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
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Can you explain how the folder option in EBSCO databases works?
When you are in an EBSCO database, you can save articles and searches to a folder so you can access them later. You can save articles by clicking on 'Add to folder' underneath the article while in a list of search results, or on the top right side of the screen while in the article itself. You can save a search by clicking on 'Alert/Save/Share'.
It's a good idea to create a free EBSCO account and be signed in whenever you are searching and adding content to the folder. Articles and searches you add to the folder while signed in will remain after you leave the database, and by signing in again you will be able to access them at a later date and on different computers. Content that is added to the folder while you are not signed in to your EBSCO account will be deleted when you leave the database. You also need an EBSCO account if you want to check out eBooks. | <urn:uuid:b8021e32-3234-46c1-b1df-14e7ddce61c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asklibrary.com.edu/a.php?qid=270477 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939503 | 208 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Childhood camping experiences taught me you don't want green wood when you're starting a fire. It creates too much smoke. Plenty of heat, too, but mostly smoke, of the kind that envelops you and leaves you too blind to see the marshmallows and hot dogs you're burning to a crisp.
The president's recent interview endorsing same-sex "marriage" was the forensic equivalent of green wood. He added greatly to the heat of the issue, but mostly cloaked it in smoke.
He professed to have come by his newfound conclusions by a long and winding road (although when he ran for the Illinois senate in 1996 he seems to have already been there). Perhaps the journey could have been appreciably shortened by embracing the truth instead of contorting to fit that which is culturally fashionable.
And right now, homosexual behavior is culturally fashionable. Of that there is no doubt. The culture is dancing to the tune played non-stop by those promoting a homosexual legal and political agenda – it's a tune called "equality." And the music is supposed to drown out the truth that homosexual behavior is wrong.
If two children tell their parents a falsehood, and one child is spanked for the lie while the other is sent to bed with no dessert, the first child may reasonably complain that justice was not equally applied. What he cannot deny is that the lie was wrong. Or that, because of his parents' injustice, he should be rewarded for that lie.
But that, in essence, is the plea of those pressing the case for same-sex "marriage." For the question is not whether heterosexual couples should be allowed to enjoy the privileges of wedded bliss while same-sex couples are not. It's not whether heterosexual couples have treated marriage with the respect it deserves. And it's not whether civil unions offer some reasonable substitute for a marriage license.
No, the question at the root of the same-sex "marriage" issue is, "Is homosexual behavior right or wrong?" If it's wrong, the law and society have no business supporting it, endorsing it, protecting it, promoting it, or elevating it to the status of a "civil right." Everything else is moot.
The president allows as how his own tortured soul came to peace on this question when he came to realize what nice people some of these same-sex couples are and saw how much his children were confused that such happy homes should be deemed disreputable.
But again, the measure of right or wrong is not whether the person doing wrong is nice, nor is it about how effectively the wrongdoer has made his wrongdoing work for him. Politeness, charm, personal warmth, and affectionate natures have never been regarded as exemptions from the law. A fast talker who charms the officer who pulls her over may or may not get off without a ticket – but she was still speeding. And society has determined that speeding, however widely and hypocritically practiced by the population, is wrong.
One of the more exasperating aspects of wrong is that it doesn't cease to be wrong just because I love the person doing it. Although the man who betrays his wife with another woman may be my brother, my father, my son, or my best friend, adultery is still wrong. His wife may be a shrew, and the other woman may be gregarious. He may even feel that this new relationship has actually helped him "grow as a person." But society still concurs that betraying one's marriage vows is wrong.
The laws – written and unwritten – of our society are not based, cannot be based, on feelings, personalities, or individual circumstances. They are based, most often, on what we intuitively know to be right and wrong. In turn, this knowledge helps us perceive what is best for the society as a whole.
Self-destruction is not best for society as a whole. And the end-result of entrenched, endorsed, homosexual relationships is fewer children. The end-result of one-gender parents is a child less fully adjusted to his world than he would be by the effective combination of loving male and female parental influences.
We know this in the deep places of our soul. And we know that homosexual behavior is wrong for the same reasons that we understand, intuitively, that lying, stealing, and adultery are wrong: the fact that those practicing homosexual behavior are lying to themselves, stealing from themselves, harming themselves, and betraying an idea of marriage that they disagree with doesn't change that.
And neither does the fact that we let them, even if we do so out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, compassion, tolerance, or justice.
So when the smoke clears, wrong is wrong. Even when a president says it isn't. | <urn:uuid:f65c8042-053b-4b4c-a902-5634d91d5561> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/peering-through-the-smoke-of-the-marriage-debate-75615/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974738 | 974 | 1.601563 | 2 |
“A line already snaked around the building shortly after the three-day event began at 3 p.m., and the parking lot was jammed” at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Va., wrote Justin Jouvenal of The Washington Post:
“With an AK-47 slung over one shoulder, Marco Hernandez offered one word when asked why he was in the overflow crowd at the gun show.”
“Obama,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the possible gun ban.”
And this is the story across America since Sandy Hook.
The weapon most in demand at Chantilly?
The AR-15 black rifle, a version of which was used to slaughter the innocents in Newtown. At Chantilly, their price doubled in hours to $1,800. Gun stores have sold out their inventory.
Yet for weeks after Sandy Hook, journalists and politicians from the president to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who were making the case for a new assault weapons ban, dominated the airwaves. Those calling for reinstatement of the ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 had the national audience almost entirely to themselves.
The National Rifle Association was largely silent. Not until nine days after Newtown did the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre appear on “Meet the Press” to be subjected to hostile interrogation.
Yet, from the record gun sales in December, and 2012 — there were 16.8 million calls to the FBI for background checks for gun purchases last year — the elites have lost the argument with the audience that counts. They have failed to convince those who buy guns.
Just as East Berliners, before the Wall was built, voted with their feet, fleeing west, Americans are voting with their checkbooks, paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to buy the guns liberals loathe.
The reflexive response of the gun controllers is to blame this on that malevolent force, the gun lobby, at whose apex is the NRA.
But those crowds coming to gun shows in droves and buying semi-automatics are not there because the NRA issued some order.
Today, we Americans are a far more heavily armed people than half a century ago. Forty-seven percent of adult males own a firearm. There are 270 million rifles, shotguns and pistols in private hands.
Are they for hunting? Not according to the Financial Times.
“The number of hunters fell from 16.6 million in 1975 to 12.5 million in 2006, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.” That number will continue to shrink as America’s suburbs further encroach on rural areas, limiting hunting grounds and reducing game.
The FT notes that Freedom Group, owner of Bushmaster, has estimated that while “total sales of long guns to U.S. consumers rose at an annual rate of just 3 percent during 2007-2011, modern sporting rifles grew at an annual rate of 27 percent.” Last year, sporting rifle sales doubled.
The number of rifles like the AR-15 in private hands has probably tripled since the assault weapons ban expired. The NRA’s David Keene estimates the number now at above 3 million. Who owns these weapons?
Half are owned by veterans and cops. Writes Keene: “Nearly 90 percent of those who own an AR-15 use it for recreational target shooting; 51 percent of AR owners are members of shooting clubs and visit the range regularly; the typical AR owner is not a crazed teenage psychopath, but a 35-plus-year-old, married and has some college education.”
These figures suggest that a successful effort to restrict the sale and transfer of “assault rifles” will, as did the Volstead Act and Prohibition, drive the market underground, create lawbreakers out of folks who are law-abiding and send the AR-15 price further skyward.
Many gun controllers not only do not understand what motivates those who disagree with them, they do not like them, reflexively calling them gun nuts, a reaction as foolish as it is arrogant and bigoted.
For given the loosening of gun laws at the state level in recent years, the gun controllers no longer have the numbers to impose their will on the folks who have a love for, or feel a need for, guns.
To most Americans, an armed guard in a school is a good idea in our too-violent nation. Most Americans realize that when shooting breaks out in a gun-free zone — a school, movie theater, mall — the first call goes to 911 to get cops with Glocks and a SWAT team with black rifles there as soon as possible.
Most folks understand why air marshals on planes might have to be armed. Most folks know that the people running up the death toll in murder capitals like Chicago are not using AR-15s. And many Americans yet accept that in the last analysis it is a man’s duty to be the defender and protector of his wife and children.
Human nature will ultimately triumph over ideology.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” | <urn:uuid:38b9b634-7a59-4742-9ccf-31bd24104f6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mdjonline.com/view/full_story/21358596/article-Our-Coming-Gun-War | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962527 | 1,082 | 1.515625 | 2 |
If you were to log in, you'd be able to get more information on your fellow community member.
Very unique book. Presents viewpoints that one has to look very hard to find nowadays: accurate, not sugar-coated, and honest.
The most useful *concept* in the book is that sticking to standards is good; a site that looks great but is all line breaks and font tags is a (mostly) useless site.
The most useful *tool* (for me) was actually learning how a relational database works; they're a lot simpler than one would think. I've often heard of them but not even bothered to find out more because they seemed overkill for the task.
Also, AOLserver is the last thing I would have used, it being owned by the same people who brought us America Online, but it's really the best tool I've seen for the job if you really want to put up an online database; only problem I have with it is that I've not taken the time to learn some of the more advanced configuration syntax, which isn't the server's fault.
Which brings me to the third most useful toolset, Lisp and MetaHTML. (Includin... | <urn:uuid:388cd640-1579-4083-a62f-865cf2901929> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://philip.greenspun.com/shared/community-member?user_id=18441 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980234 | 247 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Odd Wisconsin Archive
A Con Man for Connoisseurs
Back in 1886, an anonymous journalist at the Madison Democrat recalled a talented charlatan who had fleeced many of the state's residents when Wisconsin was still young. Among them was attorney Edward G. Ryan, who went on to become Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
At the time, the con man was considered just a guy who had fallen on hard times through "excessive drink and kindred vices." One evening, quite late, Judge Ryan heard the doorbell ring, and found the culprit and a police officer at his door. They entered the judge's room, where the man claimed he had gotten into a fight with an adversary who had insulted Judge Ryan's good name.
The police were called to break up the fight, and he had been immediately arrested, tried, and convicted. He said he now owed a fine of $20 to the court and if he could not pay up, he was going to jail.
Ryan handed over the money with an admonishment to "get into no more scrapes on my account." The next day he discovered that the entire story had been a hoax, and the policeman in uniform had been just a crony of the con man.
:: Posted in Bizarre Events on May 5, 2011 | <urn:uuid:e150cc90-aa62-4fcd-be9e-b6075cea7ec7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/004553.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.99092 | 268 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Rebels downed a helicopter on Wednesday as troops fought to take back a key Syrian town, a watchdog said, as international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned the conflict risks setting the region ablaze.
Fighting for control of the Damascus-Aleppo highway raged around the northwestern town of Maaret al-Numan even as Brahimi appeared to have won tentative support for a ceasefire proposal.
Brahimi, the UN and Arab League envoy, warned of the conflict spreading in the Middle East as he visited neighbouring Lebanon, the latest leg of a regional tour aimed at ending more than 19 months of bloodshed.
"This crisis cannot remain confined within Syrian territory," the veteran troubleshooter told reporters in Beirut.
"Either it is solved, or it gets worse... and sets (the region) ablaze. A truce for (the Muslim holiday of) Eid al-Adha would be a microscopic step on the road to solving the Syria crisis."
A Syrian rebel fighter holds a gun as he guards a post during clashes with government forces in Aleppo. Syrian forces have bombarded opposition areas in the country's battle-scarred north, as both sides indicated they are ready to explore a truce proposal floated by peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
Brahimi called this week for a temporary ceasefire in Syria during the four-day Eid al-Adha holiday starting on October 26.
"The Syrian people, on both sides, are burying some 100 people a day," he said on Wednesday.
"Can we not ask that this toll falls for this holiday? This will not be a happy holiday for the Syrians, but we should at least strive to make it less sad.
"If the Syrian government accepts, and I understand there is hope, and if the opposition accepts," a truce would be a step "towards a more global ceasefire," said Brahimi.
The Syrian conflict began in March 2011 with pro-reform protests inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings.
It has since transformed into a civil war pitting mainly Sunni rebels against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, which is dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
At times it has also spilled over into neighbouring countries, including Lebanon and Turkey.
Tensions have soared between Turkey and Syria with Ankara taking an increasingly strident line towards its southern neighbour since a shell fired from inside Syria killed five Turks on October 3.
Brahimi has been promoting the idea of a ceasefire during Eid al-Adha on the tour that has included stops in Sunni-ruled Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiite-led Iran and Iraq.
Damascus says it is prepared to discuss the proposal in talks with Brahimi while the exiled opposition says it would welcome any ceasefire but insists the ball is in the government's court to halt its daily bombardments.
A rebel fighter shows the destruction inside the local museum in the northern Syrian town of Maaret al-Numan. Tourists have long since disappeared. But according to the old posters to guide the visitor, the area is home to "the largest collection of mosaics in the Middle East". Duration:00:37
"The Syrian side is interested in exploring this option and we are looking forward to talking to Mr Brahimi," Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi told AFP.
The opposition Syrian National Council said it expected the rebel Free Syrian Army to reciprocate any halt to the violence but that it was up to the government to act first.
"We would welcome any halt to the killings but we think the appeal needs to be addressed first to the Syrian regime, which has not stopped bombarding Syrian towns and villages," SNC leader Abdel Basset Sayda told AFP.
On the battlefront, rebels shot down a helicopter gunship in the country's northwest as the army fought to recapture the strategic town of Maaret al-Numan, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"In Maarhtat, on the outskirts of Maaret al-Numan, rebel fighters downed a helicopter being used in the fighting," the group said, adding it crashed in nearby Bsida according to initial reports.
International peace envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi (left) meets with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr in Cairo. Syrian forces have bombarded opposition areas in the country's battle-scarred north, as both sides indicated they are ready to explore a truce proposal floated by Brahimi.
Regime warplanes targeted a rebel blockade of a highway in Idlib province which has halted the regime's efforts to get reinforcements to Aleppo, theatre of intense fighting for the past three months, said the Observatory.
The early morning air raids targeted Maaret al-Numan and nearby villages, which fell to the rebels a week ago as they pushed their quest to create a northern "buffer zone" abutting Turkey, it said.
The clashes erupted as rebels attacked a six-tank convoy of government troops in the town of Maarhtat as it was making its way to reinforce the nearby Wadi Deif army base, the largest in the region.
At least five people were killed across Aleppo province, including in the city of the same name, as government forces pounded the area and clashed with rebels who fired rockets into an army base, said the Observatory.
The Observatory -- which relies on a network of activists, medics and lawyers for its information -- says some 33,000 people have been killed since the revolt began in March last year, among them 2,300 children. | <urn:uuid:13e4aeec-e482-4e73-9ed0-04fded6712be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.afp.com/en/news/topstories/cambodian-ex-king-returns-home-sea-mourners | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972148 | 1,141 | 1.585938 | 2 |
When Sir Clay of York gambles with a gypsy named Luca, he doesn’t expect to lose his coins as well as his pride due to the gypsy’s cheating ways. He doesn’t expect to lose his daughter, Rosie, in the mix either. While he has no love for Rosie with her pale skin, white hair, and red eyes, he detests that he has been bested by the hated gypsies and he vows revenge. He will give Luca his daughter, but he will find a way to get her back and get even with the gypsies at the same time. The gypsy, Luca, needs a wife after his father stole his betrothed from him years earlier and so he tells the Englishman, "Bring your daughter to me one week from now." In the gypsy world, gypsies marry gypsies, and now Luca must face the consequences of his bet. After having been imprisoned and beaten in her own home, Rosie is both thrilled and frightened when she hears that she is to be wed. Though she knows nothing of this man, she never dreamed that she would ever be allowed to leave her father’s house. When she asks about her wedding and the man who is to be her husband, Rosie’s father refuses to tell her anything.
He's a gypsy. They were thieves, thieves who stole from hard working people and traveled around England in carriages. Rosie had heard that gypsies were ruffians and oftentimes beat their wives and had many wicked children who were just like their parents. And that was who she would marry. Luca would probably beat her and lock her away. Either that or he would push himself upon her and breed wicked, evil children.
As Luca approached the camp, he felt Rosie's trembling. His hand was rough and callused, like sandpaper. What will these hands feel like touching my breasts, my stomach, or even my… She met Luca's eyes and they appeared to be smoldering.
"Shall we go to bed?" he asked, stroking her cheek with one of his rough hands.
Rosie heard Luca climb into the back of the house wagon and head toward her. He began to undo his shirt, and Rosie watched him with interest as he revealed tan, hard flesh below. She smiled and he leaned down and kissed her gently. His lips were probing and tender, yet she felt electricity fill her body at his warmth. As Luca continued to kiss her, he reached downward and touched the sensitive area at her hip. She moaned and squirmed at his touch, and he chuckled against her lips, filling her with electricity. She reached down, fingering the top of his undergarments. She was curious and yet she had never touched him. Luca broke the kiss and gazed at her with a heated stare as her hand lingered.
"Is it okay if I?..." But she was too embarrassed to finish the sentence.
"Is it okay if you what?" Luca asked.
Rosie’s cheeks grew hot at the thought of what she wanted. "Is it okay if I touch you?" she asked, knowing that this was the root of his carnal pleasure. | <urn:uuid:26b73322-f291-4ecc-a000-befc151fa0bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/by-genre-romance-c-3_12/a-gypsy-s-bride-p-9053 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.993565 | 683 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Driftless Region Beef Conference to Focus on Efficiency
DUBUQUE, Iowa – Feed efficiency is a major component in the profitability of any beef operation. Just one ercent improvement in feed efficiency during the growing and finishing phase has the same economic impact as a three percent increase in the rate of gain. Iowa State University Extension and Outreach beef program specialist Denise Schwab said the importance of good beef production efficiency is why it’s the focus of the first day of the Driftless Region Beef Conference on Jan. 31.
“On an individual animal basis, feed efficiency has been difficult to measure at a production level, so cattlemen have not been able to utilize genetic selection to improve this trait,” she said. “We know some animals require more feed to maintain their body before directing energy to growth, but about the only way to identify those inefficient animals has been through individual feed trials, which are complicated and impractical at the farm level.”
Three of the conference speakers play major roles in the federally funded project on evaluating efficiency in the beef industry, and will share their research and expertise with attendees.
“Dan Shike from the University of Illinois will talk about feed efficiency, including industry impacts and alternative measures of efficiency; and Matt Spangler of University of Nebraska-Lincoln will present information on selecting for improved feed efficiency,” Schwab said. “Iowa Beef Center director and Iowa State Extension beef specialist Dan Loy will provide an overview of the feed efficiency project and its related research.”
Potential cost savings to the U.S. beef cattle industry with selection for feed intake, feed efficiency, growth and carcass traits could be more than $1 billion per year. More efficient cattle have the same daily gain but eat less feed, thus saving feedlot operators money and producing more food for a growing nation with the same or fewer inputs. Feed efficiency, feed conversion, residual feed intake, residual gain and value of output per dollar of input all play a major role in the profitability of beef cattle operations.
“Other key speakers for the conference include Allen Bridges from Minnesota speaking on heifer development strategies, and Derrell Peel from Oklahoma sharing his outlook for beef prices into 2013 and beyond,” Schwab said. “Separate breakout sessions for feedlot or cow-calf producers will be held on Friday, Feb. 1.”
