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You have to give liberalism a certain amount of credit. It doesn’t work, destroys lives, and pits people against each other, but that’s not to say that there are no advantages to being a liberal. Sure, you may end up sleeping in a tent in Zuccotti Park, reading Noam Chomsky’s laughably ignorant books, or having to watch Rachel Maddow babble incoherent nonsense on MSNBC, but the fringe benefits cannot be beaten!
1) If you’re a politician, no matter how dumb you are or how poor your decision- making is, the press will still never question your intelligence.
2) You can claim to personally speak for everyone in your gender or racial group, like you’re their leader, and the press will take you seriously.
3) You can feel completely superior to people who are more admired, more influential, richer, happier, more successful, and just generally better than you in almost every way (like Sarah Palin) because they’re conservatives.
4) You can declare that other people should have their money taken away and given to the government and still get credit for being “compassionate” even if you give nothing yourself.
5) You can leave a woman to die at the bottom of a tidal pool, use crack, or have a gay prostitution ring run out of your apartment and other liberals will STILL vote for you.
6) You can suggest that black Americans are too incompetent to handle something as simple as getting a photo ID without being called racist.
7) You can use capitalism to make huge piles of money and then turn right around and score brownie points with your fellow liberals by ripping an economic system that made it possible for you to actually become filthy rich writing, making music, or acting for a living.
8) No matter how many insults you lob at people you disagree with or how determined you are to refuse to listen to their arguments, you will never feel as if you’re being uncivil or close minded.
9) You can be a white man who calls himself the first black President without getting in trouble with Al Sharpton and be a serial adulterer who even cheats with an intern without getting in trouble with NOW.
10) You can go an entire lifetime without having a single kind thing to say about America and still consider yourself to be patriotic.
11) Similarly, you can disregard the Bible, ignore slurs aimed at Christianity, and mock people who take their religious beliefs seriously and still consider yourself to be a Christian.
12) You can be perfectly fine with cheating on your own taxes while you call other people “greedy” for not wanting to pay higher taxes themselves.
13) If you’re a minority, you can actually hold a prominent media job centered around regularly accusing other people of being racists.
14) You’ll be considered “courageous” by your left-wing friends when you get up in front of a group of liberals and say things that all of you believe to be true.
15) If you run for office, you’ll get questions like, “(Do you think your opponents are) uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible?” from the media while your opponents will be getting asked questions that start with the presumption that they hate half the country or their economic policies couldn’t possibly work.
16) You can be a former KKK member who drops the N-bomb on TV and people will still deny you’re a racist.
17) You can ride around in an SUV, fly on a private jet, and have a mansion while you lecture other people about the importance of having a small environmental footprint and other liberals won’t have a problem with it at all.
18) You can claim to hold the exact same position as conservatives on gay marriage and you won’t be called a homophobe.
19) You can regularly call conservative women sluts, whores, tw_ts, and even the C-word and still call yourself a feminist without other people laughing out loud.
20) You get to feel comfortable with lying to other people because you know what’s in their own best interests better than they do and if they were a little more enlightened — like you — they’d thank you for misleading them into doing the right thing! | <urn:uuid:3ade652c-2b0f-4563-83f3-d2440b631f40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rightwingnews.com/john-hawkins/20-phenomenal-fringe-benefits-of-being-a-liberal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944041 | 911 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Very much pressured by Tory backbenchers as well as by the rise in the polls of the strict anti-EU ‘UK Independence Party’, Britain’s PM David Cameron eventually presented his long announced and often postponed speech on the future relations of the UK with the EU. No surprise in regards to the content of his speech. Cameron wants an à la carte Europe where each member can chose what she likes, and thus opt out from items she is not willing to digest. In best neoliberal manner, Cameron pledged for a Europe that comes with low-level regulations of all markets, a free trade orientation, national self-control of a widely defined range of core policies that follows the principle of subsidiarity, and a small state approach. In brief, Washington Consensus policies across the board.
Obviously, this is not the path the project of European integration currently is moving onto. Like it or not, and Cameron can rightly point to the grumbling of vast social sectors in many member states, the majority of political and economic elites of the EU favors further steps of deeper integration in order to deal with the institutional flaws of the common currency. These are not full-hearted steps but moves out of desperation. Far advanced in the game, so the hidden assumption of the policy drivers, it is seen safer to move forward than backwards. Whether we are talking about the shapes of a banking union, the already established centralization of fiscal policy control, the financial transaction tax, rescue funds, competitiveness policies, and the like, it goes without doubt that those projects run against Tory instincts, and mostly against the interests of the City of London. It is not of any help that the UK is outside the Eurozone as those steps have unavoidable implications for the overall shape and the working mechanisms of the EU as a whole.
For a minimum, all those projects transfer sovereignty and power from the national to the supranational level. They may even have the potential to weaken the nation states. The Tories seem to think that they never signed up to such a transfer of control and power. Cameron’s strategy to advertise the renegotiation of already generous opts-out rules for the UK is in stark contrast to the functional reform needs of an endangered project. To be clear: institutional reforms that are currently under way or are already accomplished are guided by the wish to stabilize the existing regime by ‘normalizing’ an austerity and competitiveness approach across the board. This approach means more and not less Europe.
The EU is a permanent process of negotiations that ask for compromises from all sides. Even in the current situation it would be wrong to argue that the changing shape of the EU is dictated by Germany. Compromises reign – not an optimal crisis management, but such is life in the EU. Seen in such a light it is not very convincing to argue , as Cameron did, that member states had signed up to a different EU. Sure, the EU of the Treaty of Rome differs in many respects from the EU of the Lisbon Treaty. This is the nature of the beast, though, and not an aberration from the original. No doubt, however, that member states can decide to walk away from such a negotiated institution. Much of the current debate has to do with the simple fact that none of the members has ever decided to do so. So far, the EU is a growing and not a shrinking project. It may be time to rethink this trait.
Let us assume the Tories will again head the British government in 2015 and the planned in-out referendum would result in a majority for leaving the EU. What then? From a purely economic perspective the whole Tory plan seems pretty absurd. Currently, Britain is on its way into a triple-dip recession, this time not caused by an out-of-control financial sector but due to a misguided economic policy that is based on exactly the neoliberal project Cameron and his team want to impose on the rest of the EU. Why should anybody, besides out of purely ideological reasons, favor a project that has failed on so many levels? For quite a long time the UK’s economic growth has been driven by a big and growing financial service sector that has made the UK to a strongly financialized economy. Its lack in overall productivity and a weak industrial sector in combination with an overvalued currency contributed to a meager level of international competitiveness and thus to the deficits in its trade balance.
When the crisis hit, public debt got a hit, too. The change in government and its implied change in economic policy added to the wounds. Rather than taking advantage of the fact that Britain is in control of its currency, the incoming coalition acted as if being under the pressure of the IMF of the early 1980s. Ironically, Washington Consensus policies were introduced at a time when on the global scale those policies were on its way out. It is part of this irony that it was the IMF that sent a number of alerts to the British government to rethink its crude austerity project, without avail. Learning seems not to be the strength of ideological-driven projects. Today, the UK is in a severe crisis situation, and its emphasis on bringing down public debt is pro-cyclical in the best-known way.
With the UK gone the EU would fall back into the situation pre-UK membership of 1973. It would be a less balanced EU where neoliberal market orthodoxies would still prevail but be no longer as strong as today. This is probably the main reason why Chancellor Merkel would like to see the British stay around. Rather than having to do the heavy liberalization lifting herself, she could always rely on the Tories to do the job. Leaving the EU would not mean that the UK gets cut off from EU markets. Negotiations would find a way to keep the relations open. However, Britain would no longer be as attractive for international companies as the European mainland. In time, the UK may also lose some of its financial center privileges, if only due to ongoing EU efforts to domesticate the financial industry and to make it harder for financial actors to move business and operations to the City of London. Having said that it needs to be stressed that quite some water will run down the Thames until all this may materialize. First, it is no done job yet that the Tories will return to government at all. Second, even if this happens it is not clear whether a referendum will succeed. Still, it would be silly not to anticipate a withdrawal of the UK.
Cameron’s speech made clear that the time is ripe to re-evaluate the project of European integration. Continuing with widening and deepening in a kind of business-as usual-manner will not work, nor does Cameron’s approach. Offering more and more choices for member states sounds flexible and may be in the interest of Britain but this would only contribute to weakening the EU as a major global player, and it would undermine its internal coherence. To be clear: it would weaken the EU in favor of the nation state. There is no doubt that this is an option. However, it is an option for an even weaker and even more irrelevant EU. The strength of any integration project lies in harmonization as the source of efficiencies. Moving away from this strength is not the way to go in a multipolar world. Rather, it may be time to restart the whole project. The first step could be to cut the ‘acquis’ into slices and to define an essential core no member can opt-out from. Such a core has to comprise more than the common market. It needs to include the common currency and its attached institutional architecture. The rethinking of this architecture is one key task, not least for gearing up to the best practices of other world centers. More so, the core needs to be embedded into a framework that is guided by the principles of de-marketization. Recall, the current mess has been generated by unfettered liberalization. Some of this misaligned liberalization needs to go back into the bottle.
Would such an EU be attractive for the UK? Not at all, and the same is probably true for some other current members. Disintegration as a process of deepening and shrinking is the future. Thanks to Cameron we now have to truly make up our minds what the European project of the 21st century is supposed to look like. Actually, I think a redesigned project that draws the lessons of the recent disasters is highly attractive. | <urn:uuid:166eb93b-61a3-42f3-8d4c-a0151e6880bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.social-europe.eu/2013/02/shrinking-and-deepening-a-new-pathway-for-the-eu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968016 | 1,714 | 1.632813 | 2 |
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West Croydon is a suburb of northwest Adelaide in southeast South Australia and has a population of around 3,900 (48.9% male, 51.1% female). Around 1035 families live in the area and of those 39.2% have one or more children under the age of 15. 15.3% of families have only a single parent while 34.6% of couples have no children. West Croydon covers an area of approximately 166 hectares (411 acres).
The most common income bracket for people living in West Croydon is between $150-$249 per week (19.8% of people). 5.9% have no income and high income earners ($2000 or more per week) account for 1.5% of the population.
Of the 1461 private dwellings in West Croydon 37% are owned outright by their occupiers, 35% are being purchased (eg. by mortgage) and 24% are being rented. On average there are around 2.7 people per private dwelling in the area. The composition of occupied private dwellings in West Croydon is as follows: 91.2% separate houses, 5.2% semi-detached houses (eg. townhouses, row or terrace houses), 3.6% flats (including units and apartments).
In terms of people aged 15 years or more living in West Croydon 49% are married, 8% are divorced, 3% are separated, 7% are widowed and 34% have never married.
Compared to the rest of Australia, West Croydon has close to average migrant population, with around 33.1% of residents being born overseas. The top 5 countries of birth for migrants in the area are: Italy (4.5%), Greece (4.2%), United Kingdom (3.5%), Vietnam (2.7%), South Eastern Europe (1.3%).
West Croydon varies in altitude/elevation from about 13 m (highlight point) to 21 m (highlight point) above sea level.
The postcode for West Croydon is 5008.
Neighbouring suburbs/regional areas of West Croydon include Allenby Gardens, Beverley, Croydon, Croydon Park, Kilkenny, Renown Park and Welland.
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Are you a keen bird watcher? Have you been bird watching in West Croydon? What birds have you seen in West Croydon? Contribute your knowledge by clicking here. As a Bonzle sub-project, we're trying to build Australia's most comprehensive suburb by suburb bird location atlas. A big thankyou to all that have contributed and continue to contribute sightings.
The areas that make up this are outlined in yellow on the map below.
If you're interested in Suburbs/Regional Areas then you may also be interested in Cities, Towns and Villages and Cities, Towns and Villages | <urn:uuid:b1a11783-055e-4abd-a6ca-e3de8f26f237> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bonzle.com/c/a?a=p&p=288320&s=butterfly%20gorge&m=12&wnb=74839722&cmd=sp&c=1&x=138.5591688&y=-34.888988835&w=2391&mpsec=0 | 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 | 0.940355 | 749 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Bhubaneswar, Aug. 10: Rise in the price of sugar, following a drop in its supply in the open market, has left a bitter taste in the mouth of consumers in the state.
“We are feeling the pinch since it’s festive season. Even otherwise, sugar is a major ingredient in the daily menu,” said Sabita Jena, a home-maker, who has to shell out Rs 42 to buy a kilo of the essential commodity in the retail market as against last week’s price of Rs 36.
Traders at Malgodown, the state’s largest wholesale market, claim that the hike in sugar prices is mainly because of shortage in supply from Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. This has triggered a fluctuation in the wholesale and retail prices of sugar in the past month.
This apart, the Centre’s supply of sugar to the state through the public distribution system (PDS) has been delayed. Though the supply through the PDS forms 10 per cent of the state’s demand, Odisha received its sugar quota for April only this month.
At present, the wholesale price of sugar ranges between Rs 3,800 and Rs 4,200 per quintal at Malgodown. “Compared to the earlier prices, there is an increase of Rs 150 to Rs 550 per quintal,” said sugar merchant Shyam Sundar Bhawsinka.
The state government, however, is keeping its fingers crossed. “The price of sugar is rising in the open market. We don’t have any control over it,” said food supplies and consumer welfare minister Pratap Keshari Deb.
The minister also admitted that the delay in release of PDS quota sugar had pushed up the price of the commodity in the open market. The quota of sugar for April had arrived in the state only recently, he said.
The Centre provides 8,700 metric tonnes of sugar to Odisha every month for sale through the PDS network. This, however, accounts for only 10 per cent of the state’s total requirement of 70,000 metric tonnes per month.
“Out of the total sugar requirement, nearly 90 to 93 per cent is met from states such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu,” said Odisha Byabasayee Sangh general secretary Sudhakar Panda.
The state produces only 3 to 7 per cent of its total requirement of sugar at the three mills in Aska, Badamba and Dhenkanal. “The situation might improve after the arrival of PDS quota for May. The consignment is expected within 15 days,” said Deb.
The minister, however, warned the unscrupulous traders and said stern action would be taken against hoarders. “I have instructed the enforcement squad to conduct raids,” he said.
Sugar merchants in the state are hopeful of an improvement in the price situation as the Centre is going to release additional quota of sugar in the open market.
“This will, in all probability, bring down sugar prices in the coming days,” said Cuttack Chamber of Commerce joint secretary Srikant Sahu.
The release of the additional sugar quota would also effect a drop in the wholesale price by nearly Rs 200 per quintal, Sahu said. | <urn:uuid:063a3521-d5f9-46db-a7a8-f9b9fed1ddb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120811/jsp/odisha/story_15840453.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960774 | 695 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Just what did GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) get for its dime when, in 2008, it dropped $720 million (or 72 billion dimes) to buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals? It gained small molecule antiaging drugs that work, according to Sirtris, by mimicking some of the beneficial effects of caloric restriction mediated by resveratrol, a compound found in some red wines.
Founded in 2004, Sirtris went public in May 2007 and continues as an independent discovery performance unit within GSK. The buyout was another giant coup for Sirtris founder and Boston biotech entrepreneur Christoph Westphal, M.D., Ph.D. He reportedly could earn up to $25 million from the deal as well as a $2 million bonus to stay on for four years to run Sirtris/GSK. All the investors involved also made a bunch of money. Dr. Westphal has consistently done well for his investors: He co-founded and was CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, as well as Acceleron Pharma and was also co-founder of Concert Pharmaceuticals.
GSK believes that it got a good deal, with Sirtris’ drug candidates adding to GSK’s metabolic-disease drug pipeline. The company said that the acquisition reflected its strategy of pursuing the best new science to bring novel medicines to patients and value to its pipeline. But two research papers recently called into question some basics of the new science underlying Sirtris’ drug candidates. Such confounding results highlight the complexity of SIRT1 activation, the mechanism behind Sirtris’ antiaging candidates.
Yay and Nays for SIRT1 Activation as an Antiaging Tool
A group of investigators at Amgen concluded that “the pharmacological effects of resveratrol in various models are unlikely to be mediated by a direct enhancement of the catalytic activity of the SIRT1 enzyme. In consequence, our data challenge the overall utility of resveratrol as a pharmacological tool to directly activate SIRT1.”
Separately, Pfizer found in in vitro studies using synthetic and natural substrates that SRT1720, SRT2183, SRT1460, and resveratrol did not directly activate SIRT1; SRT1720, SRT2183, and SRT1460 were all identified by Sirtris as candidates at some point. The investigators also found that the compounds were highly promiscuous in their interaction. Additionally, their study of SRT1750’s in vivo efficacy in high fat ob/ob mice did not find a decrease in plasma glucose at comparable dose levels to those used by Sirtris and discovered an increased food intake and weight gain in the treated mice. Higher doses of the drug intended to increase glucose tolerance resulted in three dead mice.
These findings directly contradict the work of David Sinclair, Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School and a Sirtris founding scientist. With regard to Pfizer’s findings, Dr. Sinclair commented, “Purity of the compounds that were used in their study cannot be ascertained due to the lack of data provided. The publication also does not cite nor discuss multiple scientific publications that are in direct contrast to their primary conclusions. As such it is unclear how to place this work in perspective of what has been found by other investigators.”
A large body of basic research does indeed support the nomination of SIRT1 activators as antiaging drugs. SIRT1 activation has profound metabolic effects: It regulates glucose or lipid metabolism through its deacetylase activity for over two dozen known substrates and has a positive role in the metabolic pathway through its direct or indirect involvement in insulin signaling. It also stimulates glucose-dependent insulin secretion from pancreatic β cells and directly stimulates insulin-signaling pathways in insulin-sensitive organs. SIRT1 also reportedly influences adiponectin secretion, inflammatory responses, gluconeogenesis, and levels of reactive oxygen species, which together contribute to the development of insulin resistance.
The importance of SIRT1 is evidenced by the fact that inactivation of SIRT1 has significant consequences: Inbred knockout mice lacking SIRT1 show developmental defects, have a low survival rate, and have a significantly shorter lifespan compared with wild-type mice.
Sirtris based its small molecule drug development programs on basic research conducted by Dr. Sinclair and Leonard Guarente, Ph.D., of MIT who showed that caloric restriction in animals, long known to extend life, is associated with SIRT1 activity. The company’s mouse studies showed that resveratrol “induces gene-expression patterns in multiple tissues that parallel those induced by dietary restriction.”
The study also found a significant increase in lifespan in both the resveratrol-treated group on a high-calorie diet and the resveratrol-treated group on a calorie-restriction diet. The treatments, however, did not extend lifespan in mice on a standard diet. The resveratrol-treated mice did show markers for improved cardiovascular health and reduced aortic stiffness, according to the company.
These findings, the company noted, support the idea that resveratrol can mimic many effects of dietary restriction in vivo. Sirtris said that it has developed thousands of small molecules with much greater potency than resveratrol, allowing administration in much smaller doses. Increasing SIRT1 activity, either by transgenic overexpression of the SIRT1 gene in mice or by pharmacological activation by small molecule activators like resveratrol and SRT1720, the synthetic resveratrol, reportedly delayed the onset and reduced the incidence of age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes. Sirtris also reported that SRT1720 improved whole-body glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity in adipose tissue, skeletal muscle, and the liver.
Based on its research, Sirtris is forging ahead with its Sirtuin program with NCEs that are reportedly chemically distinct from and more potent in vivo than resveratrol. In January 2008, the company announced that its first product to enter the clinic, SRT501, was “found to be safe and well tolerated and to significantly lower glucose in an oral glucose-tolerance test conducted as part of a 28-day Phase Ib clinical study in patients with type 2 diabetes.” In April 2008, the company said that the FDA granted resveratrol orphan drug designation as a treatment of MELAS syndrome (mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes). Since then neither GSK nor Sirtris has put out a press release related to its Sirtuin program, but Jamie Morgan, spokesperson for GSK, told GEN that the firm plans a pipeline update shortly.
Nascent Field Is in Need of Validation
And the Sirtuin story will grow more and more complicated. In 2009, MIT’s Dr. Guarente published a study in Genes and Development reporting that sirtuins bring about the effects of calorie restriction on a brain system known as the somatotropic signaling axis, which controls growth and influences lifespan length. “The new study,” Dr. Sinclair commented, “fills in an important missing piece of the sirtuin puzzle—how sirtuins act in the brain to mediate the effects of calorie restriction. Until this paper, the focus has been on tissues like muscles and liver and other organs that control metabolism.”
Richard Miller, professor of pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School Institute of Gerontology, pointed out, however, that Dr. Guarente’s study did not link SIRT1 knockout with shorter lifespan or declining health. The relationship between sirtuins and longevity, he said, is “more complicated than people had hoped would be the case.” He thinks that sirtuins are likely one of many cell-signaling systems that influence aging.
In an April 2008 interview with Forbes about why GSK acquired Sirtris, Patrick Vallance, head of drug discovery at GSK, said “Like a lot of areas of science, it's got its controversies, and like many biotechs in this stage with a good pathway, this hasn't been proven yet. It has to be proven with a medicine.” | <urn:uuid:49d53639-387f-470b-9072-bf9b2df5b7de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://genengnews.com/insight-and-intelligenceand153/sirtuins-antiaging-medicines-or-marketing/75667826/?kwrd=Aging | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954002 | 1,741 | 1.664063 | 2 |
January 24, 2011
Posted: 1531 GMT
As I watched Japan beat Qatar in an exciting quarterfinal at the Asian Cup, I wondered if a team from this confederation could ever win the World Cup. My first thought was “definitely not,” but considering the 2022 tournament is taking place in the region, will AFC nations have more motivation to improve their infrastructure and coaching in order to shine in 11 years' time?
As you probably know, only one Asian nation has ever made the semifinals of soccer's top international event, South Korea in 2002. Now, as well as the Red Devils played, they had the advantage of home support and benefited from some fortuitous refereeing decisions in the matches against Spain and Italy.
Even so, their achievement made many pundits believe a bridgehead had been established for the region’s football teams to mount regular assaults on the latter stages of FIFA’s flagship event. A hope that has sadly remained unfulfilled. In 2006, only Australia made it past the group phase before losing to Italy, while last year Japan and South Korea were dispatched in the round of 16 in South Africa.
In order to analyze the possibility of an Asian World Cup champion, we have to look at the pros and cons of teams from the region. This is incredibly difficult to do considering the cultural and social differences between many of the nations, but it would be fair to say they all share one problem: lack of experience at the top level.
If I asked you to name the top-five Asian players of all time, how quickly could you answer the question? Not easy, is it? The fact remains that few have made an impact on world football's best domestic divisions, where quality opposition and high standards of technique are a week-in, week-out reality. A presence in the top leagues of Europe is required. I would pick out Park Ji Sung, Hidetoshi Nakata, Ali Daei, Mark Viduka and Cha Bum-Kun for their achievements for club and country, but none of them have set the world alight.
Another challenge, historically, has been the style of football. Detractors have labeled Asian teams as soft; as sides that shy away from physical clashes and mid-air tussles. Whether this holds water or not, the record shows that Asian teams have rarely done well against nations with strong center-backs and strikers.
In my opinion, the priority for the top Asian teams right now should be to invest in coaching. The federations in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia should try to sign top coaches from Europe and South America to work with their youth teams.
We have seen what Guus Hiddink managed to do in 2002, and look at what Alberto Zaccheroni is accomplishing with Japan right now at the senior level. If coaches with international experience could influence young, talented Asian players, a football revolution could take place in the region leading up to the 2022 World Cup.
Which leads me to a point about the hosts of that tournament, Qatar. I predict right now that they will make at least the quarterfinals. Pretty bold call, huh? Especially considering they have never qualified for a World Cup. Well I justify this pick by saying that over the next decade this oil-rich nation will pump pots of money into the sport. They will get the best coaches, the best physios and the best fields to make sure that their national team is successful at the event. And as the ancient saying goes, you reap what you sow ... | <urn:uuid:e506e3a2-a331-4764-bbc3-bbb4fe2cb33e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldsport.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/24/can-an-asian-team-ever-win-the-world-cup/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968965 | 729 | 1.539063 | 2 |
“Toto, it’s bleak and rainy. I have a feeling we’re not in Washington anymore.’’
That’s what Dorothy might be saying later this month when a pair of the original ruby slippers Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz’’ are to go on their own journey, traveling to Europe for the first time. They will go on view as part of “Hollywood Costume,’’ an exhibition that opens Oct. 20 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The four-week loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will reunite the slippers with Dorothy’s blue and white gingham pinafore dress for the first time since the filming of the 1939 movie.
The slippers are almost always on display at the Smithsonian and this pair was purchased at auction in 1970 before being donated to the museum in 1979. Since the loan is for four weeks and the show doesn’t end until Jan. 27, 2013, when the real ones go back to Washington, a replica pair, made for the exhibition by the Western Costume Company, which created the originals, will take their place.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 4, 2012
An earlier version of this post misstated the title of the exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum and its closing date. It is "Hollywood Costume," not "Hollywood Costumes," and it ends on Jan. 27, 2013, not on Nov. 18. | <urn:uuid:0a850a23-5061-44a4-b3d7-4792e0e9ee93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/but-she-can-get-back-to-washington-by-clicking-her-heels/?ref=movies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949186 | 326 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Be sure to watch for keeper talks and special animal presentations while you are visiting the zoo. Animals are fed throughout the day and these are times to keep in mind while you are here.
The following apply June through August:
• Primates are fed mid-afternoon.
• Penguins go off exhibit at 7 PM so they can eat and the pool can be cleaned.
• Giraffes go off exhibit at 7:45 PM
• Large cats go off exhibit at 8:00 PM.
Take advantage of this unique opportunity to hand feed the giraffes. The feeding station is open June through August. Please ask ticket booth attendent for more information.
Zoo Members – $8/person or 2 people for $12
Non Members – $10/person or 2 people for $16
Feeding times are subject to change or close due to weather or animal behavior. Please wash hands before and after your feeding experience, hand sanitizers are available throughout the zoo.
Stop by the pelican feeding station and feed the pelican a fish! The pelican feeding station is located on the bridge leading to the duck pond.
Kids are invited to listen to a story followed by an animal encounter. The program is held during July and August. Visit the Education page for more information.
Visit the EVENTS page to view our current calendar of events. | <urn:uuid:57214cec-7e57-4efc-a47d-4060dd5ad9d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rpzoo.com/dailyevents.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954023 | 279 | 1.671875 | 2 |
I’m a pretty lazy person. I like to put things off, drag my feet, and make plans that I know will never come true. Perfect example, Fall 2008 I took a digital systems course where we designed a very basic (2-bit) CPU and I decided I wanted to continue working out of class to make a better one. Initially, I was actually making some progress, but quickly outgrew the basic chips (GAL chips) we were using at the time, so I screeched to a stop. After a few months of poking around, I figured out an FPGA might be a better way to go. However, these are expensive and would take a lot of effort to learn, so I put the idea on the back-burner.
Luckily for me though, my research group started to do some work with FPGA’s, so I was able to get some hands on experience with them. Despite having the needed tools though, I was still dragging my feet on doing any work. Well, a few days ago, I got re-inspired when I found a website about a guy called Bill Buzbee who built his own (and in my opinion) pretty complex CPU. It has all sorts of neat features such as paging and interrupts. Well, that was the inspiration I needed and now, a few days later, I’ve actually got some progress worth mentioning.
I’ve tried designing a CPU several times before, either on paper or just trying to hack out some Verilog code to no avail. I think the main problem is that I haven’t had any clear direction or plan. Because of this, I decided to make a high-level block diagram of the architecture on the computer before I wrote any code. So far, this seems to pretty helpful, as I’ve had several *doh* moments already where I found an error in my design. Doing it on computer (hurray for Visio!) makes it a lot easier than working with pencil and paper too.
As I started my design, I tried to copy what I already knew a little about. In a computer architecture class I took, we had studied the MIPS architecture, so I tried to copy their style of pipelining, though I in no way claim my sketches were anything close to a MIPS design. I quickly figured out pipelining would be pretty difficult for me at this point, so I dropped that idea for now.
After I had revised my drawing a little, I noticed that the memory was being referenced in two separate places in the CPU (see diagram). So this meant that I could do one of two things:
- Revise the whole design to only reference memory in one place, retaining the Von Neumann structure.
- Use two separate memory modules, giving me a Harvard architecture.
I thought it might be fun to try something new (and also not redo the drawing again), so I decided to go with the Harvard style and split the data and instruction memory into separate chips. I might regret this later, but we’ll see how it goes for now.
Lots of designs are using parallelism today, so of course I didn’t want to be left out. As such, I’m going to try to add a second ALU into my design. This would allow me to do two computations at once. This will probably also make the design a lot more difficult to complete as well. I’m going to add a few restrictions to this second ALU so that it will be easier to work with though, such as it will only operate on certain source and destination registers, unlike the first ALU, which should be able to use most any register available. If this part gets too difficult to deal with, I might drop it, but I am going to try to get it to work.
I haven’t yet decided whether I want to use 8/16/32 bits for addresses and data sizes, how many I/O ports to have, nor exactly how many registers the chip is going to have, but I don’t think that is really important yet. Right now, my layout is such that these choices don’t really matter yet. These issues shouldn’t really become an issue until after the instruction set is designed. One major problem I do see coming up is the implementation of the bi-directional buses on the FPGA. What I mean is that I will need tri-state outputs for the bus, but the FPGA can’t synthesize these internally. It can however, do tri-state outputs on the physical I/O pins. What this means is that I will have to physically wire the bus to various I/O pins on the FPGA, which will be a headache. If you know of an FPGA that can do tri-state logic internally, please leave me a comment!
At this point I have started to write some basic code for the chip. Specifically, I’m working on designing the registers and I/O port modules in Verilog. These seem pretty simple, but I’m making a big effort to actually write tests and make sure that they work properly. Hopefully this attempt will pan out better than my previous efforts! | <urn:uuid:2e92a326-a35a-4dd0-a088-39290d315389> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://samuelkerr.com/?p=243 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976312 | 1,098 | 1.757813 | 2 |
You play a computer game programmer (Captain Blood) who finds himself trapped in one of his own computer games. Worse yet, you've been cloned. Each of your five clones has made off with a quantity of your bodily fluids and is hiding out on a planet somewhere in the galaxy. Because of your depleted bodily fluids, you're gradually turning into a machine. You need to find and assimilate those clones before the transformation is complete.
- "L'Arche du Capitaine Blood" -- French title
- "Die Arche des Captain Blood" -- German title
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Atari ST version
The game was originally developed for the Atari ST. This version has two differences to the ports to other systems:
- It is s open-ended. When you 'win' the game, it actually continues, with you still being able to continue playing. There is no real ending to it. When you think about the game plot, this lack of an ending actually makes perfect sense. This feature wasn't implemented in the PC version (or in most of the other conversions).
- The Atari ST version is the only version to feature spoken Bluddian. This is the language the inhabitants of the Hydra Galaxy use to communicate. In the game, you can speak to the aliens by using Bluddian symbols: there are symbols for about every concept in the game. In the Atari version, each time you clicked on a symbol or that Alien speak to you, the Bluddian words are played on the speakers ("numh" for yes, "duhm" for not...) - if you play enough, you can actually learn how to speak Bluddian.
A sequel to Captain Blood
was planned for release at the end of 1988. It is unknown why it was dropped, but a short interview with Philippe Ulrich and Didier Bouchon (in Tilt magazine, March '88) gives a tantalising glimpse of what could have been:
Q. What are we your projects for 1988? Will we see Blood in a new adventure?
A. The development of a second scenario for Blood is in progress. The game system is similar to the previous episode. It is a war against the KINGPAK, which are not the stupid, greedy beings that we know. In their history, they have a social organization, a culture, laws. The interface graphics, all the characters, their knowledge bases will be different. There are sixteen families of characters. They are much more intelligent, are equipped with memory and the capacity to communicate between themselves. The game's characters will have different knowledge and reactions according to each player.
To give you an idea, the conversational base in the first game is 4 KB, and 32 KB in the second. Then we envisage the release in October 1988 of another Blood adventure, which will be even more advanced. This game will contain a space flight simulation part, an arcade part with space combat and a contact part with the extraterrestrials; the interactivity will be larger in each section of the game. In the first game, it is necessary to successfully teleport your enemies into the Ark to kill them whereas, in the next one, the Ark evolves/changes considerably; more sophisticated weapons, the appearance of shuttles and especially Blood will be able to leave the Ark.
Q. Will the players finally see his face?
A. Yes, and the player will be able to put himself in the skin of Blood or that of his/her partner Torka, the Ondoyante. Already present in the first game, she also plays an important part in the second episode.
Interview by Dany Boolauck, Tilt n°52 March 1988, p24
One of the game's alien races, the Croolis, also appears in the second Exxos game, Purple Saturn Day
The EGA version of the game was only available in the U.S. Europeans were limited to playing in CGA.
The original European manual included an short story (in seven chapters), called "The Ark According To Captain Blood". The U.S. manual only had a short synopsis with some major details omitted or changed.
Some versions don'* include the trademark Jean Michel Jarre title music ("Ethnicolor"). Instead, it has a beeper tune composed by Charles Callet.
There are 32,768 unique planets in the game.
References to the game
The game is referenced in the manuals of Purple Saturn Day
There are two releases of Captain Blood
on the Atari ST. The second is like a beta release. No multilanguage, French only, title orange and without design. Some upcom pics are word and not draw and you always begin the game is an izwal.
Tandy 16-color version
It is rumored that a Tandy 16-color graphics version exists, since a slip of paper inserted into the box mentions that it "will be available soon", and that "you can exchange your current disks for a Tandy 16-color version" by contacting Mindscape.
This game was one of the first to use fractal techniques, to generate its flying sequences and rotating planets.
The manual states that the game is limited to 45 realtime hours. This is not true and likely there is no time limit at all.
The U.S. version of the game was censored for nudity. The Ondoyante (naked in the European release) had a bikini-type-thing pasted on.Information also contributed by | <urn:uuid:e38c068a-2a96-4200-836b-c80cf96a892f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/captain-blood | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946466 | 1,161 | 1.671875 | 2 |
State must do better on bridge tolls
Published: Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 2:37 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 2:37 p.m.
The Leeville Bridge is a continuing tale of two political extremes.
On one end, the bridge itself — as part of the ongoing progress in getting La. 1 improved and raised — is a study in efficiency and progress.
A coalition of businesses, government entities and interested individuals were able to see a project that could have taken many decades become a reality in a number of years.
The completion of the bridge was a crowning achievement in the sense that it links the vibrant and vital economic engine of Fourchon with the rest of the world.
It was also a testament to what caring people and organizations could achieve if they worked together to get what they all agreed they need.
The other extreme, though, has been just as evident in this tale.
That is one of complete inefficiency and waste.
The bridge’s toll-collection system — which is what the state is using to pay off the loans made to construct the bridge — has been fraught with problems since the bridge’s opening.
The computer system was flawed.
There were problems collecting tolls.
The toll system required motorists to stop at roadside kiosks to pay their way rather than simply handing over money at a toll booth the way nearly all other tolls are collected.
The punishment of those who did not pay the tolls was mired in inefficiency.
Those who didn’t pay the tolls were never punished. And many of those who did pay the tolls received citations in the mail saying that they had not paid.
Unfortunately, the tale continues.
A state audit released this week says the state has not even tried to collect money from 300,000 people who did not pay the toll but who nonetheless crossed the bridge.
While the state has tried to collect money from some, it has not done so for the motorists who live out of state.
It also never issued citations to people who had toll tags with zero balances on them who continued to use the bridge.
The significance of the problems is high. The state must collect the tolls to pay for the bridge. It must pay for the bridge to maintain the good side of the story.
It is absolutely essential that the state work out the remaining issues that are standing between where we are now and the happy outcome that is demanded by the other half of the story.
The bridge remains an incredible achievement. Paying for it should not be this troublesome.
Editorials represent the opinions of
the newspaper, not of any individual.
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:26e4c1b1-2a5a-4cf9-86b9-6d419a10e15a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20121204/OPINION/121209877/1008/WIRE?Title=State-must-do-better-on-bridge-tolls | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978461 | 579 | 1.53125 | 2 |
One day, Bushman retrieves one of his stories from the stacks of scrap. He starts reading it. There is not much sense there. It’s not a complete story; only a brainstorming.
‘I must complete the story‘, says Bushman to himself. He finds some scrap paper and starts writing.
As he progresses, the story becomes interesting. He suspends his other activities for the time being. He gets stuck into writing.
By the time he finishes, he’s covered a good amount of scrap paper. He is amazed. He smiles to himself. He has a complete story. Bushman stacks the scrap paper in the middle of a Air Niugini Paradise magazine and puts it away. He goes about his usual businesses.
Some days later, Bushman returns home from the buai market. He finds scrap paper lying all over the floor. His youngest daughter sits with her friends outside, all their eyes on Paradise.
They are arguing which one of them is that pretty air hostess. Bushman shakes his head. He picks up the paper and goes to his bed. Lying down, Bushman reads his story.
It is full of mistakes. He makes corrections as he reads.
