text
stringlengths 211
22.9k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
371
| file_path
stringlengths 138
138
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.93
1
| token_count
int64 54
4.1k
| score
float64 1.5
1.84
| int_score
int64 2
2
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rave Out is about books, films and music that we like. No time-wasting, just the good stuff!
Paley has set the story of the Ramayana to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. The epic tale is interwoven with Paley’s account of her husband’s move to India from where he dumps her by e-mail. The Ramayana is presented with the tagline: “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”
All of this should make us curious. But there are other reasons for admiring this film:
This new film is the latest remake of Devdas, but what is equally interesting is the fact that it is in conversation with films made in the West. Unlike Bhansali’s more spectacular version of the older story, Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D is a genuine rewriting of Sarat Chandra’s novel. Kashyap doesn’t flinch from depicting the individual’s downward spiral, but he also gives women their own strength. He has set out to right a wrong—or, at least, tell a more realistic, even redemptive, story. If these characters have lost some of the affective depth of the original creations, they have also gained the hard edges of modern lives.
Literate Indians should be familiar with Ashis Nandy’s remark: “Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.“ A Trinidadian Indian by the name of Chuck Ramkissoon, in Joseph O’Neill’s superbly inflected novel “Netherland”, is also fond of making bold pronouncements on the behalf of the game he wants to introduce to the U.S. “I’m saying that people, all people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket. What’s the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match…”
Pablo Bartholomew’s beautiful photo-show “Outside In” opened in Manhattan a few evenings ago. The exhibition is being held at Bodhi Art in Chelsea. Black-and-white photographs from the seventies and the eighties—reflecting Bartholomew’s engagement with people and places in Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta.
These are not the pictures that made Bartholomew famous. The undying image of the father brushing the dust from the face of the child he is burying—that was the iconic photograph from the Bhopal tragedy in 1984. It also won for Bartholomew, still in his twenties, the World Press Photo’s Picture of the Year Award.
I’m coming to the party late—last weekend, for the first but not the last time, I watched Manish Acharya’s comedy, Loins of Punjab Presents. Behan____, what a film!
I will not rehearse the synopsis or plot, partly because of the lateness of the hour, but also because it is available here. Instead, let me note quickly that the comedy keeps ticking, and the attention to detail in all matters, from the plot to the casting, makes this film a pleasure to watch.
A couple of evenings ago, my cousin Debika and I were discussing how we’d react if we were told we had just a few months to live. She said she would try and do everything she liked in that time, and surround herself with her family. I said that I’d be inclined to save people I cared for the pain of watching me die—whatever that took. Ironically and unexpectedly, shortly after this conversation, we found ourselves watching François Ozon’s remarkable film Time to Leave.
Over ten years ago, Suzanne Vega hit a terribly sexy groove with an album called Nine Objects of Desire that made me seek out every CD she has done since then. She’s kept us waiting for six years for her new studio effort, but it’s such vintage Vega that the reward is well worth the wait.
I’m writing this on August 15. It is our Independence Day. A young Kashmiri Muslim told me in Srinagar a few months ago that this is the day on which everyone there tries to stay indoors. This is not because the people support Pakistan, but because they are most suspect on August 15. You are questioned, searched, and locked. If any of the readers have had a chance to view Sanjay Kak’s powerful documentary Jashn-e-Azadi (How We Celebrate Freedom) you’ll see how Sanjay, coming in to Srinagar for a visit around Independence Day, is struck by the fact that the only people present for the ceremony are the cops and members of the armed forces. (That’s Rave Out #1. For Jashn-e-Azadi.)
Once while eating dinner in Montreal, our friendly, intoxicated waitress plopped herself in my lap and proceeded to tell us about how obsessed she was with the CD that was playing - singing out the lyrics at an ungodly volume and flinging her arms about. Wow, I thought to myself, people who listen to Morcheeba sure seem to have a lot of fun, and promised to check them out.
Several CDs later, they are firmly one of my favorites. And their trip hop meditation, 2003’s Charango remains one of my most played CDs.
A lot of people like batsmen who step out to the bowlers and hit huge sixes. I, for one, am highly entertained by batsmen who do the same but get caught in the deep. I love robust ambition constrained by mediocrity of execution – it’s my type of entertainment.
Despite sharing Amit’s fondness for Indian Idol 3, I love the potent mixture of tacky loopiness and bravura singing on Zee TV’s Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007.
Anung Un Rama is the virtually indestructible creation of Beelzebub himself. He has red-skin, wears a goatee, a tiny ponytail and has blank yellow eyes. His head bears two sawed-off horns. He is the Beast of Apocalypse - his fate, to plunge the world into chaos. There is only one problem: Anung Un Rama - or Hellboy as he is readily known - doesn’t seem to think much of this plan.
If the function of the poet is to push the limits of language, then few poets writing today do it as splendidly as Anne Carson. In her verse novels (Autobiography of Red, The Beauty of the Husband) and her collections of essays and verse (Men in the Off Hours, Plainwater) Carson consistently challenges the bounds of what we call poetry, blending the classical with the modern, the surreal with the mundane, creating a tough-minded oeuvre of rigorous yet revelatory power.
Bob Woodward’s The Secret Man can be termed as the concluding part of the trilogy (Parts 1 & 2) on the Watergate scandal. Mark Felt, the No.2 man in the FBI was identified as Deep Throat in 2005. The book reveals the gory details of the author’s trysts with Felt.
There is a Nigerian renaissance in writing, it seems. Helon Habila won the Caine Prize last year, and Helen Oyeyemi, 22, has written two novels about ghosts and spirits of the kind Wole Soyinka alludes to in “Ake”. But to see how global African writing is, try Biyi Bandele‘s “Burma Boy.”
Had the satirical Bengali writer Parashuram (1880-1960) been alive today, one can imagine him writing brilliant pieces about the attempt to prove Pratibha Patil worthy of the presidency, on our attitudes to foreigners revealed by matters like the Greg Chappell controversy, or the love of Indian housewives for saas-bahu serials. But as Parashuram cannot come to us, the only other option is for us to go to Parashuram, and this can be done by picking up the wonderful edition of his Selected Stories published last year by Penguin.
How little we know about the silent comedy of Hollywood becomes clear when we recall having seen only one or two Buster Keaton films and dimly remember the name Harold Lloyd. We know silent comedy because we know Chaplin.
If we remember the era as an era at all, it is because of James Agee’s masterly tribute to silent comedy, published as ‘Comedy’s Greatest Era’ in the September 5, 1949 issue of Life magazine. In it he says:
I have just finished reading Jonathan Raban’s Surveillance. I recommend it highly not because it is a political novel (which it is), not because it is a smart novel (which it is), not also because as a political novel its smartness lies in throwing open the question of politics as well as representation (which it does, unlike say, Jay McInerney writing about 9/11). Not because here’s a major writer who blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction (a line that reveals goosebumps if you touch it right). And not even because the protagonist has a bright, young daughter (which she does, and I’m all for bright daughters and the joy that they bring), but because, living as I do in a world that is marked not only by the war on terror but also by little, irritating stuff like readers’ reviews on Amazon, I’m delighted to find that Raban has much to say about the former and also a little about the latter.
In American music today, no producer is bigger than Timbaland. He has charted numerous careers, recently propelling Justin Timberlake into the top drawer and putting Nelly Furtado’s career back on the rails.
I’ve been massively enjoying his much awaited solo album - Shock Value. Despite the fact that through the course of the album you keep tripping through a list of marquee artists, it is very much a producer’s album - full of delightful little sonic pleasures and brainy-rapper attitude.
One of the greatest cataclysms of my teenage years was the day I discovered that an army of termites, nibbling and burrowing away out of sight, had laid waste to the wooden bookshelf that housed all my cricket books. Some of the books themselves, having after all been wood in a past life, had also not survived the attack. Out of the ruined city of cricket literature I fished out my prized copy of Harsha Bhogle’s Azhar, which I diligently read every year. I was not to know it then, but in a couple of years the reputation of the book’s subject was to be similarly in tatters.
9 across: Van Morrison classic from Moondance (7)
6 down: Order beginning with ‘A’ (12) | <urn:uuid:2067fc1d-433d-4f23-899f-096010e62895> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indiauncut.com/raveout/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963206 | 2,339 | 1.546875 | 2 |
WASHINGTON — On Sunday night at the Kennedy Center, a group of legendary folk and rock artists will convene to pay tribute to the man who laid the foundation for them: Woody Guthrie. But for Nora Guthrie, the folk master's daughter, the concert will be more a meeting of old friends.
"We don't really have stars in folk music," says Guthrie, 62, director of the Woody Guthrie Archives, which is organizing the Centennial Celebration Concert in conjunction with the Grammy Museum and the Kennedy Center. "For me it's much more personal than that. These are all people who know the material, they know the spirit, they know the cause and they're all doing it on their own. They are the sons and daughters of Woody in their own right."
The concert — which includes performances by Ry Cooder, Tom Morello, Lucinda Williams and Old Crow Medicine Show, among others — marks the culmination of a year of concerts celebrating Guthrie's life and musical legacy. The performances have roughly traced Guthrie's footsteps from his beginnings in Oklahoma to Texas, California, Canada and New York.
Woody Guthrie's influence on today's folk singers is at once well documented and immeasurable.
Nora Guthrie recalls that when her father was sick with Huntington's disease, Pete Seeger or a young Bob Dylan would come over to play his songs. Seeger's banjo, she says, was the first she ever heard.
Guthrie, who was only 17 when her father died, cared for him during his illness. Now, she works to preserve his legacy, maintaining ties to his proteges and sharing the bounty of his work through the Woody Guthrie Archives.
"It meant a lot to him to know people were singing his songs," his daughter says. "Everyone on this show, I have a story about. It's real. Whatever it is, it's going to be real."
Here, five of the artists who will perform on Sunday share their thoughts about the legendary musician.
— Rosanne Cash
Daughter of country music icon Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash is a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and an author of three books.
"There's no denying his influence, and he's part of the American consciousness, really. He's bigger than himself and bigger than the songs at this point, [with his influence] spread through our cultural sense of ourselves. So it's important to honor that and remember who we are, and Woody is part of who we are.
"I remember my dad talking about Woody, playing Woody, so I would have heard 'I Ain't Got No Home' and 'Pretty Boy Floyd' and of course 'This Land Is Your Land.' He was a powerful influence on my dad, the rawness of it, the American face of it, how stark it was. He's like Steinbeck. He's quintessentially American, and he draws these portraits and creates these narratives that are like small pieces of cinema or a Walker Evans photograph, which is a pretty amazing thing, and then he backs it all up with his social consciousness. . . .
"It's hard to create a stand and a social consciousness in music without sounding like you're proselytizing, and Woody did that so well. Just the beauty of the working man, and the unfairness in society. Without screeching, without proselytizing, just drawing these portraits.
"Here's a reminder of who we are, here's a reminder of the power of art and beauty in music, and here's a reminder of a guy who stood up for the working man and woman, and the poor and the disenfranchised."
— Ani DiFranco
Folk singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco founded the independent record label Righteous Babe Records in 1990 to maintain artistic control over her music. She received the Woody Guthrie Award in 2009 for being a voice of social change.
"I kind of came up through folk music, and Woody's part of the foundation. So I was probably knowing and singing Woody songs before I knew that I was. You know, his influence on me I'm sure is foundational in that way, in that he sort of had a hand in inventing the genre and the job of folk singer: to write political music, to be a song crafter whose work is connected with your community, with your society, with making a change in the world.
"I began to study him and his work maybe later in life, long after I started writing my own songs, but the vicarious influence is huge. Because sort of the game of folk music is something that he helped devise, and that's what I learned as a young person and that's sort of the spirit that I like to work within.
"I was immediately as a young person attracted to this community, this subculture of anti-establishment, anti-corporate, rabble-rousing political writers and activists/musicians. So that's the model that I've followed, and you can trace that pretty directly back to him and his contemporaries."
— John Mellencamp
The Grammy-winning heartland rocker received the Woody Guthrie Award in 2003 for his history of social and political activism.
"My parents back in the '50s had a couple Woody Guthrie records. They were young parents, so they were kids having kids.
"You know, the music was always important, but what I really enjoyed about Guthrie as well as the music was the way he conducted his life. He wasn't afraid to stand up to people, he wasn't afraid to be unpopular, he wasn't afraid to speak his mind, he wasn't afraid to go against the grain.
"To put it mildly, Woody suffered the full catastrophe of life. He was I guess what the common person would call a free spirit. But I would call it inspiration. The more I learned about him, the more I thought: These are the footsteps that I want to travel under. I don't want to be part of anything. I'm with me. . . .
"I just think that it's funny — and I think it's very American — that we would be honoring Guthrie here, particularly since in his lifetime he operated so far outside of the law and society. But time has rewritten his legacy, and thank God it did."
— Jackson Browne
In 2011, bass player Rob Wasserman approached singer-songwriter Jackson Browne about composing a song based on a notebook entry Guthrie had written about his second wife. The result was "You Know the Night," which Browne will likely perform at the centennial concert.
"Woody was the first really to take it upon himself to speak out about injustices and portray the working life. He's really the first to have that kind of music sort of enter into American popular music.
"He also was so bohemian, I don't think people necessarily understand how the sort of Merchant Marine/world traveling/Okie intersects with the bebop/stream-of-consciousness/Kerouac kind of world. There is a nexus there of the bohemian with folk, with working people. He could portray the lives of simple, working people in really elegant and emotional terms.
"All the while, he was extremely literate. Woody was an artist and a journalist, and we're still writing songs from the piles and trunks of journal entries and letters that his family has preserved. Like so many folk songs, [Guthrie's songs are] rooted in the reality of people's lives. They're not picturesque, they're not just period pieces. They're about real life.
"I think it has to do with living in a very turbulent time when there was a lot of upheaval. He kind of grew up in the Depression . . . so he knew how to create a lot from a little. But there's that undercurrent of truth-telling in all of Woody's work. . . .
"Songs are a little bit like bumper stickers. They're messages that are sent out. And some people's messages resonate for generations. And in Woody's case, 'This Land Is Your Land' was a very incendiary thing to say at the time it was written. It was about people who had been dispossessed. It was about reminding people that what this country was founded on was inclusion, and opportunity for all. And the opportunity to own land or to own a house of your own, or the opportunity to build a life for your children that might be improved over the life you yourself have led. You know, come to think of it, it's not just an American idea, it's a very universal, human idea."
— Joel Rafael
California-based folk musician Joel Rafael performed at the inaugural Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in 1998 and has played at the festival every year since. He toured with the Guthrie tribute show "Ribbon of Highway, Endless Skyway" and has released two albums of Guthrie's songs.
"At a certain point, when I was still a young songwriter in my early 20s, I started to really look for Woody Guthrie. I realized that he'd been a huge influence. . . . And then, a couple years after the Woody Guthrie Festival was established, I made the decision to record a couple albums of his songs.
"Woody, he just wrote and wrote and wrote. He wrote instructions on how to be a songwriter. He's got essays on, you know, coffee, and what's good about it and what's bad about it. All the promises it makes and never keeps. He literally wrote on every subject. So there's a conversational quality to his writing that really appealed to me.
"I have internalized him in a certain way. He's just kind of integrated into what I do in my work, and it's not purposeful anymore, it's just something that kind of happens.
"There's a lot of people that find their influence in what Woody did and they try to copy him or dress like him. But — and I've heard Arlo [Guthrie] say this — nobody is like Woody. And all the people that sing his songs and help perpetuate his legacy, none of them are like Woody. He was one of a kind, a Renaissance man. He defies all the definition that has been put on him."
WASHINGTON POST-BLOOMBERG--10-11-12 1408ET | <urn:uuid:74a17dd0-d573-4d80-b523-f300010fe544> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emissourian.com/currents/music/article_7d2349f6-140e-11e2-acba-001a4bcf887a.html?mode=story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987513 | 2,173 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Studio Mumbai Architects have designed the Palmyra house in Nandgaon, Maharashtra, India.
The house has been shortlisted for the 2010 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Full description after the photos….
Palmyra House by Studio Mumbai Architects
This two-storey timber house, built as a weekend retreat, lies in the shade of an extensive coconut grove on coastal agricultural land facing the sea, near the fishing village of Nandgaon, south of Mumbai. The functions of the house are placed within two oblong masses slightly offset from one another, whose facades are predominantly characterised by louvers made from the trunks of the local Palmyra palm. The structure is made of ain wood; local basalt was used to make boundary walls, plinths and paving. Plaster finishes were pigmented with sand from the site. The development of the design and detail, which resulted from collaboration between the architect and the craftsmen, took on tested techniques, both local and foreign, and raised them to a finer construction resolution. The house is well-adapted to its environment: the louvers on the elevations enable passive cooling, as does the extensive shade provided by the coconut trees above; water for the house is harvested from three on-site wells, filtered and stored at the top of a water tower and fed by gravity to the house. The result of these measures is a quietly compelling project that is fully integrated into its landscape.
Visit the website of Studio Mumbai Architects – here. | <urn:uuid:a0470b02-a13e-4b4e-9c8b-beb49c691f31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.contemporist.com/2010/05/27/palmyra-house-by-studio-mumbai-architects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968141 | 307 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The short answer is of course you don't need to include humans as a race in a setting. But the situation is not as simple as that.
In any fantastic setting you have to remember that the during the campaign the world is filtered through you the human referee. And it can be a lot of work making sure that you give enough details so that the players can make meaningful decisions for their characters. The advantage of using ordinary or mundane details in a setting that it allows the players to make valid assumptions during the campaigns. This lessens the amount of detail you need to communicate and increase the player's confidence that their decisions are meaningful and are not the equivalent of throwing darts at a board.
If you are planning to create a truly alien setting then you also need to plan how the players are going to learn about the setting while the campaign unfolds. For Tekumel's initial campaign M.A.R.Barker made the player characters barbarians from another continent. The player's lack of knowledge of the detailed alien cultures Barker created was the same as their characters.
That was just one referee's solution. You may come with an alternative that works better for your setting. One thing you should avoid is the info dump. If you hand out more than one page of personal information and one page of general background then that is probably too much. | <urn:uuid:24bc6492-6cb7-4048-9146-5300476ebb56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/11669/are-human-characters-needed-in-a-roleplay-system?answertab=votes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97667 | 273 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Courtrooms are exciting arenas for drama. People’s lives are permanently decided on and occasionally, at least in American courtrooms, an accused jumps up, launches an ill-fated escape attempt, just to be subdued with the electrifying stopping power of a Taser.
The most famous and dramatic scene that ever unfolded in an American courtroom, if not any courtroom in the world, was when OJ Simpson tried on a glove that was too small and his attorney, Johnnie Cochran, said the now immortal words: “If it doesn’t fit, then you must acquit!”
South Africa, as always, punches way above its weight and now advocate Gcina Malindi surpassed this performance with an Oscar clincher of his own - he actually shed real, salty tears.
As a former competitive debater, I can assure you with some authority that theatrics is deployed in the absence of substantial argument. As President Jacob Zuma’s advocate, Malindi surely realised this was the case when he had to make a number of concessions and had to go through the gruelling scrutiny of the judges.
Legal representatives have a very difficult job: they represent a client and should under law and ethics put forward argumentation in accordance to what their clients instruct. It is particularly difficult when you are Malindi and your client not only occupies the highest office in the land, but he insists that you should pull the race card because someone painted him with an inconveniently open fly.
Malindi conceded that the right to dignity and privacy does not accrue to the office of the president and thus had to present Zuma as an ordinary, red-blooded human being, equal a everyone else under law. Now the case is being treated in the way it would be dealt with if my privates were displayed all over Murray’s canvass. Now that his client was recognised as a mere mortal and he needed time to re-strategise and collect his thoughts, he reached up his sleeve and unexpectedly pulled a second race card by claiming that painful memories of apartheid brought him to tears.
News cameras were there to capture the action and the judges called for an adjournment so that the sensitive lawyer could collect himself. The judges subsequently ruled that footage of the advocate’s breakdown could no longer be repeated by any South African broadcaster.
A furious Gwede Mantashe rallied the crowd outside the court, after the adjournment and, interestingly, conceded that the case will most likely be lost in court – talk about confidence in your race-based case – but they will win it on the streets. The “who’s who” of government and the ruling party started throwing about a word as yet only used by the opposition. Censorship, they cried.
Now the argument being put forward by the camp which feels that Murray’s painting should be destroyed and apologised for is claiming that the courts are censoring them. Hang on, is that not exactly what the Goodman Gallery, Brett Murray and the rest of rational, civil society are accusing them of?
The slippery slope of poor argument is astounding and it is rather insulting to expect us to lap it up. We have heard that our president’s culture, dignity and privacy has been violated by the painting, and then we are told that it is an affront to all black people and the president’s children were supposedly traumatised, now we have a sobbing lawyer and censored government.
The judges were not concerned with gossip, our amusement with seeing Malindi cry or the entertainment value and accompanying rise in ratings for a particular news broadcaster. The judges know that there is a court that extends beyond the ambit of their benches. It is a court that bases its decisions and rulings on the testimony of television and newspapers. It is a popular court, presided over by you and me, the court of public opinion.
An already emotive issue will be exacerbated by the repetition of Malindi’s sobbing. The court should and wishes to maintain its authority as the decision maker in matters of this nature and here the judges of the South Gauteng High Court want to ensure that they alone make the decision on the issue.
Presiders of the court of public opinion have not acquired the sophisticated ability to remain emotionally unfettered by the events that unfold in court. Trained and experienced judicial judges are persuaded by facts, evidence and argumentation, whereas we are easily persuaded by the side that sheds a tear first. The courts know this and, despite the public gallery being extended to our living rooms, they wish to assert their authority by ensuring that we do not question their decision due to the repeated imagery of a crying lawyer.
Calling this censorship is as disingenuous as claims that all black men are united in their belief that the display of the contents of the president’s open fly is racist. Some of us actually get the point Murray so explicitly conveys: he shocks us provocatively and by means of a medium of expression overtly protected by our Constitution. Malindi’s expression of pure manipulation is tragically not protected by said document. It was not artistic, instead it was manipulative with the aim to garner lay support and give us yet further reason to lose faith in our judiciary.
Mantashe, I believe, deserves to be censored. An organ of state, no more and no less equal to his executive office deserves his and the nation’s joint respect. A statement that the war in court can be lost but will be won in the streets is irresponsible and symptomatic of a greater ill. Understandably, the executive feels sore over the many decisions that have gone south for them in the courts, but they need to set an example in abiding by the decisions of the courts.
If the executive and the legislature Mantashe and his colleagues occupy fail to abide by the rulings of the judiciary, then how are we to? The option of appeal or seeking alternative legal remedies is still open to them and this should be sought if they feel that the South Gauteng High Court is incorrect in its finding. An appeal and the request for it should be based in compelling legal reasoning and, unfortunately, will not be granted through tears.
Poor legal argumentation, based in the convenient red herring of race, has been diverted with tears. More disturbingly, ordinary people have been rallied as cannon fodder to protest a court ruling that will in all likelihood go against Zuma and his entourage yet again. The courts have been further disrespected by the fact that this complex and monumental issue of freedom of expression has been dragged into the uninformed rulings of the court of public opinion.
Malindi’s tearful stunt and Mantashe’s claim that this is censorship to prevent the further dissemination of the event through televised media is nothing more than to exert public, misguided sympathy with the president.
Based on this, I really wish that government and her servants can be censored. Unfortunately, the state and her institutions censor and therefore for obvious and practical reasons it itself cannot be censored. What a shame – shedding tears of my own. DM
- Stereotypes aside Ė legalise it!
- To Cheeky and the Chief Justice: Itís all about merit
- O, Liewe Lulu!
- We donít need another hero
- The inefficacy of the rape debate
- Nationalisation: a business case for failure
- Filling the leadership void: The Malema dilemma
- Behind every dark cloud is a blue light?
- Prosperity evangelism: How far are we from drinking the Kool-Aid?
- The phantom menace of subliminal messaging | <urn:uuid:dbad2c15-c140-4e91-9b0c-521f78ce9718> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2012-05-25-censor-you-censor-me-lets-all-censor-together/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971363 | 1,586 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Trends: Idea Markets
Since the start of the year, the number of people laid off from American companies has topped 1 million as orders for everything from automobiles to computers and, most recently, airplane tickets have sputtered in what Princeton University economist Paul Krugman recently called the country's new "fear economy."
But at Whirlpool Corp., where appliance sales have eased and a 10 percent reduction in headcount is under way, executives aren't just ordering employees to focus solely on the bottom line. They're also challenging workers to keep dreamingand communicate those ideas over the company's new intranet. Employees who post winning new ideas there for new products, services or improvements in business processes are rewarded with coupons that can be redeemed for gifts from a company catalog.
Whirlpool executives are also moving forward with plans to create Web-enabled appliances, including a washing machine that can tap into the Net to get customized instructions enabling it to clean specific types of stains in different types of fabrics. Says company spokesman Steve Duthie: "Innovation is what will give us the edge in the future."
Whirlpool is not alone. A growing number of companies, from Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. to Estee Lauder, are trying to battle the malaise of the current business climate and gird for the long term by creating "idea markets" that use in-house information networks to stimulate and manage innovationand put the brightest new ideas into the hands of the people who can turn them into new products and services the most quickly. The theory: Continuous innovation can lead to profits with staying power.
For some, these electronic idea markets have already paid off. Royal Dutch/Shell Group uses them to create new technologies for finding new oil reserves and develop more efficient production methods. Companies such as Memphis-based Buckman Laboratories International Inc., a specialty chemicals firm, use them to harness the expertise of the company to untangle individual customers' problems, fastand thus better justify product prices. Whirlpool and Procter & Gamble are using idea markets to push new projects into the product development pipeline at more than twice the normal pace.
To encourage employee participation in these idea exchanges, many companies are rewarding employees who dream up winning ideas with stock options and promotions. At Whirlpool and Royal Dutch/Shell, backers of ideas chosen for pilot programs are asked to help manage them; executives at Voyant Technologies Inc., a Westminster, Colo.-based Internet voice conferencing firm, give special awards to the authors of new ideas, and even give recognition to ideas that don't quite make the grade. (Runners-up are given an award named for Elisha Gray, the man who applied for a telephone patent a few hours after Alexander Graham Bell.)
Call it the innovation imperative. More than ever, senior executives today face pressure to encourage creativity and new thinking within their ranks. A sober look at the operating margins of the S&P 500 over the past eight years suggests that the over $100 million spent on new information technology during the period has had little impact on the competitive position of most companies (see chart, page 37). "Most of the technology-powered, efficiency-based strategies that companies used during the 1990s to prop up their share prices have simply run out of steam," says Gary Hamel, a visiting professor at the London Business School and founder of Strategos, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based consultancy.
McKinsey & Co. Director and Senior Partner Richard Foster says the problem isn't innovation so much as the inability of most companies to sustain it. In his recently published Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market, Foster argues that unless companieseven the best-runfind a way to innovate continuously, they will be unable to sustain their market-beating performance for more than 10 to 15 years (see chart, this page). In 1982, for example, management experts Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr. cited Amdahl, Texas Instruments, Eastman Kodak and Maytag as top innovators in their business classic, In Search of Excellence. But 12 years later, in Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras found the elixir of success in a predominantly new cast of visionariesand cited Dell, Cisco, Charles Schwab, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Enron, Gap and the University of Phoenix as the newcomers. Now that list, too, is being shaken up amid the current downturn as a new set of rivals waits in the wings. "Companies may chance upon a good idea that will give them an advantage for a while," says Hamel, a leading voice in the innovation movement. "But sooner or later they cede the advantage to a competitor who has chanced upon an even better business idea." The answer? "Management is going to have to change, and IT is going to have to change to support ubiquitous innovation," he says.
The growth of in-house information networks has kicked off a vast new innovation movement across the corporate landscape. Borrowing from the principles of the quality movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, the advocates of the fledgling innovation movement seek to use the Web and idea markets to make innovation, like quality before it, a capability around which their companies can be organized. The idea: The Web is a platform that's very well-suited to harvesting a lot of ideas continuouslyand cheaply. In-house information networks, used properly, can cultivate, test and develop hundreds of experiments and ideas at any one timebe it a new product idea, a new service or a new market. Says Math Kohnen, director of Royal Dutch/Shell's idea market initiatives: "New ideas aren't just the job of R&D. Now, innovation is everyone's responsibility."
For early adopters, idea markets have already beefed up the bottom line. Royal Dutch/Shell boasts six teams of six employees each called Game Changers that meet every week at the exploration and production divisions in Houston and in Rijswijk in The Netherlands. There, they consider ideas that have been pitched via the company's intranet. For the past two years, the teams have been fielding employee suggestions this way. Last year, the teams rounded up more than 1,000 ideas from employeeseverything from ways to reduce company paperwork to using laser sensors to discover oil.
The exercise has paid off: Of Shell's top five business initiatives in 1999, four emerged from the Game Changer teams. Now, those projects are bringing in millions of dollars. Shell's new "Light Touch" oil discovery method, for example, helps explorers by sensing hydrocarbon emissions released naturally into the air from underground reserves. The laser technology helped locate some 30 million barrels of oil reserves in Gabon last year. Says Hamel: "Innovation is becoming to U.S. corporations in the early years of this new century what the quality movement was to companies in the 1960s and 1970sa way to build better widgets, make higher profits and stay at the forefront of your industry for decades. Executives are just beginning to wake up to the possibilities."
What's taken so long? It's not that innovation is hard to define: Mid-century economist Joseph Schumpeter described innovation as the first commercial use of a product or a process that hasn't previously been exploited. Trouble is, someone can be a great inventor but still be unable to sell their inventionsor even get their ideas heard or developed. But information technologywith its potential to push authority out to employees, form networked communities of workers and encourage new ideas to bubble up from the edgescan change all that.
Two reasons online knowledge sharing has taken so long to fly have been lack of commitment from top executives and difficulty in getting workers to share their ideas. Case in point: knowledge management, which caught fire, then flamed out a few years ago when executives couldn't get buy-in from the troops. "There was also the problem that few people really understood what it was," says Adrian Slywotzky, a management expert and a vice president at Mercer Management Consulting Inc.
Many executives still wonder. According to a new CIO Insight survey to be published in November, many executives give lip service to the benefits of knowledge sharing, but still find so-called knowledge management hard to implement, much less comprehend. Of the IT and business executives polled in September, about one quarter said they didn't consider implementing a knowledge-management system because there was no budget for one. Roughly another one quarter said they decided against it because they were "not sure what a KM system would do for the company."
But more and more executives appear to be figuring it out. In a recent Conference Board survey of 200 execs at 158 large multinationals, 80 percent of the respondents said they had knowledge-sharing projects in the works, and many already had appointed chief knowledge officers and enlisted consultants. All told, says market researcher International Data Corp., consultants pulled in $1.8 billion in knowledge management services last year. By 2003, that number should top $8 billion, the muffled economy and continuing skepticism over KM notwithstanding.
Backers of the innovation movement point out that the quality movement suffered similar skepticism when it was first being pushed in the late 1960s by noted quality consultants J.M. Juran and W. Edwards Deming, who believed that poor products and serviceand high defect rateswere the result of poor management rather than inferior employees. Japan's embrace of this idea, thanks largely to Deming's teachings after World War II, inspired the pursuit of the perfect assembly line and sparked the country's rise as a major industrial power, allowing Japan, for a time, to become the dominant manufacturer of such products as cars and consumer electronics. Indeed, it wasn't until Japanese auto companies began stealing major market share from Detroit's Big Three in the early 1980s that most U.S. companies began to sit up and take noticeand start to adopt with fervor many of the principles espoused by Deming and Juran nearly two decades earlier.
The innovation movement takes a page from the quality movement. Deming and Juran advocated quality circles, the pre-Web system still used regularly by hundreds of companies to gather ideas about how to boost quality and to make the quest for zero defects everybody's business. The innovation movement seeks to make idea creation everybody's job, but it uses the Web and managed intranets to involve wide circles of workers to generate new ideas in search of a hiton the theory that the more ideas being generated continuously, the higher the chance of innovation.
In addition, the quality movement anchors its philosophies in its own set of metrics and teaches workers to use statistical process controls to measure error rates so that defects can be continuously corrected. In a similar effort, the innovation movement aims to use a new practice called "operational process controls"otherwise known in some circles as benchmarkingto determine the impact of new ideas on cycle time and time to market as well as on cash flow, IT systems and, ultimately, profits and revenues. "The problem that many executives have had with this whole area of knowledge sharing or knowledge management is that it's been mostly an intellectual dialoguebut it stops when it comes to figuring out how to tie knowledge sharing to its impact on business," says Dave Allman, founder of Knowledge Advantage, a Harrisburg, Pa.-based consultancy.
But that's changing. A variety of software products with such names as Collaborative Strategies and iCohere can be used to help collect, distribute and analyze new ideasand track their progress from inception to final outcome. Raytheon CIO Rebecca Rhoads says she is pushing for a new collaboration and messaging infrastructure to speed up decision-making, grant employees easier access to key data and provide the network platform that could support a companywide idea market.
Either way, reorganization is the mandate. "Just as in the quality movement, companies must change their organization," says Hamel. "They must become horizontal rather than vertical in scope. They need to structure around projects rather than strategic business units, their boundaries must be open and not closed and their leadership must become enablers of innovation rather than stewards of existing assets" (see Viewpoint, page 40).
How do idea markets work? Managers solicit ideas and pick the most promising, then typically pass the projects off to established business units. Sometimes they create and fund internal start-ups that use Web communications and collaboration to deliver new products and services. The payoff for the innovators: bonuses or stock optionsmuch like they would get if they worked at a Silicon Valley start-up in the mid-1990s. Experts say dozens of traditional corporations are just starting to adopt the approach. At Whirlpool, for example, no proposals are rejected out of hand. Instead, all ideas are subjected to rigorous evaluation sessions centered on how customers might react to them, with Whirlpool employees sometimes replacing outside focus groups. Ideas that make the cut get funding to go to the next level. "The trend now is to decentralize operations, to build idea factories. This is a way to preserve the best of the old start-up mentality, but bring it inside," says Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor.
Consider P&G's knowledge market, called Corporate New Ventures. It is armed with $200 million in seed money and a direct line to the office of the CEO. Ideas bubbling up from P&G's far-flung workforce of 110,000 people are routed to a CNV innovation panel via My Idea, a Web-based corporate collaboration network. CNV teams then put the ideas under the microscopeusing the Web to analyze markets, demographics and cost information to make sure a new idea is feasible.
In most idea markets, once a team decides to go ahead, a project is launched within days. The CNV people have the authority to tap any resources in the company to bring a product to market, including the brainpower of the company's engineers, scattered in 23 sites worldwide. The program already has delivered results. One of CNV's first efforts, a cleaning product called Swiffer, got pushed out the door in just 10 monthsless than half the usual product development time. Swiffer, a disposable cleaning cloth that generates electrostatic charges to attract dust and dirtand which has since generated more than $100 million in sales for P&Gwas dreamed up during a novel, Web-based collaboration between P&G's paper and cleaning-agent experts. CNV's first chief, Craig Wynett, pulled them together to start talking in person and via the Internet. He challenged them to think more broadly than just about detergents and diapers. Over time, the collaboration moved to the in-house intranet, and resulted in new ideas, some of which corporate executives decided to green-light. Says Wynett, now general manager of future growth initiatives: "It was an exercise in speed, in breaking down the company's division-by-division territories to come up with new ideas."
Yet creating effective knowledge markets isn't as simple as setting up a traditional skunk works. Perhaps the biggest challenge is cultural. Bosses need to tolerate failure. "There's an inability by most companies to deal with failure, which is why corporate decision-makers are hesitant in some companies to seek change and innovation, or even start thinking about idea markets as a way to foster more innovation," says William Gartner, professor of entrepreneurial studies at the University of Southern California's Marshall Business School (see "The Creativity Dilemma," page 44).
Also critical: Bosses and employees need to buy into the notion of idea-sharing. In some cases, companies have found they need to tie compensation and recognition schemes around their idea-market initiatives in order for them to get off the ground. Buckman Labs has put together a knowledge market called K'Netix that is designed to generate fast answers to customer service queries via 54 Net-based discussion groups. At first, employees were so reluctant to share their ideas that CEO Robert Buckman had to monitor the intranet for a time, issue "friendly reminders" to individual employees who refused to participate and then start rewarding those who got with the program. Early on, Buckman realized that unless there were solid incentives, managers weren't going to share what they knew via the intranet. "They had information, but they feared giving it up," Buckman said. "They felt they wouldn't get credit for their ideas, so I reorganized the system so that sharing got rewarded and hoarding did not."
Today, Buckman Labs is proof positive that it was worth the effort. Idea-sharing at the chemicals firm has led to both innovation and faster response to customers on service queries. Revenues, which hit $400 million last year, have been growing about 5 percent annually in recent years, a slightly faster rate than its rivals can claim. Buckman points to a 53 percent increase last year in the share of sales from products less than five years on the market, which he considers a good measure of innovation. And he cites as proof statistics on employee productivity: Since 1992, sales per salesperson have gone up by 51 percent and sales per employee have increased by 34 percent. Operating profit per employee jumped 93 percent in the same period. All this has helped it to compete successfully with much larger and better-funded companies. "I don't think we'd be a player today if we hadn't done those things," says Buckman, who has since been elevated from the company's CEO to chairman of the executive committee of Bulab Holdings Inc., Buckman's parent company.
But nobody says idea markets are easyespecially Buckman, one of the first to experiment with the concept. "It took us years to develop our idea market," he says. "It isn't a project, it's a journey." Adds Hamel: "This is not about saying, 'Okay, we get it and six months from now we've solved it.' This is like quality. You show me a company that truly mastered quality in less than three or four years and I'll be surprised. It just doesn't work that way."
Ken Yamada is an Oakland, Calif.-based technology writer whose work has appeared in the The Wall Street Journal, Red Herring, New York Newsday and a variety of computer trade publications. Comments on this story can be sent to [email protected].
The Role of Standards in Cloud Security
Security is often cited as a primary cause for concern...Watch Now
Ensuring Resources for Mission Critical Workloads
Application workloads can thrive in cloud environments,...Watch Now
Improving Security in the Public Cloud
One of the main concerns about moving data to a public...Watch Now | <urn:uuid:cf93b738-501f-45fb-9af1-b343f350d296> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Trends/Trends-Idea-Markets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963202 | 3,846 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Chevron takes blame for Brazil oil spill
An ongoing oil spill off the Brazilian coast occurred because Chevron underestimated the pressure in an underwater reservoir, the head of the company's Brazil operations said Sunday.
George Buck, chief operating officer for the Brazilian division of the San Ramon, California-based company, told foreign journalists that Chevron "takes full responsibility for this incident," and that "any oil on the surface of the ocean is unacceptable to Chevron."
But Buck rejected accusations the company did not notify authorities quickly enough after the leak was detected and that it did not properly manage cleanup operations.
If you have questions, please email [email protected].
To start your free 14-day trial, fill in the form below. | <urn:uuid:cc5bd61c-71cd-4882-8cb8-9529be6ee071> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.energyguardian.net/chevron-takes-blame-brazil-oil-spill | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954413 | 152 | 1.546875 | 2 |
For a Quality Metrics Reality Check, Just Ask a Nurse
Nurse leaders, I have a homework assignment for you. Formally survey your staff about their perceptions of your hospital's quality of care. It might be one of the most enlightening things you can do to get an accurate, big-picture look at how well your organization is caring for its patients.
Staff nurses probably didn't need a study to tell them this, but research shows that nurses provide an exceptionally accurate barometer for measuring hospital quality.
