ceremony. This may translate into unforeseen or unplanned expenses simply because they are on a ‘must have’ list which has little in common with financial realities. This can turn into a significant point of contention between a couple and their families, particularly for the person or people who are paying for the wedding.
How Can Issues of Financial Management and Money Affect Your Marriage?
Very often, couples have entirely different approaches to money and this is often revealed during the wedding planning process. One of you may have a very controlled and contained method of spending money, while the other may spend without much thought to the longer term consequences. This can be an important topic of discussion during pre-marriage counselling sessions. Your pre-marriage counsellor or psychologist can help you sit down and look at your wedding budget, help with negotiations on particular points and even role play talking to a wedding planner or with family members about spending money for the wedding.
Of course, issues of financial management and money are not just limited to the wedding, and general issues of financial management are topics commonly explored by couples during pre-marriage counselling sessions. Typically, couples do not join their finances until after marriage or during their engagement period. A pre-marriage counsellor or psychologist can help a couple to identify any differences in the way they spend and manage money, explore similarities and common concerns, develop mechanisms for dealing with those differences, and help a couple create firm agreements about how they will handle and manage their money once they are married.
Why Do I Feel Anxious Now That I Am Engaged to be Married?
The decision to get married is a huge one. It brings with it an increased level of responsibility and commitment to your partner, the likelihood that you will start a family sometime in the future, typically an amalgamation of your finances, it impacts on your respective families, and it is supposed to be “forever after”. No wonder the decision to get married can be a nerve-wracking one, even if you love your partner dearly and with certainty.
Pre-Marriage Counselling can help you work through your nerves and get to the bottom of your anxiety. Often, voicing your concerns or fears is enough to belittle them. A pre-marriage counsellor can help you express your fears and talk them through with your fiancé. ‘Butterflies’ can be a normal part of every big decision we make in our lives, and talking to a pre-marriage counsellor can definitely help calm the nerves.
How Do We Deal with Religious or Cultural Difference?
Religion and cultural background can be a massive part of who we are, and have a substantial impact on the way we decide to live our lives. It might affect the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the festivities you celebrate, where you send your kids to school, and the social rules you observe. In short, strong religious or cultural affiliations will impact your entire way of life.
If your religious or cultural associations are different from that of your spouse, or you observe them differently, or you are not religious at all, these differences have the potential to cause substantial conflict in your married lives. Even if they don’t affect you directly, they are likely to impact you through your parents and in-laws.
Pre-marriage counselling is an excellent forum in which to air and discuss these issues, and to come to honest and open understandings about your religious and cultural backgrounds and how you see these backgrounds interacting with your married life. Questions which are commonly discussed in pre-marriage counselling include what elements of your religious or cultural background are important to you? How important are they to you? What would you be willing to give up for your partner, or what would you be willing to take on? How will you bring up your children? These are all questions which can be discussed and answered with the help of a professional pre-marriage counsellor.
Help! I am a Step-Parent!
Kids are not always thrilled at the prospect of their parents remarrying and parents who are divorced may pose problems if they are still having conflicts with each other or with you. Likewise, becoming a step-parent is not easy, and was probably not what you ever planned for yourself, especially if this is your first marriage.
When announcing your engagement, do your best to include the children in the process. Hopefully, your relationship with your fiance’s children is strong, but try not to ‘parent’ your step-children too early on in your relationship with them. A new marriage greatly affects children, especially young children who are still living at home.
This is where working with a pre-marriage counsellor and learning active listening and communication skills can be of help. You can express your concerns with your partner, and openly discuss how best to deal with the children. Hopefully by doing this, you can avoid fights and conflict around the issue, and most importantly, do your best by the children.
You can also work with a pre-marriage counsellor or psychologist on any residual issues resulting from a previous marriage and divorce, especially if you think those issues might impact upon your new marriage.
How Do We Get Help?
If you are getting married and believe you would benefit from pre-marriage counselling and working with a qualified professional relationship counsellor or psychologist, contact us to schedule a consultation or to receive further advice: Associated Relationship & Marriage Counsellors Sydney. | <urn:uuid:7b57dcb8-7af1-4754-b4ff-7f744fcb00af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.couplecounselling.com.au/pre-marriage-counselling-sydney/common-issues | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968051 | 1,723 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Current State - Current Sports
Most Active Stories
It's All Politics
Thu December 8, 2011
Obama In No Appeasing Mood As He Goes After Republicans
It has been President Obama's misfortune to be accused of appeasement by both his political supporters and foes.
For much of his presidency, liberals have accused the president of being too willing to compromise away their priorities in his negotiations with Republicans.
Meanwhile, Republicans have called Obama an appeaser for not doing more to constrain U.S. enemies in the Middle East, specifically Iran.
The most recent example of that came Wednesday. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, appearing before the Republican Jewish Coalition, accused the president of such appeasement.
So Obama came out swinging at a Thursday news conference to demonstrate to friends and foes alike that he was no Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who will always be associated with trying to appease Adolf Hitler.
First, Obama made it clear that he intended to fight for his nomination of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Senate Republicans blocked Cordray's nomination Thursday, which left the new agency unable to start some of its regulatory duties, such as issuing new rules to for payday lenders and student loans.
Sounding like Gen. Ulysses Grant — who during the Civil War once said: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." — Obama said:
"So I just want to send a message to the Senate: We are not giving up on this. We're going to keep on going at it. We are not going to allow politics as usual on Capitol Hill to stand in the way of American consumers being protected by unscrupulous financial operators. And we're going to keep on pushing on this issue."
That was in stark contrast to the lack of fight the president showed when it came to Elizabeth Warren. Many progressives wanted the president to go to battle with Republicans last year by naming the Harvard Law professor to be the first CFPB head, especially since the new agency was her brainchild.
Obama declined to take on that fight, leaving Warren free to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts. He now apparently believes the time is right to fight for Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general who has support from both Democratic and Republican attorneys general across the U.S.
Obama was also seemed ready to knock down accusations from Republican presidential candidates that he has been soft on Iran and other threats to the security of the U.S. and its allies, particularly Israel.
Told that his handling of Iran and other threats had been likened to appeasement, a feisty Obama said:
"Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22-out-of-30 top al Qaeda leaders who've been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever is left out there, ask them about that."
That's a line we're likely to hear again.
Obama was apparently feeling so fired up, that he appeared eager to jettison his planned Christmas holiday to Hawaii to remain in Washington if it meant getting the payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance extended:
"With respect to my vacation, I would not ask anybody to do something I'm not willing to do myself. So I know some of you might have been looking forward to a little sun and sand — (laughter) — but the bottom line is, is that we are going to stay here as long as it takes to make sure that the American people's taxes don't go up on Jan. 1, and to make sure that folks who desperately need unemployment insurance get that help. And there's absolutely no excuse for us not getting it done."
Clearly, he was not even in the mood to appease his family or the White House staff and press corps. | <urn:uuid:dbecffcd-3f74-4073-8a68-35ec652e67e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wkar.org/post/obama-no-appeasing-mood-he-goes-after-republicans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97565 | 777 | 1.632813 | 2 |
New federal immigration program to fill gap in skilled trades
Published Monday, December 10, 2012 10:58AM EST
Last Updated Monday, December 10, 2012 10:12PM EST
A new federal program aims to fill the demand for tradespeople in Canada while fast tracking the immigration process for certain skilled workers.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced the Federal Skilled Trades Program on Monday, which could see up to 3,000 applications from foreign workers in its first year.
“With all the huge construction projects going on and oil and gas projects…we’re talking tens of thousands of unfilled jobs, quite frankly because our high schools and our community colleges have not been producing enough tradespeople for these jobs,” Kenney told CTV’s Power Play on Monday.
The program takes effect on Jan. 2, 2013 and Kenney expects the number of eligible applicants to grow over time. Those who qualify for the program will be given permanent residency.
Kenney said that over the last 30 to 40 years, immigration policies have made it close to impossible for skilled labours from abroad to enter the Canadian labour market.
“One of the weaknesses that we’re now changing is that if you didn’t have post-secondary academic education and very high levels of English or French, your chances of getting into Canada were slim to nil,” he said.
Under the new program, applicants will need to be either pre-approved by a province or territory, or have a job offer in hand.
Other requirements include basic language proficiency and at least two years working experience in their skilled trade.
“We don’t want to re-create the big problems of endless backlogs and wait times that have characterized our dysfunctional system in the past,” said Kenney.
Eligible occupations, including electricians, welders, heavy-duty equipment mechanics, pipefitters and others, will be specified on a list the federal government is now working to draw up with provinces, territories and labour groups.
The list of occupations experiencing labour shortages will be released ahead of the program's official launch in January.
The need for workers is said to be particularly high in northern Alberta, where billions are being spent on oilsands projects.
In a report released last spring, the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada projected that the energy industry there will grow, on average, by 73 per cent by 2021.
And some occupations will add more than 100 per cent of their current workforce by then, it said, noting the forecast did not account for labour market turnover or demand for workers in the construction and service industries.
According to the PHRCC, Canada's oil and gas industry will need to fill a minimum of 9,500 jobs by 2015 in order to accommodate growth in the sector as well as retirements and attrition.
Skilled tradespeople currently make up a small percentage of immigrants to Canada, despite national demand for qualified welders, pipefitters and electricians, for example.
“We always want Canadian (workers) to come first, but let’s be blunt about this, provinces and employers have to do more in terms of skills training in these areas,” said Kenney, adding that he’d like to see vocational training programs emphasized at the high school level.
“We have a lot of skills shortages in trades and a surplus of people coming out (of schools) with a certain kind of academic degree and this has created a paradox of 15 per cent youth unemployment in an economy with hundreds of thousand unfilled jobs.”
When he announced the new program earlier this year, Kenney said the existing criteria put tradespeople at a disadvantage because the rules are geared toward professionals.
Many of them wind up in Canada, Kenney said, but end up unemployed or under-employed in unrelated jobs.
Critics have countered that there are approximately 1.5 million unemployed workers in Canada who could be trained to fill the labour market gaps themselves.
With files from The Canadian Press | <urn:uuid:5eee44d4-d584-4acc-a208-9567141e0d08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/new-federal-immigration-program-to-fill-gap-in-skilled-trades-1.1072923 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954392 | 833 | 1.664063 | 2 |
China FTA Not Enough - NZ First
8 April 2008
China FTA Not Enough - NZ First
New Zealand First has described the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China as “not enough” and will vote against the legislation in Parliament.
Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters said there was simply not enough in the deal for this country for New Zealand First MPs to support it.
“Just over two decades ago the trade doors to New Zealand were thrown wide open in the vain hope that the rest of the world would reciprocate but that has still not happened.
“Under this FTA we will have to wait up to another 17 years to get the full benefits that have been promised.
“The one industry which could genuinely bridge our serious trade deficit – the primary sector – must wait at least 12 years and up to 17 years to reap the full benefit of this FTA.
“Given that China has effectively had half a free trade agreement with New Zealand for the past 20 years we could have expected more from them.
“When the euphoria settles, people will start realising the seriousness of this situation.”
Mr Peters listed the main areas of concern with the FTA:
* The stated return from the FTA is not worth the risk of exposing the few remaining elements of New Zealand’s manufacturing industry.
* The timing of tariff reductions is weighted heavily in favour of China. What remains of New Zealand’s tariffs will be removed within seven to nine years whereas China has up to 12 years and possibly 17 years to reduce its tariffs.
* A huge imbalance already exists in trade between the two countries. China‘s exports to New Zealand in 2007 totalled $5.59b but New Zealand’s exports to China totalled only $1.95b for the same year.
* The projected benefit in dollar terms will make little impact on the trade imbalance. It should be noted that FTAs with both Thailand and Singapore resulted in a worse imbalance of trade.
* China has very low wages and fewer labour standards than New Zealand. What is left of our local manufacturing industry will simply not be able to compete on a level playing field.
* The movement of labour provisions should fall within existing immigration requirements – not FTAs.
* The increasing levels of imported processed and non-processed foodstuffs from China threaten New Zealand's production of similar goods. New Zealanders should continue to have access to the quality food products of their own country.
* The clauses in the FTA relating to investment are of great concern.
Mr Peters said that New Zealand First remained convinced that tax incentives and a realistic currency value were the way to drive export growth and enable New Zealand to prosper.
The Government had been informed of the New Zealand First caucus decision.
Mr Peters said the issue was a case of “agreeing to disagree” with the Government and did not represent any threat to the confidence and supply agreement.
“Both Labour and National support a Free Trade Agreement with China and our opposition cannot prevent it, but New Zealand First believes it is important to make New Zealanders aware of our position on this matter.
“Since 1984 successive Labour and National governments have told New Zealanders about the benefits of free trade. The long wait for these benefits continues,” said Mr Peters. | <urn:uuid:addd2829-304f-4d16-ae55-b73e67eb5fe0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0804/S00225.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958448 | 685 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Facebook Buying Face.com
Likely streamlining the tagging progress, Facebook has agreed to buy Israeli facial-recognition company Face.com for an undisclosed sum, but reports put the buy at around $60 million. The move will give Facebook “mobile fodder for its photo-tagging service as it continued to recover from a post-IPO Wall Street decline,” writes MercuryNews.com. A 5-year-old startup, Face.com offers free and paid versions of its facial-recognition technology.
Focused on social uses in apps and software, the company is credited with making advances in the increasingly critical field of mobile. "By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we'll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers -- that's all we've ever wanted to do," Face.com co-founder and CEO Gil Hirsch wrote in a blog post on the site.
Adds MercuryNews: “The acquisition gives Facebook more experience in identifying people in photographs taken with mobile devices, helping add to its option of ‘tagging’ photos shared on the social network.” How Facebook handles the privacy issues surrounding such technology remains to be seen. | <urn:uuid:e19ee8b1-adf6-4fb0-98e3-0617e1808a49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/177108/facebook-buying-facecom.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+around-the-net-in-online-marketing+%28MediaPost+%7C+Around+the+Net+In+Online+Marketing%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958478 | 250 | 1.515625 | 2 |
New term, new official portrait.
Just before President Barack Obama's second inauguration, the White House Friday released a new official portrait of the president for his second term. The portrait, taken Dec. 6 by White House photographer Pete Souza, shows a smiling Obama standing with his arms crossed in front of his desk in the Oval Office.
The new portrait replaces this one, taken in 2009. It was the first presidential portrait to be taken with a digital camera:
Presidential portraits hang in the lobbies of federal buildings across the country.
Obama's second term begins at noon EST on Sunday. | <urn:uuid:f95817f8-ab2d-416a-961c-d253346d0224> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://main.aol.com/2013/01/18/obama-portrait_n_2504957.html?1358531164 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968287 | 122 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Petra: Great Tribulation Refuge of the Remnant of Israel
Where will the Remnant of Israel Gather during the Great Tribulation?
Bozrah / Petra = The Sheep Pen of the Remnant
Copyright � 1999-Jesus' Second Coming - www.tribulation.com - All Rights Reserved
Understanding Bible Prophecy
The Day of Vengeance in Edom
January 24, 2009
In the Book of Daniel an
Angel of God is revealing the Mystery of the End Times to Daniel while he is a
captive in Babylon. In the following passage, the Angel explains
that the Antichrist will enter Israel and other nations:
41 He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon (Daniel 11:41 KJV)
Edom, Moab and Ammon are
all in Jordan ... these areas must escape the Antichrist so that Israel can flee
to Edom (Petra/Bozrah is in Edom) where she escapes during the last 1/2 of the
Tribulation (times = 2 years, time = 1 year and 1/2 time = 1/2 year ... total =
14 And to the Woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the Serpent (Revelation 12:14 KJV)
In the Gospel of Matthew, written more specifically to the Jew, an escape route for the remnant of Israel is noted by Jesus as He identifies the kickoff event (cf. Daniel 9:27) for the last 1/2 of the Tribulation Period. This "kickoff event" is the Antichrist setting up an idol to himself in Israel's rebuilt Temple of God:
Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF
DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the Holy
Place (let the reader understand),
16 then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains; (Matthew 24:15-16 NASB)
During the terrible last 1/2 of the Tribulation Period, 2/3 of the population of the Nation of Israel falls to the armies of the Antichrist. The remaining 1/3, the remnant, flees this tyranny foretold in the prophecy of Zechariah:
It will come about in all the land,
Declares the LORD, That two parts in it will be cut
off and perish; But the third will be left in it.
9 And I will bring the third part through the fire, Refine them as silver is refined, And test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, And I will answer them; I will say, "They are My people,' And they will say, "The LORD is my God.' (Zechariah 13:8-9 NASB)
In Micah, we find a prophecy from the Lord declaring Bozrah as the sheep pen of the remnant of Israel:
12 I will surely assemble all of you, Jacob, I will surely gather the remnant of Israel. I will put them together like sheep in the fold (Bozrah - KJV); Like a flock in the midst of its pasture they will be noisy with men. (Micah 2:12 NASB)
12 I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah (fold - NASB), as the flock in the midst of their fold: they shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men. (Micah 2:12 KJV)
When the Antichrist tries
to finish Israel off at Bozrah/Petra in Edom ... Jesus Christ returns to save
them ... After the Battle of Armageddon, His clothing reflects the Winepress of
God in Isaiah 63:
1 Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in His apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to Save.
2 Wherefore art Thou red in Thine apparel, and Thy garments like Him that treadeth in the winefat?
3 I have trodden the Winepress alone; and of the people there was none with Me: for I will tread them in Mine anger, and trample them in My fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will stain all My raiment.
4 For the Day of Vengeance is in Mine heart, and the year of My Redeemed is come.
5 And I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold: therefore Mine own arm brought Salvation unto Me; and My fury, it upheld Me.
6 And I will tread down the people in Mine anger, and make them drunk in My fury, and I will bring down their strength to the Earth (Isaiah 63:1-6 KJV)
The Day of the Lord is also
pictured in the Book of Revelation as Jesus returns to Earth on a white horse.
The Winepress of God from Isaiah 63:3 is again found in the 15th verse of
Revelation chapter 19:
11 And I saw Heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He doth judge and make war.
12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns; and He had a Name written, that no man knew, but He Himself.
13 And He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and His name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which were in Heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
15 And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations: and He shall rule them with a Rod of Iron: and He treadeth the Winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God (Revelation 19:11-15 KJV)
See Bozrah/Petra as "The Valley of the Crescent Moon" in "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade"!
MIDI Music: "Jesus is Just Alright" | <urn:uuid:ac2bc033-9588-4e83-b2b3-f197b0fdedbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tribulation.com/petra.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944876 | 1,364 | 1.53125 | 2 |
As if getting your ass handed to you while playing video games wasn’t annoying enough, [furrtek] decided that the best way to help improve his skills was by inflicting physical pain each time his on-screen character died.
While perusing the Internet looking for something to break through the doldrums of the day, he came upon a video in which someone decided to try on a dog shock collar just for kicks. This sparked [furrtek’s] imagination, and he started to think that it would be pretty cool to use the same sort of device to make dying in a video game that much more unpleasant.
After ordering a set of collars online, he tore them apart to see how they functioned, and to measure just how big of a jolt they were able to deliver. [furrtek] then modified two Genesis controllers with a pair of ATtiny 25s, which let him send the fire signal to the collars. Unfortunately, stock Genesis games don’t allow you to send signals to the controllers, so [furrtek] had to spend some time hacking ROM images to trigger events when players are injured or lose a life.
We think the project is pretty slick, and if you don’t mind fiddling with your old controllers, you too can have a merciless trainer strapped around your neck. For those slightly more averse to pain, you can watch [furrtek] and his friend [Dyak] suffer the consequences of poor gameplay for your amusement. | <urn:uuid:aacc0172-c33e-4b67-bf0e-fb79e884a174> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hackaday.com/2012/08/02/genezap-improves-your-video-game-skills-using-corporal-punishment/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=7b62a7b6bf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965377 | 313 | 1.515625 | 2 |
By Julie Zeilinger
WeNews guest author
Sunday, May 20, 2012
The Internet is a big boost to the feminist movement says teen blogger Julie Zeilinger in this excerpt from her new book, "A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism is Not a Dirty Word." How else would she meet a co-blogger from Jordan?
(WOMENSENEWS)-- One of the attitudes older feminists seem to have about my generation is, essentially, that we need to get our asses into gear.