When he finishes, the scrap paper is full of crossings, asterisks and arrows pointing here and there. The whole is a mess. Only Bushman can make sense out of it. He is sick. He looks around and finds a plastic shopping bag. He puts his scrap paper in the bag and hides it in that place Bushman calls bedroom.
One morning, a friend of Bushman comes along. He tells him about PNG Attitude and the Crocodile Prize. Bushman goes to town and buys a writing pad and some biros. He goes back to his bed and painstakingly starts rewriting the whole story on the pad.
After two hours, Bushman completes the rewrite. He is happy. He burns the scrap paper. The pad takes their place in the plastic bag.
Typing is Bushman’s next dilemma. On the following day, Bushman goes to town looking for a place to have his story typed. One typing shop charges K2.50 per page. The rest charge K3. He chooses the cheaper one.
After two hours of waiting, his typing is ready - three pages in all. Bushman checks the typed story. As far as Bushman is concerned, he is the Microsoft Word 2007 proof checker. He is the grammar, the vocabulary, the tense and the punctuation.
He finds mistakes. He gives the story back to the typist to incorporate corrections. The typist demands an extra K1 a page for the corrections and reprints. Bushman pays.
Scanning and sending the story to PNG Attitude is Bushman’s next double headache. He doesn’t give up. He searches and asks around.
His good friend who introduced PNG Attitude to him helps. He sends Bushman’s first story to PNG Attitude from his work place. Thanks Mero.
Bushman’s story gets published; his greatest delight and satisfaction.
He is happy that he shares a piece of mind his with others. He wishes to write more stories. But how is Bushman is going to overcome the obstacles, or at least alleviate them?
Francis Nii will offer the second part of this story in November | <urn:uuid:592b79c7-3c15-4cdc-88d5-57c325ee851f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2012/10/publication-not-so-easy-the-dilemma-of-a-bush-writer.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971829 | 708 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Paul Lewis begins a two-part exploration into the late piano works of Franz Schubert on October 18 at 92nd Street Y. His appearance at 92Y is part of a Schubert cycle that is taking him around the world. In the following joint interview with Chicago’s Symphony Center, which presented Mr. Lewis earlier this year, he discusses his feelings toward Schubert, 92Y and the cycle approach to programming.
In a recent interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, you called Schubert “endlessly fascinating.” What distinguishes him for you?
Many things, but if I had to point to one particular aspect of Schubert, it would be the way in which he creates a sense of drama. Normally when a composer wants to convey something dramatic, it’s far more common for them to write something demonstrative which jumps off the stage at the listener—and Schubert sometimes does that too. But more often, the drama of his music is of an inward looking nature. When Schubert wants to tell you something important, he will usually lower his voice rather than raise it—he draws you into the message, rather than projects it out to you. His moments of extreme despair seem primarily to be conveyed in that way—which, for me, makes them all the more powerful.
What do you as a musician discover by exploring one composer in depth? How does it change your perspective?
That’s hard to describe, as it’s such a gradual process. Sometimes you might stumble upon a musical “solution” to something that has been eluding you via a different work by that composer. There’s one specific element of the way he writes which I’ve come to see in a different light as a result of studying some of the songs recently. Schubert often writes repeated figures, sometimes just repeated single notes, and it’s easy to see that as an accompaniment—something that shouldn’t be heard too much in the forefront.
But when you look at songs such as “Die Liebe Farbe” from Die Schöne Müllerin, or “Der Wegweiser” from Winterreise, you see that those insistent repeated notes are in fact of huge significance. There’s a sense of fate, or of not being able to escape, which of course represents a certain reality for Schubert himself after his diagnosis of syphilis in 1822-23. This has made me think again about similar passages in the solo piano music, such as the repeated notes in the first Impromptu of D. 899—every strand of Schubert’s writing has its significance, and this particular strand is, I feel, of great importance.
What are the challenges of such a project? Do you ever get bored or feel any kind of “composer fatigue?”
Definitely not! During the years I spent playing the Beethoven sonatas, there was never a moment when I felt bored of the music. Every day I knew there was something new to discover, and at the end of those years it felt like I was just getting started. It feels much the same now with Schubert. I’m not someone who constantly needs to be stimulated with huge amounts of new repertoire—I like to take my time with these things and to see what I can discover in the process. (Maybe that’s just another way of saying that I’m a slow learner….) But I think it’s impossible to be bored with truly great music—and the music you love the most always has the capacity to surprise you.
As you just mentioned, you’re also known for your Beethoven cycles. Are there other composers whose music you could contemplate making into a series?
There are many composers whose music I could imagine focusing on for an extended period of time. It’s really more a question of how you define a “series,” and what the value of that series might be. With the Beethoven sonatas, you have a body of consistently great works that span most of the composer’s life and provide an important overview of his work and development. With Schubert’s music, after 1822, you have some of the most unique and profound piano music ever written, with a darkness and individuality of expression that binds together the works written in that period.
To embark on any such journey, I think there has to be a sense of unity about the series—that way, it really becomes a journey. I’d love to focus on Haydn sometime in the future, for instance, but haven’t yet worked out how I could create a meaningful series of programs. I have to justify it to myself first—otherwise, who’d listen?
This will be your second performance at 92Y? Do you have any specific thoughts about the hall?
I loved playing at 92Y in 2008. It was my debut with a program of Mozart, Ligeti and Schubert. This hall has an atmosphere not unlike Wigmore Hall in London, which lends itself perfectly to intimate music-making, and which makes it ideal for Schubert in particular.
What can we look forward to in your recitals in October 18 and next April? What might audiences particularly listen for?
The “Wanderer” Fantasy is Schubert’s most outwardly symphonic and virtuosic work for the piano. It’s full of orchestral colour—Liszt even arranged it as a piano concerto. I deliberately programmed this right after the Moments Musicaux, which are some of his most intimate and heartfelt miniatures— this is perhaps the most extreme contrast between works in the whole series.
In the April program, I decided to put two A-minor sonatas on either side of the intermission. The earlier one, D. 784, is by far the most austere and terror stricken of any of the sonatas. In D. 845, which he wrote a few years later, Schubert conveys a similar message but expresses it in a very different way. I thought it would be interesting to hear the development between these two works in the same program—almost like flip sides of the same coin.
See Paul Lewis at 92Y On October 18.
» Follow and Connect with 92Y on Twitter, Facebook and more! | <urn:uuid:69deafec-e46b-4f7a-97a8-a4bfaef32f72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.92y.org/index.php/weblog/item/a_conversation_with_british_pianist_paul_lewis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966379 | 1,361 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The American Sport Education Program is proud to partner with the United States Squash Racquets Association (USSRA) in delivering coaching education to USSRA coaches. The ASEP Coaching Essentials online course meets the requirement for the USSRA Theory Module of Level 1.
U.S. Squash is the national governing body and membership organization for the sport of squash in the United States. U.S. Squash is a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee and owns and licenses tournaments including the U.S. Open, the North American Open, as well as all other U.S. championships. U.S. Squash also selects and supports the U.S. teams that compete internationally, maintains the official ratings and rankings system for the U.S., and invests in programs to grow participation in the sport at every level. The mission of U.S. Squash is to enhance people’s health and well being by increasing participation in squash, to enrich the experiences of our members of all ages, and to build awareness of the sport, valuing excellence, professionalism, and fiscal responsibility. | <urn:uuid:8f75fba6-e3ed-465b-9d3e-981bd32ac2b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.humankinetics.com/our-partners/our-partners/usa-squash-racquets-association?ActionType=2_SetCurrency&CurrencyCode=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954826 | 228 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Share Your Blessings Posted By: Patric Chan
When you are blessed financially, emotionally and spiritually, it is truly a gift from God. This is one of the accomplishments you want to have in life. This is why you must be grateful for all the wonderful things that occur in your life
Being blessed doesn't mean you have to be rich. As long as you are able to go on with your daily life, have food in the table, have a decent job and have a happy family then you are also considered as blessed.
Therefore, how can you achieve success and be blessed? Well, it is also your responsibility to "plant and sow the seeds and harvest what you have planted". This means you have to work hard and be grateful for each moment even if you find it difficult to achieve your goals in life.
Take into account that God has been providing each individual the opportunity to be blessed. The proof to this is a passage from the Bible. In Genesis
"I'll make you into a great nation and I'll bless you; I'll make your name great, and you'll be a blessing. I'll bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I'll curse;self improvementpersonal developmentself help | <urn:uuid:39c09927-6bc7-4ef1-943d-fe497243d9ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ereselling.com/articles-2/117-seo-a-webmaster/628-share-your-blessings-posted-by-patric-chan | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975065 | 249 | 1.84375 | 2 |
WASHINGTON -- After a long and chilly four years, Barack Obama hopes to reset his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he makes his first trip to Israel as president this spring.
Obama won't be carrying any big new Mideast peace plans when he embarks on the trip, which also will include a stop in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, officials say. But repairing the relationship with Netanyahu, a key ally with whom Obama often has been at odds, could itself be a crucial step toward reopening a pathway to peace in the region.
In his meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian leaders, Obama will stress the importance of getting the parties back to the negotiating table. But U.S. officials caution that no breakthroughs are expected to emerge during the president's trip and reviving the peace process in the near term is not seen as realistic by the Obama administration.
"That is not the purpose of this visit," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday.
Despite the deep ties between the U.S. and Israel, traveling to Jerusalem is always a tricky prospect for American presidents, given that their visits often raise expectations for U.S.-brokered peace deals. Only four U.S. presidents have visited Israel since the country was formed: Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who visited twice in the final year of his presidency.
Seeking to temper expectations, the White House is emphasizing that the president's focus will be brokering a new beginning with his Israeli counterpart. Both men are freshly re-elected and stuck with each other for the foreseeable future, though each may have hoped for a new negotiating partner.
Obama will enter the one-on-one talks in a position of some strength, having solidly won re-election in November by defeating Republican Mitt Romney, whom the Israeli leader all but publicly endorsed. Netanyahu, despite embarking on his third term as prime minister, was weakened by last month's Israeli elections. A new centrist party had an unexpectedly strong showing, and that probably will force Netanyahu to form a coalition government in the coming weeks. | <urn:uuid:7dd40062-045c-4855-8274-dfffa9f9b053> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.times-gazette.com/ap%20general%20news/2013/02/07/obama-seeks-to-reset-relationship-with-netanyahu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974086 | 426 | 1.742188 | 2 |
The lawyers and human rights advocates said there is a mass hunger strike at Camp 6 that is threatening the health and life of a number of detainees. In a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, they said they have received “alarming reports” that men have lost “over 20 and 30 pounds” and that “at least two dozen men have lost consciousness due to low blood glucose levels.”
A military official said 14 detainees are on hunger strikes and six of them are being force fed. Others have been refusing meals but eating non-perishable food stashed in their cells, officials said.
In a statement, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said “claims of a mass hunger strike . . . are simply untrue.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside organization allowed unrestricted visits to the camps, said it visited Guantanamo from Feb. 18 to 23 and “is aware of the tensions at the detention facility.”
“The ICRC routinely follows the situation of detainees on hunger strikes and continues to do so today,” the group said in a statement. “The ICRC believes past and current tensions at Guantanamo to be the direct result of the uncertainty faced by detainees.”
Officials at the ICRC would not comment on information obtained by The Washington Post that a Red Cross employee was splashed with a mixture of feces and urine during the February visit. Durand said guards have been splashed with bodily fluids.
The immediate trigger for the protests was a series of searches in Camp 6 in which detainees alleged that their Korans were desecrated by guards who looked through them.
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said that no member of the guard force ever touches a Koran and that any examination of Korans would be conducted by cultural advisers at Guantanamo, most of whom are Muslim. He also noted that detainees have in the past used their Korans to hide contraband.
Of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo, the administration has said, more than 80 are cleared for release if they can be returned to their home country or resettled in a third country. But Congress has imposed a series of restrictions on transfers out of Guantanamo, which have ground to a halt.
In January, the administration closed the State Department office charged with negotiating the transfer of detainees and accelerating the closure of the facility.
“Part of this is the general, absolute loss of hope, people having forgotten about Guantanamo and the administration having no plan for closure,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents a number of detainees. | <urn:uuid:d4f194a1-369f-41ae-94f9-dc212141adc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/guantanamo-detainees-frustrations-simmering-lawyers-and-others-say/2013/03/16/47fc4c0e-8d9a-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html?wprss=rss_world | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971018 | 558 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Robots, Weight Loss Surgery, and a Twisted Tale Out of Baltimore
Everything you know is wrong.
That phrase comes to mind after a cluster of surprises from news and research papers this week threw conventional practice wisdom onto the bird cage floor like yesterday's news.
First, there was the report showing that a common surgery for benign gynecologic disease such as fibroids produced no better patient quality outcomes when surgeons performed it using the expensive, and heavily marketed, da Vinci robot than when they operated with traditional laparoscopic techniques.
Only the price tag differed, with da Vinci procedures costing on average of $2,189 more. Yet the da Vinci performed 138,000, or 37%, of the total number of 376,000 procedures done by the robot in U.S. hospitals last year, according to the robot's manufacturer, Intuitive Surgical Inc.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Jason Wright, MD, of Columbia University,prompted a comment from Frank Loffer, MD, medical director of the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists, which has recently raised questions about the robot's popularity despite a lack of evidence that it's a better choice for women undergoing a hysterectomy.
"Mainly this is marketing on the part of hospitals and physicians, persuading patients to come in fixed on the idea, saying 'I want the latest; I want a robotic procedure, and if you don't do it I'm going to go to the guy next door.' Robotics is the latest and robotics is sexy," says Loffer, a gynecologic surgeon at the University of Arizona.
- CMS Seeks to 'Rapidly Reduce' Medicare Spending with $1B in Grants
- Building a Better Healthcare Board
- Case Study: Advance Care Conversations
- Patient Harm Data to Remain on Medicare's Hospital Compare Site
- Quiet ORs Better for Patient Safety
- Hard-Nosed About Physician Teamwork
- Hospital Pricing Data Dump Won't Hurt You, Yet
- CMS Releases Hospital Pricing Data
- Tavenner Confirmed as CMS Administrator
- Evidence-Based Practice and Nursing Research: Avoiding Confusion | <urn:uuid:9875ac4e-1240-40a2-8cfb-f47276e852a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/QUA-289481/Robots-Weight-Loss-Surgery-and-a-Twisted-Tale-Out-of-Baltimore.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930068 | 455 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Health care benefits access and participation rates, March 2009
September 30, 2009
In March 2009, 74 percent of civilian workers had access to medical care benefit plans through their employers; 56 percent of civilian workers participated in such plans.
The take-up rate—the ratio of the percentage who participated to the percentage with access—was 76 percent.
The proportion of all civilian workers who had access to dental care benefit plans was 48 percent, with 38 percent participating, yielding a take-up rate of 79 percent.
The proportion of all civilian workers who had access to vision care benefit plans was 29 percent, with 22 percent participating; the take-up rate was 77 percent.
These data are from the National Compensation Survey–Benefits program. To learn more, see "National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2009" (HTML) (PDF), September 2009, Bulletin 2731. The take-up rate is the ratio of employees participating in a benefit to employees with access to this benefit.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Editor's Desk, Health care benefits access and participation rates, March 2009 on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2009/ted_20090930.htm (visited May 18, 2013).
Spotlight on Statistics: Productivity
This edition of Spotlight on Statistics examines labor productivity trends from 2000 through 2010 for selected industries and sectors within the nonfarm business sector of the U.S. economy. Read more » | <urn:uuid:4cec399b-8494-4048-a26a-dfca204572cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2009/ted_20090930.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938659 | 316 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Mobile Phones Driving More Kids To Declare Bankruptcy?
from the gotta-learn-financial-planning-somehow dept
Textually points us to a report in Australia claiming that more teenagers these days are declaring bankruptcy and it's because they're racking up huge mobile phone bills that they weren't expecting. It's the type of story that certainly sounds plausible -- after all, we know that mobile phones are popular with kids, and every once in a while you hear about ridiculous phone bills. It isn't hard to put it together and think that there are some irresponsible or careless kids who need to declare bankruptcy because of these bills. However, the article doesn't provide any evidence that this is really happening. The single source providing the info is a gov't bureaucrat, talking about a study done by the government, which found that many young people didn't know how to deal with high bills -- which is quite different from proof that they're declaring bankruptcy. She does claim that financial counseling services are seeing an increase in young people seeking to declare bankruptcy, but the article doesn't talk to any such service or get any numbers on bankruptcies among young people (or even seek to find out that, if there are such bankruptcy, how many are due to high mobile phone bills). That's not to say it's not happening. After all, the story sounds like one that is plausible to many people. It just would have been nice to have seen a little more concrete evidence, rather than offhand conjecture reported as fact. | <urn:uuid:fade9aed-13ee-45a4-ab7b-04288b9dd7d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071108/014054.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981533 | 311 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Harvard Business school professor Nancy F Koehn said:
Entrepreneurs look for new possibilities and new markets, should think about 3 or 4 things:
1. Look around you, the social, culture and economic environment, what people do you know care about, what do you feel when you walk on street, what happening in term of where people are going in their lives, understand the broad stage on which consumers act.
2. Look for something, a product, a service , a combination of both you were passionate about, did it really pull your heart strings. follow your passion that would lead to your success.
3. Choice the people that you are going to work with very carefully, the people that you brainstorm with , the people you toss ideas around with, those early disciples, early team mates, those early creators would be very important to you in help you build your wings, and help you get your idea off the ground
4. Believe in yourself, a idea has to come out of ethers, from nowhere, become a something, a product, a service, a company, a market, to do that, you are going to need conviction, confidence, and a lot of believes in what you can do.
Professor Koehn has ensured my idea of starting a chocolate business in China.
China is in its rapidly developing stage, as China's economic booming, new things from all over the world flood into China, western culture has greatly affected Chinese's life style. One of them is confectionery culture.
Compare with chocolate's annual consumption of 22.36lbs per capita in the #1 chocolate loving country Switzerland, and 11.64lbs per capita per year in the united states(rank in #11), China's chocolate consumption per capita is only 100 gram per year. But the coming five to 10 years will see steady growth of 10-15% of chocolate consumption in China. High-end chocolates are expected to see the fastest growth in the next few years, which is also in line with the global trend. Imaging with 1.3B population, if chocolate consumption increases to 2kg per capita per year, China would be the second largest chocolate market in the world, such a great market potential.
Chocolate market in China should be targeted at consumers between age 15 - 45. Most powerful purchases come from young urban professionals. They follow fashionable life style, buy fine quality goods and strive for high social status. They are the frequent consumers buy chocolate at least once a week, and 52.4 percent of chocolate consumed in the Chinese market was used as gifts. The most popular flavor is milk chocolate, then praline chocolate and dark chocolate. The #1 fact that encourage a purchase is the taste of the chocolates; then nice packaging or wrapping; create meaning/stories for your chocolate would be another strategy to attract more younger buyers; of cause, occasion is also a good time to sell.
If you see what I can see, please feedback. | <urn:uuid:cf0a756f-a4f0-4671-ace2-745649eb8c90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thechocolatelife.com/profiles/blogs/chocolate-wonderland-in-the | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963675 | 610 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Sometimes it takes an active volcano. Having been otherwise engaged, I had not travelled across Europe overland for some 10 years. Last Friday, hopelessly stranded in Prague, with my family and office in London some 800 miles away, I took to the road wondering how much the place had changed.
There have been some pleasant observations. The day was glorious, with flowers in bloom, sunshine, and blue skies all along, volcanic ashes notwithstanding. Only if you looked straight into the sun could you see something akin to a haze, something a little smoky, but it could have also been tears from staring straight into the sun. Starting early in the morning, we hit an expressway five miles from my Prague home, and we were off—less than 12 hours later, we left the highway to snuggle inside a Eurotunnel shuttle (the van and all) for a 35-minute ride under the Channel that served as a nice occasion for an improvised dinner of French cheese and Czech strudel. After another 90-minute drive on the wrong side of the road, we were back in Hampstead.
We went through six European countries but encountered only a single border control in Calais, France. To an American audience this may sound somewhat esoteric, but the control was actually British although they lost Calais in 1558. Unlike going through airports—with their ticket counters and security checks—the ride made for a very cavalier sense of a border. It took some focus and observation skills to be able to tell where Bohemia stopped and Bavaria began, where the Rhineland ceased to be German and became Dutch, no, Belgian, only to become France an hour later. Only with the British it was kind of easy, driving on the wrong side of the road.
With no plane in sight and everything green, in bloom, or both, the sense of European tranquility, disturbed only by election campaign billboards at the beginning and at the end of the journey, was striking. Indeed, not just of tranquility but also of the greening of Europe. Whereas in the past you had to wait all the way to Flanders for a sight of a modest windmill, the road has now become a virtual alley of giant wind-driven propellers no Don Quixote would even dream of fighting against. Most of them were not moving because there was no wind. Luckily, in between the windmills numerous sun-harvesting fields have replaced the unfashionable, non-profitable, and non-organic crops of the past. Some of these solar miracles of efficiency are apparently so profitable it pays off to operate them at night with the help of oil-driven generators—the subsidized and guaranteed feed-in tariffs are up to five times those of commercial electricity. Not everything is as green as it appears. And not everything is as anti-green as it appears; the few nuclear power stations along the way seemed to be humming along and looking a little greener compared to a few years ago.
Finally, the politics. In the Czech Republic, we are having the first election campaign where the Internet really matters. The social networking Web sites, virtual discussion groups, even house parties are having their heyday. In the more traditional UK, on the other hand, pre-election TV debates are finally taking place, suddenly raising the specter of “the third man.” It remains to be seen whether the third man turns out to be Barack Obama, or Ross Perot. | <urn:uuid:aef9397e-215a-4654-a462-0cfefe158b68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-zantovsky/road-again?page=0%2C1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975364 | 706 | 1.523438 | 2 |
|by Sean O'Neill||Airport Check-in, Safety and Security||5|
About 20 to 26 percent of TSA workers leave their jobs—or are let go—each year.
The 20 percent estimate comes from a USA Today analysis of federal data.
For years, the agency has refused to simply say how many of its staffers have joined only to later quit or be let go. But homeland security gadfly Annie Jacobsen thinks the TSA accidentally released this info on a blog entry, excerpted here:
“To date, we have terminated and sought prosecution for about 200 of our employees who have been accused of stealing, either from checked bags, passengers’ carry-ons or fellow employees. While 200 out of more than 110,000 employees is a minuscule percentage (less than one half of one percent) over the short life of the agency, one theft is too many when you are in the position of public trust as we are.”
Over at Pajamas Media, Anne breaks down this post in plain English.
—The TSA has a [Congressionally-mandated] work force of 43,000 screeners.
—TSA blog says the agency has had a total of “more than 110,000 employees” in its six-year history.
—That means more than 67,000 individuals who entered into employment contracts with TSA have left the agency over this period of six years
Meanwhile, USA Today says:
One in five screeners left between Oct. 1, 2006, and Sept. 30, 2007, federal Office of Personnel Management figures show. The turnover rate was identical the year before.
Still, it's not clear if a 20 to 26 percent annual turnover rate is high. According to the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "overall U.S. voluntary turnover" hovers around 23 percent a year, according to the most recent tally. In other words, TSA agents leave their jobs with roughly the same frequency as folks in the service industry.
No doubt, the job is often thankless. Training involves two-weeks of intensive classes, and wages are roughly $14 an hour, with about $21 for overtime.
Says USA Today:
Screener salaries, though higher than they were before the TSA was created, are still lower than for comparable jobs. Full-time screeners earned $34,934 on average in 2006-07, federal data show. The nation's 3 million protective-service workers, including security guards, police and corrections officers, earned $37,040 on average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. An average screener supporting a family of four would be eligible for reduced-price school meals, federal eligibility guidelines show.
What do you think about how the TSA hires its staff? | <urn:uuid:dce54ea3-e53e-496f-b2c7-dd3c69d221c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/security-is-job-turnover-high-at-the-tsa,9687/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961066 | 584 | 1.65625 | 2 |
SOMALIA: Benefits - and risks - of Puntland oil
Handled correctly, the oil in Puntland could change the fortunes of Somalia's population (file photo)
NAIROBI, 8 March 2012 (IRIN) - The recent discovery of oil deposits in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, could improve its population's livelihoods as long as it is handled properly, officials and locals told IRIN.
"The discovery of a valuable natural resource anywhere in Somalia is welcome and it should benefit all the people of Somalia. The finding of adequate oil in Puntland would change the lives of the people of Somalia for the better provided it was managed properly and Somali authorities learned from the experiences of other African countries where oil was found. Oil has the potential of bringing corruption and curses to a country if not handled well," said Mohamed Abshir Waldo, an independent analyst and Somalia expert.
Farah Ali Jama, Puntland Minister of Finance, said he was confident that any money from the oil would be handled properly and improve the lives of all Somalis. "I am 100 percent confident that this resource will improve people's livelihoods," he said, adding, "we will not fall into the mistakes made by others."
Jama said any funds from the oil find, which is expected to come on-stream soon, "will not fall into the pockets of any individual or group. This is for all of the Somali people wherever they may be."
However, there is as yet no legal framework in place for who will collect the money. "We are working on a legal framework for the relationship between the TFG [Transitional Federal Government] and the Puntland government on who will do what," said the minister.
He said the draft constitution, which is expected to be completed before August 2012, "will make it clear how resources will be divided”. Until then, "we [Puntland] will make sure that whatever money comes out of this will be handled transparently and every penny accounted for".
Farah Hassan Atosh, a traditional elder and resident of Armo town, 28km northwest of the oil field, said: "We are expecting great things. It will change our lives for the better. Insh’Allah [God willing] we will never depend on others to give us food again."
He said that change was already happening in Armo town (population 25,000). "You can see many more people arriving every day and it can only add to the development of the town."
Drilling began in January 2012, and locals support the project, he said. "We not only support it, we will defend it from anyone who wants to stop it."
He said the project was also contributing to peace-building in the area. "They are employing many young men who would have been idle and easy prey for recruitment into militias."
Awad Husein Ali, the former district commissioner of Armo, told IRIN that residents were already feeling some of the benefits. "Businesses are starting in the area. We have a construction boom going, with hotels and big houses being built to accommodate the [oil] company employees and contractors."
|Oil has the potential of bringing corruption and curses to a country if not handled well
Ali said that even the Somali shilling had started to appreciate against the dollar. "A few months ago we were exchanging US$1 for 32,000 Somali shillings. Today it is 23,000 Somali shillings. Who knows, our shilling may become like the Kuwaiti Dinar!"
New infrastructure projects are expected to follow the oil, he said. "They are already putting in roads and hopefully, schools and hospitals will follow soon."
However, a regional analyst, who requested anonymity, told IRIN that although the Puntland administration had so far said all the right things, "it does not mean that all will be well when the money starts flowing".
He also questioned if Somalis had the expertise to deal with an international oil company. "It is not even clear how much the Somalis will get and how much the oil company will get. There needs to be transparency on how much money the company will get. Is it 50 percent, 20 percent or more?"
He warned that, given the TFG's poor record on handling finances, there had to be "a way to monitor how any money collected is spent. There should be a stringent legal framework in place to make sure that the money goes to the people of Somalia and not to individuals' pockets." | <urn:uuid:d65981fd-c9a3-4373-a8c7-b24c65de6486> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95031/SOMALIA-Benefits-and-risks-of-Puntland-oil | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972271 | 947 | 1.757813 | 2 |
A fishing town with exquisite gastronomy.
Alcanar is in lands washed by the Ebro River. Its origins go back to the Iberian settlement of Moleta del Remei (7th-2nd centuries BC), although it was later occupied by the Romans, and then by the Moors, who introduced numerous agricultural and irrigation techniques in the countryside, used to this day. In the Middle Ages it became part of the Crown of Aragon, and, centuries later, defensive walls were built around the town (Torre del Carrer Nou Tower remains to this day). Defensive towers, such as that of Sant Pere, were also built on the coast.
Some of the most important attractions here are the sea and the local beaches. Its 12 kilometres of clean, peaceful beaches and coves are one of the region's gems. Water sports, hiking and outings to protected nature areas are other things to do in the village, from a broad array of options available. Close to Alcanar you will find Las Casas, a small fishing village, outstanding for its traditional maritime cuisine (prawns, rice dishes and soups with fish, amongst others).
And you can also discover...
All rights reserved. Turespaña / Segittur © 2013
Website managed by: Sociedad Estatal para la Gestión de la Innovación y las Tecnologías Turísticas, S.A. (SEGITTUR) | <urn:uuid:230c04e3-e9da-4e2b-aa14-f5282734594e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spain.info/en_CA/ven/otros-destinos/alcanar.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936549 | 302 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Posted by Kendall Raine on August 21, 2002 at 14:54:16:
In Reply to: remedial thermodynamics posted by TDI_2 on August 21, 2002 at 14:31:01:
Now I get it. Thanks. Oh, by the way, you don't happen to audit any public companies, do you? Just kidding Karl.
PS Hint: If you use a crescent wrench, as opposed to hand tightening, the connection to the first stage, coiling the reg over and over, or metalurgical expansion and contraction, won't cause the hoses to become lose to any material degree.
PPS Why do you use hoses with stainless steel swedges? The standard scuba hose swedge is chromed brass, just like the first stage itself (except for Apollo). You must have yours made custom at great expense. Is this related to thermodynamic principles?
Post a Followup | <urn:uuid:69b4f857-6306-4845-9b63-6d705a1d360a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diver.net/bbs/messages4/32314.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951992 | 192 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Leo Frank Meets Hollywood: Parade the Leo Frank Broadway Musical Goes International
Parade is a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The musical was first produced on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on December 17, 1998. The production was directed by Harold Prince and closed 28 February 1999 after only 39 previews and 84 regular performances. It starred Brent Carver as Leo Frank, Carolee Carmello as Lucille Frank, and Christy Carlson Romano as Mary Phagan.
The musical won Tony Awards for best book and best score (out of nine nominations) and six Drama Desk Awards. The show has enjoyed a U.S. national tour and numerous professional and amateur productions in both the U.S. and abroad.
The whole conspiratorial premise of Gentile anti-Semitism woven through the 21st century production of, ‘Parade’, is to mask the Jewish racism against African-Americans and European-Americans inherent in the Leo Frank Case agitation campaign against Western Civilization. For the last 100 years, Jews have manipulated the Leo Frank case into a fraudulent Jewish persecution themed fiction, meant to demoralize Gentiles, especially European-American Gentiles. Jews don’t consider it a crime if one of their own racial kinsmen pounds in the face of a little White Gentile girl, before ripping her clothes open and savagely raping her, moments before strangling her to death with a cord.
What this re-engineered Broadway play does NOT tell the audience is Leo Frank botched a most deliciously racist intrigue, a poorly orchestrated attempt with Jim Conley’s help to frame the murder of Mary Phagan on an African American security guard named Newt Lee.
The reason the plot would have surely succeeded if Leo Frank hadn’t botched it, is because Negroes were considered third class citizens, and their word was almost never taken over a White man or women. Leo Frank plotted to entrap an innocent negro, to become his patsy, and hang over the murder of Mary Phagan. In 1913 Atlanta, it would have been infinitely easier to convict a low ranking African American nightwatchman or janitor (Newt lee or Jim Conley) vs. a prominent and wealthy White Jew who was well connected in the South. Leo Frank married into a prominent Jewish family, and he was the 1912 and 1913 president of the Atlanta B’nai B’rith, a 500 members strong Jewish Brotherhood that collectively wielded enormous resources. Leo Frank had the best and most expensive Lawyers in all of Georgia.
After Leo Frank’s racist plot failed against the African-American Newt Lee, Leo Frank made a second racist attempt to pin the murder of Mary Phagan on his African American Janitor named Jim Conley, his admitted accomplice after the fact.
The Leo Frank Case is being used by the genetic enemies of Western Civilization as a subversive cultural weapon of agitation, division, demoralization and deracination against Southerners, African Americans, and Gentiles. The Leo Frank Case is being used as another front in the Jewish race war against Western Civilization. What makes this Jewish campaign most grotesque is the recruitment of Gentiles as cannon fodder in their dirty culture war.
Sources for Parade:
Theatre Chic: http://theatre_chick.tripod.com/parade.html
Parade Goes International, Theatre Locations
Nottingham, ENGLAND, Italy, entire EU, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South America, Israel and more than half the U.S. states.
Last Updated: February 28, 2012 | <urn:uuid:91534b3b-0fed-4517-afda-e7851d7574a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.leofrank.org/parade/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94945 | 745 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Micron's glass memory monster chews up slowcoach flash
Chip's got the write stuff
Micron has demonstrated Phase-Change Memory (PCM), enabling an app to run around 50 times faster than it would on NOR memory.
PCM is a post-NAND and post-NOR contender in the non-volatile memory arena; it's said to combine the speed and simple data access of DRAM and the non-volatility of NAND and NOR flash memory. It stores binary values by altering the physical state of a chalcogenide glass to be either poly-crystalline or amorphous. The state, which dictates the material's electrical resistance, is changed by running current through the material.
PCM is one of several candidates posited to replace both NAND and NOR flash as these technologies run into read and write performance and endurance walls as the underlying process shrinks.
There is a somewhat rough and ready video demo on Micron's blog, which shows off the addressability of PCM - there's no need to erase entire blocks of cells before being re-writing them.
Micron's PCM (left) and NOR memory (pointed to by pen; right)
The demonstrated application unscrambles and scrambles an image stored in 128Mbits of PCM and 128Mbits of NOR memory. The image is written out 99 times to the memory banks.
The PCM version of the app unscrambled the image in a couple of seconds whereas the NOR version took up to two minutes, due to the number of block erases and re-writes involved. There is no precise timing involved but a Micron engineer, Brian Bradford, talks of an order of magnitude in performance between the PCM-assisted app and the NOR-based app.
This would mean, assuming 2 seconds for the PCM app and 1.5 minutes for the NOR app, that the PCM app ran 45 times faster. We might assume that PCM would be similarly faster than NAND which also has block-erase requirements before data is rewritten.
With HP stating that Memristor product could hit the market in 2013, targeting DRAM initially, the post-NAND and NOR stakes are hotting up and technology productisation is key. Micron is serving notice that its PCM efforts are continuing.
We also note that Micron has announced details of its 3D DRAM memory cube technology and it is going to competing against Memristor if its 3D cubes are ready in 2013. It also has irons in the spin-transfer torque-MRAM fire, as it is determined to be a force to be reckoned with in the post-NAND market. ® | <urn:uuid:13f089fd-5ca2-4271-acad-5dbe33d5c354> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/02/micron_pcm_video/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955053 | 559 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Testing Fail – Feedback Army Blog Error
Testing fails happen all the time and usually when you least expect them. I stumble across a lot of website issues and document some of them on this blog to point out what appears to have gone wrong plus include some steps that could be followed to prevent this type of error happening again.
You don’t have to be actually testing to find problems and this is the case here. I was having a look at the Feedback Army website, which is a usability testing tool that is currently the most popular tool of its type in our testing tools directory.
I was thinking of writing a review of Feedback Army and so was poking around their website at http://www.feedbackarmy.com/.
The Feedback Army site doesn’t have many pages, they like to keep it simple (and usable). But on several of their pages there is a link to ‘Usability Testing Tips’. It looked interesting so I clicked on it, and hit a big error (see below).
Your server is running PHP version 5.1.6 but WordPress 3.3-aortic-dissection requires at least 5.2.4.
The blog post containing Feedback Army’s usability testing tips cannot be displayed because of some silly server error. Most users click back at this point and possibly click off Feedback Army altogether.
If we look into the error in more detail, we can see that Feedback Army’s blog uses a version of the popular WordPress blogging software, something called WordPress 3.3-aortic-dissection. This version of WordPress needs to have PHP version 5.2.4 in order to work but the current server only has PHP version 5.1.6 and so the error is displayed.
You would expect website monitoring to pick up this kind of error, as the error is not restricted to just this URL but to the whole of blog.feedbackarmy.com (I get the same error if I try blog.feedbackarmy.com or blog.feedbackarmy.com/usability-testing/.
However, because there is a response from the webserver (even those the response is an error message) it may be that the website monitoring has not been set up to recognise this as an error. The URL returns a 200 OK response from the server and so the website monitoring (if there is some in place) may think that everything is ok.
You can run a server response code check on any URL here – http://www.seotools.com/server-response-checker/
Even if you go to one of those websites that tell you whether a website is down for everyone or just who, this is the response you get:
To monitor your website more effectively for this kind of error, you could set up your monitoring to check for a specific piece of text so that if an error such as the above is displayed, it will trigger your monitoring to alert you that it couldn’t find the text you specified.
Of course, the root cause of the problem was upgrading to a version of WordPress without checking the server requirements of the upgrade. But at least, with better monitoring in place, this error could have been caught earlier and a decision made as to whether to roll back to a previous version of WordPress or upgrade PHP to the required version.