The conference will be held at the Grand River Conference Center in Dubuque with the early bird registration fee of $80 due by Jan. 23. After that date it increases to $100. All registration materials and the full program agenda are available at http://www.aep.iastate.edu/beef/ or by contacting Schwab at 319-721-9624 or [email protected].
Counties Main Menu
- County Home
- About Us
- 4-H & Youth
- Agriculture & Environment
- Business & Community
- Families & Healthy Living | <urn:uuid:3b762350-a583-48fa-8324-2a80089d0044> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.extension.iastate.edu/plymouth/node/15310 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930354 | 618 | 1.5625 | 2 |
By Caley Fretz
It’s 5:15 a.m. on Saturday in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the sun won’t be up for well over an hour. A light bobs through the darkness, honed in on a gaggle of students shivering beside their beat-up, bike-racked hatchbacks. Sam Starr, bike light owner and freshman at Colorado State University, is meeting up with a few like-minded souls.
It’s not the conclusion to a Friday-night party. It’s the prelude to a bike race. But not just any bike race — a collegiate bike race.
The world of collegiate racing is a mystery to many within the greater cycling community. VeloNews.com’s coverage of the scene has inspired questions about the structure, organization, leadership and purpose behind collegiate cycling.
With this piece, we aim to shed a little more light.
Behind the scenes
Collegiate cycling is governed by USA Cycling and led by Jeffrey Hansen, program manager for the High School and Collegiate Cycling Program. A conference director heads each of the 11 geographically divided conferences, which include more than 300 clubs comprising 4,700 licensed riders. The vast majority of these clubs are student run and funded; a few are professionally guided varsity programs.
Clubs are split into two divisions. Division I is for schools with 15,000 or more students; Division II is for schools with fewer than 15,000. A number of varsity programs are small enough to race Division II, but have successfully petitioned to race in the more prestigious Division I.
During the regular conference races, DI and DII race together but are awarded omnium points separately. At national championships, the two divisions race independently.
There are four separate disciplines within collegiate racing: road, mountain, track, and cyclocross. Each has a national championship at which points for the national team rankings are acquired.
Since collegiate cycling is a club sport, governed only by USA Cycling, there are fewer restrictions than in many other collegiate sports. Essentially, any full-time college student can race. There are no limits on professionals, no red shirts and no cap on the maximum numbers of years a student can race. Graduate students are welcomed with open arms.
More so than anywhere outside of the ProTour, collegiate racing is a team sport. The simple fact that riders compete for their schools adds a team element, which is further enforced by the structure USA Cycling has given to collegiate racing.
“The rules encourage (teamwork) through the points structure, where every place counts toward the team’s success,” explained Hansen via email.
The power of the team, the most vital part of collegiate cycling’s success, cannot be understated. When it comes to attracting young people to the sport, which is vital to its long-term health and growth, the social atmosphere a team provides is essential. This atmosphere, focused on collective rather than individual achievement, is the backbone of collegiate racing.
It’s why Sam and two dozen fellow CSU students are in a freezing parking lot an hour and a half before sunrise. Nowhere else will you find a group of Category 1 racers standing on the sidelines, four hours before their own race, cheering their brains out for a bunch of Cat 5’s.
The number of racing categories available depends upon the size of a given conference. The Eastern Conference, by far the largest in terms of attendance, has five letter-delineated categories for men and four for women. The much smaller Rocky Mountain conference has three and two.
Collegiate categories are designed to coincide with the standard Category 1-5 system where possible. A Pro/1/2 rider must race in the A’s, a Cat 3 can chose between A’s and B’s, a Cat 4 between B’s and C’s, and a Cat 5 between D’s and Intro. In smaller conferences, Category 5’s and are all stuck into the lowest category available.
Beyond the individual glory of winning a race, athletes work towards gaining points for individual and team omnium championships within their conference, as well as separate omnium competitions at each national championship. When Hansen speaks of rules that encourage a team atmosphere, he is referring to the omnium competitions.
Qualification for nationals can be achieved on an individual or team basis, based on each conference’s respective omnium competitions. This allows strong riders with small or weak teams to attend nationals on their own merit.
Points attained during conference races become irrelevant at nationals, with the exception being the individual omnium winners from each conference, who are given front-row call-ups.
Collegiate racing’s relationship to rider development can be summed up in a single word: accessibility. The lowest categories are the largest, by far. Costs are lower thanks to entry-fee caps and reduced-cost USAC licenses, and the team atmosphere encourages new cyclists to give racing a try. Nowhere else is bike racing as cheap, easy or fun to get into. Hundreds of cyclists use collegiate racing to try bike racing for the first time every year.
“While many of USA Cycling’s development programs focus on juniors and U23s that have been racing for quite some time and are already at a high level of ability, collegiate cycling helps ramp riders up to that level very rapidly,” says Hansen.
Unlike the typical Cat 5, new collegiate riders have experienced, tight-knit teams to help guide them. The hard lessons of bike racing are taught rather than learned through trial and error.
The list of top professionals who started cycling in college is a long one. Alison Dunlap and Mara Abbott are just two of the big names. Amanda Miller, who began her career racing with Colorado State University and now rides for Team TIBCO, credits her years as a collegiate racer for her recent success.
“I could not be where I am today without the collegiate cycling experience,” she said recently.
Back to Sam
Fifteen minutes before the first crit of his life, Sam is taking a few hot laps on the University of Denver course with his men’s C teammates. After a brief clinic they all line up on the front row. Visibly nervous, each hands over his jacket and gets a final high-five from an A-category teammate.
The official yells, “Go!” A few moments of panicked clipping-in ensues, and the field is on its way. Sam sits around 20th wheel. Through the first left hander, no problems. Past the tricky right-left chicane, still rolling along. At the third corner, an awkward 150-degree roundabout, a touch of wheels claims the first victims of this crit — among them Sam, shorts torn and bloody down his left side, grinning like he just won the race.
A teammate runs up. “You okay, Sam?”
“Yeah, yeah, skin grows back. How are the rest of the guys doing?”
That concern, not for self but for others, is why collegiate cycling is so powerful. | <urn:uuid:80e2b291-e144-4603-8ddf-91abf924da9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/03/news/collegiate-cycling-whats-it-all-about_109906 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955275 | 1,495 | 1.664063 | 2 |
My “video-book,” Learning From YouTube (LFYT), was “published ” by the MIT Press in February. With support from the press and many others , I have pushed the media studies monograph, kicking and screaming, fully onto the Internet. "This is not your typical scholarly book (Learning from YouTube can never go to paper)," cautions MIT’s recent press release. "Juhasz writes about social media inside and through it."
It’s true, unlike most academic e-books — erudite words placed into regulation paragraphs unceremoniously plopped onto a new environment with a few links and illustrations added — my video-book (according to my Glossary ) is "large-scale online writing that depends upon video, text, design, and architecture for its meaning making." That I can’t begin without defining the work itself (like the press’s request that I add a glossary to help readers) demonstrates how common terms of scholarly writing and publishing must be reworked, modified, or scare-quoted to most effectively describe and traverse the "limits of scholarship " of the digital sphere. But what, precisely, gets muddled at these borders and what might we best do about it?
The Internet is certainly warping the reading, writing, and learning practices of our students and society more generally. This was the focus of the undergraduate Media Studies course, Learning from YouTube — held both about and on the site over three semesters in 2007, 2008, and 2010 — that is also the subject of my self-reflexive video-book about teaching, writing about, and publishing inside of the very sphere I analyze. There, I found that engaged, situated online pedagogy and research begs for new writing forms and demands its own publishing models. As one of the first scholars to get the support to do so, I detail some of the lessons as well as the still open questions of fully online scholarly publishing:
- Medium specificity: A scholar should ask: What book medium is best suited for my study — codex, e-book, video-book, other? I have found that digital publication is ideal for inquiry into and expression about Internet and visual culture, new media forms, digital archives and databases. Given its home and topic, it never made sense for my project to leave the Net. Furthermore, a significant amount of my argument about YouTube is expressed in video and/or links off the book. And the videos are not illustrations, they are part of its writing, i.e., video-book. For example, many of the texteos [a page that expresses meaning through the integration of design, written text and video (text+video=texteo)] of the video-book are comprised only of one lone YouTube video.
- Reading practices: To be literate requires awareness of the parameters of engaging with books: slow, careful, often linear experiences that rely upon investments of attention, time, and money into words (that is, unless one skims, borrows, or Googles the book). Meanwhile, Internet reading customs are consolidating around a different set of norms: quick, scattered, linked, multiple engagements with words, sounds, images, and design. Which reading practice is best suited for your scholarly study?
- Writing practices: To publish online means to write to new reading practices. My video-book is more dense than your typical website, and more terse and fun than your average monograph. A scholar should ask: am I ready to write in new forms to new readers? LFYT is written using a montage form where I produce meaning by hitting words, images, and concepts against each other within one texteo. For instance, in “YouTube is DIY: Then What ,” I place a video of Geriatric1927, a gentle YouTube vblogging celebrity born in that long-ago year, with two conflicting short pieces of theoretical writing about how cameras might "empower ordinary people." The three texts express different opinions about the potentials for DIY media, including my own more cautionary remarks, but the texteo’s meaning is their sum total: a demonstration and expression, via form, of how YouTube distributes authority, produces debate, and flattens expertise.
- Temporal expectations: The average Internet user appreciates that three or four clicks should do it. But I believe that a reader of my video-book should approach it as she does a movie: a 90-minute commitment sans popcorn — less time than for a book, more than for Facebook. To publish online demands either altering your expectations about readers’ (limited) attention or educating or enticing them about the new forms of digital reading that your publication might demand. Hence one of my “YouTours” (what I call chapters) is "How To Use This Video-Book ."
- Expanded audience: The typical academic book is written primarily to the author’s field and perhaps its students. An online book may likely move to a greater constituency, especially if it is marketed to do so. Hence, field specific terminology, training, and background cannot be assumed. I tried to write my video-book for readers like my undergraduate students by using a dense, tweet-like voice and a lot of video and playful design. They say they enjoy learning in this ADD fashion, even as they express concern that it is harder than your average web page. For example, the first "page" of the "book" in its opening "chapter" — "YouTube is a Mess " — is comprised of one shore, simple sentence: “Videos are hard to find, easy to misname, and quick to lose.” But the two associated videos add a more developed, and sophisticated, arguments about searching YouTube (one by my students, another from a YouTuber). And if you hit the "Origins and Context" or "See Also" links, the once-simple sentence begins to grow around and under you, adding framing concepts like database logic and corporate ownership.
- Expanded authorship: Readers interact with books by teaching, citing, and returning to them. Online users expect and can have more, including a belief in their right to author. Online publications are written collaboratively with their designers and programmers — like Craig Dietrich, who worked with me on LFYT — as well as their readers, and in my case, also my students and day-to-day YouTubers. Thus, the very form of a publication continues to change as users build inside or upon it. This then affects legal and vetting issues of authorship and expertise…
- Legal challenges: The book contract refers to rights and obligations connected to original words printed on paper that are shipped and sold to stores, libraries, and individuals. The MIT Press made heroic steps to rethink and then rewrite a fair contract that covered Internet-based rights and obligations connected to moving, owning, and pointing to a variety of Internet content, and the associated issues of copyright, versioning, authoring, and correction raised. For instance, my contract reads: "Size of the Work: 6. The Work as delivered to us will consist of an unformatted manuscript of approximately ?????? words?” Because nearly all of my typed text repeats (given that the video-book is reiterative, recombinatory, and recursive by design, to comment upon this expressive quality of the Internet) it was impossible for the press to get a proper word count for the publication, a central building block for their typical contracts (in that this number signals what would be the size and publication expenses of any given book). The online academic needs to be open to yet-to-be stabilized norms of intellectual property and what that lack of clarity might mean in terms of evaluation and promotion …
- Vetting: Expertise flattens on the Internet while authoring opens up to include users and collaborators. These new forms of writing and reading demand new methods of evaluation. My video-book was peer-reviewed by scholars qualified to assess its design and structure as well as content. Once approved and edited, it was given an ISBN to count as a "book" and published by the MIT Press and granted its imprimatur. But it might not have gone so smoothly. I authored LFYT as a senior scholar in the field able to take the risks raised by unstable norms because I did not need it for my advancement or promotion. My hope is that the video-book will thereby hold the place of possibility for other new objects and their scholars who do seek promotion and employment.
- Support structures: Online publications demand institutional and professional supports well outside those established to produce books: designers, programmers, authoring tools, storage capabilities, copy-editing templates. My video-book was written in a database, transferred awkwardly to Word, expertly copy-edited there by Mel Goldsipe, and then clunkily returned by me back into the database where I typed in her corrections by hand. Our clumsy workarounds also included me printing a PDF of Goldsipe's corrections, and cutting these into slips of paper that I piled up and then taped to larger piece of paper (this for a digital publication!) Along a different vein, my video-book was supported by generous but soft grants from a variety of leading institutions that allowed it to be built and then also offered for free. LFYT was published by the MIT Press in partnership with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Alliance for Networking Visual Culture (ANVC) and USC’s online journal Vectors which is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. ANVC (and this video-book, their first supported publication) has itself been supported to promote and discuss more viable and long-term models for digital publishing. But here is no possibility for developing online academic publishing without a model that carries its added expenses. Eventually, more institutions, not just brave new scholars, will need to shoulder these costs in ever more self-sustaining ways. And yet…
Scholarly considerations of digital culture stay offline at the peril of obsolescence and the cultural cost of trained experts excluding themselves from timely and critical current debates of serious importance. I believe in the scholarly book, and celebrate its continued support. I am also certain that scholars’ voices need to be central to the larger and ever more relevant conversations occurring about and on the Internet and believe that these will need to be supported as well. My first-step attempts to write fully online will certainly seem laughable in the near future. Here I bring to light my own mistakes and uncertainties, as well as lessons I have learned, in hopes of broaching further conversation about developing academic norms, structures, and possibilities for online scholarly writing and publishing.
Alexandra Juhasz is professor of media studies at Pitzer College. | <urn:uuid:5ed5edf7-11e6-46fc-8e2e-366259554da9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.insidehighered.com/print/views/2011/05/03/essay_on_publishing_video_books?width=775&height=500&iframe=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953853 | 2,238 | 1.75 | 2 |
SINGAPORE: Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, has been discharged from a hospital following a brain-related blockage, but he remains under doctors’ observation.
The 89-year-old Lee was hospitalised on Friday after experiencing a transient ischaemic attack, which occurs when blood flow to the brain stops for a period of time.
The condition is associated with irregular heartbeats.
A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office says he was discharged on Sunday and was resting at home.
He will receive anti-coagulation treatments to discourage the formation of blood clots.
A founding member of the ruling People’s Action Party, which transformed the country from a slow port city to a bustling metropolis, Lee became prime minister in 1959 and held power for 31 years.
His son Lee Hsien Loong is the current prime minister.
Meanwhile, analysts say Singapore’s biggest protest on Saturday in decades shows that the ruling party for over half a century is facing a more vocal electorate and must change or watch its popularity slide further.
At least 2,000 Singaporeans chanted “we want change” and endured heavy downpours on Saturday to reject government immigration proposals, in a rare demonstration in the tightly controlled city-state of 5.3 million people.
Although low by global standards the turnout was the largest in some years in Singapore, where the People’s Action Party (PAP) has traditionally responded to any dissent with a firm hand, and provides the government with much to consider.
“I think that gradually the anti-PAP sentiment will build and spread unless there’s a very fundamental change in the way the PAP deals with the people, which I don’t see happening,” political analyst Seah Chiang Nee told AFP.
“I think there’s going to be a further decline in the popularity of the PAP between now and 2016,” added Seah, who runs the political website www.littlespeck.com, referring to the next general elections.
For most people at the rally, held at a designated free-speech corner after a Facebook campaign, it was their first time waving placards and chanting slogans against the PAP, which has ruled Singapore for almost 54 years.
Saturday’s protesters were rallying against government projections that the population could rise by a third to almost seven million in less than 20 years, with much of the increase resulting from immigration. | <urn:uuid:f0c82faa-337d-4121-b619-8a1c32b0048d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gulftoday.ae/portal/d07c92a9-ad72-4736-bd46-1778d1455bce.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964648 | 523 | 1.734375 | 2 |
In their continued efforts to support youth education, the Angels have teamed up with the Orange County Office of Education and the Advancement Via Individual Determination Program (AVID) to form Angels Scholars. Created in 2006, the Angels Scholars program annually awards college scholarships to five academically talented, financially disadvantaged public middle school students in Orange County. The Angels Baseball Foundation will award each Angels Scholar $4,000 (plus accrued interest) upon their acceptance into a four-year college. Each year, all Scholars are honored during an on-field pregame ceremony at Angel Stadium. Click here for more information on Angels Scholars.
The Angels kicked off their Adopt-A-School program in 2007 by adopting five local elementary schools and five local high schools. Every year, the Angels and the Angels Baseball Foundation "adopts" a new class of ten schools. Angles players, broadcasters, Alumni and the Angels Strike Force visit the elementary schools and speak to the students about the importance of working hard, reading and staying in school. As a part of the Adopt-A-School program, the Angels Baseball Foundation donates tickets, a $1,000 grant and school supplies to each elementary school. The Foundation donates tickets and $2,500 to each of the five adopted high schools to assist their softball and baseball programs in the areas of equipment, uniforms and field/facility renovation. All schools are honored at a pre-game ceremony during the season.
The Angels annually honor high school students and athletic teams who have earned athletic and scholastic recognition through the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF). CIF honors high school athletic teams based on their cumulative grade point average. Individual award recipients must be seniors who have maintained a minimum 3.5 grade point average in college-prep courses over the past three years. These students must also have earned a Varsity letter in at least one sport and participated in an additional extracurricular activity. Students are honored on the field during a pregame ceremony and given tickets to enjoy a night of Angels Baseball.
This summer, the Angels and Denny's are partnering with local libraries to encourage students to take part in the Rally Readers program to promote reading as a positive activity for children.
Participants can sign up with their parents online at angels.com/rallyreaders, and kids ages 5-13 will keep a log to track their total hours reading and number of books read. Readers can participate in Strike Force Reading Day on July 9th at Angel Stadium where kids and their families have the opportunity to come read on the outfield grass. On May 15th, kids can start redeeming their reading logs at local Denny's restaurants for prizes donated by the Angels and Denny's throughout the summer.
One grand prize winner, who read at least 60 hours, will announce "Play Ball!" at the Angels game on September 3rd vs. Tampa Bay. For more information, to download a reading log or to sign up for Reading on the Green please click here.
Read Across America Day
Every year on Dr. Seuss' birthday, March 1, the Angels join schools across Southern California to celebrate reading during Read Across America Day. In conjunction with the National Education Association's Read Across America event, Angels Alumni, Strike Force and front office staff attended local schools to read aloud in classrooms and share the importance of reading.
Throughout the season, Angels players and their wives visit local hospitals to lift the spirits of the patients and their families. Players and coaches make special appearances to distribute Angels items, sign autographs, and visit with the children and their families. The Angels often visit Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC).