After all, they petitioned door-to-door for the Equal Rights Amendment. They held conscious-raising sessions. Hell, they slammed their livid bodies against the doors of the Playboy Club to protest violent pornography. So when they watch us tapping away on our computers and calling it activism, it makes sense that they'd be like, "Um, no, I think you're confused. That's not activism, that's actually the ancient art of sitting on your ass."
But, in defense of technology, I have to say: The Internet is one of the greatest things ever to happen to the modern feminist movement.
The Internet has allowed feminists--who are an incredibly large and diverse group of people--a place to convene. Sure, it's a virtual convening, but we gather nonetheless.
We can unite by reading blogs, or by blogging ourselves. We have an instantaneous way to share and encounter ideas with a potentially vast number of people.
Beyond the blogosphere, we can join feminist-oriented Facebook groups and meet other like-minded feminist souls, or organize an event and alert an entire online network to its occurrence. We can spread awareness of our cause through mass-email chains or via awesome organizations (like Change.org) that have a mission to raise awareness and gain support for worthy causes. There are plenty of sites where users can create their own petitions and otherwise be in charge of creating their own form of change. There are even websites (like Kickstarter) that allow people to raise money for their projects or ideas.
And while these websites and new opportunities for communication and connections aren't limited to the feminist community, our movement has certainly reaped their benefits.
The Internet also allows us to begin to bridge the gap among different global feminist movements. With the Internet, we can see what our feminist sisters in India and Saudi Arabia are up to. And then we can support them--and use their stories, perspectives and ideas to shape our own movements.
Discovering female feticide and infanticide was what first got me involved in feminism. The fact that such atrocities could not only be committed, but also be so common, such an accepted part of other cultures, that was what lit the fire within me. But even though what I found in all my research and reading on the subjects made me irate, it was still something I only read about. It wasn't something I could see or feel. Only later, when I was connecting with actual girls abroad via my feminist blog the FBomb, did the adversity that women face on a global level become truly tangible.
A few months after starting the FBomb, I received an email from a 15-year-old girl from Jordan. She sent me a blog submission about how difficult it was to be a teen feminist in the Middle East. She wrote of how free speech and empowerment are weakened and undermined by patriarchal control and widespread rejection of anything Western. She asked that I post her submission under a pseudonym, because if anybody were to find out what she had written, she could be in great trouble.
She continued to write posts over the next year--about her feelings on the headscarf (hijab) and about "honor" killings. So-called dishonorable activities include having an affair and, in some extreme cases, simply talking to a man to whom she is not related.
That's when I felt the connection. That's when it became real to me. Here was a girl who had witnessed things I'd only read about and who lived in a culture that promoted values different from the ones we live with in America. She had emailed me. It wasn't in the printed text of an article or the spoken words of a teacher. It was a direct connection. She was real and part of my life now.
It was then--when I could actually point to somebody real who had witnessed these things--that I finally realized, on a deeper level, "This shit actually happens."
Ultimately, the Internet is a tool that is beyond powerful. Just as it has changed the way business is conducted, the way we define our relationships and the way we communicate, it has also changed the way we create, maintain and grow social movements.
I'm not saying that the Internet will solve all of the feminist movement's problems. There are still pervasive issues that have nothing to do with communication and accessibility. But at least with the Internet, we're able to remove some roadblocks in a fresh and largely effective way, and that is nothing to sneeze at.
Excerpted from the book "A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism is Not a Dirty Word" by Julie Zeilinger. Excerpted by arrangement with Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright copyright 2012
Julie Zeilinger is the founder and editor of the FBomb, a feminist blog and community for teens and young adults who care about their rights and want to be heard. She has been named one of the eight most influential bloggers under the age of 21 by Woman's Day magazine, one of More Magazine's "New Feminists You Need To Know," one of The Times' "40 Bloggers Who Really Count" and one of the Plain Dealer's "Most Interesting People of 2011."
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A Little F'd Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word
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Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future
by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards
The New Feminist Agenda: Defining the Next Revolution for Women, Work, and Family
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by Barbara J. Berg
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By Hannah Seligson
By Eleanor J. Bader
By Courtney C. Radsch
By Courtney C. Radsch | <urn:uuid:b85b9fbc-72e5-4b33-926d-3f11fe105bc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mailto:[email protected]/story/books/120519/teen-blogger-feminisms-future-online | 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 | 0.955997 | 1,432 | 1.703125 | 2 |
As soon as the patient tripped, a hard fall was inevitable. Her walker was of no help, and for someone already injured, such a hard fall could be very damaging.
That’s where Alisha Clements, graduate from the Occupational Therapy Assistant program, came in. It was in the middle of a therapy session and Clements caught the patient before she fell and hit her head on the wall or floor.
“She said 'you saved me, you’re my angel,'” Clements recalled of the patient’s reaction. “It was a really fulfilling experience.”
Clements isn’t the only graduate of Adventist University of Health Sciences that has experienced this kind of fulfillment in the workplace.
According to PayScale’s 2012-13 College Salary Report, 97 percent of Adventist University graduates experience “high job meaning.” In other words, 97 percent of Adventist University graduates answered “very much so” or “yes” to the question “does your work make the world a better place?”
This is the highest percentage of any of the 1,058 schools in the study, which represents 77 percent of all schools in the U.S. with more than 2,000 students.
Once students become healthcare professionals, they have a daily opportunity to interact with and help patients. In every class at Adventist University, students learn the responsibility attached to this opportunity, which for many is the difference between just doing a job and truly making an impact.
“In my program the teachers instilled a passion in us,” Clements said. “We’re there as God’s servants to the patients and we’re there to make a difference.”
-by Sarah Crowder | <urn:uuid:1bb2208f-5af7-4f05-a436-f3161f39801b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fhchs.edu/about-fhchs/news/2012/11/19/97-percent-working-graduates-experience-high-job-meaning?page=4&track=fhchs.edu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959936 | 379 | 1.835938 | 2 |
You don’t have to go broke trying to feed your family because there is a way to get 60 pounds of food for just $10 in the Valley.
It’s called Market on the Move .
It’s almost like a very cheap, traveling farmers market.
When farmers and grocery stores have too much food, they obviously don’t want to throw it away. So they sell it to Market on the Move and that’s good news for you!
For a $10 donation you’ll get 60 pounds of fresh produce. Keep in mind, this produce is very ripe, so you won’t be able to store it for long. But for $10, it’s worth sharing it with your friends and family.
The events are every Saturday from 7 a.m.-10 a.m. at locations all around the Valley.
All you have to do is go online to find out the locations of the events.
We visited the St. Mark Lutheran Church and they had all sorts of produce, including avocados, tomatoes, even watermelon.
You simply give the $10 donation and you will get a full box of produce.
The food goes quickly, so you’re best off getting to the event early, before the food runs out.
Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Did You Hear?
We talked with a dietician, a doctor and a health food restaurant manager, and they all had different ideas on hot diets trending this year.
There was a lot happening in the news around Arizona this past week. How much of it do you remember?
Did a woman capture photographic evidence of a UFO earlier this month? | <urn:uuid:8eddd62d-b0e7-4d99-a948-896714c21373> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc15.com/dpp/money/consumer/smart_shopper/get-60-pounds-of-produce-for-10-at-events-all-around-the-valley | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953526 | 373 | 1.695313 | 2 |
This article is part of a debate organized by Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) in collaboration with Moi University (Eldoret) and Pambazuka News. A selection of essays based on this debate will be published in an edited volume by Fahamu Books. For PDF documents of the debate please go to www.csls.ox.ac.uk/otjr.php.
The debates over transitional justice in Kenya have been largely silent on the issue of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). It is evident that beyond the initial commentary at the TJRC’s inception – when the appointment of some commissioners was vigorously queried – much of the attention has focused on possible prosecution of key perpetrators either in The Hague or by the Special Tribunal for Kenya. One could attribute this fixation with The Hague, Special Tribunal and the envelope delivered to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to the contentious nature of the process, and the fact that the Prosecutor’s sights are trained on some Kenyan principals. However, I suggest that this sole focus on prosecutions – and in particular the ICC – is somewhat misguided. Here, I consider, – based on the strength of several legal, policy and practical considerations – why Kenyans need to embrace and own the TJRC.
First, we need a comprehensive view of justice. While prosecutions are necessary, international law requires that we prosecute at least the most serious crimes and those who bear the greatest responsibility. But justice is not complete by only jailing a handful of perpetrators. We need approaches that will attend to the concerns of victims such as reparations, rehabilitation and truth telling. We also need approaches that address the broader national questions that foster inter-ethnic rancor, impede peaceful coexistence and national reconciliation.
Second, the ICC can and will only prosecute a few individuals. Even locally, a Special Tribunal and national courts cannot prosecute all of those who wielded machetes, stones and homemade guns. We must find other options of accountability. This is what the recent endorsement by the ICC Prosecutor for a ‘three-tier approach’ is about.
Third, we must internalize the fact that trials will only yield judicial truth: truth relating to whether a particular individual is guilty or not for a particular crime. Trials will not tell us enough about context and history. Trials reveal little – and will leave unopened the closets of Wagalla, Likoni, Molo, Burnt Forest, Elgon and other places. Crucially, the law will prevent us from prosecuting most – if not all – crimes committed decades ago because of the problem of retroactivity. But at the TJRC, we can open those closets and ensure that the victims of Wagalla at least know the truth, and have an opportunity to receive reparations. We may know who perpetrated the violence, and find ways of ensuring they account for it: for instance we can ban the public figures among them from running for public office.
The TJRC’s process should not be equated to impunity. One of the key functions of the TJRC is to ensure this global truth comes to the fore, is recorded and committed to national memory. It will ensure that no one re-writes history to suit their own beneficial narrative. It will ensure that we come to terms with the past and begin to find ways of moving forward. The events of 2007 occurred partly because we have too many unaddressed instances of injustice.
Fourth, we must embrace the TJRC because we as a nation called for it. We must support it because we need it. The TJRC is not a foreign imposition. It is not even an imposition by politicians or the Kofi Annan talks. The TJRC has deep roots in battered communities around the country. Since at least 1992, Kenyans thirsted for truth. The Mutua Task Force in 2003 said as much. When Kenyans spoke to the Ghai Commission on constitutional reforms (CKRC), many said the same. It is safe to conclude that in 2003, the TJRC’s creation was merely suspended because of political games.
Fifth, truth commissions – unlike trials – operate flexible procedures that allow for the widest possible opportunity for victims to participate, tell their stories and confront their tormentors in a less adversarial and friendly forum. Access to justice is of paramount importance. Few victims can locate The Hague on a map. Even fewer will participate in The Hague or receive reparations should trials commence. The TJRC can – and should – bring a keen listening ear and justice to a town they know near them.
Sixth, as the cases of South Africa, Sierra Leone and others demonstrate, truth commissions have their flaws. While we may want as many people as possible – if not every perpetrator – to be prosecuted for crimes, this may not be possible for some of the reasons suggested above. Further, insisting on prosecutions may not foster truth telling. That is why the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Act that creates the TJRC, provides that those who testify before the Commission will not incur criminal or civil liability. I remain convinced that without a TJRC, where people can talk without fear of prosecution and other harm, we are bound to repeat the murderous folly of 2007-2008. Truth can set Kenyans free.
The TJRC can only succeed if we want it to succeed. We may not like some commissioners for a range of reasons, but we can make the process our own. We must publicly and critically ask piercing yet constructive questions of the TJRC. Sometimes the sheep know best where the grass is greener, and the shepherd must follow.
However, truth searching must be managed in a transparent and accountable manner. The hunter must have the right tools, and must know their craft. It is important that the Commissioners, especially those inexperienced in matters related to truth commissions, gain a deep understanding of the relevant issues. The TJRC must have the right gear that will enable it not only to open, scrutinize and record what lies within closets of historical injustice, but to commence a process though which at least some of its key consequences can be addressed. It matters what you do with the truth you have unearthed. For these reasons, the TJRC must be supported, but it cannot stand alone. The ICC is relevant, as are the Special Tribunal and the national courts. Moreover, this comprehensive process must be supported by other related measures.
We must address the concerns of victims. This requires different forms of unwavering government and civil society commitment. Those currently grappling with matters of constitutional and other institutional reforms must act diligently and a sense of historic responsibility. They must consider themselves part of, rather than separate from, the broader transitional justice project that is unfolding in Kenya.
* Dr Godfrey Musila is a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa. A version of this opinion appeared on the Standard on Wednesday 21 October 2009 | <urn:uuid:06dc764a-11c5-45c3-a9f0-5a7af242cd21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://africanarguments.org/2009/11/02/why-kenyans-must-embrace-and-support-the-tjrc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952178 | 1,421 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The Satyam fraud is stunningly alarming not only because it is the biggest accounting and auditing fraud in India till date but also because it directly threatens to engulf the IT sector in India at this time of economic downturn and undermine India's global image as one of the most promising economic stories in the new millennium.
While the Ketan Parekh fraud in the late 1990s brought about the collapse of several co-operative banks and the largest mutual fund in India (Unit Trust of India US-64),which was located right in the middle of the Indian financial system, the Satyam fraud clearly brings out the lacunae in the systems, practices and methods of auditing and accounting in India and situates itself right at the heart of India's booming IT industry.
A chilling similarity between Satyam and Parekh lies not just in the scale of the frauds but also the incidence of criminal conduct by the top management of the various companies involved and the conflicting interests between the various groups of accountants, bankers, auditors and top management. An inescapable factor is the clearly questionable auditing standards at large and the professional ethics generally of the auditors who have supposedly audited the company's books for at least the last four to five years.
The fundamental question that needs to be asked of the audit and accounting firm, Price Waterhouse in this case, is — why was there such a critical absence of, or failure to enforce, control systems and/or audits in accordance with the firm's best practices for such a prolonged period of time? Clearly it is the job of the auditor not only to ensure that companies operate with prudent levels of risk, but also, that their books are subject to an effective and accurate scrutiny regime.
The fact that the Satyam fraud went on undetected and uncorrected for years and without any external audit and accounting mechanism picking it up raises serious questions as to the actual degree of implementation and enforcement of such practices as part of a credible, effective and sound auditing system.
Also, given that the audit firm in question was also involved in the affairs of Global Trust Bank and DSQ not long ago, it may be relevant to ask what corrective actions were taken by the firm to mitigate or prevent opportunities for fraud, reckless mismanagement, and conflicts of interest raising the potential for such behaviour within its own organisational set-up.
Clearly, there should have been a clear objective and roadmap within the firm to achieve certain standards of ethics and benchmarking of audit practices after DSQ and Global Trust Bank. In any case, there does exist various annual reviews of frauds and serious irregularities pointed out in several audit reports after the Ketan Parekh fraud in India which should have become a basis for reviewing the basic audit and accounting systems of the many auditing firms.
The second question is whether the Indian authorities can and/or be able to hold the audit and accounting firm liable if serious auditing lapses and accounting irregularities come to view. This question is important as it will go a long way not just to ensure that acceptable, correct and effective audit mechanisms are put in place but also in terms of building the capability within the legal system that puts the burden of serious auditory lapses on the entity itself. The reasons are two-fold.
First, the inability of auditors to detect fraud and the diversion of funds separately or conjointly constitute a key element of the 'expectations gap' between public and professional perceptions of auditor's responsibilities and usually gives leads to a possible collusion between the auditor and the management.
Second, the inability of auditors to correctly and honestly do their functions often, in turn, result in lack of meaningful corporate governance within the company both in terms of the directors and senior management unable to evaluate and review existing internal control systems through established internal audit functions and/or to implement, enforce, refine and improve upon such internal control systems.
A thorough investigation by the relevant authorities and an effective legal prosecution is the order of the day as it will ensure that honest and correct auditing and accounting methods take precedence, that best practices are meaningfully adopted and followed by audit firms and that the problems of corporate governance are genuinely redressed as opposed to the mere issuance of guidelines that some fail to follow.
(The author is a research fellow, Brunel University, UK and International Banking Regulations Consultant with PDS & Associates, an India-based Law Firm) | <urn:uuid:6b6a7f6e-de06-49c1-ad25-13628cb08097> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2009-01-24/news/29403716_1_satyam-fraud-audit-price-waterhouse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952478 | 901 | 1.804688 | 2 |
"By helping others we also help ourselves": interview with Jana Hradilková of the Berkat NGO
[ 2.2.2012, Nina Bosničová, Gender Studies, o.p.s.,
Feminismy > Feminismus, Multikulturně > Ženy ve světě, Rovné příležitosti > Rovné příležitosti
I was looking forward to interviewing Jana Hradilková because I was finally going to get to know one of the co-founders of Gender Studies, a NGO I have been working for in the last seven years. The other reason I could not wait was that I had always been impressed with the activities of the Berkat NGO. In the interview, Jana told me about how the organization started, what 'Berkat' means and explained how helping people has a positive effect on everyone. Her honesty, openness and unique energy were wonderfully refreshing.
How did you transition from setting up Gender Studies in the 1990's to working for Berkat and Chechnya?
My involvement with Chechnya started when I still co-directed Gender Studies. The combination of the war in Chechnya and oral history pulled me into the cause. At this time, one of Gender Studies projects was about oral history (Women's Memory - Ed.) and I found it particularly interesting. I clearly remember how in 1993, older ladies started coming to the library at the Centre for Gender Studies (at Klimentská Street in Prague) asking us to help them start a civic association or another platform that would enable them to meet on a regular basis. This was an important moment. I told them: "All right, ladies, feel free to come here, we'll help you, but how about you share your memories with us in exchange? We'll chat with you and record it." That's how the Women's Memory project started. For me, it was a kind of a safeguard against becoming too abstract in our work. This project was grounding in that women's lives and roles would be reflected in the light of everyday life, which oral history does. First, we only interviewed Czech women in the Czech Republic. In 1997 we had the idea to expand the project into other Post-Communist countries also because Pavla Frýdlová, the project coordinator at the time, had a close friend in Yugoslavia. The war had already started and we met with women from Yugoslavia several times. The war made a deep personal impression on me.
How does this relate to Chechnya and the founding of Berkat?
When the war in Chechnya broke out in 1999, I was approached by someone who needed assistance with organizing a petition of Czechs against the war. My friends referred him to me because they thought I would be able to help. So I got together a group of people I knew from different NGOs. Our goal was to shape an NGO memorandum which would have more impact than just a petition signed by individual citizens. In fact, I was organizing a coalition against the war in Chechnya. The main idea was to protest against human rights violations in Chechnya and to show solidarity as we were a country which also experienced an invasion – in 1968. Besides working on the memorandum, I also asked Jim Ottaway (American philanthropist who helped fund several Gender Studies publications - Ed.) to support an anthology of interviews with women from the Chechen city of Grozny. This was how I met journalist Petra Procházková (who lived in Chechnya – Ed.). We started writing to each other very frequently and I asked her to join the project. It meant that she was going to gain financial access to resources she could use to operate a shelter for children there.
Eventually, we raised money from the general public. People donated spontaneously to our campaign, as we toured the country and screened documents from Chechnya made by Petra Procházková and Jaromír Štětina. We also had an exhibition of war photographs. However, I was very frustrated about the fact that civic activism among Czech people was palpable, people were turning to us asking what they could do, yet little was changing. The situation in Chechnya was getting worse. Finally, these requests motivated us to start Berkat as a service to people who wanted to help.
What does the word 'berkat' mean?
It is a Chechen word. It means happiness in the sense of blessing in their language. Children in Grozny came up with it when they discussed what the shelter should be named. In Arabic, it means creating abundance from next to nothing. That's something we learned later when we dabbled in Afghanistan. Afghanistan happened because, after 9/11, Petra Procházková went to work there as a war reporter for a few years. Her work extended the activities of Berkat. We identified four villages in the Southwest of Kabul which offered nothing in the way of resources, but were settled by refugees. For example, in Fakiro (translates as The Poor) there wasn't even a well, so people drank rain water from the puddles. They were completely dependent on outside help. We thought we could train local women's groups in business. In the beginning, we had the naive idea that people here would go crazy about Persian rugs, so we came up with the "Happy Flying Carpets" project. We hadn't realized that carpet production is quite complicated and that we didn't have the capital to buy all the equipment the women would need to make rugs. In the end, we had to compromise and ended up with the idea that they would do ordinary work they were used to doing. Every Afghan woman has a wonderful feeling for colours and is good at embroidery. So we simply asked them to do that, to embroider. Then we would buy the best pieces and gradually, we jointly thought of complete products which would be attractive and comfortable to wear for people here. This usually meant tunics to be worn with trousers, scarves and hats. The embroidery represented the traditional aspect of the products but we shaped their overall form and made orders like in standard business. Eventually, our relationship became professional, which was what we had originally wanted, because we had believed it was going to help the women to improve their lives.