I just hope this problem hasn’t cost Feedback Army too many potential customers of its usability testing software. | <urn:uuid:9a225126-332f-4871-8ea6-8af01d20430b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.testing-web-sites.co.uk/2011/10/02/testing-fail-feedback-army-blog-error/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937977 | 714 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat, his wife Soraya, and their 8-year-old son Gibreel were eagerly awaiting their chance to attend the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday (Feb. 24), with Burnat's film "5 Broken Cameras" nominated for Best Documentary Feature.
As they arrived at Los Angeles International Airport after an exhausting 24-hour journey from their home in the Palestinian West Bank, immigration officers detained them. When they questioned Burnat about the reason for his visit, he showed them the Academy Awards invitation on his iPhone, but the officers were unwilling to believe him and threatened him with deportation.
As Burnat and his family waited in a small room, he texted filmmaker Michael Moore, who immediately went to work calling the State Department and Academy officials who then called their lawyers. He told Burnat to “give the officers my phone number and say my name a couple of times.” An hour and a half later, officials released Burnat and his family and allowed them to enter the country.
In the meantime, Moore had tweeted the whole sequence of events to his 1.4 million followers. One of his tweets gave Burnat’s response to the ordeal: "It's nothing I'm not already used to," he told me later. "When you live under occupation, with no rights, this is a daily occurrence."
"It's nothing I'm not already used to," he told me later. "When u live under occupation, with no rights, this is a daily occurrence."— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) February 20, 2013
Burnat remarked later, “After 40 minutes of questions and answers, Gibreel asked me why we were still waiting in that small room. I simply told him the truth: Maybe we’ll have to go back.’ I could see his heart sink.”
“I am already used to this, I don’t know any other type of life, but it kills me that my son had to learn that even outside the occupation and in America he is still a second-class human,” Burnat said.
Life imitates art
Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now!," called Burnat’s detention at LAX “life imitating art.”
In "5 Broken Cameras," Burnat tells the story of life under Israeli occupation in his village Bil’in, on the West Bank. In 2005, Israel began building a wall outside the village that cut off the villagers’ farmland. Burnat’s son Gibreel was born the week construction began. When Burnat bought a video camera to record his son’s young life, he decided to use it to document the villagers’ newly forming nonviolent resistance campaign as well.
The camera often follows little Gibreel in the village and out through the checkpoint to the family’s olive groves, as he learns what life looks like under occupation. “Kids learn many things by themselves,” Burnat remarked in an interview.
In the course of Gibreel’s first five years of life, Burnat lost five cameras to tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and attacks by angry settlers. The film marks off the progression of the growing demonstrations with both the history of each camera and the milestones in Gibreel’s young life.
“I filmed to protect myself and to be a witness,” Burnat says. “My camera is a very strong witness.”
After he had collected hundreds of hours of footage, Burnat asked his friend, Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, to collaborate with him on the film. Davidi had spent several months living in Bil’in covering the demonstrations when they began in 2005. He described the experience in an interview with HuffPost Live. As he lived with the villagers, he learned “how occupation penetrates your life, your childhood, how much occupation penetrates every part of your soul. You lose control of your life. You can’t plan your life. When you set a goal, the occupation takes you by surprise.”
The question of impartiality
Davidi said that in making the film, his role was to “empower Emad’s voice,” rather than to be a representative of Israeli society. Indiewire reviewer Jacob Combs writes:
“Davidi’s conscious decision to focus the film only on Burnat’s experience and elide his own identity as an Israeli allows '5 Broken Cameras' to have the impact that Burnat’s footage deserves, and simultaneously makes it a work that is less journalistic and yet far more moving. '5 Broken Cameras' is not a balanced or an impartial film, and that’s part of the point: it allows Burnat to tell his story, to develop his perspective, both through his footage and through a continuous stream of thoughtful and at times elegiac narration, freed from the expectation that both sides must have a chance to make their case.”
Jared Young, in a letter to Burnat at the Dear Cast and Crew website, turns the notion of impartiality around and says that the camera’s view of events is “true impartiality:”
“In many of these moments, the camera is up close to the action; mere feet away (inches, in some cases), and captures an intensity of emotion that news cameras rarely do. What shows through, from this intimate vantage, is true impartiality, not merely the illusion of it: nowhere is this more evident than in the defeated, almost apologetic way that an Israeli soldier reads his eviction orders when you and your family are ordered to vacate your home in the middle of the night. Often you somehow manage to find a perch behind Israeli forces, and shoot from their point-of-view as they fire tear gas and rubber bullets into the fleeing crowd. This is no impartial piece of journalism (nor is it meant to be) but we get a sense – in camera perspective, at least – of what it’s like on the other side of the fence.”
Burnat describes his film as a “Palestinian documentary from the heart, the mind, and the soul.” He wants the film’s message to “give people all over the world something new about Palestinian life.” The film is “related to the place, the real thing, the true thing,” Burnat insists.
Combs makes the point that the film is about a “very specific place, a very specific time, and very specific community of people. And through this relatively narrow perspective the broader truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict is revealed.”
Among the five nominees for best documentary feature, both "5 Broken Cameras" and "The Gatekeepers" are films that cast Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in a critical light. Guy Davidi said industry insiders had warned him that “pressure was being exerted on the Academy” to stop the two films from winning the award. “Many people in Hollywood are working very hard to make sure that neither film wins,” he said. “From Israel’s point of view, an Oscar would be a public relations disaster and mean more people get to see our films.”
Asked about the film’s Oscar chances, Moore, who is a governor in the Academy’s documentary branch, said that with all 6,000 members of the Academy voting the race was “too close to call.” In Moore’s personal assessment:
“This is not only one of the best docs of the year; it’s one of the best movies. It’s a powerful film, co-directed by a Palestinian and an Israeli. It’s the first Palestinian film to be nominated for Best Documentary. That makes it an historic moment for the Academy and for movie lovers everywhere. For that alone, [Burnat] should have received roses and an official welcome at LAX, not the detention room.”
When Burnat was asked if he had any hope that the occupation would end in his children’s lifetime, he answered: “If you lose hope, you lose your life.” His voice in the film came from “deeply inside,” he said. “I don’t want for my kids to live like this. I hope we can change the situation in Palestine for my kids. We ask for peace and freedom, for my kids to live in peace and freedom.”
I’m looking forward to watching the Oscars Sunday evening (Feb. 24). I hope I’ll catch a glimpse of Gibreel in the audience. His young life unfolding in the film deeply moved me. As a parent, I was drawn in by Emad and Soraya’s hopes for their children. Whatever choice the envelope holds, I hope they and their fellow villagers back home have a marvelous celebration. | <urn:uuid:2341b4d3-1714-40cb-823f-91b83b089672> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://toledofavs.com/culture/arts-and-media/palestinian-filmmaker-family-detained-on-way-to-the-oscars | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974759 | 1,883 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Mali Islamist leader helped Berlin in 2003: magazine
BERLIN (Reuters) - The leader of Ansar Dine, an al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in northern Mali, was once a trusted partner of the German government and brokered the release of hostages in 2003, Spiegel magazine said on Sunday.
Iyad Ag Ghali, a Tuareg separatist commander, was asked by Berlin to negotiate with Algerian kidnappers in 2003 for the release of 14 tourists seized in the Sahara, including nine Germans, later paying them a ransom of 5 million euros supplied by Germany, Spiegel added.
Ag Ghali was "our man", Spiegel quoted a former top German official as saying. The foreign ministry declined to comment.
France has deployed ground troops in Mali and its war planes have bombed rebel columns and bases, halting the Islamists' advance. The intervention aims to stop militants from tightening their grip on Mali's northern desert zone and using it as a springboard for attacks in Africa and on the West.
The region has been occupied by a mix of gunmen since rebels bolstered with weapons seized from Libya after the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi took up arms last year.
Separatist rebels who launched the fighting were soon sidelined by the Islamist alliance of al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and home-grown Malian groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA.
Citing the German intelligence agency (BND), Spiegel said the Malian government had hoped it might negotiate with the Islamists through Ag Ghali, but efforts ended with the push south by rebels that led to French military intervention.
In Germany senior politicians including from the ruling coalition have criticized Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle's response to the crisis as inadequate, reviving a long-running and sensitive debate about the role of Germany's armed forces.
Berlin immediately ruled out sending any combat troops as French forces began their mission, but sent two troop transport planes to West Africa and said Germany would join a European Union training force for Malian troops.
In a piece for Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday, Westerwelle wrote that Germany was "engaging decisively in the fight against terrorism."
(Reporting by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Jason Webb)
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Oklahoma: Supportive Services For Our VAs
Vets of the U.S. armed forces are entitled to a number of services specifically created in recognition of their personal needs. A current list of the help centers in Oklahoma is located here.
Known for taking the lead in the prosecution of asbestos cases, Weitz & Luxenberg won a noteworthy consolidated trial in 1991 in regards to men who had worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the 1940s and 1950s.
We have dealt with 36 clients in that case and secured $75 million. Another case yielded a $64.65 million award for four asbestos plaintiffs in 1996 (NY, docket # 10893/95), and, in 2002, the firm won a $53 million verdict in New York for a brake mechanic suffering from mesothelioma (docket No. 12658-00). The firm has recovered hundreds of millions more for its clients, many of whom formed the hub of the victorious Allied war effort in the second World War.
Formed out of oxygen, hydrogen, silicon, and other metals, asbestos is classified as a mineral. Asbestos fibers are powerful, flexible and will not burn. Asbestos also insulates very well and doesn't break down easily. Other asbestos uses include older plastics, paper products and floor tiles. Usually, asbestos fibers are blended with a material that binds them together, producing asbestos containing material, otherwise known as ACM. Several industrial products are created with ACM, for example sealants, cement pipe and insulation.
Countless Americans were part of the armed services and were exposed to asbestos for decades unaware of the fact that this could one day bring about the mortal disease: mesothelioma.
Dealing with asbestos-related diseases can be demanding. Weitz & Luxenberg can help relieve some of the burden by providing you with a free case evaluation. Your first step is to fill out the form below.
your next step . . .
Fill out a form for a
Learn more about Asbestos | <urn:uuid:e1f12076-255e-4078-9afd-e9e8ec5a6615> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weitzlux.com/VetsFacilitiesOK_403985.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952863 | 412 | 1.625 | 2 |
International Medica Foundation
The International Medica Foundation is a nonprofit foundation committed to the development of medical products and services and the distribution of healthcare products, services and information to families in need in neglected populations.
The foundation has all of the rights to RotaShield®, an oral rotavirus vaccine. The International Medica Foundation focuses on ensuring that a safe, effective and affordable rotavirus vaccine is clinically tested and then can be provided to children in need globally. The foundation also aims to ensure that the manufacturing process for RotaShield is available to manufacturers in countries with the appropriate vaccine manufacturing capabilities.
To combat this killer of children, the International Medica Foundation has a rotavirus vaccine program and is currently developing a neonatal oral rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield®, which has the potential to protect infants earlier in life than the current rotavirus vaccines. The vaccine also is intended to be very affordable to families in low-income, less-developed countries.
International Medica Foundation's Phase II clinical trial of its oral rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield®, has reached the milestone of nearly 1,000 infants in the study that have recieved their second of two doses of either RotaShield or a placebo.
International Medica Foundation and Dr. Leonard Ruiz are featured in the January issue of Minnesota Business Magazine | <urn:uuid:38751990-c925-48d2-8dff-92f94d4de4de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intl-medica.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936159 | 271 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The U.N. Security Council on Friday will impose sanctions on the Pakistani Taliban, an extremist Islamic organization that American officials blame for masterminding the botched May 2010 Times Square bombing plot.
The group, which is formally named Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), will be added Friday to a U.N. blacklist of terrorist organizations linked to al Qaeda. It was already placed on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list last September, some four months after the United States accused the group of attempting to set off a car bomb in the packed New York City tourism center.
The United States proposed in recent weeks that the organization be added to the U.N. list, citing the widening reach of the organization's terrorism targets. Australia, Canada, Britain, France, and Pakistan co-sponsored the U.S. measure. Tomorrow's action reflects that the United States has now secured unanimous support from the 15-nation council, including from China and Russia, for imposing U.N. sanctions on the group.
The Obama administration claims that Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen who planted the Times Square car bomb, acknowledged that he was trained in Waziristan, a stronghold for al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban, a relatively new militant group that was formally established in 2007 and is headed by Hakimullah Mehsud, who has engaged in increasingly audacious terrorist attacks against Pakistani and U.S. targets. The group launched a December 2009 attack against a U.S. military base in Afghanistan and carried out the April 2010 bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan.
The decision to target the Pakistani Taliban comes at a time when the United Nations is seeking to encourage the Afghan Taliban to pursue peace talks with the Afghan government, a necessary prelude to a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.N. anti-terrorism blacklist -- known officially as the 1267 list, a reference to the U.N. Security Council resolution that established the measures -- imposes a set of financial and travel bans that are aimed at restraining extremist capacity to strike.
Follow me on Twitter @columlynch
Longtime Washington Post correspondent Colum Lynch reports on all things United Nations for Turtle Bay. | <urn:uuid:4e28ec52-7fee-485f-883b-eef96afb92ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/07/28/un_slaps_new_sanctions_on_pakistani_taliban_while_courting_its_afghan_brethren | 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 | 0.931054 | 472 | 1.585938 | 2 |
|6. Pornography, Prostitution, and Homosexuality
The dedicated evolutionist may reject the use of mind changing drugs on the basis of the genetic threat they pose to unborn generations and thus to the evolutionary hope of the race. (Marijuana, for example, induces chromosome breakage in human eggs and sperm). But since evolutionary doctrine has done away with moral law, with personal responsibility, and with meaning and purpose in life, what is there to keep a hedonistic generation from seeking pleasure for a season in drugs or any other kind of sin? If the drug user is willing to endanger his health in this life, he should be free to do so. Since moral responsibility does not exist, why worry about the next generation of (human) animals? If he becomes a ward of the state, society bears the guilt for his aberrations and should pay the tab.
7. Education for Social Adjustment
In accord with the evolutionary view of man, since spiritual life and obedience to a Creator are excluded, the highest ends of the individual are to please himself and, perhaps, to preserve the race. Human nature, supposedly being the most advanced product of evolution, is held to be basically good, not corrupt. therefore, self-expression free from external control is the ideal educational goal. Practical considerations would then suggest that the prime purpose of education is the socialization of the individual to bring him into a workable but loose conformity with the group, with society, subject in some degree to group consensus, but not to absolute moral law. In this view the imposition of absolute moral law is repugnant, for it tends to produce feelings of guilt which supposedly hinder or twist the desirable natural course of personal human development. Such an evolution-based educational program, by avoiding all reference to the moral law, to God, or to the spiritual nature of man, is teaching practical if not theoretical atheism. An additional "benefit" arises from the fact that education without a morality based discipline usually produces much learning failure, with many functionally illiterate graduates.
In actual practice this permissive type of education has caused such chaotic conditions in the schools and in society that the evolutionary humanists themselves are frightened. Their response takes two forms. One is psycho-social mind programming and the other is the imposition of increasingly oppressive governmental controls over behavior. Each of these responses is designed to give the elite planners power over a population reduced to the condition of an efficiently operating termite colony in which the will of the planners is done.
As this essay is being revised in June, 1996, a radical addition to the federal stable of education legislation is in committee in both houses of the supposedly Republican congress. It would establish a set of federal standards for public schools across the nation. Each child would have a "smart card" on which his or her entire personal record is stored. At an early age, perhaps around 12 years, counseling would be initiated aimed at determining the course of secondary education and the career goal of the child. The child's parents and the child's preferences would be overridden if the "expert" counselor determined the smart card data ruled otherwise. At the conclusion of the bureaucratically planned educational process would be a Certificate of Completion. And by law employers would be forbidden from hiring any young person not possessing a Certificate! Now what would this do to all private education? Either control or destroy it. What would happen to students who evidenced intelligence and ability, but were deemed to have attitudes or convictions not in line with the humanist/statist goals of the bureaucracy? They would be side-tracked into some form of street sweeping.
The Christian who accepts some brand of theistic evolution has no firm or credible basis for criticizing such a hideous public educational system.
8. Government Control of the Family
Government policy informed by evolutionary theory will aim ultimately to control family life, for family influence shapes the individual's character. Training and socialization within the family unit generally tend to perpetuate traditional values which in America are basically Christian values, grounded in the moral law given by the Creator. This cultural chain must be broken if the evolution-based values of the elite secular humanist planners are to replace Christian values. It is thus no surprise that numerous government plans and programs at both the state and national levels appear designed to weaken the Christian concept of the family or to give recognition to and acceptance of competing modes of life, such as communal extended families, or even homosexual "families." Furthermore, because the race supposedly is still evolving and new technology may be placing in human hands some powerful capabilities of genetic engineering and psychological conditioning techniques, elite planners and power seekers will inevitably try to apply these capabilities to control and remold the race. Such experimentation, even on a mass scale, is acceptable if man is only an evolved animal. One biologist of international repute stated publicly that he would accept the position of genetic czar with the authority to determine which human sperm and eggs would be permitted to unite and develop in selected wombs to create the population of the future! Christians who accept evolution have seriously undermined their platform for resisting such Orwellian schemes for humanity.
9. Government Control of Everything
Created man bears the divine image and has received from God the moral law and personal responsibility. He possesses as a personal being gifts of precious rights and freedoms from his Creator. These are all protected from governmental encroachment in the United States Constitution, the fundamental principles of which are firmly grounded in the conception of human nature and the Moral Law expounded in the Bible. Evolved man, in contrast, bears the image of his ancient animal ancestry, is subject to no external moral law, and is responsible only to himself. The only permanent law for evolved man is adaptive response to the environment for preservation of self and, perhaps, of the race. Since he is a product of his environment and has no eternal personal value, experimentation by government planners is acceptable for the solution of social problems. Since anarchy is really intolerable for everybody, progressive breakdown of the social order demands corrective remedial action. The creationist sees that the key requirement for social order is that individuals have internal personal commitment based upon the sense of personal responsibility to the Creator and His Moral law. The evolutionist, rejecting the idea of personal responsibility, seeks to preserve the social order or to create a new one by forcible psycho-social mind programming and/or external forcible police state controls upon behavior. The goals of the programming and controls are determined by whoever gains the requisite political or military power. These persons, whoever they may be, have the power to constitute themselves as the authoritarian elite who know what should be done to, for, and with mankind. Dreams and actual implementation of such humanist/collectivist dreams can be observed in developing stages at every level of human society today, state, national, and global. A population indoctrinated in the evolutionary view of the world and of themselves is helpless effectively to resist domination by the planners. The Christian who espouses any form of evolution ruins the cutting edge of his spiritual sword, the Bible, having already compromised the Word of God by making peace with the arch-enemies of the God of the Bible, the evolutionary humanists. Their schemes are clearly preparing the world for the anti-Christ beast of the revelation. Christians surely should have no part in these machinations.
The world system, says the Apostle John, "lies in the wicked one." (1 John 5:19) The social, moral, political, and religious atmosphere in which unregenerate men and women live has been created by "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience." (Ephesians 2:2) The theory of evolution is a doctrine of demons taught by seducing spirits. As we have seen, evolution subverts every fundamental doctrine of biblical Christianity. Furthermore, the evolutionary world view dictates starkly un-Christian and anti-Christian responses to the needs and problems of life in this world. In no way can a Christian man or woman espouse evolutionary doctrine and honor God with the implicit faith in His written Word that He requires. It is not possible for a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ to go along with the evolution-based humanistic programs of the world without denying the lordship of Christ and the necessity of the gospel of grace. To espouse both evolution and the gospel of Christ is to be double-minded and lose the effectiveness of one's witness to the world. James said, "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." (James 1:8)
The alternative to double-mindedness is faith, faith which works by love and produces obedience in the believer's life, faith that enables the Christian to hang his life and his reputation before the world upon the Word of God written, the Bible. The Scriptures plainly teach the doctrines of creation which we presented at the beginning of this study. The Scriptures also call upon Christians to be "the salt of the earth," opposing the corrupting influences which flow from anti-Christian doctrines. History is rushing on to its end. Satan is pushing his program of deception to the hilt, and evolutionism is one of his most powerful offensive weapons. In the face of this hellish onslaught against truth and righteousness the Christian can surely accept the charge of the Apostle James, "Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." (James 4:7)
Table of Contents / Previous Essay / Next Essay | <urn:uuid:a95f4820-d2f6-455a-a5ca-aa7efff2f580> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parentcompany.com/creation_essays/essay10.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950544 | 1,927 | 1.75 | 2 |
A Problematic Peace Accord
One month after the fertile Swat Valley turned into a Taliban stronghold where Shari'ah law rules, the fate of local Pakistani Christians is uncertain.
Last month, in an effort to end a bloody two-year battle, the national administration surrendered all governance of Swat Valley in the North West Frontier Province to Taliban forces. Sources estimate that 500 Christians remain in the area after steady violence killed and displaced hundreds and more than 200 schools for girls were burned down or bombed.
An associate pastor at Swat's sole Church of Pakistan congregation, comprising 40 families, told the National Commission for Justice and Peace that after the bombings, all local Christian families migrated to nearby districts. The peace deal has led most of the families to return to their homes with guarded hope for normalcy and for their children's continued education. Most, however, are reluctant to attend church.
"People don't come to the church as they used to," said the pastor, who requested anonymity. He said Christians don't believe the Taliban's promises of peace.
The associate pastor met with area Taliban leader Kari Abdullah to request land for a church building. Abdullah reportedly agreed, saying that his group intended to provide equal opportunities to Swat's religious communities.
But Parliament member Shahbaz Bhatti said Christians in Swat Valley have lived under terror and harassment since the Taliban began seizing control of the region.
"The Christian delegation told me that they favor the peace pact if indeed it can bring peace, stability, and security," said Bhatti. "But they also shared their concern: If there is enforcement of Shari'ah, what will be their future?"
Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information. | <urn:uuid:e5eabb6f-198c-49f3-9ed7-61d3b4f74972> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/4.13.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959799 | 352 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Legislators stopped worst cuts proposed by Gov. Corbett
(Harrisburg, PA – June 30, 2012) - With the final pieces of the budget puzzle put together and sent to the governor’s desk, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture) thanked legislators from both parties and citizens from across the state for restoring funding for vital conservation and alternative fuels programs in the budget that were originally targeted for elimination by Gov. Tom Corbett.
PennFuture also praised the creation of an historic preservation tax credit that will help revitalize our older communities.
But cuts to other environmental and social programs were still significant, even though the final package miraculously delivered nearly $1.7 billion over 25 years to Royal Dutch Shell to build a cracker plant in Beaver County, with weak oversight of taxpayer money and no specific requirements that Pennsylvanians will be hired for the jobs.
“Thanks to many determined legislators, led by House Majority Appropriations Chair Bill Adolph, R - Delaware, several programs and funding targeted for elimination in the original Corbett budget proposal have been saved,” said PennFuture’s Policy Director Steve Stroman. “These include the state’s premier conservation funding program, the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund, and Pennsylvania’s nationally recognized farmland preservation program. Citizens raised their voices to protest the proposed cuts, and our legislators stepped up to the plate.
“PennFuture led the successful fight to rescue another program targeted for elimination, the Alternative Fuels Incentive Grant program,” continued Stroman. “We helped the business community speak up for this program, and educated legislators on the need to invest in a wide range of emerging alternative fuels technologies including electric vehicles, biodiesel, and natural gas. We’re gratified that legislators fought for this valuable program and won the day.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to stop a last-minute $12 million raid for the next fiscal year on the Consumer Energy Program created by the 2008 Alternative Energy Investment Act, and more cuts to the Departments of Environmental Protection and Conservation and Natural Resources,” continued Stroman. “In particular, Pennsylvania continues to disinvest in our award winning state parks, which return nearly $10 to local economies for every dollar of state investment.”
“More than anything, this budget shows the priorities of the Corbett administration,” said George Jugovic Jr., PennFuture’s president and CEO. “At the same time the state is continuing to cut vital investments in human capital and social programs, we are ramming through the governor’s plan to give Shell – the second largest and one of the most profitable companies in the world – nearly $1.7 billion in tax credits to build an ethane cracker plant.
“And while the advocates for the ethane cracker claim it will bring new jobs to Pennsylvania, the language in the Tax Code bill (House Bill 761) approved today provides weak assurances that taxpayer dollars will be well spent. The bill also lacks specific language to make sure those jobs will go to Pennsylvanians,” continued Jugovic. “And they had the opportunity to do just that. The Senate rejected an amendment to HB 761 by Senator Mike Stack, D-Philadelphia, that would have imposed tight reporting requirements to show how many jobs were created each year, the types of jobs created and the wages paid, the number of jobs going to Pennsylvanians broken out by political subdivision, and the amount of public subsidies provided including loans, grants and tax subsidies.
“And let’s be perfectly clear, while claiming to be a free marketer, Corbett is actually using his budget to create winners and losers in the market place,” continued Jugovic. “The governor and House Republican legislative leaders refused to consider minor changes to our Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards that would preserve jobs and investment in the Pennsylvania solar industry, but gave an immense subsidy to Shell with loose protections of these taxpayer dollars.”
PennFuture congratulated the General Assembly for the creation of a tax credit for the restoration of qualified commercial historic buildings. “This is a great step forward for Pennsylvania,” said Stroman. “State incentives for the rehabilitation of historic buildings could play an important role in the revitalization of older communities by attracting investment, creating jobs, boosting retail activity and tourism, and increasing tax revenues for local communities.
“Several legislators deserve special credit for moving this language to the governor’s desk,” continued Stroman. “First and foremost, Sen. Lloyd Smucker, R-Lancaster, championed the legislation and was unceasing in his advocacy during budget negotiations in June. Rep. Robert Freeman, D-Northampton, also championed the issue in the House. I’d especially like to recognize former state representative Tom Tangretti, D-Westmoreland, who led the fight for this legislation for a decade prior to his retirement in 2008.”
PennFuture is a statewide public interest membership organization, founded in 1998. PennFuture's activities include litigating cases before regulatory bodies and in local, state, and federal courts; advocating and advancing legislative action on a state and federal level; public education; and assisting citizens in public advocacy.
PennFuture has staff throughout the state, in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Wilkes-Barre. The Philadelphia Inquirer called PennFuture the “state’s leading environmental advocacy organization,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette named the organization “one of the ten most influential groups on the issue of natural gas drilling,” and StateImpact Pennsylvania, an online collaboration of NPR stations across the state, called PennFuture “the commonwealth’s main environmental advocate.”
Build the Bridge between Natural Gas and Renewables
PennFuture Session Daze
Gov. Corbett requests and receives resignation of DCNR Secretary
Energy Center Re: Energy
Kudos to the PUC for Supporting Global Wind Day
A Bear in the Woods
Environmental Law Blog
Fracking Requires An Environmental Impact Statement
A Climate for Change
We want Gina! We want Gina! And we want her now! | <urn:uuid:2fe42ee1-ab3a-4f01-850d-e9e7c5f37efb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pennfuture.org/media_pr_detail.aspx?MediaID=1469&Home=Y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945462 | 1,292 | 1.507813 | 2 |
ST. LOUIS — Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry on Thursday questioned President Bush's seven-minute delay in leaving a Florida classroom after learning of the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to," Kerry said.
The remarks by the Massachusetts senator -- his first on the campaign trail about Bush's initial reaction to the terrorist assault -- were in response to a question at a minority journalists conference in Washington. And Kerry's effort to cast himself as more decisive than the president led Bush's campaign to deploy former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to swipe back at him.
"John Kerry must be frustrated in his campaign if he is armchair quarterbacking, based on cues from Michael Moore," Giuliani said in a statement released by Bush's campaign.
Giuliani was referring to the filmmaker whose documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," features lengthy footage of Bush sitting through a book-reading session with children after his chief of staff, Andrew Card, told him of the attacks. Moore's narration in the film belittles Bush for his delay in leaving the classroom.
Bush has said he stayed seated to keep from alarming the children.
Giuliani's statement said: "John Kerry is an indecisive candidate who has demonstrated an inconsistent position on the war on terror, who voted against funding for our troops at war and who cannot give a clear answer on his position concerning the decision to remove [former Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein."
Kerry spokesman David Wade said the candidate had not seen "Fahrenheit 9/11." But for a week Kerry's campaign speech has included a line echoing a theme of the scathing documentary on Bush -- the charge that he puts the interests of Saudi Arabia ahead of America's.
Kerry used a version of the line Thursday after he left Washington and joined his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, in St. Louis. At a rally before the two embarked on a train trip across the West, Kerry drew a roar of applause when he said: "I want America's security to depend on America's ingenuity and creativity, not the Saudi royal family."
His comment alluded to his push for more investment in alternative energy to curb U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
Kerry plans to focus on that issue today, detailing an energy plan that includes investing $20 billion over 10 years to spur development of clean-burning fuels and environmentally friendly technology.
The rally at Union Station in St. Louis was the scene of a theatrical send-off for the train portion of Kerry's two-week journey across the country that began after his party's national convention ended in Boston. Over the last week, Kerry traveled in a bus caravan through several of the most keenly contested states in this year's election.
In St. Louis, 5,000 union workers and other backers erupted in thunderous cheers as a blue "Believe in America" bus carrying Kerry, Edwards and their families sliced its way through the crowd to a spot next to the vintage rail cars they would board for their trip.
On stage at Kerry's side was Missouri's best-known Democrat, Rep. Dick Gephardt. And in his speech, Kerry went after Missouri's best-known Republican, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, in an attack on the Bush administration's conservative leanings.
"There is nothing conservative about a certain attorney general
Following his custom, Kerry suggested Bush had rushed to war in Iraq without due consideration of the consequences. That charge drew a sharp, personal response from Bush, who was campaigning in Ohio.
"Committing troops into harm's way is the most difficult decision a president can make," he said. "That decision must always be [the] last resort. That decision must be done when our vital interests are at stake, but after we've tried everything else."
In Iraq, he said, "I felt we had a compelling national need" to attack after diplomacy failed.
Kerry voted for the congressional resolution in October 2002 that authorized the war. But when the Democratic ticket's train stopped in the tiny Missouri River town of Washington, Teresa Heinz Kerry agreed with her husband's accusation that Bush misled Americans in the run-up to war.
"You cannot solve problems by throwing stones," she told a cluster of listeners from a perch on the caboose. "And you cannot solve problems by telling lies, and you cannot solve problems by wishing ill to other people. The only way you solve problems is by holding hands and talking about it, and that's what we want to do in this country."
The Kerry train is one rich with presidential history. Harry S. Truman, whose hometown of Independence was on the route Kerry followed Thursday night, used one of the cars in his 1948 campaign. In 2000, Bush rode parts of the train across the Midwest.
"Our equipment's never been involved in a campaign that lost," said Don Anderson, president of RailCruise America, owner of five of the train's 14 cars.
Earlier, in his appearance at the minority journalists conference, Kerry lamented the concentration of power in a shrinking number of big media companies. He pledged to resist further mergers.
He said his appointees to the Federal Communications Commission would be "committed to enforcing equal employment and ensuring that small- and minority-owned broadcasters are not consolidated into extinction."
Kerry focused largely on matters of race as he spoke to the group, which Bush plans to address today. He was repeatedly interrupted by applause, and some of the journalists gave him a standing ovation when he entered the room to speak and when he finished his comments. | <urn:uuid:ebd6d016-9f49-4ad1-9360-5a0573515e0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.latimes.com/2004/aug/06/nation/na-kerry6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978006 | 1,199 | 1.601563 | 2 |
A few hours ago Chuck Palahniuk shared this on his Facebook page:
“What is the issue that is eating you up? What is the personal fear that you can’t resolve and you can’t tolerate? Are you getting old with fucking NOTHING to show for it? Then, write Invisible Monsters. Are you worried that your brain or talent isn’t capable of creating anything interesting or unique, and you’ll die and rot and be forgotten – failing everyone you love? Well, then write Diary. My point is, use the story to explore and exhaust an issue of your own. Otherwise, you’re just dicking around, playing “let’s pretend.” If you can be ruthless and honest about your own fear, you express something that other people can’t express. You can resolve your own anxiety – through research, discussion, experiment – and that freedom is what brings you back to writing.
What could you never talk about in a million years? Then, write about that.”
I agree with everything he said.
In a way, I always find it funny when people tell me that in order to be a writer, you need a vivid imagination. Or drugs. Or both. But the truth is, that you don’t.
Then there’s this simple question: Why do we write? And why do we feel at times that only the written word can express our deepest fears and emotions, our love and pain and hatred; basically everything we can’t speak out loud.
Truth be told, writing is a liberating experience. It’s like shouting in a crowded place. It’s a way of attracting attention.
In real life, I don’t really like to tackle philosophical issues very often. Actually, I don’t like to talk too much about life, money, love, and other important issues such as the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living. More so, I usually make fun of those issues.
Why do I do that?
Maybe because I’m shy, and that’s why I’m a writer in the first place. Or maybe because I know that the written word has a better chance of surviving the cruel passage of time. I’m not sure, but I know that most of the times, in real life, I do my best to act as shallow as possible. Serious conversations kind of bore me.
I just listen. I smile and nod and act like I’m interested in what everyone’s saying, and then I go home. I go home and I start to write. That’s when everything changes. Because I write about what I love or loved once, about what I hate, what I’m afraid of, what I’d like to see changed in this world. I write about ambition and passion and courage and pain, and there’s nothing for me to be afraid of.
Not the people I shamelessly turn into characters, not the real tragedies that I turn into words… because the same thing I do to myself. Every experience, every kiss, every heartbeat gets dissected countless times. Some of them find their way in my stories. And that’s a very painful process.
A lot of writers out there, if asked, will say that writing isn’t easy. But it’s not because of the rules you have to obey, or the conventions, or the need of a vivid imagination. Writing isn’t easy because you have to relieve the most painful moments of your life, over and over again, and then you have to write them down, hoping that they’ll matter to someone else other than yourself. | <urn:uuid:0d02b8c9-958e-44fd-ac1e-da382dadba74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cristianmihai.net/2012/11/30/what-we-write-about-tells-us-who-we-are/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=5b12459335 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942416 | 786 | 1.5 | 2 |
Everything has a lighter side. And now, the lighter side of The Smiths. (If MAD was still running The Lighter Side strip, that would be a great one. Or are they? Do they still exist?) The root causes of Morrissey songs are most often debatable, but this one is pretty clearly inspired by his short-lived flirtation with gainful employment. He’d labored briefly as a clerk in a tax office, hated it and spent most of his pre-fame life mooching off the government. It’s also thought to be partly inspired by The Smiths’ by-then strained relationship with their handlers at the Rough Trade record label, a relationship that would continue, in animosity, until the band’s demise in 1987. The legend goes that label boss Geoff Travis did indeed attempt to write ‘bloody awful’ poetry, thus earning Morrissey’s eternal contempt.
All these interesting facts I got perusing my brand new Mozipedia, which I have just purchased after a lengthy search. Author Simon Goddard is widely accepted as the world’s leading expert on all things Morrissey, which isn’t yet something you can get a PhD in, but probably will be within my lifetime, if not Morrissey’s. Goddard has written the self-explanatory Mozipedia, and Songs That Saved Your Life an exhaustive compendium of the when, where, how and why behind every song The Smiths ever recorded. Therein, according to Goddard, Frankly Mr. Shankly is “The Smiths at their most vaudevillian extreme” because “The manifest music-hall wit of its lyrics transpose even to Marr’s complementary, tongue-in-cheek score…” And so on in a similar spirit. If that seems overwhelmingly academic for a pop song, it’s nothing compared to Gavin Hopps’s treatise Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart, which is highfalutin to the point of being unreadable. Hopps has filled his book with mind-straining lines like (regarding Reel Around the Fountain):
“Morrissey’s use of ‘half,’ which is foregrounded by the parallelism with the previous section, quietly complicates everything and encourages speculation by tantalizingly telling us much less than it appears to [...] we remain outside the narrative, and are left to read backwards from effect to cause across a comical aporetic boundary.”
I was left in some doubt whether Hopps has in fact written an honest-to-God PhD level assessment of the works of Morrissey if read as literature, or if the whole thing is a massive joke satirizing the self-seriousness, willful obscurity and incomprehensible jargon of academic writing. For being filled with footnotes in minuscule type and the contorted, syllable-heavy vocabulary of academia, Hopps’s book is nonetheless useless as research material, for not having an index (though a ten-page bibliography is handily present.) One wonders at the inherent hilarity of treating Morrissey – in the end, a pop star, devilishly literate though he is – with such scholarly reverence. Though how can I judge poor Gavin Hopps? In my own meagre critical output, my longest rants and raves have been about ol’ Mozzer. He is, in his own sick way, one of pop’s great pied pipers. Just like Bowie has been someone to dress up for, Morrissey is someone to write for. | <urn:uuid:ab5e6877-e206-4e0a-bbf3-f533da945bf0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ladygarfunkel.wordpress.com/tag/simon-goddard/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9595 | 753 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Bring GOOD Ideas for Cities to Your City: Download Our Toolkit
Since 2008, we've been we've been hosting GOOD Ideas for Cities events across the country, where local creatives team up with civic leaders to solve real-life urban challenges. The initiative has resulted in dozens of implemented solutions, from a board game that helps house the homeless in L.A., to a neighborhood revitalization project in Dallas, to a network of urban beacons which connects St. Louis both physically and virtually.