Going to Bat Against Breast Cancer
The Angels annually join Major League Baseball and Susan G. Komen for the Cure on Mother's Day to raise money for the fight against breast cancer in America. Game-used bases, lineup cards, and the ceremonial home plate will be auctioned off, with funds benefiting Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Players, coaches and umpires throughout the league support the cause by wearing pink wristbands and pink ribbons on their uniforms. Many players also choose to play with special pink bats on Mother's Day. The Angels are also honored to participate in the MLB Honorary Bat Girl Contest, a campaign to recognize baseball fans who have been affected by breast cancer and demonstrated a commitment to fighting the disease.
Father's Day Home Run Challenge
The Angels and Major League Baseball are committed to the fight against prostate cancer. In 2013, they will continue their partnership with the Prostate Cancer Foundation for the Home Run Challenge. In its fourteenth year of raising money for the cure of prostate cancer, the Home Run Challenge takes place the week prior to Father's Day with events scheduled at stadiums across the nation. During the Home Run Challenge, fans make a monetary pledge for each home run hit during the week's games, including all games played on Father's Day. On Father's Day, players, managers, coaches, trainers, umpires and groundskeepers across the league show their support by wearing blue wristbands, uniform decals, blue anti-glare and temporary blue ribbon tattoos.
Light the Night
Since, 2002 the Angels have partnered with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to sponsor the Light the Night Walk. Angels Chairman Dennis Kuhl serves as the Light the Night Walk President. This special fundraising event is held at Angel Stadium and is an annual celebration and commemoration of lives touched by cancer. All walkers carry balloons: cancer patients and survivors carry white illuminated balloons, while cancer supporters carry red illuminated balloons. To participate in this year's walk, please visit www.lightthenight.org.
UCI Blood Drives
Angels Baseball is teaming with UC Irvine Healthcare for a series of summer blood drives at Angel Stadium. By donating blood to UC Irvine Medical Center, you are helping save lives in our community. All donors will receive two Angels baseball tickets. The bloodmobile will be parked near the stadium ticket office, and the big red helmets between 8:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Donors must be at least 17 years of age and bring a photo ID.
The Angels Baseball Foundation is a proud partner and supporter of the Boys & Girls Clubs in Orange County. In 1999, the Angels, the Boys & Girls Clubs in Orange County and Major League Baseball partnered together to create the Angels Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) League. This youth program provides an opportunity for 12 to 18-year-olds to play the game of baseball and softball while learning important character and life skills. Through the game RBI concentrates on fundamentals and teamwork, while stressing citizenship and academics. To date, the league has served over 6,500 youth who would not have otherwise had the opportunity to play. Click here for more information on the Angels RBI League.
Angels RBI Clinics
Each season, the Angels RBI League hosts a Baseball and Softball Clinic in the outfield of Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Participants of the league rotate through six instructional stations working on their fielding, batting, speed & agility, sliding, and pitching skills. Instruction is provided by local professional clinicians, college coaches, high school coaches and Angels' players and coaches. In addition members focus on SportSMART, a Boys & Girls Clubs of America prevention program designed to give kids the skills to make wise choices in their daily lives. The Angels RBI League provides kids who would not have otherwise had the chance, the opportunity to play baseball and softball in an organized league.
Angels Youth Baseball Camp
The Angels annually host a Baseball Day Camp in the outfield at Angel Stadium. The goal is to not only teach the proper fundamentals of the game of baseball and softball, but also the fun that can be had while playing. Angels players, coaches, and Alumni assist for a great afternoon of baseball. All proceeds from the camp benefit the Angels RBI League. This season, the Angels will also host their first Softball Day Camp at Angel Stadium.
Since 2006, the Angels and the Baseball Tomorrow Fund have teamed up to host the annual Equipment Drive to benefit local baseball and softball leagues. Fans are encouraged to bring new or used gloves, bats, balls, etc. to the ballpark and drop them off at any of the bins located at outside the stadium. The first 1,000 fans who donate equipment or $10 or more receive a commemorative Angels pin. Help support youth baseball and softball by participating in our next Equipment Drive! Click here for more information on the Angels Equipment Drive.
Angels in the Outfield
Groundskeepers Canned Food Drive
In the Thanksgiving spirit, the Angels' Groundskeepers hold an annual Canned Food Drive the weekend before Thanksgiving. Fans are given the opportunity to step up to the plate at Angel Stadium and support their local community. All proceeds from the Thanksgiving Drive benefits Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County in the fight against hunger during the holiday season.
Angels Baseball Foundation Golf Classic
The Angels annually host the Angels Baseball Foundation Golf Classic at Pelican Hill Golf Club in Newport Coast. In 2012, the event raised over $120,000 for the Foundation. Thirty-six foursomes participate and each is joined by an Angels' Alum. Participants enjoy a round of golf and a dinner reception with Angel greats such as Tim Salmon, Gary DiSarcina, Chuck Finley, Rod Carew and many others.
Aramark Toys for the Children Holiday Luncheon
During the 2012 Holiday Season, the ARAMARK Chefs at Angel Stadium hosted a spectacular lunch buffet for Angels and ARAMARK staff in the stadium's Knothole Club Restaurant. All diners are encouraged to bring a new, unwrapped children's toy valued at $10 or more as their donation for lunch. Since it began, hundreds of toys have been collected and later distributed to local children at the Angels Children's Holiday Party and to the Salvation Army.
Angels Baseball Foundation Children's Hospital Party
Each year the Angels Baseball Foundation aims to make the season brighter for 200 underprivileged kids by hosting a Children's Holiday Party for organizations in the Southern California area. The Angels partnered with AM 830 to host the event at ESPN Zone in Anaheim ESPN Zone generously donated the use of their facility, food, and free video arcade games to all the children in attendance. Players, coaches and broadcasters attend each year to kick off the event and provide the children with an afternoon of fun. Angels representatives welcome the children, pass out Angels hats and special holiday t-shirts. The children eat dinner, have a special visit from Santa, and then take time playing games. As the children leave the party, they each receive a toy from Santa, pajamas, a gift to pass onto a loved one and warm holiday wishes from the Angels.
The Angels Wives Group takes an active role in the community throughout the season by contributing their time and effort toward numerous charitable events and organizations. The Player Basket Online Auction annually raises over $20,000 for the Angels Baseball Foundation. The baskets are personalized to the players and coaches and contain game-used and autographed memorabilia, as well as Angels' tickets and merchandise.
Once a month, the Angels and Hyundai will recognize an outstanding individual from the community for their service, acts of heroism, or dedication to helping others through various projects and initiatives. Heroes come in many forms, and the Angels are excited to honor local individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to serving youth, performing acts of selflessness, and exhibiting exceptional character. All stories will be welcomed; no act of heroism is too big or too small.
Help support the Angels Baseball Foundation by participating in our monthly Online Auctions! Twice a month, Angels fans will have the opportunity to bid on authentic Angels items, such as stadium banners, game used jerseys and autographed memorabilia. All proceeds from the online auctions will benefit the Angels Baseball Foundation and its mission to create and improve education, healthcare, arts & sciences, and community related youth programs throughout the region, in addition to providing children the opportunity to experience the great game of baseball and its countless positive attributes. Please visit the Angels Charity Auctions at angels.com for more information.
Imagine walking up to Angel Stadium and seeing your name or message inscribed on a brick in front of the Home Plate Gate. Fans can purchase a 4"X8"brick, inscribe their name or a message on it, and become a permanent fixture on the entry diamond of Angel Stadium. Click here to order now.
The "behind-the-scenes" tour of Angel Stadium of Anaheim is both an enjoyable and educational experience. Attendees are invited to view areas that are normally restricted to the public. The complete tour includes a visit to the Press Box, Visitors' Clubhouse, Bullpen, Dugout, and Angel Stadium's Suites. Tours of the stadium are available year round and all donations support the Angels Baseball Foundation. To make a reservation, please visit angels.com/tours or call 714-940-2045.
The Angels post birthday, anniversary and welcome messages during games on the Angel Vision Board. With a $25 donation per message, fans have the opportunity to share their messages with all those in attendance. All donations go to the Angels Baseball Foundation. Click here for more information.
The Angels are happy to help numerous charitable organizations in Southern California that are dedicated to making a difference in our community. To help support these organizations, the Angels regularly donate various autographed and game-used items and game tickets to be used for fundraising auctions and raffles. If your organization is interested in a donation, please click here for more information.
Angels Baseball Foundation Grants
Since its inception in 2004, the Angels Baseball Foundation has granted over $3,000,000 toward local causes, almost all involving children. The Angels Baseball Foundation has awarded many grants to worthy organizations throughout the community, ranging from music programs to at-risk youth shelters to local hospitals. If your organization is interested in applying for a grant through the Angels Baseball Foundation, please click here or call the Angels Community Relations office at 714-940-2070.
The following are trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball entities and may be used only with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. or the relevant Major League Baseball entity: Major League, Major League Baseball, MLB, the silhouetted batter logo, World Series, National League, American League, Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the names, nicknames, logos, uniform designs, color combinations, and slogans designating the Major League Baseball clubs and entities, and their respective mascots, events and exhibitions. | <urn:uuid:86828f7a-7e7d-403e-a84f-2c0cf502b231> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/ana/community/ana_community_programs.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940112 | 3,007 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Akima Eleonora wore a floor-length orange formal dress adorned with a satiny bow. Her hair was styled up in glossy curls. Sparkles shimmered on her back and arms, and her silver shoes matched her silver jewelry.
It was her second time to be a Queen Sarah candidate, and she was dolled up for the occasion.
She and four other young ladies with intellectual and developmental disabilities were nominated by their peers for the annual beauty contest.
Was she nervous? "Not really," the 25-year-old Hampton resident said.
Someone is crowned Queen Sarah, a nod to the support of the Sarah Bonwell Hudgins Foundation, once a year at one of the Monday night sock hops hosted by Boy Scout Explorer Post 140 at the Sarah Bonwell Hudgins Center in Hampton.
For many people with developmental disabilities, the sock hop is the place to be on Monday nights. Between 150 and 200 people turn out every week.
The name hints at its longevity. The dances have been going on for about 40 years.
They're designed to provide recreation for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or IDD for short. With tight state budgets, funding goes to shelter and work for people with disabilities. "There's never any money for recreation," said Bill Stinebaugh, scout master of Post 140.
Group homes offer some outings on nights and weekends. "Some of them do better than others," Stinebaugh said. "There's stuff going on, just not very much of it. It's a common complaint of parents, 'Why don't you take the guys out?'"
That's where he comes in.
The story starts in 1967, when Ted Pritchard's son was looking for an Eagle Scout project. Hampton Jaycees suggested a scout unit for mentally handicapped people. So the group got started with 12 scouts.
There were 220 members when Stinebaugh, a Poquoson resident, came on board in 2000. He became involved because his son, David, has intellectual disabilities andcerebral palsy.
When he heard that Virginia ranked 45th among states, according to the State of the States in Developmental Disabilities 2010 report, for how much it it spends on intellectual and development disabilities, he was shocked.
"I pay a lot of taxes in Virginia. I was amazed."
The Boy Scout Post accommodates both men and women, and its lifeblood is its volunteers — mostly parents of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The post offers Monday night sock hops, swimming on Wednesday nights at the YMCA and, during the winter, bowling on Saturdays. In October, they take about 200 people to Franconia Moose Lodge for the Special Olympics, a sock hop and a show by an Elvis impersonator. The scouts also offer a summer camp every year.
And once a year at the sock hop, there's the crowning of Queen Sarah. Scouts nominate women as candidates for the beauty contest and vote for their queen. The women get dressed up in prom gowns and pick escorts. This year, the gymnasium was decorated with streamers strung from basketball hoops, and plastic tablecloths and flower arrangements adorn the tables. Previous Queen Sarahs were announced and paraded around the room, followed by this year's nominees. Lachelle Jackson was crowned the 33rd Queen Sarah May 16.
"Next time," said Eleonora, who was third runner up.
Eleonora has Down syndrome and muscular degeneration and is visually impaired. She has a speech impediment because one of the eight surgeries on her eyes required soft tissue removed from her palate. She cannot read or write, her mother Amalie Eleonora said.
Akima Eleonora lives with her mother, works at The Arc of the Virginia Peninsula, takes dance classes and enjoys shopping, she said. Her boyfriend, whom she met through The Arc, was her escort.
The dances are "a great form of entertainment and socialization for Akima," her mother said. "It's clean fun." | <urn:uuid:0bf2635d-6305-4688-b9b7-eadc20da778e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailypress.com/health/dp-nws-cp-mental-retardation-recreati20110624,0,93313.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977051 | 834 | 1.5 | 2 |
I took my mom on a day trip about 70 minutes away, down US 52 North to Mount Airy. The town is famous for a couple of “stars” – Donna Fargo (the song, FUNNY FACE) and more notably, Andy Griffith’s hometown. It is said that Mayberry is modeled after Griffith’s memories of Mount Airy.
While there are major events held at the small town of about 10,000 during the year, we wanted to see what the town offered without being in a huge crowd – like during their annual Mayberry Days celebration.
After some research on the internet, I found that I could park for free in a municipal lot two blocks from Main Street. However, after parking there and walking the two blocks, I found there were spaces ON Main Street. (sigh) My mistake, but I wouldn’t have gotten this photo of part of mural on one of the buildings.
Since we were a bit late starting out, we wanted to eat. My mom – who doesn’t eat pork or red meat – can make it hard to find restaurants sometimes. So when walking to Main Street, a gentleman suggested we go to Speedy Diner – famous for pork chops. Obviously we didn’t go there, but instead decided to go to Walker’s Soda Fountain.
Upon entering, we were the only people in the place – other than the owner, but several people came in while we were there. The soda fountain is original from 1948 and the homemade chicken salad is excellent! There is also this mural on the back wall (someone is making a killing on murals in Mount Airy!):
After waddling out of the soda shoppe, I spotted Floyd’s Barber shop. After all, this is Mayberry!
Next, I wanted to see the historic movie theater I read about online. In Greensboro, there were no less than five downtown theaters “back in the day” and now only one remains – The Carolina, which opened in 1927. So when I read about The Earle - a 1938 movie house/theater located on Main Street, I knew I had to see if I could get inside. You can read the complete history using the link above, but with the new multi-plexes popping up, theaters like The Earle were becoming obsolete. Thankfully, the Surry County Arts Council were deeded the building and began renovations. Please believe me when I say my photos do not do this charming theater justice!
Once inside, you see a neat little concession stand, tended by a very nice young man (I’m sorry I neglected to get his name).
The Earle still shows movies on Saturday and Sunday and has a live country music radio show twice weekly since 1948! Inside the auditorium, there are three sections for seating, a main stage and screen.
There is also a balcony section.
Even the restroon area was neat. The retro doors led to a very simple, but clean facility. For all I know, these are the original fixtures!
Once out on the street again, we strolled back towards our parking lot, passing by a building labeled Bank of Mount Airy. Built in 1923 using granite from Surry County, it is now closed to banking and is an Art Center.
After a short stop in an Antique consignment market (where mom bought a table), we headed back home – very happy that we finally visited “Mayberry” – Mount Airy, NC! | <urn:uuid:66bea6ec-506a-47bf-828d-6bf3e75a135d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://picturenc.wordpress.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976789 | 728 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Del. Mark Keam (D-35) is the first Korean American and the first Asian-born immigrant to serve in the Virginia General Assembly. In November 2009, Keam was elected to an open seat in the House of Delegates and re-elected in November 2011. Keam, 46, currently serves on the House Education and Finance Committees, and is co-chair of the Legislative Tourism Caucus. Keam sat for a series of interviews with Connection reporter Victoria Ross in his Vienna office in December. Here is Keam’s story, mostly in his own words.
For new Americans, life is hard, but once they overcome those barriers, they are stronger and they contribute so much because they fought so hard to get here. I’m proud of my background. The policies I advocate for are from the perspective of an immigrant, something which is sorely missing in Richmond. As an immigrant who came here with nothing, I’m able to have everything I ever wanted, to give my children incredible opportunities.
Let me put it this way, unlike most people whose immigration stories are fairly simple, (for example, they move from one country to another country), I lived in four different countries and several different cities. I guess you could say I was the result of global circumstances beyond my control.
My parents met in the late 1950s. They had lost their parents during the war, so I didn’t know any of my grandparents. My mother had an older sister, who was a devout Christian. She didn’t like my father.
My parents were like street kids after the Korean war. My mother didn’t finish school and my father was sort of a rogue. The only way my aunt would let him approach my mother was to prove he was upstanding citizen, so he became a minister.
In 1961, there was mandatory conscription in the military, so Keam’s father was sent to Vietnam as a chaplain.
My father would come back at least once every two years. My brother was born in 1962, my sister was born in 1964 and I was born in 1966. In 1969, he came back to Seoul, and he wanted to set up a church. But Korea was still very run-down post war. Imagine Afghanistan, imagine that scenario. Korea was like Afghanistan times two. No running water, all the buildings were bombed, everything was devastated, being run by dictators. It’s only 50 miles from DMZ. That was the world I was born into.
THE WAR IN VIETNAM was at a standstill, a lot of countries started establishing ties in South Vietnam, so they asked my father, who had studied Vietnamese language and culture, to establish a Korean church and community center. We lived in the church, and I remember the building well.
This goes directly into how I got into politics. From the time I was 4 years old, I can’t remember one meal we had with just the five of us. Our meals were with whoever was at the church. For the 5,000 Koreans who lived in Vietnam in the 70s, every one of them came to our church because it was also the only community center. It was the hub of all Korean activities. From the time I woke up until I went to bed, there were always people around us.
When I was a small kid, I freaked out because we had caskets. I remember there’d be a wedding in the morning, a funeral in the middle of the day, and another wedding at night. You’d see the same people dressed up for a wedding and then back for a funeral, because they knew each other. I lived in that world with the idea that community helps each other. It was ingrained in me such a natural way that I think, to this day, that’s the core of my being. What made me who I am and what made me think the way I do and act the way I do every single day was molded in my childhood. More importantly, because of my father, I saw it was incumbent upon us to be leaders in our community. Family is important, but community is just as important. So that has led me to do what I’m doing today.
When Keam was 9 years old, in April of 1975, he recalls his family fleeing the church compound during what historians call the Fall of Saigon. The capture of Saigon by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period leading to the formal reunification of Vietnam into a communist state.The fall of the city was preceded by the evacuation of almost all the American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians associated with the southern regime. The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, which was the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
That’s the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to me. We were playing in the room, and I just remember my mother coming in saying we have to pack up and go.
We had seen a lot of things. Whenever I see war-torn scenes of Libya or Syria, it brings back flashes of memory. I never saw actual tanks roll in, but we heard bombs going off. There were times when we would go through the markets of Vietnam, and we had seen Buddhist monks self-immolating in political protests—just awful.
After seeing things like that, it wasn’t real to us until that day my mom said pack up.
The families at the compound got in the cars, and drove to this little airport. As we’re leaving in the helicopter, we look back and I see my dad standing behind the chicken-wire fence.
KEAM SAID HE EVENTUALLY reconstructed what happened to his father through relative’s stories and his father’s testimony.