The retrospective study, published in the journal Research in Nursing and Health, used data from 396 acute care hospitals and 16,241 nurses from California, Pennsylvania, Florida, and New Jersey. Researchers compared nurses' reports on quality of care from the Multi-State Nursing Care and Patient Safety Study from 2006–2007 with outcomes data such as patient assessments; care measures for heart failure, pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction and surgical care; and administrative data on mortality and failure to rescue.
Nurses were asked "How would you describe the quality of nursing care delivered to patients in your unit?" They could answer excellent, good, fair, and poor. As it turns out, the way they answered this question strongly correlated to actual outcomes data.
The researchers found that nurse reports of excellent care did, in fact, correspond with higher levels of patient satisfaction, better scores for processes of care, and better results for patients in the hospital with regard to mortality and failure to rescue.
- $6.4B Henry Ford, Beaumont Merger Failed on Cultural Hurdles
- House Lawmakers Grill CMS Over Health Exchange Navigators
- Don't Let Nurses Sink Your Bottom Line
- Fortunately, Angelina Jolie Isn't On Medicare
- How Chargemaster Data May Affect Hospital Revenue
- Insurer's App Aims to Lower Healthcare Costs, Securely
- Primary Care Docs Average More Hospital Revenue Than Specialists
- ED Physicians Key to Half of Hospital Admissions
- Uncompensated Care Faces a Double Hit in Some States
- Hospital Pricing Transparency a Marketing Game Changer | <urn:uuid:757a6f84-a71d-4b9a-b399-106536576da9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/NRS-285216/For-a-Quality-Metrics-Reality-Check-Just-Ask-a-Nurse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940779 | 433 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Ask 100 different mothers of multiples about their labor and delivery experience, and you’ll hear 100 different stories. Multiple pregnancies have more variables (and more surprises!) than single births. But since you’ll be getting two for the price of one labor, it’s really not such a bad deal after all. Just how that labor and delivery will stack up, though, can depend on a lot of factors (such as fetal position, your health, the safety of the babies, and so on). But whichever exit route your babies take, it’s important to keep in mind that the ultimate goal is your and your babies’ wellbeing. Here’s what you can expect from your labor and delivery:
Labor. Your labor may begin very similarly to a singleton labor — either with contractions or with your water breaking. And here’s some good news about the beginning of your labor: According to a recent study, the first stage of labor is often shorter with multiples. Which means that it’ll likely take less time to get to the point where you can start pushing. The downside: Your window of experiencing merely minor pain will likely be shorter than your friends who are birthing only one baby. (In other words, watch out for stage two!)
The level of monitoring you’ll experience during labor is another aspect that will set your childbirth experience apart from most singletons. Throughout labor, you’ll likely be attached to two (or more) fetal heart-rate monitors so your practitioner can see how each baby is responding to your contractions. Early on, the babies’ heartbeats may be monitored with external belt monitors; this allows you to go off the monitors periodically so you can walk around or hit the Jacuzzi to help ease your pain. In the latter stages of labor, Baby A may be monitored internally with a scalp electrode. This will put an end to your wandering, since you’ll be tethered to a machine (but by this time, you may be well past the point of wanting to move around anyway). Be sure to discuss fetal monitoring during labor and how it will affect your mobility with your practitioner ahead of time. (No sense practicing natural pain management in your childbirth education class if that’s not going to be an option for you.)
Another discussion to have ahead of time is about anesthesia. Some doctors and hospitals differ on this subject when it comes to multiples, but epidurals are often strongly encouraged — or even required — in case an emergency C-section becomes necessary in order to deliver one or all of your babies.
For that same reason, you should know that most hospital's protocols is that twins be delivered in an operating room rather than a standard labor-and-delivery room. So although you may be able to labor in one of those comfy rooms with the pretty curtains, when it’s time to push, you’ll probably be wheeled into the OR. (Check with your practitioner to be certain.)
Delivery. Here are the possible scenarios for your multiple delivery:
Vaginal delivery. About half of all twins born these days come into the world the old-fashioned way, but that doesn’t mean the birthing experience is the same as it is for singleton moms. Once you’re fully dilated, delivery of Baby A may be a piece of cake (“Three pushes was all it took!”) or a protracted ordeal (“It took five hours!”). In fact, one recent study showed that the pushing phase (stage two) is usually longer in a twin delivery than in a singleton delivery. The second twin in a vaginal delivery usually comes within 20 minutes of the first, and most mothers report that delivering Baby B is a cinch compared to Baby A. Depending on the position of Baby B, he or she may need some help from the doctor, who can either reach in and move the baby into the birth canal (internal version) or use suction or forceps to speed the delivery. The possibility of this kind of intervention is yet another reason why many doctors strongly recommend epidurals for multiple moms. (An arm reaching up into your uterus to pull out a baby ain’t pretty without pain meds.)
Mixed delivery. In rare cases, Baby B must be delivered by emergency C-section after Baby A has been delivered vaginally. That’s because after Baby A is delivered, Baby B can be at risk for placenta abruption, which can cause a sudden drop in his or her blood supply and heart rate. (Those all-important fetal monitors tell your doctor just how well Baby B is doing.) A mixed delivery is not fun for Mom: In the moment, of course, it’s a very scary situation; and after the babies are born, it means recovery from both a vaginal birth and major abdominal surgery. (Ouch!) But mothers of twins who have been through a mixed delivery usually express nothing but gratitude, since the procedure likely saved their child’s life.
Planned C-section. A scheduled C-section is discussed with your doctor in advance and a date is set. (But don’t wear your party dress!) Possible reasons for this route may be a previous C-section (a VBAC — vaginal birth after cesarean — is not common practice for multiples), placenta previa, or other maternal or fetal medical issues. With most planned C-sections, your husband, partner, or coach can accompany you into the operating room, where you will probably be given a spinal block — a pumped-up version of the epidural used to block pain in a vaginal birth. The block is delivered in a similar way, with a needle inserted into the epidural space of your spinal column. Don’t panic: The area is numbed first with an injection that feels like a pinprick. You won’t feel the larger needle, and it will be over before you know it. (The biggest challenge may be curving your back over your enormous belly in order to receive the injections.) The great thing about this type of anesthesia is that you remain fully awake throughout the birth process (although some women experience shaking, nausea, or vomiting as a side effect). You may be surprised how fast it all goes after you’re numb: Baby A and Baby B’s birth times will be separated by just a minute or two.
- Unplanned C-section: An unplanned C-section is the other possible way your children will enter the world. You may walk into your usual weekly prenatal appointment and find out that you’re going to meet your babies that very day! So in those later weeks of pregnancy, be sure to get your bag packed and ready to go. Reasons include such conditions as intrauterine growth restriction (where the babies run out of room to grow) or if your blood pressure starts to rise (preeclampsia). Another unplanned C-section scenario may arise if you labor for a very long time and don’t progress at all. A uterus holding ten or 12 pounds of babies may be too stretched to contract effectively, so a C-section might be the only way out. | <urn:uuid:dc54ed80-b7eb-4d3a-94e1-25a241dacdb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/twins-and-multiples/giving-birth/multiple-birth-experience.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940343 | 1,504 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Entries in "goals"
June 27, 2007
an alternative to the SMART goal framework
I wrote up a post at my new blog, Work-Life Chronicles, about the alternative to the SMART goal framework that I have developed and used in the last year of teaching MGMT 250 and 251. I call it START NOW, which stands for:
To read more about each of the labels in the START NOW framework, and some funny stories about my adventures learning to ride my Vespa, click through to read "a different take on setting and achieving goals".
Please let me know what you think of the new blog, too! I'd welcome you to add it to your blogroll, or subscribe to the RSS feed, if you find the first few posts interesting.
April 10, 2006
how do you track your progress toward your goals?
No time for part 2 of the Anne Lamott blog today -- sorry. Things are humming in my life, but I'm hoping to find time tomorrow to write up my thoughts, before the vividness of the experience fades!
In the meantime, let me briefly mention that I have been experimenting lately (as you can see from the righthand column of my blog) with an online service called 43 things. On Thursday I will introduce it to my students in class, as a way of helping them to make sense of why the plans they set up for themselves last December may not have worked as intended -- and of helping them to stay focused on their goals, keep track of their progress, and give themselves credit for their accomplishments.
I really like the 43things system, even though it's less structured than a Getting Things Done approach or a Covey Seven Habits approach. For students who are online all the time, often from different computers, I think that using this kind of organizing might work even better than keeping a paper planner.
I'd be curious to learn how my readers track progress toward their goals.
- Do you use a paper planner?
- Do you keep your calendar on your computer?
- Is it online so that you can access it from several different computers?
- Or do you sync your computer with a Palm or other handheld, or with a cellphone or something?
- How do you schedule things into your planner in a way that allows you to give priority to important but not always urgent tasks?
- When you feel yourself getting into a cycle of fighting fires, how do you choose to respond so that you retain a sense of efficacy?
November 29, 2005
tidbits for students
Lisa Haneberg, who blogs about the craft of management, is currently offering an e-book for free on New Year's Resolutions for Leaders which may be helpful to students as they are SMARTening their learning goals and filling in their action plans for achieving them. She offers good tips for how to avoid turning the goalsetting process into an exercise in stargazing, and some practical suggestions for the kinds of actions that can keep you moving toward a goal.
Terrence Seamon, a workplace learning and performance consultant, offers his vision of a better alternative to tying annual performance appraisals to a too-small pot of merit pay: spot cash awards, a raffle for award winners, and annual development planning that is less focused on the past and more focused on continuous improvement and skill development. He offers an important reminder that performance appraisal should always end with a conversation about how to convert the numbers to meaning and to constructive action in the future.
Oh, and if you're wondering why we asked you to blog this semester, and my post from back in August doesn't convince you that the assignment is worthwhile, then perhaps the fact that blogging is the topic of an article in Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge newsletter will convince you that learning to compose blog entries and connect with other bloggers is becoming an increasingly valuable skill in the workplace! | <urn:uuid:1832a595-2048-472d-b937-a7dc8a21e582> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.case.edu/kep2/goals/index | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960374 | 799 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Aaron Putnam, a postdoctoral researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, led an expedition to Bhutan to examine links among climate, glaciers and water resources in the Himalaya. This is his final post.
Friday, Nov. 2
A long, tiring drive over a narrow, cliff-bound gravel road took us westward from Sephu back to Thimpu. We dropped Tshewang Rigzin and Pashupati Ssarma at their respective houses, and finally arrived at our hotel where David Putnam and I were met by an enthusiastic and relieved Ed Cook and Paul Krusic. After checking into our room, we compared notes on our respective journeys out of the mountains from Rinchen Zoe.
Ed and Paul said that as they were taking their final steps out of the mountains, they could see the growing storm that would bring blizzard conditions to our high camp at Rinchen Zoe La. Needless to say, they were concerned about our welfare and were doubly relieved to see that we made it from the field site unscathed.
We recounted our saga to Ed and Paul, and they filled us in on theirs. They were able to exit the mountains on schedule for Mike Roberts to catch his flight. The good news was that Ed, Paul, and Karma Tenzin of the Council for Renewable Natural Resources were able to make a reconnaissance collection of samples from the ancient juniper trees growing at the timberline below Tampe La.
These will be among the highest growing trees they have sampled in Bhutan. Ed and Paul were excited about the possibility of reconstructing several centuries of atmospheric temperature from these trees, though they wished that there had been more time to build a larger sample collection. This is clearly a promising avenue for further research. | <urn:uuid:6617ef06-315b-4d97-b45d-894b26cda00f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/bhutan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98113 | 365 | 1.726563 | 2 |
President Barack Obama on Thursday designated Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan as the federal point person to lead the recovery effort from Superstorm Sandy, a little over two weeks after the rare mix of converging weather slammed into the Northeast.
"We thought it'd be good to have a New Yorker," Obama said, referencing Donovan's previous stint atop the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The agency is thought to be among the nation's largest municipal developers of low- to mid-income housing.
"FEMA basically runs the recovery process," the president said. "It doesn't focus on the rebuilding. For that, we've got to have all government agencies involved."
He addressed reporters beside Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Michael Bloomberg in hard-hit Staten Island, where more than half of New York City's 43 storm deaths occurred.
Obama also toured Rockaway Peninsula, where a tidal surge and heavy winds lashed homes and businesses and rendered much of the region without power.
"We are going to be here until the rebuilding is complete," he said. "I'm also going to be coming back in the future to make sure that we have followed through on that commitment."
As of Thursday evening, about 4,000 households remained without power across New York, officials said. It was not clear if that number included thousands of customers the Long Island Power Authority previously reported as "unable to safely receive power without customer repairs." About 1,400 customers were without power in New Jersey, officials there said.
On October 31, Obama broke from his re-election campaign to meet with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and assess the widespread damage near Atlantic City, two days after Superstorm Sandy barreled through.
On Wednesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the federal government's typical approach to disaster relief, such as the widespread use of emergency trailers for displaced residents and long-term rental assistance, doesn't work as well in New York, where space is limited.
"New York is a unique housing environment," said Michael Byrne, federal coordinating officer for FEMA. "We had to come up with something." He said FEMA will work to make short-term repairs to homes to make them habitable. More complete repairs will come later, Byrne said. | <urn:uuid:b6a47b09-06bf-4ce5-927e-2d98fb475ed3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ksbw.com/news/Obama-tours-storm-battered-New-York/-/1852/17430254/-/gl3jht/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96854 | 460 | 1.59375 | 2 |
But Ma. Ceres P. Doyo of PDI writing today in Human Face - Caricature asks the gently devastating question:
What is more blasphemous: those pen-and-ink doodles of the Prophet Mohammed (offensive they may be to the Muslims), or the killing of thousands of innocents by terrorists who wrongly invoke Islam? Where is the worldwide Islamic outrage over the latter?
As ideological battlelines harden over the issue, it may do well to refer to this Timeline of Events--
Financial Times of London (Feb.15,2006)In a Letter to the Editor, Gonaranao B. Musor foreign service officer, Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Coordination, Department of Foreign Affairs, writes --
TIMELINE: How the Cartoon Crisis Unfolded
Sep 17 2005: Politiken, a Danish newspaper, runs an article under the headline ”Deep fear of criticism of Islam”, detailing the difficulty encountered by the writer Kåre Bluitgen, who had difficulties finding an illustrator for his children’s book on the life of Mohammed.
Sep 30: Jyllands-Posten, one of Denmark’s best-selling daily newspapers, publishes 12 cartoons of the prophet to illustrate the problem.
Oct 12: Ambassadors from 10 mainly Muslim nations and the Palestinian representative in Denmark call the cartoons deeply offensive and demand a meeting with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, urging him “to take all those responsible to task”.
Oct 21: Mr Rasmussen says offended parties should use the courts to air their grievances and refuses to meet the ambassadors.
Oct 28: A coalition of Danish Muslim groups files a criminal complaint against Jyllands-Posten newspaper. A regional prosecutor investigates the complaint, but decides not to press charges.
Dec: The Danish Muslim coalition visits the Middle East. seeking support from religious and political leaders.
Jan 1 2006: Mr Rasmussen condemns any actions that “attempt to demonise groups of people on the basis of their religion or ethnic background,’’ but reiterates Denmark’s commitment to freedom of speech.
Jan 4: Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, joins the protests.
Jan 10: Magazinet, a Norwegian Christian newspaper, reprints the cartoons.
Jan 25: Saudi Arabia’s religious leaders demand an apology and call for the Jyllands-Posten newspaper to be punished.
Jan 26: Saudi ambassador is recalled from Copenhagen. Danish companies in Riyadh report a boycott of Danish goods and supermarkets remove products from the shelves.
Jan 27: Protests begin to spread across the Middle East
Jan 30: Jyllands-Posten publishes a statement on its website, saying it regretted offending Muslims and offered an apology, but said it had a right under Danish law to print the cartoons.
Jan 31: Mr Rasmussen calls for calm in the dispute, but the Danish Muslims group say the Jyllands-Posten apology is “ambiguous” and demands a clearer one.
Feb 1 - 2: Media in France, Germany, Britain, Spain, the US, Iceland, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Hungary, reprint the cartoons.
Feb 2: France Soir, a Paris daily tabloid, sacks its managing editor for publishing the drawings, but defends its right to print them. In Jordan, the weekly newspaper Shihan’ publishes them with an editorial by former Jordanian senator Jihad Momani but later withdraws issues from circulation.
Feb 3: Danish prime minister meets ambassadors and diplomats from more than 70 countries. Mona Omar Attia, Egypt’s ambassador says the Danish government’s response is inadequate.
Feb 4: A South African court prohibits newspapers from publishing the cartoons. Protesters in Damascus attack the Danish and Norwegian embassies. Mr Momani and Mr Hisham Khalid, editor of al-Mehwar, another Jordanian weekly that published the cartoons, are arrested and charged with insulting religion.
Feb 5: Protestors storm the Danish Embassy in Beirut. One person is left dead and several are injured. Iran recalls its ambassador to Denmark. Denmark says it is withdrawing diplomatic staff from Syria and recommending Danes leave the country. Norway confirms it is taking the same action with diplomatic staff in Syria.
Feb 6: Lebanon apologises to Denmark. EU leaders call for calm. Protests erupt in Afghanistan where one person died. Danish and Austrian embassies attacked in Tehran.
Feb 7: Peter Mandelson, EU trade chief, warns Iran against suspension of trade with Denmark. Norwegian NATO peacekeepers attacked in Afghanistan as demonstrations escalate. Austria, holders of the EU presidency, demand Muslim states improve security measures for European citizens and premises after Norwegian embassy is attacked in Tehran.
Feb 8: The US accused Syria and Iran of inciting violence among Muslims over caricatures. Three more people were killed in fresh protests in Afghanistan and French President Jacques Chirac condemned “overt provocations” as Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly, reprinted the images.
Feb 9: The international row spilled over into the creation of a new UN Human Rights Council. Hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims turned a religious ceremony in Lebanon into an anti-western cartoon protest.
Feb 10: Danish embassies are targeted in both Kenya - where police fire live rounds and teargas at hundreds of protesting Muslims - and in Bangladesh, where Indian police clash with about 10,000 people.
Feb 11 Denmark recalls, ambassadors and embassy staff from Syria, Indonesia and Iran over security concerns.
Feb 12: Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, said violence sparked by the cartoons could get out of control and urged governments, especially Iran and Syria, to “act responsibly” and refrain from encouraging demonstrations.
Feb 13 Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, said that Iran, Syria and other governments that failed to protect foreign embassies from mobs should pay for the damage.
Feb 14 Jose Manuel Barroso, EU Commission chief, backed Denmark, saying that freedom of speech cannot be compromised. But in fresh violence, two people were killed in the Pakistani city of Lahore, despite a province-wide ban on demonstrations. German embassy attacked in Tehran.
Feb 15 Three more people died in violence as outlets of the Norwegian phone company Telenor, a US KFC fast food restaurant and banks were ransacked and set alight in Pakistan.
An important religious figure, Prophet Mohammed is considered by Muslims the messenger of Allah. However, Islam also maintains that the Prophet, a human being, should not be deified. That is why visual representations of Prophet Mohammed, whether through photos or drawings, are considered blasphemous -- to prevent Muslims from resorting to idolatry. Aside from being blasphemous, the various depictions of Prophet Mohammed in the cartoons perpetuated some of the common, unfair Muslim stereotypes that are downright disrespectful, offensive and discriminatory.There's that magic word again: responsibility.
Press freedom entails the exercise of great responsibility. It is not a matter of which side you are with, or of simply offending others in the exercise of one’s duty as a journalist. It is basically about respecting all faiths, regardless of whether a journalist subscribes to it or not. The enjoyment of freedom should not be at the expense of other people’s beliefs. Freedom without limits can lead to chaos and anarchy.
Under the present 1987 Constitution (Section 4, Article 3, Bill of Rights), one reads, "No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances."
In the ill-fated draft Constitution of Jose Abueva's Consultative Commission, "No law shall be passed abridging the responsible exercise of the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances."
This small addition of two words -- "responsible exercise" -- to the freedom of expression provision of the Bill of Rights last month earned almost universal derision from the Philippine Press.
Tony Lopez of the Manila Times called it a "naughty constitution" --
The cabal of Jose Abueva, the Con-Com chair, thinks that freedoms and human rights are not inherent rights of the people but grants from the government, and thus their exercise is subject to conditions, like being a responsible person.Ellen Tordesillas of Malaya savaged Jose Abueva with --
We thought that the postponement of the 2007 elections was the most idiotic of the Con-Com recommendations led by Jose Abueva, who strikes us as being up in the air and whose only concern is to make us laboratory rats to his idea of parliamentary-federal government. He doesn’t care if in making his dream come true, we lose our cherished freedom and basic rights. But the proposed change in the freedom of expression provision strikes at the core of our basic rights as a citizen of a democratic country. The key change here is in the word “responsible.” Who will determine what is responsible exercise of freedom of speech? Who will determine what is a responsible press. Who will determine responsible petition for redress of grievances? Gloria Arroyo?Well, certainly not someone who wants to behead journalists and cartoonists, or those who would compromise in the name of Religion, freedoms they themselves have cherished in the name of Politics and Economics.
PDI on the Separation of Church and Press
The Responsible Journalism of Conrado de Quiros
Freedom of Religion IS Freedom of Expression
Danish Cartoons Broke the Muslim Taboo On Idolatry
It's Capital Blasphemy Just To Describe the Cartoons | <urn:uuid:bd8a7cbc-d1d3-4511-ada2-96ea8e85bc29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://philippinecommentary.blogspot.com/2006/02/global-jihad-against-insensitive.html?showComment=1140239760000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933638 | 2,017 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Directed by: Luc Jacquet
Starring: Morgan Freeman (narrator), a whole bunch of emperor penguins
Consider the penguin. Mankind has been fascinated by this curious flightless bird for as long as its existence has been known. There's an inherent charm to the little fellow. He pops up all over the place in popular culture.
Nearly everyone from my generation seems to have been exposed to Richard and Florence Atwater's 1938 children's book Mr. Popper's Penguins, a now rather quaint and fantasticated tale of a house painter who is given a couple penguins by polar explorer Admiral Drake. (Amazingly, the book still finds its way into the classroom.)
In both the play and the film of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner, radio personality Sheridan Whiteside is presented with a crate of penguins as a Christmas present from Admiral Byrd. Bob Hope was the lower end of a vaudeville act with a penguin named Percy in My Favorite Blonde. Perhaps best of all, though, is the film of Stuart Palmer's mystery novel Penguin Pool Murder, in which Robert Armstrong explains his fondness for the penguin (he would encounter a much larger animal the following year in King Kong): "They're like funny little old men in dinner jackets -- slightly drunk. They're human without being offensive."
That, in fact, may be the best assessment of the appeal of the penguin imaginable.
Now the penguin has a movie all its own with Luc Jacquet's critically acclaimed documentary, March of the Penguins. The penguins in Jacquet's film are the most spectacular of all, the emperor penguin. (I'm no ornithologist, but I believe the penguin mostly featured in old movies is the Magellanic penguin from South America.)
The emperor, up to 4 feet tall, is the largest penguin, and a true Antarctic creature, which the film whimsically suggests (at least in the American version via Morgan Freeman's narration) was just too stubborn to beat a well-advised retreat when the continent went south and became the world of ice and sub-zero temperatures we know today. And a remarkable beast it is, as the film shows.
But that's not what makes March of the Penguins such a crowd- and critic-pleasing success. Jacquet's film differs from most nature documentaries by minimizing the more scientific aspects in favor of a slightly romanticized, humanistic (or penguinistic) approach. The harsh realities of life at the South Pole aren't glossed over, but neither are the grimmer aspects of the penguins' existence dwelled upon.
We're given a couple of instances of the penguin as food for predators (ignoring the fact that the penguin itself is a predator where fish are concerned). But unlike many National Geographic specials, March never allows itself to become a depiction of nature as -- in the words of Woody Allen -- being "like an enormous restaurant."
Jacquet has instead opted to take something of a narrative approach; the narrative consists of following the penguins on their march from the sea to their breeding grounds and on through the entire process involved in producing and caring for the egg and its resultant chick, through to the point of the adolescent chick finally going to the sea.
There's a certain amount of romancing going on in the presentation, which tends to imbue the penguins with human emotions. That's not too surprising, since part of the appeal of this upright bird lies in its peculiar similarity to humans. Still, the business of presenting instinctual behavior as emotion is sometimes a little forced. (That may be more the "fault" of the Americanized version of the film, since these elements are the result of the narration, which presumably differs a good deal from the French version, since it carries a separate writer credit.)
But it's hard to argue with the results. Much of the movie's inescapable appeal lies in its ability to make the viewer care about the penguins. It's invariably engaging, entertaining and occasionally moving -- something quite rare for a nature documentary. Moreover, the cinematography is little short of breathtaking, and some of the images, especially the night scenes, are simply gorgeous.
All in all, March of the Penguins is an amazing work that's bound to delight most viewers. Rated G
-- reviewed by Ken Hanke | <urn:uuid:20287492-5e70-47d7-bd2c-2891042307e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mountainx.com/movies/review/marchofthepenguins.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95764 | 902 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Loving yourself as a woman is vital. Loving your femaleness in a system and culture that is hell bent on conditioning you to hate and fear your femaleness, is truly a radical act.
Yes, hating and fearing femaleness is at the heart of misogyny, and misogyny is at the heart of patriarchy.
In his incredibly revealing book, The Gender Knot, Allan Johnson writes:
“Misogyny plays a complex role in patriarchy. It fuels men’s sense of superiority, justifies male aggression against women, and works to keep women on the defensive and in their place. Misogyny is especially powerful in encouraging women to hate their own femaleness, an example of internalized oppression. The more women internalize misogynist images and attitudes, the harder it is to challenge male privilege or patriarchy as a system. In fact,women won’t tend to see patriarchy as even problematic since the essence of self-hatred is to focus on the self as the sole cause of misery, including the self-hatred.” (italics mine) (pg 39)
It has taken me some time to understand and see that so much of my own self-loathing doesn’t come from me. It’s learned, and it’s reinforced over and over with the hate and fear filled images and sound bites that circulate each day.
I don’t buy magazines, nor do I have a television. I haven’t for some years. And, I can’t escape these images. Just the other day, I was driving behind a San Francisco city bus, and all across the end of the bus was an advertisement that was misogynistic at its core. Who makes the decisions in San Francisco to plaster the buses with images that continue to pass along these messages that hurt us all, women and men?
Before I proceed, I want to make it clear that Johnson, throughout the book keeps coming back to the point that Patriarchy is not men, but rather the system in which we live, the system that we’ve all inherited. Just using the word patriarchy can be divisive, yet when we all, women and men, begin to see how entangled we are within its web of beliefs and admonitions, we can begin to unravel this knot that causes us all to distrust each other, and most especially ourselves.
Patriarchy is hierarchy where men (fathers) are at the top, and the rest of life, women and children included, are beneath men. Within this structure, we cannot ever see each other on equal ground because the entire thing teaches us there is no equality. By definition, a hierarchy is a system where people and things are ranked, one above another. Wonder why we still don’t have parity after decades? We can’t and we won’t as long as we believe in and buy into this system.
Coming to love our femaleness…
The journey to know one’s true self, to know the soul, is a journey into the dark places where we’ve hidden the things we don’t want to feel or know, and for women, much of what we find here is this fear and hatred of our femaleness. Much of what we discover is that we’ve been taught to hate and fear this, and that others who also have been taught the same project this fear and hatred onto us. And, of course, we discover that we project this onto each other.
But what is waiting for us on the other side of these feelings that have been stuffed into the dark, is a light that knows differently. It is a light that is both beyond this world and at the very center of this world. It is the light of truth, the light of the sacred. But the only way out is through. The only way to the light is through the body, for the body is where we’ve stored all these messages and feelings that together create our internalized oppression.
As we go deeper into the body, we discover that what we are is not even gendered, and that what we are sees the body with the softest eyes of love, the most tender caress of compassion.
Some of my most healing moments have come through clearly seeing, hearing, and feeling the painful messages of my own internalized misogyny railing against the beautiful deep-feeling and sensual aspects of my womanhood. When I began to feel the pain I’ve caused myself, something cracked open. And with each time I can do this, my heart opens wider to my own beauty and worth.
As we go into the body and feel the things we haven’t wanted to feel, more of the soul can come down into the body. More of the light of the soul can enter the cells of this physical aspect of our being. Much like the tree trunk above that is hollow through its center, we, too, begin to feel new shoots of life spring forth form the rich soil of our own creative center. As we clear out, we breath deeper. With each in-breath, the soul comes in to vitalize our cells, and for a split second, with a body full of breath, we know the joy of the soul. And it is here we can feel the love return for our femaleness.
“In your deepest center, you are the stillpoint. You are the rhythm beyond stillness, the feeling beyond compassion, the sexual energy beyond celibacy, the life force beyond death, the vibration beyond inspiration. The moving center is within you.” ~ Gabrielle Roth
And, I would add, you are the life beyond gender. What you truly are is non-gendered, and when we know this deepest center, we behold the body with love, and hold it in love. We hold both men and women in love.
It can be through the body that we come to see that the seemingly intractable nature of patriarchy is nothing more than something we’ve inherited and taught well to uphold.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We are all in this together and we have the creativity and capacity to change this. We humans can create a world so much more whole and loving than the culture in which we currently swim.
We can’t do this for each other, and we can’t even really know what each others experiences are like, but what we can do is walk this together, is hold each other with respect and compassion as we move into a new way of being in the world.
When we see the system for what it is, our relationship with it changes. We can stop participating in our own degradation and oppression.
At the end of all of this it is about relationship – with ourselves, and with each other. It is about connection and vulnerability. It is about seeing each other, and each gender, with these eyes of love.
None of us are unscathed by a system that ranks beings by worth and value, that doles out privilege as if it is inherently true. Deep at the heart of it all, and deep in our own hearts, we know that life itself does not measure, rate, and objectify. | <urn:uuid:ffd249d0-2db7-4c75-bab2-2ef8b8b7e97f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unabashedlyfemale.com/2012/12/14/loving-your-femaleness-is-a-radical-act/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960912 | 1,494 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Fans of true dog stories, Jack Russell terriers, and African wildlife will want to check out Bulu!
Born on a crocodile farm in Zambia's untamed South Luangwa Valley, the puppy seemed different from his littermates. Too quiet. Unresponsive. Terriers are usually full of energy and bouncing off walls. But not this one. Nobody wanted him. Enter Anna and Steve Tolan—former police officers who had left behind their life in England to live in the African bush. People thought the Tolans were a bit different, too. The peculiar puppy suited them perfectly. They named him Bulu, or "wild dog" in the local Nyanja language.
Living in the bush, Bulu not only found his voice, he also found his calling as a foster parent to the orphaned baby animals—including warthogs, monkeys, elephants, baboons, bushbucks, and buffalo—cared for by the Tolans. But Bulu's protective nature led him into terrifying situations in the wild. It's a miracle he survived! But survive he did, disarming people with his wacky ways and nurturing once-unwanted creatures like him until they too could be set free. Bulu's story is a joyful confirmation of dogs as unique spirits, capable of love, compassion, and bravery.
Packed with vivid descriptions of encounters with crocodiles, lions, leopards, poisonous snakes, bull elephants, and more—and illustrated throughout with black-and-white photographs— Bulu: African Wonder Dog will leave fans of dog stories begging for more!
From the Hardcover edition.
Share your thoughts on the Bulu: African Wonder Dog Childrens Fiction eBook with others!
|Title of eBook: Bulu: African Wonder Dog|
|Release Date: 05-25-2010|
|Allowed Countries (hover)|
|Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers|
This eBook download is available in the following formats:
|Parent title||Bulu: African...|
|Devices||Samsung Tablet, Apple Ipad & Iphone, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo eReader, Aluratek Libre, Iliad, Nokia, Blackberry, Hanlin|
|Note||ePub, short for electronic publication is one of our favorites and should be yours for a couple of reasons. ePub offers reflowable text giving you flexibility to manipulate how the content is presented. Moreover, lots of cool features are now being developed for the reader like advanced video and audio. ePub is now an industry standard, so all of the "non-propreitary" hardware manufacturers are now supporting it.|
Bulu: African Wonder Dog
"Anna and I know a few things about risks," Steve said with a wink at Anna as she poured tea into tin cups. The two smiled as they glanced over at their African-style house, fifty yards from the gazebo. It was a one-room circular rondavel, made of wood and straw with a thatched roof. It rested like a huge dried-up cupcake under a wild mango tree. Inside, a kerosene refrigerator sweated to keep perishable food cold, an old propane stove smoked their meals, and a shower rained river water behind a wicker screen. Cobras slithered inside when they forgot to close the door. Scorpions dropped onto the mosquito net over their bed. Lions' roars rattled the reed walls. But despite the risks, Steve and Anna loved life in Zambia's untamed South Luangwa Valley. They were living their dream.
"Nevertheless," Mitch continued, "this is no place for a dog."
"Oh now, Mitch," Anna persisted. "Didn't you just say that there were puppies for sale at the old crocodile farm?"
"You really are determined, aren't you?" Mitch shook his... | <urn:uuid:f2c1110c-c592-4e46-8452-1bec873daa8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/9780375847233/Houston-Dick-Bulu-African-Wonder-Dog/1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947049 | 806 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Published in The Nation
The following conversation between Naomi and Yotam Marom was recently recorded in New York City. Yotam is a political organizer, educator, and writer based in New York. He has been active in the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and is a member of the Organization for a Free Society.
One of the things that’s most mysterious about this moment is “Why now?” People have been fighting austerity measures and calling out abuses by the banks for a couple of years, with basically the same analysis: “We won’t pay for your crisis.” But it just didn’t seem to take off, at least in the US. There were marches and there were political projects and there were protests like Bloombergville, but they were largely ignored. There really was not anything on a mass scale, nothing that really struck a nerve. And now suddenly, this group of people in a park set off something extraordinary. So how do you account for that, having been involved in Occupy Wall Street since the beginning, but also in earlier anti-austerity actions?
Okay, so the first answer is, I have no idea, no one does. But I can offer some guesses. I think there are a few things you have to pay attention to when you see moments like these. One is conditions—unemployment, debt, foreclosure, the many other issues people are facing. Conditions are real, they’re bad, and you can’t fake them. Another sort of base for this kind of thing is the organizing people do to prepare for moments like these. We like to fantasize about these uprisings and big political moments—and we like to imagine that they erupt out of nowhere and that that’s all it takes—but those things come on the back of an enormous amount of organizing that happens every day, all over the world, in communities that are really marginalized and facing the worst attacks.
So those are the two kind of prerequisites for a moment like this to take place. And then you have to ask, What’s the third element that makes it all come together, what’s the trigger, the magic dust? Well, I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know what it feels like. It feels like something has been opened up, a kind of space nobody knew existed, and so all sorts of things that were impossible before are possible now. Something just got kind of unclogged. All sorts of people just started to see their struggles in this, started being able to identify with it, started feeling like winning is possible, there is an alternative, it doesn’t have to be this way. I think that’s the special thing here.
Do you feel that there is an organic discussion happening about fundamentally changing the economic system? I mean we know that there is a strong, radical, angry critique of corruption, and of the corporate takeover of the political process. There’s a really powerful calling out happening. What’s less clear is the extent to which people are getting ready to actually build something else.
Yeah, I definitely think we’re in a unique moment in the development of a movement that’s not only a protest movement against something but also an attempt to build something in its place. It is potentially a very early version of what I would call a dual-power movement, which is a movement that’s—on the one hand—trying to form the values and institutions that we want to see in a free society, while at the same time creating the space for that world by resisting and dismantling the institutions that keep us from having it. Occupation in general, as a tactic, is a really brilliant form of a dual-power struggle because the occupation is both a home where we get to practice the alternative—by practicing a participatory democracy, by having our radical libraries, by having a medical tent where anybody can get treatment, that kind of thing on a small level—and it’s also a staging ground for struggle outwards. It’s where we generate our fight against the institutions that keep us from the things that we need, against the banks as a representative of finance capitalism, against the state that protects and propels those interests.
It’s surprising and it’s really encouraging because that’s something that has been missing in a lot of struggles in the past. You usually have one or the other. You have alternative institutions, like eco-villages and food coops and so on—and then you have protest movements and other counter-institutions, like anti-war groups or labor unions. But they very rarely merge or see their struggle as shared. And we very rarely have movements that want to do both of those things, that see them as inseparable—that understand that the alternatives have to be fighting, and that fighting has to be done in a way that represents the values of the world we want to create. So I do think there’s something really radical and fundamental in that, and an enormous amount of potential.
Read the rest of the conversation in The Nation | <urn:uuid:ade46f3c-3d5f-4fb1-9e7b-0323eaf4e8b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2012/01/why-now-whats-next-naomi-klein-and-yotam-marom-conversation-about-ows | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975762 | 1,067 | 1.671875 | 2 |
CALGARY — Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB) and a partner are planning to convert some of their natural gas capacity to ship crude oil from a pipeline hub in Illinois to refineries in the eastern Gulf Coast refinery market.
The Calgary-based pipeline company and Energy Transfer Partners would each own 50 per cent of the joint venture, which they expect will be in service by 2015.
The plan requires U.S. regulatory approvals and Enbridge says its participation will depend on getting a minimum commitment from customers.
The companies say the system would be able to carry between 420,00 and 660,000 barrels per day of crude.
The proposal is one of several initiatives being considered to move more crude from the U.S. Midwest and Canadian Prairies to refineries along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
Canadian crude is currently being sold at a bigger discount than usual because of a lack of pipeline capacity and growing supplies from North Dakota and other states that are expanding their output using advanced drilling methods. | <urn:uuid:efd55090-2df1-43cf-9f53-1dfee31e868b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/energy/Enbridge+Energy+Partners+plan+ship+more+crude+Gulf/7970409/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961282 | 209 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Reach tens of thousands of people instantly by advertising with Ekklesia. Find out more
The Pacific nation of Tuvalu, whose existence was at one time was tied to the ocean, is now threatened by rising ocean water levels, IEPC has heard.
One of the world's smallest nations, Tuvalu, has a big problem. Slowly, but surely, it is "going under" the relentless waves of the Pacific. Tuvaluans know it, but they don't accept that sinking is their ultimate fate. | <urn:uuid:70562d5a-7120-4084-97e9-483c209f9baa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/taxonomy/term/6315 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97651 | 109 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Get involved! Send your photos, video, news & views by texting WN NEWS to 80360 or e-mail us
Horsemeat scandal sends customers rushing to traditional local butchers in Worcestershire
12:19pm Tuesday 12th February 2013 in News
BUTCHERS have seen a dramatic increase in custom after the news of the supermarket horsemeat scandal broke.
Customers have been shunning supermarket meat, preferring independent butchers’ shops after it was discovered that horsemeat had been found in supermarket ready meals and burgers.
Many had reported seeing a spike in trade over the weekend following the latest news that Findus beef lasagne contained 100 per cent horse.
Phil Checketts, managing director of Checketts of Ombersley, said sales were well up on Friday and Saturday as people questioned where their meat had come from.
“This (horse meat scandal) couldn’t happen at a butcher’s who buys British because the procedures are so strict here.
“It is a matter of trust really, I don’t think people are just going to turn vegetarian but they are going to be much more choosy and careful about what they buy.”
Calls to ban meat imports have been rejected by environment secretary Owen Paterson but he said he would be taking legal action in Europe over the scandal.
The horse meat was believed to have entered the elaborate supply chain throughout the Continent from two Romanian abbatoirs The Food Standards Agency has said there is no evidence to suggest the horse meat detected in beef products posed a danger to humans, although there is concern about the drugs which could have been used on the animals.