How did InBáze/InBase, the community center for immigrants, come about?
Many refugees from Chechnya and other countries in the Caucasus emigrated to the Czech Republic. There were also refugees from Afghanistan. Because they knew Berkat worked in their countries, they came to us and asked us to deliver their messages home. They wanted us, paradoxically, to serve as their connection with their home communities. Then in 2003, we had an idea to set up a community center for immigrants. A year later we built the InBáze/InBase. It was funded with a grant from the European Union and it materialized the principle of community help for immigrants.
What is the attitude of Czechs toward aid in countries like Afghanistan or Chechnya about which people know little more than that the majority population is Muslim?
Berkat started by bringing a group of Chechens to the Czech Republic. They lived here for a while and we found out a lot about each other. For example, we realized that there were many more things we shared than things we didn’t share. First of all, they are people just like us. Their Islam is different than what Czechs expect. Many Chechens are actually like Russians, especially people who are now middle-aged. Because they lived under the Soviets, their lifestyle was very similar to Czechs’. In short, our lived experience and genetic heritage brings us close while the differences which might stem from their Muslim religion are minimal. On the other hand, the media notices primarily these differences. Journalists, for example, find the differences easy to see and to grasp. They can also be easily exploited for marketing purposes. The media presented the situation in the Caucasus largely with the help of the external attributes of the local culture which, however, make little sense in real life. That's the other reality, the media reality, which feeds on contrasts and has a life of its own. And naturally, big issues such as terrorism and safety also play a role in the way a society is perceived.
What are some tangible outcomes of the Berkat and InBáze/In Base projects?
The first outcome was that Berkat served people who wanted to help. For example, a Czech citizen wanted to contribute 500 CZK to a Chechen family every month. We put together a list of families which needed this kind of help and presented it to the interested Czechs. They would then be able to choose who to support according to who they liked and how much they could. We always tried to bring the two sides closer together by providing information, encouraging letter exchange and other methods, many of which proved unrealistic, of course. Not everybody is able to share personal information. Neither can disclosure of personal information be required in exchange for humanitarian help. This was a fragile aspect of our work and we soon realized that there were many different ways we could facilitate mutual contact and communication. For example, we brought Chechen children to the Czech Republic to do a couple of dance performances and to experience what people live like here. Because until people meet face to face in a particular location they will never really listen to you. They can start to understand what life and people are like here and why only once they come here. The same is true the other way around.
It was like a mutual learning program. We also decided that we didn't want them to be completely dependent on us so we helped them create a community center where they could meet and decide what it was they needed and organize it themselves. Later, we would sit there and brainstorm what they would like to do for a living and all the ladies wanted to have beauty parlours. Unfortunately, it is hard to fundraise money for beauty parlours so we took it a step further: we started trainings in computer work, English, and sewing. The last course they came up with was a cooking course and it became very popular. So these were some concrete outcomes of our work. The point of our service is to push them and to inspire them by sharing our experience with working from ground up. In the spirit of the word berkat, we try to create a lot out of nothing.
How about the gender dimension of your work?
Well, the gender aspect of our work was pre-determined by the book Aluminium Queen, published by Gender Studies and Lidové Noviny (a publishing house - Ed.). It was a collection of interviews Petra Procházková had done with women in Grozny, Chechnya. So even though we in no way tried to focus only on women, it became our only option. We needed to start communicating and cooperating with women because their work was the easiest to see in the context of everyday life. And supporting women clearly entailed supporting their children and their families. For these reasons, our help naturally took the form of creating the first community center for women. What surprised me very much was that even the local men acknowledged that women were carrying a very heavy burden and that a women's community was the right idea. We continued to stick to this model. When Berkat was starting out, 80% of its members were women. We found out that whether we wanted it or not, it was much easier to recruit women than men. For example, already back in 2003 or 2004, our most important colleague in Chechnya, the leader of a local group, said that helping others was the best way she could help herself. She said that working to help other people was a formula which enabled her to escape her own complicated problems. And I have realized this as well, here, that by helping others we also help ourselves.
Do Berkat activities have any impact on the Czech society, in your opinion?
This goal is not articulated in our mission or in our job description, but it is embedded in the core of our work. When I reflect upon the almost ten past years, I realize that the idea that you can help in places where it seems impossible makes a lot of sense. This principle has taken a firm root in this country and it's not going away, but it is not only a result of the work of Berkat, of course, I am sure there are other groups like us. Berkat helps to acknowledge the value of helping others. It presents charity by choice as something credible and worthwhile. Berkat also represents alternatives to traditional charity by integrating a creative approach through giving both sides an opportunity to understand and shape their input. Every person on either end of the relationship is actively involved because they come up with new ideas about how to do things.
Are there any other unique aspects or benefits of the work of Berkat?
I think we are unique in that we help people rediscover their freedom and independence. We help them break their dependence and in doing so, we learn to understand the importance of individual, responsible and sustainable way of living in relationships. Both parties learn with the help of this principle, which is disappearing in this over-institutionalized world; we constantly live our lives in the context of given conditions. So this work is a search for pathways in which people can operate regardless of these conditions, these external restrictions and practice true responsibility in these new spaces. I believe that we generate infectious energy that is positive and that spreads without any further intervention from us.
Jana Hradilková is an observer, a researcher, a writer and a facilitator of ideas of her friends as well as of her own. She has been married for 30 years and has four children. Jana has co-founded a number of NGOs, including Pražské matky (Prague Mothers), Gender Studies, Ašoka-podnikatelé pro obecný prospěch (Ašoka-Enterpreneurs for Public Good), Berkat, and Semja in the city of Grozny, Chechnya. She strives to create and foster conditions for the engagement of people who seek new ways and space to create positive energy (http://www.berkat.cz, http://www.cecna.cz). | <urn:uuid:f3322b91-0312-4b92-b6dd-d989428a9415> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.feminismus.cz/fulltext.shtml?x=2324654 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979815 | 2,995 | 1.8125 | 2 |
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Camp Chef's 10 inch quality cast iron skillet features deep-dish sides and a comfort grip handle. Cooking with cast iron is a healthy way to cook, our cast iron has an all natural seasoning with no chemicals added. Features a Lewis & Clark Commem... Learn More | <urn:uuid:65e4d692-b3cc-46bd-bb4e-a30f0e31facd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outdoorcooking.com/activities/home-patio/skillets.html?dir=desc&manufacturer=12&order=position&price=10-20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959497 | 206 | 1.5625 | 2 |
This past weekend two children in Indiana were left in hot cars. One infant died and a toddler was rescued, but suffered a heat-related seizure and was in critical condition.
The infant was 3-months-old and the toddler is 16-months old.
Over the weekend, temperatures soared past triple digits in many areas of the U.S., and in Indiana, they reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit (about 40 degrees Celsius). According to MSNBC, there were two incidences of parents leaving their children alone in cars in the Indianapolis area during this heatwave.
The IndyStar reported Greenfield Police Chief John Jester said the infant was found about 3 p.m. after being left in the hot car for "an extended period of time." She was brought to the Hancock Regional Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Her 18-year-old father, Joshua Stryzanski, was being held at the Hancock County jail and faces a charge of neglect of a dependent resulting in death.
The toddler was also found in the mid-afternoon sitting alone in a car at a shopping center. Police broke into the car and rescued the young girl. After being in the hot car, the young child suffered a heat-related seizure. The interior temperature of the car was reported to be 124 degrees and it's being reported the toddler was in the car for about an hour. Her mother had been shopping in a clothing store while the child sat unattended.
The 16-month-old girl was initially in critical condition after the seizure, but was later upgraded to stable. A separate IndyStar report says she has been released from the hospital and placed in the custody of a grandparent, but reportedly the hospital would not comment.
Fishers Police spokesman Tom Weger said the girl's mother, Meg Trueblood, 30, made a statement to police but, "she didn't appear to be fully coherent. That'll be part of the investigation."
The region's all-time high temperature is 106 degrees.
In recent weeks there have been many documented instances of parents leaving their children alone in hot cars. Sadly, there have been several preventable deaths. A recent Digital Journal report noted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stated vehicular heatstroke is the most common non-crash related fatality involving children 14 years and under. | <urn:uuid:dc54d527-406d-43c4-9251-cccd964347e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/328199 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981786 | 479 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Fox-owned WFLD-Channel 32 was one of 36 recipients of the 69th annual Peabody Awards announced Wednesday. The station was recognized by the 16-member Peabody Board for its coverage of the fatal beating of Chicago student Derrion Albert.
The brutal tragedy wound up having national repercussions. "The award speaks for itself," said WFLD general manager Michael Renda.
The Peabody Award, the first in WFLD's history, comes as the station has begun making a substantial number of changes to its news operation to try and improve its last-place standing in the Nielsen late local news ratings.
The Peabody Board does not hand out its awards in specific categories, but rather selects its award recipients based solely on the quality of the work submitted for consideration. There are no set number of awards handed out each year.
The Peabody Awards are the oldest honor in the electronic media, including television, radio, networks, cablecasters, Webcasters, producing organizations and individuals. The Peabody Awards are overseen by the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The 16-member Peabody Board is comprised of television critics, broadcast and cable industry executives, academics and experts in culture and the arts. | <urn:uuid:8cba0e67-2118-434f-bd09-f71116b76bfe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.suntimes.com/media/2010/03/wfld-channel_32_wins_peabody_a.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959199 | 260 | 1.515625 | 2 |
- ISRAEL21c - http://israel21c.org -
A tech revolution that lets you choose the movie’s plot
Posted By Brian Blum On November 28, 2010 @ 12:00 am In | No Comments
Did you ever desperately want to interfere in the action of a feature film, so things would work out differently? Now’s your chance.
“All filmmaking is based on a lie,” says Israeli Professor Nitzan Ben-Shaul. “In the narrative structure of a movie, it appears that there is only one possible ending – that the way it’s presented is the way it has to be. But in life there are always options.”
To demonstrate his argument, Ben-Shaul of the Film and Television Department at Tel Aviv University has created the world’s first, fully interactive feature film where the viewer gets to decide at various points, in real time, how the action will progress. “It’s nothing short of revolutionary,” he tells ISRAEL21c. “It has the possibility of turning every one of us into potential film directors.”
Ben-Shaul is not a technologist – he teaches classes in cinema studies at Tel Aviv University and has written several books including Mythical Expressions of Siege in Israeli Films and Hyper-Narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solution. So to create his interactive movie, he partnered with Guy Avneyon who built a sophisticated patent-pending movie editor and standalone player.
The technology is still under construction, as is the company. Turbulence (also the name of Ben-Shaul’s interactive film) is just now being incorporated and seeking angel investment. For Ben-Shaul, that’s less important. His focus is the process of thinking through the making of an interactive movie.
Ben-Shaul points to the Gwyneth Paltrow hit Sliding Doors which presented two alternative paths that intersected, diverged and eventually arrived at a single conclusion.
Turbulence the film is similar, except that the viewer controls the points of departure. The 83-minute suspense/thriller is about three friends who meet by chance in New York 20 years after they participated in a demonstration in Israel and were arrested. At the time, the police pitted the three against each other, which led to accusations of betrayal. There is also a love story that is rekindled.
Choose your glowing hot spot
The interaction takes the form of “hot spots” that glow when the viewer can make a choice. At one point, for example, one of the Israelis has written a message to his lover on his cell phone. The viewer can click “Send” or “Cancel”. If the viewer hesitates too long, the action continues according to a pre-determined narrative path.
Unlike previous interactive attempts, the transitions in Turbulence are seamless, which means there is no point where the movie stops and a flashing button appears with big icons to click. Once a choice is made, the film immediately cuts to a new scene. “That’s the language of movies,” Ben-Shaul explains. “There could be 4,000 cuts in a film, but if you cut on motion, people don’t see the transition, they just see the flow.”
While viewers make choices throughout the viewing experience, the film regularly returns to the main narrative. This means the writers don’t have to create 10 entirely different scripts (although in Turbulence there are several alternate endings).
Ben-Shaul is adamant that interactivity is not a gimmick – like the first attempts at 3D in the 1950s and 1960s. But he warns that interactive films must be carefully planned to avoid the errors of more primitive experiments in the past.
These mistakes include what he refers to as the ‘computerization trap’. “Computers can generate endless possibilities, but that doesn’t help the viewer in terms of drama. It interests computers, but not humans!” he tells ISRAEL21c.Good interactive drama, he adds, is actually about “option restriction”.
Interactive movie producers should also not try to emulate the gaming world, he cautions. “It’s not about scoring and puzzle-solving,” Ben-Shaul says. “It’s about creating real, life-like situations.”
Most advanced, patented system
Turbulence can currently be viewed on either a Mac or PC. But Ben-Shaul is most excited about the red-hot Apple iPad. With its touch screen and media consumption emphasis, “it’s the perfect device. The iPad is a main target,” Ben-Shaul says.
The technological secret behind the film comprises an editor that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever created a movie, with a timeline, audio control, and multiple tracks. There are various additions such as a library of clips and hot spots that can be easily inserted.
The aim is to sell a standalone version as well as plug-ins for professional editing systems such as Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere and Avid. Ben-Shaul and his team are also developing a scriptwriting tool that will ease the creation of a hyper-narrative.
Both grassroots and professional filmmakers should be empowered. “We’re not aiming toward automatic storytelling,” he says. “That’s like robots today, which are so far off from what humans can do.”
Turbulence isn’t the only software company making interactive movies. Israeli alternative rock sensation Yoni Bloch owns a company called Interlude, which is moving in the same direction. Earlier this year, Interlude produced a music video by pop singer Andy Grammar that includes seamless interactivity. YouTube also has its own very simple interactive functionality.
Ben-Shaul acknowledges the competition but says his system is further along, not to mention patented. Turbulence also gives viewers the ability to actually move an object on screen (for example, to slide a letter out of a drawer) rather than just click or touch a point on the screen.
Opening Israeli minds
The idea for Turbulence was hatched in response to one of Ben-Shaul’s courses about the “siege mentality in Israeli cinema.” The professor explains: “Israeli movies are very close-minded. It comes from the society and the political situation; from war and ethnic tensions. Interactivity and giving people options is the opposite.”
Interactive movies are primarily intended for an audience of one. But Ben-Shaul says it’s possible for an entire audience to get in on the fun. Turbulence was premiered at the Berkeley Film Festival this year where it won the prize for “best experimental feature.”
In a demonstration of the interactivity at the showing, Ben-Shaul’s wife (who also works at the company) canvassed the audience at each decision point. Ben-Shaul then clicked the viewer’s choice from his computer backstage.
In the future, Ben-Shaul would like to build a system where everyone in the audience has a controller, allowing the movie to move in the direction dictated by a majority vote. In the meantime, Ben-Shaul says the showing at Berkeley was “very successful. People loved it.”
Ben-Shaul hopes to show Turbulence in Israel, perhaps at one of the country’s Cinematheques, though nothing has been finalized yet. For now, interactive movie fans will have to visit Ben-Shaul in his office at Tel Aviv University or watch a TV news clip and interview with Ben-Shaul on Israel’s Channel 10 which provides a hint of the richness of interactive moviemaking.
Beyond entertainment, interactive video might even help to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ben-Shaul suggests. Interactivity, he says, “develops thinking for people who are in what seems like an intractable conflict. It can be a real therapeutic tool.”
Article printed from ISRAEL21c: http://israel21c.org
URL to article: http://israel21c.org/technology/a-tech-revolution-that-lets-you-choose-the-movies-plot-2/
Copyright © 2012 Israel. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:88af945c-c5f4-40a1-b295-6bd29cb4e268> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://israel21c.org/technology/a-tech-revolution-that-lets-you-choose-the-movies-plot-2/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947859 | 1,779 | 1.578125 | 2 |
|Police come under attack of petrol bombs thrown by Nationalist youths in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast [Reuters]
Police fired plastic bullets and water cannon amid sectarian riots overnight in Belfast, Northern Ireland's provincial capital, following parades by pro-British unionists.
Sporadic rioting in predominantly nationalist Catholic neighbourhoods of the British-ruled province on Tuesday night came on the eve of the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, a date unionists celebrate with parades which are considered provocative by nationalists, who favour a united Ireland.
About 200 people threw stones, firecrackers and petrol bombs in the Ardoyne area of Belfast after police moved in to prevent them confronting the passing Orange Order parade on the disputed Crumlin Road.
Two cars were set on fire and dozens of rounds of plastic bullets were fired and police said a number of officers were injured.
Most of the 500 or so parades across the province passed peacefully, but police reported rioting in Londonderry, known as Derry by nationalists, Newry and Armagh, as well as the Markets area in central Belfast.
A small Orange Order parade passed the Ardoyne estate in near silence with one drummer keeping time after a government commission ordered marchers not to play their traditional drums or flutes on "The Twelth".
A few dozen residents held a silent protest as they passed, while a small group of women sang the Irish national anthem.
But hundreds of others were pinned by police vans and officers in riot gear into an estate a hundred metres
from the marchers, a move residents said was heavy-handed.
"It's the same thing every year. It's aggravation," Jim, a 47-year-old health worker watching the parade, said. "We're surrounded up here. It's no wonder the kids have so much hatred."
Unionist and nationalist politicians have called for calm in recent days and urged people not to go into the streets to protest against the parades.
"We must not allow the progress that has been made to be thwarted by those who want to drag us back to the past," Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland's first minister, said.
Police said they had also come under attack on Tuesday evening in the mainly Catholic Markets area of Belfast, with rioters throwing bricks and fireworks and setting a car on fire.
A car was hijacked and set alight in Armagh.
'Orange Order' commemoration
Marchers of the Orange Order brotherhood were marking English king William of Orange's victory over his Catholic predecessor, King James, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, considered a key date by unionists in securing British rule in Ireland.
Pipe bands and drummers from Scotland joined local groups decked in orange banners and British flags for hundreds of marches across the province.
"It's a celebration, we don't want any trouble," Eddie Whyte, 42, said, as he marched past Belfast City Hall on Tuesday morning. "If they are offended by the British flag, maybe they shouldn't be living in this country."
Three decades of fighting tore Northern Ireland apart during a period known as the "Troubles".
A 1998 peace agreement paved the way for a power-sharing government of loyalists and nationalists.
Violence has subsided, but police say the threat from dissident groups opposed to the peace deal is higher than it has ever been since it was signed. | <urn:uuid:f551d997-8666-4cb4-b130-b25895f89db2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2011/07/20117131243573228.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973264 | 710 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Another stimulus check would be nice; but would those billions go to better use if we built new bridges, highways, and schools instead? Josh Landis and Mitch Butler explain.
Archives for the ‘Video’ Category
American retirement assets fell by $3 trillion with the crash of the economy, which means some will have to work into retirement. The Fast Draw team looks at the positives.
Barack Obama promised Americans a lot of changes on the campaign trail and Americans are eager to see if he will deliver once he is in the White House.
Exit polls are a valuable tool in helping to navigate who will win an election, but sometimes that might not be enough. Mitch Butler and Josh Landis explain in this edition of “Fast Draw.”
The current stock market is scary for most but as the Fast Draw team illustrates, the market monster may not be as bad as it looks if you know what to do when it strikes.
The average of federally declared disasters per year spike 33 percent during an election year. The Fast Draw team Mitch Butler and Josh Landis illustrate the phenomenon.
The price of higher education is getting higher and higher and, as the Fast Draw team illustrates, gathering funds can be like climbing a mountain. A look at the problems and solutions of the education adventure.
The Fast Draw team looks at how much energy hybrid cars really save. How do hybrids compared against used cars? Lets see how the numbers stack up and what the experts say.
The contentious topic of offshore drilling is brought to life by Josh Landis and Mitch Butler of the “Fast Draw” team. Watch the views of Barack Obama and John McCain come to life. | <urn:uuid:17fe5eb5-acad-4c60-8385-6cb6da6ce4ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mitchbutler.com/site/category/video/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955394 | 343 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The Symbols of St. Bonaventure University
The Bona Fanatic was one of the most interesting looking mascots that St. Bonaventure has ever had. Most would agree that it was a hasty, poorly planned move away from the Brown Indian which had been receiving political heat. Still, the Bona Fanatic made its first appearance on Dec. 3, 1996, and precipitated a list of complaints. The people inside of this costume were subjected to assault by Bonaventure's own fans and suffered from its construction.