My father was stranded on the rooftop and he was arrested by the Viet Cong. He had two marks against him. One was that he was a religious leader in a communist country. Another mark was that he served in the South Korean military, even though he was a chaplain.
We were taken back to Seoul, and there were so many rumors. We heard that my father was killed, or that he was in prison, or that he made it but he’s not coming back. We had absolutely no way to understand this. . . .
When we arrived back in Korea, we had zero, nothing. No one was doing well. My mother found a one-bedroom apartment in Seoul. My mom had never finished high school let alone college. As a woman, she had no way of having meaningful employment, being a single mother with three kids. . . . So my mother went to churches and to ex-military friends and it was those people who supported us, not the government. I never asked her, and she never talks about it, but I believe the only way she fed us every single day is that she begged and went to charities and welfare groups. That was the year I became an adult and lost my childhood innocence.”
KEAM SPOKE ENGLISH AND FRENCH, but not much Korean. Back at school in Seoul, he was bullied and treated as a special-needs student. He said that terrible year transformed him in ways that make him the person he is today.
I preach this all the time, discrimination is discrimination no matter who is doing it to whom. My life’s mission is to fight against discrimination. I am also passionate about literacy. I serve on the board of Virginia Literacy Foundation, a nonprofit founded by former Virginia First Lady Jeannie Baliles to ensure that everyone has essential reading and writing skills they need to succeed.
After what Keam considers the worst year of his life, assuming his father was never coming home, feeling out of place in his native country, his family got another surprise. His father returned home, showing up on their doorstep out of the blue.
“That’s a story for another time, how we eventually got here,” Keam said.
The rest of the story, abridged: After reuniting with his father, Keam’s family then moved to Australia, where his father established another church before eventually moving to California.
Keam received a political science degree from the University of California at Irvine, and had a chance to live in Falls Church while working as a college intern. After receiving a law degree from Hastings College of the Law, Keam returned to Virginia where he met and married Alex Seong Keam, also an attorney. The Keams have two children, Tyler, a Cub Scout, and Brenna, a Brownie. Both children attend Mosby Woods Elementary School in Fairfax.
As a part-time citizen-legislator, Keam, who is known as the most prolific member of the General Assembly on Twitter @markkeam, maintains a year-round office in Vienna in addition to his Richmond office. When the General Assembly is not in session, Keam serves as senior advisor for strategic affairs at Verizon; he has worked at Verizon since 2007. Before that, for six years, he served as chief counsel to the Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Before working on Capitol Hill, Keam worked at the Small Business Administration and had also served as an attorney with the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireless Bureau. | <urn:uuid:0ccb7311-a93c-4a88-be0d-71316f33603f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2012/dec/18/immigrant-experience-guides-success/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988832 | 1,962 | 1.75 | 2 |
To protect the public and limit further damage from high water to the White Lake Dam in Marshall County, Gov. Dennis Daugaard has enacted a no boating zone.
The no boating zone will be in effect for White Lake, six miles east and four and one-half miles north of Britton in Marshall County.
The order will remain in effect until rescinded by Daugaard.
State law gives the governor authority to prohibit or restrict recreational use or navigation on any portion of a river, lake or stream to protect the public peace, health, or safety, according to Jeff Vonk, secretary of the state Department of Game, Fish and Parks.
“Recent heavy rains and subsequent high water flows have caused the concrete spillway at White Lake Dam to become undermined. In addition, boating on White Lake could be potentially hazardous to public safety and cause unnecessary and additional damage to the dam structure,” Vonk said.
“Work is currently being done to assess damage to the dam structure,” he said. “Our priority in any situation like this is to secure public safety first.”
A violation of the public waterway restriction is a Class 2 Misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine. | <urn:uuid:797a9358-f63f-4b00-8b2c-bb0a9fff2078> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.aberdeennews.com/2011-07-28/news/29827589_1_boating-marshall-county-dam-structure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944023 | 263 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Oprah and Denzel Reveal Who Inspired Them
"My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Benton, was the first person that I really could see believed in me," Winfrey, 53, tells Parade magazine in its Sunday issue. "She would tell me that I was just the smartest little girl she'd ever seen."
Winfrey explains, "I felt shiny in her eyes. It's why, whenever I see a little girl, I always stop to try and acknowledge her. I always try to have a shiny moment."
The talk show mogul produces The Great Debaters, starring and directed by Denzel Washington, who also posed in a photo shoot with the talk-show queen.
As for his take on mentors, "The thing is that you don't know who you influence," Washington, 52, says. "I had a young counselor at the Boys [and Girls] Club who told me, 'You know, with all your smarts, you can do anything you want to do in life.' And I can remember like it was yesterday, walking out of the club, putting my shirt on, going, 'I can do anything.' "
(Parade also has announced it's teaming with The Case Foundation to give $500,000 to charities in America's Giving Challenge. More info is at Parade.com/givingchallenge.) | <urn:uuid:6aa4dda3-be51-4054-a799-ad837a6d9dc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20166519,00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986705 | 279 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Add root drive mapping to default config file
m.hearn at signal.qinetiq.com
Tue Jun 3 04:29:52 CDT 2003
Oooh, here's an idea - how about if when you ran wine from an area of
disk that wouldn't normally be mapped, it creates a temporary "ghost"
mapping that doesn't appear in the config file but only for itself and
child processes? It takes precedance...
That way you wouldn't have to keep either moving files around or mapping
new drives. Thoughts?
On Tue, 2003-06-03 at 10:22, mike at theoretic.com wrote:
> > - its insecure, since you can write everywhere you want
> > and some filesystem corruption still exist today.
> Only if you run Wine as root. What makes us think we trust Linux software
> more than Win32 software?
> > - it will cause recursion/drive change problems =>
> > example : what will be the current drive/directory
> > if you access the fake C:\windows
> > via Z:\home\user\fake_c\windows ?
> Good question. I guess the algorithm must be able to deal with that
> though, as I've been running with / mapped for months and it hasn't caused
> any problems that I can see. Simply chopping out subtrees if they are
> mapped elsewhere would work.
> > On my RH box I have a drive called W: that contains wine sources and P:
> > contains programs/.
> > If I am in W: (wcmd) and I do 'cd programs', wcmd now says P:\.
> Yes, that might be a bit confusing (if you use wcmd), but for newbies
> having the "Wine cannot find executable" error is even more confusing.
> Well, I'm not really bothered either way, but something would need to be
> done to address those problems I think.
Mike Hearn <m.hearn at signal.qinetiq.com>
QinetiQ - Malvern Technology Center
More information about the wine-devel | <urn:uuid:609dead4-0302-4285-9e68-b9cda40cf6ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2003-June/017617.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941275 | 460 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Don't forget to visit the Outdoor and Garden section of our Museum Shop.
Can anyone tell me the variety of St. Johns Wort (hypericum) that is used at Monticello? (I saw an almost identical variety at Mt. Vernon the day after my last Monticello visit a couple of weeks ago.) It's far larger and bushier than any I've been able to find in North Carolina, and I'd love to locate a retail source. You folks consistently awe me with your meticulous landscaping. Love it! One of my favorite places on earth is in the vegetable garden at Monticello.
Simply Amazing :)
How is the lilac doing? Is it blooming yet? Last year it was early and I missed it completely.
According to our curator of plants, the lilacs seem to be doing fine and are starting to bloom now.
Does anyone know when the tulip bloom at Monticello?
Generally, April is tulip month here. But I just heard from our Curator of Plants that ‘Duc van Tol Max Cramoisi’ Tulip (Tulipa gesnerana introduced circa 1700) is up.
Gardeners are among the biggest supporters of all things Jefferson; pictures from the gardens never fail to elicit a lot of input on our Facebook page. The In Bloom database is a wonderful resource for anybody who loves Jefferson's love of plants, or if they just want to come visit (or just visited) and are wondering what's in bloom. It's a rich distillation of some amazing scholarship to boot.
Customers frequently come into the Museum Shop with questions about a specific flowering plant they saw on the Monticello grounds that they could not identify. The great majority of the time, we have a Garden Shop employee available who can quickly identify the plant based on the customer's description. On the rare occasions that we don't, this website comes in very handy. The content changes each month to reflect what is actually in bloom at the current time, and it is such a helpful resource that we have started printing out the information and posting it at each register.
Just a day or two after launching this project, I sat next to a woman on one of our shuttle buses and noticed she was holding a print out of In Bloom at Monticello. "I've never seen anything like it," she said when I asked her about it. It was one of my earliest projects as webmaster here and is still one of my favorites.
Current list of Flowers in bloom in the gardens. | <urn:uuid:92a0bbea-2b46-4edb-9bc8-61fcda7c63d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/in-bloom/blackberry-lilly | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959632 | 526 | 1.8125 | 2 |
World Trout funding surpasses quarter-million mark; grants program expands support for threatened species.
Why Fly Fishing? A new DVD asks, and answers, this very question. By Jim Butler It all started at the Yale Peabody Museum, really. The Peabody was making plans to display a traveling exhibit from the American Museum of Fly Fishing (AMFF), called "Seeing Wonders: The Nature of Fly Fishing."
It might still be wishful fishing season in the Northeast, but that makes it the right time for the right outerwear.
New adventures from a favorite fly-fishing penman
G3 Guide Convertible Waders One of the smartest models in Simms' revamped line of waders is the G3 Guide Convertible, which is equally functional in both waist-high and chest-high configurations. Most waders of this type give priority to chest-high mode, with waist-high use an inconvenient afterthought that involves re-wiring your suspenders, fussing with your belt and fighting folds of excess fabric.
More on Fleece Thanks to Buzz Bryson ["Ask FR&R," Jan/Feb '08] for explaining why fleece is so valuable in increasing enjoyment in our outdoor experiences. He triggered some further thoughts on this topic. There is a larger environmental concern here about use of plastics in our sport, in general.
Once again, it's the time of year when the staff of FR&R gets together with some of the magazine's contributors to select those pieces of gear that deserve to be recognized with a Kudo Award...
What to bring and what to leave; circle hooks and more
We're pleased to announce that Kirk Hall of Evanston, Wyoming, is the winner of the 2007 Fly-Fishing Film Festival
There's a lot of water in Maine, and sometimes the only way to get to them is to walk far. On my recent hike through Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness I brought with me March Brown's 7-piece, 7-foot rod. | <urn:uuid:043a9c59-0ad2-458a-a6d5-48248734597d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flyrodreel.com/flyfishing/outerwear?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941349 | 414 | 1.554688 | 2 |
For the Air Force Academy men’s ice hockey team, winning has become a tradition. The Falcons captured the Atlantic Hockey tournament title in four out of five seasons from 2006-11, earning a berth in the NCAA tournament in each of those years.
So it may come as a bit of a surprise that, entering the 2011-12 season, Air Force made a change and added a new training component. Looking to help its players become more mentally aware of their surroundings on the ice, the coaching staff began incorporating The Hockey IntelliGym into their plans.
“Hockey sense is one of the toughest things for coaches to teach,” said Falcons assistant coach Mike Corbett. “But with the IntelliGym, we saw our players’ mental confidence improve. The training has led to better decision-making in the difficult, high-traffic areas of the ice where the game is so often won and lost.”
Resembling a video game with cognitive scenarios similar to what players will experience on the ice, the IntelliGym trains the decision-making skills necessary to stay one step ahead of the puck and the game.
And since the program was adapted from technology originally designed to help train fighter pilots, the IntelliGym made perfect sense for the cadets at the Air Force Academy.
In February, the Falcons captured their second-ever Atlantic Hockey regular-season crown, adding to their long-standing winning tradition. | <urn:uuid:cb43291f-e471-4172-b2e2-9cfde6d31c8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ushockeymagazine.net/article/2012-04/air-force-academy-hockey-team-using-technology-soar-higher | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96681 | 300 | 1.765625 | 2 |
COLUMBUS -- Ohio Governor John Kasich is proposing major cuts in the state income tax and sales tax.
In his presentation on his proposed state budget for the 2014-2015 fiscal year, Kasich proposed slashing the state sales tax rate from 5.5 percent to 5 percent.
The Ohio sales tax currently brings the state about $8.3 billion in revenue per year.
Kasich also wants to lower the state's income tax rate to 4.75 percent, phased-in over 3 years. The state's top rate is now 5.92 percent for those earning more than $204,200 per year.
"I believe this will allow us to keep our economic momentum going, despite the economic headwinds that are coming from Washington," Kasich said, of his tax reduction proposals.
The Republican governor is also calling for a 50 percent cut in taxes on small businesses whose annual income is up to $750,000 per year.
"This represents 90 percent of Ohio's small businesses," Kasich told an afternoon news conference in Columbus.
The proposed cuts would total $1.4 billion and would be accompanied by closing loopholes, including those now used by big banks.
Kasich also mentioned plans to tax certain services which are now exempt.
Details of the governor's budget, called Ohio's Jobs Budget 2.0, can be found at the state's Budget website. (http://jobsbudget.ohio.gov/) | <urn:uuid:d61b7c84-a9d2-4291-b566-9481cbb0574e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wkyc.com/(S(5gc40445twtwgj453gk2liai))/news/article/281778/23/Kasich-wants-to-cut-state-sales-tax-income-tax | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970237 | 293 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Hotel Santa Caterina, over a century of history
The history of this special resort is as impressive as its surroundings. In 1880, Giuseppe Gambardella constructed the original structure. Crescenzo Gambardella, his son, redesigned the property in 1904, creating the original six guestrooms. Two generations of Gambardellas have improved the hotel, bringing the resort to its present 66 guestrooms and suites.
Today, Crescenzo's daughters, Giusi and Ninni Gambardella, assisted by their children Crescenzo Gargano, Alessandro e Beatrice Camera, directly manage the day-to-day operations of the hotel and take personal interest in the comfort and enjoyment of the resort guests.
Located on the famous Amalfi drive, a few minutes from the famous town of Amalfi, the Santa Caterina enjoys a panoramic coastal setting of incomparable beauty. The hotel sits at the summit of an extensive property, which begins along the Amalfi drive and tumbles down to the water in a series of landscaped natural terraces.
Two elevators and scenic path transport guests past citrus groves and lush gardens to the seaside level, which includes a sea-water swimming pool, sunbathing decks, gym, café/bar and open-air restaurant. | <urn:uuid:17523d8b-761e-40d0-8449-23bae8f50a93> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hotelsantacaterina.it/en/history | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931336 | 276 | 1.5 | 2 |
Dad Uses Amazing Terminator Arm For Good, Not Evil
This amazing video makes us wonder — is there some sort of psychological evaluation before somebody is given a robot-Terminator arm, or do doctors just cross their fingers and hope for the best? It seems like that could go really wrong. Fortunately, Nigel Ackland, 53, is using his bionic arm for cracking eggs and pouring beers, rather than throttling somebody until their heart beats no more. Ackland lost part of his arm in an accident, and now for the first time in six years he can dress himself, peel vegetables and shake hands with any person brave enough to stick their hand into a robot hand, thanks to sensors in the arm that are attached to two muscles. Good job, science.. | <urn:uuid:3b60725c-36e4-42b5-8ed5-727a5cde70db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://us103.com/terminator-arm/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962309 | 153 | 1.59375 | 2 |
“If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put it in a bottle it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friends”. – Bruce Lee
Quoted from the closing remarks made by Eliseo A. Aurellado/EVP – COO, the above passage inculcated a simple but meaningful concept of leadership to the participants of the Supervisory Skills Training held at Jade Valley Cantonese Restaurant located at Scout Torillo St., corner Timog Avenue, Quezon City last May 24 and 31, 2008.
A two-day training which emphasized the principles of administration, time management, human relations and communication, decision-making as well as the specific roles of the leader attendees, attested to the serious approach of the management of the Stonerich to equip its key personnel/managers with the necessary skills to perform their tasks effectively and efficiently. Activities during the said instruction included administration of psychological tests to recognize their tendencies, leadership styles, strengths and weaknesses. Results of such tests would also be a significant data to be considered for their future promotion.
Moreover, best enjoyed by the attendees is the “Fall-out Shelter Problem or Bomb Shelter,” an activity which requires skills in prioritizing and problem solving. In the said exercise, participants are made to decide in a consensus allowing them to experience stereotyping problems, equal employment opportunity issues and discrimination issues throughout. Also, the “Exxon Valdez Case Study,” which focused on putting the person for the right job and management of a crisis.
The Supervisory Skills Training was developed and headed by Eduardo Q. Lomocso/HR – Consultant and is a part of the series of supervisory development program created for Stonerich. Through the joint efforts of the Quality Management Represented by Rene C. Fabros and the facilitators: Marie Georgine Mandaue, Leo Aranas, Marvin Pamplina and Ian Chiong, the exercise is hailed successful and worthwhile. | <urn:uuid:811c4501-0836-4a15-a576-73bb695fc790> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metrostonerich.com/newsd.php?id=0000000031 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960695 | 437 | 1.523438 | 2 |
North American Network Operators Group|
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical
Re: The use of .0/.255 addresses.
Stephen J. Wilcox <[email protected]> wrote: [...] > I currently have a few .255/32s with Cisco and Foundry products and > have various windows/linux/OSX machines that access them without > problems.. Well, I'd expect Linux and OSX to do the right thing. It just seems to be Windows that makes a complete sow's ear of it. As to the IP addresses ending in 255 that are working from Windows boxes, would I be right in guessing that the first octet of the IP addresses in question is between 1 and 191? -- PGP key ID E85DC776 - finger [email protected] for full key | <urn:uuid:a1f4e7ca-4810-453d-85df-0c7883fc8d62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nanog.org/mailinglist/mailarchives/old_archive/2004-06/msg01049.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945147 | 183 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Chinese authorities on Friday blocked access inside the country to the English and Chinese websites of The New York Times after they published an article reporting that family members of Premier Wen Jiabao had amassed a fortune worth billions of dollars.
Citing corporate and regulatory records, The Times said it had pieced together evidence showing that Wen's relatives have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion, often hiding their names "behind layers of partnerships and investment vehicles involving friends, work colleagues and business partners."
China reacted angrily to the report, preventing people inside the country from visiting the two Times websites or searching for the terms "New York Times" and "Wen Jiabao" on popular social media platforms.
"It's trying to blacken China's image and has ulterior motives," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a response to a question about the article, which mentioned Wen's son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law as being among those who had grown rich during Wen's time in power.
Asked about the decision to block the websites, Hong replied: "China regulates the Internet in accordance with laws and regulations."
The Chinese government tries aggressively to control the flow information inside its borders about sensitive topics like unrest in Tibetan areas and criticism of senior officials. It strictly manages the output of domestic news media outlets and has a history of shutting off access to international news websites.
Chinese authorities have blacked out the broadcast signal for international television stations like CNN and the BBC when they have aired sensitive reports about the country.
The Times story about Wen's family's wealth comes at a particularly delicate time for the ruling Communist Party, only a matter of weeks before the start of the 18th Party Congress, at which the country's next set of top leaders will be announced.
Authorities have stepped up security in Beijing, where the congress, part of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition, will take place. This transfer of power has already been complicated by the dramatic and damaging scandal involving the former high-flying official Bo Xilai and his inner circle.
In a country where official corruption is widespread, the top leadership is particularly sensitive to suggestions that its members or those close to them have become unusually wealthy. The growing divide between rich and poor after two decades of torrid economic growth has added to that defensiveness.