Ian Narraway, owner of family butchers Narraway’s of St Johns, said he had served an extra 45 to 50 people on Saturday with many telling him they would no longer shop for meat in a supermarket.
“We had someone in this morning who said she will never trust supermarkets again, of course a lot of people might just say that but this time it seems to be from the heart.
“We have seen a big influx of people since Thursday but this has been going on for some years now as more people want to know where their meat comes from.
“These supermarkets now have meat products coming from the other side of Europe, being manufactured in France and Ireland, they are losing the traceability factor.”
The scandal has received a mixed response to our readers on Facebook.
Mandy Morris was among those considering going back to her local butcher.
“I never tended to buy ready meals or cheap burgers anyway so not too bothered personally by what's happened. Prepare food from scratch where possible.
“That said I am being more careful what cuts I buy, and am considering going back to buy from a local butcher as I am more confident as to the traceability of the meat.
Kay Kavanagh said she would love to use a local butcher, but doesn’t really have one and was worried they could be more expensive.
And Wendy Coggan was among those who have already made the switch.
“I buy all my meat from my local butcher and am quite happy knowing where my beef comes from, right down to the farm and the registration number of the cow.
“If I want to eat burgers or whatever, it's about two minutes' work to make them myself from mince from the very same animal.
“It's not the presence of horse meat that I object to in ready meals (I've eaten it before now and it was quite tasty), it's the poor quality of all the ingredients. I know that any ready meal doesn't match up to something that I can make myself. It's a no-brainer.”
Similary The Superdrome, Toys & Games Worcester wrote: “We stopped buying meat a supermarkets years ago. When it comes to fresh food we're not really impressed by the pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap philsophy.”
"Go and catch your own food like me: rabbits".
What they're saying on Facebook about this story.
"Shoppers really asking about what's in their burgers, finally!"
What they're saying on Twitter about this story. | <urn:uuid:2ef2d451-47aa-43a2-bd18-d63cac4a19d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/10222202.Horsemeat_scandal_sends_customers_rushing_to_traditional_local_butchers/?ref=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980442 | 891 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Today’s article (and questionable grammar) comes from Manulife’s Tax & Estate Planning Group.
The question is: Who do you owe a financial obligation to at death?
The question in the title above is one that all estate planners need to be asking clients. If your client does not plan or think about it, the court may on their behalf. At the end of the day, this may mean that a beneficiary designation will not stand.
The case of Stevens v. Fisher, 2013 ONSC 2282 (CanLII) certainly highlights this point. Camille Stevens lived in a common law relationship for 11 years with Mark Fisher. Mark had various other relationships prior to living with Camille and had children from those unions. One of those previous relationships was with Margaret Eagles. Mark had three separate life insurance policies. The subject of the litigation arose with respect to a Sun Life policy in the amount of $84,000 where Ms. Eagles was named as beneficiary.
Camille Stevens argued that she was a dependant of Mark Fisher at the time of his death in 2010. There were more debts than assets in Mark’s estate. She therefore looked to relief via insurance proceeds. In reviewing the various policies and those in place to meet child support obligations, the court focused on one policy which named Margaret Eagles as beneficiary.
During the 11 years Camille and Mark were together, the court found that it had been a loving and caring relationship. In many instances, Camille placed Mark’s needs above her own and to her detriment financially. She worked for free at an Inn Mark had purchased. When the Inn was sold, she reaped no benefit from the sale. She provided household support and fostered a relationship with Mark’s children to ensure his contact with them. When Mark’s health declined, she cared for him up until his death. She drove him to appointments and made sure he took his medication. Camille provided full emotional and physical support to him.
After Mark’s death, Camille struggled to make ends meet. She could not return to school to upgrade her education because she was working two part-time jobs. She therefore remained in low paying jobs. Her quality of life significantly declined without Mark’s income and subsequent disability payments which contributed to the family unit. When Mark died, he left nothing in his Will for Camille other than a very small RRSP which she paid tax on.
Neither Margaret Eagles nor Camille Stevens knew about the Sun Life policy until Mark’s death. The court indicated that while Mark Fisher left the policy in place since 1995, with Ms. Eagles as beneficiary, he may simply have forgotten to change the beneficiary designation. There was no evidence to support that he had revoked the designation.
While Ms. Eagles had a long relationship with Mr. Fisher going back to childhood, with him coming to live with her family when he was a teen and then living together on and off on three occasions over the years, the court found that the tie between the two had ended in April of 2001 with a final court order . That court order settled their outstanding financial affairs. The court order was silent as to the insurance policy.
In taking all the facts into consideration, the court awarded $75,000 of the insurance proceeds to Camille and paid the remainder to Margaret Eagles. The court reviewed the case law and found that there was, in accordance with the leading cases of Cummings and Tataryn, a moral obligation to provide support and calculated an appropriate amount. The court also reviewed the dependent relief provisions of the Ontario Succession Law Reform Act (SLRA) and found her to be a dependant under the legislation.
While the issue of dependant relief claims is not new, the case certainly reminds estate planners once again that the issue must be addressed or the court will ensure that the obligation is met.
The Tax & Estate Planning Group at Manulife Financial writes various publications on an ongoing basis. This team of accountants, lawyers and insurance professionals provides specialized information about legal issues, accounting and life insurance and their link to complex tax and estate planning solutions.
These publications are distributed on the understanding that Manulife Financial is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional advice. If legal or other expert assistance is required, the service of a competent professional should be sought. | <urn:uuid:6c858982-24c6-44f5-abc8-7f977ae9c5e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.financialbenefitsgroup.com/category/insurance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976861 | 889 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Books & Music
Food & Wine
Health & Fitness
Hobbies & Crafts
Home & Garden
News & Politics
Religion & Spirituality
Travel & Culture
TV & Movies
So, You Want to Be a Librarian
I have read much from those who wish to join the profession, and frankly I’m a bit worried about the perceptions of exactly what it MEANS to be a librarian. Speaking from the standpoint of someone who has worked in specialty libraries and public libraries, choosing a career as a librarian is not what one might think.
Many people erroneously believe that librarianship is a fine profession for those who do not wish to deal with people. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, there is no profession that I am aware of where you do not have to deal with people at all. On some level, everyone has to deal with someone whether it is a client, a boss, vendors, or salespeople. Sometimes all of those and sometimes just one or two are relevant. If you are hoping to avoid all personal interaction, librarianship may not be for you.
Another misconception is that librarianship is solely about books. It isn’t. Not only has technology changed the face of life in the new millennium, but it has changed librarianship as well. Modern librarians are not only recommending books, but recommending and troubleshooting technology issues as well. On an average day, public librarians can troubleshoot internet browser issues, printing cache problems, issues with wifi routers, and website design and access while instructing someone on how to download audio or e-books to their Nook, iPad, iPod, iPhone, Pandigital reader, Kobe, Sony, or Kindle. Yes, all in a day’s work for your average public librarian.
Do not be afraid of the job. It is a rewarding one. There is fantastic potential to grow personally and professionally. But, like any profession, it can be tough. Dealing with the public is a double-edged sword. On one side, you have the ability to help people, on the other are the people that no amount of help will satisfy. What is important is that you want to help; you want to say yes, you want to do this.
All librarians have some requirement in their jobs to help patrons, whether those patrons are community members, faculty, members or employees. Even if you consider yourself “not good with people” or “shy” you can overcome it in this profession. And we are all here to help you do just that!
| Related Articles | Editor's Picks Articles | Top Ten Articles | Previous Features | Site Map
Content copyright © 2013 by Christine Sharbrough. All rights reserved.
This content was written by Christine Sharbrough. If you wish to use this content in any manner, you need written permission. Contact Christine Sharbrough for details.
Website copyright © 2013 Minerva WebWorks LLC. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:78620fa1-2295-4804-92ea-88466dbe49c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art18901.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940975 | 628 | 1.53125 | 2 |
"We have a nutritionist program come in," said Holmes. "People come in from the city and health department to instruct us on what to eat."
Holmes said there was a lot of hand washing at the center as well.
Pharmacist Gary Roberts of the Roberts Southbank Pharmacy said it's important for seniors to know what to take and how it mixes with their current medications.
"People should talk to a pharmacist about other meds," said Roberts. "It can elevate blood pressure, so if someone has high blood pressure, they should consult with somebody before taking something off the shelf."
Roberts said Tamiflu is a good prescription medication for helping to fight off flu symptoms. He said it's something he's sold a lot of within the past week. | <urn:uuid:20d0d20c-b7b1-43e6-927d-d3205954a98e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news4jax.com/health/Flu-concerns-increase-as-deaths-mount/-/475590/18070602/-/item/1/-/d2qdec/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981429 | 160 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Mount Hoffmann, aka Mount Hoffman and Hoffman Peak, located near the geographic center of Yosemite National Park (YNP), is one of the most popular hiking and trail running peaks in the park. The excellent summit views, short summit trail (3 miles), and close proximity to Tioga Road (aka CA SR-120, distance 2 miles) ensure this is so (characteristics it shares with Mount Dana and Lembert Dome). Hoffman's Thumb, an impressive spire located a few hundred feet south of the true summit, offers some additional rock climbing options with the Regular Route being rated 5.6. During the summer months, taking a chilly swim in May Lake on the hike out can be a treat. There is an obivious large boulder from which one can jump or dive into the lake (be careful as always). Winter, however, does not keep people away from the summit vistas as this also a popular destination with backcountry skiers.
Like Mount Dana, the easiest summit route is one of use and unsigned, however, unlike the former peak, Mount Hoffmann has an antenna on top. The South Slope Route (mostly class 1, class 2 at the top) begins at the May Lake Trailhead at 8,346 feet and follows the standard trail to May Lake. Upon reaching May Lake, head west following the use trail that skirts the south side of the lake. Soon after the route will turn north as you begin your ascent to the summit plateau. From here you will see peaks to the west and east with the true summit being towards the west. Looking west, you'll see Hoffman's Thumb to the left. There is a short class 2 scramble to the top from where you will enjoy great views of the Yosemite High Country looking north and Clouds Rest and Half Dome looking south.
During the winter months, the summit is also a popular skiing and snowshoeing objective. Intermediate to advanced skiers can climb and ski right from the summit of Mount Hoffmann. This shortest way to reach the summit entails adding a 10 mile approach to reach the May Lake Trailhead using the Snow Creek Trail from Yosemite Valley (starting at about 4,000 feet). This trip is typically done over 2 days each way.
TIOGA ROAD (aka STANDARD) APPROACH: The May Lake Trailhead is the most popular starting point and easily reached from Tioga Road. Take CA SR-120 (aka Tioga Road) through YNP and turn north at the 2-mile dirt road for May Lake. This turn off is between Porcupine Flat and Olmstead Point.
YOSEMITE VALLEY (aka WINTER) APPROACH: During the winter months, Tioga Road is closed and skiing (or snowshoeing) in on this road is a long trip. Many skiers use the Snow Creek Trail starting in Yosemite Valley which is plowed year round. Hiking or skinning up this trail up 8 miles will take you to Tioga Road, from where you will reach the May Lake Trailhead in another 2 miles. When you reach Tioga Road, just head straight across on to the connecting trail which parallels the dirt road described above (or go west for 0.5 miles on Tioga Road to reach the May Lake dirt road).
PARK ENTRANCE FEE: Yosemite National Park is part of the US NPS and an entrance fee is charged. The most common way to enter the park is by vehicle for a $20 entrance fee good for 7 days. Check the NPS web site for the latest fees. As with all US National Parks, you also have several other options including an annual National Parks Pass.
OVERNIGHT TRIP PERMIT: Generally there's no reason to make this an overnighter (outside of winter that is) due to the short distance, however, if you are planning an overnight trip, you will need a Wilderness Permit since YNP has a trailhead-based quota system in place. At least 40% of the permits are available on a day-of or day-before basis. See the YNP Wilderness Permits Page for more information on how to reserve these permits by the Internet, phone (209-372-0740), or mail. While the permit itself is free, if you wish to make an advance reservation, there is a non-refundable $5 per person processing fee. If you want something more plush you can stay at the May Lake High Sierra Camp which operates on a lottery basis. Applications are available between October 15 and November 30 annually. More information at the above link and the High Sierra Desk at (559) 253-5674.
When To Climb and Ski
Generally, people hike this peak between May and October. Skiing is best during late winter to early spring from February to early May.
Check the Official YNP Conditions Update webpage for the current weather and road closure status. This page also has a link to the National Weather Service 3-day and extended weather forecast which are published twice daily (4am and 4pm PDT).
- John's September 25, 2000 Mount Hoffman Trip Report
- Aug 7, 1993
- Tuolumne & Hoffmann Double Play
- Hoffmann/Tuolumne dayhike - Aug 4, 2005 | <urn:uuid:9515ab9f-7925-4d53-93b3-a38e5e54a383> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.summitpost.org/mount-hoffmann/150445 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947998 | 1,083 | 1.648438 | 2 |
1) What sets your book apart from others?
Most teens don’t know how to lead themselves. They haven’t learned how to set goals, motivate themselves, or overcome peer pressure in an honorable way. In his books, Mawi Asgedom drives timeless truths in a passionate and compelling way to teenagers of EVERY background.
2) Why should parents pay special attention to what you are doing?
Mawi says everything parents want to say or have tried to say in a compelling and honest way…and the teens REALLY LISTEN!
He has trained over a quarter of a million students in personal leadership. He is truly the leading expert in teen leadership.
3) What’s unique about your book?
Mawi’s materials, speak deeply to many different backgrounds–from the battered and war-torn refugee, all the way to the suburban teenager who’s had every advantage in life.
4) What has inspired you to develop this book?
In his 29 years, Mawi has suffered many losses in life and overcome many tragedies, but he has
also been blessed in uncountable ways.His materials are his way of giving back. To whom much is given, much is required.
5) What do you hope to accomplish through your book?
Mawi’s mission in creating Mawi Inc. is to create a nation of amazing teens!
6) Who is your target audience?
Though Mawi has spoken to audiences that range from elementary schools all the way to Ivy League Universities, his real passion is in reaching students who fall in the middle school- early high school levels.
7) Do you have any other works for your readers to enjoy?
Of Beetles and Angels: A True Story of the American Dream The Code: The 5 Secrets to Teen Success, Win the Inner Battle Journal, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE CD Series, and coming soon is Mawi’s 3rd book…Mimic the Devil and other poems by Mawi and friends.
As of now those who want to buy the book, they can visit Amazon.com | <urn:uuid:e438f9d8-2c79-4e20-970a-d6469ab9d561> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parentingteens.com/nothing-is-impossible/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960526 | 438 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A recent deal by the British specialty-pharmaceutical company Shire Pharmaceuticals to buy the Boston-based biotechnology firm Transkaryotic Therapies at a rich 22% premium to the biotech firm's market price may be another example of Wall Street getting the jump on Washington.
Along with another recent deal by the big generic-drug maker Barr Laboratories to marry up with a little-known Croatian biotech knockoff outfit named Pliva, the drug industry seems to be positioning itself for an inevitable showdown in Washington over the creation of follow-on, or "generic," versions of biologic drugs.
Biologic drugs are the kinds of medicines produced by companies such as Genentech, Amgen and Biogen Idec. The easiest way to distinguish them is that they often come as liquids in bags rather than pills in bottles. The scientific way to differentiate them is that they are grown up out of organic processes, often fermented out of natural compounds in big vats. It's a lot like making beer, but more difficult and far more profitable.
Making a copy of a pill is relatively straightforward. Making a copy of a monoclonal antibody like Genentech's breast cancer drug Herceptin isn't so easy. And that's been the rub in Washington: How do you create an abbreviated regulatory process that allows for the fast and inexpensive approval of follow-on versions of these biotech drugs after their original patents have expired?
The recent deals on Wall Street may accelerate this discussion. Up until now, the debate has been pushed by generic-drug companies with little real capital at stake, and resisted by biotech firms that may stand to lose. Now the generic-drug makers, and even some specialty pharma companies, are investing in technology to bring these follow-on biologics to market, and so they are likely to become more forceful advocates for a change in the law.
Patents on some older biotech medicines, such as Human Growth Hormone--produced by a number of companies, including Pfizer--and insulin produced by Eli Lilly, have already expired, making follow-on versions of these medicines a near-term opportunity.
There are challenges, however, and they aren't all political. Biotech companies make some good arguments that the proprietary craft involved in production of these biologic drugs is in the manufacturing process as much as the molecule's profile. There have been some recent scares, including one involving the drug Epogen, which proved that the way that these biologics are made can have a big impact on their safety and effectiveness.
It's not always easy to guard against the changes that take place in these organic molecules as you move from one production process to another. Sometimes the original manufacturer has the lock on a secret recipe that enables production of these complicated drugs to go just right. Sometimes the original company doesn't even know all of the elements in that recipe that make it go so smoothly. Welcome to the world of cutting-edge science.
For these reasons, any abbreviated pathway for approving follow on biologics is still likely to include more testing than simply proving structural equivalence as generic drug companies must do when they make copies of pills, at least for anything but the simplest biological drugs like peptides and short proteins.
Nonetheless, with Europe moving forward with its own policies for approving follow-on versions of these drugs, and the patents on one of the biggest biotech drugs of them all, Epogen, set to soon expire in Europe, it is unlikely that legislators in the United States are going to resist treading on the biotech turf for long--especially when Epogen ranks as one of Medicare's biggest drug expenses.
In fact, the lack of major patent expirations may make this the right time to seek the legislation. If they wait too long, Congress is going to get a stronger whiff of the potential savings it can extract from such a scheme and be more tempted to do something more far reaching and anti-innovation.
Opening up biotech drugs to the prospect of generic competition after patents expire may even spark innovation--forcing biotech companies to come up with improved versions of existing drugs that perhaps require less-frequent dosing, have fewer side effects or hang around the body longer, making them more effective. Let's hope the political establishment recognizes these kinds of innovations for the value they bring to patients, rather than deride them as "me-too" biologics.
Because when it comes to medicine, Washington has a hard time finding where the value is. That's a cautionary tale for this debate. Too much of the policymaking that's getting done in the drug debate seems to have left the patient out of the equation, and to have been focused only on the political calculus of how angry politicians can take a bite out of the industry's hide.
Scott Gottlieb is a resident fellow at AEI and a practicing physician. | <urn:uuid:5c0c9ccf-3bec-4f95-8c99-6f9318d5b5f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aei.org/article/health/biologics-warfare/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957372 | 994 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Trampled by Titles: FISA, FAA, TPP, CTU...
The Five Fingers of Death:
In his most comprehensive public comments yet on the US covert drone war, President Barack Obama has laid out the five rules he says the United States uses to target and kill alleged terrorists – including US citizens. The president has also warned of the need to avoid a 'slippery slope' when fighting terrorism, 'in which you end up bending rules, thinking that the ends always justify the means.' Obama's comments were made in an on-camera interview with CNN's chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin.
1 'It has to be a target that is authorised by our laws.'
2 'It has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative.'
3 'It has to be a situation in which we can't capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.'
4 'We've got to make sure that in whatever operations we conduct, we are very careful about avoiding civilian casualties.'
5 'That while there is a legal justification for us to try and stop [American citizens] from carrying out plots… they are subject to the protections of the constitution and due process.'
Want to express solidarity with Chicago's embattled teachers/ Lend a hand? Take a stand against the Rahm Emanuel juggernaut?
Here's the place to do it: www.ctunet.com/contact
These are the days that will see one of two things: the demise of Labour or its roaring resurgence. Citizens make the difference; Consumers make Obits.
- Length: 15:01 minutes (6.87 MB)
- Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 64Kbps (CBR) | <urn:uuid:1db97cb2-92c4-42ea-9220-6379de8a0e25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kboo.org/node/49813 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947261 | 360 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, center, and CIA Director David Petraeus, right, appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence earlier this year. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)
The federal government spent $75.4 billion on intelligence programs last year — down from $78.6 billion in the previous year — the government said Tuesday.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the 2012 budget for the non-Defense National Intelligence Program was $53.9 billion. And the Defense Department said its Military Intelligence Program cost $21.5 billion last year.
The Defense intelligence budget dipped 10 percent from fiscal 2011, when it was $24 billion. But non-Defense intelligence spending was only about 1 percent less than its $54.6 billion 2011 budget.
The Obama administration requested $55 billion for non-Defense intelligence programs in 2012. The Pentagon did not release its 2012 budget request for intelligence operations.
The Defense intelligence budget includes the cost of intelligence operations in Afghanistan and other locations, known as Overseas Contingency Operations. | <urn:uuid:a23bc08e-9ce1-4f49-b6ea-8a1a57bcf2e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20121030/DEPARTMENTS01/310300001/-75B-spent-intel-last-year?odyssey=nav%7Chead | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932983 | 214 | 1.53125 | 2 |
2012Sep17 QE to Infinity
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." ~ Albert Einstein
The Federal Reserve took a really aggressive stance Thursday when it announced its new round of quantitative easing. Superficially, the Fed's new tack looks a lot like a combination of what it did in the earlier rounds of quantitative easing. But the Fed's new policy is far more radical than this description might suggest. Several features of the policy mark a stark departure from past practices.
1. Open-Ended Expansion. In the past, when the Fed announced a Large Scale Asset Purchase program-LSAP, in Fed speak-it indicated its maximum size and duration. Sometimes it revisited the duration or size, expanding the programs as necessary.
But this time, the Fed has explicitly declared that the LSAPs will continue until economic conditions improve. What's more, the Fed said it would undertake additional LSAPs and employ "other policy tools" so long as the economy is underperforming. There are no definite size or time limits on QE3-prompting some to call it QE-Infinity.
2. Targeted at Labor Market. Perhaps even more importantly, the Fed's policy is very explicitly tied to the labor market.
"If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability," the Fed said in its official statement.
This explicit tying of the LSAP to the labor market is unprecedented.
Not only has the Fed never done this in the past, but no other central bank has launched a quantitative easing program with such an explicit link to jobs.
3. Not Tied To New Weakness. The Fed's statement was actually pretty upbeat about the economy. The only downbeat note there is about the jobs market. But that's hardly news.
What the Fed did was announce that its policy was not based on a forecast of things getting worse-but on a desire for things to improve faster. In short, it announced that the central bank intended to change the pace of recovery.
Gallons Per Paycheck:
Over the last decade, the price of gas has moved higher while wages have been driven lower.
Here's a sad chart plotting how many gallons of gasoline can be bought at average U.S. hourly wage since 1998, from Reuters.
Just in case:
Bacon as Currency: Testing the Limits of What It Can Buy
This Great American Bacon Barter adventure is sponsored by - everyone act surprised - Oscar Mayer, which sent him off with no money, no credit cards - nothing but 3,000 pounds of bacon to barter for everything he needs to get from New York to Los Angeles.
When Oscar Mayer put the question to its Facebook fans: "What would you give for 5 bricks of bacon?," they got all kinds of responses, including a Klondike bar, 5 garden tomatoes, my hat, my bicycle - maybe a secret handshake. There were a few offers for "cooking breakfast" - and then it gets weird. Someone offered their dog, another offered their son (so he won't eat all the bacon) and a few offered husbands and wives.
It's gotten him a couch to crash on in more than one city, as well as breakfast, some empanadas and hot dogs. He got a first-aid kit, some Civil War artifacts, a John Wayne poster that says, "Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway," and a bottle of moonshine. In Louisville, Kentucky, some guy gave him gas money and the shirt off his back and, another guy, for 200 bricks, agreed to get a bacon tattoo!
He's still got 2,428 bricks of bacon left - let's see if, like that guy a few years ago who set out on a cross-country barter with just one paper clip, he winds up with a house! | <urn:uuid:5fcf2809-0bea-415c-a8e2-7161f5ebb295> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://investorresourcesinc.com/free-resources/knowledge/689/sep-qe-to-infinity/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967202 | 845 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Is this normal Thunderbird behavior or did I miss something?
Two users on my PCLOS kde4 partition. Both have extremely bloated .thunderbird files. Almost 8 gigs between them. Within Thunderbird, files have been deleted on a daily basis using the provided Trash folders. And yes the Trash folders are emptied regularly.
After some sampling of Thunderbird characteristics, here's what I observe:
*Deleting a file in any folder sends the visible message to the Trash folder.
*However, the size of the original folder doesn't change after the deletion.
*In fact, even moving a file from one folder to another behaves the same way. Although no longer visible in the original folder that folders size remains the same and the receiving folders size increases.
*Thus if you change your mind about where to store a message it will be stored in every folder sent. From a bloating perspective, that one message will decrease available disk space by multiples of the number of folders it once occupied.
*Using the empty Trash upon exit option doesn't change these characteristics.
*Clicking on a folder file within Dolphin File Manager will open Kmail, displaying a deleted file along with this message, “The file contains multiple messages. Only the first message is shown.” Strange that Kmail can still read and display Thunderbird's deleted messages.
*The only folder file that actually can be physically emptied within Thunderbird, is the Trash folder. But that doesn't regain the disk space from the other folders.
OK, so I discovered how the bloat happened. I tried various settings within Thunderbird and none seemed to change this bloating behavior.
To regain the 8 gigs, I decided to delete the bloated folder-files located within .thunderbird. It worked, 8 gigs became less than 100 megs. Before deletion, to preserve important messages, I moved them into an empty folder within Thunderbird. When Thunderbird was closed then reopened, Inbox, for example was automatically recreated. The Sent folder was automatically recreated once a message was actually sent.
Thunderbird works the same after this tinkering. It still is adding any new email in a new cumulative bloating way. At least I've temporarily regained 8 gigs.
Thinking it was peculiar to kde4, I checked my pclos-kde3.5 installation. It behaved the same way. I tried reinstalling Thunderbird from Synaptic but again, no changes.
I've searched these forums without finding this topic. If it's there and I've missed it, my apologies. Is this unique to my installs? Are others finding similar behavior? Is there a way within Thunderbird to regain disk space from deleted messages? Thanks for any constructive advise. | <urn:uuid:8a4f0e56-f518-4149-bb2a-880ae7101130> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=67830.msg552940 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938274 | 569 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Open Neighborhoods Extends Solar Program Before LADWP Solar Rebate Moratorium
Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) December 3, 2010
After the Los Angeles City Council unanimously vetoed the LADWP’s proposed cuts to the Solar Incentive Program and called for a 90-day moratorium on new solar rebates, neighborhood advocacy group Open Neighborhoods announced the GoSolar 2010 community program will be extended until December 15th.
The Council vote came after the Department of Water and Power had proposed rebate cuts that were expected to dramatically slow the adoption of clean, renewable energy in Los Angeles — and would eliminate one million dollars per year in solar funding for Affordable Housing.
Council member Bill Rosendahl said “The bottom line is this: We should go solar; we’re in sunny Southern California, and the DWP has to figure out how to incentivize us to make it work.”
The Sierra Club, VoteSolar, a coalition of solar companies, and the community advocacy group Open Neighborhoods all voiced their opposition to DWP’s proposed cuts, which disproportionately reduced residential solar rebates for neighborhood homes.
Council member Richard Alarcon said “If we’re going to grow support for solar – use of solar energy – everyone in the world has to do it, not just select communities who are rich.”
According to a recent Solar Home & Business Journal report, “The council motion also called for a 90-day moratorium on the acceptance of new applications for solar incentives, to begin Jan. 1, 2011.” The report speculated that the moratorium could set off a “year-end run on solar by consumers seeking to lock in what could be decades-long bargain rates for electricity.”
Responding to news of the solar moratorium, Open Neighborhoods representatives announced they are extending the current GoSolar 2010 community program until Dec 15th. “This extension will ensure as many community members as possible are able to claim Million Solar Roofs rebates before the LADWP solar moratorium takes effect.” said Open Neighborhoods co-founder James Brennan.
The program extension applies to Los Angeles area customers of both LADWP and Southern California Edison. Program participants will join with over 170 Los Angeles area homes and businesses in receiving free solar assessments, accessing group savings of up to 30% with large-scale volume purchasing or leasing of solar panels, and reserving Million Solar Roofs rebate funds to help offset installation costs.
Participants must sign up to request a free solar assessment at http://www.openneighborhoods.net/gosolar prior to the December 15th program end date. LADWP rebate applications must be filed by December 31st in order to be processed prior to the January 1st solar rebate moratorium.
, Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Vocus, PRWeb, and Publicity Wire are trademarks or registered trademarks of Vocus, Inc. or Vocus PRW Holdings, LLC.
Find More Solar Panel Rebates Press Releases | <urn:uuid:6b21eda9-b150-4194-9d22-51ff110d6994> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.solarpanelmall.com/tag/neighborhoods/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932312 | 626 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Related stories: Finding a fix for foreclosure mess | Future is uncertain for foreclosure idea | The basics | The pros and cons | Meet some of the key players
Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP), a San Francisco investment firm, proposes that local governments use eminent domain to buy mortgage notes that have been packaged into mortgage-backed securities and help debt-burdened homeowners refinance.
The company proposes to raise private capital and, while it would collect fees, says the program can be accomplished at little-to-no cost to municipalities.
Mortgage Resolution Partners and any local governments who decide to put the plan to work, however, face a number of obstacles:
The financial services and real estate lobbies oppose the plan, citing potentially harmful effects to investors, lenders and prospective homebuyers.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which holds mortgage investors Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in conservatorship, has questioned the viability of MRP's proposal and may oppose it.
Local politics in San Bernardino County. The Board of Supervisors or the Ontario or Fontana city councils could conceivably force the local joint-powers authority set up to | <urn:uuid:2025ece5-8e31-4af1-a4a9-d309cf8cf25f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sbsun.com/ci_21555102 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934244 | 234 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Breakfast on Pluto
by Patrick McCabe
HarperFlamingo, 199 pp., $22.00
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty
by Sebastian Barry
Viking, 308 pp., $23.95
The Star Factory
by Ciaran Carson
Arcade, 295 pp., $23.95
In the early morning of the day that fills Ulysses, as they stand outside the Martello tower at Sandycove, Haines, the sentimental English celtophile with eyes sea-cold and imperial, tells Stephen Dedalus: “We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.” Stephen replies only with a wary silence, but history is much upon his own mind that day, like God and Shakespeare and his father. History in the large, universal sense, but more particularly the messy, contingent history of his own island. Later that morning, talking with an Ulster Protestant schoolmaster for whom that history has a very different meaning and color, he says, in words that would become memorable: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
And with those words, he set down an agenda for the succeeding century of Irish literature. At times it has been difficult to decide which has been the more nightmarish, the history or the struggle to awake from it. The world beyond—we readers—has attended to it, held in place, very much like Coleridge’s Wedding Guest, by the power of the tale told and by those special gifts of eloquence and verbal magic which it would be trite to comment upon, but which are surely aspects of that literature and products of its complicated history.
The three books here under consideration, two of them novels and one a memoir of sorts by a distinguished poet, offer variations on Stephen’s theme. Although all three have been written in the shadow of Northern Ireland’s recent three decades of violent history, they deal with it either by an almost theatrical obliqueness or else by a charged near silence. All three, although in very different ways, make use of this narrative strategy to point us to a central thematic concern—the shaping presence of history. Like Sherlock Holmes’s dog that did not howl in the night, we are directed to this concern by its silence upon the page.
Patrick McCabe’s Breakfast on Pluto is partly spoken and partly written by young Paddy “Puss” Braden, a transvestite prostitute, as he negotiates, or blunders, his way through a world of corrupt and sexually ambiguous politicians, queasily lustful parish priests, gunmen, and bombers, protected only by his cheekiness and his Candide-like innocence, and expressing himself either through his own demotic speech or through his improbable gifts of ventriloquism and pastiche. The narrative unfolds first in rural Ireland and then in a lurid London lit by strobe lights in discos and, on occasion, by IRAbombs. In either setting, Puss pays little attention to history of that sort, wrapped as he is in a cocoon of pink boas, dance hall chatter, and rock lyrics.
McCabe leaves us free to infer, if we are so inclined, that Puss’s psyche has been shaped in good part by the extremity of his circumstances; he is a bastard conceived by the frantic fumblings of a parish priest … | <urn:uuid:2036f150-300d-4704-9296-b854fcad21b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1999/apr/22/waking-from-the-nightmare/?pagination=false | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969741 | 715 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Regular readers of this column know that for over seven months, I have argued that because midterm elections are referenda on the party in power, Democrats have big problems going into 2010. The American people continue to be exceedingly unhappy with the way things are going in this country, and especially with Washington politics.
Voters believe the jobs situation is poor and blame President Obama and Democrats for not having focused more on the economy. In part, because Democrats have devoted the lion's share of their messaging efforts on health care, their focus and primary concern was on an issue not perceived by many to be directly related to the economy and jobs.
And according to a Pew Research Center report released last week, their efforts on the economy are seen as ineffectual.
These factors, combined with the traditional preference for divided government over one-party control, suggest very large losses for Democrats this fall.
This is reality, not perception, and for Democrats to avoid major losses, the reality has to change.
Whether Republicans can take control of the House in November is a close call.
I see it as more likely than not to tip to Republicans, which is a call many people in my business, for whom I have enormous respect, are not willing to make just yet.
There will likely be heavy Democratic losses in the Senate, as well, but not enough for Republicans to take control; it's more likely they'll gain between six and eight seats. However, with 22 Democratic and 10 Republican seats up in 2012, and 20 Democratic and 13 Republican seats up in 2014, there will be more targets for the GOP as they look to take control in the near future.
As everyone knows, though, things could change in the six months between now and the election -- as many Democrats seek to remind me.
But, at this point, things would have to change dramatically to save Democrats from some very significant losses. The trajectory or the narrative of the election would have to profoundly change from where it has been and where it still is. And, with each week that goes by, there are no clear signs that the direction this election seems to be going has altered. It still might change, but it hasn't thus far.
A recent Gallup report, which reflected interviews with 5,490 registered voters between April 1 and April 25, asked the generic congressional ballot question. The poll showed those surveyed preferring the GOP at 46 percent and those preferring Democrats at 45 percent. Among those "very enthusiastic" about voting, Republicans had a 57-37 percent advantage. This reflects those people most likely to vote in the traditionally lower-turnout midterm election. The poll has a 1-point error margin.
That same Gallup survey also showed that young people -- voters ages 18-29, a key source of votes for Obama in 2008 -- were much less enthusiastic about voting than older voters. This could be a major problem for Democrats in turning out the vote.
This is the reality, not the perception, and for Democrats to avoid major losses, the reality has to change.
It's always important to question one's assumptions -- the "if I am wrong, where am I wrong" examination.
The news this Saturday that a car bomb had been planted in New York's Times Square on a busy spring evening should be a bone-chilling reminder that a "Black Swan" event could always happen that would turn everything upside down and fundamentally change the dynamics of the election.
Without knowing the specifics and the circumstances, conjecture on what the implications are is meaningless, but it is important to remind ourselves that some huge and awful event is always possible.
More down to earth is whether Republicans find some way to seize defeat from the jaws of victory. Some seem to believe that there might be an issue or thematic self-immolation that will bring down the GOP, such as if they are perceived as defending Wall Street or if they trigger an uprising with Hispanic voters as a response to Arizona's new immigration law. I don't see any of those things moving numbers yet, and am focusing more on the possibility of the new rising populism and hard-edged conservatism.
This, driven in part by the Tea Party movement, could help nominate Republicans who are simply too far from the general election mainstream to capitalize on what should be a great year for the GOP, or it could fuel independent or third-party conservative candidates who would siphon support out of the Republican column in November. Upcoming Republican primaries in Arizona, Indiana and Kentucky, along with the state GOP convention in Utah, will give some important clues as to whether Republicans are seeking to nominate pragmatic, mainstream and highly electable candidates or whether the party is in a primal scream phase, one that could result in potentially self-destructive party behavior.
From this vantage point, the anti-Democratic, anti-party-in-control-of-Washington narrative seems to be the most dominant storyline. But it is important to look for any competing ones that could alter where this election seems to be heading. | <urn:uuid:15dafd33-72e6-4699-8c6c-478aa8949033> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/off-to-the-races/the-dominant-narrative-20100504 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972342 | 1,015 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Don't let them fool ya,
Or even try to school ya! Oh, no!
We've got a mind of our own,
So go to hell if what you're thinking is not right!
Love would never leave us alone,
A-yin the darkness there must come out to light.
Could You Be Loved
Out of the same background came three major things: fascism, Bolshevism and corporate tyranny
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Media Control - the spectacular achievemnts of propaganda
Unfortunately, for all its emphesis on class analysis, Marxism blinded many fighting against the economics of competition and greed to important antagonisms between the working class and the new, professional managerial, or coordinator class.
There is an ample literature documenting the advantages of employee management. Evidence is overwhelmimg that people with a say and stake in how they work not only find work more enjoyable, they are more productive and efficient as well.
Economic Justice and Democracy
Good sense is, of all things amongst men, the most equally distributed; for everyone thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already posses. And in this it is not likely that all are mistaken: the conviction is rather to be held as testifying that the power of judging aright and of distinguishing truth from error, which is properly what is called good sense or reason, is by nature equal in all men; and that the diversity of opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects.
Discourse on Method
The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
The Sane Society
... the fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in phisics. Like energy, power has many forms, such as wealth, armarment, civil authority, influence on opinion. No one of these can be regarded as subordinate to any other, and there is no form from which the others are dirivitive. | <urn:uuid:6a8cbb5d-3e10-4718-9ea1-131446f511de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/markevans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951292 | 518 | 1.765625 | 2 |
One of the unfortunate consequences of increased regulation of financial advisers is that some smaller investors now find themselves squeezed out of the market for personalised investment advice.
There are two types of advisers who are able to give advice to the public: authorised financial advisers (AFAs) and qualifying entity advisers (QFEs). Whereas AFAs can give investment advice on a wide range of investment products, QFEs can give advice only on products offered by the company they work for.
QFEs are generally large companies such as banks and insurance companies.
There are fewer than 2000 AFAs in New Zealand, and many who hold the designation do not give advice to the general public. Just to make it even more confusing, some of the AFAs work for QFEs such as banks.
However, an AFA working for a QFE can give advice on a wide range of investment products from different providers.
With the limited number of AFAs available, many advisers and QFEs are now setting minimum limits on the size of an investment portfolio they will advise on and manage. These limits can be anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million or more.
At the other end of the spectrum, QFEs, such as banks, are using the large number of advisers in their branches to sell KiwiSaver, and savings and investment funds, for small lump sums or regular contributions.
It is increasingly difficult for investors with small to average portfolios to find advisers who can advise them on a wide range of investment products from different providers.
Getting advice on whether to purchase shares in the proposed Government asset sell-down is a prime example of this, as advice will need to be obtained from an AFA adviser, not a QFE, many of whom will not be interested in working for smaller investors.
Liz Koh is an authorised financial adviser. The advice given here is general and doesn't constitute specific advice to any person. A free disclosure statement can be obtained by calling 0800 273 847. | <urn:uuid:d35b5f48-16e0-4669-9b06-ce4419464669> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hawkesbaytoday.co.nz/news/liz-koh-advisers-price-out-smaller-investors/1559316/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963528 | 409 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Collection of modern, minimalist, and eco friendly architectural design for your home inspiration
Bates Masi architects has completed a home remodeling project made from timber into a modern one. White colors become the most dominant nuances thus creating a sense of simplicity. The butterfly roof juxtaposed with a traditional pitched roof. Bates Masi has a great portfolio of modern homes.
With tons of blueprints (over 16,000!) for different furniture designs and outdoor woodwork projectsyou can have a great insight into how to build different things with wood. In it, they tell you about wood, how to design projects, the detailed photographs, patterns, blueprints, materials list and step by step instructions on how to put build them.