Now, in partnership with CEOs for Cities, and thanks to a generous grant from ArtPlace, we've published a toolkit that will allow anyone who wants to make a difference in their community to launch a GOOD Ideas for Cities initiative locally.
The GOOD Ideas for Cities toolkit is a step-by-step guide that contains everything you need to know, from reaching out to urban leaders to recruiting creative teams to working with local partners to planning an awesome event. Additionally, the toolkit features essays by leaders from six cities that hosted events in 2012 who share their best practices and unique innovations. Thanks to ArtPlace, we're able to make the toolkit free and readily available online—so you can start bringing good ideas to your city today.
(Click the button above to open the PDF in your browser, or right-click and "download linked file" to save to your desktop.)
Here are a few sneak peeks at the toolkit content:
GOOD Ideas for Cities pairs creative problem-solvers with real urban challenges proposed by civic leaders. To learn more visit good.is/ideasforcities. Watch more videos of recent GOOD Ideas for Cities events, and if you'd like to talk about bringing the program to your city or school, email alissa[at]goodinc[dot]com or follow us at @IdeasforCities | <urn:uuid:4c24251c-e7a5-4428-be9e-5425d3f1d752> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.good.is/posts/bring-good-ideas-for-cities-to-your-city-download-our-toolkit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930948 | 380 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Thanks to Tomomi Sasaki (coincidentally of AQ, whose AQ Lift we recently featured) for the tip on this very cool Twitter language visualization from Eric Fischer. It shows all the languages being used on Twitter an a single, multi-colored world map. While Europe is probably the most colorful, we thought we’d zoom in on the Asia portion and see how it looks.
As you can see, there are very dense patches for Japanese, Korean, and Indonesia. In China, where Twitter remains blocked, there are small patches of activity. Thai is well represented too, as is Malay which is a little tough to see as the color is a little hard to distinguish from Indonesian. On the left India shows a lot of dark grey which is the color chosen for English.
Check out the Asia portion of the map below for a closer look. The country labels were added by us here at Penn Olson, and not by the original creator. | <urn:uuid:6e0a3840-2776-46ac-bb2a-d88be0aca929> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techinasia.com/twitter-asia-map/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957754 | 194 | 1.640625 | 2 |
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The fate of healthcare reform in the U.S. Senate seems to be resting with these four women: Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, and Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe.
This new bipartisan gang of four could be key to removing the heavily partisan debate dogging the legislation. Even though I only agree with two of them, I'm thrilled to see women's growing power in national politics. It's something we've all wanted for some time. As the New York Times reported:
When Senate Democratic leaders first went behind closed doors to complete the healthcare legislation, the only women in the room were either committee staff members or officials from the White House. The senators there — Harry Reid of Nevada, Max Baucus of Montana and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut—reflected the Senate's predominant history as an old-boys' club.
Bi-partisan gangs are the key to passage of most controversial legislation. Healthcare reform is certainly turning out to be highly partisan.
The fact that the gang this time is an all-girls club instead of an ol' boys club is historic. That especially since among the 100 U.S. Senate seats, only 17 are held by women. Who ever thought that this far after 1992, the so-called Year of the Woman in politics, the number of women in the Senate would still be so small? Progress is slow, achingly slow, when it comes to women's advancement. | <urn:uuid:fddb44cb-04a9-41ea-9c18-d668e3cfd495> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/erbe/2009/11/25/healthcare-reforms-fate-lies-in-the-hands-of-four-women | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943557 | 317 | 1.78125 | 2 |
AD to decriminalise personal drug use
Alternattiva Demokratika has pledged to decriminalise personal use of drugs use if elected to Parliament, AD Chairperson Michael Briguglio argued.
The AD Chairperson added that the victims of drug addiction and dependency are to be considered as persons in need of help and not as criminals. “Decriminalization also ensures that recreational drug users, including those who cultivate soft drugs for personal use, are not criminalized for their lifestyle," he concluded
The law regarding the cultivation of marijuana plants is absurd, AD spokesperson for citizenship Robert Callus announced. He expressed solidarity with David Caruana, who is being accused with dealing cannabis even though his cultivation of two plants indicates it was solely personal use.
"The law puts people who are drug users who never had any intention to sell at par with drug dealers,” Robert Callus said. People who have caused no harm are being imprisoned, sometimes for ridiculously long periods of time he added, concluding that Daniel Holmes is another case in point. | <urn:uuid:4f60c86b-5a8c-4c13-8b51-ec05907926fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.di-ve.com/elections-2013/ad-decriminalise-personal-drug-use | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96861 | 210 | 1.554688 | 2 |
September 20, 2006
AG Calls for New Data Retention Laws
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is asking Congress to pass a law that will require Internet providers to retain customer records of their Internet usage for two years to better help the government investigate cases of child pornography and terrorism. News reports indicate that Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller met with he major Internet providers to press them on the subject. Other reports have indicated that some providers have increased their data preservation times to help head off legislation. That won't stop the Attorney General, however, as he appeared before the Senate Banking Committee over the need for such a law.
Internet providers and some businesses have had unease over these proposals based on their promises of customer privacy and a general feeling that privacy is one of the civil liberties that people take seriously. Preserving data may affect the way people use the Internet in terms of shopping and other transactions if users feared the information was turned over to the government.
Most of the talk from the government says the information that should be preserved would be matching IP addresses to web site visits, email, and messaging. The content would not need to be preserved as much as the paths these communications take and their final destination. The government would obtain the data via subpoena. This, of course, is the same government that decided on its own that the subpoena process was too slow and cumbersome in terrorism cases so it simply ignored the requirement in the FISA law. One could legitimately ask that with that kind of a track record, why would this government respect the subpoena requirement in this situation?
The major phone companies provident Internet access have not been models of civil libertarians by some measures. AT&T, Verizon, and others are being sued by providing customer records to the government without a subpoena. In fact, AT&T recently changed its customer agreement to make the data property of the company to avoid such suits in the future. In the meantime, the government has tried to get the suit against AT&T dismissed on the grounds that it would reveal state secrets. That alone is somewhat of an admission that something funny is going on. Bob Dylan said it best when he sang "Because something is happening here, but you don't know what it is
do you, Mister Jones?"
Another problem lurking in the background of all this is the other possible uses of the mountains of data that will sit out there. Divorces, cheating spouses, viewing and or purchases of legal but tasteless products (use your imagination), could be subject to subpoena in private litigation. And then there is the matter of out of state purchases on the Internet. How many people actually report those purchases to pay sales tax on their state returns? Now state governments could have a way to put teeth in compliance with that line of the tax return. Sure, the current proposals don't require preserving that kind of information for purposes of the war on terrorism. It would be easier for the government to extend laws passed than to go for the whole thing at once. If Congress goes along with this, it should put strict limits on the government's ability to bypass the courts in validating requests for data. Given the current composition of Congress, however, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.
September 20, 2006 | Permalink
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Since its seems to be a growing trend over the past year or two for high end department stores and boutiques to carry trendy, expensive OBEY t-shirts, The Blot felt it was important to enlighten readers of where this OBEY clothing line really came from. Especially since the clothing line is based on one of my favorite artist’s work. But, to find out what these OBEY shirts are all about you have to go back to the company’s roots.
The company that many refer to as OBEY is actually named OBEY Giant, and the giant in question just happens to be one of the greatest pop culture icons of all time. You see the OBEY Giant movement began with a simple sticker created by Shepard Fairey in 1989. The picture I’ve created above is actually a spoof of the original OBEY Giant sticker known as "André the Giant has a Posse.” André the Giant, as I’m assuming most of you know, is one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. He also did some acting and is fondly remembered by most as the gentle giant Fezzik in The Princess Bride.
From what I’ve read, the movement came out of the skateboarding subculture Fairey was a part of growing up in South Carolina and later as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. (Link) Sometime in the early 90’s the WWE, who owns the trademark for the name André the Giant, took notice of the stickers, which were quickly spreading across America, and threatened to sue Fairey for copyright infringement for illegal use of the name. Because of the threat of a lawsuit, the street art campaign morphed from "André the Giant has a Posse” to “OBEY Giant” and more recently to the ubiquitous “OBEY.” As Fairey’s style evolved, the imagine of André has also shifted from the full head shot of early stickers, to the more iconic square outline of his face, to now in Fairey’s more recent pieces of artwork using his facial outline in smaller designs like the star pictured here as a part of a larger image.
It has been reported that Fairey added the OBEY slogan as “a parody of propaganda, but also a direct homage to the ‘OBEY’ signs found in the 1988 cult classic film, They Live, staring Roddy Piper” and directed by John Carpenter. (Link) It really is amazing how I can always tie things back to Rowdy Roddy Piper, don't you think? As the graffiti art campaign continued to evolve, the posters and stickers have continued to take on more of a propaganda look with the outline of André’s face being moved to the background in much of Fairey’s more recent work.
For a better explanation of what the OBEY movement is really about, I defer to the company’s website ObeyGiant.com. In the company’s own words, “The OBEY campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. The first aim of Phenomenology is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment. The OBEY campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisements or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with OBEY propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer’s perception and attention to detail. The medium is the message.”
If anyone is interested in finding out more about Fairey and OBEY Giant, I recommend roaming around ObeyGiant.com and definitely check out this article. Also, for a really great comprehensive gallery of Fairey OBEY artwork and additional information on the propaganda art campaign go to TheGiant.org. And remember, to become an official member of The Blot’s Posse keep coming back to The Blot Says… every weekday and don’t be afraid to post a message. | <urn:uuid:15b0a275-3c19-47dd-9bfa-3e0f63580c46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theblotsays.com/2007_11_05_archive.html?m=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967434 | 872 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The Media's Appalling Coverage of Sonia Sotomayor
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Last week's press coverage of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court was gruesome in so many ways, as reporters routinely fell down and failed to reflect even the most basic tenets of journalism.
One of the most disturbing examples of how fundamentals were ignored involved Sotomayor's now-infamous quote from eight years ago about a "Latina woman" judge reaching a "better conclusion" on the bench than her white male counterparts. Sotomayor made the comment as part of a speech she gave at University of California, Berkeley, in 2001 in which she explored what it would mean to have more women and minorities on the bench.
To see just how dreadful the coverage of that story became, let's look at the efforts by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, which published nearly identical news articles about the unfolding political battle surrounding Sotomayor and the "Latina woman" quote, which conservatives have latched onto. The quote became the basis for the incendiary claim made by Newt Gingrich and Glenn Beck, among others, that Sotomayor is, in fact, a racist because she thinks Hispanic judges render better decisions than whites.
Here was how the Journal reported out the story on May 28 (emphasis added):
Conservatives are focusing on a speech Ms. Sotomayor delivered at the University of California at Berkeley law school, where she said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
"Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.' Wouldn't they have to withdraw?" asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on his Web site. "New racism is no better than old racism."
White House aides said the comment was being taken out of context, and predicted it wouldn't put the nomination off course.
And here's how The Washington Post treated the same story, on the same day, in a news article:
Leading conservatives outside the Senate, however, did not hold back, targeting a pair of speeches in which Sotomayor said appellate courts are where "policy is made" and another in which she said a Latina would often "reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Critics also targeted her support for affirmative action, with Rush Limbaugh calling her a "reverse racist" in his syndicated radio program, citing a case in which she ruled against a group of white firefighters who claimed discrimination in hiring practices. White House officials argued that the comments in the speeches were taken out of context, and they said that the firefighters case was an example of Sotomayor accepting established precedent, something they said conservatives should applaud.
For good measure, the Journal returned to the topic on May 30, again referencing the "Latina woman" quote:
Earlier this week, administration officials said the nominee's comments at the University of California, Berkeley, were being taken out of context.
Both the Post and the Journal reported on the conservative attack on Sotomayor driven by her "Latina woman" quote. Both the Post and Journal reported that the White House had complained the quote had been taken out of context. And incredibly, both newspapers failed to explain what the actual context was.
What was the context? When Sotomayor asserted, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," she was specifically discussing the importance of judicial diversity in determining race and sex discrimination cases. | <urn:uuid:f29f3c0a-1ef7-4261-9b29-3b7c6a092fa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alternet.org/story/140474/the_media's_appalling_coverage_of_sonia_sotomayor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976677 | 775 | 1.664063 | 2 |
CLEVELAND WOULD ACCEPT?; Report That He Would, If Convention Should Nominate Him.
Special to The New York Times. ();
July 09, 1904,
, Section , Page 2, Column , words
BUZZARD'S BAY, Mass., July 8. -- It can be said on the best authority that in case there should be a stampede of the St. Louis Convention for Cleveland he would accept. Mr. Cleveland will not know the result of to-night's Democratic Convention proceedings until to-morrow morning. Worn out from a day's fishing he retired at 9:45 to-night. "I think I can wait until tomorrow morning," he said to a reporter. | <urn:uuid:f65a4430-7596-44eb-bd90-2664a28a816a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D02E2DD113DE633A2575AC0A9619C946597D6CF | 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 | 0.934439 | 147 | 1.554688 | 2 |
David Mansaray: How to Use Motivation Effectively…
Has this ever happened to you? You are busy thinking the same ‘ole thoughts like you always do, and then someone comes along and changes your head around with one of those “ah, hah!” moments.
That’s exactly what happened to me this week when watching David Mansaray’s video: How to Use Motivation Effectively.
Please watch his video (so that my explanation below makes perfect sense).
In the video David took “the minimum dose needed to have the desired effect” and combined it with “becoming motivated”. His idea is for us to motivate ourselves just enough to propel us to do what we plan to do, but not enough to use up all our energy before we get there.
[ insert "ah hah!" here ]
Now, I’ve been worried about my lack of motivation to learn languages for a good long while. I eventually came to the conclusion that I was more interested in researching how to learn languages, than actually learning languages.
Researching all the different language learning methods gives me a high; an energy that pulls me forward. Seriously, I can spend hours going from one theory to another, often writing posts on what I find.
And just like David explains in the video, by the time I got to my studies, I’m done. I’m zapped out and my enthusiasm has wained.
But, after listening to David’s explanation, I realised that’s not 100% the case. What I was actually doing was using up my energy and motivation to study before I could get to my studies.
So instead, if I just follow what David suggests and harness that energy before it’s consumed, then my natural excitement for languages will be transferred to my studies instead. See?
And guess what? It works! As soon as the rush of David’s “ah hah!” hit, instead of searching for similar motivation resources, I went off to study. For hours. Fantastic.
If you too are having motivation issues, please give David’s idea a try and let us know how you get on. Ok?
A little about David Mansaray…
I’ve been following David for quite awhile, on his blog and on twitter. What first attracted me to David was his interest in learning languages.
But David’s overall goal is the exciting Big Self-Education Project:
I’m going to challenge the status quo. I decided to drop out of university to pursue self-education. Over the next few months, or perhaps years, I’m going to teach myself a number of different skills and I’ll share my journey. How much can we learn and how far can we go without an institution or qualifications? That’s just what I’m going to find out!
I’m here to teach you how to learn more quickly and effectively. I share actionable steps and I also explain the science that holds it all together, because understanding why something works increases the chances of you actually doing it.
Thanks David. Your ‘Big Self-Education Project’ is certainly working for me. More please ;-) | <urn:uuid:fc032b92-745b-44d3-bd19-e8830d421c2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/david-mansaray-how-to-use-motivation-effectively/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955949 | 689 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Israeli firm markets product from Winnipeg
WINNIPEG — As often happens in life, Michel Aziza’s career has taken some unexpected turns.
Of Moroccan Jewish background, Aziza grew up in France and later ended up in Toronto. In 2002, he and his Canadian-born wife, Danita, and children relocated to Winnipeg when he was offered the senior position of head of engineering at bus manufacturer New Flyer Industries.
But Aziza had always dreamed about living in Israel. Four years ago, he and his family realized that dream when he took a very early retirement and the family made aliyah.
This past summer, however, Aziza came back to Winnipeg as North American point man – in partnership with Hans Peper, Aziza’s co-worker from his New Flyer days – for Traffilog, a new to North America Israeli high-tech product. Aziza’s wife, Danita is in charge of marketing and communications.
Traffilog promises to improve fuel economy for fleet vehicles – trucks, buses, taxis and utility company vehicles – and to improve driver safety and performance.
As with most new Israeli technology, Traffilog grew out of an Israel Defence Force need. Aziza said the IDF was finding that accident rates among younger drivers were 50 per cent higher than the rest of the drivers. The IDF was looking for a way to reduce the accident rate among younger draftees. Israeli businessmen Robert Izraeli, a former IDF lieutenant-colonel in the logistics division, and Adi Amihai came up with Traffilog to solve the problem.
Traffilog is an Internet- and cellular-based telematics system consisting of a central processing unit and a modem that can be mounted under the dash of a vehicle. The system provides real-time monitoring of driver safety and driving style, as well as fuel consumption, vehicle performance and vehicle health. The data is analyzed on board and relayed via cellular networks to the customer’s office. A communications tablet can also be mounted in the cab to give the driver access to the information.
The components are all manufactured in Israel, Aziza said.
“Traffilog’s system reduced the accident rate among younger IDF drivers by about 35 per cent,” he said. “The system is now installed on all IDF vehicles.
“It’s not just a GPS system. It tells you everything you want to know.”
Izraeli and Amihai started Traffilog in 2003. Aziza connected with the company in 2009 while he was working as a consultant with the Israel Export Institute in Tel Aviv.
“Traffilog was very active in Israel and Europe and has a presence in South America,” Aziza said. “The company was looking to break into the North American market. I liked the product. I knew that Hans [Peper] at New Flyer in Winnipeg was looking for a product like this. We started a development project with New Flyer. Now all buses coming out of the New Flyer factory are outfitted with the Traffilog system.”
Traffilog was looking for a North American partner and distributor, and Aziza and Peper were happy to come on board. They opened for business this past September.
“For the past four months, we have been knocking on doors and talking to people about Traffilog,” Aziza said. “We believe that our product is superior to what the competition offers. Our challenge is to introduce ourselves and persuade people to give our company a chance.”
Peper said that Traffilog clients recoup their investment through fuel savings alone within four months. And, along with reducing accidents by 35 per cent, the system also reduces dangerous situations by up to 75 per cent.
Aziza said that Traffilog North America currently has eight pilot projects in Manitoba and Ontario, with another one expected to begin in early January. “In about six months a time, we plan to tackle the American market,” he added.
He said that Traffilog’s Israeli parent company is currently working on a system for private vehicles that would reduce fuel consumption and improve safety. | <urn:uuid:234ff835-0529-4a7e-a6d8-d1bbe4b1dac9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cjnews.com/node/99094 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975249 | 880 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Federal Minister for Narcotics Control Haji Khuda Bux Rajar has said that several strategic policy initiatives had been taken to stem the production, consumption and trafficking of illicit narcotics.
The cabinet approved this Policy in July 2010 and now the policy is being implemented, he added.
“We will undertake our efforts with full devotion and dedication to curb the menace of narcotics,” Rajar remarked.
The minister said that the ministry of narcotics control being cognisant of this tremendous challenge has taken a number of steps to control this menace.
Published In The Express Tribune, June 26th, 2012.
More in PakistanPPP’s Zahid Iqbal suspended as member of National Assembly | <urn:uuid:ca5788ec-dd01-4812-8bfb-1e6fff2b80a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tribune.com.pk/story/399234/narcotics-control-government-to-implement-5-year-plan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962529 | 144 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Towns in New Jersey scrambled to prepare for their first major winter storm not long after Hurricane Sandy destroyed huge swaths of coastline. NBC's Katy Tur reports.
Updated at 1 a.m. ET: Snow fell on damaged homes and debris piles in parts of the New York City area as a nor'easter moved in Wednesday, causing new power outages and calls for evacuations.
By Wednesday night, the winds had caused more than 100,000 new power outages in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, the U.S. Energy Department stated. That brought the total number to 715,000, most of those remaining from Superstorm Sandy, which made landfall in New Jersey on Oct. 29.
Throughout the Tri-state area, people wore coats indoors as they endured yet another night without heat. Some of those who had weathered Sandy told NBC New York on Wednesday they were petrified.
"It's like a sequel to a horror movie," said James Alexander, a resident of the hard-hit Rockaway Peninsula. "Here we are, nine days later — freezing, no electricity, no nothing, waiting for another storm."
Alexander's home was spared when Sandy hit, but homes around him burned to the ground, and the boardwalk near his home was washed out to sea.
"They said it would be a rough winter," he noted to NBC New York.
One local resident refuses to be driven out by the latest storm, a combo of snow and rain that is threatening areas already ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.
About 1,200 flights were canceled across the Northeast, while residents of a few areas hit hardest by Superstorm Sandy last week were urged to evacuate in case of new flooding. Long Island Rail Road service was also suspended before 7 p.m. because of weather-related signal problems, NBC New York reported.
A punishing nor'easter is expected to dump snow on storm-battered New York and New Jersey. NBC's Jay Gray reports.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed police to use their patrol car loudspeakers to warn the 20,000 to 30,000 residents in vulnerable areas to evacuate. In Belle Harbor, in Queens, police patrolled the streets, advertising a warming shelter. Officers found that most had left their homes to stay with family, NBC New York reported.
In Toms River, N.J., residents of nearby barrier island communities lashed out at the city council because they had not been allowed to return to their homes since before Sandy hit.
Said one resident at a city council meeting: "These people need to understand it's our island, it's our home, and we need to defend it like it's a castle."
The snow from the latest Nor'easter is expected to continue through midnight before finally winding down in the early hours of Thursday morning. NBC's Janice Huff reports.
The nor'easter, dubbed "Athena" by The Weather Channel, could produce strong gusts that could also turn up piled debris from Sandy into projectiles. (Last month, The Weather Channel announced it will name noteworthy winter storms in an effort to “better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events.")
"One of the bigger concerns ... would be the debris that's been piled up from all the residences and the businesses," Kevin O'Hara, police chief in Point Pleasant, N.J., told The Weather Channel.
"With winds picking up to 30-, 40-, 50-mile-per-hour gusts," he added, "our fear is that if people are out and about they could be hit by flying debris. We would urge people to stay in their houses, stay home, and let the storm pass."
The Long Island Power Authority dedicated more than 12,000 workers to restoring power to its customers -- 8,000 of those workers were linemen and tree trimming crews from around the country, including some who had been airlifted in by the National Guard.
Sea Bright, N.J., is among the areas fearing new flooding on Wednesday. Katy Tur reports.
Snow storms are unusual at this time of year in the New York area. Snowfall had never previously been recorded at Islip, N.Y., Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
Central Park recorded 2.8 inches of snowfall, beating the 1878 record of 0.1 inches. Bridgeport, Conn., saw 3.5 inches, breaking the former record of 2.0 inches set in 1953. In Newark, N.J., 2.0 inches fell; trace amounts had been recorded in 1981.
"It's not a massive nor'easter by winter standards," said Weather Channel expert Tom Niziol, "but at this time of year immediately after Sandy's wrath and destruction, this isn't what we want."
"Mother Nature is not cutting us a break along the East Coast," he said.
As the day cooled into night, The Weather Channel forecast three inches of snow in Philadelphia with wind gusts over 30 mph, a combination of wet snow and wind in New Jersey, and snowfall totals of six to 12 inches in southeastern New York and New England.
In New York, Bloomberg expected up to three inches of snow. He said no new flooding occurred along the city's coastal areas "through the first and most dangerous cycle of high tide" on Wednesday afternoon.
Bloomberg had ordered three nursing homes and an adult care facility evacuated Tuesday from Queens' vulnerable Rockaway Peninsula. About 620 residents were moved.
Fearing winds could down more trees, the city also closed all parks, playgrounds and beaches at noon Wednesday, and ordered all construction sites to be secured.
Sandy killed more than 100 people, mainly in New York City and New Jersey, and left more than 8 million homes and businesses without power.
John Makely / NBC News
Postal carrier Kenneth Henn delivers mail in the evacuated section of Belmar, N.J., on Tuesday as earth moving machines pile sand along the beach.
Fearing looters, Alex Ocasio told The Associated Press that he planned to ride out the latest storm in his first-floor Rockaway apartment — even after seeing cars float by his front door during Sandy.
As the water receded during Sandy, men dressed in dark clothes broke down the door and were surprised to find him and other residents inside, he said.
"They tried to say they were rescue workers, then took off," he said.
He put up a handmade sign — "Have gun. Will shoot U" — outside his apartment and started using a bed frame to barricade the door. He has gas, so he keeps the oven on and boils water to stay warm at night.
"It gets a little humid, but it's not bad," he said. "I'm staying. Nothing can be worse than what happened last week."
NBC's Isolde Raftery, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- Cops: Co-worker kills 2, wounds 2 at chicken processing plant
- Michigan highway shootings suspect arrested
- Underwear needed for Staten Island victims of Sandy, official says
- NJ's email voting suffers voting glitches
- Nun accused of stealing $128,000 to play casinos | <urn:uuid:ab3785b5-33ce-4206-a77d-385b5d13ba1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usnews.nbcnews.com/noreaster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969941 | 1,534 | 1.75 | 2 |
For Immediate Release, March 4, 2009
Contact Media: Hossein Alizadeh, 212-430-6016, [email protected]
(New York, March 4)- The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) condemned a seminar designed to attack lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Ugandans under the cloak of religion. The 3-day seminar in Kampala, which opens Thursday, March 5, features an array of U.S. speakers known for their efforts to dehumanize LGBT people and for their belief that homosexuality can be "cured." The speakers include Scott Lively, Don Schmierer, and Caleb Lee Brundidge—leading voices in the crusade by religious extremists to roll back basic human rights for LGBT people in the United States. Brundidge is affiliated with Extreme Prophetic Ministry in Phoenix, Arizona. Schmierer is on the board of the so-called "ex-gay" organization Exodus International. Schmierer is an Exodus International board member based in the U.S. Lively lost credibility with regard to his claims on the role of homosexuals in the leadership of Nazi Germany.
"The American religious right is finally showing its hand and revealing the depth of its support for homophobia in Africa," said IGLHRC’s Executive Director Cary Alan Johnson. "This seminar will increase violence and other human rights abuses against LGBT people, women and anyone who doesn’t conform to gender norms. This newest form of colonialism is deplorable and must be stopped."
The seminar is hosted by the by Family Life Network (FLN), a Ugandan non-governmental organization founded in 2002 that claims to be committed to the "restoration of Ugandan family values and morals." The FLN opposes access to safe, legal abortions. It also opposes the use of condoms and promotes abstinence-only programming as its approach to HIV prevention. The FLN makes the sensationalized claim that homosexuality is "spreading like wildfire in schools." The event organizers have invited parents, teachers, government workers, politicians, counselors and faith leaders. The seminar costs 25,000 Ugandan Shillings a day (approximately $12.60) to attend. Books and materials are extra.
"This seminar is just another way of encouraging hatred and abuse," said a spokesperson from SMUG." We condemn their discriminatory words and actions that only lead to violence. Suffering is all that they are bringing to Uganda—all in the name of God."
"There is a lot of misunderstanding about human sexuality," said Ugandan Bishop Dr. Christopher Ssenyonjo, who was expelled from the Anglican Church for supporting gay people. “This workshop is going to bring more conflict, greater hostility, increased intimidation. We need love ... in the long run, love will overcome."
The U.S. religious right has a history of exporting homophobia to Africa. With support from anti-gay organizations and faith leaders such as Family Watch International and Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, Pastor Martin Ssempa from Makerere Community Church has attacked not only gay men and lesbians, but also women’s rights and HIV activism. Pastor Ssempa has stated, "there should be no rights granted to homosexuals in this country." In 2007, he organized a multi-denominational rally against LGBT rights in Kampala, where one cleric called for the "starving to death of homosexuals."
In response to this ongoing pattern of violence and abuse, SMUG launched its Let Us Live in Peace campaign, aimed at decreasing violence against LGBT Ugandans. The campaign was launched shortly after human rights defenders Victor Mukasa and Oyo Yvonne filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General related to an illegal raid on Mukasa’s home. The plaintiffs won their case in December 2008—a landmark victory by organizers in a country that still punishes homosexuality by life in prison and has repeatedly made efforts to silence human rights leaders. FLN organizers cite this victory in the promotional materials for the seminar, saying that it shows that a "well organized homosexual machinery" is taking over Uganda, "wreaking havoc in individuals, families and the society." | <urn:uuid:0697bb73-5fad-46d6-8f70-be2bc892c875> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iglhrc.org/content/uganda-us-religious-right-exports-homophobia-africa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955825 | 871 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The desire to be ‘big’ has been an all-consuming focus in the business world. The predominant thinking has been that big leads to better and that big equals more profit. Anyone who questions the validity of this concept is condemned as a heretic. It’s so entrenched as a business mantra that it seems that ‘big’ is the foremost business purpose. THE objective, rather than an outcome of a well-crafted plan and consistent delivery of ‘better’.
In the last week, there have been three specific stories that brought this issue to the forefront and made me think about the effects of the ‘drive to bigness’.
In a February 14 internal memo, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz criticized a number of decisions that have led to the watering down of the Starbucks experience.
“Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.”
He goes on to list what he sees as the underlying issues they need to solve and to take his share of responsibility for those decisions. Many initially questioned the authenticity of the memo, but according to a story in AdAge the company confirmed it as authentic.
Whole Foods is another example where the quest for big has caused a drift toward the middle, thereby losing some of what made it successful in the first place. In a story in today’s New York Times, it says some people believe the chain is “not living up to its core values — in particular, protecting the environment and supporting organic agriculture and local farmers. In interviews, some of the customers who describe themselves as committed to these values say they have become disillusioned and taken their business elsewhere. “They are at such a level you expect the best from them, and if you don’t live up to it, people notice,†said Todd Hale, a senior vice president of consumer and shopper insights for Nielsen, the market research company.”
Whole Foods has grown from a small business to a mega-chain with 193 stores, and just last week announced a deal to acquire the 110 stores of its largest rival, Wild Oats.
In the Advertising Agency business, an industry already under intense pressure and scrutiny relative to the efficacy of the full-service agency business model, Forrester Research further added to the pain with the release of a rather bleak report entitled “Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency”. The report says clients are dissatisfied, but for no clear reason that data can back up. (Just think of what happened with Cramer-Krasselt late last week.) Instead it’s a vague disenchantment and disappointment that value is not being delivered at a meaningful enough level.
Today’s struggle may be a result of sins of the past — the way in which the agency industry grew. In the quest for ‘bigger’, agency holding companies purchased lots of diversified companies and specialty services groups in the belief they could create an integrated offering by virtue of having these ‘units’ that their full service agencies could call on as needed. The logic was that because it was all under the same holding company banner (keeping the money in the family) it could integrate the offering while still allowing these specialized units to have their own clients/projects thereby avoiding the competitive conflict problem. Seems logical on the surface. The media agnostic pitch to clients worked well for a while because the story made sense. Agency holding companies got real big.
But, the approach didn’t deliver real integration or integrated thinking on a holistic level (in part because of P&L lines that worked against collaboration among agency sister companies and in part because of the infamous above the line/below the line mentality). At best, it delivered a multi-channel marketing capabilities set. Without the thinking, you can’t create an integrated solution or deliver a customer-centric or user-oriented approach that is in sync with today’s media/consumer scape. So now agencies are desperately trying to fold these capabilities and units into the main agency body and reworking their process and operations, as well as changing internal mindsets to get to a more integrated and accountable service deliver. (On top of scrambling to keep up with the quickly changing media landscape.) It’s a difficult predicament, but one that we need to find innovative solutions for in order to thrive and maintain value as a strategic partner. Because as one anonymous CMO was quoted as saying: “Client-side marketers are better at managing integrated campaigns and being media-agnostic.”
There are a lot of people doing some heavy-duty introspection and that bodes well. Personally, I find it refreshing that Schultz is doing some soul searching about Starbucks and like this post in TomPeters.com “I was beginning to wonder whether another great experience was going to surrender to the short-term gains of operational excellence, Howard Schultz gave me faith.”, I too have hope that if someone as revered as Howard Schultz gets it, maybe others will too. The upside of pushing the question to the forefront is that if we truly look at and understand the realities and effects of the all-out quest for ‘big’, perhaps we can create ‘better’. As Howard Schultz is famous for saying, “success is not an entitlement.” It has to be earned over and over and over. | <urn:uuid:502a5a19-ddf0-4d3a-b9cf-5f7547fde573> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketinginsideout.com/2007/02/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965914 | 1,180 | 1.78125 | 2 |
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[Cite as Owen v. State, 31 Ala. 387 (1858).]
INDICTMENT FOR CARRYING CONCEALED WEAPONS.
1. What constitutes such offense.--A person who, in the room of another in which there are several persons, bears in his vest pocket a pistol, which is willfully or knowingly covered or kept from sight, is guilty of a violation of the statute (Code, § 3274) against carrying concealed weapons.
From the Circuit Court of Tuskaloosa.
Tried before the Hon. John Gill Shorter.
The bill of exceptions in this case is as follows:
"On the trial of this case, the State introduced one Hutchinson as a witness, who testified, that within twelve months before the finding of the indictment, he went into the room of one Charles S. Williams, in said county of Tuskaloosa; that he found in the room Mr. Williams, the defendant, and two or three other young gentlemen; that he remained in the room some twenty minutes, or half an hour; that, while there, he asked the defendant to give him a cap; that the defendant put his hand into his vest (p.388)pocket, and took a small pistol out of his pocket, to get a cap; that the pistol was the smallest he had ever seen, and he requested the defendant to let him look at it; that the defendant did so, and, when he and the others had looked at it, it was handed back to the defendant, who again put it into his vest pocket; that he did not see it until the defendant had taken it out of his pocket, and could not see it after he had put it into his pocket as stated; that he did not know whether the pistol was loaded or not; and that, when he went out, he left the defendant in the room.
"This was all the evidence in the cause; and thereupon the defendant asked the court to charge the jury, that unless they believed from the evidence that the defendant had the said pistol when he went into the said room, or took it with him when he left the room, merely having the pistol in his pocket, as stated, was not a carrying of the pistol concealed about his person, within the meaning of the statute. The court refused to give this charge, and the defendant excepted."
E. W. Peck, for the appellant.
M. A. Baldwin, Attorney-General, contra.
RICE, C. J.--The defendant was indicted for a violation of section 3274 of the Code, which provides, that "any one who carries concealed about his person a pistol, or any other description of fire-arms, not being threatened with, or having good reason to apprehend an attack, or traveling, or setting out on a journey, must, on conviction, be fined not less than fifty, nor more than three hundred dollars."
That section was not designed to destroy the right, guarantied by the constitution to every citizen, "to bear arms in defense of himself and the State"; nor to require them to be so borne, as to render them useless for the purpose of defense. It is a mere regulation of the manner in which certain weapons are to be borne; a regulation, the object of which was to promote personal security, and to advance public morals. To that end, it prohibits the bearing of certain weapons, "in such a manner as is calculated (p.389)to exert an unhappy influence upon the moral feelings of the wearer, by making him less regardful of the personal security of others."--The State v. Reid, 1 Ala. 612 [35 Am. Dec. 44].
The word "carries," in the section above cited, was used as the synonym of "bears"; and the word "concealed," as therein used, means, willfully or knowingly covered, or kept from sight. Locomotion is not essential to constitute a carrying within the meaning of that section. A person who, in the room of another in which there are two or three other persons, bears in his vest pocket a pistol, willingly or knowingly covered or kept from sight, without any of the excuses therefor recognized by law, is a violator of the section above cited. The charge asked by the defendant in this case, is in conflict with the law as thus laid down by us. That charge does not simply assert the general proposition, that merely having a pistol in one's pocket in a room, is not a "carrying" of the pistol concealed about his person, within the meaning of the statute: it goes beyond that, and asserts that, if the defendant did not have the pistol when he went into the room, nor when he went out of it, his "merely having the pistol in his pocket in the room, as stated, was not a carrying of the pistol concealed about his person, within the meaning of the statute." The charge as asked was specific, and referred directly to the evidence which showed the manner in which the defendant carried the pistol, and conceded the truth of that evidence. As the truth of the evidence was thus conceded by it, the conclusion it drew from the evidence was a non sequitur; for, if the defendant did have the pistol in his pocket, in the room, as stated by the evidence, he might be guilty, although he neither had it when he entered the room, nor when he left the room. | <urn:uuid:f9fceded-90f3-49c9-bb46-ee78f555f33e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://constitution.org/2ll/2ndcourt/state/178st.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985699 | 1,131 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Google officially started rolling out its new gigabit fiber Internet and TV service in Kansas City in July. Google asked households in the various “Fiberhoods”, which are made up of 800 or so residents each, to sign-up, but the service has not yet rolled out to businesses. Now, as reported by GigaOm, businesses are going as far as purchasing residential homes in the city to take advantage of the $70 per month Internet plans:
the startup community wasn’t willing to settle — and since most of them worked from their homes, coffee shops or communal space anyhow, it wasn’t a big leap to decide to find a house in an area slated for fiber and move in.