The Times article on the wealth of Wen's relatives comes four months after Bloomberg News reported that the extended family of Vice President Xi Jinping, the presumptive next top leader of China, had accumulated business interests worth hundreds of millions of dollars during his rise up the Communist Party ladder.
Chinese authorities cut off access to the Bloomberg News website following publication of the article, which was also based on public documents.
The blocking of the Times websites Friday also takes place four months after the introduction of the Chinese-language site, which the company said at the time was "intended to draw readers from the country's growing middle class" through a mixture of reporting by Chinese journalists and Times articles translated from English.
The Times cited a company spokeswoman as expressing disappointment Friday that web access had been cut off.
"We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we will ask the Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to enjoy New York Times journalism," said Eileen Murphy, according to The Times. "We will continue to report and translate stories applying the same journalistic standards that are upheld across The New York Times."
The servers that host both the English and Chinese sites of the Times are outside mainland China, according to the news organization. | <urn:uuid:d85f0e24-e1b4-4bb0-82a5-1454012b0a45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news4jax.com/news/China-blocks-NYT-website-after-wealth-story/-/475880/17141350/-/pjhoflz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968029 | 729 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Invite a friend
Newark Museum Drop In Activities- Heads & Tails
"Don't judge a person until you walk two moons in his moccasins," is an ancient Native American proverb. Walk away in a brand new pair of moccasins of your own making, and go on a hunt to find traditional moccasins in our galleries.
More About Newark Museum
Newark Museum is New Jersey's largest museum and offers educational and entertaining experiences in the arts and natural sciences. Previous exhibitions included Patchwork from Folk Art to Fine Art, Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, and Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, among others. The museum, which has a planetarium, also hosts various public and kids programs throughout the year.
Other events here
- Skywatchers of Africa Weekly on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, 2:00 pm–2:40 pm
- Secret of the Cardboard Rocket Weekly on Saturdays and Sundays, 1:00 pm–1:35 pm
- Secret of the Cardboard Rocket Weekly on Saturdays and Sundays, 3:00 pm–3:35 pm
- Stars of the Pharaohs Weekly on Saturdays and Sundays, 4:00 pm–4:40 pm | <urn:uuid:104cd41a-70f3-45d2-9628-94e24173038b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://belleville.patch.com/events/newark-museum-drop-in-activities-heads-tails | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936905 | 270 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Layered Tech is a company providing IT infrastructure, including dedicated servers, managed hosting, and grid computing, to businesses of all sizes.
It recently added virtualization technology to its offerings, and participated in the Microsoft Go-Live program for the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-VTM virtualization technology, which permitted the company to deliver services based on Hyper-V to customers even before the product's official release.
Jeremy Suo-Anttila, chief technology officer at Layered Tech, said "With the advances in server hardware technology, each dedicated server is providing a great deal more resources than is generally needed. I log into many servers a day, and I often see that as much as 80 percent of a server's resources is not being used, which means that customers are paying for processing power, memory, disk space, and bandwidth that they aren't taking advantage of."
So the company wanted to adopt virtualization "because it can enable our customers to consolidate their hosted servers, which saves them money," he said.
With its new virtualization offering, Layered Tech can create a more efficient, easy-to- manage hosting environment, company officials say, adding that cost-savings as a result of virtualization are passed on to the company's customers, giving Layered Tech "a competitive advantage in the marketplace."
OPC officials have announced that their Technical Support Department "continues to be rated 'Excellent' by our customers month after month."
The company "understands the importance of service after the sale and offers a survey after each technical support session," company officials say, adding that January customer support surveys reflected a 90 percent "Excellent" rating along with 8 percent "Good," 1 percent "Fair" and only 1 disappointed -- "that turned into an 'Excellent' rating."
In fact, among the comments the company's received are "great! Eric fixed me in a matter of moments," "Nice to have someone that will work with you so fast and so friendly," "Excellent tech support, had a good conversation" and "The support technician was very helpful and the remote support tool is great."
The company sells predictive dialers, and lists several advantages of the product including the fact that it manages the process of dialing tens of thousands of calls or tens of millions of calls in its lifetime as well as detects the result of the call. As an example: no answer, busy, fax, bad number, answering machine without any presence of human expertise - consequently saving time by only transferring calls which are voice connects to the agents locally or remotely.
Hosted PBX phones are changing how small and medium-sized businesses serve their customers, grow their business, and support their employees.
According to officials of Vocalocity, a vendor in the space, delivering the same enterprise- level phone system capabilities large businesses use at a much lower cost, "hosted PBX is helping SMBs save money while putting their customer services on par with much larger organizations."
Large enterprises, of course, get to enjoy the cost advantages and capabilities of enterprise IP telephony. On-site IP Private Branch eXchange systems can require significant initial investment and ongoing operational costs that put them out of reach for SMBs, which have generally had to make do with what Vocalocity officials say are "inflexible, expensive traditional phone systems or residential-grade voice over IP with limited functionality and flexibility, and less than business-grade performance."
Vocalocity is offering what company officials say is "a cost-effective, feature-rich alternative to on-premises IP PBXs and traditional analog phone systems expressly designed for the needs of small and medium-sized businesses." Called VocalocityPBX, it's a hosted PBX product, offering "state-of-the-art features, seamless scalability, and unparalleled ease-of- use all in a low-risk, low total cost of ownership package."
In data centers, avoiding downtime is key. Temperature and humidity fluctuations, hot spots, and other environmental factors can wreak havoc on server hardware and cause costly outages. Additionally, increased power usage not only leads to higher operating costs but can be an indication of an imminent issue.
Good airflow is vitally important and must be monitored to ensure air exchange is handled properly, and of course flooding or wetness in a data center could be disastrous.
Nick Larkin of Sensicast Systems has written recently
on some best practices for data center temperature monitoring using wireless sensor networks. According to him, these tools "can be deployed in data centers, providing environmental data and alerts, reducing costs, and ensuring server uptime."
Some such systems have advantages over traditional monitoring systems, including the following considerations:
Cost savings. Traditional monitoring systems typically require the costly process of pulling wire through the facility. Some wireless architecture, including SensiNet's, eliminates the need for this. | <urn:uuid:b30d88fa-e09a-445f-94f8-5fa2be0d0767> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/2010/09/21/-layered-tech-opc-customer-service-vocalocity-hosted-pbx-sensicast-sys.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961317 | 1,001 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The successor to the PS3 was almost-but-not-quite a completely online affair, with Sony having contemplated ditching the optical disc drive that has been standard on all three of their consoles altogether.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Sony considered whether the time was ripe to ditch game discs completely in favor of online downloads and streaming. The Playstation 4 could have ended up requiring a broadband connection to be even remotely usable.
The plan was ultimately ditched because “Internet connections are too inconsistent around the world.” Which they are. While this would have been fine for those in areas with high-speed connections it would have been a disaster for gamers in rural or unconnected locales.
I personally think it was the right decision to abandon this plan. Although games consoles will undoubtedly use similar models in the future, it’s just a little too soon for such an effort. Is it too early to start imagining a disc-less PS5? Yes, yes it is. | <urn:uuid:35ee5dc3-97fd-4dde-abf3-e63753fb6820> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://snarkerati.com/gaming-news/sony-contemplated-disc-less-ps4/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974029 | 202 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Using the Great Yoga Wall ™ like this one at the Embody Yoga and Physical Therapy Center in La Jolla, California can enhance the yogi experience.
Many of you may have experienced both the exhilaration and peaceful state that a yoga practice provides. One of the reasons we feel so good after doing yoga is because it is a balanced physical practice designed to open the spine in every direction.
This is also what sets it apart from your average sport. Most sports are a function of repetitive movements that can often cause repetitive stress on the body or tightness in certain areas because of the posture adopted during that specific sport. In yoga it is said that "you are only as old as your spine." In other words, as long as you have a healthy and flexible spine, your ability to participate in life is endless. The spine is your vitality; it houses all the nerves that keep your muscles and organs functioning optimally. It is also the home of the central channel or "Shushumna Nadi" in the yoga tradition, which is where we hold our "Prana" or life force.
For the spine and joints, gravity is not always our friend. It causes wear and tear over time, loss of height, osteoarthritis in the joints and loss of mobility. Imagine what the possibilities would be if we could open the spine in every direction without compression, in other words in a state of traction. The only way to do this would be to practice while hanging upside down. Impossible? Not so. The Great Yoga Wall ™ makes it possible. | <urn:uuid:6e57b96d-da49-4b95-8370-8832e5dcb169> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.active.com/mindandbody/articles/hanging_out_the_yoga_way.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967134 | 319 | 1.617188 | 2 |
(CNN) -- Richard Heene, who pulled a hoax in 2009 by saying his 6-year-old son was in peril as a stowaway in a balloon over Colorado, is now auctioning the saucer for charity.
Heene apparently believes he can get up to $1 million for the controversial saucer.
The man behind the "balloon boy hoax" is offering the saucer in an online auction to benefit relief efforts in Japan, according to the website balloonboyflyingsaucer.com.
The site, which claims to be the work of California lawyer Perry Rausher, assures potential bidders that Heene will not receive any money from the auction.
"The winning bidder's funds will go directly into the Trust Account of Attorney Perry H. Rausher of Calabasas, California. Mr. Rausher will then write a check to a selected charitable organization that is helping the Japanese cause. The Heene family will not receive anything from the sale," the site says.
Rausher did not immediately return calls for comment. The auction ends Monday.
Heene's claim that his son was in the balloon prompted a sensation and live coverage nationwide of authorities tracking the craft while they agonized over how to rescue the boy inside.
When the balloon came to rest in a field, however, Heene's son was not inside.
The boy later was found hiding in the family's house.
The auction website says visitors can buy the saucer outright for $1 million or submit a bid online.
Bidders are asked to respond to a few questions, including "Do you believe Flying Saucers have been around for many years?" and "Would you like to see people travel everyday in Flying Saucers?"
The online form also inquires of "your main interest" in the craft, how it will be used and whether a bidder has read Heene's paper, "Electromagnetic Fields Recorded in Mesocyclones."
The site contains a link to a YouTube video of Heene and his wife, standing outside in front of a deflated silver balloon while they explain their motives and the craft's functionality.
"We went on the internet and we saw that over 18,000 people have perished over in Japan because of that tsunami," Heene says in the video. "We thought, how can we help out? We can't with our hands but we have something that we think could help."
"Funds raised by the sale will go to charity to help Japanese in their recovery," his wife, Mayumi, says in subtitled Japanese.
In November 2009, Heene pleaded guilty to a felony count of attempting to influence a public servant, while his wife pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of making a false report.
Heene completed a 90-day sentence with home detention, and his wife served a 20-day sentence on weekends, according to a jail official. Her time was not spent in a jail cell, but on a Saturday and Sunday work detail, a probation official said.
The judge also sentenced the couple to four years' probation.
Heene was also ordered to pay $36,000 in restitution, a judge ruled last year.
Prosecutors said the couple staged their son's disappearance on October 15, 2009, to generate publicity for themselves because they wanted to star in a reality television show.
Heene has managed to remain in the public eye through business pursuits that included a rock band and back scratchers. | <urn:uuid:e86d9198-1b82-4adf-817c-618f0a94f652> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/01/colorado.boy.balloon.auction/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978723 | 712 | 1.679688 | 2 |
WTO Intellectual Property
Nokia lost a ruling in a German court on 19th April, 2012 in a patent lawsuit filed by IPCom GmbH & Co., after the regional court in Mannheim, Germany found the Finnish mobile phone company had violated patents belonging to the German patent firm.
This particular patent battle has been on the run since 2007, when IPCom was founded and purchased patents from Bosch.
The patent in question is related to the process in which access channels are assigned to the 3G users. It allows, for example, emergency services to be given priority access.
IPCom has demanded that Nokia should stop selling all its 3G phones in Germany.
Nokia, however, said that the court found infringement of "older phones", but the judgment doesn't rule whether Nokia's current mobile devices infringe the respective patents or not.
It will also seek legal clarity from the higher regional court in Karlsruhe.
The two companies are currently entangled in patent litigation across Europe. The ruling concerns patent DE 199 10 239.
The ruling came the day after Nokia announced a bigger-than-expected loss.
The shares of Nokia, which has been struggling to compete with both high-end smartphone rivals and cheaper competitors, were down 4.8% to 2.778 euros at 1128 GMT.
Moreover, it might be interesting to note that among all the claims made by Nokia till now, at least 61 IPCom patents have been found invalid as granted or conceded as invalid by IPCom. The company believes that IPCom needs to recognize its position and end its unrealistic demands for what remains of this significantly diminished portfolio.
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Helsinki. It manufactures mobile electronic devices, mostly mobile telephones and other devices related to communications, and in converging Internet and communications industries, with 130,000 employees in 120 countries.
IPCom was founded in 2007 to establish a bridge between patent developers and patent users. IPCom connects scientists, developers, and producers. | <urn:uuid:097e0886-9df8-461f-bdb0-7f5ba3402c00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://iitrade.ac.in/kmarticle.asp?topic=Nokia_loses_wireless_patent_ruling_to_IPCom | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952285 | 424 | 1.835938 | 2 |
(just finished my Indy article, y’all!)
The speed and ferocity with which the Internet can ruin things will never cease to amaze me.
When I first saw Facebook posts about people doing the Harlem Shake, I was excited. Images of crowded middle school dances flooded my head, and I could almost smell the confusion of hormones and the collective AXE bath half of the 7th grade boys had taken earlier that day. I wondered why everybody was so late to the party, but didn’t think anything more of it.
It wasn’t until I’d already gotten home and turned on “Chicken Noodle Soup” again that I really took a minute to look at who was posting these statuses.
White people who I knew for a fact had never heard of DJ Webstar, G. Dep, Eve or Jadakiss; white people who I knew for a fact only knew hip-hop by way of Macklemore, Asher Roth and Mac Miller; white people who I knew for a fact were from Lake Zurich. No offense intended if you are one of these white people – I just had no idea how or why you of all people would suddenly be interested in a 30-year-old hip-hop dance move that’s been dead for about 10 years as it is.
That’s when I found out: because it isn’t the Harlem Shake. At all.
The Harlem Shake as I know it is a pretty easy-to-do shimmy that’s been around since the 1980s and popped back up around 2001 when choreographer Moetion taught it to the dancers in the videos for Jadakiss’ “Put Your Hands Up,” Eve’s “Who’s That Girl,” and G Dep’s “Let’s Get It.”
The Harlem Shake as the Internet viral circuit knows it started with 23-year-old Henry Rodrigues, who produced the 2012 single “Harlem Shake” under the name Baauer.
The name of the track comes from a sample from hip-hop group Plastic Little’s 2001 song “Miller Time” that says “then do the Harlem Shake.” Plastic Little is essentially a late-80s/early-90s hip-hop revival group, so I have no doubt that when they say Harlem Shake, they mean Harlem Shake.
Unfortunately, most people bumping Baauer’s track in the background of their “Harlem Shake: College Campus or Corporate Office Edition” videos don’t mean Harlem Shake.
What they do mean is a formulaic, simple-to-repeat video meme that starts with one person humping the air or doing some sad version of the Bernie (another long-since-over dance craze) in a room full of people which then cuts to the entire room freaking out and flailing wildly, as large groups of white people are prone to do.
(Seriously, I’m pretty sure there’s math to back this up. As the number of white people you have in a room increases, the probability of developing a line dance, some sort of synchronized flailing, or a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody exponentially approaches 1.)
The videos themselves are pretty amusing, but the use of the name “Harlem Shake” is problematic. VICE writer Drew Millard summed it up better than anybody else I’ve seen in an article titled “Stop Doing the Fucking Harlem Shake.”
“I’m not a nerd whose thirst for authenticity causes me to huff, arms crossed with my hands under my armpits whenever anyone co-opts any little thing ever, and I’m not an Oompa-Loompa representing the Buzzkill Guild. Promise,” Millard starts.
“But whenever I look at an Internet full of (mostly) white people doing a bastardized version of a dance that has the same name as another dance (and lest we forget, is named after fucking Harlem), and they’re doing that dance to Trap, a style of EDM that took the name (and some sonic signifiers) of an already-existent style of hip-hop that had a very specific set of sociopolitical implications, and people aren’t finding it at least a little problematic, it makes me feels like I’m taking crazy pills.”
Trap music, for the record, originated in early-2000s southern (particularly Atlanta) hip-hop and crunk music that dealt with the “trap” – the place where drugs are sold, where money is exchanged, and where daily life happens for many people – including the hit song “Rubber Band Man” from rapper T.I.’s 2003 album “Trap Muzik.”
“But why the rubber band?/It representing the struggle man/My folk gonna trap/until they come up with another plan/Stack and crumble bread/To get theyself off they mama land/Gangsters who been serving/Since you was doing the Running Man,” T.I. raps in one of the verses.
As Rebecca Haithcoat wrote for the Dallas Observer, “[t]rap music in this connotation was characterized by soulful synths, 808s, the pan flute, sharp snares and long, syrup-slurred vowels.”
Electronic artists have been drawing from these influences to create what many people now refer to as “trap music” without any understanding of its origins or its significance.
That’s the problem I have with the new “Harlem Shake” video craze. It looks like a lot of fun, but the meme status of these videos has eclipsed, hopefully only for the time being, the real Harlem Shake and its cultural history.
The fact that the Internet plays such a crucial role in the preservation and dissemination of information, especially information about the cultural contributions of minority groups, makes this rebranding especially disheartening. It’s by absolutely no stretch of the imagination the first time something from Black communities has gained mainstream appeal after being co-opted, sanitized, and re-packaged – I also don’t have time to publish my dissertation in the Indy.
To anybody who reads this and thinks “man, I wanted to make a Harlem Shake video, but I also don’t want to feel like a dick afterwards,” it’s okay. The videos will still be problematic long, long after they stop being relevant.
To anybody who reads this and thinks I’m just a life-ruining fun-sucker: fine. Just know that there are only two kinds of Harlem Shakers – you’re either with me, or you’re con los terroristas. | <urn:uuid:a6c77460-9627-4526-bb49-b89eb45b1945> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ianthe.tumblr.com/tagged/whiteness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949752 | 1,456 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Party Competition in Multi-level Systems: An Analysis of Programmatic Strategy of Parties, Government Formation and Policy Making in European States
The analytical focus of the research project was on the relationship between party competition, coalition formation and policy making in European states. The central research questions were, first, whether the policy preferences of parties differ (1) across regions and (b) between the regional level and the national level. Secondly, the project asked for the determinants of government formation in multi-level political systems. In order to analyse institutions and actors on the regional level, we constructed data sets that contain information on numerous elections, parties, coalitions and regional entities. In doing so, creating a database that includes the policy preferences of political actors on the regional and national level became one of the main goals of the project. We collected more than 1500 election manifestos from nine European countries and estimated the policy area-specific positions of political parties acting on the national and regional sphere by applying computerised methods of content analysis. With regard to parties’ policy preferences, we found that the patterns of party competition are similar across different levels, but that political parties at the regional level are at the same time able to adopt policy preferences that deviate significantly from the policy positions of the respective parties at the national level. The origins for deviating from the party line are structural characteristics of the regional electorate like the share of Roman-Catholics or Labour Union members as well as short-term economic constraints like the level of unemployment. With regard to coalition formation in European multi-level systems, we found that the ‘usual suspects’ like party strength and policy distances play a decisive role also at the regional level. However, parties on the regional level are generally more likely to form coalitions that are congruent to the partisan composition of government and opposition on the national level. Parties are, by contrast, less likely to form congruent coalitions in regions whose political institutions have a rather high authority in terms of policy making or if the party system clearly differs from the one on the national level. In addition, we found that the European classification system of regions (NUTS) establishes incentives to form similar coalition governments among regions that belong to the same NUTS area: Coalitions are more likely to form if the respective parties are also part of the government in regions that belong to the same NUTS area. | <urn:uuid:2d6ec93a-536d-45db-892c-2e88becbeaaf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/d7/en/projects/party-competition-in-multi-level-systems-an-analysis-of-programmatic-strategy-of-parties-government-formation-and-policy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943452 | 484 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Ski Cross: It has been called NASCAR on skis and winter sport's answer to roller derby.