Bona Venture articles dating back to the Fanatic's time are also less than encouraging about it. In an article dated January 31, 1997 reports of the mascot getting hurt are included. Two freshman shared rally duties in the suit. Taylor Nicklaus and Lori Magenis were recipients of cracked ribs, bruises, abrasions, and a dislocated knee. Nicklaus is quoted as saying "The crowd rushed onto the court at the University of Buffalo game and started roughing me up. I had a cracked rib, a cut nose and bruises on my arms and legs." Nicklaus also states "There have been home games were fans attempted to push me down the stairs." Magenis includes tales in which she said it was hard to work in the costume and after tripping because of poor visibility she dislocated her knee. Even the suit itself was not conducive to the needs of a school mascot. Nicklaus states; "...the inside part of the legs and boots give me rug burns, ...and the shoes are at least four sizes too big."
In an attempt to help the students inside of the suit, the Athletic Director bought an ice pack system to help keep the suit cool. In response to student harassment the mascot also received an escort to all the games. Still, no one seemed to be very pleased with the university's attempt at a new mascot and in 1998 a committee was formed to talk over the possibility of a new mascot, something that alumni could relate to and that the student body would like. Knowing that the current mascot would not survive another season the committee quickly chose a symbol that all could warm up too, The Bona- Wolf.
Page created by David Patt; St. Bonaventure University, for History 419 (Computer and Archival Skills for Historians),
Last updated: 03/23/05 | <urn:uuid:7791f509-74d8-4814-b5de-ed384e49d1c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.sbu.edu/friedsam/archives/symbols/bona_fanatic.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982046 | 478 | 1.84375 | 2 |
At a military-dominated training technology conference like I/ITSEC, one would expect the winners of a serious games contest to be, well, military.
But three of the six winners of this year’s I/ITSEC Serious Games Challenge didn’t seem very martial. Take Machineers, which won the best student game category. Designed by the IT University of Copenhagen, Machineers is a 2-D puzzle adventure set in a robotic world, where the main character works in a machine shop and must solve puzzles in a story-driven approach to help students learn. But discovering effective learning technology is also a goal of many Western militaries.
According to Kent Gritton, director of the Serious Games Showcase, the organization abandoned the call for “military serious games” after the first year, when people interpreted it as a limited call for first-person shooter games.
“There is virtually no training objective in the civilian work space that does not have a parallel application in the military,” Gritton said. “Our goal was, and remains, primarily to advance serious games as a training medium, and secondarily look for games, concepts, or technology that could be applied to military training objectives.”
The DragonBox+ app from French-Norwegian developer WeWantToKnow AS won best mobile serious game. DragonBox+ uses graphics of evolving dragons and other weird and wonderful creatures, plus digital playing cards and puzzles, to find an entertaining way to teach the childhood terror known as algebra.
“I was quite pleased with the variety of games that were on the floor,” Gritton said. “While all the games were fantastic in their own right, a standout for me was the mobile winner DragonBox+, due to its training objective (algebra), simplicity and elegance.”
Of course, a military training conference is all about our tax dollars at work, so it’s only fair that Government in Action from McGraw Hill won the adaptive training award. Government in Action is a multiplayer game that takes more of a roleplaying approach by putting players in the shoes of a congressman who must first run for office and then get legislation passed.
Still, the military had its day at the Serious Games Challenge. Adaptive Force category winner C-ID, from Aegis Technologies, uses gaming to teach combat vehicle identification, with players identifying vehicles through a simulated UAV camera.
Virtual Attain, champion of the business category, places a dismounted security patrol in an Afghan village and asks players to identify suspicious objects and people.
Finally, the Cross-Cultural Competence Trainer from the Joint Staff and Joint Knowledge Online won in the government category. The program uses interactive video and gaming to teach cultural awareness to Provincial Reconstruction Teams and civil affairs missions.
“The overall quality of the entries is going up,” Gritton said. “I can confidently say that this was the best Challenge to date. I believe it is because developers are getting more comfortable with the medium, and there is a greater use of the science of learning as they create their story lines and matching training objectives.” | <urn:uuid:2e0d84e6-a8f7-4b03-a615-78bfecaa3cbd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defensenews.com/article/20121214/TSJ01/312140004 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963685 | 644 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Eighty-five Percent of Texas Republicans Approve School Choice Proposition
In the 2012 Texas Republican primary, 85 percent of voters supported a school choice proposition to have state education dollars follow individual children to any school their parent chooses. Of the nearly 1.4 million voters considering the proposition, nearly 1.2 million of them approved it, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.
School choice has long been part of the Texas Republican party platform, but this overwhelming show of support on May 28 helps indicate to lawmakers that voters want some action, said Brooke Terry, grassroots coordinator for Texans for Voluntary Taxpayer Savings.
“It was important for us to be able to see what parents in Texas think,” she said. “Now we can start to educate lawmakers in Texas on how to incorporate that [into legislation].”
School System Funding Woes
In June 2011 the Texas legislature went into a special session to confront a $4 billion budget gap largely related to education. It faces another budget gap in the coming 2013 legislative session. In the meantime, a coalition of school districts has sued the state for more money, saying it doesn’t provide them enough to properly educate students. That and several other related lawsuits are set to be heard in October.
Texas spends an average of approximately $8,000 per student. The state Supreme Court has previously suggested the state ought to reorient its school funding mechanism, and if it hears the case it may direct the legislature to do so.
Terry says tough budget realities combined with clear voter support could provide momentum for the legislature to consider the well-documented savings of school choice measures such as Taxpayer Savings Grants.
The proposition voters approved read, “The state should fund education by allowing dollars to follow the child instead of the bureaucracy, through a program which allows parents the freedom to choose their child’s school, public or private, while also saving significant taxpayer dollars.”
Terry says TSGs fit that description. In 2011, TSG legislation would have given parents of public-school students up to 60 percent of the state cost to educate a student, or $5,143, to send their child to private school. A Heartland Institute study concluded the program would save the state $2 billion over its first two years. (Heartland publishes School Reform News.)
Legislative Changes Coming
Texas House Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler (R-The Woodlands) lost to a primary challenger. Senate Education Committee Chairman Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) will retire in January 2013. The leadership shift will mean an opportunity for school choice advocates, Terry said.
“What’s going to be key is the Tea Party group,” Terry said. “That’s a new part to this entire equation we haven’t had on past votes on vouchers.”
Because the Tea Party concentrates on fiscal conservatism, it’s likely they won’t miss the potential offered by legislation that can save $2 billion in two years and broadly expand families’ education options, she said.
Image by Benjamin Geminel. | <urn:uuid:e1371b85-16df-4ede-91b4-cdd40d76c41c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2012/06/02/eighty-five-percent-texas-republicans-approve-school-choice-proposition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949905 | 646 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Interstitial ads: Too much of a bad thing?
Gerry McGovern wrote recently that finding is the new advertising. Not a new concept really - search moguls Google and Yahoo have been making money for years now displaying targeted ads - not the advertising to the masses that gets done in newspapers, radio, and TV.
But what's really new is the level of ad-receptiveness, or lack of it really. Today we are advertising averse. Ad-blind.
My wife thinks watching the previews is one of the best parts of going to the movies. Why? We expect it. We are receptive to it. We want it. It's entertaining and enticing. It's the Free Prize. Most people are not annoyed by the previews - most of the people that I know like them.
Interstitial ads are all the rage online. But they make you wait for what you want. In contrast, no one I know likes watching these ads and usually looks to see if there's a "skip this ad" button.
The web has brought new powers and capabilities to advertisers to reach people in new ways. The web allows marketers to target niche audiences that would have been cost prohibitive to reach in the past. The incredible success of the Google Adwords program is due to two main factors: (1) they can be incredibly granular and targeted allowing for great relevancy; and (2) they are at times very beneficial - providing useful links to the information, product or service the user was searching for.
In the short life of the web, online advertising has already seen several trends come and go. Pop-ups and banner ads, while still somewhat effective, are considered "old school." The interstitial ads, while very popular now, seem too much like television to me. They are the non-targeted, non-relevant, in most cases non-interesting commercial before the show. They are the painful, annoying opposite of a free prize.
One thing is for certain: online advertising is here to stay. New techniques and technologies will undoubtedly bring us new forms of advertising. But it's obvious we have a ways to go before we figure out exactly how content and advertising will live together in online harmony. | <urn:uuid:0d1b4bd1-a907-470b-b9b8-6ac7bf030cd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cleverthink.com/labels/advertising.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972731 | 453 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Currently I am participating in a German online course “TBDL 04″ (technology based distributed learning, modul 4: pedagogy II - online instructional design).
It is designed as a planning role game, and it has great contents: lots of diligently and fondly crafted scenarios, stories, settings, role descriptions, challenge descriptions, teams and groups and so on. We are playing five fictituous universities planning 5 modules for a program called “key literacies in learning and teaching”, and lots of the accreditation details are lifelike modelled, even including the contact to the ministry.
The only problem is that it is a closed group. Nine people paid 410 Euros each, and so all of this great setting is only available to the few of us, which is really a pity. Many of the resources and discussions are hidden within even smaller groups which, by default, cannot see what the others are doing.
Here I noticed that I am not at all comfortable with this closedness. When CCK08 started, I was similarly unconfortable with its extreme openness. Is this openness addictive? Right from the beginning of TBDL04 I missed the medium where I could note down my impressions and reflections to share it with the others. CCK08 made us accustomed to share our messy learning and think “in the open”. Of course I could have created a wiki page “x28’s musings”, but if the general atmosphere is more silent, this would not help much.
The opensource LMS platform “OLAT” (which was new to me) does have RSS working in the authenticated intranet, but I have not yet figured out how it could be used for blog-like pull/push combination. Probably this is not intended. My first impressions of OLAT is that it seems very patronizing and linear.
- Only predefined backward moves are allowed (the browser’s back button is prohibited),
- and branching via “open in new window” is impossible, too.
If attempting the latter, the ironical answer is “In Web 2.0 mode, you cannot open links in a new window.” (emphasis mine), which makes web2.0-like collaboration via a wiki almost impossible, since you cannot lookup previous pages while thinking about a new text. In page-turner inspired applications, the linear route seems efficient. But I don’t like to be walked-through as a bobsleigh in the ice channel. Probably I am spoilt by openness. | <urn:uuid:475e1be7-1fde-4633-be21-6d3f4d609ec4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://x28newblog.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/2010/08/31/is-openness-addictive/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96215 | 533 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Today's film is suggested by guest blogger, Gary Hollingsbee.
For a while I've been undergoing a personal Renaissance: all the stuff that I was into when I was in my formative teen years that in my twenties I thought were childish, like comic books, indie music and Doctor Who, I've been rediscovering like a lot of old friends calling round. For a while I'd been thinking about a movie that really influenced me back then called Barfly and a few weeks ago I found a copy of it. The movie is a Hollywood take on a period in the life of the gutter poet Charles Bukowski. It's directed by Barbet Schroeder and stars Mickey Rourke and Fay Dunaway. It follows a few days in the life of Henry Chinaski (Rourke) - a fictionalized version of Bukowski - who spends his time drinking, brawling and writing poetry.
At a point in our late teens when we were really considering what sort of lives we wanted to lead, to me and my group of friends this movie was inspirational. We saw something beautiful and noble in the wretched existence of an alcoholic who poured out his soul into poetry. We all wanted to be artists and writers and saw this as an example of how to do it and find honest subject-matter.
Much of the film acts to explain why Chinaski is a bum. In our celebrity-centred society where so many are desperate for fame, it's refreshing to see that Chinaski doesn't care about what happens to his poetry: it's the actual writing of it that provides a meaning for his existence. Throughout the film he is followed by a private detective (played by Jack Nance, a David Lynch regular) who spends his time stealing Chinaski's writing so it can be published by his agent, Tully Sorenson, played by Alice Krige. There's a memorable scene where she says to him that he's wasting his life, that anyone can be a drunk. He replies: "Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth." She is unable to comprehend Chinaski's lack of personal ambition and tells him that he's wasting his talent:
Tully Sorenson: You can really write. Why do you live like a bum?At the time I thought this was profound social commentary - and in Hollywood terms, I guess it is. I guess all those years ago, I liked Chinaski's freedom, the way he could choose not to try and engage with the pressures of the rat race, to show the courage and desperation of ordinary hard up people. At the time I was gearing up to go to university and really felt the pressure of conforming to the patterns of a future working life. Now I certainly wouldn't think it offers any guide to living.
Henry Chinaski: I am a bum. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to write about the sufferings of the upper classes?
Sorenson: This may be news to you but they suffer too.
Chinaski: Hey baby, nobody suffers like the poor.
The structure of the movie is circular and begins and ends with Chinaski brawling with his nemesis: the supposedly, good looking bartender, Eddie - played by Sly's brother, Frank Stallone. This antipathy towards attractive men with no personality struck a chord with me as a teen. I couldn't understand why women were attracted to guys with no depth who you just knew loved themselves too much and would mistreat them. Chinaski's comments in the movie about Eddie were almost like a manifesto for me: "[Eddie] symbolizes everything that disgusts me. Obviousness. Unoriginal macho energy. Ladies man...."
I was also inspired by the way that Chinaski imagines his legacy in a voice-over towards the end of the movie:
"And as my hands drop the last desperate pen, in some cheap room, they will find me there and never know my name, my meaning, nor the treasure of my escape.That Chinaski labours without ever attempting to get his work published or seeking any form of fame, I thought profound. It influenced me then - to the point where I stopped my own attempts at writing and virtually gave up.
As you can see, thinking about this movie all these years later is something very personal to me. The movie is, I think, not available on dvd. For me this is Rourke's finest performance. After that -- who knows what happened to him but he wasted his talent. Maybe too much like Henry Chinaski.
You're right it isn't available. There was a region one dvd release but that's been deleted. The cheapest copy on Amazon's marketplace in the UK is £66.29 and in the US, $78.75. Which is a shame because it sounds really entertaining. Thanks Gary. If anyone else would like to suggest a film and even write a couple of hundred words about it, please email [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:1478675e-9aa1-4f41-899a-732ce2c36682> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://feelinglistless.blogspot.com/2007/02/forgotten-films_07.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979631 | 1,064 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Teacher 'duct-taped fourth grade student's mouth shut - and told him punishment would be the pain when it was ripped off'
The mother of a fourth grader whose mouth was duct taped shut by a substitute teacher to get him to stop talking is calling for the teacher to be arrested.
Michelle Droddy, whose nine-year-old son is a student at J. Wallace James Elementary School in Lafayette, Louisiana, is seeking to bring criminal charges against both the school district and the teacher.
She said when her son came home from school last week extremely upset, she had no idea what had caused it.
Scroll down for video
Furious: Michelle Droddy's son is a fourth grader at J. Wallace James Elementary school where she says a sub teacher taped her son's mouth shut
Scene: Superintendent Pat Cooper said the teacher was now banned from teaching at J. Wallace James Elementary school
'He just told me he didn't want to go back to school no more, and he didn't want to be friends with no one in his class, or the school,' she told KATC.
When she reported the matter to the school, administrators talked to almost 100 students who then all told the same story - that the teacher taped his mouth shut with red duct tape used in arts and crafts.
The teacher told the student his punishment was going to be 'the pain when the tape is pulled off'.
In another alleged incident the sub made a child bend over while he hit him with a ruler. The sub has been banned from working in the district.
Charges: Police are looking into the incident concerning the fourth grader at J. Wallace James Elementary school
Report: The complaint said the teacher told the student his punishment would be the pain he would feel when the tape was ripped off
Pat Cooper, superintendent for the Lafayette Parish Schools called the incident 'very serious' and said it was 'outside the boundaries of what seems to be common sense. You just don't do that to children'.
A police report was filed on Tuesday because of possible battery charges.
Mrs Droddy said she intends to pursue criminal action: '(My son) has to face these same kids for the rest of the year that were sitting there laughing at him.
'The embarrassment and the shame that goes along with having someone you're supposed to respect that comes and duct tapes your mouth shut in front of everybody.' | <urn:uuid:fb2abfaa-f7ab-426c-84a4-63f1771e9995> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2206227/Teacher-duct-tape-fourth-grade-students-mouth-shut-saying-punishment-pain-ripped-off.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987275 | 496 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Soak country hams prior to cooking to reduce their saltiness.
To remove rind easily off from a cooked ham, slit the rind lengthwise down the ham before cooking and cook with the slit side down. Remove immediately after cooking and the rind should pull off easily.
It is best to serve country hams in very thin slices because of their very intense flavor and saltiness.
Ham is easier to slice thin when it is cool.
Do not overcook ham or it will become dry and tough. The threat of trichinosis is eliminated when the ham is heated to 137°F, but the USDA recommends that uncooked pork should reach 160°F to be safe. Fully cooked ham should be cooked to 140° F to intensify its flavor and juiciness.
Do not baste the ham with its juices as it is cooking because they are too salty and will only add more saltiness to the ham.
Glazing the ham at the end of the cooking process adds flavor and a more appealing finished look to its appearance.
Removing a canned ham is made easier by first placing the sealed can in hot water for 1 or 2 minutes. Open and slide the ham out.
To add extra flavor, apply a glaze to the ham during the last 30 minutes of the cooking time.
Roasting at a lower oven temperature (NEVER roast meat below 200°F) will result in meat that is more flavorful and moist. It will take longer to cook but the results will be worth the wait.
Do not use sharp utensils that may pierce the ham when trying to turn it because piercing allows valuable juices to escape. Use other utensils, such as wooden spoons and spatulas for handling the ham.
If cooking more than one ham, be sure that there is uniform space around the hams so that they will cook evenly. The hams should not be touching and there should be enough space around them to allow air and heat to circulate.
When placing a thermometer in the meat to check for doneness, be sure that the stem is not touching a bone because this can result in a false reading.
Preheat grill or broiler to the proper temperature to ensure the meat surface is seared quickly to give it a flavorful crust.
Using clean racks and coating them with vegetable oil or a nonstick vegetable oil spray will help prevent the meat from sticking.
To keep ham slices flat while grilling, clip fat around the edges at 1 to 1 ½ inch intervals.
Do not use a fork to turn the ham as it cooks. The piercing causes juices to escape. Use tongs to turn.
Keep an area in the charcoal grill empty of coals so if a flare up occurs or some of the meat is cooking to quickly, the meat can be moved to this area. On a gas grill, leave one burner on low.
A processed cut taken from the top half of the leg. The butt end is meatier but contains more fat than the shank end of the whole ham and is harder to carve because it contains the hip and pelvic bone. | <urn:uuid:3edd587f-54bd-412a-b848-2bf6a967a60a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recipetips.com/kitchen-tips/t--758/ham-cooking-tips.asp?slide=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931863 | 639 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Located in United States, San Antonio Military Medical Center was designed by RTKL Associates Inc, A major addition and renovation to Brooke Army Medical Center is currently underway, transforming the campus to San Antonio Military Medical Center. The project will almost double the size of the facility, adding a rehabilitation clinic, expanded operating room capabilities, a new emergency department, and a new patient bed tower.
Overall, the new addition and the existing facility are compatible yet distinguishable, each identifiable with its own time and cultural, technical, and architectural values. The addition complements the existing hospital but does not fully replicate its uniform brick envelope. Instead, it transitions from a monolithic brick façade to a thin transparent membrane. On the west, terra cotta rods control the amount of light and heat that reach the building while acting as a material connection between the old and the new. The amount of terra cotta rods diminishes as you move around the building until you reach the north façade where an unobstructed glass curtain wall takes advantage of light and allows more freedom in placing interior partitions. On the south, a monumental trellis (the ‘sunbria’) shades five stories and creates an icon visible to motorists traveling the nearby Interstate highway.
A large courtyard between the existing building and the new structure creates a pleasant distraction and a connection with nature. It provides a pleasant view from much of the building and a wayfinding reference as well. A healing garden and a landscaped pond fed by recycled water from the new central energy plant are other elements that maximise the hospital’s healing environment. The man-made pond also serves as a sustainable element that allows water from the energy plant to slowly return to the water table rather than overload the city sewer system. | <urn:uuid:2afae904-8e73-45b2-81e1-d362417747bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.topboxdesign.com/san-antonio-military-medical-center-in-united-states/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931395 | 359 | 1.546875 | 2 |
George H.W. and Barbara Bush are the Grandpa and Grandma of current American politics.