Tyler Vanwinkle of Leap2, a mobile search company, said his company was already based near a neighborhood slated to get fiber and a friend of his owned a house there. So he talked to his friend about renting space for the company in the house, now dubbed the Hacker House. “Google fiber the speed is phenomenal but it’s only residential,” he said. “Since we were interested in renting the house as office space and so were some of our friends, this has evolved into this common bond of entrepreneurship.”
GigaOm also noted many other startups and businesses in the city are considering making the switch to residential to gain access to Google’s new Internet service. The company originally said it would provide more information on offering the service to businesses at a later date, but has yet to do so. | <urn:uuid:d33eec38-d211-4bd3-ac8d-fa93ce01b9e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://9to5google.com/tag/startups/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985856 | 324 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Moreover, Hermann Gröhe, a senior member of Merkel’s CDU party did not mince his words when he commented on the election, claiming that:
“[Sarkozy] is the right man in the Elysée now and in the future…We need a strong France with a strong president in charge…The Socialists are stuck in their dreams of the past. All they are doing is bringing out dusty concepts and wealth distribution fantasies from their moth-ridden policy cupboard.”In recent months, Hollande’s candidacy has become the focal point of opposition to Merkel’s crisis management strategy and the ethos that underpins it - symbolised by the treaty on closer fiscal integration and discipline. Hollande has promised to focus less on austerity and more on promoting jobs and growth, both in France and the eurozone; he has pledged, if elected, to re-negotiate the treaty so that it focuses less on 'stability' and more on 'solidarity'. Although Sarkozy signed up to the treaty at yesterday's summit, the French parliament will not have an opportunity to ratify it before the presidential elections.
The stakes are therefore high for Merkel who has a lot political capital – both domestically and internationally - riding on the successful transposition of the treaty into domestic law throughout the eurozone (even if it is debatable as to whether it will address the root causes of the crisis). Given that polls consistently give Hollande a clear lead, Merkel has decided that in order to protect the treaty in its current state, she will have to intervene. While it may be unpopular with her own MPs who consider it to have been watered down too much, she knows this is nothing compared to how it would be affected by a likely Hollande victory.
The big question is whether Merkel's endorsement will be to Sarkozy's benefit or detriment; it certainly jars with his recent media strategy of playing the humble do-gooder trying to make the best out of a bad situation. It is likewise no secret that due to Merkel's (perceived) lack of willingness to compromise on issues such as eurobonds or the ECB, both she and Germany as a whole have become the pantomime villains of the crisis. There is also potentially the risk of a backlash against Sarkozy if the French public feels that Merkel has crossed the line and is actively trying to meddle in their domestic political arrangements.
Ultimately however, both Merkel and Sarkozy will hope that as suggested in the FT’s editorial this weekend, the French public will vote with their hearts in the first round, and with their heads in the second. While they cannot win in the popularity stakes, they will count on the fact that the public will at least recognise that they have taken tough but necessary action to tackle the eurozone crisis, and that for all his rhetoric, Hollande lacks a credible plan for making the French economy competitive. There are some grounds for optimism - a poll earlier this month found that 82% of respondents had a positive view of Germany, in particular regarding its leadership and work ethic. Finally, it is worth remembering Merkel is not renowned as an astute political operator for nothing; evidently she has decided Sarkozy's re-election is not a lost cause.
Merkel's intervention should add further spice to what is shaping up to be a fascinating election campaign - as ever we will keep you updated on the ins and outs... | <urn:uuid:302a015b-4c11-49b4-ab88-4aa39ba97811> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.openeuropeblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/merkel-takes-fight-directly-to-hollande.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97217 | 691 | 1.617188 | 2 |
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 5 (Bernama) — The two new laws formulated to replace the Internal Security Act (ISA) 1960 need to take into consideration ways to deal with sensitive issues, Datuk Ibrahim Ali (Independent-Pasir Mas) said.
He said these included matters pertaining to religion, race and the position of the Malay rulers as well as the safeguards provided for under Article 153 of the Federal Constitution.
“Security does not have not a price…the government must be firm in its stand that what was being done was for the good of the people,” he said when debating on the Restricted Residence (Repeal) Bill 2011 in the Dewan Rakyat Wednesday.
The bill was tabled for the second reading by the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and was later approved without amendments.
Ibrahim said the world today was no longer safe in view of the various issues being played up especially through the new media.
He also proposed the setting up of what he described as a high profile committee with the Home Minister, Attorney-General, Inspector-General of Police and the chairman of the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) as members.
He said the committee would determine whether a person who had infringed the law governing sensitive issues need to be detain without trial.
Source : Bernama | <urn:uuid:dc17e69f-5dae-480e-9612-a1c907c5ae29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.1malaysia.com.my/news_archive/parliament-new-laws-need-to-consider-national-security/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969687 | 282 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Designing a website for your business
Looking to create a successful website that generates hits? Read on to find out about designing a website, and learn how to search engine optimise.
Design-intensive websites with loads of content are often seen by business owners as important elements of a successful website. But, according to Fred Schebesta, managing director of Freestyle Media online marketing agency, this really isn’t the case. Instead, search engine optimisation is key.
Easy navigation should be one of your top priorities, says Schebesta. Without it, your customers will have trouble contacting you and reaching your product. “The most important thing, in terms of navigation for any SME website, is you need to know where your money page is,” he says. “Your money page is either your contact point, or your inquiry form, or in some cases the checkout and online cart. You want to funnel people through your site to those pages.”
Navigation was an important website design element for Night Nannies, an agency which provides sleep guidance and other specialised services for families in their homes. Although based in New South Wales, Night Nannies is a national agency and uses their website as a main point of contact for expanding their reach and saving time. “It was more important for us to have the web as the main shopfront because we feel that is where the market is going,” says Annemarie Sansom, Night Nannies director. “People are time poor, so most of our clients are using the internet as a research tool as well as to quickly find services.”
For easy navigation, the Night Nannies website features an aspect search. “It’s not a search engine, but if people still struggle to find information on the site they can just put in the search information as well,” says Sansom.
Inquiry forms are also a major business drawing point. “People may not want to ring up, so this allows them to be anonymous,” Sansom explains. “It’s quick and easy, and it can go from their inbox to ours and back again. And there’s no obligation on their part.”
Dealing with Online Inquiries
However, having an online inquiry form and funnelling traffic to that page is useless if you don’t respond to visitors. “We always respond to every email and inquiry that’s done through our forms within 24 hours at the absolute latest,” says Sansom. “Every business needs to make sure they’re on top of that.”
Search engine friendliness is also high on Schebesta’s list. “That’s an absolutely critical element to any website,” he says. “Search engine friendliness can make or break a site. People used to look at the Yellow Pages; these days people search for information online and that’s how they find your website.”
Sansom agrees, but doesn’t think search engine optimisation is as simple as it’s thought to be. “There are a lot of cowboys out there doing site optimisation,” she says. “I would recommend any small business do their research because it’s a lot of money to spend.”
Your website should also be credible and clearly get your message across. “It’s important to ensure that your site is persuasive and converts visitors on your site to actual leads,” says Schebesta. He suggests some tips to create a persuasive website, including having fresh content on your site and take down that 1995 press release. Also make sure you have real pictures of real people. Finally, pop your address on the footer, show that you’re a bricks and mortar business and that you will be around tomorrow.
But there is more to web development, including converting visitors into actual customers. “Create a way to capture people, as opposed to just an inquiry form,” says Schebesta. “Engage with them. Getting your customers to interact with you in a conversation will build trust and confidence. For example, give away a simple information sheet or a simple white paper on your site to get their email details. Once you have their email details you can communicate with them and send valuable emails and offers and prospects.”
Night Nannies site uses a blog to communicate with customers. “The blog is a great way to show that there’s a person behind the website. Also it’s a way of being able to keep the information up-to-date,” says Sansom. “But again it all comes back to another way for search engines to pick you up, because blogs are great for search engines. There’s no point in being on page 20 on a Google search; you need to be on page one or two.”
The Night Nannies website also provides free information to assist converting visitors into customers. “We want to be able to help people, and the reality is we’re not giving anything away,” she says. “We’re saying we’ll come to your home and help you implement those strategies. So having that information onsite is a bonus because information brings the customer to you.”
Night Nannies visitors will also find links to other sites, but Sansom explains that this is part of optimisation and she isn’t worried about driving away customers. “Links going out is just sharing that particular resource, and with the links coming in you’re seen as the authority on that particular topic,” she says. “I’m not afraid to be able to share that resource and show that we are part of the bigger picture.”
While an informative site that conveys your expertise is great, it’s not the easiest thing to manage. “You can have all the information in the world, but if customers get lost it’s pointless,” says Sansom. “Knowing what people want is really hard, so we had to nut it out with someone from IT. Obviously you don’t want to put everything in there—you don’t want to give away all your secrets—but you want to give away little bits.” | <urn:uuid:a6eba39a-9f32-4776-b7fb-044767ae3df5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dynamicbusiness.com.au/technology/designing-a-website-for-your-business.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953795 | 1,338 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Beloved Community
Strengthening the Ties that Bind in an Era of Alienation
As we move into the winter of 2012, the days are getting shorter and the sociopolitical realities put before us seem, in some ways, to be darkening by the minute. How is it that we do not know how to live in the world, in those ways that have sustained and advanced the human experiment for eons? Today we have reactionary, regressive policies masking as “progress,” replacing the reciprocal bonds of authentic community with the wafer-thin ties of social networking and, in the process, turning our alienation and dysfunction into a nouveau spectacle. During the recent Israeli assault on Gaza, for example, a reporter for the Jerusalem Post actually asked residents in fear for their children’s lives if anyone could give an interview about how the shrieking sirens were affecting pets. It is so taboo to speak of what really matters with the people who matter that we have to be encouraged to do so.
Let us not be timid about this, nor idealistic about the prospects of reinvigoration: it is going to take an unprecedented effort of critical thinking and constructive action to save us from ourselves. The dominant culture possesses a mass-suicidal tendency that pits sustenance against sustainability, success against society, and wealth against wellbeing — and it must be resisted at every turn if we are to survive. And perhaps the surest path to doing so lies in restoring the overarching human tendency toward solidarity.
We want to put forward the suggestion that solidarity, taken as the “just communion” of humanity, is best served not by an emphasis on analysis and strategy, but by a prioritization of what was once the traditional work of women, work that can and should be shared by all people. This is the work of homemaking, parenting, physical and emotional care of an extended family, mentorship, unconditional acceptance, fair conflict resolution, comfort, moral guidance, empathy, education — all shared, within a community of caregivers. These are at once ephemeral values and learned skills, the development of which requires dedication, time, and both personal and community patience. Solidarity has been a traditional ideal of the Left, which is a hard-to-define political community except for its emphasis on the principle of solidarity. Can we forge a union between the political ideal of solidarity and a traditional domestic vision? This represents a planned departure from alienation in the work of activists, creating supportive relationships inside activist communities where burnout has been a powerful, destructive force both personally and politically.
We have seen examples of this in the occupy movement. What was more powerful in the camps of last fall and winter than the communal kitchens, our libraries, the childcare we created for one another? What is more powerful today than the home occupations? Let us take this a step further, or a step backward, as the case may be.
Relationships are the key to forging new communities and, ultimately, a new world. Though (as people writing for a blog) the irony does not escape us, when we replace the interpersonal with the internet, and the communal with the commercial, we tend to diminish our capacities to meet one another from a place of authentic care and mutual aid. The “mile wide” aspects of social networking allow us to broaden our notions of solidarity and community in one sense, but in another (and perhaps more powerful) manner they serve to stretch them so far as to be almost nonsensical. If you had an actual emergency — say your house was on fire — would you post something to Facebook and Twitter, or would you call on actual neighbors living in proximity? The latter is more apropos, but it assumes that we still even know our neighbors — a scenario that is less likely as we spend more time in either virtual or professional communion than in search of the proverbial “beloved community.” The central question of our era seems to be whether we can locate it in time.
The issue of how to proceed to the beloved community is not merely an academic or historical one. “Community” is often invoked as a desirable end even by those antagonistic to it, and it can be a static, limiting trope when it emphasizes a narrow parochialism as against an expansive solidarity. Stripping away the fallacious constructs, we find that our raison d’être is solidarity. The tactic is solidarity and the goal of the tactic is solidarity. It is in our nature. But what is solidarity? In brief:
• Solidarity is motivated by love
• Solidarity is restorative
• Solidarity respects what a human being is
• Solidarity is communal
• Solidarity must be political and it must be personal
As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1957: “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method … is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community.” In this sense, we see the beloved community as the nexus of solidarity and empathy, the union of shared interests based on a common humanity and emotional bonds based on feelings of compassion and understanding. No one suggests that these are easy to practice, nor that they are quick fixes for a society wracked by alienation and outward signs of despair — but it is incumbent upon us to try. Again, King: “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”
We note the feminist underpinnings of these concepts, connecting the personal and the political, as well as the penchant for loving, respectful, and restorative relationships within the working definition. In a recent interview on Democracy Now!, long-time activist and radical feminist Selma James said: “We are civilized by this work [of caretaking], we women … we need men to be civilized by this work … we don’t want them working for capitalism…. I’m talking about our working to care for others, to be with others.” Our task, then, is to reemphasize the essential role of relationships, and to reprioritize the work of being caretakers of ourselves, one another, and the world.
In the end, we recognize that the road ahead will be arduous and that the beloved community will remain a work in progress. Yet in this, it is equally apparent that the beloved community is a means to its own end, and that it is our shared capacity to be nurturers that simultaneously enables us to feel nurtured. It is the interdependence of our existence that defines us, the sense of mutual destiny and common humanity that will allow us to move from dominators to liberators. As our friend Aurora Levins Morales once said, “Our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet.” The beloved community is our highest expression of this ideal; reclaiming it as a living principle can strengthen our ties to each other and to the balance of life in our midst. We can choose to embrace this in celebration, or consume ourselves and the world in desperation. The time to decide is now. It has always been now…
Randall Amster, J.D., Ph.D., is the Graduate Chair of Humanities at Prescott College. He serves as Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and is the publisher and editor of New Clear Vision. Among his recent books are Anarchism Today (Praeger, 2012) and Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness (LFB Scholarly, 2008).
Windy Cooler is a Contributing Author for New Clear Vision. A long-time organizer and former teenage-mother-welfare-queen, she writes about the emotional lives of homemakers and activists. She has two sons and lives in suburban DC. She blogs at windycooler.com, and can be reached at WindyCooler(at)gmail.com. | <urn:uuid:a21ea738-2b3a-4cc3-869c-677bff41eb24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/the-beloved-community-by-randall-amster | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957173 | 1,678 | 1.828125 | 2 |
What happens next? Commentators say committee chair Sen. Barbara Boxer's legislation is likely to be rewritten by a bipartisan group of three Senators in the hopes of making a more moderate bill. Pundits weigh in on what the increasingly bitter partisan fight in Congress means for the climate change bill.
- Democrats Could Go It Alone on Climate Change At Politico, Lisa Lerer says "legislation can be approved by the committee with a simple majority of members, an exception Boxer could use to pass her bill. Boxer is also the final judge on any dispute over committee rules, a fact that would allow her to override any GOP objection to her process."
- The GOP Loses on Climate Change Aaron Wiener of The Washington Independent says "the end result is that the legislation will now be molded by other committees and the Senate leadership, without input from Inhofe and his Republican EPW colleagues."
- Climate Change Bill Doomed Without GOP Support At The Foundry, Dan Holler says the Democrats look desperate. "Boxer's actions appear to have violated decades of precedent and despite the 'success' of reporting a bill out of committee, the path forward seems very uncertain."
- What The Final Bill Could Look Like In the Washington Post, David Fahrenthhold says John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman will likely "stitch" the various bills from the committees together to draft the final bill. Fahrenthold probes the Senators for details about what such legislation might look like.
"The three senators offered few details about the elements they considered nonnegotiable: Graham said the bill should protect the climate but also allow for more offshore drilling, an expansion of nuclear energy and an emphasis on 'clean coal' technology. Asked whether the group was committed to a 'cap and trade' scheme, like the one used to reduce pollution in a bill passed by the House, Lieberman said yes, but noted that the scheme had 'a lot of moving parts you could negotiate on.'" | <urn:uuid:659f6fd4-cf06-4420-8454-ba2b0226296e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2009/11/climate-bill-steps-forward-for-now/26515/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939156 | 405 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Laurie Campbell is one of Scotland's leading natural history and landscape photographers
Laurie was born in 1958 and developed an interest in natural history at an early age. He began photographing wildlife in 1972, initially from a desire to share his experiences and observations of the natural world. He later studied photography at Napier University in Edinburgh (1977-81), and has since worked almost exclusively in Scotland, travelling from his Borders home to all parts of the country.
Most of his work is carried out in the field using 35mm equipment and natural lighting whenever possible. He is dedicated to photographing genuinely wild creatures in their natural habitats.*
Laurie Campbell works with cleints across the World, is a published author and Illustrator, and writes regular photography magazine articles. He has appeared on television in programmes such as "The Photoshow", and has won many awards for his work. Lauries images regularly feature in magazines, books, postcards, calendars, company reports, displays, exhibitions and prints.
Laurie is renound for his own picture library of over 120,000 images - the most extensive of its kind by any single photographer working in Scotland. He also contributes to three other libraries: NHPA, RSPB IMAGES and GETTY IMAGES*
We stock a range of Giclee Photographic Art Prints by Laurie Campbell. Buy Scottish Nature Photography Giclee Prints by Laurie Campbell at Bay Attic. Secure Online Shopping, Free UK Shipping on orders over $114.26, 30 Day Money Back Guarantee.
See Laurie Campbell photography every time you log-on ! Visit Laurie Campbell photography and download your free Windows Screensaver featuring over 50 natural history & landscape images.
*extracts taken from Laurie Campbell Scottish Natural History Photographer website
Call us on: 01475 636 218 | <urn:uuid:fb2d2681-3f2e-4c72-82a1-e66a6afdb8df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bayattic.com/laurie-campbell-b118 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963247 | 372 | 1.585938 | 2 |
The mission is clear, but it's certainly not easy.
Whoever becomes the next governor of the Bank of Japan will be expected to make full use of the central bank's tools to reflate the Japanese economy, while avoiding accusations that it is igniting a currency war by deliberately depressing the yen.
Further aggressive easing of monetary policy in the world's third largest economy looks all but assured -- thanks to the early departure of the bank's current governor and a new prime minister with a strong mandate for bold action to stimulate growth.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to name candidates for governor early next month, after Masaaki Shirakawa announced he would stand down on March 19, several weeks before his term was due to end.
Abe based his election campaign last year on a commitment to take radical steps to end years of deflation, combining promises of looser monetary policy with pledges of fiscal stimulus.
"Any Abe government pick for the Bank of Japan will move quickly after his confirmation with a more aggressive monetary policy in line with the government's wishes," analysts at the Eurasia Group wrote earlier this month.
Shirakawa agreed last month to double the bank's inflation target and adopt open-ended purchases of government bonds but is opposed to some of the more extreme proposals considered by the bank and has been accused of doing too little, too late.
While a surprise candidate could still be put forward by Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, three frontrunners have emerged - Toshiro Muto, Kazumasa Iwata and Haruhiko Kuroda.
Kuroda, head of the Asian Development Bank, appears willing to follow through on Abe's plans, telling the Wall Street Journal this week that Japan has "plenty of room for monetary easing."
"If necessary and if appropriate, of course additional monetary easing this year could be justified," he said. | <urn:uuid:07c1c5bb-daec-4d58-a1b5-769305505969> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wyff4.com/news/money/A-tough-job-for-the-next-Mr-Yen/-/9323996/18556646/-/wu6lf9/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965808 | 378 | 1.75 | 2 |
GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 23 Jan) – The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Region 12 is pushing for the creation of a special regional body that would handle the settlement of conflicting land claims and the harmonize various land administration concerns affecting the area.
Elmer Mercado, DENR-12’s land management division chief, said Wednesday they have started discussions with government agencies involved in the issuance of land tenurial instruments for the establishment of a regional committee that would directly deal with various issues and concerns regarding conflicting land claims within the region.
He said the talks involved key officials and personnel from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) and the Land Registration Authority (LRA).
“Our main goal is to harmonize various issues involved in the issuance of land titles and other tenurial instruments. This way, we can avoid coming out with conflicting issuances that could cause problems among claimants,” Mercado said.
Region 12, which is also known as the Soccsksargen Region, comprises the provinces of South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, North Cotabato and the cities of General Santos, Koronadal, Tacurong, Kidapawan and Cotabato.
In a dialogue held in this city last month, he said officials of the four agencies agreed to initially create a regional-level committee as a working mechanism for the Joint DENR-DAR-NCIP-LRA Administrative Order (JAO) No. 1 issued in January last year.
Mercado said they also agreed to create provincial-level committees that would address specific concerns within the region’s four provinces and their component or attached cities.
JAO No. 1-12 specifically provides for the clarification, restatement and interfacing of the respective jurisdictions, policies, programs and projects of DENR, DAR, NCIP and LRA “to address jurisdictional and operational issues between and among the agencies.”
The order was set as a guideline to specifically address “issues of overlapping jurisdiction, operational issues and conflicting claims by and among the aforementioned agencies.”
It was signed by Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio delos Reyes, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje, NCIP Chairperson Zenaida Brigida Pawid and LRA Administrator Eulalio Diaz III.
At the regional level, Mercado said they were ready to form and activate the proposed regional committee but noted that they were presently facing some problems due to the lack of an enabling directive for such move from the Office of the President.
“We have requested for the issuance of a directive (from the Office of the President) that would set the convergence of the four agencies as provided for in JAO 01-12,” he said.
Datu Tungko Saikol, DENR-12 regional executive director, said the creation of the proposed regional committee could help resolve various pending land claims in the region that were triggered by conflicting land tenurial instruments.
He specifically cited the issuance of Certificate of Land Ownership Agreement or CLOA by DAR to an upland area in Koronadal City that was earlier declared by the DENR as Community-Based Forest Management Area.
In South Cotabato, the provincial government had raised concerns on the worsening cases of land disputes in the area, some of which had already resulted to murders and other violent incidents.
A resident of Tantangan town was killed in April last year while a landowner in Polomolok town was shot over separate land dispute problems.
Engr. Siegfred Flaviano, acting South Cotabato Provincial Environment Management Office (PEMO) chief, said they are currently facing problems with overlapping” tenurial instruments issued by various government agencies on declared protected areas in the province.
He specifically cited the case of a portion of the protected areas in T’boli town that were issued with certificates of ancestral domain title or CADT by the NCIP and CLOAs by DAR.
“There’s no other way to resolve these problems other than converging all these involved agencies and harmonize all conflicting matters regarding land administration. We’re hoping that this will materialize soon,” Saikol added. (Allen V. Estabillo / MindaNews) | <urn:uuid:179400d8-a59c-4306-bf68-37b09de7fbe5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mindanews.com/top-stories/2013/01/24/denr-12-pushes-creation-of-special-body-to-settle-land-disputes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954926 | 911 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Critique of ABC’s primetime series, Scandal
Written by SpriritHouse and Johnathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Fellow, Dean Steed
A variety of communities, including the Black community, continue to praise the American Broadcasting Channel’s (ABC) latest prime-time television series, Scandal. They celebrate it for being the first one-hour dramatic network television series produced and written by a Black woman (Rhonda Shimes) for an African American woman lead. Among such shows as Basketball Wives, Housewives of Atlanta, and Love and Hip Hop, capitalizing upon the racist mythologies of Black women as Sapphires and Jezebels, Scandal appeared as the beginning or genesis of a new Black woman who does not fit into these stereotypes. Scandal, presents the leading character, Olivia Pope, as an intelligent, independent, and resourceful Black woman. However, contrary to this representation, Olivia is not a new Black woman, Olivia is the quintessential Mammy, Jezebel, and Tragic Mulatto, wrapped into one. As a Mammy figure, she cleans up the messes of White men, covers their flaws, and protects their interests, while overlooking the needs of her own community. Essentially, her work is in the big house. Not only do White men see her as the Mammy, for them she is the tragic Mulatto and Jezebel. With her mulatto-like acceptability, she allows them to think White, while sleeping Black.
John Mayer, a White folk artist, reflects this attitude, when he states in Playboy magazine interview, that he possesses a “white supremacist ‘d–k” and that he would deviate from this and sleep with Kerry Washington, a black woman, because she is “super hot, white girl crazy, and would break your heart like a white girl.”
Although the series presents Olivia as a new woman, the center of gravity remains the same. The real scandal is that we accept the interracial love affair of Olivia Pope and the Republican president without recognizing that the image of Powerful White men, who sexually use Black women, is not new or liberating. It has it’s roots in a racist history that extends back to enslavement.
Olivia is the mistress and not the legitimate heir to the power and status of her White lover. Olivia’s position as mistress, echoes Sally Hemming’s affair with Thomas Jefferson. In season one, Olivia Pope engages in a heated argument with Fitzgerald Grant, over their torrid affair in which she likens their relationship to that of Thomas Jefferson and his slave mistress, Sally Hemming. Although Olivia draws on the example of Sally Hemming, she acts if her relationship with the President exists without a history or context. In other words, in a racialized society, the relationship is stripped of any racial meaning.
Despite the fact that many in the audience view Scandal as a groundbreaking series for it’s position in history as the first primetime series to be written and produced by a Black woman to feature and an African American woman as the lead, the show remains profoundly silent on the issue of race. It ignores that racism and White Supremacy are core values and organizing tools of the Republican party. In reality, members of the Republican party exploit and mobilize White resentment towards the gains that we achieved in the 1960s and 70s, viewing these gains as a loss of White power. Building on this resentment, the Republican party strategically uses codified language, distorted images, and a rhetoric of colorblind post-racialism to cover their racist assaults against our community.
The real scandal is that Olivia Pope, helps these men manipulate the public and to promote an anti-black agenda.
As I became further involved in the series, watching episode after episode, season after season, I slowly became increasingly aware of the incredible deception of the the producers who present the Republican party as supportive of democratic values while using a Black face to encourage the support of a Black audience.
In the first season, we witness Republican President, Fitzgerald Grant and his administration lobbying for the passage of the DREAM Act, a bill providing amnesty for young undocumented residents in the U.S and the support of immigration. In reality, the Republican party vehemently opposed the DREAM Act, executed under President, Barack Obama.
In 2011, Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney voiced his opposition to the DREAM Act, vowing to veto it, if elected.
Another prevalent deception in this series is the representation of the Republican party as supportive and accepting of LGBT rights. This is exemplified through the show’s representation of the Republican administration as supportive of the openly gay Chief of Staff, Cyrus. Scandal, presents Cyrus as an out gay Republican who is married to a young, male journalist.
In reality, the Republican party is very vocal in its opposition to gay rights and has strongly advocated against same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples and the existence of gay men and women in the military. It was the Democratic President, Barack Obama who repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” along with vocalizing his support of same sex marriage.
Scandal is inspired by the life of co-producer and writer Judy Smith, Washington’s D.C’s crisis management expert and former Deputy Press Secretary and Public Relations consultant to the George H.W. Bush administration.
Judy Smith involved herself in the Clarence Thomas saga, when she provided her services to clear his image during Anita Hill’s charge of sexual harassment.
Judy Smith and actress Kerry Washington, (cast in the role of Olivia Pope) together lend a Black face to a party that builds its platform upon the continued oppression of all people of color.
The real scandal is that we know this and yet we allow this to invade our living room week after week.
(In my next article, I will reveal the ways in which Scandal mask the racist deeds of the Republican party)
Writer, Dean Steed, is the Lead Educator and Youth Organzinger at the Johnathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Institute and Senior at Georgia State University, majoring in African American studies.
|JONATHAN DANIELS & SAMUEL YOUNGE INSTITUTE
Through the program, The SpiritHouse Project: (1) supports and prepares a new generation of peace and justice workers who want to discern a call to social justice and nonviolence; (2) strengthens their courage, hope, resolve, and reason to do this work; (3) prepares them to play leading roles in public policy debates about issues such as racism, poverty, prison industrial complex, militarism, and the shrinking budget for human needs, voting rights, privacy and judicial issues, and neo-conservatism; and (4) helps grassroots communities meet their urgent need for trained and committed volunteers or staff.
WHAT IS THE SPIRIT HOUSE PROJECT?
The SpiritHouse Project is a national 501(c)3 non-profit organization that uses the arts, research, education, action, and spirituality to bring diverse peoples together to work for racial, economic, and social justice, as well as for spiritual maturity.
The SpiritHouse Project
1884 N. Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Unit 1
Atlanta, GA 30307
Phone: (404) 228-1715 | <urn:uuid:95e47266-7d6c-4351-b7ed-9bf62f44a6d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ourcommongroundtalk.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/critique-of-abcs-primetime-series-scandal-l-spririthouse-and-johnathan-daniels-and-samuel-younge-fellow-dean-steed/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950094 | 1,524 | 1.75 | 2 |
By Marley Gibbons
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Official Saudi reaction to the women's driving campaign may be taking a harsher turn, with five women arrested this week. As usual, the e-mail alert about the situation came from Change.org, which is supporting the cause every way it can.
Saudi Women for Driving has earned statements of support from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton, news sources reported.
The driving campaign is the leading edge of a wider push for autonomy and citizenship. Saudi women must be accompanied in public by a male relative, may not dine alone in restaurants and have fewer educational opportunities. They do not have the right to vote in all elections and they can't travel outside Saudi Arabia without a male relative as a companion. Many work outside the home, but a driver's weekly salary--of $300 or so--eats up their income.
Many Saudi activists see driving rights as an essential stepping stone towards future progress. "I can't say I want a woman minister, I can't say I want to see democracy . . . I can't say all of these things without being able to drive a car," Eman al-Nafjan, said in a phone interview.
No Saudi law explicitly bans Saudi women from driving. It is part of a religious edict issued by the Islamic council that advises King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.
"This won't be resolved until the King says so," said al-Nafjan.
Abdullah al- Alami, a Saudi writer and economist, said in an e-mail that he is encouraging an advisory group to the king to consider women's right to drive. But he said any change must come from within. "I do not encourage getting outside groups involved in our internal affairs."
Boston free-lance journalist and activist Trisha Calvarese says she was drawn to the cause while covering the Middle East. "I literally just made some friends on Facebook," she said in a phone interview.
Calvarese launched a solidarity effort a few months ago -- Honk for Saudi Women Driving--that calls on women around the world to post YouTube videos of themselves honking car horns in support.
After she posted a few "Honk" videos, a supporter from France offered to help. He and his team at Kinomap, a video-sharing platform site based in Douai, France, developed a smartphone application that supporters could use to upload "honk" videos to the "Honk for Saudi Women Driving" YouTube channel.
The channel's roughly 50 videos so far include a dozen that Saudi women shot of themselves driving on June 17 and since then. Others come from supporters in Australia, Sweden and England.
Saudi women have conducted right-to-drive demonstrations before. Joffe-Walt recalled an occasion in 1990 when 47 women drove cars around Riyadh for a half hour. The drivers and their husbands were banned from leaving the country for a year and those with government jobs were suspended from working, NPR reported. In 2008, a now well-known Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha Al Huwaiderposted a YouTube of herself driving in the suburbs of Riyadh, said the AFP.
The latest effort began on May 22, when Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old single mother and computer technician working for an oil company, was arrested and detained in Riyadh, for posting videos of herself driving on YouTube.
These efforts got the most media attention globally, Joffe-Walt said, because campaigners turned to the Internet to spread information.
Given the distinctive restrictions on Saudi women, many activists decline to link women driving efforts to current revolutionary movements in the region. But no women were jailed for driving on June 17 and some activists say regional politics may help explain the government's initially tolerant response.
One Saudi woman who drove with her mother for about 15 minutes during a rush hour demonstration on June 22, told Women's eNews in a phone interview that police actually protected them from the hostility of some male drivers.
Until now, the mild official response could mean King Abdullah is biding his time and seeing how it plays out in the international community as well as in the Saudi religious establishment, said Joffe-Walt.
But the arrests of the five drivers this week heightens the suspense about how the kingdom will react.
After her release from jail on May 3, al-Sharif's lawyer Adan al-Salah, said she voluntarily signed a pledge to end her Women2Drive campaign, which designated June 17 as the women's day of driving. But Wajeha al-Huwaider, her close friend, told the Guardian she was "certain" silence was a condition of her release from nine days in prison.
Human Rights Watch reported May 22 that al-Sharif's YouTube videos of herself driving had been removed from the Web and her phone, according to several news sources, had been turned off.
Al-Sharif's video was preserved by anonymous supporters and can be found online
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Marley Gibbons is an editorial intern at Women's eNews.
Honk for Women Driving Campaign
Support from Western political figures | <urn:uuid:9b45f67b-4046-4316-ad87-985c236e8507> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://womensenews.org/story/equalitywomen%E2%80%99s-rights/110629/saudi-women-allies-keep-driving-campaign?page=0,1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96737 | 1,123 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Peek inside the office of Christopher Reynolds, professor, musicologist, choral singer and son of a choir conductor, and a visitor sees the expected — rows and rows of books, stacks of sheet music and a sketch of Beethoven on the wall.
But take a few more steps inside and you bump into a life-size cardboard cutout of Elvis clad in a shimmering gold suit, a gift from a co-worker. To talk to Reynolds for a few minutes is to learn his favorite musician of all time is the late, great guitarist Jimi Hendrix, with Led Zeppelin coming in a close second
“I could do a whole quarter on Zeppelin,” said the professor, who has taught at UC Davis since 1985. In fact, he plans to teach “a whole quarter” next year on a different British import: the Beatles.
His teaching abilities, punctuated with enthusiasm for all his subject matter — a vast breadth of music from Renaissance to rock — were recognized Friday when UCD Chancellor Linda Katehi interrupted Reynolds’ “History of Rock Music” class to announce that he is the recipient of this year’s UCD Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement.
Established in 1986, the prize was created to honor faculty who are both exceptional teachers and scholars. The $45,000 prize is believed to be the largest of its kind in the country and is funded through philanthropic gifts managed by the UC Davis Foundation. The winner is selected based on the nominations of other professors, research peers, representatives from the foundation’s board of trustees and students.
With the professor’s students, family members and campus officials looking on, Katehi surprised him with a cake shaped in the distinctive curves of the Fender Stratocaster guitar that Hendrix so famously set on fire and then smashed at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
For today’s purposes, the flames were edible.
“He has a gift for connecting with his students by encouraging them to find their own approach to the material discussed in class and inspiring them to think critically about music,” said Katehi, in presenting the award in an announcement to his class.
Foundation Board Chair Bruce Edwards said Reynolds’ work is inspiring. “It’s exciting to celebrate someone as talented and inspiring as Professor Reynolds. His talent and dedication to UC Davis bring great joy and pride to the university, and we are proud to have him as a member of the Aggie Family.”
The foundation will sponsor an event on May 9 to celebrate the award.
“I am incredibly grateful to the donors at the UC Davis Foundation who established this prize,” Reynolds said. “This is an amazing and humbling honor that they give. And I’m grateful as well to all of my students and wonderful colleagues who have been so generous in their praise. It’s a real privilege to work with the students I’ve taught here, and I’m blessed to have such great colleagues.”
For his part, Reynolds said he was shocked, but thrilled, to hear of the award when Katehi told him.
But to those who have taken a class from him, it’s no surprise at all.
“I am in awe of him,” said Calvin Lymos, who directed the UCD Gospel Choir and earned his bachelor’s degree in music from UCD in 1993.
Lymos, who now directs a gospel choir at the 24th Street Baptist Church in Sacramento, said he was always impressed with the breadth of Reynolds’ music interests and knowledge: “He is versatile. He is open to what music has to give; open to what the earth has to offer.”
In their evaluations, students praise his lectures, his knowledge of history and mostly write that he is “awesome.” Wrote one student about the rock history class — which Reynolds has taught since the 1990s — “Thanks for teaching this class.”
Reynolds does not mind, and actually embraces, that courses in rock once never got approved. In the not too distant past, most university music coursework stuck to “serious” music.
“That means German music,” he quipped — although German music is a subject in which he also excels.
In a letter recommending Reynolds for the teaching prize, department of music chairman Henry Spiller wrote that Reynolds’ teaching of the rock class had been met with skepticism by some faculty — skepticism that seems “quaint” now.
But, Spiller said, it precipitated an important paradigm shift for the department of music and for the university as a whole.
“We make more of an impact on students’ lives by showing them how to apply the methods of humanistic inquiry to the subjects that they find compelling than we do trying to dictate which subjects they should appreciate,” said Spiller. “This paradigm shift stands as perhaps his most important achievement.”
It is a different teaching experience to teach rock and roll to 150 students, most of them nonmusicians, than to teach Beethoven, Reynolds explained.
“When I’m teaching Beethoven, I’m the expert. It’s new to them. In rock and roll, every group of students that I teach is going to have some knowledge of what I’m teaching. I’m teaching fans, some of them really knowledgeable fans.”
He resists being an uncritical fan himself, but knows what he appreciates.
“One of the things I look for is someone who has a variety. I find Jimi Hendrix particularly amazing,” Reynolds explained, describing how the late rocker wrote and performed in a variety of styles. “But he doesn’t let his virtuosity get in the way of the music.”