The event made its Olympic debut as a medal sport at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver-Whistler. Prior to the Olympics, ski cross had already established itself as a hugely popular TV sport, with footage of spectacular passes, jumps and crashes showing up on highlight reels all over the globe. Ski cross courses have both naturally occurring terrain and artificial features including jumps, rollers and high-banked turns. But what sets ski cross apart from other alpine events is the fact that there's more than one skier racing down the course. Four to six racers go head to head, at the same time, with the aim of finishing first. The unique combination of technically challenging terrain and head to head racing make ski cross a thrilling spectator sport.
Contact your local club for more information on Ski Cross racing and programs. | <urn:uuid:25b87281-c621-42f8-a160-7f495bfd3652> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://albertaalpine.ca/?q=ski-cross-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950067 | 189 | 1.570313 | 2 |
I was the only Jew in my dorm, and I wanted to be kosher, so I decided I was going to be kosher and I wrote a letter to the administration asking for kosher meals, cause pork was served... there was always a pork choice at the table, and I had never really—even though my parents didn't keep kosher, they ate kosher-style, and there wasn't a lot of pork, I had never confronted pork until I went to college. And no one said no, it was like, sure, we can do this, and we got it done. And I became sort of this nuisance, cause, people... they were burning crosses in Indiana when I was in college. Black people, Jews had horns and tails, and... they had never seen a Jewish woman before, or any kind of Jewish person before. And so I was being met with a prejudice and for some reason chose to engage and turn the whole paradigm around.
How to Cite This Page
For a bibliography:
Jewish Women's Archive. "Jewish Women's Archive - Women Who Dared - Anita Weinstein on JEWISH VALUES." <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/jsp/fullAnswer.jsp>.
For a footnote:
Jewish Women's Archive, "Jewish Women's Archive - Women Who Dared - Anita Weinstein on JEWISH VALUES," <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/jsp/fullAnswer.jsp>. | <urn:uuid:36a64764-9a12-42a2-9ead-4291904882f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jwa.org/exhibits/wwd/jsp/fullAnswer.jsp?themeID=1&questionID=1&answerID=3290 | 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 | 0.983608 | 310 | 1.625 | 2 |
NEA: British Gas 10% price cut
Monday, 11 May 2009
National Energy Action chief executive Jenny Saunders said: "We welcome today's announcement by British Gas that it will cut its standard tariff electricity prices by ten per cent. It is a move that we estimate will lift 26,600 people out of fuel poverty.
"Any cut in fuel bills is good news for the 5.1m households across the UK that spend more than ten per cent of their income on energy and cannot afford to heat their homes adequately.
"This cut will make a difference, but average dual fuel bills are still a third higher now than they were in January 2008.
"We will continue to push the Government to introduce a mandatory social tariff that will reduce confusion and make sure that customers get the best possible deal.
"If people are worried about paying their bills they should contact the Home Heat Helpline on 0800 33 66 99 to get expert advice on existing social tariffs and simple energy saving measures."
Disclaimer: Press releases published on this page are from key opinion formers
who promote their organisation's activities by subscribing to a campaign site within
politics.co.uk. politics.co.uk does not endorse, edit, or attempt to balance the
opinions expressed on this page. The content of press releases are wholly the responsibility
of the originating company or organisation.
Phil Bentley, British Gas managing director, defends energy price rises.
British Gas's 15 per cent energy price increase will hit Britain poorest families, claimed Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.
British Gas engineers will take part in five 24-hour strikes in the coming weeks in a battle with the company over pension rights.
British gas sends first e-bills
The prime minister has praised the Proms after one of his ministers claimed they failed to promote diversity.
The government today sought to fend off fears that rising gas prices and shortages would lead to an energy crisis this winter.
Government officials have attempted to quantify the value of nature to the UK economy in an independent report out today.
Sarah Palin's top ten moments - 10.
The government is facing accusations of complacency over its response to the Russian gas crisis engulfing Europe.
A bitter political row has erupted over the 1p cut in fuel duty announced in yesterday's Budget. | <urn:uuid:496253dd-d313-4300-942a-f91f638062bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.politics.co.uk/opinion-formers/national-energy-action/article/nea-british-gas-10-price-cut | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944147 | 475 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Free Speech, Off-label marketing, and the learned intermediary doctrine
St. Louis today has an editorial that persuasively argues that off-label marketing should remain illegal:
Off-label marketing may be against the law, but off-label prescribing is perfectly legal, even common. About one in five prescriptions written in the United States each year is for an off-label use.
The contradiction between how drugs are marketed and how they are prescribed creates a gray area that opened the door for the Allergan case.
As the article explains, when a pharmaceutical company gets FDA approval for a drug, the approval is for a specific usage. For example, Viagra is approved for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. Pfizer may market Viagra only to treat erectile dysfunction. As it turns out, some doctors are using Viagra to treat primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH). Pfizer may not market Viagra to treat PPH. The reason why is because Pfizer has not demonstrated to the FDA that Viagra is safe and effective in treating PPH.
It’s not surprising that pharmaceuticals want to end the off-label marketing ban. If they could push their products for the treatment of anything it would certainly increase sales. I agree with the St. Louis Today editorial that ending the off-label marketing ban would put consumers at risk. However, I am also sensitive to the manufacturers’ free-speech interests. So I have a novel solution.
I would end the off-label marketing ban, but I would also end the learned intermediary doctrine. The learned intermediary doctrine traditionally prevents consumers from suing pharmaceutical companies for failing to warn consumers of the dangers of a prescription drug. Instead, a consumer has to sue the pharmaceutical company for failing to warn doctors of the dangers of a specific drug. Because consumers can’t just buy a prescription drug on their own, they have to get a prescription from a doctor. The doctor acts as an intermediary between the consumer and the pharmaceutical company. And it is the doctor’s responsibility to ensure that the patient is a proper candidate for the drug.
I believe if we abolished the learned intermediary doctrine, pharmaceuticals would be more forthcoming in their disclosures about specific drugs. Warning consumers about the dangers of a drug is different than warning doctors. Pharmaceutical companies would have to do more to educate the public than release a study in a medical journal, for example.
More importantly, abolishing the learned intermediary doctrine would take into account how drugs are actually prescribed. In reality, many patients see a drug on TV and then decide they want that drug. They then get an appointment with their doctor, ask the doctor for a prescription, and the doctor writes the prescription with few if any questions. Instead of acting like a “learned intermediary,” many doctors act like nothing more than a middleman, happy to collect an office visit fee in exchange for a prescription for just about any drug a patient wants. Abolishing the learned intermediary doctrine would force pharmaceuticals to actively attempt to warn consumers about the dangers of specific drugs. This can only improve patient safety.
I hope that the off-label marketing ban stands. But if it falls, I suggest we reconsider the learned intermediary doctrine as well.
UPDATE: I got a very polite email from a representative of Pfizer regarding an error in the above post. From Pfizer:
"Viagra is also known by the chemical name sildenafil. Pfizer markets two formulations of sildenafil: Viagra, which is approved by the FDA to treat erectile dysfunction, and Revatio, approved for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (WHO Group I) to improve exercise ability and help lessen symptoms and slow down worsening changes in a patient’s physical condition. Thus, while the statement is correct in stating Viagra is not indicated for the treatment of PAH, there is a formulation of sildenafil FDA-approved for the treatment of PAH. " | <urn:uuid:c3e68ff5-1468-4240-900f-089c14d9333a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tortdeform.com/archives/2010/04/free_speech_offlabel_marketing_1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943205 | 812 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Environmental Groups Fail To See Humor
As they say... always
read the fine print.
A recent environmental agreement signed by Boeing and Virgin
Atlantic -- which includes the purchase of up to 43 Boeing 787
airliners, as well as a pledge to deliver a biofuel for jets --
also contained a weighty stipulation for Virgin CEO Sir Richard
Branson (right) and Boeing Chairman Jim McNerney to drop some
The Daily Mail reports the clause in the agreement signed April 24
states "The parties hereby agree that each of the signatories will
lose at least one stone [14 lbs] in weight within the next four
years in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 36lb on
the delivery flight."
Branson's communications director, Paul Charles, says the text
was planted in the contract as a joke by staffers, to see if the
men would read the fine print.
"Clearly, neither of them reads contracts properly before they
sign them," he said. "They had no idea they had agreed to lose
weight until after their signatures were down on the dotted line.
They thought it was very funny."
Branson -- whose measurements and weight were helpfully reported
in the Daily Mail (gotta love British media -- Ed.) -- is
classified as overweight, according to the National Institute of
"We are doing our bit to tackle carbon emissions, but losing
weight was an additional element thrown in for added effect,"
Charles added, tongue firmly in cheek. "If you are carrying lighter
people in the plane, you need even less fuel. Perhaps the
Government should consider adopting it as a way to combat obesity
and climate change in one go."
Boeing declined to disclose McNerney's vitals, but did confirm
the Boeing chairman would honor the agreement.
It was meant to be a good-natured joke, but environmentalists
failed to see the humor -- or, at least, the humor intended.
"Branson's fleet produces 7.4 million tonnes of CO2 each year,"
retorts Joss Garman, of the anti-flying group Plane Stupid. "He and
McNerney are both very carbon-obese men, but they seem to have
mistaken a low-carb diet for a low carbon one.
"It's the flying that's the problem, Richard, not the frying," | <urn:uuid:2603fccf-d126-40ea-a70a-a1735e8cec99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=9da85796-077f-4670-a3f8-0b7d673acd92 | 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 | 0.966671 | 498 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Just when I thought I'd truly heard it all, I read a story about a woman in China who went into labor nine days before she was due, and ultimately wound up giving birth to her baby girl after insisting on making a stop to use the bathroom on her way to the hospital. You know -- because she probably thought she was feeling pressure "down there" because she had to poop, not push the baby out! OMG.
This definitely isn't the first time a baby has been born in a restroom, but it is the first time I've heard about a baby being born in a public toilet pit. Yes -- a toilet pit, which is basically a small hole on the bathroom floor that you -- well, kind of squat and "hover" over in order to do your business.
If you still aren't getting a good visual of what I mean, then you'll get a much clearer picture after checking out the photo of the actual toilet pit where the little girl was born. It's not entirely primitive, but it's definitely not what we're used to here in the States. I did have the pleasure of using something similar in Paris once, and trust me -- it was no picnic. I can't imagine actually being hovered over that thing and pushing out a baby -- especially when I expected to be going #2!
After the woman gave birth, her husband called for help, and rescuers came and could see the baby lying in the pit and could hear the poor little thing crying too. They wound up ripping out the other pits nearby so that they could get the baby out. She was in there for about 30 minutes, and rescuers reported her as "a little pale and stiff."
Miraculously, the baby survived and is being monitored by doctors in the hospital for a little while longer just to make sure she is ok. Her aunt says that the family will bring her home as soon as the doctor says she's ready to go.
If nothing else, this story really makes you appreciate living somewhere with modern facilities, and up-to-date toilets, doesn't it? I think I'll be a little more appreciative and less whiny the next time I complain about having to put down toilet paper on a public seat before using it. Doing that sure beats giving birth (or pooping) into a hole.
What is the strangest place you've ever heard a baby being born in?
Image via Micheal Melchiorre/Flickr | <urn:uuid:ee33bef8-78bb-4627-b763-91b711f32756> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/135862/laboring_mom_accidentally_poops_newborn?next=11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983731 | 504 | 1.625 | 2 |
500 AD: Theodora, the empress of Byzantium was born. (this folks, is knowledge that you NEEDED to know, but never knew how to ask for without sounding like an idiot.)
500: The number of pounds I've gained and lost in 52 years.
500: Some sort of car race in Indianapolis, maybe?
500: The number of bottles of beer on the wall before you take one down and pass it around....
500: The number of times I confessed to Father Reinhart that I'd disobeyed my parents in one month's time (Short explanation.. I was told by my parents to not crack my knuckles. I couldn't help it and kept cracking so I figured I'd just pick a high number and confess it. Father Reinhart probably thinks I was a LOT more rotten than I really was.)
500: The square root of 22.360679774997898 (this is important knowledge to tuck away for when your preschooler runs into trouble with math problems)
500: The total number of posts on "The Other Side of 50" (as of today).... which was the real reason for this blog post. I'm actually kind of proud of this accomplishment, considering that I rarely stick with any new project for more than a couple of months.
HOWEVER..... there is one more 500 I'm even more proud of.
500: the number of dollars raised by The Other Side of 50 so far this year for donation to Gleaner's Food Bank of Indianapolis. Thank you all for your continued support by your regular visits to my blog. Together, we're doing what we can to feed the hungry. I love you all so freakin' much! | <urn:uuid:b8bd098e-5077-43a9-9c87-3914c3e04094> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.othersideoffifty.com/2010/12/500.html?showComment=1292100070413 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96664 | 354 | 1.53125 | 2 |
12:15 pm in accompanied by a service animal, codeshare flights, Department of Transportation, disability in air travel, Elections, emotional support, nondiscrimination, olden days, pot bellied pigs, psychiatric service, service animal, service animals, spotlight, technical assistance manual, § 382.7(c) for codeshare flights by danmillerinpanama
It recognizes that many of us will need lots more emotional support.
Life has improved greatly since the primitive olden days of air travel. On July 5th, the Department of Transportation published its new Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel: Draft Technical Assistance Manual in the Federal Register. Among the many other recognized disabilities is the need for emotional support provided by pot bellied pigs. Here is the DOT’s position on this matter of national great importance:
A passenger arrives at the gate accompanied by a pot-bellied pig. She claims that the pot-bellied pig is her service animal. What should you do?
Generally, you must permit a passenger with a disability to be accompanied by a service animal. However if you have a reasonable basis for questioning whether the animal is a service animal, you may ask for some verification. Usually written verification is not required.
You may begin by asking questions about the service animal, for example, “What tasks or functions does your animal perform for you?” or “What has its training been?” If you are not satisfied with the credibility of the answers to these questions or if the service animal is an emotional support or psychiatric service animal, you may request further verification. You should also call a CRO if there is any further doubt as to whether the pot-bellied pig is the passenger’s service animal.
Finally, if you determine that the pot-bellied pig is a service animal, you must permit the service animal to accompany the passenger to her seat provided the animal does not obstruct the aisle or present any safety issues and the animal is behaving appropriately in a public setting. However, note that as a foreign carrier, you are not required to carry service animals other than dogs (except as noted in § 382.7(c) for codeshare flights with a U.S carrier.).
If President Obama is reelected, having pot bellied pigs to accompany us during air travel will provide great and badly needed emotional support. Moreover, the demand for them is likely to increase sufficiently to create numerous shovel ready jobs for additional farm workers.
But wait; there is more. From the same authoritative manual,
You must permit a service animal used by a passenger with a disability to accompany the passenger on his or her flight. (§ 382.117(a)). In addition, you must permit a service animal to accompany a passenger with a disability to the passenger’s assigned seat and remain there if the animal does not obstruct the aisle or other areas that must remain unobstructed to facilitate an emergency evacuation. (§ 382.117(b)). The service animal must be allowed to accompany the passenger unless it poses a direct threat to the health or safety of others or presents a significant threat of disruption to the cabin service.
If a service animal does not fit in the space immediately in front of the accompanying passenger with a disability and there is no other seat with sufficient space to safely accommodate the animal and the accompanying passenger, there are several options to consider for accommodating the service animal in the cabin in the same class of service. You should speak with other passengers to find a passenger—
(1) Seated in an adjacent seat who is willing to share foot space with the animal, or
(2) Who is willing to exchange seats with the passenger accompanying the service animal and is seated in a seat adjacent to—
(a) A location where the service animal can be accommodated (for example, in the space behind the last row of seats) or
(b) An empty seat.
You must not deny a passenger with a disability transportation on the basis that the service animal may offend or annoy persons traveling on the aircraft.
I would not be in the least offended by a cute little pot bellied pig in the seat next to mine. Having heard that pot bellied pigs are highly intelligent, it would probably be possible to carry on a more entertaining conversation with one of them than with a Librul otherwise seated next to me. This may even provide grand opportunities to wean devout Muslims away from their irrational dislikes of pigs. They could learn that pigs can be very clean, friendly and even beautiful companions.
NOTE: This is not satire. It is all true, or at least the part about the DOT manual is.
First published at Dan Miller’s Blog. | <urn:uuid:9dc4ce13-958b-4c13-aa12-a93838cc9e8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teapartywire.com/blog/category/service-animals/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950391 | 974 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Jessica Immelman hands off donation check from Nikela to Shannon Hoffman at Africa’s largest Bird of Prey Sanctuary to protect the endangered Bearded Vulture.
“What an amazing place!” is what Jess had to say after witnessing Shannon’s bird of prey flight demonstration and experiencing a personal tour around Africa’s largest bird of prey sanctuary. Earlier this month Jess presented Shannon Hoffman with a $1,000 check to assist in her work with protecting Africa’s endangered and threatened bird of prey species. Shannon and her husband Ben are a dynamite duo.
Ben runs the rescue center, where he treats around 200 raptors a year that need the care of a skilled rehabber. Ben is one of the world’s finest. Those that sadly cannot be returned to the wild due to the severity of their injury or being too humanized (tame) are then placed in a breeding program or sanctuary. Some are suitable for Shannon’s sanctuary where the birds become ambassadors for their species.
During Jess’ visit she was introduced to Shannon’s famous Lanier Falcon “Chicken” and a relatively new resident at the center, a female Bearded Vulture, rescued from a witch doctor. The Bearded Vulture is an endangered species with only about 350 remaining in the high mountains of Southern Africa. It was originally hoped that she could be released, but sadly the team determined her far too tame after spending most of her four years in a small chicken coop like cage.
The funds provided by Nikela as well any future donations to Shannon’s project will go to assist with the center’s program to breed and reintroduce Bearded Vultures in to the wilds. Apparently without this program their long term survival is rather bleak (more coming on this timely program.)
Thanks again Jess for delivering the donation check, we look forward to more photos and videos of your visit. In the meantime you’re welcome to join us in the quest to save the Bearded Lady by making your $7 donation. | <urn:uuid:78f1ea38-ddd5-4e2b-b38d-ac8d527a6a99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nikela.org/abops/nikela-volunteer-visits-raptor-center-with-donation-check | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9498 | 425 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Facebook says it has patched a security hole on its New Year's Eve messaging service after an IT student in the U.K. discovered he could easily see other people's private messages.