And, don't think we mean that as an insult.
The former 41st President and First lady -- both now in their late 80s -- have been witness to world and American politics for the last 65 years. Whether it was fighting in World War II; representing Texas in Congress during the '60s; serving as envoy to China; heading up the CIA; or being a fixture in the White House for 12 years; these two are the original power couple.
The best part is that everybody pretty much loves them. Could it have something to do with the fact that they're so freakin' adorable?
Recently, the couple gave an in-depth interview to Parade. Here are a few highlights:
- George spends most of his days now in a Lazy-Boy, watching TV. Not because he's lazy, but because of his health. He has vascular Parkinsonism, which says "... Just affects the legs. It's not painful. You tell your legs to move and they just don't move."
- Barbara thinks George's chair is ugly and calls it a "disaster." She also admits that she'll "gripe at George about his chair."
- Barbara doesn't think politicos today compromise like when she and George were in Washington. Back then, she explains, "politics stopped at the border" and "they listened to each other" -- unlike now.
- They weren't expecting Ronald Reagan to ask George to be his VP. The two had been in a fierce competition for the nomination at the 1980 Republican National Convention. To hear George tell it, the family was packing to head home, "And Jeb—was it Jeb?—said, 'It's not fair, Dad.' I said, 'What do you mean, it's not fair? Of course it's fair. We lost and we have no reason to feel entitled to something.' I remember the conversation well. And then the phone rings and it's Reagan saying, 'I'd like you to be on the ticket here.'"
- They [heart] Bill Clinton. It seems that the couple has gotten to know the 42nd president and think the world of him. "I was surprised by the fact that I liked him," says Barbara. She also let's slip just how close Bill and George have gotten over the past few years, explaining: "I think he thinks of George as the father he never had."
- George's proudest moment in public service was Liberation of Kuwait during the Golf War, but he and Barbara say they're greatest legacy is their 17 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Like we said, they're freakin' adorable!
|< Prev||Next >| | <urn:uuid:0aa84a2c-3b8e-410c-a84b-d4acc2d8c51a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glittarazzi.com/players/113116-papa-and-mama-bush-look-back-in-interview.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985257 | 572 | 1.617188 | 2 |
TSA to speed flight attendants through security
By Mike M. Ahlers, CNN
updated 8:36 PM EDT, Mon July 23, 2012
Flight attendants will soon get the same expedited screening at airport checkpoints available to airline pilots.
- Flight attendants are being added to the Known Crewmember program
- They will not have to undergo full screening like passengers do
- It could take 12 months to phase in the change, the Transportation Security Administration says
Washington (CNN) -- Flight attendants in coming months will get the same expedited screening at airport checkpoints available to airline pilots, the Transportation Security Administration said Monday.
In a move intended to reduce checkpoint congestion while improving security, flight attendants will be allowed to display credentials instead of undergoing physical screening. They will still be subject to random, unpredictable searches, however.
TSA Administrator John Pistole said the change is in keeping with his philosophy of "risk-based" security, because it speeds up screening of known "low-risk" travelers, while allowing TSA screeners to focus on unknown travelers.
Authorities investigate needles in sandwiches
Flight attendant representatives have long argued that flight attendants deserve the same treatment as pilots because they undergo identical background checks and are entrusted with access to the cockpit.
The Known Crewmember program is "good news" for U.S. aviation, flight attendants and the traveling public, said Veda Shook, head of the Association of Flight Attendants.
"We are the last line of defense in security aboard the aircraft," Shook said.
In addition, the program will eliminate flight attendants' "uncomfortable" practice of jumping to the head of the security line so they can make their flights on time, she said.
High-flying family shares travel secrets
In May, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security instructed the TSA to include flight attendants in the Known Crewmember program.
Flight attendants -- there are 90,000 of them in the United States -- will be eligible if they work for U.S. airlines that participate in the program and are flying from U.S. airports. When flight attendants present their credentials to the TSA officers, the identifications will be checked against an up-to-date database of program participants.
The TSA has been phasing in the program for pilots. To date, nearly 1.4 million pilots have been screened at checkpoints under the new system.
How to deal with air turbulence
The TSA expects it could take up to 12 months for airlines and their service providers to make the necessary system modifications and fully implement this change. Flight attendants could begin to experience expedited screening as early as this fall, and by year's end it could be implemented at more than 30 airports. | <urn:uuid:278afb38-1f37-4714-9b19-c59c2ee39204> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nigeriadailynews.com/mobile/mobile/usa/40123-tsa-to-speed-flight-attendants-through-security.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936655 | 552 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Tim Holmes is an American filmmaker and artist and filmmaker working in the outskirts of social evolution, trying to help envision a more equitable future for all. He has worked with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, designed the UN Women's Peace Prize and was the first American artist ever exhibited solo in the world's largest art museum, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his sculptures remain on permanent exhibit. His work has gained notice among some of the world's peacemakers, from the Chinese dissident students of Tiananmen Square to the Physicians for Social Responsibility. President Jimmy Carter, President Vaclav Havel, and Coretta Scott King are among Holmes' best-known collectors.
In his work with Archbishop Desmond Tutu he helped create an international peace center on Robben Island, the gulag where President Nelson Mandela and thousands of others were imprisoned during the dark apartheid years. He also designed the sculpture for the bid for the Olympics by Cape Town, South Africa.
Though Holmes is most well known for sculpture he has worked in a variety of media from museum installations to film. His award-winning series of short Body Psalms films focuses on the value of the body and often appears at special screenings– frequently in social settings outside the art world– in the US and Europe.
I believe that art can transform the human soul in ways impossible through any other human activity.
Art is the footprints into the journey of aliveness in an endlessly terrifying and erotic world.
Toward a Universal Conscience- What if there were a way for the entire human family to sit down together to forge a future beyond the divisions of religion, politics, education and economic disparity? It may sound too good to be true but for the first time in history this vision is within our grasp. Nearly every person on the planet– regardless of origin– learned the same rules for cooperating for the greater good of all. We all learned it as kids– by growing up in a family. Those basic values can help us realize the long-envisioned dream of world cooperation. This has suddenly become a reality because of the internet– a tool that will transform everything we do, but more importantly, the way we think.
Universal Conscience is a model for creating a global ethic that bridges all cultures, nations and religions to find a shared sense of right and wrong, a wiki that can be influenced and accessed by anyone on the planet to increase cooperation and diminish evil everywhere.
This member doesn't have any favorite talks yet. | <urn:uuid:a9e2030e-ed95-425d-8ed4-9e54e4cbed10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ted.com/profiles/133100 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964596 | 506 | 1.734375 | 2 |
During his long and colourful life, Guillaume Dufay (1397-1477) was in the service of many famous households but his connection to the Court of Savoy was perhaps the most substantial and the one closest to his heart. He spent three periods of residence there, during which he wrote some of his finest music, and this recording groups together his most famous mass together with three other important vocal pieces which possess great beauty.
The Missa Se La Face ay pale, composed some time in the early 1450s, evokes an era of opulence and splendor with its structural design complimented by a rare degree of musical invention and expressive power. The Gloria is a prime example of the composer's vivid imagination.
Listen -- Dufay: Gloria (Missa Se la face ay pale)
(track 3, 0:00-1:00) © 2009 Hyperion Records Ltd
The Sanctus has a joyous flow that transports the listener to unimaginable heights of adoration. The work has a dense contrapuntal element, but its classic status is attained by Dufay's ease to find solutions to his own intricate and rather sophisticated writing.
Listen -- Dufay: Sanctus (Missa Se la face ay pale)
(track 8, 2:49-3:41) © 2009 Hyperion Records Ltd
The three other pieces are gems in their own right but Magnamine gentis has a strong ceremonial grandeur which is quite disarming.
Listen -- Dufay: Motet: Magnanime gentis
(track 13, 5:18-6:29) © 2009 Hyperion Records Ltd
The Binchois Consort has been connected with Hyperion and Dufay's music since 1995, their founding year, and this fourth disc of the great master's sacred vocal repertoire is another spellbinding achievement.
Copyright © 10 February 2009
Gerald Fenech, Gzira, Malta
BUY CLASSICAL CDS ONLINE
CD INFORMATION: GUILLAUME DUFAY
Record Box is Music & Vision's
regular series of shorter CD reviews | <urn:uuid:0489b64d-104d-4d62-bdde-850c7a082c40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mvdaily.com/articles/2009/02/dufay.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948753 | 437 | 1.835938 | 2 |
We just received an interesting email from a reseller cell phone jamming gear, asking if we'd be interested in testing some of their anti-cell phone gear. Some of you might know these devices, although legal to sell, using jamming cell phone signals here in the United States is considered property theft by the FCC. An $11,000 fine and up to a year in prison for each offense makes owning one of these a risky proposition at best. But if these were legal, would you be tempted to own and use one?
These cell phone jamming devices don't come cheap and by using one, you risk not only breaking FCC laws, but perhaps causing an incident if its use messes with someone's pacemaker or other signal-sensitive device. We do think in time, these devices in some form or another, might be necessary in a society where improper cell phone use in public spaces (even churches, libraries and museums!) is growing rampant.
Most of these $100-$1000 devices only affected 30-100' perimeters of dead space, but some more powerful government-grade units can kill a whole mile diameter (think Presidential motorcade), so one wonders what the real dangers are besides intrusion of freedom to use mobile devices. There might be a day similar to the time when smokers were made to partake in their habit in designated areas, with the introduction of cell-free dining zones...at least one could hope. | <urn:uuid:04b3d5f8-22b1-4145-91a7-e92e7505f2da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/cell-phone-blockers-if-you-cou-125232 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955942 | 290 | 1.828125 | 2 |
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2 posts • Page 1 of 1
I bought an unfinished solid oak table recently with a view to colouring it and finishing it myself so that I could match existing dining room furniture (which is generally walnut).
I've looked at a variety of posts and projects on here but don't seem to be able to find the answers I'm looking for! It looks like oiling is my best bet for finish and protection but I have 2 questions really:
I presume I should stain/dye the wood first to achieve a colour similar to walnut and then apply a finish to protect the wood and colour? A few of the projects mention that you shouldn't dye any surface used in the prep of food, but I guess a table is safe. Will dyes (solvent or water-based) cause any problems when it comes to oiling?
Danish oil looks like a favourite for finishing (which also darkens the colour somewhat) so I was thinking of this option, however I have also seen Hard Wax Oil advertised in various places. Anyone have any views on the difference between the two (and whether either is better/worse for this use). Hard wax oil seems to come coloured too, which might remove the need for pre-staining/dying?
Finally, should the rules about continually applying oil for the first weeks of the wood's life apply to tables as well as kitchen work surfaces?
Thanks in advance...
The first thing to say is that oak is oak and walnut is walnut, the grain structure is quite different. The best you are going to end up with is something that looks like mid-brown oak rather than pukka walnut. You need to be aware that the woods will always look different, and that difference will only increase as they age. For that reason I'd suggest going with an appropriate shade of oak colour rather than a matching shade of walnut which is always going to look a bit odd. In other words let the oak look like what it is - it'll thank you in long run!
The basic rule of finishing is to use a dye and a finish with different solvents, so a water based dye with a spirit based finish, or vice versa. That way the finish does not re-dissolve the dye and smear it all over the place. So if you are going to oil, go for a water based dye.
(The trick up the sleeve is a shellac finish, which goes with anything - it's what we use when we don't know what was put on before.)
There is a skill level step between using dye and a finish and just using a coloured finish. The former gives better results, but you do need to practice first - several times - until you are confident. You can't just slap it on!
I'm personally not sure I'd go for danish oil on a table - although you could do if you want a low sheen finish that is easy to keep maintained. Traditionally oak is wax finished (over a coat of shellac unless you want to spend the rest of you days re-waxing it). If it is to be used hard then a varnish or two part catalytic finish (rustins) is a better bet for the top.
So after all that, what would I do....
I'd use a water based oak dye to get the wood to tone with the existing furniture, de-nib (lightly sand) it, a coat of shellac sanding sealer (it's a finish in it's own right, it's not just for sealing prior to sanding) followed by a couple of coats of wax.
2 posts • Page 1 of 1 | <urn:uuid:19722516-abe0-4ab4-8413-a4eb0f0d893d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diydoctor.org.uk/forums/dining-table-finishing-t4835.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968024 | 813 | 1.570313 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Europe are racing to avert or delay a looming showdown over Palestinian statehood at the United Nations that may crush already dim Mideast peace prospects.
Senior U.S. and European officials, at meetings Sunday afternoon in New York, hoped to find a way of bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to stalled negotiations without antagonizing either side or embroiling the region in new turmoil.
But each is locked in intractable positions over the expected Palestinian bid this week for U.N. recognition and chances for a breakthrough seem slim. As a result, officials say the effort may be more about damage control than diplomacy.
The Palestinians are frustrated by their inability to win from Israel concessions such as a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. They want to seize the moment to try to gain greater standing and attention with a high-stakes wager on statehood and U.N. membership. The U.S. and Israel vehemently oppose this move.
Only 12 months ago, President Obama said he wanted the U.N. to be welcoming Palestine as its newest member this year. But talks broke down long ago, and the U.S. is in the unenviable position of leading the opposition to something it actually supports.
The U.S. has promised a veto of the Palestinian bid at the Security Council, leading to fears the action could spark violence in the region.
The American side was working to secure additional opposition to recognition, officials said. Without nine affirmative votes in the 15-member council, the Palestinian resolution would fail, and Washington is hoping it won’t have to act alone.
U.S. officials believe that six other members may vote against or abstain, meaning the Palestinians would fall short. That tally could not be immediately confirmed.
Heading off or watering down the Palestinian resolution had been the goal of international diplomats. They hoped to parlay that success into a meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders at which the two sides would relaunch negotiations.
Yet the Palestinians have refused to back down and give up the little leverage they hope to win.
“The aim of this is try to elevate the Palestinians to a more equal footing so that this disparity that existed over the last 18 years, which allowed Israel to exploit it to its advantage, can end and they can talk now to an equal member state of the United Nations,” said Maen Rashid Areikat, the Palestinian’s top representative to the U.S.
Mr. Areikat told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the Palestinians could accept an alternative, but it must include “clear terms of reference to return to the negotiations, clear time frame and an endgame.”
Still, even with a loss in the Security Council, the Palestinians were expected to take their case for recognition to the General Assembly, where they enjoy widespread support and the U.S. cannot block it.
A nod from the General Assembly could give the Palestinians access to international judicial bodies such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.View Entire Story
By Elaine Donnelly
Extending sexual misconduct to combat units
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
One man’s perspective. Exploration and commentary designed to challenge the conventional thinking of day on the political issues affecting our nation.
Politics, economics, and business from a real world perspective.
Consummate traveler Todd DeFeo explores the unique stories that make destinations worth going to.
Benghazi: The anatomy of a scandal
Vietnam Memorial adds four names
Cinco de Mayo on the Mall
NRA kicks off annual convention | <urn:uuid:8602750c-41e8-498a-b419-93eb897437d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/18/high-stakes-diplomacy-over-palestinian-un-bid/?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943043 | 760 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The reference staff at the State Library has compiled a webpage with links to many of the Massachusetts State Documents that exist in digital form. These include recent reports from state agencies, as well as several series dating back to the 19th century.
Series digitized by the State Library include the Acts and Resolves from 1960 to 1996, Legislative Biographical Directories dating to the 1890s, and the Annual Reports of the Attorney General (from the 1840s to the present). Several other series, such as Massachusetts Election Statistics and the Massachusetts Census have been scanned by other area institutions, such as the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
-Alix Quan, Head of Reference | <urn:uuid:7357eb14-b18a-4dee-8324-edc9979abba7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mastatelibrary.blogspot.com/2008/10/state-documents-online.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975546 | 134 | 1.695313 | 2 |
My Dad has a saying that goes “If you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough.” Growing up he said this to me every day, sometimes twice a day a lot. I understood what it meant, but didn’t really know how true it was until I started encountering some of America’s finest. For starters, today I read a story about a woman who put a frozen chicken into her dryer to defrost it. Seriously, I couldn’t make that up if I tried. This my friends is the perfect example of “If you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough”. But personally I like the guy at Lowes today who combined being stupid and a pig all at once…
Lowes Guy: “Hey little lady, need some help?”
In my head: Did he just say little lady? What an ass. That’s so chauvinistic. But maybe he meant I looked skinny! Cause I totally have been sticking to my Weight Watchers lately! Wow how sweet of him to notice! :::giving him a huge smile since maybe he thinks I look little:::
Lowes Guy: “So uh, your husband let you come in here all alone huh?”
Me: Soo ya no, he totally doesn’t think I look ‘little’. He is just a major asswipe. “No but my partner did. She doesn’t like to do all the manly stuff.”
Him: “..Oh……..Thats, uh cool. Well thanks for shopping at Lowes.” :::darting off down the paint aisle:::
Again, If you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough. And just for the record, I am not claiming to have never been on the receiving end of this saying. For example, a few years ago I accidentally responded ‘to all’ on an email to my entire team at work, including my boss, about how annoying the boss was. As soon as I saw it sent to everyone all I could think was “If you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough”. So true, so very, very true. (Luckily I was able to play it off as a sarcastic joke…I seriously have no idea HOW I managed to pull it off.)
This recipe was created on one of those nights where I just tossed everything I could find together…and it turned out delicious. We have had it (on purpose) 3 times since then! We love the flavors together and it goes wonderfully along side grilled chicken or even as a stand alone dish.
Tri-Color Orzo with Zucchini & Cherry Tomatoes
Yield: 4 servings
Recipe Note: I use Better Than Bouillon to boil the orzo in. If you have a bunch of extra chicken stock lying around, use it instead! I use Better Than Bouillon because it is much more cost effective and really gives great flavor to the orzo. Also, to make this dish vegan just substitute the Better Than Bouillon, Chicken for Vegetable flavor, or Vegetable stock. Or of course you can always just use water in a pinch!
1 cup tri-color orzo
8 cups water
1 tbl Better Than Bouillon, Chicken
Cooking Spray (or Olive Oil in your Misto)
1 lg zucchini, chopped
12-15 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1 lg shallot, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced
salt and pepper
Begin by bringing water to a boil in a large stockpot over high heat. Once boiling, whisk in your Better Than Bouillon. Add orzo and cook according to package, or until al dente. Drain, set aside.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, coat with cooking spray (or Olive Oil), and add zucchini, cherry tomatoes, shallot and garlic. Saute for about 5-7 minutes, or until the zucchini is tender.
Remove from heat and add thyme, salt and pepper, stirring well. Then toss with orzo until well combined. Serve immediately.
Source: A Novice Chef Blog Original | <urn:uuid:2cc9d00e-c42b-4a83-a242-eebda3df5c2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenovicechefblog.com/2011/01/tri-color-orzo-with-zucchini-cherry-tomatoes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940425 | 899 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Ardnamushrooms was featured on the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall television programme
"Three Hungry Boys". Click here to watch the clip
Robert and Justine Dunn bought this old manse in 2002. It was in a very poor condition, some parts on the verge of collapse,
so it was stripped back to the stone inside and rebuilt. Robert and Justine did as much of the work as possible themselves
- Robert working full time as a builder and Justine looking after the family (4 children) and working on the house when able.
The family lived in two small caravans in the garden during the renovation so were thrilled to move into the Manse at the
end of October 2003.
The Manse has been renovated to be fossil fuel free and as energy efficient as is possible in an old building. The walls,
roof and floors are highly insulated and all windows are double glazed Pilkington K glass. The house is heated by a woodburning
stove which supplies hot water to the underfloor heating and for baths, and heats the oven. There is also a whole house ventilation
system which, during the summer months, uses passive solar heat from the conservatory to keep the house warm. We have recently
installed a Solar Twin panel to provide us with hot water. The hot water is pumped from the panel with a solar powered pump
- a satisfying hum can be heard in the kitchen on a sunny day as hot water is pumped into our tank!
The Manse is situated about 1.5 miles from Strontian village along a single track road. It is a beautiful and peaceful spot
with fabulous views of Loch Sunart and the hills. About 7 acres of land surrounding the Manse, known as Ranachan Glebe, are
owned by the Dunns and are gradually being converted to a more productive state.
The area of Ardnamurchan has a rich variety of wildlife. Eagles have been seen regularly, as well as other birds of prey.