Reynolds is known to his students and fellow faculty to be at once a very warm and kind person, while at the same time being a rigorous instructor.
Laurie A. San Martin, an associate professor of music who long ago was also Reynolds’ student, said this combination impressed and inspired her.
“I remember rather vividly actually, that he would show these beautiful slides of Europe — the churches and courts where Renaissance music was performed, towns and people too.”
“They were often his personal pictures from travels. As a teacher myself now, I look to this example — living and enjoying the experience to help tell the stories from history. His love of the subject always came across and it was also always obvious that he is and was a very good person to his core.”
Teaching is a family tradition. Reynolds’ father taught music at UC Riverside, where he also conducted the two choirs. His great-granduncle taught classics for half a century at UC Berkeley. One of his sisters and a brother-in-law also are music professors in New York.
His wife, Alessa Johns, teaches English at UCD. They grew up together in Riverside, and their families were close.
Exposed to a lot of music while growing up, he thought the one thing he should not be is a music professor, since that is what his father did. He studied philosophy, but took music courses, too, at UC Riverside. When it was time to declare a major, he discovered he had taken many more music courses than philosophy courses, so ultimately declared music as his major.
He went to Princeton for graduate school, but told his friends he might come back home in a year. But the siren’s song of music drew him in still, and he eventually earned his doctorate in musicology.
As a musicologist, he enjoys teaching about the meanings of music and the ways that composers influenced each other, rather than focusing on dates and biographical facts. He sings (bass or baritone) and plays piano — musicianship not necessarily expected or required of a musicologist.
He, his wife and son, Gabriel, all sing at the Episcopal Church of St. Martin in Davis, a choir that he also has conducted for many years.
Reynolds devotes about 30 minutes a day to acquiring on eBay and elsewhere sheet music written by women composers. He has collected about 5,000 pieces, of which 3,000 have been donated to the Shields Library as the Christopher A. Reynolds Collection of Women’s Song.
The collection is a testament to the activity of women composers in a field considered dominated by men, said Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the division of humanities, arts and cultural studies, in the College of Letters and Science.
A musicologist herself and Princeton classmate of Reynolds, she said in her letter nominating him for the teaching prize that his commitment to this work is both scholarly and ethical.
“Professor Reynolds’ work lays the groundwork for further consideration, by students as well as scholars, of the role of women in American music,” Owens said.
Reynolds is the author of two books: “Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter’s, 1380-1513” (UC Press, 1995), and “Motives for Allusion: Context and Content in Nineteenth-Century Music” (Harvard, 2003) and numerous award-winning articles.
He is currently writing a book on Wagner and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and is founding editor of the journal Beethoven Studies. He is the president of the American Musicological Society, one of many prestigious posts he has held during his career.
He has studied and taught 19th century German music, and lived so many years in Germany in the course of both his research and as director of the UC Study Center in Germany, that his son, Gabriel, now 15, once was identified as an English-as-a-second language student while entering school in the United States.
“We laughed at that. We spoke English at home, but apparently he had a little bit of an accent.”
His son, who speaks English and German today, due to frequent family trips to Germany to keep up his language, plays guitar and viola.
Reynolds, a firm believer in students going abroad for their education, said the 15 years of his life spent outside the United States have been among his most rewarding years. But, every day is rewarding.
“I sometimes just look around and say, ‘This is so much fun. I can’t believe I get paid to do this.’”
— UCD News Service | <urn:uuid:7b3eac65-9655-45a7-9a18-ca26904c0d75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/renaissance-to-rock-musicologist-wins-teaching-prize/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980612 | 2,232 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Haaretz , Israel, Friday, May 1, 2009
None of a $4.5 billion package of reconstruction aid recently pledged for the Gaza Strip has got through because of border restrictions, a top United Nations official said on Thursday.
International donors pledged the aid money in March to help the Palestinian economy and rebuild Gaza after a three-week Israeli military offensive against the coastal strip’s Hamas rulers.
But John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, said Gaza had still not benefited from any of the aid because of restrictions on the flow of goods into the territory.
“There is no prospect of recovery or reconstruction until we can get access for construction materials,” Ging said.
“Billions of dollars were pledged for recovery and reconstruction and yet none of that can actually connect with those whose lives were destroyed,” he told a news briefing during a trip to European Union headquarters in Brussels.
Israel has said it had opened Gaza’s border to larger amounts of food and medicine since the December-January offensive against Hamas militants who control the Palestinian territory and were firing rockets into Israeli towns.
The war destroyed some 5,000 homes and, according to figures from a Palestinian rights group, killed over 1,400 people. Israel has challenged this figure, stating that a total of 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation, the majority of whom were Hamas militants.
Since Hamas ousted Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah from Gaza in a bloody 2007 coup, Israel has tightened its blockade of the 45-km strip in an effort to weaken Hamas’s hold on power.
Egypt has also restricted crossings at its border with Gaza.
Ging said the international community should find a solution to the border crossings issue and provide more access to goods and services for the inhabitants of Gaza.
“Today the money is out there in pledges and the people of Gaza continue to subsist in the rubble of their former lives and the attention of the world has sadly moved on, which compounds the despair that people feel,” he said.
Robert Serry, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said on a visit to Gaza on Thursday the situation was alarming and warned that issues such as Palestinian reconciliation and secure borders had to be addressed.
“In the absence of real progress on issues like Palestinian reconciliation, open crossings, secure borders and a prisoners- exchange, the potential for renewed violence is ever-present,” Serry said in a statement. | <urn:uuid:ba7c9bb7-8e6a-4b36-9869-47a48fe5670f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sudhan.wordpress.com/tag/donors-pledge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968408 | 516 | 1.515625 | 2 |
There is perhaps no greater image of irony tonight than that of anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, anti-materialist extremists of the Occupy Wall Street movement paying tribute to Steve Jobs — the co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., who passed away this evening.
While the Kamp Alinsky Kids ditch school to moan about their massive student debt, parade around in zombie costumes, and whine about evil corporations while Tweeting, Facebook-ing, blogging, and Skype-ing their “revolution,” it’s the doers and producers and wealth creators like Jobs who change the world. They are the gifted 1 percent whom the #OWS “99 percent-ers” mob seeks to demonize, marginalize, and tax out of existence.
Inherent in the American success story of the iPhone/iMac/iPad is a powerful lesson about the fundamentals of capitalism. The Kamp Alinsky Kids scream “People over profit.” They call for “caring” over “corporations.”
But the pursuit of profits empowers people beyond the bounds of imagination.
I am blogging on an iMac. When I travel, I use my MacBook Pro. I Tweet news links from my iPhone. My kids are learning Photoshop and GarageBand on our Macs. I use metronome, dictation, video, and camera apps. I use Apple products for business, pleasure, social networking, raising awareness of the missing, finding recipes, and even tuning a ukulele.
None of the people involved in conceiving these products and bringing them to market “care” about me. They pursued their own self-interests. Through the spontaneous order of capitalism, they enriched themselves — and the world.
Eleven years ago, I wrote about one of my favorite economics essays: Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil.” He turned a mundane writing instrument into an elementary lesson about free-market capitalism. What goes for the pencil goes for any of the products Steve Jobs introduced to the world.
“I have a profound lesson to teach,” Read wrote in the voice of a lead pencil. “I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because–well, because I am seemingly so simple. Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.”
Read traces the rich, deep genealogy of the metaphorical little pencil from the loggers who harvest its cedar wood grown in Oregon, to the millworkers in San Leandro, California, who cut the wood into thin slats, to the railroad employees who transport the wood across the country, to the graphite miners in Ceylon and refinery workers in Mississippi, to the farmers in the Dutch East Indies who produce an oil used to make erasers.
All these people, and many more at the periphery of the process, have special knowledge about their life’s work in their separate corners of the earth. But none by himself has the singular knowledge or ability to give birth to a pencil. Few will ever come in contact with the others who make the production of that pencil possible. It’s not because they “care about each other” that they cooperate to deliver any one good. It’s the result of self-interest, multiplied millions of times over.
As Read explains it: “Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me.” Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants.”
Read pushed the lesson of pencil further. “There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.”
This spontaneous “configuration of human energies” is repeated endlessly in our daily lives. Think of the countless and diverse people involved in producing a Slinky, jump rope, or baseball, a diaper, refrigerator, desktop computer, Boeing 747, or iPhone.
Appreciating this voluntary configuration of human energies, Read argued, is key to possessing “an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.”
Indeed. Without that faith, we are susceptible to the force of class-warfare mobs and the arrogance of master planners in Washington who believe the role of private American entrepreneurs, producers, and wealth generators is to “grow the economy” and who “think at some point you have made enough money.”
The progressives who want to bring down “Wall Street” will snipe that Steve Jobs was one of “theirs,” not “ours.”
He belonged to no one. He was transcendently committed to excellence and beauty and innovation. And yes, he made gobs of money pursuing it all while benefiting hundreds of millions of people around the world whom he never met, but who shed a deep river of tears upon learning of his death tonight.
Such is the everlasting miracle of the spontaneous configuration of human energies. Teach your children well.
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What made Jobs’s tenure at Apple great is that he wedded profits with aesthetic loveliness. Not every businessperson can or should do this. Even the entrepreneurs who provided the masses with tacky things are just as deserving of our admiration and praise, for they too do their part to lift us all out of the poverty and squalor that is the state of nature.
And aside from the prettiness of certain products or the elegance of the smartphone, there is another overarching beauty that we find in the market: a lovely, orderly, productive global matrix of cooperative exchange that leads to human flourishing for everyone, even in the absence of a global dictator. This is as beautiful a system as any product Steve Jobs ever made.
In wake of Boston bombing, disgusting left-wing anarchists attack police…and whine about “pigs” [video, photo links]
May 2, 2013 02:34 AM by Michelle Malkin
June 13, 2012 09:47 AM by Michelle Malkin
June 24, 2012 06:22 PM by Michelle Malkin
August 10, 2012 11:40 PM by Doug Powers
September 17, 2012 11:46 AM by Michelle Malkin
Daily Caller» Wyo. student who threatened to rape self on Facebook was convicted of assault
Daily Caller» David Brooks: ‘We as a country have become over-addicted to scandal’
Green Room» New liberal idea: Let’s raise $660 million online in a month to buy the LA Times before the Koch brothers can
Daily Caller» Bill Maher: GOP guilty of ‘treason’; Michael Moore: ‘They hate America’
Gay Patriot» Meanwhile, at Obama’s EPA. . .
Green Room» Feelgood video of the day
Green Room» Two House Dems demand Lerner resignation after using lobbyist to stage modified limited hangout
Gay Patriot» Did the IRS act progressive groups the same kind of intrusive questions they asked of Tea Party groups? (And if not, why not?) | <urn:uuid:040feb12-b71f-4414-8911-93d29c9db6fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://michellemalkin.com/2011/10/05/from-i-pencil-to-iphone-the-spontaneous-order-of-capitalism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935824 | 1,614 | 1.671875 | 2 |
By Lindsay Lorenz
PBN Staff Writer
BOSTON - While employment edged up in Providence County by 0.6 percentage points during the second quarter of 2012, average weekly wages declined by 1 percent as compared to second quarter 2011.
A report released Thursday by the New England Information Office of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in June 2012, the county’s employment stood at 271,623 and accounted for 59 percent of employment within Rhode Island.
Statewide, over-the-year employment was up 0.9 percent during the same period, while nationally, employment increased by 1.8 percent.
Providence County, which is considered the state’s only large county (large counties are defined as those with employment of 75,000 or more as measured by 2011 annual average employment), was one of 287 of 328 large counties that experienced job gains from June 2011 to June 2012.
The largest over-the-year gain recorded was 8.2 in Yakima, Wash., with Madison, Ill., St. Clair, Ill. and Clay, Mo. experiencing the largest over-the-year decrease with a loss of 2 percent each.
Although employment was up slightly during the second quarter of 2012, the average weekly wage in Providence County, $888, reflects a decrease of 1 percent compared to the second quarter of 2011.
Statewide, the average weekly wage was $859 and the national average weekly wage was $903.
Providence was one of 86 large counties that experienced a wage drop during this period, with Williamson, Texas experiencing the largest average weekly wage decrease with a loss of 17 percent.
Of the counties that experienced over-the-year wage growth, Washington, Ore., ranked first in average weekly wage growth, with an increase of 8.5 percent from the second quarter of 2011.
Of Rhode Island’s other four counties, none reported an average weekly wage above the national average in the second quarter of 2012.
Newport had the highest weekly wages at $839, while Bristol had the lowest at $716. Bristol County’s wage was more than 20 percent below the U.S. average.
Data used in the bureau’s report was derived from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which obtains data from unemployment insurance summaries. | <urn:uuid:9c54a06a-934c-46dc-8ae9-7c39bfbb8538> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pbn.com/County-employment-rises-wages-drop-in-2Q,86188?category_id=40&list_type=featured&sub_type=stories,packages | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971766 | 479 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Asian kids get head start of golf careers
Under the sweltering heat, Butsakom Moonfong gripped her golf club firmly and practiced her swing, before focusing on the ball. Adjusting her position, the 10-year-old hit the ball close to the hole, getting a thumbs-up from her caddie.
Butsakom emerged champion in her age group in the Kids Golf World Championship in Malaysia on December 4-6, much to the delight of her caddie, who is also her father. She has been playing competitive golf since she was five, and by six years old she had her eyes set on the world stage.
"I want to be a world professional player. I want to make lots of money," the softly spoken Thai girl said at lunch break earlier this week, escorted by her doting parents.
Golf is no longer just an adult's game in Asia. It is fast becoming child's play as many parents nurture their kids from increasingly young ages, giving them a head start on a path to a professional career.
Asia's rising status in the sport, and the inclusion of golf in the 2016 Olympics have sparked interest in the region.
Asian women are particularly dominant, sweeping all four major championships this year for the first time in LPGA history. That makes it nine Asian triumphs in the past 12 majors, while the world rankings, headed by Taiwanese star Yani Tseng, are dominated by Koreans and Japanese. Sixty of the world's top 100 women golfers are from Asia.
That may soon be mirrored in the men's game too. Recently, Chinese schoolboy Guan Tianlang created golfing history by qualifying for the US Masters in April at the age of just 14. Tianlang, from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, started playing at age four and won the world junior title by 11 shots last year in San Diego.
The Kids Golf World Championship, held for the first time in Asia, attracted 402 participants aged between six and 18. It is an offshoot of the US Kids Golf Foundation, the largest and among the most prestigious event in the world for junior golfers. It also tabulates points towards world amateur ranking.
Among those competing was six-year-old Filipino Lucas Hodreal, who is a big fan of Woods and world No 1 Rory McIlroy. Hodreal was among the youngest participant in the Malaysian championship. He was only two years old when his father put a golf club in his hand.
"I like golf because I get soft drinks and get to play Ipod in the car," the pint-sized boy said. He was disappointed with his game in Malaysia because he didn't land any double eagles.
In the Philippines, junior golf tournaments are held almost weekly, providing an avenue for young golfers to brush up their skills. In Singapore, some schools have begun to offer golf as part of the curriculum. In Malaysia, top bank Maybank recently set up a junior golf academy to nurture young talent for the Olympics and to try and dispel the notion that golf is an elitist game.
Golf is also slowly being embraced in Myanmar, as it emerges from military rule toward more democracy.
Yin May Tho, 17, came from a non-golfing family and fell in love with the game at age 11. She has participated in 45 tournaments since then and aims to make golf a career. She won in her age group in the Kids Golf World Championship.
"This is a gentleman's game and I can manage it myself. It's a mental game," she said, citing Yani Tseng and South Korea's Na Yeon Choi as her idols. She said she hopes to enter a golf academy in Australia next year to better her game.
She was among an entourage of a dozen Myanmar teenagers competing in the Malaysian championship.
Her coach Chan Han said interest has bloomed in recent years with 70-80 budding junior golfers in Myanmar under the country's golf association. As Myanmar opens its doors further to the world, Chan said he hopes there will be more incentives and further investments to build world standard golf courses to make the sport more accessible.
"In Asia, many people see golf as an elitist game but the rise of Asian stars in the game is slowly changing that perception. Green fees are still cheap in Myanmar and there are many talents here in Asia," Chan said.
For Thailand's Butsakom, her parents are pushing her and doing all they can for their only child to support her dream.
They live in Mae Hong Son, a hilly province in northern Thailand where her father owns a driving range. Every month, they take a five-hour drive to the nearest golf course in Chiang Mai so that Moonfong can practice her game. Her future goal is clear: become a professional at age 16.
Her mother, a nurse, said they plan to uproot the family to Chiang Mai in the next two years so that Butsakom can practice her game daily.
Will she be the next Asian rising star?
"Yes, I think so," her mother said, with a laugh. | <urn:uuid:0342e2a9-b728-4d77-a909-8d4635519a1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.supersport.com/golf/golf-globe/news/121208/Asian_kids_get_head_start_of_golf_careers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976039 | 1,061 | 1.664063 | 2 |
2012 was tumultuous for school district
With cuts, honors and a campaign for a levy and bond issue, 2012 has been a tumultuous year for Dublin City Schools.
The district started the new year looking into cuts after voters rejected a $25-million bond issue and 7.2-mill operating levy in November, 2011. Cuts, plans and campaigns for a new tax issue dominated most the year.
During the first few months of 2012, the district worked to cut $7.1 million from its budget that included $1.5 million in operation efficiencies, cuts to professional development, supplemental contracts and field trips and modifications to busing routes.
About $2 million in reductions were made by cutting nine positions in the central office, increasing class sizes and the elimination of one period at the high schools.
"We've been trying to grab savings from different areas around the district," Superintendent David Axner said in February. "We're trying to save the classroom."
Teachers were not absolved from cuts. The district laid off 16 teachers and abolished 46.5 teaching positions in March.
About 90 retirements and resignations saved several positions throughout the district as employees were shifted to different areas to avoid layoffs.
"After the levy failed, we were talking about 100 positions (to be eliminated)," Axner said in March.
The positions eliminated by the board included high school language arts, math, business, French, middle school-level Spanish, physical education and 12.5 elementary teachers.
With cuts in place, the Dublin Board of Education then grappled with what request to return to voters with in November.
Although the 2011 bond issue included seven new classrooms at Deer Run Elementary and four at Glacier Ridge Elementary, board of education members opted to include only maintenance, technology and a few important projects at three schools to decrease the funding request to go to voters.
In June, the board of education approved seeking a combined 6.4-mill operating levy and $15.8-million bond issue on the November ballot, which was almost 1 mill less than the 2011 tax issue.
"This is greatly reduced from the last issue," Axner said during the summer.
The board of education in September approved a contingency plan that would institute $10 million in cuts if the 2012 bond and levy issue were to fail.
Cuts included five central office positions, the elimination of some classroom aids, custodians and high school busing as well as a significant increase to pay-to-participate fees.
Altogether 125.5 positions were included in the contingency plan.
The district celebrated when residents approved the combined 6.4 mill operating levy and $15.8-million bond issue in November with 56 percent of the vote.
"It was loud and clear this time last year that the community wanted us to continue to make cuts," Board President Chris Valentine said after the victory.
"We did that and continue to do that, but we're thankful for the overwhelming support from the community ... ."
Also making headlines in May, Axner announced he would leave the district to be associate executive director of the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators in 2013.
"I've always wanted to do something statewide," he said during the announcement. "The association (of secondary school administrators) recruited me. I wasn't out looking and applying. Career-wise it makes sense to me. Family-wise it's good."
Axner became superintendent of Dublin City Schools in 2007 after 17 years in the Chagrin Falls school district.
The announcement came amidst cuts and funding decisions, and the district opted to concentrate on the levy issues at hand before funding a replacement.
After the bond and levy issue passed in November, the board of education began the search for a new superintendent and will use the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio.
Late in the year, the district surveyed residents on qualities they want in a new superintendent and the position will be posted for applicants early in 2013.
'Excellent with distinction,' sort of
Although the district struggled with cuts and passing a new tax issue in 2012, achievement in the district did not suffer.
Final state report cards have not yet been released by the state, but preliminary results show Dublin City Schools will receive the top rating of "excellent with distinction" on the 2011-12 report card.
The district also met 26 of 26 state indicators and achieved its highest performance index score of 107 points out of 120.
"That's nine years in a row we've had the highest academic rating," Axner said in the fall. "There are only 13 (districts) in the state now that have that."
On the state report card, the district met Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, which measures whether students in nine subgroups meet goals in reading and math.
For the value-added rating that determines the progress students have made since the last academic year, Dublin was rated above, which means the district exceeded expected growth.
One Dublin robotics team also made district history.
The Sells Middle School FIRST Lego League team, Moderately Confused, participated in state competitions and took first place in the Global Innovation Awards.
Each year, teams must come up with an invention that solves a problem and in last year's food challenge, the team created an erasable barcode that would render a barcode on meat unreadable if stored at improper temperatures too long.
The team competed against teams from throughout the world and for first place won $250,000 in services from Edison National to help develop and market their invention.
"There are no words to describe how good I felt," team member Rahul Mal said in July after the awards were handed out at the U.S. Patent office in Washington, D.C.
"It felt great, but it was more than that." | <urn:uuid:2bb7388a-ae64-4bef-993b-55abb8f448f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/dublin/news/2012/12/19/year-in-review-2012-was-tumultuous-for-dublin-schools.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976711 | 1,195 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Problems in schools come from society
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I am an inner-city high-school mathematics teacher, and I believe the legislature is specifically targeting urban education with recent education reforms.
Public education is a reflection of society. Some act as if the problems in our society come from within the school.
Wake up, people. The problems we face as educators walk in the front door every morning. The clientele who come to me differ greatly from the clientele who attend schools in more-affluent neighborhoods. Some are homeless, some have drug-addicted parents, some are physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually abused, and many are poor.
It is time for Gov. John Kasich, and other elected officials to leave the “ivory tower” and venture into the real world of an inner-city school.
And, for those who think this is just a pity party by me, my classroom door is always open; come join me. But it may be more than they bargained for. Once people have this firsthand knowledge, then they, too, are accountable. | <urn:uuid:f9f3a3d9-6ea3-4700-826a-3c3940cd1774> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/11/19/problems-in-schools-come-from-society.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946643 | 325 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Approval of Research
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You are encouraged to consider the issue of informing research participants of the results of the research or where they may be able to get access to this information, although research participants may not be able to be given their individual results. Taking part in non-clinical research is a voluntary matter requiring good-will on the part of the community and it is appropriate for research participants to be able to receive feedback on research they have been involved in where this is possible. | <urn:uuid:977124a9-31e2-4779-b6ec-c83cea641b60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/research/researchethics/approvalofresearch/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931758 | 461 | 1.757813 | 2 |
They're starting revolutions, opening schools, and fostering a brave new generation. From Detroit to Kabul, these women are making their voices heard.
Seven years ago, I resigned from my job as assistant Food and Drug Administration commissioner for women’s health because I believed that, under the Bush administration, politics was taking precedence over science and women’s health.
In an email to my colleagues at the time, I wrote: “I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled.”
That was in 2005. After the election of Barack Obama, I and many others were filled with a renewed hope that scientific findings would once again guide the decisions of the FDA. But as a New York Times article on Tuesday laid out, that has not always been the case. In fact, some of the same mistakes are being repeated.
In the Times article, I was quoted as saying that President Obama had not lived up to his pledge to depoliticize our decision making, but that nevertheless “I’m an optimist and hope that the president will find a way to stand by his promise.”
It’s true: today I am a real optimist, but sometimes it is hard to remain one.
Let’s take a specific example: the decision in December by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to block the nonprescription sale of emergency contraceptives—known as Plan B—to all women who need it, including girls younger than 17.
Sebelius insisted that she had a “scientific” rationale for overruling the science-based recommendation of the FDA: there wasn’t enough data to satisfy her, she said. What was missing? Data that showed girls as young as 11 could correctly use emergency contraception. But this rationale doesn’t hold water.
To test this, I went to a pharmacy recently to purchase some Plan B and to see for myself how the process worked. Early on a Saturday evening, I had to go to three stores to find an open pharmacy counter. I then needed to stand in two different lines and show my ID (though I am obviously over 17 years old!). After paying $50 for a single Plan B pill, I bought a bottle of children’s acetaminophen (bubble-gum-flavored) for $5—enough chewable pills for any 11-year-old to suffer life-threatening liver damage. Also on the shelf, of course, were many types of condoms, available to anyone with a few dollars in his or her wallet.
So the Plan B decision was clearly not about safety or effectiveness—indeed, the FDA commissioner, Peggy Hamburg, clearly stated that the agency was ready to approve it fully over the counter. It was also not about use by preteens, because by keeping emergency contraception prescription only for those under 17, any woman who needs it fast—whether in her 20s, 30s, or 40s—will have to find that open pharmacy and the pharmacist to give it to her.
Let’s remember that Plan B is simply a higher dose of regular birth-control pills and works the same way, only immediately after unprotected sex, not before. Despite the scare tactics and misinformation campaigns being waged by the Catholic hierarchy and others who oppose allowing women to access contraception, Plan B is not the abortion pill (sometimes known as RU-486), and it will not interrupt a pregnancy.
On its surface, the secretary’s action was a small thing. After all, invoking concerns about sexually active preteens is enough to garner the support of most parents, no matter what. But when Sebelius decided to block the FDA’s recommendation, and when she asserted her own interpretation of medical and scientific data, she set a new and potentially dangerous precedent.
While the HHS secretary does have final legal authority to make decisions for the FDA, by law these decisions must be made based on very specific and limited criteria. Political considerations are not one of them. The FDA makes recommendations based on scientific evidenc to ensure that the products it approves are safe and effective. Approving or blocking medications based on political or other grounds is a slippery slope.
Imagine a future secretary appointed by a president who objects to, say, embryonic stem-cell research. Pointing to the Plan B decision, this new secretary could assert that he or she doesn’t believe the data showing effectiveness of a stem-cell-based cancer therapy and so could deny approval. Or maybe a major political contributor wants a new drug or device approved (or blocked)? The secretary—a senior political appointee, after all—could identify a “scientific” rationale to overrule the decision by the professional medical and scientific staff at the FDA.
By law the FDA’s decisions must be made based on very specific and limited criteria. Political considerations are not one of them.
There is a good reason why earlier secretaries have not publicly or formally overruled “controversial” FDA product-approval decisions: it doesn’t benefit the public’s health, and all of us are at risk if we cannot trust the FDA’s decisions.
There are real options for the HHS and FDA to revisit the Plan B decision and to ensure that it does not set a very risky precedent. It all starts with giving independence back to the scientists and physicians at the FDA—who, it should be noted, have recommended full approval for Plan B over the counter for nearly 10 years.
We depend on the FDA every day so that we have confidence that all of the medicines—whether prescribed to us or bought over the counter—are safe and effective. Yet the controversy over Plan B that started under the Bush administration unfortunately has continued into the present, and it serves as a canary in a coal mine. The Obama administration, which is championing expanded insurance coverage for contraception as a preventive service for women, needs to find a way to back the FDA decision—both for the benefit of women and to ensure a strong, independent FDA that truly protects and promotes our health.
Inspiring women from around the globe will convene in April for the 2013 Women in the World Summit. See who’s coming!
From invisible Iranians to dealing with an overweight body, see works from female photographers to watch.
Newsweek and The Daily Beast are excited to announce the 2013 Women in the World Summit on April 4 and 5. Get your tickets today.
DINKs, DILDOs, and other readers respond to Joel Kotkin and Harry Siegel’s Newsweek story about America's declining birthrate and share their reasons for remaining child-free.
Gail Sheehy looks at the new, strategic feminism, as PBS prepares to air the documentary ‘Makers: Women Who Make America’ tonight.
The mother of a domestic abuse victim speaks out
As Melanne Verveer departs, who could be Obama’s new champion for women and girls? By Katie Baker.
Diane von Furstenberg joins GMA's Robin Roberts to talk about the annual DVF Awards and reveals the courageous anchor will be honored at this year's event on April 5th.
“Fatshion” is a popular community on Tumblr, where plus-size bloggers post pictures of themselves as a way of celebrating their size. Judy McGuire reports.
The film, which will be released March 7, advocates for the education of girls around the world. Eliza Shapiro reports.
Three feminists from different generations revisit Friedan’s classic. By Jessica Bennett, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Alisa Solomon.
A new CDC study is just the latest news to buoy the pro-breastfeeding camp, reports Eliza Shapiro.
Ping Fu talks to Katie Baker about the online backlash to her new memoir, ‘Bend, Not Break.’
She changed the game irrevocably, and now she’s about to transform it again—by walking away. Plus, read the full transcript of her farewell speech.
Tina Brown and Angelina Jolie announce gathering strength for an education fund in her honor.
How two women’s online plea is pushing the lingerie giant to the ‘survivor bra’ market. By Nina Strochlic.
See locations of the country’s 724 clinics and distance to the closest clinic in different areas. By Michael Keller and Allison Yarrow.
When companies support women, write Melanne Verveer and Kim Azzarelli, their businesses and communities win.
Veteran Anthony Woods recalls a brave lieutenant who lost her life in Afghanistan.
After gifting his DNA via Craigslist, a Kansas man may be on the hook for $6,000 in child support. Fair? | <urn:uuid:8d5865c5-621c-4d7e-a1f4-63d1263a8819> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/06/obama-lets-politics-trump-science-in-plan-b-fight.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957244 | 1,837 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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September 24, 2008
NEW YORK CITY -- Can hardware acceleration save Wall Street? Well, not as quickly as a multibillion-dollar bailout might, but there was plenty of discussion at this week's HPC on Wall Street conference about the advantages specialized hardware can bring to market analysts and traders. Sellers of these products were all over the place, their booths were busy, and several sessions on the subject were standing-room only.
The idea of separate appliances to speed up data processing has started catching on in financial services, said Geno Valente, VP of sales and marketing at XtremeData, Inc. "A few years ago, people were like, 'Who needs that?'" The expectation was that faster and faster CPUs would yield the processing and throughput speeds needed to respond to market changes. Plus, the FPGAs that are the brains of most accelerator boards were exotic to organizations outside the scientific community and required specialized parallel-programming skills to be used effectively.
But that's all changed, said Valente. Accelerators are now built into appliances from companies like Solace Systems and Exegy that "anyone can plug in and start using," he said. "Libraries are being developed that make acceleration technology available to people who don't know parallel-programming." As a result, "Public exchanges are using accelerators. Wall Street is now taking advantage of them. And there are a lot more companies using them that we can't talk about," he said.
Obviously performance -- faster processing of more data and more data streams -- is the primary advantage vendors mention when talking about their products. Their specialized processors handle the floating-point operations that crunch the algorithms that analysts and traders do-or-die upon. "Accelerator hardware enables us to do things we couldn't do otherwise," said Henry Young, founder of TS-Associates, an IT services company specializing in financial middleware. "We can handle a 10-gigabit data stream through a hardware accelerator to speed up processing. You can't compress a 10-gig stream like that with current CPU technology."
But it's not just speed. One reason Wall Street is getting on board is the need to score an edge over competitors and get a better handle on volatile markets. "Accelerators can differentiate a cluster," Valente said. "Otherwise you have exactly what the other guy has. It's accelerators and other customizable things you can add to a Linux box that give you an advantage."
Reliability and data precision were brought up as crucial benefits of acceleration hardware during a panel discussion. Simon McIntosh-Smith, VP of applications at ClearSpeed Technology, raised the spectre of "soft errors" resulting from cosmic emissions flipping bits. ClearSpeed makes an ASIC-based accelerator board that can plug into a server or be ganged up in a rack and connected to the network. What if an alpha emission hit a processor and altered the data from "sell 10,000 shares to buy 10,000"? In that case, you'd better hope you have hardware that supports error detection as well as error correction, McIntosh-Smith said. "The point is to make sure you have a system that supports high reliability. Some hardware accelerators support it, and some don't. Without reliability built in, you can have soft errors and not even realize it until it's too late."
While cosmic rays might be too sci-fi for other manufacturers, they still emphasize the high reliability features of their devices. Exegy uses reconfigurable hardware "so people can add logic to detect flipped bits or to add in more data protection as necessary," said Scott Parsons, the company's chief architect. And Solace Systems VP of architecture Shawn McAllister pointed out that Solace appliances can also have reliability features added. "We have firmware that monitors things and can take over in the event of a problem," he said.
Consolidation is another benefit, these hardware makers say. Exegy's technology is incorporated in a ticker based on reconfigurable hardware that "can handle all the North American market data feeds in one box rather than a dozen," Parsons said, with that stream including NYSE/SIAC, NASDAQ, OPRA, and ARCA. (See it in action at marketdatapeaks.com, he noted.)
"Datacenter consolidation is very important to our customers," McAllister said. "Some of them are in a situation where they just can't add another server until they take one out. Accelerators can help with that."
With appliances replacing big servers, in theory at least financial firms will save on utility bills. "We have seen lower power consumption at the system level with our FPGAs," Parsons noted.
That would be an advantage, right?
"I thought by now we'd be hearing more customers saying they want to reduce power consumption," McIntosh-Smith said. "But we're not seeing that. It's still all about speed and performance."
And as market data grows and grows, there will probably be no end of that need. Accelerator designers admit they're just part of the solution. Advances in middleware, algorithms, the OS stack, software development tools, will all be needed to give financial services the ability to acquire, process and interpret data faster. "We don't see general-purpose CPUs getting that much faster," said Parsons. "So you have to look at non-traditional approaches to all these problems."
Meanwhile, manufacturers of other types of processors are designing their chips to meet the demands of financial applications. In June, NVIDIA, whose graphics processing units are at the heart of upscale gaming and multimedia systems (pretty demanding themselves), introduced its 240-core Tesla 10 series. The company says the chip's teraflop of processing power can be applied to mission-critical workloads such as financial analysis. Likewise, AMD is aiming its Firestream 9250 processor at the same kind of HPC number crunching. AMD has said that developers are reporting up to a 55 times performance increase when running financial analysis code using a FireStream 9250 GPU-based accelerator versus a standalone CPU.
Regardless of one's take on hardware accelerators, they've got to be considered, like any other advancement.
"If you want to play in the fast markets, you can't ignore new technology," said Peter Lankford of the Securities Technology Analysis Center, which evaluates and benchmarks IT for trading systems and other financial applications. "Technology budgets are going to be more constrained now, so financial companies need to pay even more attention. Things are just going to get tighter and tighter.
Jun 18, 2013 |
The world's largest supercomputers, like Tianhe-2, are great at traditional, compute-intensive HPC workloads, such as simulating atomic decay or modeling tornados. But data-intensive applications--such as mining big data sets for connections--is a different sort of workload, and runs best on a different sort of computer.
Jun 18, 2013 |
Researchers are finding innovative uses for Gordon, the 285 teraflop supercomputer housed at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) that has a unique Flash-based storage system. Since going online, researchers have put the incredibly fast I/O to use on a wide variety of workloads, ranging from chemistry to political science.
Jun 17, 2013 |
The advent of low-power mobile processors and cloud delivery models is changing the economics of computing. But just as an economy car is good at different things than a full size truck, an HPC workload still has certain computing demands that neither the fastest smartphone nor the most elastic cloud cluster can fulfill.
Jun 14, 2013 |
For all the progress we've made in IT over the last 50 years, there's one area of life that has steadfastly eluded the grasp of computers: understanding human language. Now, researchers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) are utilizing a Hadoop cluster on its Longhorn supercomputer to move the state of the art of language processing a little bit further.
Jun 13, 2013 |
Titan, the Cray XK7 at the Oak Ridge National Lab that debuted last fall as the fastest supercomputer in the world with 17.59 petaflops of sustained computing power, will rely on its previous LINPACK test for the upcoming edition of the Top 500 list.
05/10/2013 | Cleversafe, Cray, DDN, NetApp, & Panasas | From Wall Street to Hollywood, drug discovery to homeland security, companies and organizations of all sizes and stripes are coming face to face with the challenges – and opportunities – afforded by Big Data. Before anyone can utilize these extraordinary data repositories, however, they must first harness and manage their data stores, and do so utilizing technologies that underscore affordability, security, and scalability.
04/15/2013 | Bull | “50% of HPC users say their largest jobs scale to 120 cores or less.” How about yours? Are your codes ready to take advantage of today’s and tomorrow’s ultra-parallel HPC systems? Download this White Paper by Analysts Intersect360 Research to see what Bull and Intel’s Center for Excellence in Parallel Programming can do for your codes.
Join HPCwire Editor Nicole Hemsoth and Dr. David Bader from Georgia Tech as they take center stage on opening night at Atlanta's first Big Data Kick Off Week, filmed in front of a live audience. Nicole and David look at the evolution of HPC, today's big data challenges, discuss real world solutions, and reveal their predictions. Exactly what does the future holds for HPC?