Student and blogger Jack Jenkins, found that he could view the messages simply by changing the ID number displayed in the message's confirmation URL. The messages would show up as if he were sending the note. He could read the text, see any attached photos, and even delete the message.
According to Jenkins' blog, Facebook took down the service a few hours after he blogged about the issue. Facebook confirmed earlier this morning that it took the app down. "We are working on a fix for this issue now, and in the interim we have disabled this app on the Facebook Stories site to ensure that no messages can be accessed," a spokesperson said in an e-mail to CNET.
After Facebook revived the service, users can no longer view other messages by changing the ID number. This now sends a user back to his or her own New Year's messages. Users may be experiencing another bug that makes the app think New Year's Day has already passed in the U.S. At least one CNET writer on the East Coast reported seeing this error message:
Midnight on New Year's Eve has passed. Friends were able to wish each other a happy new year with a private message that was delivered to their Facebook inbox at exactly midnight on December 31.
We've contacted Facebook about this development and will update when we hear back.
What a way for Facebook to end 2012. The social network just rolled out its new privacy settings, which Internet privacy watchdogs promptly criticized. Last month, Facebook had to disable a loophole that might have allowed some accounts to be accessed without a password. | <urn:uuid:d713f8dc-39d5-4f59-ba44-104ea8f0b0d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57561405-93/facebook-revives-nye-message-service-after-security-fix/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968202 | 360 | 1.703125 | 2 |
A Natural Family Planning Service
Serena is a volunteer non-profit organization which educates couples about their fertility through the Sympto-Thermal Method of Natural Family Planning.
The term Natural Family Planning can be misleading in our modern-day environment. It can lead some to think that the goal of Natural Family Planning is to plan to have as many children as possible. Nothing can be further from the truth!
Natural Family Planning allows the couple to use their fertility as a resource (gift) to exercise responsible parenthood. A husband and wife agree together when it is the right time to actively seek to conceive a child or when there are reasons to avoid conceiving a child. The goal of the couple determines how the information is used.
By understanding when a woman is fertile and when she is infertile during her cycles, a couple can either effectively avoid conceiving or increase their chances of conceiving. Serena's approach is to teach the Sympto-Thermal Method as a co-operative method of husband and wife, a lifestyle-method which also serves to build up the relationship of the couple.
Serena teaches its methods through volunteer teacher-couples. Formally trained by Serena, our teacher-couples are knowledgeable and accredited instructors. As users of the methods themselves, they can also offer relatable, everyday support and expertise from their own experiences.
Serena British Columbia is part of Serena Canada, and our teachers are accredited by Serena Canada. Click here for more information about Serena Canada and its teachings.
Serena Canada has on staff a world-respected fertility researcher, Dr. Suzanne Parenteau-Carreau. In addition to continual research endeavours, she develops and reviews our technical materials, and advises teacher-couples when unusual circumstances present themselves. Also on staff to further Serena's research and education is medical advisor, Dr. Fabian Ballesteros. We are honoured to have both Dr. Suzanne and Dr. Fabian as vital members of our team.
Serena is a non-denominational group that has been given official approval by the Roman Catholic Church. | <urn:uuid:c815db5c-7015-459b-b04a-14013626055a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vcn.bc.ca/serenabc/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959866 | 445 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Who originally wrote it, I don’t know. But I know where my copy came from. It’s been folded and re-folded a couple of dozen times, read and re-read when I needed a chuckle or wanted to make someone else laugh.
A little lady named Miss Mary gave it to me one morning as I waddled down the hallway of the retirement center where I worked. A week overdue with my first child, I wasn’t moving very swiftly and I stopped to rest and to say hello.
“I have something for you,” she said and reached into her pocket and pulled out a freshly folded piece of white paper. “It’s a funny about mothers.”
Then she patted my belly gently and looked up at me and said. “It will be here soon. I can tell these things.”
And, sure enough, our son was born the very next week.
That was 18 years ago almost. Miss Mary isn’t with us any longer, I heard. But her funny about mothers is — folded and re-folded a couple of dozen times, read and re-read over the years when I needed a chuckle or wanted to make someone else laugh.
Like now — this is what it said:
Mama taught me to appreciate a job well done — If you are going to kill each other, do it outside! I just finished cleaning this house. Mama taught me religion — You better pray that will come out of the carpet!
Mama taught me time travel — If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to slap you into the middle of next week! Mama taught me logic — If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you’re not going to the store with me!
Mama taught me foresight — Be sure you have on clean underwear, in case you’re in an accident! My mama taught me irony — Keep on crying and I’ll give you something to cry about! Mama taught me the science of osmosis — Shut your mouth and eat your supper!
Mama taught me how to be a contortionist — Will you look at the dirt on the back of your neck! Mama taught me about stamina — You’ll sit there until all of those turnip greens are gone!
Mama taught me about weather — It looks like a tornado swept through your room! Mama taught me to solve problems in physics — If I yelled because you were going to be hit by a car, would you listen to me then?
Mama taught me about hypocrisy — If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, don’t exaggerate! Mama taught me the circle of life — I brought you into this world and I can take you out!
Mama taught me behavior modification — Stop acting like your father! Mama taught me about envy - There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don’t have wonderful parents like you have!
Mama taught me about anticipation — Just wait until we get home! Mama taught me about receiving — You’re going to get it when we get home!
Mama taught me medical science — If you don’t stop crossing your eyes, they’re going to get stuck that way! Mama taught me to think ahead — If you don’t pass your spelling test, you’ll never get a good job!
Mama taught me ESP — Put your sweater on; don’t you think I know when you’re cold?! Mama taught me humor — When you cut off your toe with the lawnmower, don’t come running to me!
Mama taught me how to become an adult — If you don’t eat your vegetables, you’ll never grow up! Mama taught me about my roots — Do you think you were born in a barn?! Mama taught me about the wisdom — When you get to be my age, you’ll understand!
And the all time favorite lesson mama taught me was justice — One day you’ll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you!
Thanks, Miss Mary.
Contact columnist Mandy Flynn at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:326f6f51-e221-4e07-983d-22ff019034ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albanyherald.com/news/2012/may/12/miss-marys-teachings-mama-said/?features | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951814 | 909 | 1.53125 | 2 |
I don’t get “prosperity Christianity” or, as it is known in non-denominational circles, “abundance spirituality.” At all.
An early purveyor of this outgrowth of the Protestant Work Ethic, Norman Vincent Peale made a bundle from his book, The Power of Positive Thinking, in which he promoted the Gospel of Prosperity. Apparently, Peale didn’t think too positively about Catholics and opposed the candidacy of John F. Kennedy, fearing that the election of Catholic president would destroy American culture. His career received a pretty damaging blow as a result of his anti-Catholic bigotry and initiated an ironic chapter of his life that might be called “The Power of Negative Thinking.”
He is hardly alone in preaching prosperity. Throughout the last five decades, Unity minister Catherine Ponder has turned prosperity Christianity into superabundant cottage industry, cranking out titles like The Millionaires of Genesis, The Millionaire from Nazareth, and Pray and Grow Rich on a regular basis, turning her leaden prose into the kind of gold anyone could bank on.
More recently, televangelist Joel Osteen has been the most prominent exponent of pious prosperity, persuading viewers into his ministry of fiscal hope through his chipper demeanor, optimistic attitude, and non-threatening humor. Osteen’s estimated worth is at about $40 million, which is not too shabby for a guy who never finished college. It’s easy to like the boyish Osteen, just as it’s easy to like the idea of prosperity. But I don’t see what either of them has to do with Christianity.
An honest reading of the New Testament doesn’t disclose anything like “prosperity,” if by this word we mean material well-being. Jesus, for one, does not seem to have been flush with cash at any moment during his earthly life, and the Virgin Mary does not appear to have employed a housekeeper. The apostles, for another, left prosperity (and their professions) behind when they started following the rabbi with the pretty extraordinary message about the Kingdom of God.
Saint Paul reaped plenty of rewards for following Jesus. First he was blinded. Then he was beaten and imprisoned. Then he was shipwrecked. Then he was imprisoned again. Then he was shipwrecked two more times. Then he was imprisoned again. Then he was beheaded. In 2 Corinthians 12—for the only time—he acknowledges his complaints to God about the “thorn in the flesh” that he thought compromised his happiness (whether the affliction was physical, psychological, or material, he does not say). He also shares the answer he received: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” No one told Paul that he should pray and grow rich, and he told no one to embrace the power of positive thinking so they could turn theirs into lives of abundance.
It is no surprise, I think, that prosperity Christianity arises out of Protestant religious contexts. As many scholars have argued, the secularization of Western culture has been an unintended consequence of the Protestant Reformation which emphasized the individual’s relationship to God and the free interpretation of scripture over the community’s participation in Christian life and ecclesial authority. Prosperity Christianity, on the other hand, seems to have been an intended consequence of the Reformation and the emphasis on the PWE, at least on the part of certain individuals. Many Protestants, of course, would argue that this is an aberration of Reformed religion. It is.
Though many Catholics and Orthodox have no doubt been influenced by the presence of prosperity Christianity—especially through the agency of American popular culture—I cannot think of any Catholic or Orthodox writers or clerics peddling a spirituality of abundance. Why, exactly, I cannot say. I do know that my more than sixteen years of Catholic education emphasized a spirituality of poverty, of sacrifice, and of placing others first. The Christianity I grew up in, that is, was not one of prosperity, but of the Cross.
In one of her spiritual dialogues with Christ, St. Teresa of Avila complained that she was suffering too much for his demands: that the work was too hard, that her efforts seemed ineffective and under-appreciated, and she was tired of so much mistreatment. “That is how I always treat my friends,” he answered. To which she wryly replied, “That must be why you have so few friends.”
As recent polls have indicated, Jesus can count on fewer friends on his Facebook account. His market is dwindling. The only abundance he promises is one of life. And life, too, for our culture, has lost its value.
Spero columnist Michael Martin is a professor of English literature at Marygrove College. | <urn:uuid:440ca248-d33d-4aaf-ac5e-0fe90049efd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.speroforum.com/site/print.asp?id=KXFJGJXAGV11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975718 | 1,029 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Self Help Technical Assistance (TA) Grants to an organization pay the cost of developing and administering a program of technical and supervisory assistance to aid the very low and low income families in building their own homes. The dual purpose of this program is to fund organizations that are willing to locate and work with families that otherwise do not qualify as homeowners and help those families learn the skills of maintaining a home by participating in its construction.
Applicant organization must be a state, political subdivision, public non-profit corporation (including Indian Tribes or tribal corporations), or qualifying private non-profit corporation. Eligible applicants may qualify for two separate grants under this program. In addition to the TA grant, an additional pre-development grant of up to $10,000 may also be available if the applicant organization lacks the financial resources to assemble the TA grant application.
Funding is based upon annual appropriations. The TA grant depends on the experience and capabilities of the applicant, and must be justified based upon the number of families to be assisted.
A TA grant agreement may be for up to two years, depending upon the size and complexity of the TA grant proposal. | <urn:uuid:ca66a49c-6fdc-46e8-ae7a-f58e8c0cf156> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/WI_RHS_Selfhelp.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940078 | 231 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Bridges remain a concern in state
Deputy Transportation Secretary Gary Hoffman, center, inspects part of the Lakeview Drive overpass that collapsed onto Interstate 70 in December 2005. Since this collapse, the state has made progress on replacing deficient bridges around the area.
Jim McNutt / Observer-Reporter
Order a Print
When the Lakeview Drive bridge came crashing down on Interstate 70 in South Strabane Township almost seven years ago, it proved to be a wake-up call for the state Department of Transportation.
In the weeks that followed, inspectors looked closely at bridges of a similar design. The bridge that took North Main Street over I-70, also in South Strabane, was closed, demolished and replaced. A bridge that took Sumney Road over I-70 in Somerset was also closed and torn down but never replaced.
“Since that tidal wave seven years ago, we put together a strategy to address the problem,” said Joseph Szczur, district executive for PennDOT’s District 12, which includes Washington and Greene counties. “There have been inroads made. We have been able to replace or repair 83 bridges in Washington and Greene counties at a cost of $145 million.”
Szczur said there are other overpasses of the same structure type as Lakeview and North Main still in service in both counties.
A structurally deficient bridge has at least one structural component in poor condition or worse. Addressing the deficiency typically requires rehabilitation or replacement. In Washington County, there are 183 structurally deficient bridges and another 90 in Greene. The bridge is not unsafe to use, provided any posted weight limits are obeyed, Szczur said. The average age of the bridges that need replaced is 74 years old.
“We are drawing down the number as best we can,” Szczur said. “When we started, one out three bridges in the district was structurally deficient. Today, that number is a lot lower with about 25 percent. Some of the bridges that need replaced are large.”
One of the more noteworthy bridges that has been addressed is the Donora-Webster bridge, which has been closed for more than two years and is scheduled to be demolished in 2014, Szczur said.
Bridges that need to be replaced include the bridges on I-70 at Bentleyville and the Route 481 interchanges and one over Pike Run.
While most of the bridges are identified for repair or replacement as part of the Transportation Improvement Program cycle, the federal accelerated bridge program provided $375 million make improvements across the state, Szczur added.
“But there are a lot of roads and bridges we don’t have a revenue stream for,” he said. “There is an ongoing dialogue between the department and the Secretary of Transportation to try and figure out ways to address the transportation needs throughout the state.”
Bridges are prioritized, looking at the ones in the worst shape and the amount of traffic across it, Szczur said. Over the last seven years, almost $19 million had been spent on bridge preservation work in the two counties to prevent bridges from becoming structurally deficient, She added.
Outgoing state Auditor General Jack Wagner is not satisfied with work being done to improve the aging road and bridge system in the state. Earlier this year, he called for legislative action to address the crisis of the state’s crumbling infrastructure before there is a catastrophe.
“We have more structurally deficient bridges than any other state,” Wagner said last month. “Drivers in Pennsylvania are 10 times more likely to pass a structurally deficient bridge than they are a McDonald’s restaurant.”
“My concerns are many,” he added. “There is a significant urgency to address these problems.”
Wagner said a good infrastructure is crucial to the state’s economy.
“It is vitally important to the private sector to have a good infrastructure to provide goods and services,” Wagner said. “And that is not just roads, but rail lines and airports.”
He also noted the state has the eighth-worst road system in the country, with more than 8,400 miles of substandard highways.
“We can put people to work improving our roads and bridges,” Wagner said. “There is a wide variety of professions needed, from laborers and ironworkers to engineers and architects.
Wagner, who said he has been very vocal on this issue, said that in 2011, Gov. Tom Corbett’s Transportation Funding Advisory Commission released a report that included funding proposals to bring in $2.5 billion a year for infrastructure projects. Wagner said there has been a continued decline in fuel tax coupled with reduced buying power as a result of inflation.
“The No. 1 suggestion is taking the seal off the wholesale price of gasoline and then gradually increasing it over a five-year period,” Wagner said. “The proposal has been put in the form of legislation, but it has not gone anywhere.”
Szczur concurred that there is sufficiently not enough money to address the problem with structurally deficient bridges. He estimated it would take $540 million just to address the structurally deficient bridges in Washington and Greene counties.
Corbett said last week that he is considering all of the commission’s recommendations and expects to lay out a proposal for transportation instructure needs when the new Legislature convenes in mid-January.
Costanzo, Lucas virtually assured election in Nov. (4932)
Election roundup (3996)
Judge orders Manning memo posted at polls be impounded (2788)
Polamalu believes injury issues are behind him (1082)
Seahawks waive Portis after DUI arrest (965) | <urn:uuid:9dca09b0-ace3-447b-972a-db181ae3121d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.observer-reporter.com/article/20121208/NEWS01/121209389 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962757 | 1,219 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Lively and Thoughtful Discussion of Cancer Screening Guidelines Planned for the 2013 Dialogue for Action
Health professionals who attend the 2013 Dialogue for Action on Cancer Screening: Hitting the Targets will have a unique opportunity to hear a timely and important panel discussion on “The Future of Cancer Screening Guidelines: Reconciling the Benefits and Harms of Cancer Screening”. The discussion will get underway on Thursday March 21 at 4:35 pm at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore.
Tim Byers, MD, MPH, an expert in cancer prevention research from the University of Colorado School of Public Health, will moderate a lively and thoughtful discussion among four thought leaders on cancer screening who know this issue broadly and deeply from diverse perspectives. We are fortunate to have these panelists:
- David F. Yankelevitz, MD, is professor of radiology at The Mt Sinai Hospital, an expert in the diagnosis of early lung cancer and an initiator of the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) which enrolled more than 50,000 people in 8 countries.
- Stephen Taplin, MD, MPH, Branch Chief of the Process of Care Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute, is an expert in the field of cancer screening, having built his research career around problems he saw in day-to-day practice as a primary care physician and as head of a breast cancer screening program.
- Robert A. Smith, PhD, is an epidemiologist and Director of Cancer Screening at the National Office of the American Cancer Society and has been involved in the development of numerous cancer screening guidelines.
- Quyen Ngo-Metzger, MD, MPH, recently appointed as the Scientific Director for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, serves as the main government lead to provide guidance to the USPSTF and interacts with the public and other agencies regarding the work of the Task Force.
Attendees will have the opportunity to join this discussion and others at the 2013 Dialogue conference which will be held March 21 and 22, with pre-conference sessions on March 20.
The Prevent Cancer Foundation’s annual Dialogue is attended by the diversity of healthcare professionals involved in early detection of cancer, and it provides concrete tools and effective strategies for use in both clinical and public health settings. Since 1999, the screening focus of the Dialogue has been on colorectal cancer. New this year, the 2013 Dialogue is expanding to include breast, cervical and colorectal cancers, as well as skin, prostate and lung cancers. Continuing education credit is available for physicians, nursing professionals and certified health education specialists.
Register now for the 2013 Dialogue. | <urn:uuid:6514dc15-aa05-490b-8e31-e90fb6b83a4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.preventcancer.org/2013/lively-and-thoughtful-discussion-of-cancer-screening-guidelines-planned-for-the-2013-dialogue-for-action/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949384 | 560 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Little Free Libraries in Altadena**. There may be more around here, the list/map is not up-to-date, and there are hundreds more around the United States. The mission of the Little Free Library is to promote literacy, build a sense of community, and build more than 2,510 libraries around the world ("more than Andrew Carnegie," they say, though his are somewhat larger, and I've never seen one dressed up for the holiday).
The little window is deceiving--there are two full rows of books: paperbacks and hardbacks, nonfiction, cookbooks, novels, books on business, books for kids, and more. The idea is simple: just come and take a book. Leave a book, too, if you can. I left four yesterday so if you can't this time, it's on me.
**I had this wrong. This is inside the Pasadena border. | <urn:uuid:8a2d0529-81bd-41a0-8140-d23c56705e38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pasadenadailyphoto.blogspot.com/2012/10/little-free-library.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968858 | 187 | 1.640625 | 2 |
THE HAGUE, Netherlands
Twenty years to the day after Serb ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj vowed "rivers of blood" would flow if Bosnia declared independence, prosecutors told a U.N. court Monday he was guilty of recruiting paramilitaries and whipping up hatred of non-Serbs to ensure his vow came true.