The second part shows you the different tools and how to use them, and a complete guide to woodwork carpentry. And the color photographs and drawings are beautiful and show a lot of detail.
Copyleft © 2012 Home and House Design | 27.98 MB
All materials, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain. In the event that there is still a problem or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof | <urn:uuid:80158734-ee15-409f-8ef7-8eb5478ee695> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nhit-shis.org/home-remodeling-project-by-bates-masi-architects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938211 | 259 | 1.570313 | 2 |
In an era of virtual neighborhoods and fast-paced Internet communication, The Spectacular of Vernacular addresses the role of vernacular forms in the work of 27 artists who utilize craft, incorporate folklore, and revel in roadside kitsch to explore the role of culturally specific iconography in the increasingly global world of art. Originally employed as a linguistics term, vernacular is now broadly applied to categories of culture, standing in for regional, folkloric, or homemadeconcepts that contemporary artists have investigated since the late 1950s as part of a deeper consideration of the relationship between art and everyday life. For the artists included in the exhibition, aspects of the vernacularand often specifically American vernacularprovide a platform for narratives of home life, social ritual, and sense of place. Drawing inspiration from such sources as local architecture, amateur photographs, and state fair banners, their work runs the aesthetic spectrum from sleek to handcrafted, underscoring the diverse manifestations of the vernacular within our lived environment and its impact on artists working today. The Spectacular of Vernacular is organized by the Walker Art Center and is curated by Darsie Alexander, Walker Chief Curator. The exhibition is on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
July 30-September 18, 2011.
Inspired by Mike Kelleys observation that the mass art of today is the folk art of tomorrow, The Spectacular of Vernacular reflects an expanded view of the vernacular posited in Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, and Robert Venturis Learning from Las Vegas (1972), one that embraces the spectacle of the street and the stylistic cacophony of the stripthe totems, billboards, and neon signs of roadside America. Thus amidst the visibly handcrafted works of Matthew Day Jackson and Dario Robleto are the dense and day-glow paintings of Lari Pittman, the glittering trophy heads of Marc Swanson, and the urban relics of Rachel Harrison. These works, and others in the exhibition, suggest a long road trip through the emblems and eyesores of street vernacular, replete with its tourist destinations and outmoded hotels. A strong showing of photographs informs the exhibition, including work by WPA-era photographer Walker Evans, as well as more recent work by William Eggleston, whose color-saturated images gravitate toward the tawdry palette of faded billboards and road signs. New to CAMHs presentation of the exhibition is an additional work by Houston-based artist Robleto, The Minor Chords Are Ours (2010), and a 2001 sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, Regression.
Through strategic selections that capture varied practices, the exhibition reflects artists equal fascination with rustic as well as urban vernacular, lending the installation a visually diverse and dynamic character. In a culture in which art is increasingly globalized in its look and dissemination, The Spectacular of Vernacular considers work that can be heavily narrated, highly personal, and laboriously produced. | <urn:uuid:05992244-a7fe-4f68-8669-e1122993b70b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=49498&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943768 | 610 | 1.835938 | 2 |
I cant do it, i mean, i can go realativily fast, i can hit eithnotes at 120bpm
but i couldnt go into the fast stuff, my friend has been playing not even as long as i have and she picks pretty fast. its like it came naturally to her
I use thick piicks, im not sure thats the problem tho haha
anybody have any lessons for hand exercises?
One thing you can do is pick the open E slowly at first, make sure your picking is clean and even. The idea here is to pay attention to your picking hand. Gradually you wanna go faster and faster, and then when you're going as fast as you can, keep it at a steady rate until your arm hurts and then slow down. Secondly, rest the pick across your first knuckle on your fretting index finger, and place your thumb across the back of the pick. Choke up on the pick as much as possible, the idea being you want as little of the surface area of the pick going through the string as possible.
Another one is to start at the 15th fret. In between each note you want to pluck three open notes between, and use alternate picking. The pattern goes 15000140001200011000120001100080007000500030002000300000000000
start on the high E and move your way across all the strings.
That's just one of many excercises you can do. The most important thing is, however, to start off slow. I might suggest 80 bpm. Remember if you can't do it fast. you're not gonna be able to do it slowly. ALWAYS use a metronome! This is probably one of the most important things you could do. Try and increase 5 bpms everytime you feel like you've got the previous bpm down pat.
One trick is to increase the metronome way passed the speed you can play. Try and keep up to the best of your ability. Chances are you'll have trouble, but when you got back to the bpm you where working on, it won't seem so hard anymore.
I'm not much of a teacher man but I hope that helps, even a little. Keep it heavy
Try these for building speed:
just curious what r those numbers that u have posted regarding the fast picking is that the number of string and fret could u please explain how to interpret and read...
Using thicker picks really shouldn't hurt your picking at all. Pick thickness, is really all about personal preference and what feels right for your playing style. The big name players out there are all over the map as far as that goes....Paul Gilbert uses a .60mm Tortex (pretty thin), Dave Mustaine uses a .73mm, Hetfield and Hammet use .88mm picks....Vinnie Moore used to use an Extra Heavy pick filed to a point (not sure these days)....Guys like Eric Johnson and John Petrucci use the Dunlop Jazz IIIs....Some of the real uber-shredders like Francesco Fareri use those little 2mm and 3mm Dunlop Stubby picks. Myself, I prefer the little 1.14mm Tortex Jazz picks....
There's no real right or wrong answer on that...It all just comes down to the feel that you prefer. Do you like a little flex or "snap" to you pick? Do you like the pick to be more rigid and responsive? Or somewhere in between it all? The more that you play & practice, more that your own preferences will pan out with time. Picks are a fairly cheap item to mess with...So try buying 1 or 2 of many different styles, sizes & thicknesses and just mess around with them until you find that few that fit your own feel preferences.
As far as exercises go...There are sooooo many out there to mess with, that it's impossible to really list them all here. But some of the best starter routines are still just the good old 3 & 4 note per string chromatic drills that are not so much scale oriented, as much as just drills for building up the physical picking skills. Just start at the 1st fret of the low E string and using your Index, Middle and Ring fingers...Just go 1-2-3 on the E, 1-2-3 on the A, 1-2-3 on the D, 1-2-3 on the G, 1-2-3 on the B and 1-2-3 on the High E. Move up 1 fret and reverse the pattern to come back down to the low E string again...Move up 1 fret & keep on repeating this whole pattern up & down the neck. To do it with a 4 note pattern, simply add in the pinky finger to the pattern...So that it goes 1-2-3-4 on each string & repeat until your fingers bleed. :eek: LOL
Be sure to try and always work with a metronome or drum machine to help you keep time....Which really is important. A tightly played slower lick, will almost always sound better & more impressive than a ridiculously fast, sloppy one. So start off right, by paying attention to the meter/tempo that you are working in. Start with a tempo that is exceedingly easy for you to execute and work with it until you can do it without having to think about it at all. Focus on keep the movements of both hands as minimal as possible, while still articulating the notes clearly & evenly.
Once you can complete the routines pretty regularly start bumping up the tempo bit by bit. When you start to struggle with execution or consistency..drop the tempo well back within your comfort zone and focus one the fundementals again for a while. You can use the trick of going a bit beyond your threshold to help you break out of a rut and onto the next level...but always make sure to go back and drill on the fundementals again within your comfort zone, to keep from developing any sloppy habits.
As far as on the site here....I've got a 3 note per string "Shred Lick" tutorial goign, that I just started putting together that uses the A Aeolian mode (A Natural Minor) as it's base & is geared more towards the intermediate/advanced type player.
3 Note Per String Shred Licks
But when you really get down to it....It's just a 1-2-3 type drill, but using a scale instead of just chromatic runs. So it's really only as difficult as the tempo that you choose to play it at. No reason at all, that you couldn't slow it down and tackle something along those lines as well. There is also many good speed related lessons by The Jonezter on this site as well...so you could try giving those a search as well.
Best of luck to ya!
Great advice there by Chipshank, just to reiterate what he said about pick size too - its 100% down to personal perference. Trying to break it down to the width of the pick versus the drag coefficient as the pick passes over a string of a certain gauge just isn't realistic.
Back when I started out I was so broke after getting my first guitar that I couldnt afford the bus fare to get into town to buy a pick so I used my video card and student id (credit card sized piece of plastic. I even used coins when I had... but they were the very last resort!
Now that I can afford the 50 cents for a pick I use hard Dunlop .6mm exclusively:-)
As far as picking fast goes its not about being able to move your right hand up and down that is the problem or being able to move your left hand fast enough, it's getting the two synchronised that's will get you from 50bpm to 200bpm over night.
Here's a good exercice developed by Michael Angelo Battio to determine how fast you can realistically expect to get in a short space of time.
1) Pick an open string up/down/up/down (alternate picking)
2) Start slow then build up over a minute or so to as fast as you can possibly go without losing rhythm or accuracy
This speed is you current 'maximum picking velocity (MPV)' - so now you know how fast you can go all you have to do is get your left hand to move in tandem with your right.
3) IMPORTANT - once you hit your MPV look at how you are holding your pick and picking hand position and make sure that you hold it this way all of the time - even when you play slowly. This will probably change over time but if you are beginning and you want to get from A - Z in the shortest space of time then you should try this for a while. I would say 99% of sloppy players are sloppy becuase they practice playing fast and are 'ok', practice playing slow and are 'ok' but they can't switch from fast to slow in the same piece becuase they hold their picks, guitars and fretting hands in different positions depending on the tempo. When you become an advanced player you will start playing around more with your pick position and picking hand angle etc depending on what you are playing but by that stage you will already have gone from A -Z and back through everything in between.
Bottom line: don't worry about switching picking position untill you have mastered the above.
If you think your left hand can't move fast then try a basic legatto run to see how fast you can get right now (this can get a lot faster with a little practice unlike the 'MPV' which takes a long time to increase).
Anchor your first finger (1), then simply drum your fingers 123123123123123123 etc as fast as you can - you'll realise it's a lot faster than you have ever played before.
Now all you have to do is include this along with the drill and exercises the other guys mentioned (chromatic 3 and 4 note per srting exercises are best when starting becuase you don't have to worry about scale positions etc). Start out extremely slowly and focus 100% on the movement and honing the movement down to something that is comfortable and gradually build up speed. Get this right and you will have a firm grounding to improve on.
Look at the way you hold your guitar and the way you sit. A lot of shredders put the guitar between their legs resting on their left knee with the head stock pointing up somwhere between rib and shoulder height - simply because this takes the pressure off the wrist and is a comfortable way to sit for hours on end while doing mindless speed drills! If you lose the rhythm then don't try to play any faster and ALWAYS play with a metronome or drum machine. Set yourself goals and move the speed up in 5bpm increments - even after 1 week of this at 15-30 mins practice per day you should notice considerable improvements in speed and accuracy.
The above will help you with the raw mechanics of alternate picking - it's not about playing something that sounds 'good' or cool. Give it a go and it will help you to see the potential speeds you can achieve over the next few weeks/months.
Hope that helps.
Does it matter?
Tony Todesco (?), a studio guitarist out of LA, told a group of Berklee students that, when playing 32nd note passages, for example, only the first and last notes matter - everything between can be random. Any thoughts about that approach?
|All times are GMT -5. The time now is 11:41 PM.|
Powered by: vBulletin® Version 3.0.17
Copyright ©2000 - 2013, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. | <urn:uuid:a3ba4ecc-43f2-4b5c-b206-20981ef60330> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/printthread.php?t=27362 | 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 | 0.957068 | 2,453 | 1.742188 | 2 |
A quick read of Celia McGee’s 1995 “Portraiture Is Back” piece for the New York Times and Pernilla Holmes’s 2007 “In Your Face” article for ArtNews leaves an unwitting reader with the impression that portraiture had experienced a dramatic transformation over the course of a dozen years. McGee writes of a renewed interest in portraiture born of a recent focus on social issues like race, class, and gender, all inexorably leading to the deeply personal interface portraiture lends itself to between the artist, subject, and viewer. She provides only a handful of examples, but all of them grapple with gender, race, or personal identity, according to McGee. In stark contrast comes Holmes’s writing, which describes eleven bodies of work, most of which focus on people with whom neither the artist nor the viewer have any personal connection but through mass media: politicians, pop musicians, reality TV stars, athletes, and models. The work she describes does not make these figures any more accessible but rather heightens the concepts they represent: environmentalism, mass media, exploitation, and isolation. However, like the artists themselves, McGee and Holmes’s writings have more to do with their own frame of reference and subjective perspectives than a dramatic transformation in portraiture. The most notable flaw in the two articles is the lack of a comprehensive review of all types of media. McGee focuses on more traditional portraiture media like painting and sculpture, while Holmes seems to discuss everything but. Of course, these different focal points will lead to seemingly different types of “portraiture,” no matter when the articles were written.
Although McGee mentions many artists in her attempt to show that portraiture is “back,” she discusses only a few of them in detail, most of whom are painters and the rest are sculptors. Though she writes in the guise of an objective journalist, her selection of these types of artists is no mistake and reveals a romanticized notion of portraiture as an intimate process that only traditional media can truly capture. She notes, “Many artists believe that no mechanical means of reproduction should come between artist and subject in their intense connectedness.” Indeed, she is careful to explain that Chuck Close, best known for his photo-realistic paintings, has moved away from such stolid formalism to a more personalized, intimate approach to portraiture.
Holmes, on the other hand, cannot seem to get away from “mechanical means of reproduction.” Of the eleven bodies of work she covers, six of them work directly with photography or film, hardly the kind of mechanism-free nothing-between-you-and-me art-of-intimacy McGee envisioned. Of the remaining five, two actually work with photography as an integral part of their work—Nicolai’s “performance” piece really just being an elaborate staging for taking photographs and Herring’s sculptures comprised of collaged fragments of photographs—and one, Brian Alfred, does work inescapably entwined with technology as a device, since he bases his paintings off of pictures taken from the internet. Compared with McGee’s intimate “menage a trois…among artist, subject and viewer,” these mechanically-induced portraits are sure to seem more impersonal, detached, less imbued with the artist’s presence, and therefore more conceptual in nature.
While Chuck Close is the perfect example of how a painting can look like a photograph (and certainly the opposite can be true), different media, like different art forms, experience their own trajectories in art history. While some themes might move between music, visual arts, and writing simultaneously, they are also distinct art forms that evolve at their own pace. Similarly, photography, sculpture, painting, performance art, and movie-making are all very different approaches to the visual arts. This begs the question: what conclusions might have McGee drawn if she had looked at photography or performance art for her article? Similarly, what might have Holmes seen if she had included more than just one painter in hers? By the way, that painter, Brian Alfred, does small paintings of people he admires, including friends and family, in an attempt to portray his own identity. He exemplifies the kind of art McGee described in her article over ten years earlier and shows that, at least in the realm of portraiture painting, perhaps there has been no change at all.
Even within the media McGee and Holmes selectively review, a scan of 500 Self-Portraits suggests they are just cherry-picking examples to make their own points. Adrian Piper’s 1981 “Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features” certainly seems to be striving for individuality in the context of race and ethnicity at least as much as McGee’s example—nearly 15 years later—of Dennis Kardon’s “Jewish noses” sculpture series. Chuck Close’s 1991 self-portrait, comprised of small amoeba-like shapes, seems far more a formal exercise and much less personal than his photo-realistic “Big Self Portrait” from 1967-8, suggesting the trend McGee described with him might actually have been happening in reverse, if at all. Cindy Sherman’s self-portrait is a photograph that “quotes” Ingres much in the same way that Holmes describes contemporary portraiture as doing nearly twenty years later. Similarly, Shirin Neshat’s “Seeking Martyrdom” from 1995 is as every bit as conceptual and “in your face” as Holmes’s repertoire of examples from a decade later.
From these examples, it seems impossible to conclude anything from a comparison of McGee and Holmes’s articles other than the fact that they, like the artists they write about, are creating their own stories from personal observations and subjective experience. If asked directly, they would likely define portraiture differently, know of vastly different types of artists, and therefore see completely different trends in the exact same period of time. Portraiture in 2007 may well have been very different from portraiture in 1995, but we would not know it from these two articles. | <urn:uuid:1e839926-3ecf-412b-bc89-2e1de5620950> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://deaddogcafe.wordpress.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97135 | 1,298 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Sea Sick?Riddles are little poems or phrases that pose a question that needs answering. Riddles frequently rhyme, but this is not a requirement.
People go to me
and so do boats.
The boats bring the people,
and the people bring the boats.
What am I?
AnswerI'm a doc(k)
People take boats to the dock and when people get sea sick the boats can "bring them to the doc."
See another brain teaser just like this one...
Or, just get a random brain teaser
If you become a registered user you can vote on this riddle, keep track of
which ones you have seen, and even make your own.
Back to Top | <urn:uuid:cfb6114d-c5c6-4821-84d3-b88725880929> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.braingle.com/brainteasers/22880/sea-sick.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948136 | 148 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Social networking has boomed in the last years, but searching people isn’t taking a great part in either Facebook’s or Google’s strategies. This is where Ark comes in.
Funded by start-up pusher Y Combinator, Ark helps you do people searches a bunch of different social networks like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Orkut and MySpace. And it does it by making use of search filters, which Facebook restricts you from using.
What filters you ask? More than you could imagine. Current city, hometown, employers, education, gender, relationship status, sexual preferences, general interests, music and movies interests, email, phone and first name just scratch the surface of Ark’s search.
Using the filters correctly you could discover your old classmates, new business contacts, and if you are dedicated enough – your new girlfriend. The way the people search engine does this is by fetching the public information available on Facebook and the other social networks. This means that people, who have set their information to private won’t show up in your narrowed search results.
Here’s what Ark’s founders Patrick Riley and Yiming Liu told TechCrunch:
We imagined what would Google and Facebook build together if they weren’t at war. Someone needed to be Switzerland and build a search engine on top of all the social networks that’s completely remodeled for people looking for each other.
Interestingly enough, Facebook has given the new start-up thumbs up to utilize its Graph API and I expect the other social networks to follow the example.
Currently, Ark is in a closed beta but you should apply for an invite following the source link below. In the meantime, you should check out what Ark has to say about itself in their promo video.
Do you think Ark will thrive and become a major player in people search?
Via | Source | <urn:uuid:3e7cb285-92d7-4449-b162-ac3ea73f08bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.gsmarena.com/ark-does-people-searching-facebook-and-google-could-only-dream-about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942082 | 398 | 1.742188 | 2 |
It was a twist on the traditional bucket list idea, but with some interesting and, occasionally obvious, insights into how our words define our existence. Suggestions and tips had a bit of a “Tuesdays with Morrie” type to feel — and I mean that with no disrespect — and were put forth so we could all define our lives in better terms.
Suggestions were along the line of “Today was good,” or “I can do better” or “This is wrong.” Each phrase had a self-helpish explanatory sentence with it, demonstrating how saying these words will benefit your life. Of course, I was inspired and developed a much less intellectual, yet just as important list of my own.
While these are not exactly things you should say before you die, I define my list as “20 things I’d like to say before I die.” And while this is my list, I do believe some of these sentiments to be universal. Here you go:
1. This is a hard choice son, but life is about choices. Oxford has the better reputation, but Harvard is closer to home. Either way you’re getting a full scholarship, so I support you in whatever decision you make.
2. Strange, even after winning three national titles in five years, watching UGA play football never gets old.
3. I cannot believe all the money that was donated this year to help the poor, the needy and the disabled!
4. What shall we drive tonight, dear? The Aston Martin or the Stingray? The Rolls is in the shop again.
5. What a great sermon! That makes two weeks in a row!
6. So, this is how earth looks from space.
7. A model? Me? I never really thought about it, but, go ahead, I’m listening.
8. I never thought I would get to play a $25,000 guitar.
9. There is absolutely nothing left to be fixed or to be cleaned in the house.
10. Film option rights? For my life story? How many millions did you say?
11. I am truly flattered Ms. Klum, but I am a married man.
12. I don’t need a nap.
13. Did you see this latest study? It says that scientists have proven that biscuits and gravy are good for your heart, brain, joints, lower cholesterol and help stave off all forms of cancer.
14. Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I am thrilled the college football season now runs from August to February.
15. There’s more beer left? I thought we were out.
16. It took a long time, but I, too, am happy that our country is finally energy independent.
17. We didn’t expect our son to make the jump to the NBA after one year of college either, but he can always go back and finish his degree. In the meantime, I’m enjoying early retirement.
18. It is great to see the turn that society has made and evolved into a much more civil and respectful place.
19. I sure do love this new ban on cellphones in restaurants. What a great idea.
20. I have seen more miracles happen in this life than I ever anticipated, expected or dreamed.
Happy New Year.
Mark Wallace Maguire is the director of magazines for Cobb Life and Cherokee Life. He can be reached at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:231f3c2f-200f-44ac-8060-090b279a600c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neighbornewspapers.com/view/full_story/21291724/article-Column--20-things-I%E2%80%99d-like-to-say-before-I-die?instance=north | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967597 | 750 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Why the Gordon Moody Association?
Why Gordon Moody (formerly the Gordon House Association), why a specialist provider of residential treatment for addicted gamblers? Gordon Moody Association believes that a severe addiction to gambling, although having some parallels to a substance-based addiction, needs an inherently different approach to treatment. This is not so much due to differences in the various addictions themselves but due to the associated behaviours.
Living the life of an addicted gambler means most of the waking day is centred on the avoidance of creditors and wheeling and dealing to manipulate others to create the space to gamble in and the cash to do it with. Unlike those dependent on a substance-based addiction, such as drugs or alcohol, there are no limits to which the gambling addict is able to subject themselves or others. An alcoholic's body will eventually stop the ingestion of alcohol and there will be physical signs to indicate their state; they will stagger, fall down, slur their speech, smell of alcohol etc. Others will be able to recognise the addict's problem without the assistance of that addict. However a gambling addict can carry on indefinitely with no outward signs that they are addicted; it is a hidden addiction, others may never know that an addict even has a problem let alone what the problem is. Therefore the addiction can continue and develop to an extreme state without being detected.
If a drug addict steals money from their mother's purse, to buy drugs with, they know it is a one-way street, the money is gone and will be missed; if a drug addict takes the day's takings from their place of work, they know they will never be able to replace it. However addicted gamblers, having stolen money and lost it, will persuade themselves that they need to steal again in order to win back their losses so as to replace the money they stole. They will persuade themselves it is the only way of not being detected. They are even able to excuse the gambling of the money needed to buy food for their own child, by claiming it is the only way they can provide further food for that child. It is self delusion, but allows an addicted gambler to go far further in the abuse of the trust of others than substance-based addicts are normally able, or willing, to.
An addicted gambler's life is not based on reality but on avoiding reality. Therefore those who started gambling heavily at an early age sometimes lack some key social and survival skills; they may never have cooked or cleaned; they may never have had a significant relationship or taken the time to fully mature. Once they no longer have their gambling activities to concentrate on, and hide behind, we find that commonly faced for the first time with the actual reality of their situation and the issues they need to address, clients can experience severe anxiety and panic attacks. Some cannot deal with this reality on their own, seeing the route to recovery too daunting and seemingly impossible. Being with others who have 'been there', but have moved through the stabilization process, is of particular value at this stage to a new resident who is struggling to come to terms with their situation. However we frequently find ourselves working with clients 'rejecting' treatment, or those working with them, in a misguided attempt to protect themselves from reality by finding an excuse to hide again within their gambling behaviours.
The Gordon Moody Association works only with the most severe gambling addicts, therefore new clients will almost certainly have been severely abusing the trust of others to support their habit. They will have been living in a fantasy world divorcing themselves from many of their day-to-day responsibilities. Research suggests that every one of them will have severely affected the lives of at least 15 others in order to support their gambling.
It is calculated that around 80% of the waking day of a severe gambling addict is spent planning how, when and with what to gamble, or actually gambling. The removal of this activity therefore leaves a great deal of time for reflection and thought. This reflection and thought often gives rise to an acceptance of the reality of what they have done to others in order to support their gambling which, in return, often results in severe bouts of depression brought on by guilt. Effectively the 'Cold Turkey' for an addicted gambler is this boredom and depression. Therefore the Gordon Moody Association provides an extremely high level of support to clients early in recovery. Those in residential treatment are provided with support workers who help them budget and avoid those places, and situations, that led to their gambling in the past. Over the time they remain in treatment they are 'weaned' off this high level of support as, with the help of the others in treatment and their therapy sessions, they build their own support networks and develop their own personal relapse prevention strategies.
For those awaiting residential treatment, those for whom residential treatment is not an option and those who need transitional support as they leave one of our residential centres and move back into the community, the Gordon Moody Association provides an Outreach Support Service and an Internet Counselling Service.
The Outreach Support Service provides an individual face-to-face service in the home of the client and group support sessions at each of the residential centres for those able to travel. The Internet Counselling Service is hosted on the Gambling Therapy Website and provides confidential individual face-to-face counselling for those with access to the necessary computer equipment or text service to those without such access or those requiring total anonymity. There are also 'chat rooms' where trained counsellors can answer questions and membership groups, e.g. ex-residents, where they can seek, and give, support.
Why then Gordon Moody Association? Because Gordon Moody Association has over 40 years' experience of providing specialised support and treatment to acutely addicted gamblers. This has allowed us to develop treatment interventions that are purely gambling focused and address the extremes of associated behaviours. Because we specialise in gambling we create therapeutic communities that consist entirely of addicted gamblers, unique 'forums' wherein clients can discuss and learn to deal with the reasons why they compulsively gambled and the extremes to which they have gone to support their gambling, without it being 'sensationalised' or misunderstood.
Registered Charity number 1124751 | <urn:uuid:1878ffc7-4f48-4d23-8514-f52b04fcd0a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gordonmoody.org.uk/Why.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963591 | 1,255 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Just as New Jersey started to chip away at its foreclosure inventory during the fourth quarter, homeowners fell behind on their mortgage payments once again, a report released Thursday found.
The report by the Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group, was another sign that October’s superstorm Sandy put a crimp in the ability of borrowers to pay their bills.
“There is an aberration,” said Kevin Cummings, president and chief executive officer of Short Hills-based Investors Bank, which has 19 branches in Monmouth and Ocean counties. “I think it is Sandy-related.”
New Jersey has been trying to climb out from one of the nation’s biggest backlogs of foreclosures so that its housing market can fully mend from the collapse of the real estate bubble.
A slowly improving job market and record low mortgage rates have helped its cause. But it appears to have taken another hit after Sandy swept through the state, damaging thousands of homes and shutting down many businesses for more than a week.
• Some 8.85 percent of loans were in the foreclosure process at the end of the quarter, down from 8.87 percent in the third quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.
• Some 0.8 percent of loans started the foreclosure process during the quarter, down from 2.02 percent during the third quarter, the association said. Cummings said Sandy might have played a role in that, too, because many banks gave storm-battered borrowers more leeway.
• A little more than 9 percent of mortgage loans were delinquent at the end of the fourth quarter, up from about 8.5 percent at the end of the third quarter, the association said.
The group said delinquency rates typically increase in the fourth quarter because of seasonal factors, but New Jersey was one of only 11 states to see their rates rise at the end of last year.
New Jersey has had one of the nation’s heaviest backlogs of foreclosures. The state, unlike most others, temporarily halted the foreclosure process to ensure banks followed the rules – a step that aided struggling homeowners but might have slowed the housing industry’s recovery.
Nonetheless, the Garden State’s housing market has slowly been improving. Average home prices increased in the fourth quarter for the first time in two years, according to a report released last week by the Otteau Valuation Group, an East Brunswick-based research firm.
Still, there are lots of signs that October’s superstorm Sandy tripped up borrowers. The region’s banks, for example, said in their fourth-quarter earnings reports that they set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars to guard against borrowers who may default on their loans.
By Michael L. Diamond; 732-643-4038; [email protected] | <urn:uuid:cac54f93-3de5-4007-a9b6-fcecfa0295cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.app.com/article/20130221/NJBIZ/302210073/Sandy-may-have-led-to-more-mortgage-delinquencies-in-NJ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975317 | 582 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Zend Developer Zone: Using APC with PHP
The Zend Developer Zone has published a new in-depth tutorial from Vikram Vaswani about using APC and PHP to get the best performance out of your application. Using this opcode caching tool can greatly speed up the execution of your site with almost no effort on your part.
dding APC to an application usually results in improved application response times, reduced server load and happier users. In this article, I'll introduce you to APC, guiding you through the process of installing and configuring it and showing you a few examples of how it works. I'll also walk you through the APC administrator interface, which lets you view APC performance in real time, and show you how you can use it with the Zend Framework
He shows you every step of the way - installation, configuration (complete with some screenshots) and the web-based interface you can enable to see the statistics about how the cache's performance is and what requests it's been handling. He mentions other abilities APC has like array and object caching, caching closures and finally a real-world example of using it to cache the results of a Twitter search request (in a Zend Framework environment). | <urn:uuid:cfed19d0-19a9-4ef1-b707-85b44d63cb39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phpriot.com/news/zend-developer-zone-using-apc-with-php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934512 | 250 | 1.648438 | 2 |
An article in the Register-Star last week informed us that the renovations to Hudson Terrace would begin in the middle of this month. Aside from the sketchy information provided in the article, no one seems to know exactly what is being planned. The interior changes are nobody's business but the tenants' who are going to occupy the apartments. The exterior changes, however, should be everybody's business.
Hudson Terrace sits atop the bluff on which Hudson was built. Approaching Hudson by the river, these architecturally undistinguished late 20th-century buildings are the first and about the only things that can be seen of our city, which is known for its rich inventory of historic architecture. The vast complex stretches the width of the city, from Allen Street to State Street, and it is visible from many vantage points within two National Register historic districts (the Front Street-Parade Hill-Lower Warren Street Historic District and the Hudson Historic District) and two locally designated historic districts (the Warren Street Historic District and the Union-Allen-Front Street Historic District).
Historic Footnote: When the Front Street-Parade Hill-Lower Warren Street Historic District was originally added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, it consisted of 95 buildings. In 1986, the district was decreased to 25 buildings. Many of those missing 70 buildings (including the one glimpsed through the trees in this picture) had been demolished to build Hudson Terrace.]
When the Historic Preservation Commission designated the Union-Allen-Front Street Historic District, they wisely included the buildings of Hudson Terrace as "non-contributing structures." Inclusion in a historic district--even as a non-contributing structure--makes a building subject to review by the Historic Preservation Commission because what is done with non-contributing structures has an impact on the overall character of a historic district. We know that Evergreen Partners intends to replace the faded blue vinyl siding on the buildings of Hudson Terrace with new siding, but I don't think anyone--aside, perhaps, from Code Enforcement Officer Peter Wurster--knows what they plan to replace it with or what color the new material will be.
Last Saturday, I had occasion to drive the length of Hudson Terrace, from north to south, and as I did, I contemplated what the buildings might look like with a different "skin" of a different color. Knowing that the renovations to the buildings were to begin this month, it occurred to me wonder if the plans for the exterior changes had been presented to the Historic Preservation Commission for a Certificate of Appropriateness. So I emailed the members of the HPC and asked.
A response came quite promptly from HPC chair, Tom Swope. Not surprisingly, Evergreen Partners has not presented their plans for substantive exterior changes to the Historic Preservation Commission, but, Swope reminded me, Wurster was the "gatekeeper," and it was his responsibility to refer projects requiring a Certificate of Appropriateness to the Historic Preservation Commission when his office receives an application for a building permit. Sadly, given Wurster's lack of sympathy with historic preservation, it is highly unlikely that it would ever occur to him to refer this project to the HPC. In 2005, Wurster allowed renovations to the facade of the C. H. Evans Firehouse (now The Spotty Dog) to begin without a Certificate of Appropriateness from the HPC and claimed that he didn't know that all the old firehouses had been designated local landmarks. In 2006, he issued a demolition permit for a historic building at 404 Warren Street without approval from the Historic Preservation Commission. In 2007, Wurster issued a building permit to replace the slate roof on 448 Warren Street without referring the project to the HPC. To expect Wurster to be a watchdog for historic preservation is a great mistake.
The Historic Preservation Commission needs to reach out to Evergreen Partners to let them know their obligations. The south half of Hudson Terrace is in a locally designated historic district, and all of the complex is visible from historic Promenade Hill. Hudson's preservation ordinance requires the Historic Preservation Commission to review and give a Certificate of Appropriateness to the substantive material changes that are about to be made to the exterior of the buildings--at the very least, those located in the south half of the complex.
It is not known what kind of siding will be used. The likely possibilities are new vinyl siding or Hardiplank, a fiber-cement siding. (Crosswinds is sided with Hardiplank.) Although it's possible to paint Hardiplank, very likely, if Hardiplank is used for Hudson Terrace, it will be the kind with the color already baked in. Although the our preservation law does not require a Certificate of Appropriateness for paint colors, on the assumption that paint color is temporary and makes no permanent impact, it does give the HPC approval authority over the color of materials used in any alternations to buildings in historic districts. To quote from Hudson's Historic Preservation Law (Paragraph 169.6 of the City of Hudson Code): "Any alteration of existing properties shall be compatible with their historic character, as well as with the surrounding district" (italics mine). One of the tests of compatiblility is: "Texture, materials, and color and their relation to similar features of other properties in the neighborhood."
In the case of Hudson Terrace, we need to encourage the Historic Preservation Commission to be proactive. This is a huge project with huge visual impacts on Hudson--our waterfront as well as our historic districts. It seems unlikely that the exterior work on the buildings will begin in the dead of winter, so there is still time for the Historic Preservation Commission to intervene and inform Evergreen Partners of their obligation under Hudson City Code, if indeed Peter Wurster has neglected to do so.
The Historic Preservation Commission meets this Friday, February 12, at 10 a.m. at City Hall. | <urn:uuid:cdc58617-710f-4a4a-b24d-6759ddc6dd8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gossipsofrivertown.blogspot.com/2010/02/contemplating-hudson-terrace.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960638 | 1,225 | 1.648438 | 2 |
I'm the child of a King — The Child of a King
Original Trinity Hymnal, #720
My Father is rich in houses and lands,
He holdeth the wealth of the world in his hands!
Of rubies and diamonds, of silver and gold,
His coffers are full, he has riches untold.
I'm the child of a King, the child of a King,
With Jesus, my Saviour, I'm the child of a King.
My Father's own Son, the Saviour of men,
Once wandered o'er earth as the poorest of them;
But now he is reigning for ever on high,
And will give me a home in heav'n by and by.
I once was an outcast stranger on earth,
A sinner by choice, and an alien by birth!
But I've been adopted, my name's written down,
An heir to a mansion, a robe, and a crown.
A tent or a cottage, why should I care?
They're building a palace for me over there!
Though exiled from home, yet still I may sing:
All glory to God, I'm the child of a King.
Page number: Blue 720, Right-Click Here to Download MIDI File | <urn:uuid:02b466d8-ec5c-4eeb-8211-c9b9ef3ef0bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://opc.org/hymn.html?hymn_num=720 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947508 | 267 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Chris Carmain's fastball reached 94 mph despite sometimes searing pain in his elbow.
Then last summer, he felt a pop in his arm after throwing a pitch.
"I threw another pitch and it felt like someone had shot me in the elbow," he said. "Just excruciating pain."
His hand felt hot, then tingly. Then it began to feel cold and he couldn't feel it anymore.
Carmain, 20, of Methuen, a Northeastern University pitcher, said he had felt pain in his elbow as early as Little League but never told anyone.
"You don't want to come off the field, ever," Carmain said. "There's definitely an aspect of pressure that you don't want to let the team down."
The pop he felt last summer was his ulnar collateral ligament tearing. The ligament connects two bones — the humerus in the upper arm and the ulna in the forearm — stabilizing the elbow joint.
MRI scans showed the ligament had begun to tear in high school, when Carmain was pitching for St. John's Prep in Danvers.
Carmain underwent ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, better known as Tommy John surgery, on Aug. 18.
He'll miss the 2012 baseball season but has learned an important lesson.
"Definitely, if you're experiencing pain, get it checked out," Carmain said. "Don't wait."
Carmain also learned that he spent his high school years doing the wrong shoulder-strengthening exercises and, as a result, he had an especially weak shoulder.
He got the word when he visited Dr. Luke Oh after his tear. Oh is an orthopedic surgeon who performs about 40 Tommy John surgeries a year at Massachusetts General Hospital.
As the number of Tommy John surgeries grows among adults and teens, shoulder strength is becoming a major issue for young pitchers. The right kind of shoulder strengthening exercises can help avoid Tommy John surgery, or recover from it.
"I have yet to see a young athlete that needs a Tommy John surgery that came in with a very sturdy and strong shoulder and rotator cuff," Oh said. "If the shoulder is not optimized ... then the elbow sees more load and it's at increased risk of injury."
Carmain's weak shoulder contributed to the development of partial tears in his ulnar collateral ligament during high school.
He now advises other young pitchers to "get on a shoulder rehab program ... Rehab even if you're not hurt."
The torque and force of throwing a pitch off a mound can overwhelm the ulnar collateral ligament, Oh said.
"The ligament cannot withstand the force of a single pitch," Oh added.
But the rotator cuff and shoulder internal rotators, plus the flexor pronator group of tendons in the elbow, can help protect the ligament and prevent it from tearing.
"That's why it's critical to strengthen and optimize all of those muscle groups in addition to paying attention to things like pitching mechanics," Oh said.
Pitchers in their late teens might be the same height as a major league pitcher, but their muscle groups still need time to develop.
"Their rotator cuff muscles and other elbow stabilizers like the muscle group in the flexor pronator mass have not been developed optimally to throw a ball 80 or 90 mph," Oh said.
Carmain never learned the proper shoulder exercises until his sophomore year at Northeastern.
He did overhead presses and shrugs in high school. "Both lead to tightness and overexposed my shoulder," he said.
"You need to (exercise) the small muscle groups with bands and light weights to keep the shoulder stable," he said.
Carmain now undergoes physical therapy three days each week, two hours each day. The other four days each week he exercises on his own for an hour, working on his rotator cuff and his "lats," the major muscles in the back.
"High school coaches should have an idea of how to strengthen a shoulder and should have some kind of regimen for pitchers and position players to follow," Carmain said. "But if you really want to get the strength necessary, then you need to go to a private coach or at least a physical therapist." | <urn:uuid:0317d1f8-4817-4287-8639-ef44a30cc348> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eagletribune.com/latestnews/x1295786903/Recovering-pitchers-advice-If-you-feel-pain-get-it-checked | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978908 | 886 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Great read about how Stephenie Meyer developed into a storyteller and working to improve her writing ability. (excerpt below)
“I hope I’m getting better,” she says. “Hopefully practice makes perfect. With Twilight I really was very very raw. I think I’m good at storytelling and not necessarily writing it in a beautiful way. I think I’m a lot better in The Host. I think I’m learning.”
She works on it by reading, “although it can be horribly depressing to read people who are amazing and look at what they do and how they use words and see how beautifully it can be done.” Her favourites are Austen, Bronte and Orson Scott Card (“I think he’s really poetic. He writes very beautifully”) the author of Enders Game, which has also been turned into a film.
Read the full article HERE
h/t Joel Emmett | <urn:uuid:41e35e14-0bc2-4432-ac33-b1d08ad74994> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.twilightmoms.com/2013/03/o-canada-com-article-stephenie-meyer-a-natural-born-storyteller/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980204 | 207 | 1.507813 | 2 |
By Mr. Curmudgeon
If there is one truth in American politics, it is this: heroic service during wartime does not always translate into heroism in the contentious theater of political affairs. Two names come to mind: Bob Dole and John McCain. Dole bears scars suffered when wounded at Anzio, Italy, in 1944. And McCain has only partial movement in his arms due to grueling torture at the hands of his communist North Vietnamese captors. The gallant military actions of both men, under trying circumstances, honor both flag and country. But the political actions of both threaten the viability of their party by continuing to blur the few minor distinctions separating Republicans from Democrats.