Owls and bats are also sometimes spotted at dusk. Pine martins are frequently seen. The chickens have to be carefully locked
away each night to save them from becoming an easy meal to the pine martins, otters or foxes. Most common are deer, often
seen grazing in our fields, or at times much closer - the photo above shows a young deer grazing at our garden wall. | <urn:uuid:db0aa4a3-4cea-439b-9ca0-cb515e52e3f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ardnamushrooms.co.uk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97506 | 497 | 1.75 | 2 |
RELEASE: No One Wins When Our Children Lose
Alliance for Quality Education Report No One Wins, When Our Children Lose
Shows that Executive Budget Proposal Inadequate for Quality Education Needs
Analysis Shows that Only 52% of Proposed $805 Million in Additional School Aid is Directed to High Needs Schools
Data Set Shows how Each School District would Benefit if $250 Million in Competitive Grants were used for Classroom Restorations and Pre-Kindergarten
For Immediate Release: Wednesday, February 1, 2012
For Info: Nikki Jones, AQE Communications Director, (cell) 315-416-9393
Alliance for Quality Education released a report today entitled “No One Wins When Our Children Lose.” The report, an analysis of the Executive Budget proposal, shows that out of the $805 million in new school aid proposed only 52% will go to high need schools and 14% to average needs schools; 31% of the aid would go to competitive grants. A full data set shows how much each school district in the state would benefit if the competitive grants were instead budgeted for classroom restorations. The report details many of the classroom cuts that schools have instituted as a result of budget cuts and finds that in order to stop more cuts the $250 million in competitive grants needs to be reallocated and that the Legislature will need to add more school aid in addition to the $805 million. The report calls for redirecting $53 million of the competitive grant funds to pre-kindergarten programs as recommended by the New York State Board of Regents. Quality pre-kindergarten improves success in grades K -12, raises graduation rates, increases students’ income as adults and reduces incarceration rates.
The Executive Budget would only restore 1 in 5 dollars of cuts made to the classroom over the past two years, and even if the competitive grants funds were instead used to restore classroom cuts only 1 in 4 dollars of classroom cuts would be restored.
“After two years of devastating school cuts, an increase in school aid is a welcome change. But the $805 million proposed is only one in four of the dollars that have been cut from the classrooms—it may not be enough to prevent more cuts. If students have to compete with each other for access to some of these funds, then the picture gets even worse. Make no mistake about it, the state budget cuts these past two years have jettisoned teachers, librarians and guidance counselors, arts, music and sports, college prep and career courses. Our students need the legislature to significantly increase the total education funding and put the competitive grants funding directly into the classrooms,” said Billy Easton, Executive Director, Alliance for Quality Education.
“Making me compete with my friends in different schools for funding for our education isn’t fair and it isn’t right. How is my high needs school supposed to compete with the other districts with more money? The competitive grants will hurt my school and similar ones. The $250 million could be better spent by supporting schools that need it. If my school needs new textbooks, computers and teachers, why should we have to prove that by competing?” said Maya Williams a senior at Schenectady High School.
“District 6 in northern Manhattan was one of the hardest hit districts in New York City– we lost nearly $14 million which in my school meant a loss of teachers and school aides. My son loves art but because of budget cuts he lost his art teacher which means that I now have to volunteer as an art teacher at the school,” said Miriam Aristy-Farer, parent at PS 153 in Manhattan, she added “I’m doing my part to make sure students have more opportunities but we need our legislators to do their part by demanding increased restorations so that our students can be college-ready.”
“Low-wealth rural schools have suffered enormous reductions in programs and staff in the past three years. They are now being asked by Governor Cuomo to compete amongst one another for aid in an unproven Dickensian competition just to provide the sound, basic education promised under the state constitution. This could quickly become a kind of cynical game that further punishes those who happen to be born in the wrong zip code. Our students need the Governor and the Legislature to lead in the effort to establish an equitable, sustainable and predictable state aid formula and not resort to gimmicks,” said Michael Glover, Ph. D. District Superintendent Genesee Valley Educational Partnership.
Recommendations to Legislature
- Redirect the $250 million from competitive grant programs to classroom restorations.
- $53 million of the competitive grant funds should be redirected to expanding quality pre-kindergarten as recommended by the Board of Regents
- Add additional funds for classroom restorations.
- Institute cost savings initiatives that are recommended in the report.
A PDF of the full report as well as regional data sets can be found HERE. Seven press conferences were held in across the state including in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton Albany, Mt. Vernon, and Wyandanch.
“We are a high performing rural school district with about 850 students (K-12) and a graduate rate typically exceeding 90%. We have reduced our budget three years in a row and used an increasing portion of our fund balance to balance the budget. We have already had to cut back on the quality of education by eliminating our elementary school librarian, reduced or eliminated staff and eliminated our summer program. The task of developing a balanced budget that supports our education and is affordable to our taxpayers is becoming more difficult because our revenue sources are decreasing while our expenses continue to rise. At some point the math just doesn’t work anymore”, said Cecilia Tkaczyk, President of the Duanesburg Central School Board of Education and mother of a 7th grader. “The Duanesburg School District faces a $1 million deficit in next year’s budget. What are our choices? Raise taxes on the local homeowner 18%, or cut $1 million out in expenses (eliminate Kindergarten, sports, clubs, music and art, AP courses), or wipe out our fund balance. None of these choices are acceptable. The proposed state budget is simply inadequate to provide the quality of education our children need to succeed.”
“When we invest in learning for our youngest children, we’re guaranteeing the best return on investment for our community,” said Ivette Alfonso, President of Citizen Action of New York. “Study after study has shown that providing our children with quality Pre-K helps to ensure their future success, getting them ready for kindergarten, college, and careers. As the mother of a child who has attended Pre-K, I’ve seen firsthand the positive impact that these programs have. We call on our elected officials to expand funding for Pre-K, giving our kids the opportunity they need to become the future leaders of New York.”
“Mount Vernon City School District is a high poverty district that faces many challenges and has many educational needs. Many of our schools did not make adequate yearly progress and now we are a district in need of improvement. Our children have lost teachers in English, Math, Music, Art, and Media/Library. We don’t have enough textbooks and resource materials for our children. The district does not have the funds to provide adequate Regent/RCT prep classes and Academic Intervention/Support Services to our children. The budget cuts have really hurt our children. Our children attending the Mount Vernon City School District are not the children of millionaires’ or billionaires’; but they also deserve a quality education. There’s no way our children can get a quality education without adding additional funding restorations to our school system,” said Brenda Crump, Mount Vernon, parent.
“I am an assistant teacher at Shepherd’s Gate which has a universal pre-k program in Brentwood. What I love about the program is that the children come in not able to read or write in English or in Spanish and leave the program not only reading and writing in both languages but also speaking in English and Spanish. My concern is that this program might not be available for children next year due to past cuts. I’m asking that the $53 million dollars that the Board of Regents proposed for New York State gets approved so that the quality of education isn’t lost in our early care programs,” said Margarita Romero, Brentwood Assistant Teacher.
“Despite the many challenges we face in Albany, over the last four years our state aid has declined by $11 million dollars, even as our enrollment has increased. We are already doing more with less. The Governor’s budget proposal falls far short of meeting our students’ needs. We are not asking for a handout – but we are asking for a fairer share of the resources we need to meet our students’ needs,” said Dan Egan, Albany School Board President.
“In the Syracuse City School district we have lost more than 700 teachers and support staff for our students which has caused class sizes to be increased, a loss or reduction of vital programs, including electives, sports, and music. These are the kinds of programs that our schools need to help students prepare for college and careers,” said Eliza Sampson, Syracuse City School parent.
“This has become a pattern, when things need to be cut the first to go is the necessities of the children’s education. Two of my children go to School 16 in Troy where we have a pool facility that can’t even be used due to budget cuts, why?” said Emily Pena, Troy School 16 parent.
“In the Southern Tier, in our schools we have seen significant reductions in teachers and teachers aides, after-school program cuts that provide vital services to our youth, especially those that are at-risk, to name a few. Our area is considered high needs and so it is important to our kid’s future that our state leaders provide fair funding to ensure that all of our students have an opportunity to learn,” said Talia Moore, Binghamton parent advocate.
“For students in high needs districts like Buffalo the state’s promise to finally provide adequate funding to help every student receive a world class education has never been fulfilled. In Buffalo we need real investment in students who are getting suspended, dropping out and not graduating. We need educational resources like guidance counseling, support services, tutoring and a broad and demanding curriculum designed to keep these students in school and get them back on track to success. The state budget as currently proposed is not going to get the job done,” said Jim Anderson, Buffalo Board Member, Citizen Action of New York.
“Past years cuts have produced a culture of shock and survival, where true support for teaching, has taken a back seat to just avoid sinking and falling further behind. In the last 2 years, budget cuts have forced our school to cut aides in the dual-language program. To weaken such a valuable program hurts the future of all students, so we hope that New York State will begin to prioritize high needs school districts and provide our schools with the funding they need to offer a strong education for all,” said Luis Torres, parent at School #12, Rochester.
“The Hudson Valley has several districts facing educational insolvency. Many high needs districts are considering or have already closed elementary schools and more will be closed this coming year if we experience more cuts. Special education aides have been cut in Kingston and in Hyde Park special education students no longer benefit from self-contained classrooms in which they get undivided attention, but instead have joined general education classes which has nearly doubled class sizes to 30 students. State aid needs to be distributed in a way that supports our neediest schools and students rather than increasing their burden,” said Odell Winfield, Co-Founder of Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library, Poughkeepsie.
“As a parent of school children here in Queens, I have seen instances where my special need child has to have classes in the hallway because they do not have sufficient space,” said Margarita Mendoza, a Queens parent and a member of Make the Road New York. “We need to make sure that the state invests more in our children’s education and that our schools get the necessary resources to help all of our children succeed. It is time that the State Legislature do its part.” | <urn:uuid:d6837ae3-b08d-407f-8c91-89341eb3823e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aqeny.org/2012/02/release-no-one-wins-when-our-children-lose/ | 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 | 0.964682 | 2,618 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Facts to know Illegal signs, objects on state right of way
Houston County Courier
It is illegal to place a sign or object on a public road or right of way unless authorized by state law. “Sign” is defined as any outdoor sign, display, light device, figure, painting, drawing, message, plaque, or other thing that is designed, intended, or to advertise or inform. Such signs are not allowed on state highway right of way, which is reserved for official traffic control signs. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) may immediately and without prior notice remove an unauthorized sign or object erected, placed, or maintained, in whole or in part, on state highway right of way. If a traffic hazard exists, the sign will be removed as soon as practical and the owner can be charged for removal costs. If a sign permitted under the Transportation Code 392.031, (Signs on State Highway Right of Way (advertising signs), encroaches on state highway right of way, the department will notify the sign’s owner of the encroachment and request that the encroachment is remedied. Removed signs are stored at local maintenance offices pending disposal or return to the rightful owner. The department will notify the owner of all removal costs and the procedures for retrieving the removed sign(s). The department may dispose of a removed sign unless it is claimed by the owner within 10 days after the date of removal or the date notice is mailed in accordance with notification requirements, whichever is later. If the owner fails to remit all costs, the department may refer the matter to the Office of the Attorney General for collection. Texas is subject to the Federal Highway Beautifi-cation Act of 1965. Under the federal law, if the state fails to control signage visible from interstate and other federally-funded highways, Texas may be subject to sanctions of up to 10 percent of its federal transportation construction funds. | <urn:uuid:5e6d3802-5b88-4548-9327-00765046f8f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.easttexasnews.com/Courier/News/Ind/October2010/story9.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939391 | 387 | 1.789063 | 2 |
England is in the middle of a profoundly disturbing social experiment. For the first time in a mature democracy, a Government is waging a campaign of aggressive discrimination against its indigenous population.
In the name of cultural diversity, Labour attacks anything that smacks of Englishness. The mainstream public are treated with contempt, their rights ignored, their history trashed. In their own land, the English are being turned into second-class citizens.
This trend was highlighted this week by the case of Abigail Howarth, a bright teenager who applied for a training position with the Environment Agency in East Anglia but was turned down because she was too white and English. The post, which carries a £13,000 grant, was open only to ethnic minorities, including the Scots, Welsh and Irish. | <urn:uuid:d964095f-3ed1-4791-b20b-2710d005b563> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nationalsocialistmovementbritannia.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-government-has-declared-war-on.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970194 | 159 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Rafael KubelíkArticle Free Pass
Rafael Kubelík, in full Jeronym Rafael Kubelík (born June 29, 1914, Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now in Czech Republic]—died Aug. 11, 1996, Lucerne, Switz.), Bohemian-born Swiss conductor, musical director, and composer, who was noted for his frequent guest appearances with major orchestras throughout the world.
He was a son of the violinist Jan Kubelík and studied composition and conducting at the Prague Conservatory. He conducted the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra from 1936 to 1939 and from 1942 to 1948. He left Czechoslovakia in 1948 after the Communist takeover, settling first in England and later in Switzerland, where he became a citizen in 1973. He became principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1950 but was forced to resign in 1953 amid controversy over his plans for staff changes and a concert program emphasizing modern compositions. As music director of the Covent Garden Opera from 1955 to 1958, he championed opera in English. From 1961 to 1979 he was principal conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. From 1973 to 1974 he was also musical director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Kubelík’s own compositions include two operas, three symphonies, choral works, and concertos.
What made you want to look up "Rafael Kubelik"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:aac5e4e5-261f-4580-bd0d-74804e465cc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/324231/Rafael-Kubelik | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969049 | 309 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Desirée (meaning "desired one") Johansson is the ironically named daughter of Ella Johansson—ironic because Ella abandoned her at birth. In the Swedish welfare state of the 1950s, Desirée's birth defects (cerebral palsy, epilepsy and physical deformation) meant a life in institutions. Now nearing 50, she is increasingly wracked by pain and seizures, and the only person she ever loved, her doctor, Hubertsson, is dying. But she is an April witch—a weak body with a strong mind—and when Hubertsson informs her of her mother's later foster children, she employs her paranormal powers of omniscience to learn about Ella, her "betrayer," and her three foster sisters, the "thieves" of the life that should have been hers. Though unable to walk or speak, Desirée follows their movements, and it is their stories that make up the bulk of this suspenseful, insightful novel. Margareta had been abandoned, while Christina and Birgitta's real mothers were abusive, and appeared irregularly in their childhoods with terrible results. The girls were separated as teens after Ella's stroke, for which difficult Birgitta is blamed: Christina and Margareta believe Ella discovered that Birgitta was the town slut, and that it nearly killed her. While Margareta has become a physicist and Christina a doctor, and Birgitta has evolved through drug addiction to alcoholism, none of them know about their other sister—yet. Journalist Axelsson caused quite a stir with this novel in her native Sweden, ripping into Scandinavian conformity like a latter day Ibsen, while Americans might see some resemblance to the spirit of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Readers who made Peter Hoeg a bestseller should certainly find a place in their hearts for Axelsson. (Apr.)
Forecast:Originally published in Sweden in 1997, this was a runaway bestseller and a winner of the August Prize (it's sold over 350,000 copies to date). Both Barnes and Noble and Borders are giving it special attention, and news from the independents suggests it will be a great handsell. | <urn:uuid:65d812f8-a211-4e15-b04b-4b9f0ec11319> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-375-50517-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970179 | 451 | 1.679688 | 2 |
NEW DELHI: Creation of a separate Telangana state with Hyderabad as its capital and keeping Andhra Pradesh united with constitutional and statutory measures for empowerment of the Telangana region are among the six options recommended by the Justice Srikrishna Committee.
The report of the five-member committee headed by former Supreme Court judge that gave its recommendations after about 11 months of consultation process in the state was released by the Home Ministry today, a week after it received it.
The two-volume 461-page report has also suggested maintaining status quo with a rider that it is the least favoured option.
In the fourth option, for which political parties spearheaded by TRS have been campaigning, the Committee suggests bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two units -- Telangana and Seemandhra -- as per existing boundaries. Telangana will have Hyderabad as capital, while Seemandhra, comprising Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra regions, will have a new capital.
In the option for keeping the state united, the Committee has suggested that there should be simultaneous provision of certain constitutional and statutory measures for socio-economic development and political empowerment of Telangana region by creation of a statutorily-empowered Telangana Regional Council.
Another option is to bifurcate the state into Seemandhra and Telangana with Hyderabad as a Union Territory and the two states developing their own capitals in due course.
Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into Rayala-Telangana and coastal Andhra regions with Hyderabad being an integral part of Rayala-Telangana is another option suggested by the committee.
Yet another idea is to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh into Seemandhra and Telangana with enlarged Hyderabad Metropolis as a separate Union Territory.
"This Union Territory will have geographical linkage and contiguity via Nalgonda district in the south-east to Guntur district in coastal Andhra and via Mahaboobnagar district in the south to Kurnool district in Rayalaseema.
Following are the options and explanation given by the committee:
1. Maintaining Status Quo: The committee said it is of the unanimous view that it would not be a practical approach to simply maintain the status quo in respect of the situation.
"Some intervention is definitely required and though maintaining the existing status quo is an option it is favoured the least," the panel says.
2. Bifurcation of the state into Seemandhra and Telangana; with Hyderabad as a Union Territory and the two states developing their own capitals in due course:
"There is a definite likelihood of serious backlashes in Telangana region and on overall consideration, the Committee found this option was also not practicable."
3. Bifurcation of the state into Rayala-Telangana and Coastal Andhra Regions with Hyderabad being an integral part of Rayala-Telangana:
"This scenario is not likely to be accepted either by the pro-Telangana or by the pro-United Andhra protagonists. While this option may have economic justification, the committee believes that this option may not offer a resolution which would be acceptable to people of all three regions," it says.
4. Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into Seemandhra and Telangana with enlarged Hyderabad Metropolis as a separate Union Territory. This Union Territory will have geographical linkage and contiguity via Nalgonda district in the south-east to Guntur district in coastal Andhra and via Mahaboobnagar district in the south to Kurnool district in Rayalaseema:
"This is likely to receive stiff opposition from Telangana protagonists and it may be difficult to reach a political consensus in making this solution acceptable to all," it says. | <urn:uuid:6f0a41c3-2d10-4efa-a815-a9ae3643ea24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-01-06/news/28426924_1_justice-srikrishna-committee-rayala-telangana-seemandhra-and-telangana | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949599 | 796 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Oct 25, Colombo: Trade unions in Sri Lanka have threatened to bring the country's school education system to a standstill if the demands put forward by the teachers and principals are not met.
The Ceylon Teacher Services Union (CTSU) said that a trade union action by teachers and principals would result in the closing down of all 9,662 state schools in the country.
CTSU General Secretary Mahinda Jayasinghe said that teachers and principals have commenced a struggle to win six demands including a solution to their long standing salary anomalies.
He noted that the teachers were concerned over the lack of supplementary wages, the militarization of state schools, the increasing political interference within the local education system, the inability of the government to allocate 6 percent of the GDP for education sector and the privatization of the free education system of Sri Lanka.
According to Jayasinghe, the demand for supplementary wages was made to the Cabinet of Ministers in December 2008 and that it was taken up again on October 18 this year. The Salaries and Cadre Commission had reportedly said they have allocated Rs. 3 billion in 2008 to provide supplementary wages to teachers.
Jayasinghe charged that the trade union actions would continue until teachers and principals won their demands. | <urn:uuid:88b5d592-ff72-4405-a235-fb30a6ec0703> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colombopage.com/archive_12A/Oct25_1351137547JR.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972467 | 250 | 1.640625 | 2 |
While I have been involved in technology for several decades, I am constantly amazed at the advances made by industry. What’s the latest?
Well, some time ago I learned of an effort by the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Brigham Young Harold B. Lee Library and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah to jointly work on bringing probably some 100,000 genealogy-related books now out of copyright onto the Internet in a searchable database. Access will be free at Brigham Young’s Family History Archives.
Some years ago members were allowed by the New England Historic and Genealogy Society (NEHGS) to order by mail 3 books and keep them for two weeks. I assume for economic reasons or perhaps because the books were not being well cared for, NEHGS ceased this operation. But in the first 12 months I used this service I ordered and used 62 books from them. Every one of those books provided me with substantial research data on one or more of my ancestors.
Remembering how long it took me to xerox certain pages to be used as Source data, and how long it takes me to use my scanner attached to the printer on my home computer for the same purpose, I said to myself – Wow, it is going to take the consortium a long time to get 100,000 books on the internet.