Join our webinar to learn how IT managers can migrate to a more resilient, flexible and scalable solution that grows with the data center. Mellanox VMS is future-proof, efficient and brings significant CAPEX and OPEX savings. The VMS is available today. | <urn:uuid:e16e0788-5c09-49d3-9bef-10c076635b04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2008-09-24/hardware_accelerators_are_one_way_to_help_wall_street_companies_say.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951836 | 2,057 | 1.710938 | 2 |
This is a good time to take stock of the summer plants. You probably have to go outdoors to water your garden anyway. How are the annuals and perennials doing during these days of blistering heat and humidity?
One of my first notes: Begonias do very well in pots in the garden.
Outside, my stroll this morning found that I might not want to use sun coleus or even the new bronze leafed ornamental sweet potato vine in containers next year, at least not in full sun. They are two of my favorites but they do take almost daily watering in these 90-100+ degree-days. Who knows when our weather will be back to normal?
The purple-red gizzard plant is shown here hanging limply in its pot. A hearty dose of water and some shade brought it back upright by late afternoon. It is either going in the ground or staying in the garden center next year.
Not surprisingly, lantana is strong in a pot. So is variegated plectranthus. Sun Patiens from Sakata and calibrachoa from Hort Couture, both sent to me for trial, are not only standing up to the heat in containers in part sun, they are blooming.
A surprise in containers is a couple of scented-leaf geraniums, one shown here. They are brocade leaf types called ‘Indian Dunes’. I planted them for their foliage but they also send up vivid orange flowers.
Old timers that are in the ground and going strong are David phlox, milkweed, and purple coneflowers. I water them two to three times a week.
The annual vincas shown here are the all time heat tolerant/drought tolerant flowers in my garden. I plant them right next to the paved street. The sprinkler system doesn’t reach them. I have never seen them droop! Maybe next year I’ll be smart enough to put annual vincas in all of my container pots, too.
Next year you may wilt, but if you use the toughies that come through this summer, it won’t be because you had to spend valuable cooling time in the hot sun with a watering can or hose.
All articles are copyrighted and remain the property of the author. | <urn:uuid:0ab72f70-d295-423e-a40f-95bf31d74b48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gardensmart.tv/?p=articles&title=Hot_Flowers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954386 | 478 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Okay bullcrap. If he valued his damned umbrella so much he’d HAVE IT OVER HIMSELF.
Dear homeless man, here’s some help climbing aboard the clue train. First stop, why animals have fur and why humans invented umbrellas. See in the wild, dogs (wolves) get wet everyday! They have this hair ALL over them that protects them and makes it OKAY. We, long ago, discovered that getting wet sucks because we don’t have hair all over us (well most of us don’t) and some goddamn genius invented the umbrella to protect us from the rain so that we don’t get sick and/or have bad hair. Besides I bet you could get like $10 for that umbrella on a day like that and $10 would buy beer. Then you, and the dog, will still be wet but you won’t care (and the dog never cared) because you’ll have beer.
Again pure, distilled and fermented bull. You know who else didn’t give a shit, the guy in the photo up above and look at his situation. He’ll likely be trading sexual favors for drugs later on tonight but he doesn’t give a shit. Life is a thousand times harder when you don’t give a shit and a thousand times easier when you DO give a shit. You know who gives a shit? Bill fucking Gates gives a shit and that man that asked you for spare change last Friday so he could get drunk buy food doesn’t give a shit (except about getting drunk). Which of those two people has a better life … I know, I know the drunk guy. Fuck you.
Don’t you think your little Facebook game has gone off the deep end when the bounty of someone is LARGER than the GDP of THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD?!?!?! What the hell did Hobo Ella even do that every nation in the world is ready to collapse their own economy just so you would FINALLY kill her. Besides if she’s worth that much isn’t about damned time she changed her name from Hobo Ella to SUPERFUCKINGRICHANDAWESOME Ella? I’m thinking if we’re nice to her she might get that moon base that Newt Gingrich has been talking about off the ground. And what the hell are YOU going to do with all that money besides crash the world’s economy I mean. Don’t get me started on you Farmville people. Don’t you all know that Facebook is for seeing if your ex got fat and for spying on your kids … Jesus.
If you ever posted this to your Facebook feed and are A: older than 17 or B: heterosexual and male contact me immediately. I wish to study you.
I don’t even know where to start with this one. Mostly they have a tag that says, “will you let him in?” Hell yes I would, he can even have the last beer if he wants it but SO WHAT. He’s GOD. Dude walked on water, turned water into wine and did a bunch of other crap why does he need me to let him in. Can’t he just ‘jesus’ his way into the house? I’m trying to watch Simpson’s reruns. Posts like this are the reason there are fights on numerous message boards across the net. This is the very reason that every internet fight devolves into someone being compared to Hitler. If you post this in your feed you’re the reason that someone had to start a POE wiki … Also he is God can’t he modernize his clothes?
I promise you no man read the entire thing up above. I didn’t even read it and I cared enough to copy it out of Facebook, uploaded it here and am about to write a (grammatically incorrect and largely incoherent) paragraph about it. Ladies, because let’s be honest only ladies post this crap, men never read this shit. That long ass card you got us for our anniversary or birthday or national boob appreciation day, we didn’t read that one either. We don’t. We stare at it constantly asking ourselves if we can stop pretending we’re reading it yet. Generally we take some sentence in the middle and read it just in case you ask a question. Her, “Didn’t you just love the part about beaches?” she’ll ask. We’re just going to spout off the random crap we DID actually read back to you so you THINK we read it. “Sure did honey but I really found the part about love being a never ending circle like our rings very special.” It’s total shit I know but we’re all just hoping for blow jobs with minimal effort. Amiright? | <urn:uuid:25dbbc99-2fab-4e91-b8c4-a93687056cc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hadafewbeers.com/2012/03/01/542/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=6c7ec013d9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952327 | 1,033 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The UN Security Council has passed stirring resolutions against North Korea for its nuclear weapons program six times; a number that borders on the absurd. The latest resolution was passed on January 22, making it the fifth North Korea has received in the last 10 years alone.
North Korea has released a video about its space program and rocket launch abilities that shows a city similar to New York being destroyed by a military bombardment overlayed by a burning American flag.
The video, published on Feb. 2 on the country’s official YouTube channel, begins with the face of a dozing North Korean man which is then overlaid with scenes of a rocket launch. The the soothing background music — which sounds like an off-brand muzak version of Michael Jackson’s “Heal The World,” mixed with “We Are The World” — plays over everything.
True to form, the North Korean regime responded to the Security Council’s latest salvo with yet another round of ridiculous posturing. The country’s Stalinist-gangster regime (which shakes down the international community for billions in aid while starving its citizens and enslaving them in Soviet-style gulags) once again threatened to continue its nuclear program, attack South Korea, and break off talks on de-nuclearization that were previously abandoned in 2008.
Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, gamely praised the latest Security Council resolution and sanctions as “new.” And, to be fair, the sanctions do add travel bans on a few more mid-level North Korean officials such as Mr. Paek Chang-ho, the head of North Korea’s space agency.
But since – as a citizen of a totalitarian prison state – Mr. Paek was not free to leave his country anyway, it is difficult to imagine what effect the travel ban could possibly have. Before the resolution, Mr. Paek couldn’t vacation in Florida. Now, Mr. Paek really, really can’t vacation in Florida.
Since the only person who is free to come and go from North Korea as he pleases is the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, one can’t help but wonder why the UN didn’t ban a more influential figure. Like the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, for example.
There is a real possibility that the UN might finally try to prosecute Kim Jong-un and put him on trial in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. This would likely prove a drawn-out affair, but the UN finally seems ready to take the first step: the creation of a Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity in North Korea.
The campaign for such a commission picked up steam in 2011 with the formation of a coalition of 40 human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Toronto-based Council for Human Rights in North Korea. The Commission has been championed in the pages of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist and the National Post, as well as by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. Now, Japan is reportedly preparing a resolution to create a Commission of Inquiry at the next UN Human Rights Council meeting in March, and Australia and the EU are expected to support it.
At present, Canada is not a member of the UN Human Rights Council and is therefore unable to cast a vote. But as a member of the UN General Assembly, it has the right to address the Council and lend its support to Japan on the issue.
To date, the Canadian government has been cool to the idea of a Commission of Inquiry. At a September 27, 2012 meeting of a Parliamentary subcommittee on international human rights, a foreign affairs representative explained that a commission was considered unfeasible, since China would likely veto it. It is true that China would probably veto a commission if it were proposed at the UN Security Council, but China wields no veto at the UN Human Rights Council. Indeed, China, along with North Korea’s other two main supporters, Russia and Cuba, will not even be sitting on the council when it reconvenes in late February.
It seems that the time to take the first step in the criminal prosecution of Kim Jong-un has finally arrived. The Canadian government must drop its misgivings and lend Japan all the support it can in its attempts to bring Kim Jong-un and his criminal regime to justice. With our combined efforts, maybe one day the UN and ICC can squeeze the boy dictator into the jail cell he has rightly earned.
Kyung B. Lee is president of the Toronto-based Council for Human Rights in North Korea
Do you have an opinion to share with other readers? Then send us a letter. | <urn:uuid:06815eec-585f-4708-90f0-fd85def1fc5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/02/06/kyung-b-lee-canada-has-a-chance-to-help-turn-the-heat-on-north-korea/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962176 | 976 | 1.734375 | 2 |
- September 25th, 2008 2:37 PM
Why is personal development essential to masterful facilitation, and how do we approached teaching about “mastery.” The Grove defines facilitation as “the art of leading group process toward agreed on outcomes with full participant, creativity, and ownership from all involved.” Facilitation is all about serving the group and its collective purpose as distinguished from one’s own. Leaders and team managers are ones who often set the purpose and goals for a group. Consultants may often be agents for leaders, but when a person says they are facilitating, most people would expect them to serve the group. (more…)
- September 25th, 2008 2:27 PM
The Grove’s Facilitation Model is built on a framework called “The Four Flows,” inspired by Arthur M. Young’s Process Theory. Following is an illustration of the model, linked to the key questions in the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model (also inspired by Process Theory). It illustrates what a facilitator needs to attend to while the group is focusing on things like purpose, trust, goals, commitments and the like. | <urn:uuid:8c9da326-a110-4ca4-aca5-85dc511bdf6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.grove.com/tag/facilitation-mastery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969847 | 245 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Species: Brown Avrael
Birthday: Thursday, July 12, 2012
Owner: gin no tsubasa
These little ones hardly move for the first few weeks of their lives. They remain fast asleep, in soft beds. These are usually boxes lined with soft bits of cloth, positioned in their magi's chamber. Avrael hatchlings require quite a bit of attention for a while, as they wake every few hours to eat. It's not uncommon for these companions to be carried about, to allow their magi to attend classes as usual. When the little one starts crying, their magi quietly excuses themselves. Not a class goes by without several magi creeping away for a few moments. Avrael hatchlings suckle at specially designed bottles, consuming large quantities of rich milk. As they age and become more active, they'll begin to search for nuts and berries and learn to fend for themselves.
These companions act much like skioros, always busy collecting nuts and darting through treetops. They live among the skioros in the forest, and the two often form close friendships. There is one glaring difference between these different creatures, though, and that is the beautiful, delicate wings that avraels possess. These wings are lovely to behold, and they look and feel deceptively fragile. Though avraels mostly use these wings to glide from one tree to another, looking for their next meal. People assume that this is the only flight avraels are capable of, but also enjoy accompanying their magi on longer travels. They can fly for hours on end, because of their magical abilities. Avraels are able to call upon wind currents and direct them as they like. They also use this power to knock berries and nuts into their little paws, rather than climb. It's lucky that avraels only control this power enough to remain airborne, otherwise they would be most irritating. It's common knowledge that avraels are tricksters, and villagers go so far as to supply them with treats to keep them from playing pranks. Their favorite game is to rely on their silent flight, using it to their advantage to startle the wits out of people. If one is wandering around a avrael's chosen area, they shouldn't be surprised when they're abruptly bombarded by acorns. When their target shrieks, the avrael scampers to a branch out of reach and chatters loudly. Many students have remarked that this chatter sounds suspiciously like laughter. | <urn:uuid:8c4cf38a-59cf-4ab6-861b-e2d0f6e09e61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://magistream.com/creature/5467686 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976136 | 510 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Q:Did Seth and Nephtys have any children?
No, Seth and Nephthys did not have any children. Anubis was the son of Nephthys and Osirus.
Q:A site that i was looking at said that atum coughed up shu and tefnut. can someone plz explain that?
This is known as the Helipolitan (Iunu) creation myth. This myth about the origin of Shu and Tefnut states that once upon a time the god Atum went to the city of Annu and he created Shu and Tefnut from his own body through masterbation. In the story of the creation, Atum is described as saying: "I had union with my hand, and I embraced my shadow in a love embrace; I poured seed into my own mouth and I sent forth from myself issue in the form of the gods Shu and Tefnut." Some versions claim he sneezed out Shu and spat out Tefnut. Later myths called this story into doubt and claimed that Atum's shadow acted the part of his wife; still others state that the goddess Iusaaset was Atum's wife.From Shu and Tefnut came Nut and Geb who produced Osirus, Isis, Nephthys, and Seth. These 9 God's are known as the Ennead.
"A few words of clarification for our Western minds. It may seem very rude and immoral the way Atum 'copulated with his hand', i.e. masturbated, but the ancient Egyptians seem to have had a rather down-to earth, practical view of the 'facts of life'. To them it was nothing shameful about the creator´s act, since he embraced the male as well as the femal principle, this was a practical way of explaining how one god could produce two more. As you can see, the quotation also gives an alternate way; he says he 'spat out' Shu and 'sneezed out Tefnut." http://www.geocities.com/nefertiabt/Iunu2.html
With that said, the title of 'God's Hand' was an alternative title for God's Wife, which refers to the hand with which Atum masterbated with to create Shu and Tefnut. The word hand is feminine in ancient Egypt and was easily personified as a goddess. So, it is thopught that the titles God's Wife and Go'd Hand had some sort of sexual connotations. Perhaps the meaning was to stimulate the creator God sexually (by ritual?) so that he would keep his fertiltiy and thereby cause the world to be recreated. While we don't know for sure what this titled entailed, we do know that sexual activities were forbidden in the temple or on temple grounds. | <urn:uuid:f4f7d7de-8587-4660-9f99-57966c07084f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kingtutone.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3689 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984571 | 586 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Indonesian court convicts Bali bomber Umar Patek
JAKARTA - A court in Jakarta convicted a militant on Thursday for making the bombs that killed 202 people at Bali nightclubs in 2002 and sentenced him to 20 years in the final trial of those responsible for Indonesia's worst terror attack.
Umar Patek was found guilty on all six charges at a court surrounded by snipers and bomb defusal experts.
Aside from his role in the Bali bombings, he also mixed chemicals for 13 bombs that detonated in five churches in the capital on Christmas Eve in 2000 and killed around 15 people.
The Bali bombs were a watershed for Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, forcing the secular state to confront the presence of violent militants. It has since been largely successful in containing militant attacks.
Patek, 45, was captured in the same Pakistan town where U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden, and security officials say he belonged to the banned Jemaah Islamiah group linked to al Qaeda. — Reuters
Talk of the web | <urn:uuid:17f95c95-d384-44ad-9e12-7e93bb7fa4b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/262747/news/world/indonesian-court-convicts-bali-bomber-umar-patek | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958839 | 221 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Techromancer1's Grillin N Chillin Panini Challenge[Tag Response][Open Tag] [Thanks for watching][Quick N Easy Meals with Chuck] What the *** is a "PANINI?"[ Versus a Grilled Sandwich] In Italy, it is customarily made from a small roll or loaf of bread, typically a ciabatta or a rosetta. The loaf is cut horizontally and filled with salami, ham, cheese, mortadella or other food, and sometimes served hot after having been pressed in a grill. A toasted panino, colloquially called "toast" by Italians, is made out of two vertical slices of pane in cassetta almost invariably filled with prosciutto and a few slices of cheese, grilled in a sandwich press. In Central Italy, there is a popular version of panino which is filled with porchetta, ie slices of roasted pork. It is traditionally served without any kind of sauce or topping. [Panini is the plural form of the word Panino]: The word panino [pa'ni:no] is Italian for "small bread roll"; its plural form is panini. The word is the diminutive form of pane ("bread"). Outside Italy, panini is often used as a singular word (like salami, also an Italian plural noun) and sometimes pluralized as paninis. In Italian, panino refers properly to a bread roll and a panino imbottito (literally "stuffed panino") to a sandwich. A paninoteca is a humorously inflated word for a sandwich bar. Other awesome Grilled Sandwich ideas[Or Paninis!]: Panini's or grilled sandwich, whatever you want to call them, they are good on any type of grittle and George Foreman Grill! Thanks for Watching -Chuck
Re: Nibiru planet X 2012 PROOF of Government conspiracy The Simpsons has been dubbed into the French language twice, once in the Canadian province of Quebec and again in France. In both versions, the show is named Les Simpson, as last names are not pluralized in French. The French audio on the Region 1 DVDs is the Quebec dub. It is one of only a handful of American television shows that have wholly separate versions in Quebec and France, and a number of studies have been made comparing them. In France all the characters speak standard French, with the exception of the ethnic minorities: Apu is given the Indian accent, while Carl, who has no accent in the American version, also speaks inflected French. Kirk Van Houten is given a stereotypical Belgian accent. In the Quebec version only the town élite, such as Principal Skinner and Reverend Lovejoy, speak International French. The Simpson family and most of the townsfolk speak Quebec French with strong Québécois accents. In the Quebec version the ethnic minorities also have accents. Apu speaks in a creole while Carl has the accent of a Black immigrant from Africa or the Caribbean. - wikipedia
pluralized knee our pup under the bed in his squat
Touhou Danmakufu: Speed Sign ~ Gap Rush (Pluralized) YESSSSS! I've got music from Touhou MOTHER, I've got four different difficulties, and I've got black lines around me, instead of the black parts being transparent!
Plural for Penis Scott coins the term to describe pluralized penis.
Olbermann - Official Transcript of Bush's Speech Was Edited Bush slips up and shows his lack of intelligence during a televised speech. Then the white house edited the official transcript to remove his mistake. I know its was only an improperly pluralized word, but the fact that the bush administration thinks it can edit an "official" transcript offends me.
Touhou Mother 8: Things Finally Get Started It's the rabbit of happiness. Spankety spankety spankety. See the description of the first video for an explanation of what these Touhou Mother videos are. So, about the "omission" of most of the dungeon... that's not me being creative. There's a variable called "shortcut" that is never set to be true by anything, ever. Yet when you go up to that portal, if it IS true, S(uwako) will tell you what (s)he tells you in this video and skip over two rooms which are totally pointless except to make the dungeon longer. So I hacked my save to make it true. Did I mention how S has some questionable game design ideas yet? (Right after posting this video, I changed That Rabbit Enemy's name to "That Rascally Rabbit." No need to thank me for my brilliance.) I know I should have checked this a lot earlier, but "Space Tunnel" is actually the Japanese name for the Phase Distorter. And I don't think it comes up (or will ever come up) again, so I can't even pretend it never happened. Oh well. Guilloscreen Rabbit uses one of Youmu Never Loses's attacks, and I couldn't think of a way to word it so both would make sense. I suppose I could have just made a new attack, but I pretty much forgot Guilloscreen Rabbit even existed until I recorded. If you can't get through the Eientei maze, and yeah, it does suck, here's a map. Letters signify connected doors. EN is where you start. Both EN and EX lead back to Reisen. DC is the Death Crimson room. GS is the Guilloscreen. The ...
first clanwar youtube vid light6archer,dark6archer,pkr noobs639,pluralized first youtube clanwars video from me light6archer and my bro dark6archer
Act One: A Question of Solitude, an opera dedicated to The James Bond Legacy This video document permits you to sample the first act of Cinema VII's "A Question of Solitude," an opera dedicated to The James Bond Legacy. Although there is multi-clip cutting between three pluralized videos, there is no editing here. It is a continuous replay of the third performance of the production at The Williamsburg Art and Historical Center. Camera One and Sound are by Orin Buck, Camera Two by Karen Lynn Miller, Camera Three by Sam Moree, also in the cast as SENIOR BOND! Orin "pluralized" and multi-clipped to let me click back and forth as I watched for the first time... thank you, Orin. A Question of Solitude, by Peter Dizozza. additional material by the cast, particularly Kat Yew and Mike Hill staged, interpretted and performed by Anne-Marie Levey-Allauzen, Peter Dizozza, Mike Hill, Flemming Laursen, Sam Moree, Zach Pethoud, Lydia Woods and Kat Yew...
Casa de Another Lost Year I think you pluralized underwears...
Let's Play Dwarf Fortress - 28 (More Juices, Dwarvenly Death, Cloudrat Gears, Bauxed) Finally, the cursed video is up! Well, we start off by juicing our fortress with more dwarvenjuices. Then, Tim dies while trying to get some beer. Dwarvenly! Then, we get our first pluralized legendary item! Or ... items! Clouds. Rat. Then, at LONG last, our Bauxite has arrived. ALL FOUR OF IT! Then we screw up and have 3 left. ***.
An inside look at the "Visions of Students Today 2011" Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthroplogy at K-State, and a few of his students give you an inside perspective into the current Visions of Students Today project.
New Paradigms # 5: Gaia and Paganism, or, Making Nature Sacred With Paganism, the sacred is pluralized again. We create many deities. Why were we ever taught that monotheism is superior? When we become polytheistic again, we relearn to respect all the forces and elements that these deities represent. And if monotheism is not more evolved than polytheism, where is the evidence that monogamy is superior to polyamory?
Rumors on the internets George W. Bush clip with the famous: "I hear there're rumors on the uh internets"
Satanic Powers in Jamaican Hills- Orisha Shakpana CARIBBEAN METALLIC STORM 7"EP IN FOR SALE AT . if u like this promo track. You're to love that EP. THIS IS JUST A PROMO THING, THE ACTUAL SONG HAS BETTER QUALITY. NOT PUTTING THE BETTER QUALITY ONE HERE. IF YOU WANT THE BETTER QUALITY, check myspace,(which has slightly better production) /orishaoftheearth This is a real black metal band from the island of Jamaica. Orisha Shakpana is about the darkness of Jamaica, for there is a dark of side and a dark history of this island that Orisha Shakpana will expose to the world. The supertitions of the Caribbean is vast. A great shadow is cast over the Caribbean and that shadow is Orisha Shakpana. An Orisha is a god, the god of ancestors of the Afro-Caribbean natives, from all the main west african tribes that were bought to the West back in the times of Slavery. The gods(Orisha, not pluralized) are angry at all black people(meaning all humans in general) because we have forgotten them and demonized them, calling the elder Orisha, Satan. Satan is a god, a physical god and that has defeated Christ before. The Christians still won't accept the fact that he is dead, so they lie to the masses. Even though they know in their hearts that god is dead. I mean why all the violence in the world today? Why else all the wars? God as died and will never return, and Satan has his throne in heaven already. You ***ing christians can't defeat Olokun, the god of the depths!!!!!! There is none greater than him ...
Crazy Fat Chick's 65th Vlog (Mad Libs) Comment, Rate & Subscribe!!!!.............. please ^_^ Adjective: Adverb: Part of the body (plural): Part of the body (plural): Adjective: Noun: Verb: Type of liquid: Noun: Verb ending in "ing": Noun: Adjective: Adjective: Plural noun: Plural noun: Noun: Verb (past tense): Part of the body (plural): Adjective: Verb: Noun: Adjective: So just copy and paste the above part in the comments then just fill it out please ^_^ Quick review of adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs. An ADJECTIVE describes something or somebody. Examples: lumpy, soft, ugly, messy, and short An ADVERB tells how something is done. It modifies a verb and usually ends in "ly". Examples: modestly, stupidly, greedily and carefully. A NOUN is the name of a person, place or thing. Examples: sidewalk, umbrella, bathtub and nose. A VERB is an action word. Examples: run, pitch, jump and swim. Put the verbs in past tense if the directions say PAST TENSE. Examples: ran, pitched, jumped and swam. When we ask for a PLACE, we mean any sort of place: a country or city (Spain, Cleveland) or a room (bathroom, kitchen) An EXCLAMATION or SILLY WORD is any sort of funny sound, gasp, grunt or outcry, like: Wow!, Ouch!, Whomp!, Ick! and Gadzooks! When we ask for specific words like a NUMBER, a COLOR, an ANIMAL or a PART OF THE BODY, we mean a word that is one of those things, like: seven, blue, horse or head. When we ask for a PLURAL, it mean more than one. For example, "cat" pluralized is "cats".
The Economy - Are you Paying Attention? Part Two Note - This article has changed/been edited. They pluralized STOCK to ensure I was paying attention and removed the line "High unemployment is considered a key stumbling block to a strong, sustained economic recovery." They did not replace investors with gamblers however.
Peni I'm sorry I haven't made a video in awhile, I kinda forgot I had a channel haha. But anyway the pluralized form of penis needs to be peni not penises. So start saying peni and the world will be happy :D
Mad Lib:Selecting A Christmas Tree. I also explain some. First of all I'm going to describe some words you'll need to know before filling in words for a mad lib. Adjective= describes something or somebody. Examples of Adjectives are: Lumpy, soft, ugly, messy, and sort. Adverb= tells how something is done. It modifies a verb and usually ends in ly. Examples of Adverbs are: Modestly, stupidly, greedily, and carefully. Noun= is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea. Examples of Nouns are: Sidewalk, umbrella, bridle, bathtub, and nose. Verb= is an action word. Examples of verbs are: Run, pitch, jump, and swim. Put the verbs in the past tense if the directions say PAST TENSE. Examples of past tense verbs are: Ran pitched, jumped, and swam. When we ask for a PLURAL, it means more than one. For example: cat pluralized is cats. NOW ON TO THE MAD LIB TITLED "Selecting A Christmas Tree" (first I'll show the words your supposed to put into the Mad Lib, then I'll show you the Mad Lib BLANK (how it is in the Mad Lib booklit) and then I'll show you what I came up with. Words to put into this Mad Lib (do this part first so the rest of this will be more fun!) Adjective_______________________ Adjective_______________________ Room_________________________ Plural Noun_____________________ Plural Noun_____________________ Noun__________________________ Noun__________________________ Noun__________________________ Adjective________________________ Noun___________________________ Number_________________________ Plural ... | <urn:uuid:35eaaad4-4483-4bc1-876f-b5622e910cc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crosswords911.com/pluralized.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931171 | 3,009 | 1.65625 | 2 |
One afternoon this week, a patron called in and asked for me specifically. She had a question about Microsoft Word, and since I've always been able to solve her technology questions in the past, she knew I'd have an immediate answer this time. Her question was:
How do you make Word automatically indent the first line of every paragraph?
I thought for a minute, and then realized - I had no idea how to do this. Whenever I want to indent, I just hit the Tab key. But she wanted it to indent automatically - which I was sure Word probably did, I just didn't know where this was in the menus.
I figured it had to be a Paragraph format option though, so I clicked the little square in the bottom right corner of the Paragraph box on the Home ribbon in Word 2007. Nothing immediately stood out, so I did a quick web search for word indent first line of every paragraph, and the first result explained how to do it - turns out I was on the right track.
Once you get to the Paragraph format box, you need to select "First line" from the "Special" dropdown box in the middle of the page. Then you can also set how much to indent by.
Great. I found all this in a minute or so, making small talk with the patron while I searched. As I started guiding her through how to do it, we hit a snag: she's still using Word 2003, and I'm on Word 2007 (which is also what the online directions were for).
I use this Paragraph format box all the time, but for the life of me I could not remember how to get to it in the Word 2003 menus. So, it was another web search for word 2003 paragraph menu, and again it was the first result that gave me the answer: Paragraph was an option on the Format menu.
Now I can navigate the patron to the Paragraph box and explain how to set the auto-indent feature. It work, she was delighted, and I was able to maintain my perfect record for her tech support - even though I had never done this before in my life.
Which just goes to prove the reference librarian's motto: you don't need to know everything, you just need to know how to find everything. | <urn:uuid:f96fe493-b7ce-4b06-97fd-31303a810415> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/tag/indent/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978991 | 473 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Take More Control Over Highlights & Shadows
Use new controls in Lightroom 4 and Adobe Camera Raw 7 to fine-tune the yin and yang of your photographs
|This Article Features Photo Zoom|
Just when you're becoming comfortable with image controls in your editor of choice, an update comes along and changes everything, so I sympathize that it sometimes feels like you're aiming at a moving target. But no matter what image processor you're using, I always try to urge photographers to think of "image correction" as meaning just one thing: making your photographs look good...to you.
Unfortunately, because good image correction skills take time to learn and are difficult to teach, most instructors fall back on rules. "If the photo has high contrast, use control X before you use control Y." But, generally, I feel that taking a little time to understand the tools will pay off ultimately. And this is because every single image correction problem is different. There are no rules!
Given all of that, it seems that Adobe threw us a bit of a curve ball when it came to the Tone Controls in Lightroom 4 and Camera Raw 7. The revamped processing adds a couple of new controls and loses some others. But perhaps most interesting is the evolving relationship we have with Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. Why do we need four controls when it seems that there's so much overlap? In a word, control. Of course, the flip side is that they're not necessarily easier to learn, but with just a little bit of experimentation, you now can improve your raw captures in ways that would have seemed like magic just a few years ago.
In the new version, the control starts at 0 in the middle and can be pushed to either direction. Pulling it to the left doesn't touch the Whites in your image, but expands most of the rest of the tones to the left (with the effect weighted on the shadows), thereby clipping the Blacks.
So, in terms of slider movement, the new Blacks control goes in the opposite direction from the old version. The one sentence summary of moving Blacks to the left is that it increases contrast everywhere, while darkening the image slightly, and clipping the very darkest tones to pure black.
In the image of the bottles (Fig.1), we have a photo that needs a basic exposure correction of about -.75, but it's still flat and has no solid black (Fig. 1a). Pulling Blacks to -80 (Fig. 2a) gives better contrast and sets the Black point (Fig. 2).
Page 1 of 3 | <urn:uuid:44027a31-7375-41d1-b615-62eaf169fcec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/software-technique/take-more-control-over-highlights-and-shadows.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946859 | 536 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Association la Voute Nubienne (AVN)
AVN's mission is to improve housing conditions through an appropriate architecture, as soon as possible, for as many people as possible. In sub-Saharan Africa, the struggle to obtain decent housing plunges millions of families into a vicious circle of poverty. AVN offers a solution to this problem, based on three integrated concepts:
A Roof + A Skill + A Market
AVN organises the training and support of local Nubian Vault (NV) builders and entrepreneurs to promote this solution on a large-scale, with a view to developing a self-sustaining market in NV construction. As a result, families can acquire affordable, sustainable, and decent housing, at the same time improving their economic cond... | <urn:uuid:2ce04db4-3f4d-4400-840e-351f3706b538> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalgiving.org/donate/750/association-la-voute-nubienne-avn/photos/?page=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935636 | 158 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Honors outstanding contributions toward fostering the research training of underrepresented minorities in microbiology. It is given in memory of William A. Hinton, a physician-research scientist and one of the first African-Americans to join the ASM.
The nominee must contribute to the research training of undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows or health professional students and efforts leading to the increased participation of underrepresented minorities in microbiology.
Nominations will be considered without updating for three years. Self-nominations and more than one nomination per nominee will not be accepted. Only one nominating form and two supporting forms are accepted per nomination. The two supporters must be persons other than the nominator who are familiar with the nominee's qualifications and accomplishments. Only one of the three individuals involved in the nomination may be employed at the nominee's institution. The nominator and supporters must not share employers. Nominations must consist of the following:
ASM awards are granted at the discretion of award selection committees and may not be awarded every year.
2013 Laureate: Alison Gammie
View Past Laureates | <urn:uuid:3cbf0d2b-a341-43cd-9b5a-35a5219e9c52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asm.org/index.php/awards-grants/awards/all-awards/10-awards-a-grants/awards/32-william-a-hinton-research-training-award | 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 | 0.937579 | 224 | 1.796875 | 2 |
- THE MAGAZINE
Today's hot-water extraction cleaner has a wide range of wands and extraction tools to choose from when performing the cleaning process.
Selecting which tool to use often depends on carpet type and condition, as well as the condition of the cleaning tech. Power heads are usually the tool of choice for us older guys because of their ease of use, as well as the need for some degree of pile recovery.
Power heads are available as rotary-action machines without brushes, or as brush-assisted models (generally with a cylindrical brush). One of the biggest challenges in commercial hot-water-extraction carpet cleaning is to get the carpet cleaned and dried without spots and soil wicking during the drying process.
A key to successful cleaning and drying is thorough recovery of the rinse solution. In industry's formative years, many machines were equipped with "drag heads" that were connected to the base unit by hoses. They were pulled backward across the carpet to perform the rinse process; the early models featured no brushes. While the role of the brush is to provide agitation to remove visible soiling on the tips of the tufts, what it actually does is to force the rinse water down into the pile yarns where removal is now much more of a challenge. This can result in slow drying and wicking.
Rotary-jet extraction heads provide a level of agitation that effectively removes the soils built up on the yarns, and also provide some degree of pile lifting, which is often necessary on cut-pile products. They are often the choice of us older guys, whose backs are not as strong as they were a few years ago, since they are easily "driven" or "steered" without the push-pull necessary with a scrub wand. But there can be a steep learning curve in developing the proper touch of running a rotary head. Think "scrubber-through-the-wall-uh-oh." When starting out with a rotary head, it is a wise idea to have an assistant whose job it is to pull the plug if the head gets away from the operator.
Scrub wand is a term used to identify the lightweight instrument generally supplied with new machines. They are almost always metal: some aluminum, some steel, some titanium. The size of the tube used on the wand will have an impact on the degree of water recovery, with 2-inch getting the nod as most effective at removing rinse water because of its ability to flow more CFM.
A 2-inch wand is also much more difficult to push and pull, and is usually heavier than a 1 1/2-inch wand due to the extra metal in the tube. Wands may have one or two bends in their length, with the double-bend or "S" style possessing more of an ability to get under furniture.
Another thing to consider is the number of jets on the wand. The more jets, the more potential for problems, such as clogs, which can result in dirty and clean streaking due to interruption of the delivery pattern of the rinse water. These streaks will run in the same directions that the wand is being pushed and pulled. Streaks that run crossways to the direction of push-pull are the result of the technician failing to pull the wand 3 to 4 inches past the point at which the solution trigger is released, leaving a wet streak running across the width of the area.
It would be difficult to discuss wands and wand use without mentioning the newest accessory for wands, glides. These devices, which clip onto or into the cleaning head, are generally made from Teflon or some other space-age material and make it much easier to push and pull the wand (an old guy pointed that out!). Some designs will drastically increase rinse-water recovery, resulting in shorter drying times. One of the most effective designs currently available uses a series of 1/8-inch holes through which air flows in a vortex or whirling manner. The increased airflow allows for the recovery of much more water than does a simple slot. Initially available for just a few of the more popular wands, the resounding acceptance of glides in the marketplace has been recognized by manufacturers tooling up to provide glides for almost all wand models now available. My experience with a "holey" glide has convinced me that they are more efficient at water removal, and are much easier to push-pull, than a wand with standard metal lips.
Whatever type of cleaning head you may choose for your operation, take the time to learn to use it properly, and don't skimp on dry passes. Remember: get it clean and get it dry. Hope this is useful to you. Until next month, see ya! | <urn:uuid:77ba3f28-3d8c-4e1b-94fb-daf1e2fc9231> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.icsmag.com/articles/wands-and-extraction-tools | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96576 | 973 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Once again, British Muslims are in the news. The Chairman of the largest Mosque in Europe has again spoken out against the British government:
There is no explanation about what Naseem may consider a "change for the better," but chances are, he didn't have traditional British society in mind. I am also reminded of the old saying, "Don't get mad, get even."
A Muslim leader has warned that Britain is moving towards a "police state," comparing the situation to Nazi Germany after the anti-terror raids in the city of Birmingham this week.
But Mohammad Naseem, chairman of Birmingham's Central Mosque, urged Muslims to show restraint following the raids, in which nine suspects were arrested over allegations of plotting an "Iraq-style" kidnapping and filmed beheading.
"The country is moving toward a police state. That's not right. We have to change this," he said inside the mosque, where some 2,000 Muslims gathered for weekly Friday prayers.
"We can change this for the better by coming together, not by coming apart. .. Remain calm, don't get angry. Anger is a natural emotion, but Muslims should control it. We must never give way to anger," he said.
In August the BBC has this article about Mohammad Naseem. Naseem is the Chairman of the largest mosque in Europe, the Birmingham Central Mosque and his worldview is formed by the Saudi sponsored Wahabist Islam which appears to be much more virulent and threatening even than the bellicose Shiite Iranians.
2164 did a little research on the Birmingham Central Mosque and found that their web site lists the following activities:
Martial Arts & Self Defence
The mosque is involved in numerous sporting events and organisations. The mosque holds Martial Arts classes for boys and men in the weekends. The Birmingham Pakistani Sports Forum is also based at the mosque and a member of the mosque trust is also a patron for a Kabaddi organisation.
Classes teaching martial arts and self defence have been taking place at the mosque for quite some time now and with great success. The martial arts explored in the classes include karate, kung-fu, kick boxing and 'weapons' training. The classes are provided and initiated by Ustadh Umar who has a great amount of experience in the field of martial arts, defence and fitness.