As the mainstream media has noted many times since the midterm elections of 2010, moderate or establishment Republicans are finding it difficult to adjust to the new realities affecting the GOP. The inroads made by Tea Party activists to elect like-minded individuals to Congress have made it decidedly difficult for the GOP’s establishment leadership to work out political compromises advantageous to President Obama and his Democrats. These moderates have grown used to campaigning as conservatives and governing as leftist Democrats. The noisy Tea Party House contingent, therefore, is a constant reminder to the conservative base of the GOP that the biggest obstacle to real change in Washington is, and always has been, the Republican establishment.
When its candidate Mitt Romney suffered a profound defeat in South Carolina's GOP primary at the hands of Newt Gingrich, the latter saw a surge of support heading into swing-state Florida. Romney’s Wall Street cronies poured over $5 million to buy radio and television time to air ads that distort or outright lie concerning Gingrich’s record.
“Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today,” said Gov. Sarah Palin on her Facebook page. “Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary,” said Palin.
As much as I love Sarah Palin, she is profoundly mistaken. Our allegiance is not to Reagan, Goldwater or the Republican Party … it’s to the truth.
The GOP’s establishment power brokers are determined to saddle their party with a presidential candidate whose draconian health care regime in Teddy Kennedy’s Massachusetts was the inspiration for Obama’s own wicked assault on our liberties. They tell us if Obama’s inspiration is elected president, he will undo Obamacare. One would have to abandon all sense of reality to believe a President Romney, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would do anymore than tinker around the edges of Obamacare. In short, a vote for the GOP establishment is a vote to preserve the liberty-killing machine that is today’s Washington.
“Gingrich had a new idea every minute and most of them were off the wall,” said Bob Dole in an open letter critical of Newt Gingrich, “He loved picking a fight with President Clinton because he knew this would get the attention of the press. This and a myriad of other specifics like shutting down the government helped to topple Gingrich in 1998.”
Bob Dole was never one to pick a fight, especially with Democrats. Picking a fight usually means one is fed-up with assaults on their principles. With principles no more poignant than the pineapple that bears his name – unless you count federal price supports to Kansas farmers a principle – Dole’s sensibilities were rarely, if ever, offended. That is, until Gingrich shut down Dole’s pork-barrel machine on the banks of the Potomac.
At a time when Europe teeters on the brink of insolvency, when America’s debt to GDP ratio is 100% and climbing, when government debt and spending threatens the future expansion of our economy (ala, Greece), it’s nothing short of breathtaking to hear the doddering Dole attack Gingrich for attempting to stop America’s economic decline 16 years ago. Failing to heed Gingrich’s warning threatens the future well-being of Dole’s sod busters and even the ex-Mrs. Gingrich.
General Douglas MacArthur once said, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” It’s time for Dole, and the discredited establishment wing of the GOP he personifies, to just fade away. If the establishment GOP continues running interference for the Progressive left, we may lose our noble country. And Dole’s sacrifice at Anzio will have been for nothing. | <urn:uuid:5a4aafd9-994b-4f37-8811-f63f53fe93af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.morethanright.com/Bob-Dole-Newt-Gingrich | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950573 | 947 | 1.515625 | 2 |
This topic has been discussed before on this forum - keeping a piping system in Revit small for speed. My question is how do you all go about that? From what I see, there are a few way to go about it:
1) Simply leave an open end on a small portion of the system (ie. bathroom group), the pipe then going to the mains (but not actually connected to the group) would need to have the "Additional Flow" parameter set to be identical to the total for the group.
2) Create different piping systems for portions of the building - CW for enlarged plans, CW for mains, CW for Mechancal room. The flow would not propagate though and would need to be set similar to above.
3) Create a Mechanical equipment family containing connectors to allow pipe to connect in, then a connector for flow to go out. Again, you would have to manually match the flow rate, this time through a parameter in the family.
All of these approaches have their drawbacks and there's part of me that wants a nice, completely connected system. There's a bigger part of me that wants Revit to respond more quickly when editing pipes. So what is the solution? Or at least, what have you found that works best? Thanks for the input. | <urn:uuid:026e3bb5-525a-48e9-af2f-c132a8843ae7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?141178-Piping-System-size&p=1182082 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964061 | 264 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Legendary designer Philippe Starck — with no pretty slides behind him — spends 17 minutes reaching for the very roots of the question “Why design?” Along the way he drops brilliant insights into the human condition; listen carefully for one perfectly crystallized motto for all of us, genius or not. Yet all this deep thought, he cheerfully admits, is to aid in the design of a better toothbrush. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:07.)
Watch Philippe Starck’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Philippe Starck on TED.com.
Transcript: Philippe Starck, TED2007
Philippe Starck: Why design?
To watch this TEDTalk, download it or comment on it, and to view many more TEDTalks, visit http://www.ted.com
You will understand nothing with my type of English. Is good for you because you can have a break, after all these fantastic people. I must tell you I am like that [shakes hands], not very comfortable, because usually, in life, I think my job is absolutely useless. I mean, I feel useless. Now, after Carolyn [Porco], and all the other guys, I feel like shit. And definitively, I don’t know why I am here, but — you know the nightmare, like you are an impostor, you arrive at the opera, and they push you, “You must sing!” [gasp!] I don’t know.
So! So! Because I have nothing to show, nothing to say, we shall try to speak about something else.
We can start, if you want, by understanding (it’s just to start, it’s not interesting) how I work. When somebody comes to me and ask for what I am known, I mean, yes, lemon squeezer, toilet brush, toothpick, beautiful toilet seats, and why not, a toothbrush. I don’t try to design the toothbrush. I don’t try to say, oh, that will be a beautiful object or something like that. That doesn’t interest me.
Because there is different types of design. The one, we can call it the cynical design, that means the design invented by Raymond Loewy in the ’50s, who said, what is ugly is a bad sale, La Laideur se vend mal, which is terrible. It means the design must be just a weapon for marketing, for producer to make product more sexy, like that, they sell more, it’s shit, it’s obsolete, it’s ridiculous. I call that the cynical design.
After, there is the narcissistic design; it’s a fantastic designer who designs only for other fantastic designers. [laughs]
After there is people like me, who try to deserve to exist, and who are ashamed to make this useless job, who try to do it in another way, and they try, I try, to not make the object for the object but for the result, for the profit for the human being, the person who will use it. If we take the toothbrush — I don’t think about the toothbrush. I think, “What will be [finger in mouth] the effect of the brush in the mouth?” And to understand what will be the effect of the toothbrush in the mouth, I must imagine: Who owns this mouth? What is the life of the owner of this mouth? In what society this guy live? What civilization creates this society? What animal species creates this civilization? When I arrive — and I take one minute, I am not so intelligent — when I arrive at the level of animal species, that becomes real interesting.
Me, I have no power to change anything. But when I come back, I can understand why I shall not do it, because today, it’s more positive than “do it,” or how I shall do it. But to come back, where I am at the animal species, there is things to see. There is things to see, there is the big challenge. The big challenge in front of us.
Because there is not a human production that exists outside of what I call the “big image.” The big image is our story, our poetry, our romanticism. Our poetry is our mutation, our life. We must remember, and we can see that in any book of my son of 10 years old, that life appears 4 billion years ago, around — 4 billion point 2? [voice off] Yes, point 5, OK, OK! I’m a designer, that’s all, of Christmas gifts.
And before, there was this soup, called soupe primordiale, this first soup [bloop bloop bloop!], sort of dirty mud, no life, nothing. So then [pshoo-shoo] lightning [pshoo] arrive [pshoo-shoo], makes life [bloop bloop], and that dies. Some million years after, [pshoo-shoo!] [bloop-bloop] wake up! At the end, finally, that succeeds, and life appears. We was so, so stupid. The most stupid bacteria. Even, I think, we copy our way to reproduce, you know what I mean, and something of — oh no, forget it.
After, we become a fish; after, we become a frog; after, we become a monkey; after, we become what we are today, a supermonkey, and the fin is, the supermonkey we are today, is at alph of the story. Can you imagine? From that stupid bacteria to us, with a microphone, with a computer, with an iPod, 4 billion years. And we know, and especially Carolyn knows, that when the sun will implode, the earth will burn, explode, I don’t know what, and this is scheduled for 4, 4 billion years? [looks offstage] Yes, she said “something like that.” OK, that means we are at alph of the story. Fantastic! It’s a beauty! Can you imagine? It’s very symbolic. Because the bacteria we was had no idea of what we are today. And today, we have no idea of what we shall be in 4 billion years. And this territory is fantastic.
That is our poetry. That is our beautiful story. It’s our romanticism: Mutation. We are mutants. And if we don’t deeply understand, if we don’t integrate that we are mutants, we completely miss the story.
Because every generation thinks we are the final one. We have a way to look at Earth like that, you know [raises hand over head] “I am the man. The final man. You know, we mutate during 4 billion years before, but now, because it’s me, we stop. Fin For the end, for the eternity, with a red jacket …” I am not sure of that. Because that is our intelligence of mutation and things like that. There is so many things to do, it’s so fresh.
And here is something: Nobody is obliged to be a genius, but everybody is obliged to participate. And to participate, for a mutant, there is a minimum of exercise, a minimum of sport … The first, if you want, there is so many, but one which is very easy to do, is the duty of vision. I can explain you. I shall try.
If you walk like that [looking straight down, small steps], it’s OK, it’s OK, you can walk, but perhaps, if you walk with the eyes like that, you will not see, oh!, there is a hole. And you will fall, and you will die. Dangerous.
That’s why, perhaps, you will try to have this angle of vision [looking forward 45 degrees] OK, I can see, if I found something [whistle, steps around imaginary obstacle], and they continue, up up up. I raise the angle of vision, but it’s still very selfish (selfish? egoiste? yes, selfish). You, you survive. It’s OK.
If you raise the level of our eyes a little more [looking straight ahead] you go, “I see you, oh my god you are here, how are you, I can help you, I can design for you a new toothbrush, new toilet brush, something like that, I live in society, in community.” It’s OK. You start to be in the territory of intelligence, we can say. From this level, the more you can raise this angle of view, the more you will be important to society. The more you will rise, the more you will be important for the civilization. The more you will rise, to see far and high, like that, the more you will be important for the story of our mutation. That means intelligent people are in this angle [75-105 degrees off the ground] That is intelligence. From this [105 degrees] to here [180 degrees], that, it’s genius. Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, Einstein, things like that. Nobody’s obliged to be a genius. It’s better, but nobody.
Take care, in this training, to be a good mutant. There is some danger, there is some trap. One trap: the vertical. Because at the vertical of us, if you look like that, “Ah! my god, there is God. Ah! God!” God is a trap. God is the answer when we don’t know the answer. That means, when your brain is not enough big, when you don’t understand, you go, “Ah, it’s God, it’s God.” That’s ridiculous. That’s why — jump, like that? No, don’t jump. Come back. Because, after, there is another trap. If you look like that [205 degrees], you look to the past, or you look inside if you are very flexible, inside yourself. It’s called schizophrenia, and you are dead.
That’s why every morning, now, because you are a good mutant, you will raise your angle of view. Out, more of the horizontal. You are an intelligence. Never forget: like that, like that. It’s very, very, very important.
What, what else we can say about that. Why do that? It’s because we — if we look from f
ar, we see our line of evolution. This line of evolution is clearly positive. From far, this line looks very smooth, like that. But if you take a lens, like that, this line is ack-ack-ack [makes jagged motion]. It’s made of light and shadow. We can say light is civilization, shadow is barbaria. And it’s very important to know where we are. Because some cycle, there is a spot in the cycle, and you have not the same duty in the different parts of the cycle.
That means, we can imagine, I don’t say it was fantastic, but in the ’80s, there was not too much war, like that [a little], it was … we can imagine that the civilization can become civilized. In this case, people like me are acceptable. We can say it’s luxus time. We have time to think, we have time to I-don’t-know-what, speak about art and things like that. It’s OK. We are in the light. But sometimes, like today [dives down] we fall, we fall [diving sounds] so fast, so fast to shadow, we fall so fast to barbaria. With many, many many face of barbaria. Because it’s not, the barbaria we have today, it’s perhaps not the barbaria we think. There is different type of barbaria. That’s why we must adapt. That means, when barbaria is back, forget the beautiful chairs, forget the beautiful hotel, forget design, even, I’m sorry to say, forget art. Forget all that. There is priority, there is urgence. You must go back to politics, you must go back to radicalization, I’m sorry if that’s not very English, you must go back to fight, to battle.
That’s why today I’m so ashamed to make this job. That’s why I am here, to try to do it the best possible. But I know that even [if] I do it the best possible (that’s why I’m the best!), it’s nothing. Because it’s not the right time.
That’s why I say that, I say that nothing exist if it’s not in the good reason, the reason of our beautiful dream, of this civilization. And because we must all work to finish this story. Because the scenario of this civilization, about love, progress, and things like that, it’s OK, but there is so many other different, other scenarios of other civilizations. This scenario, of this civilization, was about becoming powerful, intelligent, like this idea we have invented, this concept of God. We are God now. We are. It’s almost done. We have just to finish the story. That is very, very important. And when you don’t understand really what’s happened, you cannot go and fight and work and things like that. You go to the future back, back, back, back, like that. And you can fall, and it’s very dangerous. No, you must really understand that.
Because we have almost finished, I’ll repeat this story. And the beauty of this: in perhaps fifty years, sixty years, we can finish completely this civilization, and offer to our children the possibility to invent a new story, a new poetry, a new romanticism. With billions of people who have been born, worked, lived, and died before us, these people who have worked so much, we have now bring beautiful things, beautiful gifts, we know so many things. We can say to our children, OK, done, that was our story. That passed. Now you have a duty. Invent a new story. Invent a new poetry. The only rule is, we have not to have any idea about the next story. We give you white pages. Invent. We give you the best tools, the best tools, and now, do it. That’s why I continue to work, even if it’s for toilet brush. | <urn:uuid:04e1a9a6-c8ae-469f-b993-6349c256a761> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.ted.com/2007/12/04/starck/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94961 | 3,189 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Thanks for getting in touch, and welcome to FrontlineSMS! \o/ The FrontlineForms functionality only works on java enabled phones, I'm afraid. However, there are other ways to collect data using FrontlineSMS software to receive standard SMS data from phones that aren't java enabled. Some FrontlineSMS functionalities exist to make this type of data collection easier. For example, you can arrange incoming messages using keywords to collect data on specific topics. You can also organise the contacts who are helping you to collect data into different contact groups within FrontlineSMS. It is then also possible to export the message data received into a .csv file, and thus analyse the data received.
I hope this information helps you get started with looking at FrontlineSMS as an option for simple data collection. If you have further questions, or any of the above is unclear, please do feel free to ask!
Thanks Flo. Yeah I've explored the other options, but I was hoping to be able to install the forms on the phone to ensure details get properly filled in. Need about 10 parameters from data collectors on a daily basis, so you can imagine how many mistakes will appear with keywords. Especially since we were looking at a community watch model, where rural populations could submit critical information related to deforestation.
Tried to look up if it was possible to install Java/J2me on the phones, but it's not as easy as I hoped. I'm not a programmer/IT person so you'll have to excuse the silliness.
Guess it's a fine balance between scale, costs and credibility of data.
Thanks for your follow up comments here. It can certainly be a challenge to get the right balance when designing a data collection programme. Organisations often use FrontlineForms with staff / community members who they have trained (a good recent example is Technoserve using FrontlineForms in Tanzania, featured here on our blog) because you do need java-enabled phones and so a slightly different approach can be required to use of standard FrontlineSMS.
A full list of phones that are compatible with FrontlineForms are available here on our website, and we're more than happy to help answering any follow up questions you have on different methods of data collection. Please do feel free to stay in touch, and let us know how you get on with this.
All the Best, | <urn:uuid:74895674-aa54-4e77-b860-80b336ac17ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://frontlinesms.ning.com/forum/topics/phone-compatibility?commentId=2052630%3AComment%3A72933 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934027 | 495 | 1.5 | 2 |
REPORT OF THE AUDITOR TO THOSE CHARGED WITH GOVERNANCE (REPORT 5)
The Audit Commission have issued a Code of Audit Practice 2005, which sets out specific guidance for auditors on reporting to their audited bodies. The Code incorporates the relevant professional auditing standards that cover the ‘Communication of Audit Matters with Those Charged with Governance’ and specifically requires the presentation of this report in which the external auditor (PKF) presents any issues arising from the audit of the accounts before giving his audit opinion on the Council’s financial statements. These arrangements are intended to encourage greater openness and accountability. PKF will be attending the Committee to present their report and answer any questions Members may have.
Report of the Director of Finance and Corporate Services attached.
Report of the external auditor attached.
The report be noted.
[The Committee heard a short presentation from Leigh Lloyd-Thomas of the Council’s external auditors (PKF). He explained the Statement of Accounts was never totally accurate, given they were partly based on estimation, for example, how much income due in the period would be collected. There was always a degree of judgement to be made and Mr Lloyd-Thomas was happy to declare the accounts free of material error. He thanked finance officers for what they had presented and all their help with the audit and resolution of queries and issues. He commended the timely presentation and content of the supporting working papers for the accounts as being very good. Together with the actual Statement of Accounts, they were amongst the best public sector accounts he had audited this year.
The Director of Finance and Corporate Services stated as this was the first set of accounts that PKF had audited for the Council, the process had been completed extremely well. This was due to the quality of the audit and manner in which the auditors did their work and particularly their approach to dealing with queries and issues.
There were areas for improvement, such as how Section 106 receipts and the PFI balance were accounted for. The adequacy of the Council’s insurance reserve needed to be reviewed, as the last valuation was approximately five years ago.
There was an issue regarding when depreciation should be calculated for assets acquired or enhanced. The Council’s policy was to start depreciation from the start of the year following either acquisition or enhancement rather than in proportion to the period in the year from when expenditure on the asset was incurred. The result was a less accurate charge for depreciation in the year of expenditure. The amount was not material and as the reasons for adopting this treatment were beneficial to timely closedown of the accounts; it conformed with recommended practice.
The external auditors were required to present their findings on the Council’s use of resources and scored it as a three (performing well) out of four. Given the reasonably positive comments from PKF, officers were confident this would improve.
The Committee briefly discussed the draft letter of representation set out in appendix D of the report. Councillors agreed with the representations made and were content for the Director of Finance and Corporate Services to sign it on the Council’s behalf.
Some Members questioned the position around Section 106 receipts. It was noted the balance at the end of March was approximately £4 million. The effect of the proposed change in accounting treatment would be to switch the balance from being a provision to a reserve, but the Section 106 reserve would still be ring-fenced to the specific purpose required in the individual agreements.
The Committee asked about the need to review the insurance reserve and whether this meant the current level was too low and if further contributions would need to be made to bring it up to a satisfactory level to meet potential claims. Officers confirmed the review was done around every five years, was now due, and had been commissioned earlier in the year. The results were expected early in 2007. Whilst the valuation was a detailed professional matter on which officers could not forecast the result, it was felt generally, based on discussions with the Council’s insurers, the level of the overall insurance fund was relatively high rather than low.
Regarding Richmond Theatre, Members questioned how the expenditure incurred could be treated as capital expenditure on the basis it was creating a physical asset, given a building was already there. Officers explained the major refurbishment that had required the original guarantee was correctly treated as capital expenditure because it was an enhancement to the existing asset both adding to its value and prolonging its economic life. The external auditors had looked at this point specifically and accepted this established treatment.] | <urn:uuid:fc55d308-b386-417c-98f9-69105368d39c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.richmond.gov.uk/council_committees_list?mgl=mgAi.aspx&ID=11340 | 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 | 0.984678 | 927 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Movie Review: Paths of Glory
By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic
Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," now being reprised in a brand-new print at the Music Box Theatre, is a great antiwar film that has lost none of its power since its release in 1957, when Kubrick was 29 and his legendary career was just beginning.
Set in the trenches of France's Western Front during World War I and based on a true incident that had been novelized by writer Humphrey Cobb, it remains one of the most moving film portrayals of the dirty, brutal and bloody side of war - of relentless death on the battlefields; of official lies, incompetence and conniving; and of injustice so pervasive and inescapable that it crushes the weak and renders impotent the good.
"Paths of Glory" is an antidote to false movies about the glories of war, nonsensical fantasies like John Wayne's "The Green Berets" or Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo."
Stark, dramatic and stunningly visualized, it's also fascinatingly theatrical, shot with a mix of documentary-like realism (the battle scenes) and high, elegant continental style (the scenes in the chateau with the corrupt French generals). It was a pet project of both Kubrick and star-producer Kirk Douglas, whose portrayal of Col. Dax is one of his most memorable. And it became the film that, for many, marked young Kubrick as the successor to Hollywood's '40s wunderkind Orson Welles - a view shared by Welles himself.
The story is simple, shattering. A vain and ambitious French general, Mireau (played by familiar film noir villain George Macready) is manipulated by his wily superior, Gen. Broulard (suave Adolphe Menjou) into a hopeless attack on an impregnable German position. When the attack inevitably fails, Mireau, hysterical, orders the entire regiment court-martialed and 100 men executed for cowardice. Only with difficulty is he persuaded to settle for three men, as an example.
Those three are picked perversely or randomly. One, brutal Pvt. Ferol (the amazing Timothy Carey), is charged because he is seen as an undesirable social misfit - even though he was a brave soldier. Another, brainy Pvt. Arnaud (Joseph Turkel), is chosen by lot. The third, courageous Capt. Paris (Ralph Meeker), is chosen by his craven superior, Lt. Roget (Wayne Morris), because Paris witnessed Roget's drunken cowardice. The attack's heroic commander, Dax, furious because his men are being scapegoated, volunteers as defense attorney for the court-martial, to battle against hopeless odds, closed minds and a system preordained to kill.
"Paths of Glory" is both a terrifying, grim look at battle and an excruciatingly tense courtroom thriller. Together, it's a devastating indictment of war as conducted by opportunists and liars.
"Paths of Glory" was Kubrick's fourth film. He had just finished the great 1956 low-budget heist noir "The Killing" before snagging star Douglas for "Glory." Yet it's incredibly assured, filled with intense performances and striking camerawork. Kubrick was a movie buff who echoed classics like "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Howard Hughes' "Hell's Angels," and directors like Max Ophuls and Ingmar Bergman, in his work here.
He can burn images and speeches into your mind - like the famous cockroach scene, which begins with a jail cell tirade from Paris about the insect remaining alive after they all die, and ends with wolf-eyed Carey's smashing slap and snarl: "Now you got the edge on him!"
Despite its power, idealism and awesome suspense, "Paths of Glory" failed with 1957 audiences, even though that year's Oscar winner was an equally passionate antiwar epic, David Lean's "The Bridge on the River Kwai," written from Frenchman Pierre Boulle's novel by two blacklisted and uncredited scenarists, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. (Kubrick had even better writers helping him adapt Cobb: pulp noir expert Jim Thompson and witty novelist Calder Willingham.) But it's been regarded as a classic ever since. And ever since, audiences have wept at this movie's annihilating last scene - when a beautiful, frightened German girl is forced to sing a ballad to the departing French soldiers. The Jewish-American Kubrick was greatly affected by the scene and the actress, too; she became his future wife, Suzanne Christian Harlan Kubrick.
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave," reads the poem that inspired "Paths." But though the film's subject is bloody and its viewpoint gloomy, we can still take inspiration from the idealism and cool mastery of Kubrick's undying art.
"Paths of Glory"
Directed by Stanley Kubrick; written by Kubrick, Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham, based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb; photographed by George Krause; edited by Eva Kroll; art direction by Ludwig Reiber; music by Gerald Fried; produced by Kubrick, Kirk Douglas and James B. Harris. A United Artists release of a Harris-Kubrick production; opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre. Running time: 1:26. No MPAA rating (parents cautioned for battlefield violence and intense, mature themes).
Col. Dax - Kirk Douglas
Capt. Paris - Ralph Meeker
Gen. Broulard - Adolphe Menjou
Gen. Mireau - George Macready
Lt. Roget - Wayne Morris
Private Ferol - Timothy Carey
Private Arnaud - Joseph Turkel
German girl singer - Suzanne Christian | <urn:uuid:8716956b-c1d4-4e2e-ae74-7b656cd2efa3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://listings.dallasnews.com/reviews/show/8813-review-paths-of-glory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959128 | 1,211 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Learn about Windows PowerShell
How Can I Return File Names of Files Created in Less Than an Hour from the Current Time?
Hey, Scripting Guy! I am attempting to write a script that looks at the creation dates of all files in a certain directory. If the files were created less than an hour from the current time, the script will return those file names. The script will be a recurring script running every hour. I read the script article concerning the datediff function; however, I am not sure how to compare the objFile.CreationDate (string) and now(). Can you please help?
I used to hate working with dates in VBScript. Here is a collection of scripts that work with files and folders from the Script Center Script Repository. These two articles talk about using the datediff function: the first one is a Sesame Script article from the Library and the second is a Scripting Guy blog article. Working with dates is easier when you use Windows PowerShell and I have a series of Hey Scripting Guy blogs that talk abouit ths.
Hey, Scripting Guy! I´m trying to get the actual connection speed of my Network-Connection, and I'm going mad. It seems that WMI has such a parameter, but the value is always empty. I can see Connection Speed in the Status of the Network-Card, but how can I access that information with a script?
According to the WMI SDK, the speed property has not been implemented on any version of Microsoft Windows before Windows Vista and therefore always returns null. On Windows Vista, it will return the actual connection speed. That is why you are having a problem with your script. Here is a script that will work for you on Windows XP.
strComputer = "."
wmiNS = "\root\WMI"
wmiQuery = "Select * from MSNdis_LinkSpeed"
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & wmiNS)
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery(wmiQuery)
For Each objItem in colItems
wscript.echo "Active: " & objItem.Active
wscript.echo "InstanceName: " & objItem.InstanceName
wscript.echo "NdisLinkSpeed: " & objItem.NdisLinkSpeed
wscript.echo " "
Top of page
Hey, Scripting Guy! We are trying to hide the Internet Explorer address bar, but after searching around and wasting nearly an hour, we gave up. Can you help us, old master of scripting minutiae?
I am not sure I like being called an old master of scripting minutiae, but I will take it as a compliment, which is I am sure the sprit in which it was offered. There is actually a "Hey, Scripting Guy!" article that was written several years ago that talks about this very thing. Here is a script I wrote that does a similar thing:
Set objExplorer = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
objExplorer.AddressBar = 0
objExplorer.Visible = 1
Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a good knowledge of Group Policy but I am unsure how to work with it through script. Could you please send me some resources related to scripting and Group Policy.
I am not entirely certain from your e-mail message exactly what you are trying to do with scripting and Group Policy. If you would like to actually create Group Policy objects via scripting, you are pretty much out of luck unless you purchase a third-party product. We do have an API that is available through the Group Policy Management Console, which will allow you to manage Group Policy objects via scripting. You could also be talking about using WMI filters with Group Policy. So I am going to send you some links related to both topics. This article talks about using WMI filters in Group Policy. This article talks about scripting WMI-related tasks and contains a number of good ideas. Here is a link to the Group Policy scripting hub, which has links to articles and the Script Repository.
Hey, Scripting Guy! I'm trying to compile a VBScript that will go out to a predefined server list, do a WMI call for local disk drives, and then output that to an Office Excel cell. My problem is that I am overwriting my disk data in the Office Excel cell while I'm in my for...next loop. The data I want to collect is the name, description, size, and free space of every local fixed disk in that server and output that to a single Office Excel cell. How can I append all the disk data into that single cell within Office Excel?
All you need to do is to append to your variable inside the for...each…next loop. This is seen :
a = Array("a","b","c")
For each i In a
b = b + i
Hey, Scripting Guy! I am new to scripting. I need a script that will monitor a text log file for new entries (or lines), that contain the word “Global” or “Remote”. That line needs to be put in an e-mail message and sent to a distribution list. Also, each day a new text log file is created by the application. So, the script needs to account for that. Example :
Wed Nov 12 17:54:44 EST 2008, Global, userid, Unknown, User Logged In
Wed Oct 29 11:48:06 EST 2008, HWDevice, userid, 11111111,
Device HKxxxxxx successfully processed Action: Remote Application: Remote Application Name=MyRemote
I am not entirely certain I understand exactly what you are asking. When you mention monitoring, that makes me think of looking at something on a rather continuous basis. This kind of scripting is rather difficult and is actually not best done for long periods of time using a script. We can monitor a file for changes using the type of technique that is described in this "Hey, Scripting Guy!" article.
When the file is changed, we could open the file and look for the word "Global" or "Remote". To do this, you need to use regular expressions, which is another rather advanced kind of scripting. In fact, regular expressions become their own language and are areas in which people specialize. This "Hey, Scripting Guy!" article talks about searching a text file for a particular word.
If this is something that must run continuously, what you really need to do is write a service to do this. If you insist on doing this via script, the second best thing to do would be to create a permanent event consumer via WMI. This can be done by scripting, but is very difficult to do as well. This article talks about the process involved in performing this.
Because you are new to scripting, let me point you to some resources that may be of interest to you. This is the VBScript Getting Started Guide. It has a number of good links to help you get started. You may also wish to consider learning Windows PowerShell. In fact, Windows PowerShell is the future of Microsoft scripting. If I were just starting out, I think I would focus on learning Windows PowerShell and be ahead of the game, rather than learning VBScript, which is currently in maintenance mode at Microsoft. This means there is no new development work being done to it other than a few bug fixes from time to time. In fact, VBScript has not changed since the release of Windows XP. Here is the Windows PowerShell hub. If you decide to learn Windows PowerShell, download and install version 1.0, which is the current, released product.
Hey, Scripting Guy! If I use the script below, I can enter all the SAMACCOUNT names in the array to filter just those user objects in Active Directory Directory Services? Is there a limitation to how long the array can be?
Set colItems = GetObject _
("LDAP://ou=Servers, dc=fabrikam, dc=com")
colItems.Filter = Array(“User”, "Computer")
For Each objItem in colItems
An array is, I believe, pretty much limited by the amount of memory you have in your computer. Play with this script to demonstrate:
StartTime = Timer
For i = 0 To 1000000
ReDim Preserve a(i)
a(i) = i
endTime = Timer
WScript.Echo "It took: " & FormatNumber(endtime - startTime) & " seconds"
You will also notice this takes a significant amount of time as the size of the array approaches more than a million items. On my computer the above script took 45 seconds and used a maximum of 35 MB of RAM.
Hey, Scripting Guy! I downloaded the WindowsPowerShellV2_CTP3_SDK.chm, but when I open it on my Windows Vista computer, all I get is "Navigation to Web Page was cancelled." Is this file corrupt or what?
You have to right-click the .chm file and unblock it in Windows Vista.
Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there a way to detect or enumerate disabled network adapters? I’ve disabled my Local Area Connection and checked it via WMI’s Win32_NetworkAdapter. I get NetConnectionStatus of ‘0’ (Disconnected). I would like to see the same behavior the Network Connections Control Panel applet provides.
Unfortunately, WMI does not report this information. However, DevCon will probably work for you.
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I find out who is using a file on the network, such as an Office Excel file that a user has had open for a long time and has forgotten to close). Thank you very much in advance for your assistance in this matter.
Strange thing: I have been asked this question twice today! And I don’t have a better answer for you than I did for the other guy. I don’t think it can be done. You may want to check The Official Scripting Guys Forum! and see what they say.
Have a safe weekend, and we will see you back on Monday. Until then, peace.
Ed Wilson and Craig Liebendorfer, Scripting Guys
Thank you admin, good article
I have files on CD in subfolders firstname_surname e.g. E:\Mel_VB\ or E:\John_Smith\. I want to copy all .jpg files to my C:\ not including subfolders and rename them to include the firstletter of firstname and secondname (subfolder name). e.g. E:\Mel_VB\001.jpg to C:\Pics\MV001.jpg AND E:\John_Smith\002.jpg to C:\Pic\JS002.jpg
I'm able to copy the files without the subfolders but don't know how to go about the renaming:
for /d %%a in (*.*) do xcopy /y "\%%a\*.jpg" "C:\Pics\"
Thanking you in advance,
Question, How can I setup powershell power management settings which will allow me to shutdown as well as power up a device or devices at a certain time?
I need to write a script that prompts the user to select 1 of 4 options in a dialog box. For example. Once the user logs in a window needs to pop up.
The user is asked, "Please choose the desk you are logging into."
The options would be a dropdown list showing "desk 1, desk 2, desk 3, desk 4"
Once the user has chosen their selection there will be a value corresponding to that selection such as 346, 367, 325, 356, My script will then need to proceed and as follows if
346, write value in the file C:\Folder\cptermw.ini , section; TTY configuration, Value; TTYREAL =
This will set our Virtual Machine's software TTY to the correct terminal number for our software to print to the proper printer.
Any help would be appreciation | <urn:uuid:24cc0eef-dd8c-4093-8ac7-5703aa6bd5fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2009/01/24/quick-hits-friday-the-scripting-guys-respond-to-a-bunch-of-questions-01-23-09.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931238 | 2,558 | 1.804688 | 2 |
When I was in 9th grade, I was asked in social studies class to name the person whom I most admire. That's a simple task on its face, but I found it exceedingly difficult. I have the same difficulty when asked to name my favorite movie. It's not that I can't find a person or movie that I like, but rather that I am not the sort of person who ranks things.
A few months ago, when I participated in something called the American Values Survey, I was again asked the most admired person question, but this time I had no trouble coming up with a name. Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has done more than any other person to promote and energize atheism in recent memory, and atheists in the United States are more confident and more vocal then ever before as a result. His recent book The God Delusion not only solidified my nascent atheism, but also inspired me to take a greater interest in the subject, ultimately leading to this blog. Superbly reasoned and elegantly witty, The God Delusion makes an unapologetically devastating (from a theists point of view) intellectual and moral case for atheism. I recommend the book to everyone. Dawkins' web site, richarddawkins.net, is also an excellent resource for a wide array of topics related to both religion and evolution. Dawkins is a top tier scientist and author who rose to prominence by proposing, in The Selfish Gene, the now widely accepted idea that the gene is the principal unit upon which evolution acts. His success in advancing the cause of atheism is in no small part due to the gravitas his name carries. It is a measure of how far atheism has to go that most Americans have nevertheless never heard of him.
My favorite atheist writer is actually not Richard Dawkins but American neuroscientist Sam Harris. His books The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation are unparalleled, as are many of his other writings and speeches available at his web site, samharris.org. The best introduction to atheism available on the web (that I am aware of) is his essay An Atheist Manifesto. If you can get past the title -- it has a unfortunate tendency to evoke A Communist Manifesto, or a deranged anarchist writing an antigovernment rant in a remote cabin -- it is an excellent, and fairly quick, read.
Physicist Victor Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis and journalist Christopher Hitchens's God is Not Great are also excellent and highly recommended books. Author and journalist Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, ostensibly about Mormonism, is a fascinating case study of how religion begins, and how it can spiral out of control and spawn abuse and violence. Others that I have not yet read but come highly recommended by others include Daniel Dennet's Breaking the Spell, Dan Barker's Losing Faith in Faith, and Ayan Hirsi Ali's Infidel. Although I have only so far read small parts of their works, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the freethinkers of yesteryear such a Bertrand Russell and Robert Ingersoll. Lest I forget, the greatest argument for atheism ever written (or the most ironic, at least) is the book I am currently reading, the Bible.
For those of you with the time to listen to podcasts, I can recommend Point of Inquiry, Freethought Radio, The Non-Prophets, The Atheist Experience, and The Way of Reason. Some of these podcasts are better than others, but all are worth listening to. Excellent web resources include the aforementioned Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris web sites, PZ Meyers' Pharyngula blog, The Secular Web, TalkOrigins, and the Iron Chariots Wiki.
Although I believe I have some novel ideas to add to the debate, I gratefully acknowledge that I draw heavily from the aforementioned sources, among others. I truly stand on the shoulders of giants. | <urn:uuid:a99c5f86-35b3-436a-b6fd-eff517c27278> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://proudatheist.blogspot.com/2007/09/i-stand-on-shoulders-of-giants.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954248 | 807 | 1.570313 | 2 |
I'm in Wisconsin with my Cousin K. Whereas my brother the cop I call Doc here at Cobb, Cousin K is an actual doctor. He is one of the many Americans who believes healthcare is a right. We disagree.
I'm trying to understand, of course, what medical nirvana would be like, and to me it starts with free everything up to adulthood. More specifically, I think every American should automatically get whatever basic standard of healthcare our public schools require for registration. That would be like the sorts of immunizations that parents have to provide proof of to keep kids in school.
Then the older you get, the less health care you get for free from the state. That hurts in principle only if the state is the only provider. People who want to indulge their cultural sensibilities to look young forever are free to purchase whatever in the private sector. But as I said before, I don't like Obama selling healthcare (insurance) from the starting point of people in their 60s dying of cancer.
The other thing I don't like about what we got (although who knows what we'll get in four years) is that the fundamental cost of health care provision is not going down. That's just wrong. You really can't call it reform if the same thing costs more.
But here's something really crazy. According to my sources at First Things, which is now going pay per view, there's a debate among doctors about redefining the legal definition of 'dead' in order to expedite the harvesting of human organs. But that's not so scary because, well I give the medical profession more credibility than that. I don't give credibility to the current political climate of all this fast-tracking towards medical utopia. Check this out.
Indeed, legislation (A-9865) just introduced by New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky would turn the current approach for obtaining consent inside-out. Brodksy’s bill would require every applicant for a New York driver’s license to expressly opt out as an organ donor, rather than, as is currently the case, expressly opt in. The proposal states: “If the applicant does not decline to be registered in the New York State Organ and Tissue Donor Registry they will be automatically enrolled.” In other words, unless you explicitly refuse to be a potential donor—you are one.
Don't let this one slip by, OK?
It used to be that one would be considered a saint to donate your body to science. Now, as soon as you croak their taking eminent domain. Is nothing sacred? | <urn:uuid:339f1543-fd1f-4c1e-8e50-110a97d000fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cobb.typepad.com/cobb/2010/05/dead-donors-presumed-consent.html | 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 | 0.968261 | 535 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Podcasts & RSS Feeds
Most Active Stories
Mon February 21, 2011
A Chocolate Lab who does his part to help Michigan's children
For this week’s edition of our series “What’s Working,” Morning Edition Host Christina Shockley welcomes Dan Cojanu. He’s the Vice President and Program Director of the Canine Advocacy Program (CAP), based in Oakland County. Through the use of a Chocolate Labrador named Amos, the CAP provides support to child victims of abuse and neglect when they are required to testify or be present in court.
Cojanu begins by explaining how he began organizing the CAP. As he was preparing to retire from his job as the Supervisor for Victim’s Services in Oakland County in 2008, Cojanu decided that he wasn’t done with victim advocacy. Not only did he want to continue work with victims of crime, Cojanu says he also had a desire to work with dogs.
“I did a little research, and I wound up out in Seattle at the Courthouse Dogs Program. And once I was able to observe what these dogs bring to the court setting, to forensic interviews, I just got so excited that I had to bring this back to Michigan.”
When a child has to go before a court as a victim, Cojanu says the experience can be overwhelmingly stressful for his or her emotions.
“These children, when they come to court, the anxiety level, I don’t think it can be measured. They’re going to have to be in front of a bunch of adults who they don’t know, all strangers, and tell the most intimate details of a sexual assault or neglect or abuse or whatever. And it’s so frightening to these kids.”