This week I ran across an advertisement for Kirtas Technologies. They just introduced a 3,000 page per hour scanner which treats books with kid gloves unlike humans and provides software to index every word, name, place or thing in each book using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The book is then available in PDF with every word indexed.
The teams mentioned above should finish their task in no time. Can you imagine as I can at the change in the genealogical world this will have? When I started my family research in 1995, there was no web browser and a highly specialized, hard–to-use Internet. Feel lucky if you are just starting your family history – your world will open much faster than mine did. | <urn:uuid:70f33d54-b849-4c0b-81a5-34cb122357c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.genealogyhowto.com/2009/07/family-histories-go-on-line/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955085 | 429 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Want to take a walking tour of the world this summer, rubbing shoulders with peoples from every corner of the planet? Eat exotic foods, haggle in marketplaces, soak up street culture and hear enough foreign languages to make your head swim?
Want to do all that without having to leave Chicago?
All you need do is book passage as far as 6400 North, where you will find a neighborhood that resists the prosaic and limiting terms so often heaped on areas with large ethnic concentrations-terms like Little Italy, Chinatown or Spanish Harlem. There is no appellation broad enough to cover the
indescribable walk of life that is Devon Avenue from Clark Street west to Kedzie Avenue.
For here, crammed into an urban corridor only two miles long, are to be found enough nationalities, in many ways unassimilated, to keep the most energetic ethnologist busy for the rest of his or her career.
Indian. Pakistani. Jewish. Russian. Syrian. Iraqi. Iranian. Croatian. Greek. Korean. Assyrian. Chinese. Mexican. All of these groups and more make their home in the environs of Devon, where the West Rogers Park and East Rogers Park communities meet.
Not everyone would describe the area as a cultural melting pot.
``Do not say this is a neighborhood of many cultures,`` sniffs Ilya Rudiak, author, filmmaker and arts enthusiast from Odessa, in the former Soviet Union, who owns a Russian-language bookstore at 2746 W. Devon.
``Culture this is not. This is ethnic groups.``
But if the vibrant array of lifestyles along Devon doesn`t satisfy Rudiak`s carping standards for what constitutes culture, most people would accept it as such.
From the windowless Assyrian-American Association Building at 1618 W. Devon to the Orthodox Jewish synagogue Congregation Chesed L`Avrohom at 3135, the street offers a procession of ethnic quick takes that is possibly unrivaled anywhere in the United States.
Men, women and children of nearly every conceivable stock, wearing the latest in indigenous fashions, come and go on busy shopping quests, patronizing a dizzying assortment of storefront restaurants, bakeries, groceries, electronics emporiums, gift shops, bookstores, meat markets, clothing stores, beauty parlors and doctors` offices, where the languages (and alphabets) imprinted on the signs, the surnames of the proprietors and the nature of the goods for sale seem to change almost from block to block. Motifs evanesce and reconstitute almost as in a dream sequence.
The street signs tell the tale. East of Western Avenue (2400 West), Devon has been commemoratively designated Mohammed Ali Jinnah Way. West of Western, it becomes Ghandi Marg. Still later, a sign renames Mozart Street as North Croatia Drive, while still farther up, Troy Street has become Torah V`Chesed Drive.
At times, there seems a modicum of coherence and sense of boundary. For example, for seven blocks or so west of Western, the neighborhood seems predominantly Indian and Pakistani. At Fairfield, the tenor metamorphoses rather abruptly to Jewish. The doctors and dentists change their names from Mansour to Shkolnick.
But at other times, there is not even a pretense of organization, and combinations that defy all known political and nationalistic realities flourish here more or less by common agreement. Thus, the Zabiha Meat Market, featuring baby goat and catering to the Arab trade, is located cheek-by-sidecurl to Moshe`s New York Kosher Deli. On the same block are the Babylon Restaurant, Daniel`s Beauty Salon (with its sign in Korean) and the Athens Beauty Salon. Koreana Video abuts Mahboob Hair Cutting abuts Marcells Custom Tailor.
Through the 1950s and 1960s this was a predominantly Jewish and Irish Catholic neighborhood. It began to change in the 1970s, with the new tide sweeping away most of the former residents and shopkeepers. But a few of the old-time establishments have stayed.
Still flourishing after all these years are places such as Minky`s Bicycles (2834), Goldenson`s Drugs (2158) and Crawford`s Department Store
(2509). But gone are neighborhood institutions such as Aidem & Dess clothiers, Kofield`s Restaurant and Hillman`s Fine Foods. Hobbymodels, a longtime fixture at the corner of Devon and Western, has now become Gandhi Electronics. Hillman`s is now the World Fruit Market, where signs advertise mortadella, ginger root, domestic feta and schmaltz herring, all under one roof.
``It`s not just this neighborhood that`s changed, it`s the whole city,``
observes pharmacist Don Goldenson, who runs the drugstore that his late father, Harold, founded in 1948. ``It`s kind of fun, actually. We have had to adapt somewhat to the new cultures.``
As an example, he holds up a small bottle of Valerian, a nostrum favored as a sedative by Russian immigrants. ``We have to carry this now where we didn`t before.``
Goldenson still lives in the neighborhood. But he does not venture into the more exotic Indian and Middle Eastern restaurants. ``I gotta watch my stomach,`` he says. | <urn:uuid:324fbf39-4524-482d-a6b9-7cb6dba26368> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-05-17/features/9202140366_1_ethnic-groups-devon-avenue-languages | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945245 | 1,135 | 1.53125 | 2 |
No. The most common one is insufficient company research.
Researching information on your new employer is vital during your job search and for your interview preparation. You might think that that’s a bit obvious, but believe it or not, it’s the most common mistake candidates make during a job interview, according to a recent survey.
In the survey, 44% of executives said the most common interview pitfall for today's candidates is insufficient company research. Other mistakes include:
Knowledge of the employer's benefits and downsides can help you determine more about an organisation and your potential place in it, and give you the opportunity to ask informed questions during your interview.
Before meeting your potential employer, you'll need to be aware of the following:
What the company does and how it runs.
The company's financial state - are they expanding or downsizing?
Skills they are looking for, such as education, previous experience.
What you can offer them.
Having a general overview about the company will also give you confidence during the first interview, so that you can ask relevant questions, referring to your research. Rather than asking how many employees are in the company, which you could have found out yourself, using that information in a question implies you have taken time and effort to prepare for the interview. The interviewer will take this as a sign that you are serious about the company, your job and your future career.
"Conducting effective research can give job seekers a decided edge over the competition when applying for a position," says Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of Managing Your Career For Dummies. "The more information candidates have about potential employers, the better prepared they will be to demonstrate this knowledge during the interview."
He stresses that prospective employees should be able to answer the following key questions before the first meeting with a personnel manager:
- What business is the company in?
- What products and services does it sell?
- Who are its primary competitors?
- What current industry issues or events are of interest to the firm?
- What are the company's mission, vision and values? | <urn:uuid:ceb45f4e-7dd8-47b3-bf99-4497707b93e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.caribbeanjobs.com/careers/page/Is-the-biggest-interview-blunder-to-show-up-late.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963556 | 439 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Give Us Your Tired, Your Poor. Really. We Mean It.
Economists are making the case politicians are afraid to: Immigration is great for the U.S.
By James Ledbetter
If you pay attention only to politics, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the current debate about immigration in America is limited to how severely it should be restricted—whether we need only to seal the border or actually change the birthright citizenship clause in the Constitution.
But among economic pundits, the discussion is heading in exactly the opposite direction. Pro-immigration arguments are booming, and reached a zenith this week with the publication of a paper by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank [i.e., Giovanni Peri], arguing among other things that immigrants, despite popular misconception, do not displace American workers. This has led a number [Felix Salmon] of economic bloggers [Kevin Drum] to make the very rational argument that one of the best things America could do now to fix our sagging economy is to encourage more people to come here and work.
According to the econo-blogosphere lately, immigration is a cure-all for America's economic ills. We'll get to the question of whether anyone is listening, but here is a guide to the virtues-of-immigration arguments that have been making the rounds in recent weeks.
Immigrants will solve our housing crisis. ...
Immigrants are needed to replenish the American workforce. ...
Immigrants make the economy better. ...
I'm always getting accused of being obsessed with IQ, but it seems an awful lot of people are obsessed with showing off how smart they are. In general, that would be a good thing, except that our culture has got itself into a culdesac whereby a proof of being "thoughtful" is by how little thought you give to crucial topics such as immigration, and by how mindlessly you sneer at those who actually have thought hard on the subject. | <urn:uuid:6c48853d-9276-4680-8cf4-02c74926ea08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.isteve.blogspot.com/2010/09/from-slate-give-us-your-tired-your-poor.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96269 | 402 | 1.710938 | 2 |
I have 800 boids with SphereColliders on them. I use them to determine neighbor boids for each bird. At the beginning when the boids are close to each other I get lots of collisions and my frame rate drops to 5fps. But when they spread my frame rate jumps to 20fps.
Why the speed difference is so high? Is there some internal Unity/PhysX messaging that is so expensive? I don't do anything on OnTriggerEnter (yet) but obviously physics engine has to check for collisions between all the colliders every frame because I make them kinematic and animate them by myself.
asked Jul 06 '10 at 09:46 AM
The physics engine can accelerate the check whether objects do collide by checking whether the bounding boxes collide. This is very fast. Example of what the engine is probably doing:
BAD implementation would be:
GOOD implementation would be:
The second thing is incredibly faster, because it will stop checking when the first condition evaluates to "false" and only do the (slower) full check if all the other conditions meet. For example:
But if all objects are close to each other, the full test has to be made, and this will really slow down - you notice it by the frame rate drop. | <urn:uuid:f0383fb4-7b48-4e90-8781-8d5c642a9179> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/21618/colliders-slow-for-crowds.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937719 | 264 | 1.5 | 2 |
Christmas in Kerala has always been a special occasion for all Keralites who celebrate every festival with fervour and zeal irrespective of their castes or creed. For most Malayalees, Christmas is not all about cookies, carols, cakes and wine but well cherished moments of family holidays and tours. Probably Malayalees have evolved to be one of the most touring populace in India these days, in a notable shift of habits of the yore . With a larger disposable income in hand and an urge to live life King size, Keralites make use of their holidays to the most.
However , the raging dam controversy , which has unleashed many violent incidents and unsavoury road blockades and political gimmicks on either side of the Kerala and Tamilnadu borders, has created a smoke screen of mistrust and fear. As there had been isolated instances of stone pelting on the Kerala vehicles crossing the Tamil Nadu border and vice versa, people are not willing to take risk. This could mean that most of them would be forced to put off their holidays till the murky Mullaperiyar dam situation is brought under control. Considering the fact that even private vehicles are not spared by the miscreants, holiday makers are virtually grounded without any options to move out of their cities.
In cities like Cochin ,the revelers will have late night party options, dance , special dinners and festivities apart from the elaborate ritual of downing a heady dose of liquor, which remains the most popular party activity in Kerala. On the occasion of Christmas, the festival of compassion and love , let us set aside the differences and work towards a feasible option to solve this nagging dam controversy, which if left unattended will have a spate of long term repercussions on either side. Let us welcome the New Year of 2012 with smile and peace by celebrating brotherhood and empathy!
For further Reading : A compilation of Christmas and New Year articles
Karma Kerala celebrated Xmas with much fan fare and gaiety on 17th December, much before the rest of the world did . It was all about fun, frolic, food and fiesta to put it in a nutshell. From the traditional Xmas activities like carols to the fast paced dance routines, skits and songs there was something for everyone in our colorful Christmas programme. The office was decked up with festoons, colorful balloons and confetti and the excitement was thick in the air.
The programmes started at noon after a sumptuous Christmas luncheon that consisted of typical Kerala delicacies including appam and stew among others. Our boss, Mr.Tejal etched out the strategies and goals for the year ahead and the mood was upbeat as 2010 turned out to be a profitable year for Karma Kerala even as many parts of the world were reeling under the global downturn.
The Christmas gift exchange was the first item in the itinerary where everyone exchanged gifts with their Xmas friends, the names of which remained a top secret till the last moment!. The dance numbers by Shreya, Rini, Tessa , Mary, Thanima, Amjath, Kiran and praveen was the star attraction of the evening; not to forget the swift paced dance number of Sharaz. There were games like passing the parcels and an innovative candle race (where the participants needed to come first without the candle flame going out) among many other games. As they say, all good things must come to an end; so did our wonderful day but not before offering us loads of laughter and fun in a party well organised.
Karma Kerala wishes all its patrons and well wishers all over the world a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Christmas or the mass of Christ that signifies the birth of baby Jesus Christ in Bethlehem is undeniably one of the most popular winter celebrations in the world. The first visible clues of the impending celebration of Christmas start dropping in by October when frenzied shopping and decorations highlight the festive mood in the air.
Kerala too is getting ready to celebrate Christmas with gaiety and religious fervour. However in the onslaught of modernity, the celebrations of Keralites too have undergone a sea change, which has robbed off the warmth of yesteryears. As ready made Christmas gifts, sumptuous dinner coupons and exciting travel deals took over the Christmas market, the flavour of the home made recipes that were so special to Kerala including appam and stew to the simplicity of the hand made greeting cards and stars, has been pushed into oblivion.
This year, the markets are flooded with imported lights and decorative pieces from China that flaunts a low sticker price to lure the avid shoppers. These Chinese lights are available in a bevy of designs and patterns including floral patterns, star lights and many more. This year, the low-cost cane cribs that came all the way from North India has also created a lot of interest among the Christmas shoppers.
With the nuclear family concept taking strong roots in our society, most Malayalees prefer to celebrate their festivals in their reclusive comfort zone far away from their relatives and extended families unlike in the past. But don’t you think that the traditional Christmas with all the merriment and grandeur of the old days was the perfect time to slow things down and to do something noteworthy for mankind. In the break neck speed of today’s high technology world, did our festivals became nothing but excuses to plunge into the party mood, eat, shop and splurge? | <urn:uuid:76af2009-d3c1-4b03-92af-1362d4e102a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.karmakerala.com/news/tag/christmas-celebrations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955559 | 1,114 | 1.6875 | 2 |
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and is full of walks, runs, benefits and events all in pink for this important cause. My friend Vicki of Dessert Divas in Maine was starting to plan a dessert table for a breast cancer event when she asked me to develop some printables to use in her design. I was happy to help, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized there were probably MANY of you out there doing something to raise awareness about breast cancer this month and would benefit from having these printables as well!
In the process of creating my own dessert display, I researched some of the breast cancer statistics–the Susan Komen Foundation was a great resource among others. Everything I read pointed directly to the fact breast cancer is something ALL women should take seriously. Risk increases as you age, and in the end, over a lifetime a startling 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with this disease.
But the good news? Early detection is one of the best tools in fighting breast cancer. So mothers, sisters, grandmothers, daughters, friends…be aware, and be screened!
And this month filled with pink ribbons is the perfect time for little reminders–a Breast Cancer Awareness box full of pink chocolates or a cupcake with a pretty pink ribbon topper to a friend or loved one might be just the thing they need to remember to be well.
To download the free printables, click on the links below:
- Breast Cancer Awareness 2 inch tags
- Breast Cancer Awareness Box
- Breast Cancer Awareness Flags
- Breast Cancer Awareness Hope Signs
- Breast Cancer Awareness Water Bottle Wrappers | <urn:uuid:734efa90-afed-4688-a729-85f3badf07c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frogprincepaperie.com/2011/10/free-printables-breast-cancer-awareness-month.html/comment-page-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944951 | 334 | 1.75 | 2 |
Ten years ago, Debra Hosseini and Keri Bowers had an amazing idea: to bring about a movement to showcase the artistic and creative talents of kids and adults on the autism spectrum. Last year, Debra met another Autism mom, Linda Gund Anderson who had recently published a book Unintentional Humor; Celebrating the Literal Mind™. Together they discovered that [...]
Next weekend we’re heading to Moscow, ID for the Family Enrichment Weekend organized by the Families Together Network. Here is some information about Families Together and what the weekend is all about! Linda will be a featured speaker at the event discussing her experiences as a mother of a child with Autism! The Event: Family [...]
Last fall we had the pleasure of talking with Joan Trossman Bien via phone interview about Unintentional Humor™. Her article The Funny Side of Autism is an interview about Unintentional Humor™ and the literal mind. We enjoyed speaking with her about our book and feel that she really understood what our book was about. Thank [...]
We met Gary G. Porter at an Autism conference last summer. He wrote about our book, Unintentional Humor™, on his blog. See what he had to say below and check out his website http://www.autismkey.com/. The Autism Key article: A common characteristic of those on the autism spectrum is the difficulty in grasping abstract concepts, meaning non-tangible [...]
This describes a person with a hoarse or croaky sounding voice. Long ago, Medieval physicians placed frogs into patients’ throats believing that their secretions could cure a cough. Good thing they realized that was wrong. | <urn:uuid:979c031d-a816-44db-a68a-eb1a65125e0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://unintentionalhumor.com/?m=201203 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950644 | 342 | 1.5 | 2 |
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Printing and Packaging industry outlines path for growth of sector
The nine-member team of professionals that constitute the Printing and Packaging Industry Council (PPIC) have outlined a clear and committed path for the growth of the sector in T&T says its chairman Clayton Najab.
Certified courses are to be offered at the University of T&T John Donaldson Technical Institute to bolster the necessary skill set, now in short supply in this area. The council has also expressed a desire to expand a programme in plastic extrusion now being conducted at select secondary schools across this country.
Council officials are reporting to faculties that troubled teens exposed to this programme were scoring exceptionally high in the execution of their tasks and demonstrating a newfound level of discipline. That’s not where it ends, however, as workshops focusing on packaging ideas, maintenance and training were being held to better certify existing practitioners.
Najab said the sector was already one of seven priority industries identified for business development, expansion and job creation possibilities by Government and this was ideal as printing and packing already had the capability and competitive advantage on which to build.
He cited a six-year-old report prepared by professionals in the sector and submitted to the Patrick Manning-led government. Najab said the proposal which outlined a five-year strategic action plan was accepted by the then government. It contained recommendations in three main areas: alliances for co-operation, competitiveness programmes, market research and product development.
“In order to achieve these objectives, a key recommendation was made which was to establish a Printing and Packaging Industry Council for enhancing the sector’s competitiveness.
The council comprised nine members—chosen from a variety of sectors—a chairman, vice-chairman and seven members from the printing, packaging and plastics industries, the Business Development Company (BDC) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The PPIC works closely with the BDC which is the implementation agency of the strategic plan and has industry specialist and a project co-ordinator as members of the council,” he said.
Using the information now available, Najab said the PPIC hoped to better sensitise the local industry of the need to gear itself up for the new and emerging challenges, trends and technologies as digital print comes into focus.
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Guardian Media Limited reserves the right to remove, to edit or to censor any comments. Any content which is considered unsuitable, unlawful or offensive, includes personal details, advertises or promotes products, services or websites or repeats previous comments will be removed. | <urn:uuid:4c4dec84-0a7c-449d-9553-3cf33d2c5582> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.tt/business/2012-10-21/printing-and-packaging-industry-outlines-path-growth-sector | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960736 | 584 | 1.671875 | 2 |
THE Boat Owners Association has said it would fight LMCC's proposed "natural-waterway" zoning, the toughest protection zoning available.
The NSW government initially directed the council to impose a lower zoning, "recreational waterway", but gave into lobbying from the councillors and LMCC's administration.
BOA members fear the zoning will lead to a ban on jetties around the lake, but council says jetties will continue, subject to consent.
Kilaben Bay resident and boatie, Graeme Knott, said council's proposed zoning may very well prevent that consent.
The BOA wants the zoning to be recreational.
Mr Knott said there was no need for council to require the ultimate zoning and BOA's Hunter Branch chairman, Frank Downing, said the proposal contains "hidden concerns" for the entire boating community, water-based businesses and waterfront property owners. | <urn:uuid:0a357683-70cf-403c-99e9-4904596fe08a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lakesmail.com.au/story/183822/zoning-raises-jetty-fears/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956622 | 184 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Well. Sorry for guys I haven’t done any updates for 2 weeks because I’m currently going through some personal issue which dramatically impact my life.
I’m trying to recover from this disaster and hope I can back on my feet soon.
Anyway, here is a small post regarding what I have found today.