The classes take place in the School Hall every Saturday. Boys may participate between 12pm-2pm and men between 2pm-4.30pm. Classes for girls and women are also available. To find out more, you may visit the mosque on a Saturday and speak with Br. Umar or contact him on: 07815 153816
Karate, Kung-Fu, Kick Boxing, Weapons Training
- in the School Hall at the mosque.
Classes are also available for girls and women in Saltley. For more information, please call: 07815 153816
It's questionable whether the situation in Britain will be reversed. Political correctness and multiculturalism are so entrenched that, in spite of the hate, intolerance and jihad that is being preached in British mosques, the Government seems incapable of acting against it except in a reactive way. Britain's Channel 4 went undercover for four months last summer and their three-part undercover series can be seen here at YouTube. With the release of these videos, There can be no doubt that the Wahabist form of Islam being preached in Mosques throughout England are an anathema to Western society.
In reaction to the BBC 4 broadcast, The Green Lane Mosque issued this Jan 16 press release:
PRESS RELEASE (16/01/2007)It's interesting to note that the Birmingham Central Mosque offers weapons training. The bad news is that a Muslim organization in Tampa, Florida also feels that "paint-ball" is an essential feature in their youth program. These people are preparing for jihad and longing for the day when they live the Islamic State of Great Britain.
Re: Channel Four Dispatches Programme “Under Cover Mosque” (15/01/2007)
It is extremely disappointing but not at all surprising that ‘Dispatches’ has chosen to portray Muslims in the worst possible light. ‘Dispatches’ has opted for sensationalism over substance with total disregard for peaceful community relations.
This so-called ‘undercover’ investigation merely panders to age-old anti-Muslim prejudices by employing the time-honoured tradition of cherry picking statements and presenting them in the most inflammatory manner.
It is disingenuous of ‘Dispatches’ to give the impression that they have infiltrated secret lectures/gatherings at Green Lane Masjid and then sell this as an ‘undercover investigation’ when every lecture, in its entirety, has always been available in the public domain.
Dispatches failed to adequately differentiate between the application of Islamic Shariah in an Islamic State and its application within a minority Muslim community in modern day Britain. This vital distinction would have been self-evident to any viewer had the relevant statements been presented in their correct context. Dispatches further failed to distinguish between those individuals who work with us and those with no connection to our organisation who expressed views that we may not agree with.
Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith UK is an independent national organisation where democratically elections are held every three years and follows mainstream Islam, based upon the Quran and the authentic traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
We have a long track record of good community relations and peaceful co-existence with all sections of the wider community. We will continue to strengthen our positive partnership with the authorities in addressing the needs of our communities in areas such as spirituality, health, education and crime prevention.
Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith UK condemns the diliberate efforts of tarnishing the image of national Muslim organisations and main institutions that follow moderate Islam. We also unequivocally condemns all forms of extremism and terrorism, regardless of the perpetrators. We strongly encourage the upholding of the law and integration of Muslims within British society. | <urn:uuid:6045e05f-0c85-4e3e-8a3b-466802273c86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://2164th.blogspot.com/2007/02/muslim-leader-warns-against-britain.html?showComment=1170520620000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958556 | 1,250 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Tim Cook told Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco that, ”Innovation is strong as ever and in the DNA of the company.” This from a company that has been playing catch-up and suing it’s competitors for the past two years other than really innovating. Noting that the smartphones and tablets are the backbone of Apple’s cash cow Cook underlined its “experience” is the true force of Apple’s innovation. ”Apple has skills in software, hardware and services. The model that grew the PC industry where companies specialized. That model is not working for what consumers want today,” said Cook. “Consumers want this elegant experience.” Why service definitely helps pack Apple Stores and customers snap up shiny new products, it’s not the only thing that keeps them buying. No, true innovation keeps them coming.
Apple brought itself into a new era, and market, with the iPod. It innovated a product that the founder of the MP3 player, Rio, couldn’t manage. Then again Apple innovated a product that was birthed elsewhere and took away the smartphone market from Palm. Lastly, it showed Microsoft, the company that first brought the tablet to us in 2001, how to really innovate.
So now Apple has over $100 billion in the bank, packed stores, and enjoys the majority market share for tablets, smartphones (hardware), and even still for audio players. But all those numbers are slipping and show little sign of reversing. Sure, Cook can tell worried investors that the market is just increasing in size and it still has a larger chunk than it originally had, but those are excuses, not innovation. Instead of showing the world anything of great significance in the last three years, we simply hear how great Apple is and nothing more. No talk of the future. No talk of pushing the envelope. No talk other than a nice shined marketing speech.
Apple’s last true innovation was the release of the iPad in 2010. That’s three years ago and in that time, the Android Army has been hard at work chipping away at Apple’s market dominance and even forcing Apple into a product it bad-mouthed later that year. Steve Jobs famously told investors, “7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad. ….7-Inch tablets are dead on arrival.” Dead, huh? As not to further damn his himself, Jobs went on to state, “While one could increase the resolution to make up some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size. Apple has done expensive user testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff.” Last I saw in the Apple Store, the iPad mini does not come with sandpaper. No, Jobs didn’t understand that the market actually DOES know what it wants sometimes – another famous saying Jobs liked to quip – and Apple’s own Eddie Cue urged Jobs to his death bed to let Apple make a 7″-ish tablet. Clearly, innovation was ignored, bad-mouthed, and fought before it was it acknowledged. Of course, in classic Apple style, it was quick to point out that the iPad mini isn’t really a 7″ tablet and it has “features” that improve the experience of an Android tablet. Please…
Moving on, let’s look at the iPhone now. Again, a truly innovative product when introduced, Apple seemed to slow down the gears of innovation and trickled out features year by year. Even though 3G was active in nearly half of AT&T’s network, Apple waited until the second generation to release a phone that supported the faster data speeds. Outside of that, the iPhone 3G had little more to offer than a new look. The camera still sucked, battery life was still dismal, and the OS had little advancement.
Apple continued this little-by-little strategy with each release all the way to the iPhone 5. Instead of caving into the larger screen that has pushed sales of the Samsung Galaxy S III to a market leader and the talk of the town, Apple stretched the screen and chimed about how it was still easily used one-handily. That, was its innovation. Apple’s previous yearly trickle of innovation was Siri. Siri, the voice-to-text software, was an application in the App Store for about a year that gained much attention when it first was released. Quickly scooped up by Apple and re-established as an integrated aspect of the operating system, Siri was reborn an Apple innovation. No, excuse me, as a beta. Now as we near two years – in beta – Siri is nothing more than a feature to ask it silly questions and become extremely irritated at its inability to send a text message that is even 40% accurate or – heck – even finish your sentence as it often just gives up leaving a partial text output. In the meantime, Google released it’s Google Now app for the iPhone with stunningly quick and accurate speech-to-text. No, it’s not beta, either.
I could go on about how iLife, once considered a stunning collection of multimedia applications for the Mac, hasn’t even been touched in over three years and languishes away or how its extremely expensive Thunderbolt technology two years later lacks a plethora of accessories. Financial analysts bonked Apple over the head on the market a few weeks ago after Apple produced its best quarter ever. Why? Analysts see little in the future to hold Apple up and the numbers are indicating this. Apple continues to be mute on future product and shows little innovation in the last three years. Sure, the Retina display has dawned screens across the board, Bluetooth 4 graced wireless devices, and a great camera in the phones. But it’s not enough when compared to the competitors. Instead of really kicking its competitors butt, Apple sues them. Real innovators respond with, “Top this!”
History shows that Apple is on a four-year cycle of innovation. The iPod, iPhone, and then iPad. That gives us about a year before the next big thing. Many think it’s a TV and I can see that. Apple’s true innovation is taking something that already exists and making it better. TV sales have declined and consumers aren’t fooled by bells-and-whistles such as 3-D. The networks are the issue for release just like the labels were for the iTunes Music Store. I feel Apple can overcome that opposition but without Jobs, it will be tougher.
What after the Apple TV television? I can’t imagine that the road map goes dry after that. I’m sure what ever it is, it’s already on the books and is being ironed out. But will anyone care by then? While the four years worked in the last decade, competitors and patent trolls have changed the landscape accelerating change. Apple has already shown with the last two iOS updates, iPad mini, and the iPhone 5 – to a point – that it does better at catching up than pushing the competition. If it doesn’t wish to become the next Sony – one of Steve Jobs’ biggest fears – then it needs to stop this madness of its delusional outlook on innovation and actually innovate again. Stop riding the gravy train and trickling out features. Apple had the money to demand LTE chips that are low power consuming a year before it finally hit the iPhone. Apple had the money to make Siri actually work…upon initial release. Apple has the money to force new technologies to market quicker than the other guy. Jobs pushed Corning for a glass iPhone when its own CEO said it couldn’t be done. Apple shoved a desktop operating system into a handheld device while others said it couldn’t be done. Apple can do it. If it wants. Right now, it looks like it just wants to pats its own back. Ask Sony how that’s working, Tim. | <urn:uuid:4c731445-ebaf-4d66-aa64-759af0f8df87> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://svenontech.com/tag/tim-cook/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965052 | 1,702 | 1.59375 | 2 |
New article 409 has been added to the 2005 edition of the National Electrical Code (NEC). Based on a proposal that there are many misapplications of control products and that the need for rules governing the installation of control panels is long overdue, this new article is long on product standards and short on any installation requirements not already covered by the NEC that will enhance safety related to the installation of industrial control panels.
Are we cluttering up the Code?
This article failed in the proposal stage because less than two-thirds of the members voted affirmatively on it. The negative comments appeared to be generally directed toward the proposal containing “product safety standards” that are already covered in existing product safety standards. Certainly with any control panel listed by an approved organization, misapplication should not be a problem. Misapplication in construction would run afoul of UL 508(A) and misapplication in adhering to installation requirements would run contrary to existing Code requirements. At the present time, UL 508A contains the required product standards for listed industrial control panels with all of the marking requirements including “short circuit rating” and is available to all inspection authorities.
The major concerns of the majority of the panel members about this proposal appear to be the idea that the authority having jurisdiction has no guidance in the approval of the construction of unlisted industrial control panels and their installation.
Listing is not a requirement for all electrical equipment addressed by the NEC, but following the manufacturers instructions included in any listed or labeled product is clearly shown in 110.3(B). Will addressing the problem of unlisted industrial control panels by inserting a part of the product standard in an installation safety code properly fix the problem? A more viable solution may be requiring field evaluation by a representative from a nationally recognized testing laboratory, which is a manner available to inspection authorities.
Comments were submitted pointing out that while the installation requirements included in the proposal were a duplication of requirements found elsewhere in the Code, this duplication of installation requirements supports the efforts of the Technical Correlating Committee to improve the usability of the Code by locating all of these requirements in each area. This of course, is far from being the object of the usability task groups. It appears to suggest that all references to other Code articles would be abolished and the referenced material would be duplicated in every area where the reference is made. This type of thinking will get us into Code volumes in a short time.
Other comments suggested that rather than a new article, the material should be included in existing Article 430 instead. This way it may have had a more logical basis for inclusion in the Code, but the panel steadfastly maintained that the establishment of a separate article of requirements for industrial control panels would make them easier to find and apply.
List all industrial control panels?
Apparently the problem of construction and installation of unlisted industrial control panels, in the opinion of the panel, is a safety consideration of such magnitude that the NEC must address it. An alternative would be to require listing of all industrial control panels to be assured that the product safety standard construction requirements are followed and recognize that all of the installation requirements are already a part of the NEC without attempting to centralize them in this article.
Appropriately, this new article was subjected to the proposal stage and the comment stage of the Code process before being accepted as a new article in the 2005 NEC. But at least one panel member entered a negative vote during the comment stage, expressing his contention that too many significant changes were made to the original proposal without opportunity for public review.
Significantly, the suggestion that the requirements now a part of Article 409 be put into Article 430 as a revised Part VIII would have caused the many references made to sections of Article 430 to be unnecessary as they are already in place in that article. This suggested change of course was not subject to public review but was not rejected for that reason because the panel agreed that locating the industrial control panel requirements in a separate article would make them easier to find and apply.
The article as now written will probably not cover adequately all of the product safety requirements and the authority having jurisdiction will still be required to make determinations that should be made by an organization that is concerned with evaluation of products.
Only time will tell and be the judge of the importance of the acceptance of this new article “Industrial Control Panels,” and determine whether it will make approval and acceptance by the authority having jurisdiction an easier job.
TROUT answers the Code Question of the Day on the NECA Web site. He can be reached at 352.527.7035. | <urn:uuid:d82e879d-e661-4e21-aec1-6c90767bb285> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecmag.com/section/your-business/industrial-control-panels?qt-issues_block=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963208 | 935 | 1.734375 | 2 |
I love a good glass of wine. The bordeaux business is changing. What was once own by families rather than by coporation and wealthy individual have been sold off. Bordeaux recommened producers that they should not harvest grapes early to prevent rot but allow the grapes to ropen fully. He urged winemakers to select only their best grapes for their wines, a difficult notion for many to accept at a t ime when quantity was often more important than quality. Dr. Peynaud urged wineries to create less expensive labels for grapes that were less than the best.
In the 21st century Mr. Parker himself has already proclaimed three vintages of the centruy. A global market developed and prices have skyrocketed. Great Bordeaux today is no longer merley a wine but a luxury good, priced well beyond the means of most consumers. Hiw do you rank greatness? A beautiful ruby color with complex fruit, and mineral, the Margaux. | <urn:uuid:a1f2a9ff-8ae3-4eeb-a62c-d007446238c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://coursestreet.com/228/blogentry?bid=1202 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977843 | 199 | 1.5 | 2 |
Enrollment falling at for-profit colleges
When the University of Phoenix, the country's largest university, announced this week it's closing 115 campuses and satellite locations, it signaled more than a sudden availability of commercial real estate near highway interchanges, where for-profit colleges like to set up shop as a student convenience.
After years of explosive growth that really caught fire when the economy collapsed four years ago, for-profit higher education is shrinking fast.
That's not a good thing for providers like Phoenix, at least in the short run. Whether it's good for them, for students, and for the economy in the long run -- well, that depends whom you ask.
New data throw the trend into relief. First, government figures released last week showed that total enrollment in higher education shrunk nationally in the fall of 2011 for the first time in at least 15 years. The overall decline was just 0.2 percent, but it was driven by a 2.9 percent drop in the for-profit sector, which offset an increase at 4-year non-profit colleges (for-profit colleges enroll about 11 percent of students overall).
Then came Tuesday's announcement by Apollo Group Inc., the University of Phoenix's parent company, that it would shutter roughly half its physical locations, though current students will be able to continue in their programs. The company couched the move in terms of growing interest from students taking online courses, and emphasized just 4 percent of students were affected (most of its students are online). But there's no hiding its decline in enrollment -- it currently enrolls about 328,000 students in degree programs, down from 381,000 a year ago and a peak of more than 475,000 in 2010.
On a yearly basis, enrollment is down 15 percent compared to a year ago at The Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan, which is also closing nine campuses; down 21 percent at Career Education Corp. (which operates Le Cordon Bleu cooking schools among others); and down 16 percent at ITT Educational Services, according to data provided by BMO Capital Markets. (An exception is military-focused American Public Education, Inc. which is booming on the heels of the Post 9/11 G.I. Bill).
BMO managing director Jeff Silber cites a range of explanations: the economy, negative publicity, and more aggressive marketing from traditional universities (Is anybody cheering the Detroit Tigers' run to the World Series more loudly than the nearby University of Toledo, whose large ad just over Comerica Park's left field wall is visible on TV with nearly every Miguel Cabrera home run?).
But Silber says the Obama administration's regulatory pressure has also been a major factor, particularly its aggressive of enforcement of rules preventing colleges of any kind from paying recruiters based on the number of students they enroll -- once a common practice by for-profits.
``Historically this had been a sector where it was a pretty hard sell,'' Silber said. After the crackdown, ``they're not doing it anymore because the folks that were selling hard have moved on to selling something else.''
For-profit colleges, though still annoyed by the regulations, say they are refocusing their efforts on enrolling students who can finish a degree and helping them find work when they graduate. An orientation program now gives Phoenix students three weeks to see if their program is a good fit before paying tuition. About 20 percent of participants decide not to enroll.
Phoenix also froze tuition, and this week announced a more substantial assessment and monitoring system to make sure students are getting the skills they want and need, but also to keep them on tracks toward jobs, particularly with about 2,000 corporate partners it's been assembling.
``It's really about the back end,'' Phoenix president Bill Pepicello said in a phone interview. The career services that students typically tap as they approach graduation, ``we're moving that forward.''
A report released last summer by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa., who has led the criticism of for-profits from Capitol Hill, concluded for-profit colleges have been taking in upwards of $32 billion annually from taxpayers even though most students don't graduate; those who departed lasted just four months on average. In 2010, the report found, leading companies employed nearly 10 times as many recruiters as career-services advisers, and spent more on marketing than on instruction.
The latest government figures show for-profits still have twice the federal student loan default rate of public colleges (23 percent of borrowers at for-profits have defaulted within three years).
For now, so-called ``gainful employment'' regulations that could cut off aid to colleges with poor job replacement rates are on hold, struck down by a federal judge in June (the Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has criticized the rule and the Obama administration's ``ill-advised'' regulation of the sector).
Silber says the broader initiative to crack down on schools that aggressively recruit students, cash their government financial aid checks, then leave students and taxpayers on the hook when they fail to graduate, is changing the business.
``They're going to measure outputs, not inputs any more. Many schools have restructured their program offerings, made them shorter, made them less expensive,'' Silber said. ``This is very painful right now, but in the long run I think it's very helpful for this industry.''
Whether you think it's good news that fewer students are attending for-profits depends what you think is happening to those who don't enroll. The sector often notes it serves disproportionately low-income, first-generation students who don't find what they need elsewhere in higher education. So are those students now thinking twice about whether they really need to take out large student loans to attend non-profits, and asking whether they can get what they need at cheaper non-profit institutions? Or are they just dropping out of higher education entirely?
Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of APSCU, which represents the for-profit sector, says it's the latter.
``You look at California, there's almost 400,000 on the waiting list of the community college system,'' Gunderson said. ``So they're not going there. The community colleges are loaded to the brim.''
Gunderson says that by forcing for-profits to end their open-enrollment practices, Washington is jeopardizing the president's goal for the United States to regain its status as the world leader in higher education attainment. Once the economy recovers and students are more confident an investment in education will pay off with a job, he predicts enrollment will grow again.
Robert Shireman,- a former Department of Education official whose reputation as a foe of the for-profit sector was so fierce that the leading companies' stock prices all surged the day he announced his departure in 2010- isn't quite persuaded for-profit colleges have changed their stripes.
``We still need to watch the sector carefully because there are such strong incentives to over-promise and under-deliver,'' Shireman said. But he's glad to see students apparently more aware of the risks, and to see the shift in focus at for-profits, whom he agrees have a role to play in the system.
``I would much rather see the University of Phoenix improve its quality than shut down,'' he said. | <urn:uuid:66f38300-786f-4534-beef-55ba5c231542> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ktar.com/22/1583182/Enrollment-falling-at-forprofit-colleges | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97376 | 1,494 | 1.53125 | 2 |
By Grace-Marie Turner
ObamaCare violates American values down to our country’s very DNA.
A majority of Americans continue to oppose the health law because we understand that it is at odds with the fundamental principles and democratic processes of our country. We were aghast at the way the law was enacted two years ago — ignoring citizens who were marching in the streets and burning up the phone lines on Capitol Hill pleading with legislators to vote “no.”
We oppose its government-centric takeover of our health sector with its mandates on individuals to purchase government-approved health insurance, mandates on businesses to pay for insurance or pay huge fines, and the massive new government bureaucracy to centrally manage one-sixth of our economy.
The HHS anti-conscience mandate that has not taken effect is not an aberrant rule but is woven into the fabric of the law that is in conflict with the Constitution and with American values. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the federal regulation an “unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom.”
But the Obama administration has determined that most employers and health plans now will have to provide “free” access to a long list of “preventive” health services, including sterilization procedures and contraceptives that can cause abortions. Citizens and businesses have become servants to the state.
The White House is trying to deflect opposition and frame this as a fight over the right to free birth-control pills. But we understand that this is really about the fundamental issue of the founding principles of this country and the meaning of the Constitution’s protection of our freedom. The real question is not whether women can have access to these products but whether health plans and employers can be compelled by the government to pay for them even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.
When the law was being debated in Congress, the Obama administration repeatedly assured Catholic leaders that it would respect religious liberty in implementing ObamaCare. This mandate shows that the Obama administration has broken its promises and has no intention of reversing course.
The anti-conscience rule gives pro-life private employers and health plans the choice of violating their fundamental beliefs by paying for the offending products or dropping health insurance for their employees, in which case they are subject to steep fines.
Forty-three Catholic dioceses have filed twelve lawsuits challenging the anti-conscience mandate. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty also is representing a number of colleges and other religious institutions in suing the government over the mandate.
More than 2,500 pastors and evangelical leaders have signed a letter to President Obama asking him to reverse the mandate.
As George Weigel has said, the anti-conscience rule is “a grotesque overreach by state power, one that threatens the entire fabric of civil society as well as the first of American liberties, religious freedom.”
We will not allow the First Amendment to be trampled and this battle will continue.
(Grace-Marie Turner is President of the Galen Institute in Alexandria, Virginia. She will discuss the federal health care law on September 21 at a conference co-sponsored by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and the Conservative Policy Leadership Institute. This article was originally published by the Galen Institute and National Review Online.) | <urn:uuid:fae762c0-a2ce-451b-a63f-a08f5a2dad28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.georgiapolicy.org/obamacare-violates-the-dna-of-our-culture/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96236 | 669 | 1.5 | 2 |
(Avi Charkham, who is helping…)
LONDON: A security adviser has accused social networking giant Facebook of playing 'five subtle tricks', which he believes pushes users into accepting app requests without thinking too closely about which information they give away.
Avi Charkham, who is helping set up a personal cloud security service, highlighted how the apps are installed on Facebook, and said recent re-designs help obscure how much data we are passing on to the company.
"Do you know how many apps access your personal information on Facebook? Facebook keeps 'improving' their design so that more of us will add apps on Facebook without realising we're granting those apps and their creators access to our personal information," the Daily Mail quoted Charkham, as writing in a blog.
Charkram, illustrating the granting of app permission both before and after recent re-designs, showed how Facebook cleverly has maneuvered the settings of the site's App Centre, lessening the control by a user and keeping the options in more small fonts and in tricky subtle ways.
"In the old design Facebook used two buttons - 'Allow' and 'Don't Allow' - which automatically led you to make a decision. In the new App Centre, Facebook chose to use a single button," Charkram said in his illustration.
He also highlighted the 'Post on my Behalf', 'Access to Basic Info', and 'Action Line' features of Facebook.
Facebook's security has long been one of the most high-profile issues facing the social networking site.
The firm declined to make any comment. | <urn:uuid:df39cd84-f559-43ee-af48-f68a97088823> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-29/social-media/33475401_1_facebook-app-requests-users | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942033 | 330 | 1.515625 | 2 |
By Yannai Kranzler
When I first sat with Dr. Michael Kagan and Rabbi Julian Sinclair and listened to their plans to create a Jewish Climate Initiative, I immediately got excited about a scientist and a Rabbi joining forces to confront climate change. When I mentioned my excitement, Rabbi Sinclair smiled and said “Michael’s not just a scientist, you know.” And Dr. Kagan added, “Julian’s not really just a Rabbi, you know.” And so I did my research and learned that it wasn’t a scientist and a Rabbi confronting climate change, but a scientist/inventor/spiritual guide/mystic and a Rabbi/economist/writer/tour guide. And I realized that the Jewish Climate Initiative was going to be something special.
Dr. Michael Kagan: Co-Founder, Jewish Climate Initiative
In the following interview, Dr. Kagan explains the reasons for a Jewish Climate Initiative (JCI), expands on the directions where he hopes the initiative will go, and discusses how his life’s work of understanding the connections between apparently separate facets of the world stands behind the creation of the Jewish Climate Initiative, and is the spirit which drives it forward.
YK: Spiritual Leader, biochemist, inventor- you’ve done quite a lot in your life. How has your experience brought you to this point, where you are creating a Jewish Climate Initiative?
MK: The subject of my doctorate thesis was “Patent Formation in Dissipative Systems.” I know that sounds esoteric but it basically addresses the question, “Where does structure come from in the universe?”
I focused on thermodynamics and the question of entropy: Entropy means that everything is constantly descending to the lowest common denominator. If everything is descending into chaos, then, why do we exist? How come I have a body with fingers and arms and head? Where does order come from?
As I explored this narrow, specific subject in chemistry, I was led to such wide areas of investigation- biology, physics, philosophy, the history of science, how it connected to religion and thought and consciousness. And what I learned and experienced was the interconnectiveness between all things.
I also learned that I have a particular mindset – I think in a very eclectic and associative manner that sees the connection between things that seem to be vastly separate. This is even the heart of my inventive work: putting together techonologies nobody thought to put together before.
Jewish Climate Initiative is the same thing. Our logo depicts three spheres- Ethics, Science/Technology and Activism/Policy or Nature, Man, and God or, more Kabbalistically, Form (din), Flow (hesed) and the synthesis that leads to Beauty (Tiferet). The interconnectiveness between the three – the nexus or overlapping of the three and the play between them is what excites me.
YK: What problem or need are you answering in creating the Jewish Climate Initiative?
MK: Our religion has deep wisdom that can be applied to the crises of today. Our ancient myths state that Torah is a blueprint for Creation. Therefore, we, as protectors of Torah and investigators of Torah need to investigate and unpack what the Torah says about the present crisis. I feel, as a conscious Jew, that it is incumbent upon me to ask the questions, and look for answers. We are part of the whole, with a responsibility to the whole, and this is for the whole.
YK: How do you see JCI as answering that need? What separates JCI from other environmental organizations?
MK: One thing is we’re not an envronmental organization. It was a friend of mine who taught me that what we face is not an environmental problem, but an ecological one.
Ecology means “The logic of the house”- Knowledge of the house. As in, I can ask you: “In your house- how are you recycling? Do you turn off electricy? What foods do you eat? How are your houses built?” That’s environmentalism.
But I ask- “How is the love in your house? How are the relationships in your house? How are you educating your children?” Ecology is a question of what type of home you have, not how do you run your house. Not that environmentalism is bad, but it asks different questions. JCI is an ecological organization looking at fundamental questions about our relationship with the home, home being the earth, from the Jewish perspective. What is our home? Are we apart from Nature? Are we a part of Nature? Are we stewards? Co-creators? And part of our initiative is to ask other religions what their perspective is, and to share with them our perspective.
There are plenty of organizations dealing with the How-to and that’s great. But I need to ask the basic questions and I believe that Torah has a lot to answer that is highly contemporary.
There is a book by Thom Hartman, called the Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, about how we’re using up the remaining ancient fuel created by the sun millions of years ago. My reading of Torah is that it too is ancient but is still living. It’s fresh, and hasn’t been fossilized. Torah is not fossil fuel – It’s an Or Ganuz- a hidden light, ready to be revealed now as living light. Much like the sun is ancient but the light we receive is new.
At Jewish Climate Initiative, we want to tap into ancient wisdom to help answer contemporary ethical problems. We want to explore the ethics that have brought on this mess, and to explore how we can get out of it.
YK: And how do you think can we get ourselves out of this mess?
MK: I’m an evolutionist. I think the world is evolving, and that consciousness is evolving. Even this present crisis is the evolution of human consciousness. Evolutionary development is not guaranteed. Our continuation is not guaranteed. We can end, but we don’t have to. Perhaps if I was a more believing Jew I would say that we’ll survive no matter what or that Mashiach will come. But I don’t read Torah like that.
I look at history in the following way: The present crisis is an opportunity to make a significant leap in the evolution of human consciousness, from a “Taker” culture, to a next level- a sharing culture, or a giving culture- a different way of relating to the world. Not about, “Take as much as you can and if you don’t have the luck or fortune to take, you’re just a Misken (Unfortunate).
I look at the principles of Shabbat, the heart of Judaism according to many sages. What do we learn from Shabbat? Number one, that it’s not our earth. Number two, We need to learn how to leave things alone- not entirely alone, but to know how to have boundaries: What is available for us? What is not? What is Mutar (permissable)? What is Assur (prohibited)? This principle of Leaving exists all the way through the Jewish narrative, the biblical story and is ensconced in Halakha.
YK: So is the purpose that we go back to leaving?
MK: No. There was a civilization before to ours, which we can call The Leavers: Nomads, hunter gatherers, who lived here 10,000 years ago and before. I don’t know if they were happy here but they were here. There was no building cities, urbanization, emassing huge wealth.
From what we know of Leaver society, they had more of a symbiotic or harmonius relationship with nature, we’ll call it Ancient Wisdom, of which very little remains today. This in our story is symbolized by the Garden of Eden. We left; we were thrown out; we can never go back; we can only go forwards; but we are spiraling around with a new Eden somewhere around the bend. The transition from leaver to taker is epitomized by the story of Cain and Abel, in which Cain, the agriculturalist, kills his leaver/hunter-gatherer brother, Abel. And the curse arises from the Earth.
But I think we as Jews carry the knowledge of the Leaver way of life through today’s Taker way of life in order to help initiate or seed what I call The Third Way.
In my doctorate studies I learned that when you push a dynamic system through a crisis, it either explodes, or transforms itself into a new level of structures, with their own laws and constructs. It’s amazing to actually see this happen in a physical system. You put it into crisis and it evolves into a new living structure. You cannot predict this structure beforehand. You just hope it won’t explode, and you just hope for a new, steady state, a new order.
I think that’s were we’re at. Ecologically, economically- there is a crisis happening, and there is either the possibility of exploding/imploding- or moving to a new level of consciousness or structure.
YK: Practically speaking then, what projects can JCI engange in, so as to facilitate this new or “Third Way,” and prevent “Exploding?”
MK: Last Thursday I went to the Green Economy Conference in Tel Aviv. At a session devoted to investing in cleantech, I asked the panel of investors capitalizing on the success of the cleantech industry, if their investing in green technologies was normal, just another opportunity to make money, or if they were influenced by a moral imperative considering dangers that we are facing. The younger investors all answered that practically speaking, their investments were about money, and were the profits elsewhere, they’d look elsewhere. Only one more elderly investor answered with an emphatic “No!” He said that investing in cleantech must be charged with a greater vision than the immediate bottom line; that we owed it to our children and grandchildren to push these technologies forward, with a sense of humility and courage, with the profit motive taking a back seat.
And it’s true. Life just no longer is business as usual. We can’t go on developing science, developing technology, making money and investments and relying on that structure that worked so well, ignoring the implications of that structure on life on earth, human and not human. Money can no longer be separated from ethics.
It became so evident at this conference that for the most part, we are still in the old mindset, and are not seeing the bigger picture.
Therefore, at JCI we want to bring together groups that don’t usually talk to each other: scientists, technologists, economists, investors – and sages. We want to bring them together through writing, conferences, our website and our blog and other projects, to engage in an open and ongoing discussion on where we are, how did we get here – and where are we going.
Michael Kagan, Ph.D. has been an innovator and entrepreneur for 18 years. He has Co-founded 6 high-tech companies, holds a doctorate in chemistry from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is an inventor with twelve registered patents. Michael has developed and widely taught holistic Judaism, integrating a mind/body/soul approach to spirituality. For more by Dr. Kagan, click here, or visit http://www.holistichaggadah.com/ to learn about Dr. Kagan’s original commentary on the Passover Haggadah.
For more on the Jewish Climate Initiative, please visit us at www.jewishclimateinitiative.org, or contact us.
For more interviews from Climate of Change, come and visit our interviews page.
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At Amsterdam’s International Fashion Week, OAT shoes presented its “Virgin Collection,” a line of bio-degradable shoes that can be planted in the ground to sprout trees. Its materials break down easily and the seeds are embedded somewhere inside the design. The concept was well-received and won second prize at the Green Fashion competition.
OAT Shoes was founded by designer Christiaan Maats. One of its goals is to help people connect with the environment in imaginative ways. | <urn:uuid:ccc6a15a-3073-435c-9d53-837834754268> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.psfk.com/2011/02/shoes-that-bloom.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970055 | 103 | 1.5 | 2 |
Transition teams are being formed, and the change could take place next fall.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A plan designed to emphasize the growing importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics would reorganize two of Youngstown State University's colleges.
"Increasing the visibility, academic effectiveness and enrollment in so-called STEM fields is key to the future economic well-being of the region, state and the nation," Provost Robert K. Herbert said. "It is important that YSU align its academic programs in such a way to better address those disciplines in the 21st century."
YSU's academic division has six colleges -- engineering and technology, arts and sciences, health and human services, fine and performing arts, education and business.
Herbert's plan calls for reorganizing the colleges of engineering and technology, and arts and sciences.
The new breakdown
The result would be one college focusing on STEM disciplines, including biology, chemistry, geology, physics, computer science and information systems; mathematics and statistics; civil, environmental and chemical engineering; engineering technology; mechanical and industrial engineering; and electrical and computer engineering.
The second college would focus on humanities and social science disciplines, including English, history, psychology, sociology and anthropology; philosophy and religious studies; political science; economics; foreign languages and literature; and geography.
Under the planned shifting of programs, arts and sciences would essentially be reduced by 50 percent and engineering would increase accordingly, Herbert said. He said that the changes are structural only and that the university will continue to offer the same degrees through the same departments with the same faculty.
The names of the colleges would be changed to reflect their new directions, he said, noting that new names have not yet been selected.
There is no significant immediate cost to implement the changes, because no new programs or departments are being created, he said.
New programs, faculty members
However, there is hope that the changes will eventually lead to the development of new programs that will require extra faculty members to teach, Herbert said. Biomedical engineering would be a nice program to add, he suggested.
The plan involves a realignment of departments, which will require the approval of Dr. David C. Sweet, YSU president.
The YSU Board of Trustees won't have to vote on this particular change, Herbert said, though it will be asked to endorse the overall Academic Strategic Plan, of which it is a part, Herbert said.
The reorganization could be implemented fall semester 2007, he said, noting that transition committees are being set up next week.
"This is an important opportunity for the university to advance itself in a way that will effectively serve students, faculty, staff and the Mahoning Valley for years to come," Herbert said. "I want to stress that the details of the collegiate reorganization remain to be worked out. To this end, a committee of faculty and staff will be appointed in the next few days."
YSU officials say the reorganization is in line with calls by national and state officials to increase the number of college graduates in STEM fields.
Nationally the number of jobs in STEM fields is growing at five times the rate of other occupations, according to the Council on Competitiveness, yet the number of Americans receiving college degrees in STEM fields is on the decline. | <urn:uuid:73dc9381-2ec7-4a87-9481-5c98d03a6ef0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vindy.com/news/2006/oct/26/ysu-to-focus-on-stem-fields-to-aid-valley-success/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959742 | 692 | 1.53125 | 2 |
CIBC doing small businesses a major disservice
Toronto, April 13, 2010 – The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has released a report revealing that CIBC is far and away the worst bank when it comes to servicing Canada’s smallest businesses. Based on survey results from over 12,000 business owners across the country, Banking on Better Service evaluates banks and other lending institutions based on the views of their actual clients.
In its assessment of Canadian banks’ small business-related financing, fees and service, CFIB’s report contains three separate ratings based on business size: micro (0 to 4 employees); small (5 to 49 employees); and mid size (50 to 499 employees). While CIBC rated first in the mid size category, they rated last by significant margins in both the micro and small categories. On the opposite end of the scale, credit unions not only dominated the micro business category, but they also led the way in the small category. HSBC had a strong showing across the board.
“When you consider that micro size businesses alone account for over three-quarters of the businesses in Canada, you would think that it would be in a bank’s best interest to serve them well, especially considering their role in job creation and economic growth,” reasoned CFIB president, Catherine Swift. “Unfortunately, some banks – CIBC in particular – appear to have missed a real opportunity here. In fact, this may help explain CIBC’s drop in total market share in the small business segment.”
In addition to the ratings, CFIB’s report tracks each bank’s change in the small business market share over the past 20 years. While RBC and National Bank have lost a quarter of their small business market share, CIBC has experienced a contraction of almost half. Scotiabank and Credit Unions, on the other hand, have almost doubled their market share.
“These data demonstrate why certain banks are fairing so poorly in their treatment of smaller size business clients,” noted CFIB director of research, Doug Bruce. “If they’re serious about becoming the bank of choice for small businesses, embracing the findings contained within this report will help them gain a competitive edge,” he explained.
For further information or to speak with Catherine Swift or Doug Bruce, please contact Adam Miller or Meghan Carrington at 416.222.8022 or [email protected] | <urn:uuid:5ea8cdbf-eaa7-43e9-a035-f357b0ebe1cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cfib-fcei.ca/english/article/1810-cibc-doing-small-businesses-a-major-disservice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95441 | 511 | 1.71875 | 2 |
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