When a trained service dog like Amos is introduced to the situation, though, Cojanu says the effects are phenomenal.
“You bring a dog into the picture and they have a whole new focus. They have a big cuddly Lab that they can do tricks with, take for walks. A lot of the kids will draw pictures of Amos, and it just brings that anxiety level so far down, that by the time they’re ready to go to court, they’re at least a little better prepared, certainly more relaxed. And it’s just phenomenal. And when they’re done, you know, Amos is there for a big hug.”
Occasionally, Amos has been allowed to sit beside children as they testify on the witness stand. That makes Amos the first dog ever permitted to sit beside someone as they testified in a Michigan courtroom.
Cojanu says that, in his thirty years of work as an advocate for victims, he has never seen a child leave the witness stand without being extremely upset. Since Amos has come around, though, Cojanu says things have been different.
“I can tell you that every case we’ve worked on, that child, when they’re going home, has a smile on their face. And that’s because of Amos. It’s what he brings.”
Obviously, it takes a special kind of dog to be effective in situations that are so emotionally charged. But Amos, says Cojanu, is certainly the right dog for the job.
“He’s very young. He’s not quite three years old yet, so he still has the puppy personality. But he’s so intuitive it’s amazing. When he senses that somebody is having a difficult time, he goes over to assist kids. Amos also works at the Oakland County Children’s Village in a sexual assault survivor group, and if somebody’s having a difficult time, he gets up and goes over and curls up next to them. He’s just very intuitive, a very loving dog. He’s an amazing dog.”
Beyond the children Amos works with directly, Cojanu says Amos has had an impact on the lives of a wide-array of people in the community.
“He’s become almost the unofficial mascot of the Oakland County Courthouse because, when we train, you see people just smile as we come by. So, the impact goes well beyond the kids. And it helps the court because they now have somebody who’s going to be on the stand who can give them the information that they need. And he just spreads a lot of goodwill wherever he goes.”
Currently, Amos is the only dog in the CAP, but Mr. Cojanu thinks Amos is setting an example for many dogs like him to follow. The benefits of having an intuitive, caring dog like Amos around are starting to be understood by those in fields other than criminal justice, says Cojanu.
“I can see this type of program working with people that are victims of domestic violence. I think we can utilize them more in juvenile detention centers. I think it’s really limitless because any time you open the newspaper now you see that hospitals are utilizing dogs, schools are utilizing dogs in their reading programs. So, I think, as a society, we’re starting to understand what a canine can bring. And I think we’re just getting going on that, so I’m very excited about expanding the program.”
If you’d like to read more about the Canine Advocacy Program, or see pictures of Amos, go to: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Canine-Advocacy-Program/117832911566898
By Eliot Johnson – Michigan Radio Newsroom | <urn:uuid:3b86c640-a279-4e64-b940-51f35e1c3c63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://[email protected]/post/chocolate-lab-who-does-his-part-help-michigans-children | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963713 | 1,189 | 1.5625 | 2 |
By Josh Akeman
At Thursday night's meeting, Fayetteville's city council heard a presentation from Bill James about JPods, an innovative solar-powered personal rapid transit (PRT) system he has been pitching to various governments for fourteen years, hoping to get the clearance to acquire right of way and build a network. The idea, which involves suspended rail vehicles that can be hailed on demand, is supported by Mayor Greg Clifton as a viable free market solution to transportation problems for communities like Fayetteville and Fayette County. James presented a novel and "Jetsonian" image of what Fayetteville could look like with such a transit system, and touted it as an alternative to the highway system, and an answer for America's dependence on foreign oil.
While the presentation offered an interesting look at a transportation system that some cities in other countries have implemented, the viability of the idea for Fayette County was questioned, as were James' intentions. Councilman Larry Dell challenged James with a press release he found online, bearing James' name, entitled "Fayetteville, Ga. Signs PRT Letter of Intent: Georgia To Be First with Solar-Powered Transport System."
As of press time, the press release dated Dec. 21, 2012 can still be found on the blog of Personal Rapid Transport Consulting, at the website www.prtconsulting.com. A google search for 'JPods Fayetteville' also yielded a Google Groups discussion group featuring correspondence from James saying "it looks like we've broken the right-of-way barrier," and then referencing a September resolution from Mayor Clifton that generally supported "private sector solutions" to Atlanta's traffic congestion. The resolution made no specific reference to JPods or any other specific transportation innovations.
In response to Dell's questioning James said the press release was not meant to be released to the public and that he had thought the resolution had been passed within the context of the JPod idea. Councilman Walt White emphasized that the resolution had been passed with the Mayor's tie-breaking vote. The resolution was in fact passed with White and Dell opposing it, while Paul Oddo and Mickey Edwards voted in favor. Councilman Ed Johnson abstained from voting, allowing Mayor Clifton to break the tie in favor of the resolution.
Clifton said in an interview on Friday that he still supports the JPod idea and other innovative, free market solutions for traffic congestion as well as the larger need for energy independence. He agreed, though, that James had gone too far in suggesting Fayetteville had already agreed to anything, and also emphasized he himself has no financial interest in JPods.
"I'm sure he was trying to capitalize on every little bit of publicity he could get from it, absolutely," Clifton said, and added that he had told James as much in an e-mail, saying, "you got the cart in front of the horse, we haven't made any commitments."
Clifton says his resolution was designed to support private sector solutions to transportation, rather than any particular project.
"The idea was rather than government taxing people to pay for transportation, let's let the private sector do that," Clifton said.
Much of James' presentation emphasized the power of the private sector to, when given the chance, innovate and substantially improve quality of life for the average citizen. James pointed to "radical innovations" in the past where government got out of a market and innovation flourished.
"The federal government controlled communications as a monopoly from World War I to about 1982. In 1982 we restored free markets and we went from a century of rotary phones to millions of jobs, vast innovation, and better services at lower costs," James said.
In terms of cost savings to consumers, James said it costs 56 cents per mile on average to travel by car, whereas JPods would cost only .06 cents per mile. He said if a network were installed along the golf cart paths in Peachtree City, for example, it could save an average family $2,500 to $5,000 per year in transportation costs.
James, a veteran who served in Iraq, also repeatedly emphasized the problem of America's dependance on foreign oil.
"We've been at war since 1990 defending our foreign oil, and done almost nothing to get off of our need for that oil," James said. He also displayed graphs showing the correlation between rising gas prices and unemployment.
Councilmen White and Dell both said the failure of the T-SPLOST referendum showed how Fayette citizens felt about public transportation, though James argued this this technology is not like public transportation because each JPod is meant for personal transportation of up to only six people to a specific location. Additionally, he said the system would be privately funded, not supported by tax dollars.
James said that he had been repeatedly turned down for the idea for over a decade, but argued that was a failure of politicians to be willing to "be the first," in terms of innovation. He said he has a number of clients, including airports and cities, that would license JPod systems if his company could find a first location to build and demonstrate their effectiveness.
"These are being built everywhere but in America because people don't want to be first in America any more, politicians don't want to be first," James said, arguing that Fayetteville could serve as a Kitty Hawk, the location where the Wright Brothers' first flight took place.
"Kitty Hawk is famous not because it's an airport, but because it was first," James asserted, going on to say, "innovation is very rare and very difficult to implement, and it will always face a lot of naysayers."
From Clifton's perspective, he agrees that Fayetteville and Fayette County are not ideally suited to make JPods a profitable venture in and of themselves. On the other hand, he thinks these sorts of ventures would bring jobs and make Fayetteville an example to the rest of the country in terms of energy independence.
"If we could break the ice and get something started, there would be a great deal of potential. If we had a demonstrator here people could fly in from all over and try it out and say 'I gotta get me one of these,'" Clifton said, adding that with the instability in the Middle East: "If in fact oil prices do escalate and we wind up with fifteen dollar a gallon gas people will need some alternative forms of transprotation. If gas prices go crazy and we already have this started we'll look really bright."
No action was taken following the presentation and back and forth discussion. Clifton said the idea will be handled by a study committee and that there will likely be town hall meetings to get the public involved. | <urn:uuid:370078a0-dd49-4c07-9b12-0dc86899da57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fayettedailynews.com/article.php?id_news=10600 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9738 | 1,392 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today’s world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind’s benefit, so will history decide whether today’s broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or to debase them.
If I seem today to address myself chiefly to the problems of television, I don’t want any of you radio broadcasters to think that we’ve gone to sleep at your switch. We haven’t. We still listen. But in recent years, most of the controversies and crosscurrents in broadcast programming have swirled around television. And so my subject today is the television industry and the public interest.
Like everybody, I wear more than one hat. I am the chairman of the FCC. But I am also a television viewer and the husband and father of other television viewers. I have seen a great many programs that seemed to me eminently worthwhile and am not talking about the much-bemoaned good old days of Playhouse 90 and Studio One.
I’m talking about this past season. Some were wonderfully entertaining, such as The Fabulous Fifties, The Fred Astaire Show, and The Bing Crosby Special; some were dramatic and moving, such as Conrad’s Victory and Twilight Zone; some were marvelously informative, such as The Nation’s Future, CBS Reports, The Valiant Years. I could list many more—programs that I am sure everyone here felt enriched his own life and that of his family. When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit-and-loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.
Is there one person in this room who claims that broadcasting can’t do better? Well, a glance at next season’s proposed programming can give us little heart. Of 73½ hours of prime evening time, the networks have tentatively scheduled fifty-nine hours of categories of action-adventure, situation comedy, variety, quiz, and movies. Is there one network president in this room who claims he can’t do better? Well, is there at least one network president who believes that the other networks can do better? Gentlemen, your trust accounting with your beneficiaries is long overdue. Never have so few owed so much to so many.
Image: Modern Television Studio Owned by the Island Creek Coal Company near Richlands, Virginia, 1974
Canadian subscribers add $10; All other international subscribers add $40. | <urn:uuid:e9bd4ece-c5eb-4b77-93ec-9b55ba18e316> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/breaking-the-bad-news.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956246 | 743 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering a request by Mexico to export avocados from different growing regions to the U.S.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is currently reviewing a Pest Risk Analysis, pest list and comments from SAGARPA, Mexico’s department of agriculture, said Tanya Espinosa, an APHIS spokeswoman.
If APHIS approves the request, hass avocados from other Mexican states could be exported to the U.S., Espinosa said.
Currently, the U.S. allows imports of Mexican avocados from the state of Michoacan only. A record 782 million pounds of avocados from Michoacan were shipped to the U.S. in 2011-12, up from 620 million pounds the season before.
Tom Bellamore, president of the Irvine-based California Avocado Commission, said he had not seen any proposals from Mexico, but was aware that other Mexican states were interested in exporting to the U.S.
Bellamore was cautiously optimistic that, should other Mexican states be allowed to export to the U.S., demand could keep up with the extra product.
“I guess my answer is, ‘I sure hope so,’” he said. “Growth potential still exists in the U.S. Avocados from elsewhere are an essential part of selling avocados in the U.S. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that there’s room for everyone.”
Emiliano Escobedo, executive director of the Irvine-based Hass Avocado Board, said the board was investing in nutritional research to stimulate demand.
“If you look at the success of the past ten years, the industry has seen tremendous growth, and I think there are opportunities to keep growing,” Escobedo said. | <urn:uuid:72d5fedc-0947-4c6f-83c4-d46e933ee4e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thepacker.com/fruit-vegetable-news/US-weighing-other-Mexican-states-for-avocado-imports-175414241.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961424 | 395 | 1.695313 | 2 |
First of all, given the grid sizes you've talked about you're not likely to run into performance issues with your current implementation, so if you're asking this because you have a performance problem this may not be it (and you should profile). That said:
The "array of arrays" approach might seem like a reasonable representation of a grid (and to some extent, it is), but it has some drawbacks. As you've discovered, using the interface can be awkward (especially if you're using something the like Cocoa array classes, since their indexing APIs are cumbersome already).
They're also not very cache-coherent, since the entire grid is not guaranteed to be contiguous in memory, and they allow the grid to be "jagged" (i.e., not really a grid) since you could adjust the size of an individual row only, should you so choose (of course in some cases this is a benefit, but not in this one).
So, why not just use a single array? A one-dimensional array (
NSMutableArray, bare memory, whatever) can represent a n-dimensional grid easily and requires only a little bit of indexing math, and it provides you the significant benefit of improved locality-of-reference for the entire grid's elements.
An example using
vector (although the principle applies to any other array interface):
unsigned width = /* ... */
unsigned height = /* ... */
std::vector<Object*> grid(width * height);
// Compute the linear index of the item at (row, column) in the grid:
unsigned row = /* ... */
unsigned column = /* ... */
unsigned index = column + (row * width);
// Access the grid:
grid[index] = /* assign some object */
The principle here is to treat each contiguous set of
width elements in the array as a single row. That's how you arrive at the indexing math used to compute
Another issue you touched on is how your grid resizes. This is an issue regardless of the grid implementation you use. You might try handling it by only increasing the actual storage for the grid; never decrease it. Almost any implementation of a grid is going to involve a copy of the existing grid elements when the grid resizes. Implementations utilizing linked-lists won't (or will minimize them), but then you're back to having cache-coherency issues.
You want to minimize that copying, and at a minimum you only need to resize to increase storage. You can keep, independently, a variable indicating the grid's logical size and only process that many rows, ignoring any extra "deactivated" rows that might exist beyond that when your grid resizes down. This means the resize-downward operation only involves setting a variable to the new, lower number.
This can be extended to apply to cases where the grid resizes in both directions, even though your specific case does not currently seem to require that.
I mentioned cache coherency/locality of reference a few times, and that's because I'm assuming since your game is "grid based" your doing a lot of iteration over all (active) cells in the grid. It's that kind of use-case where coherency of your data can have a surprising impact on performance, although it's still true that at the specific numbers you mentioned it's unlikely to be that big of a deal. | <urn:uuid:dd4e7895-23ba-4879-a11d-dad6a7566ac1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/44858/alternatives-to-nsmutablearray-for-storing-2d-grid-ios-cocos2d?answertab=active | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932615 | 707 | 1.679688 | 2 |
As many Sikh communities across the United States have done in the past month, the Sikh community near Redding, California, held their annual Vaisakhi celebration in that city. The Vaisakhi Festival and Day of Non-Violence involved participation by the area’s diverse communities. See more photos and video at the Record Searchlight and read more at the Anderson Valley Post.
Tomorrow, two Nagar Kirtans (religious processions) will be taking place in Redding, California, and in Renton, Washington, to commemorate Vaisakhi, one of the most significant dates on the Sikh calendar. In Renton, exhibits featuring historic Sikh artifacts will also be available for viewing: The Sikh Military Heritage Exhibit The Sacred Words: An Exhibit of the Sikh Written Word The Sikh Community: Over a Hundred Years in the Pacific Northwest Officially on April 14, Vaisakhi celebrations have been taking place across […]
Well into the month of April, Sikhs across the country are continuing to celebrate Vaisakhi, one of the most significant dates on the Sikh calendar. This weekend saw Vaisakhi festivities take place on the east coast, mid-west and west coast. Last Saturday, thousands of Sikhs assembled in New York City for their 26th annual Sikh Day Parade: The Sikh community brought color and culture to Manhattan’s Madison Square Park on Saturday. Parade-goers marched under brilliant sunshine to celebrate Vaisakhi Day, […]
Almost ten days ago, Sikhs in the Dallas, Texas, area celebrated Vaisakhi with the opening of their new Gurdwara in Irving on April 13, when the state recognized “Khalsa Day”. Read more at SikhNet, or at the Gurdwara Nishkam Seva website.
Alex DiBlasi and Alexa Altman are a pair of writers who left their lives in NYC to go on a cross-country adventure to “see what it’s all about.” A friend and colleague, Alex is also a committed civil rights advocate with the Sikh Coalition. During their travels, Alex and Alexa recently visited the Gurdwara in Jackson, Mississippi, to join the local Sikh community in their commemoration of Vaisakhi (one of the most significant celebrations on the Sikh calendar). Below, Alex […]
On April 14, Sikhs across the United States and around the world are celebrating Vaisakhi (or Baisakhi), which is the most significant celebration on the Sikh calendar. In many cities, this celebration includes a Nagar Kirtan (religious procession) through the city, and these are taking place across the country this month. In Los Angeles, California, Vaisakhi was celebrated on April 7 with a large Nagar Kirtan originating at the Los Angeles Convention Center (pictured above). Similar celebrations are also taking […]
A Sikh girl in Detroit, Michigan celebrates Vaisakhi (also known as Baisakhi) at Wayne State University. More photos of that celebration is available at the Wayne State University flickr feed. Vaisakhi is the most celebrated event on the Sikh calendar and takes place each April: Vaisakhi (Punjabi: ਵੈਸਾਖੀ or ਵਸਾਖੀ, vaisĝkhī, is, as well, known as Baisakhi), it is a very important day for Sikhs and one of the most colourful events in the Sikh calendar. It occurs during mid-April […]
Today, the Huffington Post published an essay by Jalees Rehman, M.D. , that discussed the figurative judging of books by their covers, especially in the context of Muslims and their beards: Choosing an outward appearance that is compatible with one’s faith is a personal decision. However, we have to constantly re-evaluate our priorities and make sure that the time, efforts and resources devoted to the outward appearance should be in some measure of proportion to its actual importance within the […]
I’ve been enjoying surveying all the different Vaisakhi celebrations across the United States among various Sikh communities. It’s become apparent that many Sikh communities are using these celebrations as outreach efforts to educate non-Sikhs about the religion and the Sikh identity. Princeton, New Jersey: On his website, one Savraj Singh posted a couple of pictures of Sikhs celebrating Vaisakhi at Rockefeller College in New Jersey. The setting for their service appears to be an old college building and gives the sense of […]
Categories: Events, News Bits, Sikhism • Tags: Baisakhi, California, Connecticut, Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji Foundation, Lawrence, Los Angeles, Nagar Kirtan, New Jersey, New York, Norwalk, Princeton, Rockefeller College, Savraj Singh, Selma, Sikh, Stockton, Vaisakhi | <urn:uuid:bd1951f6-5180-41ab-948c-6ba2d86fb102> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanturban.com/tag/baisakhi/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943732 | 1,019 | 1.648438 | 2 |
After the voters of two states, including our neighbor, Colorado, decided to legalize marijuana last November, it was probably inevitable that lawmakers in New Mexico would want to take a serious look at following suit in the current session of the Legislature.
Sure enough, Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, is looking at several options on the marijuana front. Though he hasn’t decided which route he’s going to take, Ortiz y Pino, who was just named chairman of the Senate Public Affairs Committee, told me Friday that he’s looking at three possible options, including an amendment to the state constitution, modeled after the law in Colorado, which would legalize weed for use by adults, regulate it and tax it.
If a proposed constitutional amendment passes both chambers of the Legislature, it would be put on the next general election ballot — 2014 — to let the voters decide.
Call it a “reeferendum.” And as long as we’re getting silly here, I have to point out that in the Legislature, constitutional amendments are introduced as joint resolutions. (Get it? Get it? OK, enough of that.)
Ortiz y Pino is realistic about the chances of such an amendment. “I don’t think we could pass it right now,” he said. “But it’s probably not a bad idea to be laying the groundwork.”
After all, it took Colorado advocates at least a couple of tries to persuade voters in that state to take the plunge.
Under the amendment Ortiz y Pino is considering, the state would license marijuana cultivation, product manufacturing and testing facilities, as well as retail stores.
The state would tax wholesale sales of marijuana. The first 20 percent of the tax proceeds would go to public education. Ten percent would go to lowering college tuition for state colleges and universities. The counties in which the marijuana was sold would get 10 percent of the tax collected. Other agencies and programs — Medicaid, mental-health programs, drug rehabilitation programs, prison and jails, would get a cut of the revenue as well.
Individual counties that did not want to legalize marijuana could opt out.
The constitutional route is just one of the options that Ortiz y Pino has been discussing with the Drug Policy Alliance, the organization that for years fought for the medical-marijuana law that finally became law a few years ago.
Another alternative is a decriminalization law that would reduce penalties for marijuana possession. That one could have a rocky future in the Roundhouse. Just last month, an interim committee considered — but declined to endorse — such a proposal advocated by the Drug Policy Alliance. This bill would have allowed adults to possess up to an ounce of marijuana with no penalty and called for civil fines — but no criminal charges — for possessing up to 8 ounces. Possessing more than 8 ounces would be a misdemeanor under that proposal. Currently, possession of up to 8 ounces of marijuana is a misdemeanor under state law.
The third option that Ortiz y Pino is considering is a memorial calling for the state to conduct a study of the costs and benefits of legalizing marijuana. “If we did that this year, we still could get the constitutional amendment on the ballot by 2014,” he said.
But one of Ortiz y Pino’s aides is pushing hard to go straight to the constitutional amendment. “I want to go for the Big Garbanzo,” said Harry Pavlides, a veteran New Mexico pollster and political consultant who is working in Ortiz y Pino’s office during the session.
“I don’t like the piecemeal decriminalization approach,” he said. With civil fines, etc., it implies there’s something bad about marijuana, he said. Plus, there would be no tax revenues without legalization.
Besides what he sees as the benefits of legalizing marijuana, there could be a political bump for Democrats as well. “This will increase voter turnout in an off-year if it’s on the ballot,” Pavlides said.
Ortiz y Pino said he probably will decide which path he’s going to take sometime this week.
Contact Steve Terrell at [email protected]. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com. | <urn:uuid:e4557e9b-d8ef-4433-bec8-58539720dee0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sfnewmexican.com/Opinion/012013ROUNDHOUSE | 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 | 0.96576 | 901 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Last fall, David Goldhill wrote an article that seemed to get a lot of attention. I finally read it this summer and now I’m finally posting about it. Sure, health care reform passed in March, but I don’t think anybody believes that will be the last word. Many liberals felt it fell short of their hopes and they will almost certainly press for future reforms along the same lines, and many conservatives want it repealed. So I think that it’s still a relevant topic, if only to become more informed for the whatever the next round of proposals is.
Goldhill, a Democrat, argues that the health care system is based on many faulty premises, like the idea that health insurance should pay for everything. Two of the subtitles in the article show some of his important points: “Health Care Isn’t Health (Or Happiness)” and “Health Insurance Isn’t Health Care.”
I could do the hard work of summarizing the article, but instead I’m going to give an excerpt the estimable Peter Leithart’s post (from which I originally learned of Goldhill’s article) in which he includes two key quotes that show the gist of the argument:
The problem is with the incentives built into the system: “Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.”
The solution is not the kind of reform on the table in DC; insisting on universal insurance is only dealing out more of the problem in Goldhill’s view. Rather, the solution is to return the consumer to the center of the system: “To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy.”
I’d really recommend the article. I don’t know if all of his solutions are right, but the analysis of the system seems quite good. | <urn:uuid:d3f896e0-66fc-43ac-ad33-47786a58af52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://endued.wordpress.com/category/christ-culture/ethics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94916 | 612 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The Era of Their Ways: Apple’s Post-PC World Is Microsoft’s PC-Plus Future
“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm,” Jobs said at D8. “But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people.”
Two years after Jobs uttered those words, are we truly in the post-PC era, as he claimed?
Not according to Microsoft. During his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote Wednesday, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner said we’re not in the post-PC era, but the PC-plus era.
“I want you to know we believe that Apple has it wrong,” Turner said. “They’ve talked about it being the post-PC era. They talk about how the tablet and the PC are different. And the reality in our world, we think that’s completely incorrect. We actually believe Windows 8 is the new era for the PC-plus, and we think that’s very strategic for us going forward. And we believe that you can have a great content consumption and creation device be one and the same. We believe with a single push of a button you can move seamlessly in and out of both worlds. We believe that you can have touch, a pen, and a mouse and a keyboard. We believe you can have end-user security and management.”
Who’s right? Who cares?
Unless you’re still bound by the antiquated and frankly asinine idea that the iPad is not a content-creation device, Microsoft’s vision of the PC-plus world sounds an awful lot like the one that users of Apple products are already living in.
(Image courtesy of The Verge) | <urn:uuid:07961d10-91af-4e21-a1b5-4a5c15dbf5bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allthingsd.com/20120711/the-era-of-their-ways-apples-post-pc-world-is-microsofts-pc-plus-future/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964159 | 462 | 1.625 | 2 |
North Korea is preparing to open up its economy with help from German experts, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported Saturday.
The daily said Pyongyang is secretly seeking advice from German economists and lawyers to come up with new economic policies and attract foreign investment.
According to the advisors from leading German universities, North Korea is currently devising investment laws and already has finalized a master plan with the goal of opening up by the end of 2013.
One unnamed economist on the team told the paper that North Korea does not want to follow the Chinese-style model, which draws foreign investors to special economic zones. "Rather, they are interested in the Vietnamese model, in which specific companies were chosen as recipients of investments," the source said.
But he warned the issue is far from concluded. "The military in North Korea will not want to give up power," he said, adding that resistance from the powerful army will be difficult to overcome. | <urn:uuid:75e7d4fb-3e2e-414a-b460-15e9abc8cf50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/01/07/2013010701314.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980946 | 191 | 1.75 | 2 |
This excerpt taken from the GENT 6-K filed Dec 1, 2005.
Convertible Promissory Notes: The convertible feature of certain notes payable (See Note 2) and stock purchase warrants provides for conversion into Gentiums ordinary shares at below market value. This feature is normally characterized as a beneficial conversion feature (BCF), which represents the intrinsic value of the difference between the conversion price of the instrument and the underlying fair value of the Companys shares at that date. Pursuant to Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF) Issue No. 98-5, Accounting for Convertible Securities with Beneficial Conversion Features or Contingently Adjustable Conversion
Ratio and EITF No. 00-27, Application of EITF Issue No. 98-5 to Certain Convertible Instruments, the Company determined the value of the BCF, for the convertible notes payable and stock purchase warrants issued as of December 31, 2004, to be approximately 3,688 ($4,643) and 459 ($578), respectively. Additionally in conjunction with convertible notes issued in January 2005, the Company determined the value of the BCF to be approximately 1,111 ($1,456) and 138 ($181), for the convertible notes payable and stock purchase warrants, respectively. Accordingly, the relative fair value of the BCF on convertible notes payable and stock purchase warrants was recorded in the financial statements as a discount from the face amount of the notes. The discount was being amortized to interest expense and additional paid in capital, respectively, using the effective interest method, through the earliest put option date. As of September 30, 2005 the convertible notes have all been converted or redeemed. The balance of the discount related to Notes redeemed was charged to expense and for Notes converted into ordinary shares, was charged to additional paid-in capital. | <urn:uuid:e8c978db-4bb1-45b7-9e2e-a0838138ae9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Gentium_SpA_(GENT)/Convertible_Promissory_Notes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9387 | 371 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The moderator at a recent symposium for West Coast Wagyu breeders started the event by posing a question: how do we make Wagyu a sustainable breed and not just a novelty?
I was fortunate enough to be among those on the panel of speakers. So when it came my turn, I put aside my prepared remarks and attempted to answer the question. I emphasized then, as I do now, that most of my remarks would apply to all breeds, from those with the largest numbers down.
Like most breeds, the Wagyu breed has attracted a variety of people to it. Most are commercially minded but only a few run truly commercial operations. One obvious issue is size. There are thousands rather than millions of Wagyu cattle in the U.S. One panel member said there were 24,000 half-blood Wagyu cattle on feed at any one time.
Compare that to the 10 to 12 million cattle on feed in feedlots of more than 1,000 head of capacity. So the Wagyu breed needs to build numbers and integrate its genetics, when appropriate, into the commercial beef herd.
Marketing and creating value
Most of my remarks were focused on marketing and creating value. I reminded them that they are breeders of an end product, not just propagators and multipliers. They're not just in the beef industry but also in the food industry. They must remember that all money flows through the beef industry from consumers, that they compete for consumers' food dollars and that if they lose consumers, they lose their business.
That means they can't breed cattle without finding out if there is a market for their product and what end users really want. Above all, they must market a product that has value and I explained that the definition of “value” is “quality vs. price.” So, if they charge a premium price, they must guarantee a premium-quality product. Alas, some producers of grass-fed beef have failed to provide true value and have failed, I told them.
Wagyu beef has already demonstrated some consumers' willingness to pay big premiums. But I reminded the audience that there is intense competition from other premium-beef programs, some operated by the major packers. The name Wagyu alone won't sell the beef. There's also Australian Wagyu beef, some of which goes to high-end restaurants like Ruth's Chris.
Breeders and those selling Wagyu beef also must focus on selling more of the carcass at a premium, I told them. Too often, breeders think of middle meats when making progeny selections. Those middle meats have to sell at a premium to offset the cuts that sell at a loss. That, of course, was also true for commodity beef. But the beef industry in recent years has done a good job in adding value to the lesser cuts and in developing new cuts such as the flatiron steak.
I also reminded them that importers of European breeds in the 1960s and 1970s thought they had the answer. Where are they today? Conversely, the Angus folk quietly and slowly worked on improving their breed's carcass and meat quality. They got the breed closer to end users than any other breed. The result has been the most successful branded-beef program in history.
I suggested that future growth of the breed might depend more on combining Wagyu genetics with other genetics than in producing pureblood Wagyu beef. That will always be the tiniest of niches. But other Wagyu beef will be subject to the broader macro-economy.
A tougher high-end market
Right now, there's clear evidence that Americans are eating out less and eating more at home because of less disposible income and thus tighter food budgets. This means the market for high-end restaurant beef might not grow for a while.
Consumers might also want less marbled but still consistently tender, juicy beef. The narrow price spread this year between the Choice and Select cutouts suggests beef demand is softer for higher-priced, more marbled beef than for other beef. It's also seen in the relatively modest premium for Prime-graded beef.
Finally, I suggested that those breeders who get closest to the final market for their beef will be more likely to succeed, and that the best genetics will be those that maximize the value of the carcass. I would like to think that this message applies to every beef breed in our national herd.
Steve Kay is a contributing editor to BEEF magazine, and editor and publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly (www.cattlebuyersweekly.com). | <urn:uuid:7a7b1bc4-5b6f-40e0-a6aa-57fa09455e96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beefmagazine.com/beef-quality/1001-breeder-value-mind | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970484 | 942 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Whenever or wherever a disaster occurs, who always comes to the aid of the country devastated by an earthquake, hurricane, or flood? The good old U.S. of A., of course.
Where are all the countries that are suppose to be America’s friends? Like France, Italy, Spain, England, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Mexico and so many others.
We have a major disaster in six of our Southern states. Homes and roads and businesses have been completely destroyed by tornadoes. Loss of life is over 300 and climbing. If ever there was a time America could use a helping hand, it’s now. | <urn:uuid:df212291-02ae-404a-b68d-f3db176cc61f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/2011/04/29/help-wanted/2010/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965845 | 131 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Something we’ve observed recently at Asian Efficiency is that different people we know have very different ways of working and that there are things we can learn from each of them.
I know, it seems obvious – everyone works somewhat differently – but when we started to break down what each person was doing, what we found were very different strengths and weaknesses.
Let’s put it out there first – everyone works differently, and no “one style” is the ideal. It is however, useful to think of your “working style” as something that has unique strengths and weaknesses, and use that as a basis to analyze and improve upon your own productivity.
Not to mention that you can pull a Sylar and steal the better aspects of other people’s working styles.
A note for the RPG fans amongst us: think of your working style a class with particular perks and proficiencies – everyone has a unique combination that you can improve through experience and use.
We’re going to present 5 different working styles below – there are of course many more, but here’s a start to seeing what their strengths and weaknesses are.
Is there a model for breaking this down? Sure there is. But we’re still working on it, so let’s save it for a future article or newsletter.
Style #1: The Pomodoro-Focus Master
This working style is about getting as much work done as possible in as few blocks of time as possible. Typically, this working style doesn’t mind the daily 9-5 routine, split up say between 9-12 and 1-5. They like to get everything done in one continuous, uninterrupted timespan, and then they want to be able to go about enjoying the rest of their day.
“Even and tempered” is probably a good description of how they work – normal hours, not all that much craziness in schedule and solid productive output all-year-round.
When practitioners of this style are at work though, they’re at work. They’ll chunk into 25/50-minute pomodoro segments and naturally take the appropriate 5-10 minute breaks for water/air.
Their pace of work is moderate to almost intense (but never quite there), and they never have a feeling that they’re juggling too many things at once. They work like this because they typically want to – not because they have to.
One line summary: methodical and on-schedule.
There is however, a downside to the even-paced production of output: this working style has extreme difficulty pulling all-nighters and switching to work-mode during downtime. This can be especially detrimental if working across timezones. They also don’t deal well with interruptions while they are working.
Style #2: Because It Needs To Be Done
This style is all about doing the right thing.
You’ll find this working style always working on something when they’re in the office – even if their output isn’t all that high. They’ll put in longer and more hours than anyone else you know, but somewhat only produce slightly more. Their work intensity ranges a lot between very low and very high (usually when deadlines are close).
They’re not a huge fan of taking breaks, preferring instead to “power through” and get it done.
This style is your classic investment banker, consultant or up-and-coming lawyer.
Probably the most amazing ability that these people have is their ability to work continuously with very few breaks and very little downtime.
The downside? Doing this for too long can lead to burnout. It saps your willpower, discipline and motivation to always be “on” and working. Outside of a few, very passionate professionals who really love their jobs, most of the people with this working style are working because they have to, not because they particularly want to (and they may not even be conscious of that choice and distinction).
Style #3: Cycles and Circles
Style #3 uses the theory of hero mode to maximum potential. They really, really enjoy riding the up and down rhythms of the day, and their typical work day might look something like:
- 1 hour of work.
- 1 hour of reading on iPad.
- Getting some food.
- Another 2 hours of work.
- Breaking out for some PS3.
- Some meditation.
- Another bit of work.
- Grabbing a drink with friends.
- All interspersed with chatting up friends on IM/Twitter.
Their flow of work is moderate to fairly high, and they are very flexible in term of being able to switch up different tasks quickly. They have a high degree of choice and freedom when it comes to what they work on in any given moment. In fact, if GTD had an ideal poster-boy – this working style would be it.
The only downside? The laissez-faire attitude doesn’t do all that well in structured environments like big companies.
Style #4: Drive and Burn
Ever met someone who works intensely at something for 1-3 weeks then takes a vacation for 4-6 weeks after? That’s what this working style is all about. They love “extended holidays” and the sense of freedom that it brings.
This working style is usually found amongst specialist consultants brought into a company for a project for a short period of time, or amongst marketers who are involved in product launches.
When they’re working – they’re working. They’ll do multiple all-nighters with no rest, using little other than caffeine and adrenaline to keep themselves going. They have super-intense focus and very little can break their concentration or get in the way of their work. There is an almost-manic sense of urgency that goes along with that they do – whatever it is they are working on, it absolutely must get done.
Just don’t talk to them about work during downtime.
Style #5: The Effective Multitasker
Despite what we’ve said about multitasking before (and how bad it is for you), there is a small percentage of the population out there who thrives with it.
The best way to describe this working style is “organized chaos”. This working style works with low to moderate amounts of focus and work happens all day – there are no on times or off times. It’s all about a continuous, ongoing switch between downtime, work, social time, and everything else.
They have a huge advantage in terms of being able to rapidly switch between different things – and in being able to leverage resources (like people and systems) to help make this all work for them.
This working style doesn’t feel obligated to work – they work because actually enjoy it. They’re multitasking out of choice, not because they don’t know better.
The only issue they have is that they’re never able to “switch off” and disconnect from it all – work (and play) follows them everywhere, and sometimes the details get a little blurred together.
There you have it – five very different working styles, yet all productive and functional. Which one are you?
Photos by: JD Hancock | <urn:uuid:b475f216-0236-45c4-83f8-0a6abcd35079> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asianefficiency.com/mindsets/5-productive-working-styles/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962499 | 1,534 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Icy spots are reported, especially inland, as temperatures begin to fall early Tuesday morning.
But while the sun will occasionally show itself later Tuesday, the real story is the snow that will fall overnight and into Wednesday, WTNH forecaster Gil Simmons said.
Most of the region will remain above freezing today, the meteorologist said, but it will be noticably colder than Monday's high temperatures, which flirted with 60 degrees in places. Icy spots were reported in the hilly sections of Derby, WTNH reported.
It was 36 degrees in Milford at 5:30 a.m., and 34 in Bridgeport at 6. Readings could fall to 29 inland by noon, including in Trumbull and Monroe, according to AccuWeather.com.
There is a winter weather advisory for late Tuesday night and into Wednesday. A coating is predicted for the immediate shoreline area in time for the morning commute Wednesday, with 2 inches possible north of the I-95 corridor and up to 4 in higher elevations.
"I'm a snow lover, but what bothers me about this is the timing,'' Simmons said. "It's going to be a challenging morning on Wednesday.''
The National Weather Service is calling for a high of 43 degrees in Bridgeport today and 41 in Danbury, with temperatures falling through the day. There is a 90 percent chance of rain or snow in both areas tonight and Wednesday with a high of 40 and a low of 32.
Whatever snow does fall will be around awhile, forecasters say. A deep freeze is predicted for this weekend and early next week. The NWS is calling for nighttime lows of 10 degrees during that periiod. | <urn:uuid:a5d40ebd-8ef6-452f-9a5d-5b49ee390ef7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Snow-is-coming-for-Wednesday-4194680.php | 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 | 0.954626 | 344 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Massachusetts needs good foster homes
You might be surprised to find out that 60,000 children per week in the United States are reported as abused or neglected. Of that number, about 500,000 of those children end up in foster care over a full year.
On average, children stay in the foster care system for almost three years before either being adopted or reunited with their family of origin, and 20 percent wait five years or more to find a loving home.
There is an ever-growing need for patient, caring foster families throughout Massachusetts.
Community Care Services, Berkley | <urn:uuid:07162fb5-fb56-46fa-a984-87866e1953a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130125/OPINION/301250313/-1/ARCHIVE | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941576 | 118 | 1.734375 | 2 |
We went to a lovely lunch yesterday given by a friend who is a very successful writer. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the kind of topics that preoccupy professional writers — the changes that are happening to the book-publishing business; how reviews in big newspapers matter so much less nowadays than they once did; the way agents and some publishers (with some notable exceptions) seem to be in that same dreamlike state of denial one once observed in record executives and newspaper editors; and so on. The one thing my friend seemed entirely unaware of was what Amazon is doing to the self-publishing business. He was shocked by my explanation of the simple process by which one can transform a book draft in Microsoft Word into a Kindle eBook (as Jeff Jarvis did recently, for example). So it was interesting to turn to the New York Times this morning and find this quote from Jeff Bezos in a column by Tom Friedman:
“I see the elimination of gatekeepers everywhere,” said Bezos. Thanks to cloud computing for the masses, anyone anywhere can for a tiny hourly fee now rent the most powerful computing and storage facilities on Amazon’s “cloud” to test any algorithm or start any company or publish any book. Start-ups can even send all their inventory to Amazon, and it will do all the fulfillment and delivery — and even gift wrap your invention before shipping it to your customers.This is leading to an explosion of new firms and voices. “Sixteen of the top 100 best sellers on Kindle today were self-published,” said Bezos. That means no agent, no publisher, no paper — just an author, who gets most of the royalties, and Amazon and the reader. | <urn:uuid:40762628-1b65-4c7f-81ae-7e726c001f85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2012/05/21/16219 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965764 | 349 | 1.640625 | 2 |
This week’s debt ceiling deal may have pulled the U.S. back from default, but 1.2 million graduate students just got slapped with another bill. About one third of all graduate students have a partial federal subsidy on their loan, so they don’t get charged interest while they’re studying. That willll be abolished from July next year, as part of an agreement to reduce deficits by at least $2.1 trillion over a decade. But it could mean thousands of dollars more in loan costs for about a third of the country’s 3.6 million graduate students.