We usually assign 30GB for Windows 2008 C drive from template. However, we have noticed the size of C drive has been consumed dramatically by Windows itself.
After investigating for a while, we have discovered there is a folder called winsxs under c:\windows occupies more than 11GB space.
After talking to Microsoft and we discover following fact.
“The WinSXS folder is in reality all of the operating system files. On initial install all of the files for the OS are stored here and any other instance of the files you see in the windows folder are simply hard links to the files stored in the WinSXS folder. This means we don’t need to have any duplicates of the files which is great on initial install. The issue comes that whenever the OS is serviced such as windows updates or service packs it adds the new updates to the contents of the WinSXS folder but does not remove the old components. This allows us to have good capability to uninstall, not running into any out of order uninstall issues and also allows us to always have the latest version of optional components etc. installed rather than installing a base version then needing to go back and patch it. This can and will lead to many duplicates of the same files being stored in the WinSXS which will cause it to grow in size during the life of the install. There isn’t really a method to be able to clear out these files other than by removing superseded software so that we are no longer able to uninstall back to
it. The only example I know of for this kind of functionality is for SP1 on Windows Vista which comes with an executable called VSP1CLN which makes SP1
permanent by removing all of the superseded RTM code that is replaced by SP1 components.
The behavior you are seeing with the WinSXS folder using a lot of space is not a virtualization related issue, rather it is part of the design of the Windows 2008 operating system. In light of this, using a different kind of virtualization environment to run Windows 2008 will not give different results for the WinSXS behavior.”
So this is another by design feature for MS in terms of having capability to roll back. We have decided to extend the size of OS from 30GB to 40GB instead of using tools to consolidate SP2.
Following is the procedure how you do it.
1. Extend the OS disk from 30GB to 40GB (this is ESX3.5)
2. Right click Windows disk management and right click the C drive and choose Extend Volume… (for windows 2008) | <urn:uuid:770c79c6-c7a7-4a12-bf2d-930f03a761fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://geeksilver.wordpress.com/tag/microsoft/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937949 | 612 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Improvements Being Made to Attract Airline Service
Airline service can't return soon enough to Charlotte County
Airport in Punta Gorda, FL for airport director Gary Quill. The
question is, will the government be accomodating to those ambitious
Quill tells the Sarasota (FL) Herald-Tribune as far as
infrastructure goes, the airport is nearly ready. All lighting and
signage is in place, there's plenty of room for parking -- even for
rental car companies -- and construction of a new 16,000
square-foot terminal is underway.
"If you're talking in terms of capability, yes, we do have it,"
Quill hopes to attract the attention of upstart low-cost carrier
Skybus, which serves major metropolitan areas via distant regional
airports -- all for dirt-cheap fares. He believes an airline like
Skybus could florish at PGD... but the question isn't one of
interest, but bureaucracy.
The airport is involved in ongoing discussions with the FAA and
Transportation Security Administration regarding the legal issues.
Quill believes the latter poses the biggest hurdle, however, due to
the onus of arranging security at the airport.
The TSA states an airport the size of PGD would require five
screeners per shift, as well as an x-ray machine and a metal
detector -- all for fairly limited commercial service. The
government fronts the cost of the equipment -- about $60,000 -- and
pays screeners anywhere from $23,600 to $35,400 per year. The
airport would have to construct a secure area for them to work.
Agency spokeswoman Sari Koshetz says the TSA is willing to work
with the airport.
"We have been talking to the airport, and what the airport needs
to have happen is FAA certification and then we have to approve
their airport security plans," Koshetz told the Herald-Tribune. "If
approved, we would come in there and support them." | <urn:uuid:52eea6a4-a931-49ed-b21a-17428221e55e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aero-news.net/subsite.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=1d6efb6d-d9c2-4e3f-a74f-1e870e72a8b6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943788 | 432 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Dryer Vent Cleaning
The Cleaning Process
- First we turn on the dryer to check if there is any airflow.
- We then pull the dryer away from the wall to inspect if the dryer was correctly installed, which includes the length of the vent from the dryer to the wall and the material in which the vent is made. (Vinyl vents are not up to code and can become a fire hazard.)
- We send the vacuum hose through the entire length of the vent from the wall to the outside. This ensures that we remove any large obstructions so the brush will not cause any clogging.
- Next, we reconnect the dryer system, turn the dryer on and from outside send a brush attached to flexible poles back through the pipe. Since the dryer is running all the loose lint will be pushed out of the dryer vent line.
- Last, we check to ensure there is maximum airflow.
There are 16,700 dryer vent fires every year!
And the number continues to rise. Why? Most people do not know their dryer vents need to be cleaned. They clean out their lent filter and think that is all it takes. But the duct is where the lint can really build up. And the lint is highly flammable, accounting for most dryer vent fires. In addition to build up, improper installation of your dryer vent system can also pose a serious danger to you. During the dryer vent cleaning we will inspect to detect potential hazards such as the presence of flammable vinyl duct or a duct run that is improperly routed. So ensure your family's safety with a professional inspection.
Source: The Consumer Products Safety Commission
Clogged Dryer Vent = Wasted Energy & Money
If you notice that your clothes are taking longer than normal to dry, you could be seeing the first signs of a clogged dryer vent. Before looking for a new dryer go outside and check for two things.
- First, how is the air flow? Is it hot, can you feel the air flow on your hands?
- Is there an obvious amount of lint build up on or around the dryer exhaust?
When the dryer vent line is clogged air can not flow properly. This causes your dryer to work harder than it should be, thus wasting you more energy and money.
When a dryer vent line builds up excess lint it can be a danger for two reason.
- The lint clogges the pipe preventing the steam to properly vent out. From here the steam has nowhere to go and turns into condensation. Eventually the pipe will fill up with water and drip back down to your dryer.
- The second danger can happen when the pipe becomes clogged and due to the excess heat from the dryer it can actually catch on fire.
For easy reference, we can also be reached at: | <urn:uuid:7068108c-3e28-490b-a6ff-a95f2e9b67b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetophattercleaning.com/portland-or-chimney-services/dryer-vent-cleaning.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938559 | 602 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Observations on nature and gardening from an Carolina wildlife gardener
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Colorful winter vegetables
I'm adapting a program about creative and attractive vegetable gardening to focus on urban vegetable gardening (for a talk next week) and came across a photo I took of a mid-winter vegetable planting last December. Impressive, partially because there hadn't a long hard period of freezing temperatures.
Our gardens (in the piedmont of SC and the mountains of NC) are increasingly home to native plants, birds, small mammals, and insects of all sorts. My gardening companion (my husband) is equally the gardener in our gardens. Woody, our rescue Golden, is now putting his own stamp on our gardens. He follows his previous fellow goldens (and my former gardening assistants): Mocha and Chessie. They bring life to our gardens.
I reduce the sizes of most images, but they're still bigger than what's seen on the blog (click to enlarge!)
Text and images are my original work, except where credited elsewhere and protected by copyright. | <urn:uuid:2b9d5562-3f07-49d6-bf08-625081b2bdfb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naturalgardening.blogspot.com/2013/02/colorful-winter-vegetables.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958619 | 221 | 1.8125 | 2 |
This is the first article from new staff writer Lisa Aberle, who has replaced Tim Sullivan.
When I first started reading Get Rich Slowly in 2007 or 2008, financial independence was only a dream. At that time, my husband and I were struggling financially. We had:
- two mortgages
- one car payment
- no emergency fund
- nothing left over after each paycheck
- a zillion home improvement projects to do – and no money to do them
I hated living like that. Some financial pains were our fault, but some things weren’t. I wondered if we would ever get to the point where a financial emergency felt less like an emergency and more like a minor annoyance.
To get out of the hole, I read this site along with many others and devoured personal finance books. I tried to learn everything I could about cutting expenses. And cutting expenses helped, but other things happened to give us a boost.
We sold one house. I got a promotion. All spare money went to pay extra on our car loan, and, once that was paid off, to an emergency fund. I started a personal escrow account to budget for our yearly expenses. As things improved, we gained confidence, and our financial progress snowballed.
We’ve now progressed enough on this journey that financial freedom no longer seems far-fetched. It won’t happen any time soon (at least, I don’t think so), but at least it seems possible now.
Now that it’s more real, I’ve been thinking about the options that would be available once we achieve it. And I want it earlier rather than later. To reach this goal, I need to do several things:
- Live frugally
- Maximize my career
- Make more money
- Save and invest
Though all four things will be (and are) part of our plan, this article is about frugality.
When financial freedom seemed impossible, I concentrated on saving money. While I know I need to make significantly more money (and invest that money) to gain early financial independence, I still think frugality has a place (after all, you must spend less than you earn).
Even though frugality has a purpose, as we started making financial progress, saving time and energy seemed as important as saving money.
I began to question my actions: Would reusing aluminum foil or plastic baggies make a difference to my goals? With unlimited time and energy, discerning the difference between worthwhile (and worthless) actions to save money is important.
Frugality, kicked up a notch
So here’s what I did: I categorized our entire budget into three categories, each one with different advantages and disadvantages.
Fixed expenses. Bills in this category include phone and insurance. My husband and I shopped around for new insurance policies, raised deductibles, dropped services, and picked a new cell phone plan.
Verdict? We are saving $300 per month, and we invested little time. Totally worth it.
Variable expenses. Food, utilities, clothing, and transportation costs make up this category. I waste food, because I still think buying in bulk is less expensive. We also save $1000 annually by heating with a woodstove. Much of our clothing comes from thrift stores.
Verdict? Sometimes I put a lot of effort in, and I’m not sure it’s worth it. For example, even though we get free wood to heat our house and it saves us $1000 annually, I think it takes us 100 hours per year to split and stack the wood. We’ve “earned” $10 per hour with manual labor, but maybe our time is better spent elsewhere,especially since both of us earn more than that in our full- and part-time jobs.
Variable, big expenses. We approached our biggest purchase (our house) with a mix of optimism and stupidity. (So much stupidity that the topic deserves its own article.) We did everything wrong, and I estimate our mistakes cost us an additional $30,000. Oh, and we didn’t negotiate at all when we purchased our last car.
Verdict? When huge amounts of money were at stake, we wasted it. So unfrugal of us.
I’m not sure how much money I’ve saved this year by not buying cooking spray and reusing foil and plastic baggies…maybe ten dollars?
Compare that to our house-buying debacle, the $30,000 mistake. That’s a lot of aluminum foil.
Sure, we probably won’t buy a different house for a long time, but that’s not really the point. If I’m truly looking at frugality as a method to conserve time, energy, and money and achieve financial independence, I’ve been concentrating on the wrong things.
So what should I focus on? Well, when large sums of money are involved, I need to spend my money carefully, in an informed way. That should be obvious, but I think I thought, “We’re spending so much money already, what’s another two thousand dollars?!”
And if money-saving tactics (aluminum foil, I’m looking at you) take too much time, I would be better off using that time to educate myself to make better investment decisions, or earning money in a different way.
That’s just one way to financial independence. But it’s still hard to throw away perfectly good piece of aluminum foil.
GRS is committed to helping our readers save and achieve your financial goals.Savings interest rates may be low, but that’s all the more reason to shop for the best rate.Find the highest savings interest rate from Ally Bank, Capital One 360, Everbank, and more.
SEARCH FOR RECENT ARTICLES | <urn:uuid:fcca4d77-e157-4923-8ab0-ab25afde182a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/09/05/frugality-and-financial-independence/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957748 | 1,236 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Apologies in advance, I don't have a lot of experience in multithreaded programming nor in gtk, and I'm working on this project that involves both.
I have a Python program that's currently used to crunch a bunch of numbers. I want to add a gtk interface to it to display results as they're computed, and to allow parameters to be changed while it's running... I'd also like the thread to be agnostic to the toolkit I use, so I don't want any gtk code in there.
I've moved all my calculations to a separate Python thread. The question is how to properly pass data to and from that thread. Probably a queue, sure, but more specifically, I'm not sure how to handle checking it. That is, the gtk interface is executing its own main loop. Somewhere in there, I need to regularly check some queue to see if there's a message from the thread. What's the way to do that without interfering with the main loop?
Since I don't know how to write any of this, I can't provide any sample code, but here's a simple two-part program that would exemplify what I want to do. I'd like a gtk window with a button and a number box. When the button gets pressed, I'd like the thread to sleep for a second, then randomly choose a number and put it in the number box. So basically, I want two-way communication without the thread knowing anything about gtk.
What's the right way to write code like this? Thanks! | <urn:uuid:ea8b1e9d-f089-4f7c-acb0-ae0d8278f150> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gtkforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=178217&view=previous | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965448 | 325 | 1.796875 | 2 |
The Wii is a must-have for the gamer generation but instead of burning calories and making them fit, it may be giving them aching backs, sore shoulders and even “Wii elbow”
It is fair to say that the Nintendo Wii (pronounced wee) has become the virtual bane of many parents’ lives: it is the computer game that promises to get their children off the couch, or the PlayStation — if only it can be tracked down.
Launched before Christmas, it soon became the most soughtafter gadget in Britain. Yet stores that sold out in December — and there were many — are still out of stock, while the waiting list of impatient and disgruntled junior consumers grows ever longer.
Such is demand for the Wii, which retails at £179, that it | <urn:uuid:10df379b-f6fb-49a2-a304-3a44e9c1c1d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/technology/article1858423.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964929 | 163 | 1.5 | 2 |
After threatening to veto it, President Obama said he would reluctantly sign the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill, which authorizes $662 billion for defense spending also contains language that essentially makes it illegal to close Guantanamo, gives the President power to detain without trial anyone who supported or aided a terrorist group, including U.S. citizens, and requires non-citizen terrorism suspects to be detained by the military instead of according to civilian law. That final element of the law can be waived by the President, but according to Human Rights Watch, "President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law."
-Brett Brownell (@brettbrownell) is video and web producer for Up with Chris Hayes. | <urn:uuid:42480b0d-1ef8-4c9e-87e4-dd5ad2807725> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.com/_news/2011/12/17/9519418-story-of-the-week-the-national-defense-authorization-act | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95271 | 156 | 1.828125 | 2 |
While the Iraq War is being fought halfway around the world, we find relevancy right here on campus. UW Oshkosh has students and alumni who have already seen the war firsthand in the Middle East or are awaiting the order to serve abroad. This multimedia project -- which includes a book, a series of podcasts and a photo exhibit -- gives these student soldiers and Marines a forum to tell the world why they enlisted, what they did and what they felt at the front lines of war.
These UW Oshkosh students and alumni have seen a world that most of us will never see, and War: Through Their Eyes is their story.
The interviews are conducted by Grace Lim's Spring 2009 Writing for the Media class. Photos are taken by student photographer Amber Patrick. | <urn:uuid:16b381d0-24d7-461f-bc4c-5912f1297bbb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uwosh.edu/warv1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968583 | 155 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Agency Workers Regulations
“I have always compared the Agency Workers Regulations to a doctor’s needle – Initially, they look quite terrifying, but they won’t be as bad as you expect, and, if you grin and bear it (and have a strategy to mitigate their impact!), the AWR should have a positive effect overall. If prepared for extensively, and contingency plans are put into place, it should be a smooth transition for most companies.”
- Matthew Sanders, CEO, de Poel
The Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) came into force on October 1st 2011.
Temporary agency workers and flexible workforces play a huge role in UK businesses. Through the economic turmoil of the last few years reliance on contingent staff has grown as companies look for a flexible staffing option.
The Agency Workers Regulations (AWR) came into force last year and is intended to give qualifying agency workers the same basic pay, holidays and working time they would have received had they been employed directly by the hirer to do the same job. This means that qualifying agency workers, which generally speaking will be those that have worked 12 weeks for the same hirer, are entitled to the same rate of pay, the same annual leave entitlements and the same access to collective facilities as an employee doing the same job, but they are not entitled to all of the benefits that the comparable employee gets.
The AWR covers agency workers supplied by a temporary work agency to a hirer. This includes most agency workers that people refer to as 'temps'. It does not cover temporary workers employed directly by the hirer. The regulations do not cover the genuinely self-employed, individuals working through their own limited company, or individuals working on managed service contracts.
Although the temporary agency recruitment market has fluctuated since the implementation of the regulations, demand has largely remained strong. The REC has found that recruitment costs have increased slightly, but the cataclysmic effect that the regulations were expected to have on UK businesses has yet to be seen. What little attention the AWR has received has largely been regarding its non-effect or the so-called ‘legal loophole’ of Swedish Derogation.
Follow the links on the left to find out more or take a look at the Latest Agency Workers Regulations news. | <urn:uuid:777c1c3e-50a3-4010-9d11-aa0c2b9b106a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://depoel.co.uk/agencyworkersregulations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978216 | 469 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Tactile. Carries exhibit to the couch, complements it in gallery. Superb video content. Rothko stuns in high res. How is this free?
- Cons A little chunky. Would do well to borrow some features from its kid brother, the iPhone MoMA app.
MoMA's new Abstract Expressionist app achieves symbiosis with the iPad: if you're an art enthusiast with an iPad, consider this app a must-download.
On Home screen, there are three main categories in addition to Videos: Browse, Map, and Art Terms. Browse offers different ways of sorting the pieces: Bookmarks, Chronological, and Artists. As I navigated the museum, I found myself browsing by Artist because all I needed was a last name. The MoMA was fairly crowded, and I appreciated that the app spared me loitering in the crowds around the placards. I bookmarked pieces that I liked and revisited them when I returned home. The Chronological sort, though impractical for the museum, delighted from the couch. I enjoyed viewing the pieces from a timeline, thinking about how one artist might have influenced another.
MoMA includes Art Terms, a glossary to the application. Terms typically include images and videos. This means that if you aren't familiar with the term "viscosity," you can read the definition and watch a one-minute clip of someone working with paint.
Maps required more attention. Like the video clips, Maps requires the Web to feed an annotated Google Map. The map loads, peppered with purple and black squares. At first, nothing happened when I tapped them, but when I pressed and held my finger, information appeared. Each square relates a landmark. One square marked Barnett Newman's second studio apartment. Another indicated the New School of Design where Arshile Gorky taught. Black squares are text-only, whereas purple squares indicate multimedia content, like images or audio. If you happen to use the Abstract Expressionist app while visiting the MoMA, open the map and take a look at the concentration of landmarks in midtown Manhattan. It's both surprising and humbling to imagine who has shared these streets.
Final points of interest are easily overlooked. There are two tabs in nondescript grey text: About and Buy. About reveals information about the exhibit, book, museum, and application. I didn't even know there was a book, but you can buy it directly from the iPad app. From Buy, you can become a MoMA member, shop for merchandise, or purchase museum tickets, all without ever leaving the application.
Certainly, MoMA could bundle more into the app: more art, more audio, more video. Much of this may be addressed in December when the app is to be updated with "additional audio and other all new content." Further, considering the size of the app, I'm surprised at how much I had relied on wireless connectivity. While I understand that AB EX NY is specific to an exhibit, borrowing the Mobile Guide functionality of the MoMA app for iPhone would make it a more capable companion within the museum. Offering the app for the iPhone, even if it means a curtailed visual experience, would render it more accessible and less cumbersome to carry than a ten-inch tablet.
Imperfect as it may be, MoMA's Abstract Expressionist app exceeds the sum of its parts. Gripe as I might about room for expansion, the MoMA app is, in truth, a Trojan horse. Its utility may be limited from within the museumanyone who can read placards, join a tour, or don an audio headset, will leave equally enlightened, perhaps more sobut its function is to move tickets. (I hadn't planned on going to the MoMA last weekend).
You may find the experience of lugging an iPad around the exhibit distracting; I certainly did at times, for no other reason than all the attention it attracted. But if you think about this as a piece of software, free to be downloaded onto any iPad anywhere with an Internet connection, then it dawns on you: a kid in Idaho, two time zones and two thousand from the MoMA, can experience this content as easily as a youngster from the Bronx.
Experience is the operative word. You can find higher resolution images of Willem de Kooning online. Books can tell you more about Jackson Pollock. But the act of experiencing art by fingertip on a full-size slate complements the content it catalogs. Quite simply, it's how art ought to be experienced. MoMa's iPad app acts as a key to the Abstract Expressionist exhibit and an entrance to the museum. Along the way, it opens up the possibility of the iPad. More iPad Apps:
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More iPad Apps: | <urn:uuid:14982919-829f-4423-a9f0-e7bf95f28dad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373284,00.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941021 | 1,038 | 1.585938 | 2 |
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