Pauline Abernathy is the vice president for the Institute for College Access and Success, a non profit that attempts to make higher education more available and affordable. | <urn:uuid:a1628824-218d-4e45-89da-48903e93f9d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetakeaway.org/2011/aug/04/us-debt-deal-slaps-12-mn-grad-students-new-loan-costs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963749 | 157 | 1.75 | 2 |
SPRINGERVILLE, Ariz. (AP) — A massive wildfire in eastern Arizona that has claimed more than 30 homes and forced nearly than 10,000 people to evacuate is likely to spread into New Mexico soon, threatening more towns and possibly endangering two major power lines that bring electricity from Arizona to West Texas.
The fire has now burned 639 square miles of forest, an increase of 114 square miles from a day earlier, officials said Friday.
Lighters winds Thursday and Friday have helped the 3,000 firefighters on the lines make progress, but critical fire conditions remain, said Jim Whittington, a spokesman for the teams battling the fire. High winds are expected to return with a vengeance on Saturday.
"We have until then to get as much work as we can done and get to the point where we can sit back and watch the winds come and do what we have to then," Whittington said.
Fire crews plan to try to strengthen what lines they've been able to establish and continue burning out forested areas in front of the main fire to try to stop its advance. It was officially just 5 percent contained Friday, but the actual numbers are likely higher, Whittington said.
The advances came on the north side of the fire, near two large towns at the edge of the forest that have been evacuated.
The two Arizona-Texas power lines are still in the path of the fire, although Whittington said he was less concerned about them Friday. El Paso Electric has warned its 372,000 customers that they may face rolling blackouts if the lines are cut.
The blaze in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest has destroyed 31 homes or cabins, including 22 in the picturesque mountain community of Greer, Whittington said. Two dozen outbuildings and a truck were also lost and five homes damaged in Greer when the fire moved in Wednesday night.
A DC-10 tanker made three retardant drops near the community Thursday, and officials hope that by Saturday the threat will be much less.
Nearly 10,000 people have been evacuated from the towns of Springerville and Eager on the edge of the forest and several mountain communities in the forest itself.
"I can't even speculate on when we can let people back in, but I can tell you we're not going to let people back in until we can be sure they will be safe and don't have to leave again," Whittington said.
Much of the growth toward New Mexico has actually been from fires started by firefighters trying to burn out fuels ahead of the blaze so it can be stopped, Whittington said. That technique allows the fires to be controlled and less hot. But there is little doubt it will cross the border, he said.
"This fire is eventually going to get there, so we want something to check it when it does," he said.
The fire doesn't appear to have moved into New Mexico yet, said Catron County Undersheriff Ian Fletcher. He said fire crews were cutting down trees and burning fuels along U.S. 180 near the Arizona border.
"I'm not sure when we're going to get to the point of it actually getting here," he said at midday Friday. Residents of about 100 homes in a small subdivision near the border were still being kept away Friday, and about 200 residents of Luna were prepared to evacuate.
Both Luna and the county seat of Reserve were being powered by a large generator because of worries that electricity to the area would be cut, Fletcher said.
Authorities suspect the 408,876-acre fire was sparked by a campfire. It is the second-largest wildfire in state history.
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez visited Reserve the area Friday to discuss fire preparations. A day ago, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer flew over burned areas in her state and met with evacuated residents in Lakeside.
"They're very resilient people up there," she said Thursday.
The fire has rekindling the blame game surrounding ponderosa pine forests that have become dangerously overgrown after a century of fire suppression.
Some critics put the responsibility on environmentalists for lawsuits that have cut back on logging. Others blame overzealous firefighters for altering the natural cycle of lightning-sparked fires that once cleared the forest floor.
Christie reported from Phoenix.
Susan Montoya Bryan can be reached at http://twitter.com/susanmbryanNM
© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:4ac519f0-a1a1-48e0-9882-a32fc436247a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsmax.com/US/ArizonaWildfires/2011/06/10/id/399666 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974248 | 935 | 1.609375 | 2 |
By Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann (Carroll & Graf, 904 pages, $33)
Progressive Portland radio talk-show host Thom Hartmann has co-authored the ne plus ultra of conspiracy books about the JFK assassination. At a doorstopping 900-plus pages, Ultimate Sacrifice presents enough speculation mixed with fact to fill at least three books. Part I reveals in convincing detail a covert U.S. plan led by Bobby Kennedy to use Cuban exiles to assassinate Fidel Castro and invade Cuba, with full U.S. military backing if necessary, in December 1963. Part II describes how the Mafia, led by mob bosses Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante and Johnny Rosselli, infiltrated the Cuba coup plan, purportedly to compromise U.S. officials into suppressing a thorough investigation of JFK's murder, which the godfathers later organized. Part III discloses two heretofore overlooked or unknown plots to kill Kennedy in Chicago and Tampa, Fla., which bore several similarities (a sniper or snipers with scoped rifles were to fire on the president's motorcade) to his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
Whether you agree or disagree with the authors' theories, it's impossible to ignore this book as an important counterpoint to Gerald Posner's 1993 book Cased Closed, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting the president. Marshaling reams of newly declassified documents, interviews with surviving participants, and stray puzzle pieces from other researchers, the authors have compiled an imposing mass of scholarship on the 1963 coup plan and the Mafia's interest in it. Where Ultimate Sacrifice is ultimately unconvincing, though, is in linking the mob's penetration of the coup plan to JFK's assassination. The Mafia would have had plenty of reasons to want to help overthrow Castro, none of which necessarily involved killing Kennedy: For one thing, the coup would have let Marcello, Trafficante and Rosselli in on the ground floor to regain control of organized crime in Cuba. Kennedy's murder actually hindered that, because plans to invade Cuba were dropped after JFK's death. The book's treatment of the assassination itself, at a scant 16 pages, is an incoherent mess, rehashing the usual hooey about unidentified gunmen, shots from the grassy knoll and "magic bullet" theories, without incontrovertibly linking the mob to the scene of the crime. The authors try repeatedly to show Oswald being manipulated by "mob associates" to take the fall for Kennedy's murder, but almost everyone mentioned in this book, including Dean Martin and Marilyn Monroe, is described as a mob associate.
If Ultimate Sacrifice sold a copy every time the authors use phrases like "could have," "may have" or "it's possible that," it would be a runaway New York Times bestseller.
Co-author Thom Hartmann hosts the morning show weekdays from 6-9 am on KPOJ 620 AM. | <urn:uuid:f6e4f60e-12e5-4897-91a5-3849b2f95dcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-5156-ultimate_sacrifice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938399 | 604 | 1.757813 | 2 |
In The Catholic Church?
I realized the other day that I may still be counted among the followers of the catholic church even though I have been an atheist for years because I was confirmed at the age of 16. If I am being cited as a catholic is there a way to correct this mistake? Any information you can provide would be appreciated.
From: Positive Atheism Magazine <[email protected]>
To: Stacie Barry
Subject: Re: Is there a way to revoke confirmation in the catholic church?
Date: Monday, September 13, 1999 4:28 PM
Madalyn Murray-O'Hair used to sell a de-baptism certificate for a small donation. They would send it to the church where you were baptized.
It is well known that churches -- most notoriously the Mormon church -- pad their membership roles. Most statisticians and pollsters know this, and count by church attendance. How many pews are filled week after week.
In Islamic countries, it is much tougher because you dare not come out of the closet about your atheism, although one Iranian correspondent estimates that at least 40 percent of Iranians are flat-out atheists.
There is another problem with trying to get your name off their records. This means you are fair game for missionary activity. I'm not sure if I still have James Call's account of his experience with the Mormons. If this is what your former church does, you will either need to take this into account in making your decision to withdraw, or you will simply need to buckle down and grit your teeth and stand fast.
A final problem, which is common only amongst Calvinistic Christian churches (Orthodox Presbyterian, Reformed, etc.) is that they do not recognize the concept of losing one's salvation. This leads some of them to refuse to remove you from their membership role unless you transfer to another church. I am still on the roll at a Calvinistic church in San Diego for this reason. though I haven't attended in almost twenty years.
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Material by Cliff Walker (including unsigned editorial commentary) is copyright ©1995-2006 by Cliff Walker. Each submission is copyrighted by its writer, who retains control of the work except that by submitting it to Positive Atheism, permission has been granted to use the material or an edited version: (1) on the Positive Atheism web site; (2) in Positive Atheism Magazine; (3) in subsequent works controlled by Cliff Walker or Positive Atheism Magazine (including published or posted compilations). Excerpts not exceeding 500 words are allowed provided the proper copyright notice is affixed. Other use requires permission; Positive Atheism will work to protect the rights of all who submit their writings to us. | <urn:uuid:1b98fc79-c189-43e6-8514-e2dd4a6bac4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9847.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964259 | 569 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Community and culture
SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT has elected to support the socioeconomic and cultural development of communities. The Group sponsors a number of projects focused on integrating disadvantaged youth, promoting artistic creation, and building bridges between art and urban planning.
For SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT, access to culture is a priority and must not be contingent on resource availability, age or social milieu. The Group encourages cultural exchange through various sponsorship projects.
- The CENTQUATRE. The Group is one of the founding members of the endowment fund established to support the activity of this 39,000 m2 space devoted to the contemporary arts, located in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
- Support for the Friends of Magnum Photos organisation, which is behind the new Le Bal exhibition space in Paris devoted to all forms of photography and documentary images: photography, video and new media. An educational platform called “The Making of an Image” has been established there to educate nearly 4,000 middle- and high-school students from low-income neighbourhoods in the Île-de-France region on reading and critically analysing images. Among the programmes offered by this educational platform, SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT supports “My Journal of the World”, an extracurricular workshop held in middle schools. This workshop offers middle-school students a chance to learn about and experiment with the entire process of producing, broadcasting and receiving an image in 10 training sessions.
- Partnership with the Estuaire 2007-2009-2012 Nantes – Saint-Nazaire cultural demonstration. On this occasion, the Group supports the perennial work of Gilles Clément entitled “The Garden of the Third Landscape”, an ever-changing park on the roof of the Saint-Nazaire submarine base.
- Support for the creation of the Arthothèque, in partnership with the city of Strasbourg. This complex is designed to educate the general public about contemporary art by giving everyone a chance to borrow and take home, for a maximum of 1 month, one of the 500 engravings, paintings or photographs available. The purpose of this place is also to democratise access to art thanks to scheduled exhibits, performances and exhibit previews in the city’s public spaces. Through its acquisitions and its mediation work, the Arthothèque encourages the creation of contemporary art.
Contributing to the social and economic growth of regions
SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT has encouraged economical land development and since 2009 has sponsored a research chair at the Institut d’Etudes Avancées (IEA) in Nantes. The goal is to develop a new kind of relationship between researchers from the countries of the South and those from the North.
The main themes of the work done in connection with the chair are urban and land use planning. This work is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the land, the behaviour of its inhabitants, and the expectations and challenges stemming from their development. | <urn:uuid:36033d15-9965-4975-a87b-6d7c1bf47b3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.suez-environnement.com/group/sponsorship-partnerships/community-culture/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931091 | 627 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Most of us drive alone or perhaps with our child or significant other in the car. On a July day in 2010 a driver was carrying two members of her family as well as two dogs with her in her car. When the car was stopped because of construction, the unthinkable happened. The vehicle was severely rear-ended by a tractor-trailer.
As a result of the truck accident, the driver's father sustained fatal injuries. The other family member in the car sustained severe head injuries and lives with permanent brain damage. The driver lived through the crash but with broken bones, internal and external wounds and more. Both dogs died in the wreck. Unwilling to just sit back after the accident, the family came together to file a personal injury lawsuit that also contained a wrongful death claim.
About one year after the fatal traffic accident occurred, the family filed the civil lawsuit in Pennsylvania against various parties, including the trucking company, the driver, and the company that the truck was transporting product for. Last week, the case came to an end, a favorable end for the plaintiffs.
What happened on the day of the crash? While cars were stopped due to construction, the truck driver was approaching the traffic jam, driving eastbound. He claims that he was blinded by sunlight and couldn't see the stopped vehicles. He attempted to brake but was too late and going too fast. The crash ensued.
That story didn't sway the court. For one thing, he was driving east in the afternoon. The sun doesn't sit in that direction at that time of day. The trucker's excuse of being blinded by the sun, therefore, came off as some sort of cover-up. Was he too tired to have been driving? Was he just desperate to come up with an excuse and came up with a lie?
In the end, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding them more than $26 million for their losses, pain and suffering. The truck accident impacted this family in a big way. They didn't just lose a loved one, but those who survived also had to find the strength (and financial means) to care for their injuries after the incident.
Source: The Pennsylvania Record, "$26.1 million personal injury settlement, possibly largest ever in Pa., reached in tractor-trailer death suit," John Campisi, June 13, 2012 | <urn:uuid:5f40bcd5-19af-4930-a4fe-5cf4579093d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.philadelphiawrongfuldeathlawyerblog.com/2012/06/one-pennsylvania-truck-accident-changes-entire-family.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989156 | 480 | 1.75 | 2 |
KAMAL NATH CALLS FOR ROADMAP FOR ELIMINATION OF TRADE DISTORTING FARM SUBSIDIES BY DEVELOPED COUNTRIES SAYS ONE DOLLAR PER DAY VERSUS ONE BILLION DOLLAR PER DAY THE REAL ISSUE
Date : 13 Dec 2005
Location : New Delhi
Mr. Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce & Industry, has called upon developed countries to come forward with a roadmap for total elimination of trade distorting agricultural subsidies which depress international prices of agricultural produce, thereby hurting farmers in developing countries like India. Addressing the international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and a Press Conference ahead of the opening of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong Kong today, Mr. Kamal Nath emphasised that the real challenge before trade negotiators was the paradox of “one dollar per day versus one billion dollars per day”, referring to the fact that the vast majority of the poor in developing countries were subsisting on one US dollar per day or less as against agricultural subsidies as high as US $ 1 billion per day in developed countries.
“Hong Kong must address the issues of the least developed countries (LDCs), vulnerable economies, small states and must provide a level playing field for all. In agriculture, if we are to correct the existing structural flaws, export subsidies must go on a date to be negotiated. On domestic support, there must be a roadmap for reduction and eventual elimination. (Agricultural) tariff is the only defensive mechanism available to the developing countries to guard against subsidized imports. For example, tariff on cotton in India is only 10% whereas the US subsidy for cotton is over 42%. We are not against trade flows but against subsidy flows”, he explained.
Replying to questions on non-agricultural market access (NAMA) or industrial tariffs, the Minister said what was important was not the formula but what it actually translated into in real terms. Criticising the latest NAMA proposal put forward by the European Union (EU) at the G-4 meeting last night, Mr. Kamal Nath pointed out that the EU proposal for Swiss co-efficient of 10 for both developed and developing countries would translate into industrial tariff reduction of 77% for India while the EU would reduce only by 24%! He described this as special & differential (S&D) treatment in reverse and rejected the proposal outright as unacceptable. He said the EU must come forward with specific proposals for reducing its tariffs, before developing countries were asked to reduce by even two-thirds of that, in keeping with the principle of proportionality implicit in the S&D provisions for developing countries in WTO agreements. “Market access for India in NAMA means elimination of tariff peaks and tariff escalation in developed country markets, end to abuse of anti-dumping laws and removal of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) all of which adversely affected trade flows from developing countries. Market access is not an issue of tariffs alone”, he added.
The Minister appreciated the crucial role played by NGOs post-Uruguay Round in creating awareness about global trade issues and providing critical inputs for negotiators. He also told NGOs that the issue of harmonizing trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) Agreement with the Convention on Bio-Diversity (CBD) was important for the prevention of bio-piracy and preservation of the rich bio-diversity of many developing countries. He reiterated that India stood by the LDCs and would continue to do so in the Doha Round negotiations which must be brought back on the development track. Later today, Mr. Kamal Nath is scheduled to have bilateral meetings with the trade ministers of South Africa and China. | <urn:uuid:441d5dcc-d647-4c0f-93dc-a1f837d6d6df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://commerce.nic.in/pressrelease/pressrelease_detail.asp?id=972 | 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 | 0.944232 | 767 | 1.640625 | 2 |
"Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched." ~ Guy de Maupassant
Arturo Sandoval - For Love or Country
Last weekend, my wife and I had the distinct pleasure of attending a performance by the renowned Cuban jazz musician Arturo Sandoval. The trumpeter and his ensemble dazzled the 400 music fans that were crammed into the tiny Clearwater Theatre in West Dundee, Illinois, to hear their unique blend of classic jazz beats and Latin rhythms.
Though an ardent jazz aficionado, I was not familiar with Mr. Sandoval until recently seeing the HBO film about his extraordinary struggle to achieve greater freedom to pursue his musical passion. For Love Or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story recounts the saga of the budding musician’s life in communist Cuba and the artistic repression he faced that ultimately led to his defection.
As co-founder of the Afro-Cuban ensemble Irakere, Sandoval and his fellow band members are only permitted to play music approved by the government, since Fidel Castro views American jazz as the “music of the enemy.” Despite his fervent opposition to the revolution, he agrees to “toe the party line” in order to gain permission to travel outside the island in state-sanctioned bands.
He begins a long friendship with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie during the jazz legend’s historic visit to Havana in 1977. Besides inspiring him musically, Gillespie ultimately plays a pivotal role in helping Sandoval realize his artistic dreams.
Although he longs to escape the despotic regime of his beloved country, Sandoval refuses to leave his family behind. Worse yet, the woman he loves does not share his ideological views.
Marianela, his wife, is a party loyalist who believes in the revolution and gladly endures the sacrifices necessary to achieve its goals. In one climactic scene, she chides Sandoval for his criticism of the Castro government and cites its many benefits, including free hospitals and free education. An enraged Sandoval retorts, “What good is free education if you can’t read what you want, if you can’t say what you want? What good are eyes if everybody’s blind?”
Marianela does not question the legitimacy of the revolution until one of its greatest heroes, General Arnaldo Ochoa, is executed in 1989 after being convicted on flimsy corruption charges. Only then do the couple devise a plan of escape, professing party loyalty in exchange for travel privileges. Finally, they are allowed to travel to Europe with their youngest child, Turi.
The opportunity, however, presents the Sandovals with a difficult dilemma. By choosing to defect, they will leave behind an older son and parents who are likely to face persecution as a result of their actions.
The movie features several masterful performances, including the great Andy Garcia as Arturo Sandoval and the lovely and talented Mia Maestro (did I mention lovely?) as Marianela.
Sandoval risked everything – his life, his love, and his family – for the freedom to play the music he loves. This inspiring film is great entertainment, even for the most jaded lovers of liberty. | <urn:uuid:5af7c0c1-c802-4e91-971f-afd1e01b3f04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://strike-the-root.com/columns/powers/powers4.html?mini=calendar%2F2012-11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967152 | 667 | 1.78125 | 2 |
King County Metro Transit believes in providing a safe and secure environment for their customers and employees. For that reason, they contract with the KCSO for a full-time police force.
About the Police Department
Our 68-member precinct team includes a chief, two captains, supervisors, detectives, deputies, bicycle emphasis team and dispatchers. We also have a dedicated Bomb Technician and Stevie, a laborador retriever whose sensitive nose is trained to sniff out 19,000 different scents related to explosives and firearms.
Community Policing in a Mobile "Neighborhood"
Policing a transit system is unlike any other type of police work. A bus or train becomes a small community as people travel together. Community policing and crime prevention are very important in these mobile neighborhoods. Metro Transit Police educate operators and other transit employees about how to maintain safe and secure facilities. In addition, our deputies and detectives work on proactive projects that stop crimes before they start.
When crimes do occur, our deputies focus on a fast response. We coordinate with the other jurisdictions that transit passes through, and work with them to follow up on cases. | <urn:uuid:d85a87ca-097e-49d2-a682-512e1ef43237> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kingcounty.gov/safety/sheriff/Communities/Metro.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946758 | 231 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Just two weeks after he was left to die in a Henderson County field, a dog now named Sammy already has a safe, loving home in which to recuperate from serious injuries inflicted on him by an apparent dog-fighting operation.
The male pit bull underwent surgery last week on his left eye, which had a large puncture wound. The other eye, with two smaller punctures, did not require surgery.
Sammy was found Jan. 1 in a field near Green River Road No. 1 by Animal Control Officer Jason King, who was responding to a call about stray dogs in the area. When King arrived, he discovered three malnourished pit bull mixes wandering around together. Curled up nearby in a pile of hay was a fourth dog, now named Sammy, who was suffering from severe eye injuries, an ear that was almost torn off and punctures and tears all over his face and neck. "He was very skinny," said Josh Cromer, manager of the Humane Society of Henderson County.
"I don't think he'd have made it through the night because that night it got really cold," the manager said.
Both Cromer and King say the dog's wounds are consistent with those caused by fighting.
"Due to Sammy's injuries and the nature of the wounds and their placement, it makes us know he was used for something like that," King said.
Added Cromer: "We are as certain as we can be without actually seeing it happen."
After the dogs were brought to the shelter, Sammy was "almost in shock," Cromer said, and was "kind of bewildered, not focused, confused."
He was treated by a local veterinarian and spent much of the week in the front office area of the shelter, quickly making friends with the shelter staff and especially following Cromer and King around whenever possible.
Sammy was so friendly, Cromer said, "he'd climb up in our lap and curl up and go to sleep. He's a really good dog."
The other three dogs that were brought in at the same time were malnourished and scared but otherwise healthy and uninjured.
Animal Control officers are seeking information from anyone who may have information about who is responsible for fighting Sammy and other dogs like him. The public is encouraged to call the shelter at 826-8966 to report any information concerning the identity of Sammy's former owner.
Callers can remain anonymous, although they may not want to because the Humane Society of the United States is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to the conviction of the person responsible for fighting Sammy. If only animal cruelty can be proven, the reward will be $2,500.
In addition, a California woman who wishes to remain anonymous is offering to match the reward upon a dog-fighting conviction.
Meanwhile, following Sammy's surgery last week by a Louisville eye specialist, it remains unclear about how much he can see out of his bad eye, Cromer said. Doctors are hopeful that Sammy will be able to see shapes and shadows at the very least with that eye.
In his good eye, which is being treated with medicine, "they think his vision will be blurry but that he will make a full recovery," Cromer said.
Sammy has been placed in a medical foster home so he can recuperate in "a happy, healthy home," Cromer said.
The foster home's location is not being disclosed, although Cromer did say it is located out of state and not in Evansville.
"He's better off out of the shelter," he said of Sammy. A private home will be more "secure and comfortable and he can get on the road to recovery immediately. We're doing what's best for the dog."
Cromer is hopeful that the foster home will eventually become the dog's permanent home, although that decision has not been finalized.
He is also optimistic that Sammy will become a great pet, once he recovers from his injuries and becomes accustomed to his visual limitations.
In just the short time that Sammy was at the shelter, the dog warmed staffers' hearts.
"I can't say anything bad about him," Cromer said. "He loves people despite what he'd been through." | <urn:uuid:7fdf0581-b8fc-43e3-8bfb-b1c5cf465fc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/jan/14/left-to-die/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98863 | 872 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Munich Stadtmuseum (Münchner Stadtmuseum) is the Munich’s municipal museum, the largest municipal museum in Germany. It is housed in the former arsenal and stables that date from late gothic period, got destroyed during WWII but reconstructed again.
We didn’t have much time so we focused on Permanent exhibition that houses a musical instruments collection on 4th floor (about 6000 instruments and sound sources many of them from exotic places), a Puppet Theater exhibition on 3rd floor (you can see the history of puppetry since 19th century and items like shadow puppets, marionettes, puppets from all over the world etc)
Then we visited Typically Munich! Exhibition, some items are interesting some others just boring, there are also scale models of the city.
There is also a permanent exhibition that focus on National Socialism in Munich (the National Socialist German Workers’ Party have been founded in Munich in 1919 and had its headquarters here until 1945), Munich was the capital of the Nazi Movement so it’s no surprise the first concentration camp was built in nearby Dachau.
It is open Tuesday to Sunday 10.00-18.00
The entrance fee for permanent exhibition is 4e, students/seniors/disabled 2e, munich pass holders/unemployed free
The entrance fee for all exhibitions is 6e, students/seniors/disabled/munich pass holders/unemployed 3e
Based on a former airbase just outside of Munich, the Flugwerft Schleissheim is a delight for anyone who still has a remnant of their childhood fascination for aircraft remaining. There is a large and extremely well preserved collection here, all kept under protective roofing inside a converted hangar. The exhibits also include some extremely rare finds, even one that you probably won't see anywhere in the world, let alone Europe. All of this is located close to one of Bavaria's finest palaces, so although it's a little out of the way, there's plenty for all to see and do in the area.
The exhibits include a large number of planes from the modern West German airforce, but have recently been suplemented with relics from the East German airforce. So along with American Phantoms and Shooting Stars, you can see a classic Mig 21, a dual rotor Kamov Ka-26 and a unmistakeable Mig-15. In addition there are a few planes from other airforces, including the rare sight of a Saab Drakken, and the truly bizarre Hindustani Aircraft Ltd (HAL) Marut.
The Marut was intended to be India's first supersonic jet aircraft, only they could never buy an engine powerful enough to take it to those speeds, so it ended up being a bit of a white elephant. It looked ever so much the elegant futuristic fighter plane it was meant to be, but because of the lack of engine technology it simply limped through the air, a pale shadow of its designers intentions. Its inclusion in the exhibits in Munich was a real surprise.
When it is complete, the transport museum in Munich should be world class. For now it has a small, but wonderful, collection of cars and other vehicles that you can access for a discount. Now you can see the main hall, which contains a host of amazing originals, including a Protos from the 1907 New York-Paris rally, a Puffing Billy locomotive, and my personal favourite, a car I thought I'd never see in real life: the NSU RO 80 with its unique rotary wankel (snigger) engine.
This is another modern art museum. I didn't know about it before going to Munich. I found it out once there because it's next to the alte pinakothek. The truth is that I liked the paintings here more than the ones in the neue pinakothek (here are also really good). Visit it if you like modern art. Besides paintings there are also some other exhibitions. It's 9 euros.
Open daily, except Mondays, 10-17
Thursday and Friday, 10-20
I always try to visit the nature museums in any city I stay.In Munich I've been to the Jagd und Fischerei Museum in the city centre a few times, and this time I had planned to go to the museum Mensch und Natur (Humans and Nature) in the Nymphenburg palace. Getting there was unexpectedly difficult, as I went on a day when the tram drivers in Munichs decided to go on strike.But with the help of a friendly student, I found my way .
There were several very interesting exhibitions in the museum, the most interesting was the one about Bruno.
Bruno is the name which was given to a bear which had wandered into Bavaria from Slovenia some years ago. He was the first bear in Germany since more than 100 years ago and reactions were anything from pure joy to pure panic.
The museum dedicates a room to Bruno, including a very interesting video about him and presenting the controversy of how to react.Bruno proved to be a bear with no fear of humans at all, he had clearly learned that close to villages it was very easy to get food. When even Finnish bear hunters with special dogs didn't manage to capture him, it was decided to kill him.
This was by far the most interesting room in the museum. I must admit, when I looked at this bear, I was quite glad I hadn't run into him when hiking in the area.
A great modern art museum with innovative architecture and a thoughtprovoking collection of paintings, sculptures, and installations. The most interesting part in my opinion is the "design" department where different historic design concepts are shown in relation to daily life - objects like vehicles, computers and furniture.
Strolling down the road I came to the Residenz, the old palace of royalty in the city and fairly hard to miss if you're in the area. Curiousity led me to explore some of the architecture and thus it was that I stumbled on the State Museum of Egyptian Art.
This is not your grand British Museum, nay, more your small rural museum with enough to keep you interested but not stay all day.
There's an eclectic mix of fine jewellery, sarcophagi, inscribed slabs et al from the Egyptian side of things and there are also works from the Greco-Roman era (pic 2) though the golden mask in the opening pic is undoubtedly one of the highlights.
I found a major problem here for me was the fact that there is not only no English captions but the staff can't help either and there was no literature available in English. Hopefully, in times to come, this will be redressed to allow more visitors access to the knowledge contained therein.
I hadn't read of any art in the museum, just the porcelain. Imagine my surprise when I discovered some quality works interspersed with the rest of the exhibition in the Marstall Museum, including some works by my favourite, Gerit Dou.
His history is interesting inasmuch as he left the school of Rembrandt after less than a year and started his own, feeling that the master lacked a little in detail. Thus Dou's works are renowned for their fine work. He rarely painted large canvases, preferring instead to do small portraits such as you see in the opening picture here.
Some of the fine Murillos and works of Raphael are shown in the other pics.
The Porcelain Museum is also located in the south wing. The pieces displayed demonstrate a comprehensive history of the products of the Nymphenburg porcelain manufactory (founded in 1761), which is based in the north-east section of the round tower in front of the castle.
Class just oozed from the exhibits and I loved the range of subjects, from the 3 dogs fighting the bear in pic 2 to the tranquility of the flower vase in pic 3 to the quirkiness of the snuff lady in 4 to the warrior in the final shot.
Opposite the sculpture collection Glyptothek lies this interesting antiquity museum. The museum building is built in the style of a greek or roman temple. Fine temporary exhibitions - at the time when this photo was taken, there was an exhibition about Troy, which is why a life-size Trojan Horse is standing in front of the staircase.
Hotel Uhland Munich
6 Reviews and 465 Opinions This is a wonderful little hotel on a very quiet residential street very near the Oktoberfest site....
Mandarin Oriental Munchen Munich
2 Reviews and 282 Opinions The Mandarin Oriental is one of the newest and most luxurious hotels in Munich. It's centerally...
Hotel Laimer Hof Munich Munich
2 Reviews and 863 Opinions Stayed 2 nights here on vacation in August 2006. Cozy little hotel - not too expensive (especially... | <urn:uuid:723e975f-ffe9-47ef-aec1-a36df8f9a1f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Germany/Bavaria/Munich-36623/Things_To_Do-Munich-Museums-BR-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970157 | 1,852 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Airbnb seemed so simple — but collaborative consumption can raise complex issues
Catbird turned me onto Airbnb almost two years ago, long before I'd ever heard of the "sharing economy" or "collaborative consumption," terms the tech industry is now using for companies that facilitate peer-to-peer rentals or otherwise take transactions once done through Craigslist to a glitzy new commercial level.
We were working together to build the Temple of Flux for Burning Man 2010 and chatting in the shop one evening. I mentioned wanting to find someone to sublet my apartment for the nearly three weeks that I was to spend on the playa that year, and she sang the praises of Airbnb, which she had recently started using to make some extra cash by renting out a room in the house she owns on Potrero Hill.
"The reason I decided to do it instead of a full-time roommate is it fits my lifestyle better," Catbird, aka Cathryn Blum, told me recently as we discussed her beloved Airbnb in light of recent controversies over whether such rentals should pay the city's 14 percent hotel tax. Catbird loves to meet visitors from around the world and help show them sides of San Francisco hidden from downtown hotel dwellers, as well as being able to keep her guest room vacant for visiting friends or family.
"Airbnb has been a godsend, and it's invigorated a lot of the neighborhoods that tourists might not come and visit," she said. "We're not competing with the hotels, the hotels don't provide that kind of experience."
That's what she and other Airbnb customers argued last month at a San Francisco Tax Collector's Office hearing on the issue, which resulted in the hotel tax [aka Transient Occupancy Tax] being applied to Airbnb and similar companies.
Airbnb was a godsend for me as well, a simple easing of my economic woes. At the time, I was just getting serious with a new girlfriend and spending most nights at her place. So we moved some of my stuff over there to clear space and protect my valuables, took some photos of my small studio apartment in the Mission, and created an Airbnb listing.
We initially listed my place for $75 per night, which more than covered my rent but was cheaper than most hotels, the sweet spot that would create enough demand that I could pick and choose guests to meet my needs. And it worked perfectly. Not only did I find tenants to fill most of my Burning Man vacancy, but I kept it up periodically throughout the fall, moving in with my girlfriend for days or weeks at a stretch and splitting the proceeds with her.
It seemed too good to be true. And as I began to learn, perhaps it was.
Something Airbnb doesn't tell you when you sign up is that you may be breaking the law and/or your lease (its spokesperson says that warning is in its terms of service, but I never saw it). Frankly, I knew that my lease didn't allow subletters, but my building is big, I really needed the money, and I figured that I wouldn't get caught, a calculation that many thousands of customers of Airbnb and other companies regularly make as well.
Later, well into by first foray as a landlord, thanks to Airbnb, I began to learn about some other complications that this business model creates in big, popular cities like San Francisco and New York that have complicated laws regulating landlord-tenant relations. For example, it's illegal in San Francisco to sublet your apartment out for more than you pay in rent.
I felt a little guilty about that one. In a city where almost two-thirds of residents are renters, yet where property owners wield tremendous economic and political power, there are good reasons for rent control, limits on converting apartments into condominiums, eviction protections, and the whole slew of complicated laws and regulations that govern the often-contentious relationship between landlords and tenants.
But nobody seemed to be getting hurt and this was easy money, thanks to an elegantly simple dot-com idea. Sure, there were risks, both from the powers-that-be and from the strangers moving into my home. A good friend of mine in San Francisco who used Airbnb kept his valuables in a locked closet, which his temporary tenants — who had used fake identities and fraudulent credit cards — broke into, stealing thousands of dollars worth of equipment and getting away with it.
By the end of the year, it began to dawn on me that this business model wasn't as simple as it initially seemed, triggered partially when the company sent me a 1099 federal tax form for the thousands of dollars I earned in 2010. Oh yeah, taxes, shit. So I paid my state and federal taxes on what had once seemed like free money, and I began to wonder what this "godsend" really meant for San Francisco, just as various advocacy groups were beginning to explore the issue.
"We began working on this issue a few years ago when we saw a big number of tourist conversions," said Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. He discovered thousands of apartments — sometimes even entire buildings, usually those covered by rent control laws — were being taken off the rental market for use by tourists, sometimes after evictions to clear them of tenants. If I could use these sites to make money, unscrupulous landlords could as well.
"It shouldn't even get to a tax issue because much of this is illegal," Gullicksen said, noting that landlords opposed legislation a few years ago to give tenants more rights to sublet their apartments or add additional roommates. "This talk of shared economy strikes me as the wealthy asking the less wealthy to sacrifice."
Advocates of the sharing economy argue that it's just the opposite, making environmentalist and even socialist arguments that it's a smart way of using fewer resources that empowers working class people.
"This idea of supplementing the formal economy with an economy based on sharing and bartering is very powerful. If you supplement a formal economy with an economy based on sharing you will have a lighter economic footprint and you would rely on relationships with people and actually, with less income, have a higher standard of living," progressive activist Van Jones — whose new book The Green Collar Economy, discusses collaborative consumption — told us last month.
But it doesn't usually feel quite so populist. Ron Conway, the billionaire angel investor who helped funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in tech money to groups supporting Mayor Ed Lee's election campaign last year, has significant investments in Airbnb and other "shareable" companies that Lee opposes taxing, as The New York Times reported last month.
Around that same time, I, along with many other local journalists, was invited to a fancy round-table dinner hosted by SparkPR to facilitate schmoozing with a half-dozen collaborative consumption start-ups, an event that felt more like the decadent peak of the last dot-com bubble than the launching of a people-powered economic revolution.
Over fine wine and a seated gourmet dinner in a private room in Perbacco Ristorante + Bar, journalists representing the New York Times, San Francisco Examiner, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and other media outlets chatted with representatives from Love Home Swap, Getaround, Zimride, Event Up, and DogVacay.
This was the latest event in the public relations blitz by advocates of "The Sharing Economy," which was the title of an event at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association two weeks earlier, which featured representatives from Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Shareable, Vayable, and Getaround (representatives of this car-sharing company do indeed seem to get around).
Our dinner began with introductions, and Love Swap Home founder Debbie Wosskow said she had come all the way from London for this dinner and some related meetings, on the ground just 36 hours. "I thought I could learn a lot from you guys out here," she said in her charming British accent, later calling San Francisco the world hub for this new economic approach.
"Our business model is very simple: it's like online dating for homes," she said, explaining how the company registers people with cool homes that they can vacation-swap with others they meet through the site. Contrasting it with Airbnb, she said, "We're swapping purists...I was less interested in turning my home into a money-making machine than moving my home to places around the world."
The company caters mostly to those with higher-than-average incomes, while others at the table seem to be giving more structure to underground transactions pursued by the average Craigslist or Yelp user. "We have a platform of trusted folks who watch your dogs in their own homes," was how Dog Vacay owner Aaron Hirschhorn described the business he started with his wife, which attracted $1 million in venture capital financing and now has 10 employees.
"I want to be the premiere national pet services company," Hirschhorn said. "That's the long-term play, but in the near-term we're solving an immediate problem. And we're giving people a chance to make money."
As dinner was served, SparkPR's Jamie Walker played hostess and encouraged us to chat about our common issues, so I offered an apparently impertinent topic for guests to address: "How do you all feel about taxes?"
An uncomfortable silence chilled the room, but I asked them to humor me because it was Tax Day and I was curious how they all felt about being required to pay taxes on the economic transactions they were facilitating. Again, silence, before someone finally ventured an answer.
"There are other societal benefits to this collaborative consumption industry," was how Getaround's Avery Lewis answered my question, talking about the many economic and environmental benefits of people being able to share their cars or avoid having to own a car for only occasional use.
And that may be true, but it doesn't really answer the question: Why should these economic transactions be exempt from the taxes charged on most other economic transactions?
Airbnb spokesperson Kimberly Rubey and Airbnb customers who testified at the tax hearing also speak of the wide variety of social and economic benefits of the service, and they make a compelling case that this company — with 100 employees here and 300 around the world facilitating 5 million nights booked in four years, up from just 1 million a year ago — is a boon to San Francisco.
But when you push them on the tax issue, they don't know quite what to say. Rubey abruptly ended two short phone interviews when I pressed for an answer, both times saying she was late for meetings and would get back to me. The third time, she had this statement prepared: "We do not shy away from tax obligations, nor do we believe that all types of private residential rentals should be excluded from transient occupancy tax in all situations. That said, we do think that staying in someone's spare bedroom or in someone's home while they are away is different in a variety of ways than staying in a hotel."
Yet that distinction isn't one made in the city's Transient Occupancy Tax law, says Greg Kato, the policy and legislative manager for the Tax Collector's Office. "When we talk about a guest room under the law, that does include private residences," he told us. "We want to make sure we're taxing everyone properly."
It was a broad and fairly unusual coalition of groups that pushed the city to begin regulating and taxing Airbnb and similar companies — from the Tenants Union and labor unions on the left to Hotel Council and Building Owners and Management Association on the other end the spectrum — making the prospects of a successful legislative challenge to the tax law interpretation unlikely.
Gullicksen said Airbnb may be one of the biggest companies affected by the ruling, but it isn't the worst. He said Vacation Rental By Owner (www.vrbo.com) converts entire blocks of apartments into tourist hotels. By contrast, he said many renters use Airbnb to occasionally supplement their incomes.
"It depends on how often it's used and to what scope it's used," he said.
Mayor Lee and some members of the Board of Supervisors recently created a Sharing Economy Working Group to hammer out those distinctions and make policy recommendations, but it has yet to be constituted or begin meeting. And Board President David Chiu has introduced legislation developed by the Tenants Union to ban the worst "hotelization" of rental units by corporations.
I'll be curious to see how these issues play out, even though I no longer use Airbnb. Advocates for collaborative consumption seem to think they've invented something new under the sun and the rest of us just need to catch on. "When new business models emerge, you're going to constantly be in ongoing discussions with policymakers to educate them about the difference with traditional models," Rubey said.
Clearly, they've convinced Mayor Lee, who unsuccessfully sought a delay in the Tax Collector's ruling, following the tax breaks he extended last year to Twitter, Zynga, and other tech companies. But I'm less convinced. Airbnb once seemed like a simple and harmless way to make extra money, but in San Francisco — where landlords and tenants often battle over the very soul and essence of the city — life here and the policies that govern it are endlessly complicated. And that's nothing new. | <urn:uuid:09251c5b-a2d5-4059-9217-f929cfd3af0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sfbg.com/print/2012/05/01/problem-sharing-economy?page=0%252C2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97612 | 2,744 | 1.570313 | 2 |
— Bears coach Marc Trestman, author of "Perseverance: Life Lessons on Leadership and Teamwork"
His son, Marc, was a multisport athlete primarily involved in football, baseball and basketball. Yet often, the younger Trestman invited a couple of friends over and transformed the basement into a full-fledged puck battle.
"There were too many holes in the walls from all the hockey games,'' Jerry Trestman said.
"I also had a table tennis thing down in that basement. We used to play that, too. But Marc, he's not little at all. His reach was too big.''
Marc Trestman never stopped reaching. Now he's at the pinnacle of his profession.
The 14th head coach in Bears history didn't climb to the summit overnight. He put forth the time. He made the sacrifices.
Trestman eagerly volunteered to coach at the University of Miami 32 years ago while attending law school there and now has fulfilled a dream that he shares with his wife and two daughters.
"I thought Marc should have been an NFL head coach years ago,'' Jerry Trestman said. "That's where he wanted to be … eventually.''
Marc credited his parents for instilling in him the values of hard work and dedication. Jerry Trestman, a musician who never played sports or attended college, owned and operated a musical instrument store for 45 years. He had other side businesses that were "nothing illegal'' he joked, including a restaurant where Marc once worked.
"I used to leave at 8 in the morning and never got home until about 2 the next morning,'' Jerry Trestman said. "My daughter, Cari, she's 13 months younger than Marc, and I think she knows him better than me because she spent more time with him. My wife (Sharon), she's the one who went to every game. She was the one who drove him all over.''
But Marc Trestman was the one who was driven.
"He left the house when he was 17. All the decisions between now and then have been his,'' Jerry Trestman said. "Like with law school, that was his decision. I tried not to influence him, although I'm a great admirer of education.
"I recall him making the decision that maybe he didn't have the physical ability to keep playing quarterback. As you know, it's a sport that very much involves the quarterback being hit. And Marc had some back problems. But still, I was not involved in any of his decisions.''
Jerry Trestman couldn't remember all the details of his son's athletic career save for his stint at the University of Minnesota as a backup quarterback to Tony Dungy, and his son's cameos as a defensive back at Vikings training camp.
Marc Trestman was a three-sport start at St. Louis Park (Minn.) High School who played three years with his hometown Gophers. Then he transferred to Minnesota State-Moorhead, where he replaced current MSNBC talk-show host Ed Schultz as the starting quarterback.
Jerry Trestman, however, vividly remembers his son's rooting interest. Fran Tarkenton was an idol.
"He always was a Vikings fan,'' the father said. "Yes, we were all Vikings fans. | <urn:uuid:d6917c2e-c502-47cc-9178-9498a372735c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.latimes.com/sports/ct-spt-0120-bears-trestman-chicago--20130120,0,2766273.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.99055 | 682 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah
From Telegraph "Syria Will Be The First Rogue State to Get Barack Obama Charm Offensive":
Diplomats and Democrats in Washington have confirmed that Mr Obama wants to persuade the Syrian leader, Bashar Assad, to cooperate with the West, in the hope that he will loosen his country's close ties to Iran, forcing Tehran to the negotiating table as well.
Both countries are accused of arming and sponsoring the terrorists groups Hamas and Hezbollah, funneling extremists and weapons into Iraq and attempting to purchase and develop nuclear technology. A Syrian nuclear plant was destroyed in an Israeli air attack last year.
Other senior sources in Washington say that there will be a "Syrian track" to American diplomacy under Mr Obama.
But dealing with Syria is a diplomatic minefield, as former prime minister Tony Blair discovered to his embarrassment during a previous thaw. On a visit to Damascus after the September 11 attacks, Mr Blair had to stand side by side with President Assad at a press conference while the Syrian dictator lectured the West about terrorism and praised Hamas, which has its political headquarters in Damascus, as freedom fighters.
Obama had this to say about Israel's attack on Syria:
Now, we don't know exactly what happened with respect to Syria. We've gotten general reports, but we don't know all the specifics. We got general reports in the run-up to the Iraq war that proved erroneous, and a lot of people voted for that war as a consequence.
And let's keep this mysterious Obama-(Syrian National) Tony Rezko-Syria connection, from Leftist blog WizBangBlue:
- Long-time Barack Obama supporter and campaign insider Tony Rezko was born in Syria and raised among Muslims. Rezko traveled the world for five years putting together business and real estate deals for famed-boxer Muhammed Ali.
- Muhammed Ali [aka Cassius Clay] is a Muslim.Elijah Muhammad (the man who officially renamed Clay) led the Black Muslim and Nation of Islam movement in the United States from 1934 to 1975.
- Tony Rezko still has ties to Syria. He is know to have investments, real estate holdings and relatives in metro Damascus
- Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski traveled to Damascus, Syria last February.
- Brzezinski was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser during the time that the ayatollahs rose to power, and was in office when Iran became an anti-western Islamic state. Brzeninski saw no threat in this.
- In 2005 Tony Rezko's company Rezmar partnered on a deal to build a nuclear power plant in Iraq.
- Tony Rezko's Rezmar Corporation has been implicated in the FBI investigation of Rezko.
Senior Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal was congratulated on Saturday by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who praised Hamas for their "legendary victory" following the Israelis' 22-day aggression against Gaza.
Just saying, maybe we should re-think this one, Mr. President. | <urn:uuid:b69fea2f-896c-40cb-a29b-3909bb02f803> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://conservativexpress.blogspot.com/2009_01_18_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959089 | 635 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The war began five years ago this week. It will end ... when? Today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year? Ten years from now? Longer than that?
Don't laugh. It's been done. France and England fought the 100 Years' War from 1337 to 1453, and already John McCain , who could be our next president, has said he can see us in Iraq a hundred years from now.
His Democratic opponents, of course, say they will begin ending it the minute they are elected. Then again, Democrats have had the power to end this malignant, unjust war for a long time now and haven't. So who knows how long it will continue?
Five years already. Can you believe it?
In that time, we've spent a half trillion dollars, and some say a lot more, all while our bridges collapse, our roads crumble and our poor can't afford to get sick.
We have, of course, lost about 4,000 brave men and women, but our losses pale compared to the devastation there. By some estimates nearly 100,000 have died in Iraq, many of them innocents. How easily we forget them because they are not "us."
Good news, though. The president this week said things in Iraq have improved. "The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable," he said, "yet some in Washington still call for retreat."
Cowards. They probably expect results, or at the very least a good reason for spending so much money and blood.
Good reasons have been hard to find.
After all, is oil cheaper? No. The price of oil hit an all-time high last week. One report said gas will be $4 per gallon by this summer, to which the president replied, "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that." Good thing he's in touch.
Is Iraq shaping up as the first great democracy of the Middle East, the one that will start the stampede toward freedom? No. Iran is still run by a nutwhack. Saudi Arabia is still a sheikdom. Syria remains Syria. If there's an uproar for democracy in any of those countries, it's a quiet uproar, that's for sure.
Are we at least safer from terrorists? Well, if we are, there doesn't seem to be any reason to credit the invasion of Iraq for it. In fact, the Pentagon recently examined 600,000 documents seized from Iraq after the start of the war and found no evidence that Saddam Hussein, evil as he was, had any direct ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. None.
So one might reasonably ask, "Why are we still there if the original premise for invading was false and there's no other real benefit?"
And one might reasonably answer, "Beats me."
I'd have thought people would be steamed. After all, their government either lied to them or was grossly incompetent.
But aside from a few protesters, few seem upset. In fact, the pundits keep assuring us that the No. 1 issue on the minds of Americans during this election is the economy, not the war.
Can you imagine the economy being No. 1 during World War II? "Sure, the Nazis and the Japanese are awful, but how am I going to be able to afford a new radio?"
It seems stunning. But then you realize the obvious: We've been at war for five long years. We've made our feelings known time and time again, and time and time again our feelings have not moved our leaders to stop the war. And so people have just quit trying.
That's perhaps the saddest thing of all here. There seems to be a sense out there that we are no longer in control of our own country. Our leaders are in control. And we don't control them.
It's true that a lot of people have died in this war.
But the death of our faith that we are a nation of the people, by the people and for the people is the biggest casualty of all. | <urn:uuid:24606b54-94e6-416a-8ea3-40c580e25135> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mlive.com/flintjournal/aheller/2008/03/five_years_of_war_has_cost_us.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979559 | 835 | 1.8125 | 2 |
News Ltd., the Australian media company headed by her son, confirmed her death.
She died peacefully on Wednesday surrounded by family members in her garden estate outside Melbourne. She had been hospitalized in September after a bad fall in which she broke her leg.
"We have lost the most wonderful mother but we are all grateful to have had her love and wisdom for so many years," Rupert Murdoch said in a family statement.
Rupert, 81, has said that his mother's long life was evidence that he would be able to continue leading News Corp., the global media company which he founded, for many years.
Dame Elisabeth was a patron of the arts and contributed to an estimated 100 charities annually.
"Probably the most useful contribution one can make is to forget oneself and care for others," she once said.
She was the wife of Sir Keith Murdoch, a hotshot journalist and newspaper publisher, and the mother of his four children—Rupert Murdoch, Anne Kantor, Janet Calvert-Jones, and Helen Handbury, who died in 2004.
Murdoch's philanthropic roots began during her childhood, when she started knitting woolen tops for babies at a children's hospital and volunteering at a kindergarten. As a teen, she volunteered for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
In 1927, Keith
Her family and friends were initially panicked over the age difference, but she ignored their warnings and married him the following year. The two were married for 24 years, before Keith died in 1952.
By then, philanthropy had become the main focus of her life. She spent more than three decades on the board of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital. Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame in 1963 in recognition of her service to the community.
Murdoch was open about the advantages wealth had granted her, particularly the opportunity to help others.
"Wealth can be very misused, but generally speaking it's a tremendous tool in here in helping community," she told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in 2008.
"People say to me sometimes, 'You must be very proud of Rupert,' and I know what they mean. They think he's made a lot of money and I say, 'I am very proud of him because he's a good father and a good son.' And that's what I'm proud of. Not so proud of his wealth."
She has 77 direct descendants, including 50 great-grandchildren and six great-great-grandchildren.
Her family said arrangements for a memorial service were still being decided, but that the funeral was expected to be private. | <urn:uuid:e8679042-71f2-4421-98a7-19a13c5a5a91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ldnews.com/national/ci_22129120/rupert-murdochs-mother-elisabeth-dies-at-age-103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990091 | 536 | 1.515625 | 2 |
SVA Film prepares you to be an independent filmmaker with the most hands-on BFA program in New York City.
- You don’t just study films; you make them – all four years.
- Your mentors are working professionals using state of the art equipment and technology
- Your fellow filmmakers are an international creative community who work together to help each other realize their goals.
Independence is the key word in filmmaking. It means having a personal vision. It means having choices in your career – whether that’s working for a company or being on your own – or both. It means being able to do what you love for life.
As an SVA undergrad, you can specialize in Directing, Screenwriting, Cinematography, Editing or Sound. You can create a body of work that rivals most graduate schools. Our immersive program has many special features designed to educate you better and faster – like courses which are taught in collaboration by writers and directors, and an integrated curriculum which means you develop work in writing classes, fine-tune it with professional actors in directing, prepare and shoot it in production, and edit in post-production.
While you get a solid start in your specialty, you also gain knowledge in all aspects of filmmaking. The essential experience of SVA Film is collaborative and your teachers and classmates quickly become your partners in creativity. All of our faculty do what they teach –actively contending in today’s high tech media marketplace. The relationships you form with your mentors now mean you are already connected to the film industry. When our teachers need to fill a slot on the set or in the studio – who better than the people they have trained themselves? Our students intern at the top production and post-production companies, among others, and are often working before they graduate.
Because your education isn’t just academic but hands-on right from the beginning, you learn early what you love and what you’re good at. You share your skills working on your classmates’ films. Bonds are formed during the intense days and nights of shooting that not only contribute to fine work during school but to career opportunities after graduation.
Film and Television are New York’s fastest growing industries -- a $5 billion business that employs over 100,000 workers. Five commercial studios have committed to the new development at the Brooklyn Navy Yards alone – adding an estimated 2,000 jobs in the next year. * The reason for this explosive growth is the talent pool – New York is the place to find the right people with right skills. SVA has long contributed to the city’s artistic resources.
SVA is the country’s largest independent art school which gives you many advantages as a budding filmmaker. You’re in an atmosphere with a rich tradition of innovation and originality. You’re surrounded by the best image-makers in media. You’re part of the art and idea capital of the world.
At SVA Film and Animation, “independent” is not just a trendy pre-fix for “filmmaker. “ It’s the creative DNA that makes SVA artists different. We’re not just about getting a job, but having a life. A life in which you can keep making the work you love.
*Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Mayor Praises Growth in Film and TV Jobs
New York Times, August 22, 2011
Request information at [email protected] to learn more about the undergraduate film school at SVA.
Friday, May 10, 2013
A Sikh child’s perilous bus ride in the wake of Ghandi’s assassination, a boy’s unusual adventure with a baby crab, three generations of Oklahoma women, and a monstrous raccoon were among... | <urn:uuid:81d8ea9b-bb17-47f3-b9c1-91e05749a5ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sva.edu/undergraduate/film-and-video?secret=87222c0a37029aatext%252Fjavascript | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952865 | 779 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The Clown Joke
Once there was a young boy, just 8 years of age. He lived in a small rural community, and there wasn't much to do when he wasn't at school. His nearest neighbours lived several miles away, so early on he learned to make his own fun, and be his own best friend. He may not have had a very exciting life as defined by an outsider, but he liked it, and was happy.
Because of the dearth of activities, when something came up it was an awfully big deal. Now every so often, a travelling circus would make its way to the local fairground and set up for a few weeks in the summer. This was the most hotly anticipated social event in the township's memory, and all the little boy ever heard about since he was old enough to remember.
One hot July day, a few weeks after his 8th birthday, the boy saw the first poster for the famous circus in the window of Greely's Soda Shoppe. It was coming! In just 7 days! He could hardly contain his excitement. He ran all the way home and told his mother, hwo started calling all her friends. Anyone who has lived in a small town will understand - it is physically impossible to exceed the speed of gossip. Soon, the whole town was abuzz with excitement and anticipation.
The little boy had been saving up all his allowance, birthday and Christmas money for two years, and had a nice wad of cash to spend at the circus. After long negotiations, he got his parents to agree that he could go about on his own, and spend his money how ever he liked. The night before the circus was due to open he was unable to sleep at all, just waiting for what wonders lay around the corner.
In the morning, he jumped out of bed, got cleaned and dressed, wolfed down his scrambled eggs and bacon, and hurried off to visit the circus.
Nothing he had heard or read prepared him for the sensory experience of a real, live circus. The pungent smell of sawdust, animals, sugar and sweat; the flashing lights of the midway; the voices of the barkers extolling the virtues of their wares. He bathed in it. He took a culinary tour of the carnival, sampling the cotton candy, the toffee apples, the hot dogs and the funnel cakes. He played a few games, tossing rings at bottles and dipping for ducks. He rode on the Tilt-A-Whirl seven times in a row and was nearly sick, loving every minute. And he toured the freak shows, seeing the dog-faced boy, the human tadpole, and the amazing headless woman. As the evening drew in everyone started heading for the big top, where preparations for the main show of the evening were starting. The boy joined the crowds and found a seat right near the front so he could see all the action.
The ringmaster came out to the main ring in his brilliant red coat, shiny black boots and crushed velvet top hat, and said "Ladies and gentlemen, and children of all ages! I now present to you the most amazing sights you will ever see!" And he was not idly boasting. The boy watched acrobats and fire-eaters, jugglers and animal trainers, dancers and strongmen, and he drank it in like fine wine.
Finally, near the end of the show, the lights went down low and a small dumpy clown in a tiny green hat waddled out to the centre ring. He proclaimed loudly, "Ladies and gentlemen, I need a volunteer!" The audience went mad, screaming, hollering, and trying to make themselves seen. The boy joined in the brouhaha, hoping against hope that he would be picked to come into the centre ring.
A spotlight came on with a loud "thud" and began to swing over the crowd. Back and forth, back and forth, in a slowly decreasing circles, until it stopped - right on the shining face of the little boy. With the boundless energy of youth he hurtled over the barrier, and raced to join the clown's side.
The clown looked down at the boy and with a broad grin asked him, "Young man, tell me - are you a donkey?"
The boy furrowed his brow. "No," he replied.
"Are you a mule?"
"Well then you must be an ass! Aaaaahahahahahaaa!" The clown roared vicious laughter at the young boy, and the whole audience joined him. The boy stood in shock as wave after wave of derisive laughter enveloped him. The room started to spin, and the depth of his humiliation grew and grew. Finally he broke down sobbing, and ran out of the tent into the night.
He ran and ran, until he got home and threw himself on his bed. Wracked with sobs, he seemed to go on crying forever. The scorn! The mortification! Finally, the sobs dried up, and the boy sat upright in his bed. If anyone had seen him, they might have wondered at the glint of hardness in his eye that had not been there before. He straightened his shoulders, looked at himself in his mirror, and spoke in a steely voice that was quite out of character for one so young.
"I'm going to get that clown if it is the last thing I do."
The next day the boy went to town and visited the library. He started reading the joke books in the library, and systematically memorising them. He did this every day, until he had exhausted every book the library had. He practiced these jokes every chance he could, with his parents, with his friends, and immediately dropped anything that did not work. His aim was laughs, and he started to get them. Soon, he was ordering books through the inter-library loan program, and building up an immense storehouse of riddles, puns and knock-knock jokes. His parents were dumbfounded by his uncharacteristic drive, but stood back and let him pursue his passion in the hopes it would make him happy. They never asked what happened to him at the circus, but both knew something had, and it had changed their boy in some fundamental way.
The joke books soon got repetitive, which inevitably led to more abstract lines of research. He began reading biographies of famous comedians, and watching them on TV. He started taping stand-up comedy on TV every time it was on, and watching the shows over and over, studying the poise, the timing, and the stage presence of each performer. When he could find them, he voraciously devored books on comedy theory, history, and craft. He became the local "expert" on comedy, though many wondered why someone so funny seemed so sad.
Eventually, he went off to clown college to study face painting, juggling, mime, and close-up magic. his instructors often commented on his excellent performances and his dedication to the craft, and the boy (who was quickly becoming a man) just smiled and thanked them. If anyone noticed the hard gleam in his eye as he smiled, no one commented on it.
After graduating top in his class, he started showing up at open-mic nights and talent shows. He introduced new material, and refined it, honed it. He never made much money, just enough to live on, and he worked like a demon. He was driven, you see. In a few years he had made a name for himself as a stand-up comedian (and all-around performer) and crowds loved him. His signature piece, though, was the heckler put-down. Those who saw him on a regular basis (and he had a few hard-core fans) swore up and down, it was the best part of any show. He always put the stooge in their place, and he never used the same line twice. And the few who had seen every show would sometimes mention the fact that there was an air of gritty purpose in everything he did on stage, like his life depended on it. Cynics said that the hecklers were plants, that they had rehearsed the whole thing ahead of time, but the simple truth was that the boy who was now a man had no time for other people, and would never consider bringing in a partner on what he considered his very personal mission.
Finally, on the morning of his 30th birthday, he took a small bag with a change of clothes and a toothbrush, and got in his car. He drove to his parents' old place and stopped in town for a soda at Greely's. He saw the poster, but it was no surprise - he had been tracking it for months.
Opening night at the circus. A good night for vengeance.
He dropped off his things, and walked to the fairground. It was smaller than he remembered, but just as vivid. The smell of sawdust, animals, sugar and sweat; the flashing lights of the midway, the voices of the barkers. He had some cotton candy, and a hot dog. He played a few games, tossing rings at bottles and dipping for ducks. He even took a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl. He saw the amazing headless woman smoking a cigarette with the dog-faced boy behind the freak show tents. Through it all, a chilly calm settled over him like a blanket.
As the evening drew in, everyone started heading for the big top for the main show of the evening. The man walked calmly to the tent, and found a seat near the front. He barely registered the fact that it was the same seat he had occupied years ago.
The ringmaster came out to the main ring, in the same brilliant red coat, shiny black boots and crushed velvet top hat, and said "Ladies and gentlemen, and children of all ages! I now present to you the most amazing sights you will ever see!" Everything was as he remembered it - the acrobats, and fire-eaters, jugglers and animal trainers, dancers and strongmen. For a brief moment, he was lost in the nostalgia, and forgot the real reason he had travelled so long and worked so hard - until it walked into the ring.
The lights went down low, and the same small dumpy clown in the same tiny green hat waddled out to the centre ring. He proclaimed loudly, "Ladies and gentlemen, I need a volunteer!" The audience screamed and cheered, begged and cajoled, but the man simply sat, a small smile on his lips. A smile that never quite reached his eyes.
A spotlight came on with a loud "thud" and began to swing over the crown. Back and forth, back and forth, in a slowly decreasing circles, until it stopped - inevitably - on the face of the man. He registered no surprise. Fate was with him. All his preparation was for this moment. It was time. He calmly joined the clown in the centre ring.
The clown asked him, "Sir, please tell me - are you a donkey?"
"No," he replied.
"Are you a mule?"
"Well then you must be an ass! Aaaaahahahahahaaa!" The clown once again roared his vicious laughter, and the whole audience joined him. The man stood, the expression on his face never changing. The clown sensed the moment slipping away from him as he stared intot hose cold, cold eyes, and the spell over the crowd began to dissipate. The laughter drained away awkwardly, until the entire crowd was deathly silent.
The man looked the clown deep in the eyes, a look of triumph blooming on his face, and exclaimed...
"Fuck you, clown."
[-Seth Hanisek, Fullback, Woo Wallcrawlers (#152, p171 bitches!)] | <urn:uuid:9b6d467d-2a89-46f2-90b3-6efe9a9c8d7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scottsigler.com/forums/general-topics/topics/unbelievably-bad-jokes-that-are-so-bad-they-re-funny?page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988516 | 2,468 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Down But Not Out: Cisco's Pascale Delaunay Shifts Gears
Pascale Delaunay, a Cisco engineer, gives us an update on her goal to achieve her Olympic dream.
August 08 , 2012
Pascale Delaunay went to Europe in hopes of competing in the triple jump at the London Olympics, but she found herself facing a whole different set of challenges that had little to do with athletics.
You might recall from a previous post on The Network that Delaunay has spent most of the past five years cramming a rigorous triple-jump training regimen around her full-time job as a Cisco systems engineer.
Born in France and raised in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, she has spent most of her 29 years in the United States. She began working for Cisco in 2005 and started training in earnest for the Olympics two years later when she moved to the Los Angeles area. Delaunay had hoped to become the first woman to bring home a medal for Haiti, but unfortunately didn't qualify for the London games. Nor did her teammates.
While her recent experience training for the Olympics in France is one she will never forget, Delaunay says it wasn't at all what she expected. For starters, she and her Haitian teammates didn't get the chance to attend all-important competitions they were relying on to ramp up for London. In addition, conditions for training were way below par, Delaunay says.
"After workouts, I need to ice," she says. "If I can't get a flush out from a massage, I have to flush out my body and makes sure the swelling goes down through icing or ice-packs. But nowhere in the region could we find ice."
But all is not lost. Ever the pro-active optimist, Delaunay and her trainer—world-class track and field coach Ernie Gregoire—are setting their sights next on the 2013 World Championships in Athletics, to be held in Moscow.
"Moscow is the mission," says an undaunted Delaunay. "It was always a six-year plan."
Delaunay is in the unusual position of being able to compete under any of three flags—French, American or Haitian. She chose to represent Haiti because that's where she felt she could have the greatest impact, inspiring young Haitian girls to a better life.
In a decision that speaks to her character, Delaunay says she would choose to compete under the Haitian flag again, but only if changes are made to the Haitian Olympic Committee. Furthermore, she is willing to be the one who spearheads such changes, in part because—thanks to her Cisco career—she does not depend on the Haitian committee for anything.
"I am the perfect candidate to speak up," Delaunay says. "These athletes spend four-plus years working towards a moment, and it all goes down the drain. I want to make sure that never happens again."
At just 29 years of age, Delaunay could yet become an Olympian. Due to the highly technical nature of the sport, triple-jumpers often enjoy greater longevity than their track counterparts, she says. Case in point, team Great Britain's best female triple-jump hope—Cuban-born Yamilé Aldama—made her Olympic debut at the London games at age 39.
"It's definitely within the realm of possibility," Delaunay says. "One thing about me is that you can't keep me down too long. No matter how many times I get knocked down, I'm going to get back up."
An inspiration to many and someone her colleagues all speak highly of, you can bet this is not the last we will see of Pascale Delaunay on the track.
The contents or opinions in this feature are independent and do not necessarily represent the views of Cisco. They are offered in an effort to encourage continuing conversations on a broad range of innovative technology subjects. We welcome your comments and engagement.
We welcome the re-use, republication, and distribution of "The Network" content. Please credit us with the following information: Used with the permission of http://thenetwork.cisco.com/. | <urn:uuid:f096db03-0eee-4e8f-b070-8c78bd962d0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsroom.cisco.com/feature/983029/Down-But-Not-Out-Cisco-s-Pascale-Delaunay-Shifts-Gears | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974479 | 864 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The CSFE site is in Clark State Forest in Clark County, Indiana, about 75 miles south of the other sites. Clark State Forests was one of the first locations in Indiana to be invaded by Japanese stiltgrass. It has been present on the property for over 20 years, and is common along many roadsides.
This paticular site is along a creekbed in a narrow valley between two steep ridges. It has been invaded for less than 5 years. The invasion is restricted to the creekbed and areas immediately around it. It has not spread upslope. | <urn:uuid:3562d3b6-0649-4f94-acf7-2b2cb4c382a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indiana.edu/~preserve/InvasiveSpread/map_html/CSFE2008.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986035 | 117 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Breathing life into the Museum that RunsWritten by Colby Dunn
A few steps past the door at Maggie Valley’s Wheels Through Time museum, and the characteristic, unmistakable scent of a mechanic’s workshop wafts out – a heady mix of grease, motor oil, gasoline and rubber worn down by open roads.
With the vast and impressive array of motorcycles and memorabilia on display in the museum — both ancient and modern, rusted and restored — it would be easy to think that it is the perfume of these dormant machines’ pasts, reminders of their greatness in battle, their glory on the track.
But meeting Dale Walksler, the museum’s proprietor, curator and greatest fan, will prove otherwise. To him, this is a living museum. It is hard to walk more than a few yards with him before he stops to crank up one bike or another and tell its story, and he knows them all. To Walksler, the stories seem to be almost as valuable as the motorcycles themselves.
“It’s all about the story and the history,” he says. “I don’t go out and chase any old motorcycle. It has to have a story.”
And all of them do. Walking through the museum, which stretches over two floors and features special exhibits, vintage racers, military motorcycles, stunt bikes, a plethora of other machines and the accessories and memorabilia that accompany them, Walksler points out one of his newest acquisitions: a strange, 1916 Harley Davidson contraption that is driven from the sidecar.
“I’ve found nothing about it,” he says enthusiastically, but he’s already got a trip planned to the Harley archives in Milwaukee to see what he can dig up. That, he says, is one of the key features of what he does.
“Research, lots of research,” is how he says he’s gotten to know the life stories of the bikes that call the museum home, and some are the most storied motorcycles this country has produced. The knowledge that is the prize for all that research, Walksler shares freely with anyone who happens to be around. A museum patron passes, asking about a particular bike in the back corner of the museum, and Walksler’s face is alight.
“That particular motorcycle was ridden by the Jack Pine champion,” he begins, before regaling the man and his wife with the story of the bike’s win and its rider’s own history, before quickly rattling off the answers to a few more obscure questions about the history of Harley Davidson shifting.
A tale behind each bike
Walksler is a compact man, his tawny hair and goatee shot through with grey, who walks with purpose and talks with animation, especially when the subject is motorcycles. His knowledge is encyclopedic, though not dry, and he has the delivery of a practiced showman — a mix of enthusiasm and bravado, information and entertainment.
Passing by another couple in motorcycle gear, he stops mid-sentence to thank them for stopping by. They’re from New Hampshire, and they’re riding their way back home.
“Would you like to see the rarest motorcycle in the world?” he asks slyly, and the New Hampshirans, of course, oblige. Leading the way, he begins telling the story of the Traub, a mysterious, one-of-a-kind motorcycle about which very little is known, apart from the fact that it was found in a brick wall by a Chicago fireman in 1967.
Walksler stops next to an old, reddish-orange bike with ‘Traub’ emblazoned on the side in stylized script and entertains his audience with the tale of how he acquired the bike from fellow collector Richard Morris. Before that, he says, it passed through the hands of both Steve McQueen and his stuntman, Bud Ekins, also an aficionado.
“Would you like to see it run?” he asks, almost rhetorically, and as he cranks the ancient machine, even more visitors materialize, drawn by the shuddering, spitting, deep-bass call of the Traub that bounces and echoes, ear-splittingly amplified, off the high warehouse ceilings. The audience is growing.
The Traub is clearly one of the crown jewels in Walksler’s collection. Some people, he says proudly, come just to see it. And whether or not this is true, his excitement makes it believable, and even a cursory inquiry will reveal that it is, in fact, a remarkably rare piece of antiquity.
But as he leads the impromptu tour group around the floor, his manner is surprisingly low on favoritism. The consummate collector, he is enamored of his entire compendium equally, and he’s been adding to it for most of his life.
“The first bike I ever owned was a 1957 Harley,” he says. “It was $25.” When he bought a bike off another high schooler for roughly the same price, and promptly sold one of its parts for $125, he was sold.
A shop followed in 1970, and a Harley dealership in southern Illinois sprung up a few years later. Along the way, Walksler was meticulously building his collection, anticipating the day he would share it with the public at large.
“Being selective is really important,” he says. He judges his acquisitions by three criteria: its rareness and desirability, make — he collects only American machines – and the story behind the piece.
“And then I’ve still got to make it run,” he says, grinning as he perches reading glasses atop his head and sets down a stack of photos sent to him by one of many hopeful sellers. And indeed, most of the museum’s specimens do at least crank, even the most geriatric and unlikely candidates.
In fact, he just completed the inaugural Motorcycle Cannonball — a jaunt across the nation raced exclusively on bikes that are more than 95 years old — on a 1915 Harley Davidson from the collection.
Wheels Through Time, in its first incarnation, began in 1993 in Mount Vernon, Illinois, where it enjoyed a 13-year run before Walksler packed it in and shipped off to Maggie Valley, where he set up shop because, as he points out, it’s where the motorcyclists already come.
“It’s a known dot on the map,” he says, launching into an anecdote to illustrate the point.
“My brother was in a meeting, and he says, ‘my little brother is moving to Maggie Valley,’ and three people — this is in Chicago — said, ‘Hey, I know where that is!’”
Since his arrival in 2006, Walksler hasn’t exactly enjoyed an untarnished relationship with the community. Frustration with what Walksler perceives as a lack of reverence for his museum by locals even prompted him to consider another move last year.
But back on the floor, he has only words and eyes for the collection that has sent him into relative prominence in the motorcycle community.
A member of the little group — an elderly man in a denim shirt, jeans held up with black suspenders, worn riding boots an a red cap that identifies him as the St. Louis Bevo Beer Packaging Supervisor — pipes up to ask if there are any flat-track bikes. His name is Ed Gahn, and he is a 71-year-old flat-track racing veteran himself.
“I got to see hospitals all over the Midwest,” he quips, laughing as he folds his arms across his chest.
Of course, replies Walksler. He quickly drums up three or four names that Gahn recognizes, and when a particularly legendary and difficult bike — Leaping Lena — is mentioned, Walksler bids the group to follow him, for that same bike, he says, is in the back corner, and both men have ridden it.
And so went the morning — a spontaneous show featuring his most treasured highlights and history of American motorcycle culture, with Walksler acting as emcee, ringmaster and professor. He summons a battery of dates and figures, names and stories, developments and disasters with keen alacrity, in his element among his beloved machines, exuding charisma as he coaxes half a dozen motorcycles to life for the benefit of his elated spectators.
But not everyone is as pleased with Walksler, or his efforts locally. The enmity between him and some in the local community is no secret, and he isn’t timid about sharing his disdain for what he perceives as a less-than-welcoming reception he and his museum have garnered from some tourism and business leaders.
“I’m not the kind of person who’s going to change my focus and life for the people who don’t get it,” he says, adding that he feels no support from the local tourism entities or local government. “I honestly think a lot of them think ‘I guess we already get enough of them [motorcyclists] through here, so that’ll do.’”
When asked why he chose to keep the museum in Maggie Valley despite conflicts within the community, he answered that “the real reason is that I’ve made as many adjustments as I’m willing to make.”
As far as an end to the hostility is concerned, Walksler says he is open to better relationships locally, but seems less inclined to proactive cultivation.
“My door is open all the time,” he says.
But despite his personal quarrels on the local scene, his offerings to those inside and out of the motorcycle community are a unique, well-curated collection that reflects the passion and eagerness of its owner.
“This isn’t a motorcycle museum,” he says, “it’s a museum of American history and culture.” | <urn:uuid:a7070d2c-dc39-4b47-8127-c0d084ecdc77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smokymountainnews.com/archives/item/1904-breathing-life-into-the-museum-that-runs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971868 | 2,153 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Haunting, beautiful film version of Emily Bronte's tragic novel, with Olivier at his romance period peak, but marred slightly by Oberon's relative lack of passion.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a beautifully told story, displaying impeccable talent both in front of and behind the camera. Wyler had been interested in Bronte's story as a vehicle for Charles Boyer and Sylvia Sidney, who had starred in his 1937 film DEAD END. Hecht and MacArthur were assigned to write
the film, and they headed for the island home of drama critic Alexander Woolcott. Here they labored to create a script faithful to the novel, though Woolcott was convinced the two writers would destroy Bronte's... | <urn:uuid:2d044057-f19f-4029-b9af-6542ac943710> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://movies.tvguide.com/wuthering-heights/123208 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97546 | 145 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Rather than using a large piping bag, paper cones are very handy in the kitchen when you need to pipe small amounts for decoration. Folding a paper cone can be awkward at first, but with practice it will take literally seconds to create one. All you need is a right triangle piece of parchment paper (not wax paper). Many pastry supply shops carry pre-cut triangles but it is easy to cut your own. Just cut a rectangular piece of parchment in half, along the diagonal, and away you go.
I have created a slide show in Flickr to demonstrate how to fold a paper cone. If you click on each individual photo, I have included helpful notes. | <urn:uuid:68ec902e-1a1a-4aaa-9230-096a87078680> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sum.ptuo.us/roller/ks/entry/how_to_fold_a_paper | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945583 | 134 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Latest Money & Finances articles
Doing Well by Doing Good
Would you lend money to a friend? To your brother-in-law? Or to a perfect stranger?
An increasing number of people are answering those questions with a resounding, "Yes!" Over the past three years, lending directly to friends, family members and even total strangers has become a popular way of earning a decent return, while helping out specific people strapped for cash.
Such direct loans are being arranged, executed and serviced through an innovative Web-based model known as peer-to-peer lending.
P2P lending brings together the ideas of social networking and micro-credit, matching people who have money to lend with people searching for a loan. P2P eliminates the middleman — the banking industry — by allowing loans to be made directly from one person to another.
Cutting out the banker creates a "win-win" for the lender and the borrower. The lender earns more interest than can be earned on bank savings, while the borrower pays less interest than would be charged on a bank loan (assuming the borrower could even get a bank loan.)
P2P lenders also get the satisfaction of helping a specific person start a business, pay off higher-interest debt, or remodel a house for a growing family.
The biggest player in the budding P2P industry is Prosper.com, launched in 2006 by Chris Larsen, co-founder and former CEO of E-Loan. Larsen calls Prosper "an eBay for money and credit."
As of July 31, 2009, the site had more than 900,000 members and had helped arrange almost $180 million in P2P loans. (Prosper generates its revenue by charging borrowers an upfront fee and lenders a small percentage of the loan balance.)
But it hasn’t been a smooth ride. Prosper was effectively shut down in late last year after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission demanded the company register as a seller of securities. That process took nearly nine months. Finally, with SEC approval, Prosper resumed facilitating P2P loans in July.
Here’s how P2P lending works. Would-be borrowers shop for a loan by posting details (for free) about why they need a loan, how much they want to borrow and what interest rate they're willing to pay. Lenders then bid, offering to fund the loan at the borrower's desired interest rate, or lower.
Usually, loans are funded by pooling money from many individual lenders. A $5,000 loan, for example, might be funded by 100 different people who've each put up $50. Some Prosper lenders have portfolios that consist of hundreds of such "microloans."
The advantage of this micro-credit model is diversification, which greatly reduces a lender's exposure to default risk. In the previous example, if the borrower failed to repay the $5,000 loan, the most any of the 100 lenders could lose is $50.
To help lenders make informed lending decisions, Prosper posts borrower profiles that include a credit score (minimum allowable score is 640), debt-to-income ratio, and information about any current and past delinquencies. The site also assigns each potential borrower a risk rating, ranging from AA (excellent credit) to HR (high-risk).
Borrowers with checkered credit histories can expect interest rates of more than 20%. We don't recommend lending to that class of borrower. Not only is the risk high, but there's also a legitimate question of whether you're really helping someone when charging them such high interest rates.
While lending to high-risk applicants doesn't intrigue us, the lower-risk end of the spectrum does.
In the current low interest-rate environment, the potential of building a 4%-6% micro-loan portfolio (which includes a cushion for a handful of loan defaults) holds some definite appeal. At this lower end of the credit-risk curve, it's also more likely that you're providing legitimate help via lower interest rates than these borrowers would qualify for from traditional lending sources.
Other P2P sites have different procedures and guidelines than Prosper, but the essence of the direct-lending model is the same—people lending to people. Prosper's competition includes LendingClub.com and PertuityDirect.com.
VirginMoney.com, owned by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, focuses on loans between friends and family.
In addition to the default risk noted above, another possible downside to P2P lending is that most loans have a three-year term — with no early-call provision. So if liquidity is a high priority, P2P probably isn't for you. This means you shouldn't use P2P lending services for your “emergency fund” money. But if liquidity isn't an issue, P2P lending could be a good option for an “accumulation” fund.
By making micro-loans to a series of (hopefully) responsible borrowers, you can do well by doing good. While helping yourself to higher returns, you'll be helping others who need access to cash.
© Sound Mind Investing
Published since 1990, Sound Mind Investing is America's best-selling financial newsletter written from a biblical perspective. Visit the Sound Mind Investing website .
Find this article at: http://www.crosswalk.com/finances/11607236/ | <urn:uuid:de3e2479-c07b-49e4-8b42-025529d7816f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thefishhawaii.com/Article.asp?id=1455779&spid=26163 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954041 | 1,121 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.