Seselj sat smiling in a Yugoslav war crimes tribunal courtroom as prosecutor Mathias Marcussen began summing up evidence presented at the marathon trial that started in 2007. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted.
Prosecutors called 72 witnesses to underpin their allegation that Seselj was part of a criminal plot led by late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to carve a new Serb superstate out of parts of the former Yugoslavia with a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Seselj, 57, did not call any witnesses or mount any defense to the charges. He is expected to plead innocence in his closing statement next week.
Marcussen told judges that in a written summary that has not been released publicly Seselj denied ever cooperating with Milosevic.
Seselj surrendered to the court days after he was indicted in 2003, declaring his innocence and saying he would turn his trial into a circus.
He was then and remains head of the Serbian Radical Party. At the time he was taken into custody the Radicals were a powerful right wing bloc in Serbian politics, but they have since weakened following a split in their ranks in 2008.
Seselj's antics have made him a thorn in the court's side and delayed proceedings repeatedly, helping to make him the longest-detained suspect since the court was established in 1993.
He staged a hunger strike in 2006 that left him close to death and delayed the start of his trail. He repeatedly named witnesses whose identities were shielded by court orders, leading to two contempt of court convictions, and he often insulted prosecutors and judges, whom he has likened to the Spanish inquisition.
On Monday, he continued in the same vein, saying prosecutors should speak for only 60 minutes each, "because they are unable to talk sense for more than an hour at a time."
He then remained silent as Marcussen told the three-judge panel that Seselj's prediction of "rivers of blood" in Bosnia "became brutal reality" for one witness who survived a massacre by a notorious paramilitary militia known as "Seselj's Men."
The witness, identified only as VS1064, was shot and wounded in a string of summary executions that left his father and three brothers among 88 men killed and buried in a mass grave, Marcussen said.
At the heart of the prosecution case is the allegation that Seselj recruited and armed paramilitaries and used hate-laced speeches to incite them to commit atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia.
Marcussen called Seselj's firebrand speeches a "vicious and relentless campaign" that "denigrated and dehumanized non-Serbs."
The Associated Press | <urn:uuid:02f52464-008a-4d21-94f0-d68a2e31852c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/mar/05/war-crimes-court-says-evidence-proves-seselj-guilt/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984413 | 628 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Posted on 24 February, 2012
24, 25, 27 and 28 February @ 8pm
Classical opera is very often conveniently perceived as a profound, exclusive genre adored by serious music aficionados. However, the dramatic plot of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte’s Don Giovanni, based on familiar themes of love, lust, vengeance and violence, is otherwise more intriguing than modern-day television drama.
Audiences will be kept on the edges of their seats as they follow the lecherous seducer and criminal, Don Giovanni, through his escapades and refusal to surrender to rules. Instead, he says to his enemies, leave it up to Fate.
Sung in Italian with English and Chinese subtitles, the lulling plot and music of Mozart keeps Don Giovanni one of the world’s most highly-demanded Classical opera. Singapore-based operatic soprano, Nancy Yuen, talks about the Singapore Lyric Opera’s humble take on this Western opera.
Q. What makes Don Giovanni an all-time audience favourite?
Don Giovanni is popular for the enduring quality of Mozart’s ingenious music and his sense of drama. There isn’t a dull moment in the entire opera, with action complimenting the mellifluous melodies, making this one of the most loved operas ever.
Q. Some striking highlights of the show which the audiences may affix themselves to?
Most of the audience can relate to all the characters on stage, as they are as flesh and blood as every other person around. This production is set in the period with the artist Goya as the inspiration to the whole look. Audience can look forward to a very Spanish theme visually and perhaps can also spare a thought on the outrageous behaviour of the main character against a very Catholic society.
Q. We understand that your role, Donna Anna, is plagued by a series of unforeseen events. How
tough is it portraying this character in Don Giovanni?
I play Donna Anna, a noble woman about to get married, but seduced by Don Giovanni right in the beginning of the opera. While trying to rescue his daughter, Anna’s father was accidentally killed by her seducer. One can understand the mental state Anna is in: hurt, tortured, sense of guilt, total shock. We see her full of angst in most of the scenes she appears, hence as an actress, it is rather challenging to keep up that intensity right through the evening.
This is a very honest portrayal of the opera, with sincerity and huge effort on ensemble playing from all the singers and orchestral members. The combined energy from everybody will definitely send shivers down the spine to every member of the audience, keeping them spell bound for the two-and-a half hours.
BY JOYCE CHENG
Tickets from Sistic. | <urn:uuid:9410259d-50ac-42ec-a64c-7397e8c4f1f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.themuse.com.sg/2012/02/don-giovanni/ | 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 | 0.959397 | 594 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Work It Wednesday: 5 Lessons that Aren’t Just for the Gym
I published this in 2011 and thought it still had enough merit to share again, especially since it’s the time of year when it’s getting harder to find reasons to keep your resolutions. Stay strong and know that your fitness goals aren’t just leading you to a better body but to a better life!
One thing I’ve always loved about yoga, particularly when I’m going through a tough time, is that I can see parallels between my practice and the things I’m feeling in real life.
But if you think yoga’s too touchy-feely-stretchy-girly-tight-clothes-y for you, get excited because if you take a second to look past the sweat and achy muscles, great life lessons and parallels abound in whatever fitness activity you choose to participate in.
Whether you’re running, lifting, squatting, yoga-ing, swimming, or taking a kick-ass class, your body will inevitably run into many of the same obstacles that your brain will as you go through life. The big question, though, is whether or not you can take these bumps in stride and treat them as learning experiences, or if you let them trip you up and keep you down. For some of the lessons I’ve learned, read on after the jump — and definitely share your own experiences in the comments section! Are there any lessons YOU’VE learned from your fitness routine?Are Toe Rings Professional Attire? | <urn:uuid:96a95fc1-a634-4fe9-a1ef-d81f12fd7a89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emmietherwd.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947982 | 329 | 1.546875 | 2 |
7 simple ideas to ‘green up’ your wedding day, a real story from an Ann Arbor couple
Did you know that an Ann Arbor couple ‘greened’ up their wedding party and you simply could do it too?
It was in August 2010, the Ann Arbor couple (Engel and Dyer) were married in a “green” outdoor marriage ceremony and reception near the Huron River fit to pay homage to their shared passion of the planet and the outdoors.
The trend toward green weddings certainly isn’t new, but industry professionals say it has evolved to allow lovers to incorporate their particular personal preferences and still afford their special day.
Most people are curious about a green wedding and once they hear about what it really entails, they find themselves going a different route. Our heroes Engel and Dyer considered they wouldn’t be able to keep everything perfectly green, but were going to try their hardest. And the most essential element was to make the day educative as well as fun for guests.
They projected the marriage ceremony at a science and nature center where tours were offered to guests in the hour before they walked down the aisle. The tour featured different water and energy conservation methods used at the center like the solar-panel arrays for electricity, solar-powered heating and water heater systems and no-flush compost toilets.
The couple also focused on little details they said make a big difference.
- Dyer wore an heirloom – a vintage green dress that had been her great-grandmother’s in the 1930′s.
- Her ring was made with recycled gold and had a beryl stone instead of a diamond.
- Her makeup was certified organic.
- Guests were given local lavender buds – rather than sachets of rice – to throw in celebration.
- Tables were covered with local wildflowers and locally sourced foods.
- Leftovers and unused food were recycled (by sending to local farms) or reused.
- They found a generator which was solar powered and able to make enough power to run the lights and the audio system they needed for the rock band.
For all their efforts, they still made some choices they knew weren’t the most eco-friendly options. While they served Michigan white wine beverages and a Michigan sparkling cider, they couldn’t find a red from the state they liked. So they decided to have a burghundy from the U.S. for that option. And they could’ve gone with Internet invites rather than printing and mailing invitations, but Dyer said she felt paper invitations were important – on recycled paper, of course.
So you? What can You do to ‘green up’ your marriage day?
While green weddings are becoming more popular, planning and pulling off the event is not as easy as one might imagine.
Sorting through claims of environmentally friendliness when shopping in the current marketplace is a big enough obstacle for standard purchases, let alone for such an emotionally charged and personal event as a wedding.
The best way to reduce the impact of an event is to participate in a life cycle analysis on different elements of the ceremony. For instance, where is that food coming from, how much energy is expended to produce it, how does it get to your plate and where do the leftovers go?
While meat typically takes more energy to produce than fruits and vegetables, considering how far some fruits and veggies need to travel might give them a larger carbon footprint.
The best way to lower an event’s carbon footprint is to cut back on the number of guests invited. Fewer guests mean fewer meals, fewer needs for centerpieces and other decor and fewer miles traveled to reach the wedding.
About the writer – L. E. Thomason posts articles for the event planning degree blog, her personal hobby website focused on ideas to help people be able to organize a green event to spend less energy and reduce carbon footprints. | <urn:uuid:7b215e69-3218-454a-9705-1618e09c9d51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redlipsbride.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970025 | 810 | 1.71875 | 2 |
SAN JOSE, Calif. – On the eve of the release of Windows 8, a veteran PC executive claims the new operating system marks the beginning of the end for PCs and the OEMs who make them.
Still, Joshua Shapiro said he has a technique to enable mass customization of software loads on PCs he says could help revive the platform.
Windows 8 includes essentially two environments—the traditional Windows operating system that runs apps complied for the x86 and a new run-time environment formerly called Metro that interprets byte codes for either x86 or ARM processors. [Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]
Shapiro claims over time Microsoft will deemphasize traditional desktops and their compiled x86 apps in favor of iPad-like tablets like Microsoft Surface and their interpreted apps. The move parallels how Windows initially included then later discarded DOS.
“Everyone invested in [traditional PCs] is screwed,” said Shapiro, who spent 14 years at IBM before becoming a consultant and entrepreneur. “With Metro and Windows 8, Microsoft is essentially walking away from the PC and leaving it to die,” he said.
Companies who make PCs will see their already thin margins wither away over the next few years from a lack of investment in PC software, he argued. “You can already see the train wreck in HP and Dell—rather than defending the PC, they are running away from it,” he said.
“It’s my contention you need to stimulate PC software development, but the only group doing that today is the computer gamers—they have the only software that comes close to stressing a PC,” said Shapiro. “Nobody wants to develop for the PC anymore because there is no money in it, and VCs won’t support PC software startups because they only support apps now,” he said.PC salvage?
Shapiro believes his company, Imbue, could help revive the PC software industry. Imbue has a patented method for quickly loading software on PCs that he claimed enables OEMs to offer custom software images to consumers. | <urn:uuid:e34a5cb2-14db-49ce-827e-f2d9487a654c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4398922/Entrepreneur-says-Win-8-marks-death-of-PCs?Ecosystem=medical-design | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946467 | 449 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Does America Need Michelle Obama to Save Fashion?
With consumer spending slumping, today’s New York Times hails Michelle Obama as just the stimulus package that Seventh Avenue needs.
American fashion, said Steven Kolb, the executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, like the American automobile and banking industries, is “at a crossroads” in dire need of some kind of boost. Reviving a faltering homegrown industry may seem like a lot to expect of one woman, however highly placed. Yet, whether or not she likes it—or has any particular interest in fashion at all—the first lady has traditionally been expected to use her position to help promote American goods.Really? Modern-day First Ladies have typically had much meatier agendas than that. Laura Bush has raised awareness for causes including education and human rights. Hillary Clinton was into health care, and Barbara Bush promoted issues such as homelessness and AIDS. Why do we always reduce the Ivy League–educated Obama down to the clothes she wears? It’s great that Obama is a style icon, but if American fashion needs a boost, perhaps we should hope that platform shoes are the next “It” item. Let’s let the First Lady in waiting focus on causes that really shape the fabric of our country. | <urn:uuid:4034d8c0-585b-4f59-a5ad-c82967fbacb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/01/does-america-need-michelle-obama-to-save-fashion.print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971233 | 268 | 1.835938 | 2 |
As 2012 winds down, dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster has come out with its list of the top ten words of the year.
This annual list is based on the number of searches for words on their website.
The words "socialism" and "capitalism" shared the top spot.
Editors speculate this is likely because of debates around the presidential election.
They said "socialism" had the most searches during the media coverage of healthcare legislation.
"Capitalism" also had a spike in searches, usually in relation to a search for "socialism."
The full list is:
1. socialism, capitalism | <urn:uuid:df3df70f-368d-4da2-bd1d-497408a6959a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmtw.com/news/maine/Merriam-Webster-names-Top-10-Words-of-2012/-/8792012/17689788/-/item/0/-/11b0jch/-/index.html | 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 | 0.960391 | 131 | 1.710938 | 2 |
14 years & up. This ball is unlike any other! You must first put it together, and then take it apart and design something else! The inspiration for the Y-Ball® is the skeletal truncated icosahedron, an orb-like geometric figure long admired for its beauty, more commonly referred to as a soccer ball. Here are a few popular ways to use it: Use it in a creativity workshop, Use it as a meditation aid to free your mind or just PLAY with it! | <urn:uuid:01c4aa71-2414-4fe1-8183-9686d73a8b09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kaplantoys.com/store/trans/productDetailForm.asp?CatID=4%7CKTBL04%7C3&Page=1&Max=3&Seq=34%2E95&PID=00308 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946472 | 101 | 1.5 | 2 |
webOS: The “Other” Smartphone Operating System
Frequent readers of this site know that I’m quite passionate about webOS, the operating system that drives the Palm Pre and Pixi. For many businesses developing smartphone apps, webOS is commonly at the bottom of the list. This is largely due to Palm’s market share in the world of smartphones. Companies ordinarily target the device OS with the largest market share. This is why most apps are developed for the iPhone and Android phones first. But it’s worse than that.
Many companies are waiting to see just what HP is going to do with Palm’s critically acclaimed, yet not-so-popular webOS. Users like me are left wanting more, while the Android and iPhone markets continue to grow.
This past summer I gave 10 tips on shopping for a smartphone. I think if more people really took the time to do the research, they’d find that the “obvious” choice is not always the ideal one. That’s not to say that webOS devices are for everyone – I wholeheartedly agree that the iPhone, Android and Blackberry have their place in the market for good reasons. However, the sheer number of complaints people post about their devices every day speaks volumes about the need to know what you’re buying before you sign a long-term contract.
At the same time, companies need to realize that there are users of each OS that are both loyal and passionate about their devices, and they, too, are seeking all-important services and apps. This is why Palm launched the PDK, which allows iPhone app developers to easily port their software to work on webOS.
Which brings me to the most common reason app developers and companies aren’t focusing on webOS at all. Despite many announcements concerning the future of webOS, Palm’s the underdog. Many developers (like Evernote) would rather wait and see if the platform gains momentum. The problem is, waiting could be opening the door for competitors to jump in and convert users on-the-fly.
It’s already happening – many independent developers are using service APIs to fill the void. The Foursquare webOS app was developed by @zhephree. While he had Foursquare’s support, the fact that a groundbreaking service which relies entirely on mobile needed to rely on an outsider to reach millions of additional users says something. Even Square co-founder Tristan O’Tierney said that company was playing wait and see with webOS.
For developers and service providers sitting on the sidelines, unwilling to take common business risks, while waiting to see if they can benefit, I have two letters: H…P…
That’s right, one of the biggest names in tech – Hewlett-Packard – has already announced it’s going full steam ahead with webOS. If that’s not enough reason for companies to get in on the ground floor in order to reap big-time benefits later, I don’t know what is. | <urn:uuid:f1a5014d-2f1c-4778-a587-e0192ce07d01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pamelahazelton.com/technology/webos-the-other-smartphone-operating-system/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955031 | 643 | 1.570313 | 2 |
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.-
From February 16 through June 2, 2013, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
presents Lebbeus Woods, Architect, bringing together 175 works from the past 35 years by one of the most influential architects working in the field. Recognized beyond architecture, Lebbeus Woods (19402012) has been hailed by leading designers, filmmakers, writers, and artists alike as a significant voice in recent decades. His works resonate across many disciplines for their conceptual potency, imaginative breadth, jarring poetry, and ethical depth. The exhibition features drawings and models from SFMOMA's collection, along with key loans from other major design collections.
Woods worked cyclically, returning often to themes of architecture's ability to transform, resist, and free the collective and the individual. As an architect whose work lies almost solely in the realm of the imagined, proposed, and the unbuilt, his contributions to the field opened up new avenues for exploring, charting, and inscribing space. Lebbeus Woods, Architect provides a thematic, rather than chronological, framework for understanding the experimental and timeless nature of Woods's work. The exhibition is organized by SFMOMA Acting Department Head/Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher and Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design Joseph Becker
"As the museum embarks on its own physical transformation, the exhibition marks an opportunity to consider the meaning and implication of such a shift," says Dunlop Fletcher. "There could not be a more fitting body of work to present at this moment."
As a collector of Woods's work since the mid-1990s, SFMOMA has assembled the most in-depth institutional collection of his work to date. These works have become the crux of the museum's architecture and design collection, which is revered for its holdings of experimental, conceptual, and visionary designs. In addition to a selection of SFMOMA's works, Lebbeus Woods, Architect will include national and international loans from the Getty Research Institute; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and MAK Vienna, along with private collections.
Acknowledging the parallels between society's physical and psychological constructions, Woods created a career-long narrative of how these constructions transform our being. Working mostly, but not exclusively, with pencil on paper, Woods created an oeuvre of complex worldsat times abstract and at times explicitthat present shifts, cycles, and repetitions within the built environment. His timeless architecture is not in a particular style or in response to a singular moment in the field; rather, it offers an opportunity to consider how built forms can enhance or hinder individual thought and how a single individual can contribute to the development and mutation of the built world.
In 2011, Woods wrote: "In my work, architecture is meant to embody an ideal of thought and action, informed by comprehensive knowledge of the physical world." The exhibition will explore Woods's evolutionary thinking through the recurring themes in his projects, including the political, ethical, social, and spatial implications of built forms. Many of Woods's projects addressed cities damaged by war, such as Zagreb and Sarajevo, or damaged by nature, as in the San Francisco earthquake drawings. Additional works considered political divisions of space, like in Havana, Berlin, or Jerusalem. Woods also explored alternative architectures, which could complement and provoke existing tropes, as seen in Nine Reconstructed Boxes (1999) and High Houses (1996), both in SFMOMA's collection. And possibly further afield, Woods suggested entirely new approaches to organizing space, as seen in his Centricity (198788) and Conflict Space (2006) series.
"Perhaps unparalleled in his influence within the architecture discourse, the work of Lebbeus Woods holds a timeless significance that transcends the physical and verges on an architecture of intellect," says Becker. "His legacy will continue to challenge the traditional notion of architecture and provoke the exploration of the vast potentials of the built environment."
Born in Lansing, Michigan, Woods studied at the Purdue University School of Engineering (195860) and the University of Illinois School of Architecture (196064). He worked for Eero Saarinen and Associates, and Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates (196468) before moving into private practice. Woods concentrated on theory and experimental projects since 1976, exhibited, lectured, and published his projects worldwide, and wrote numerous articles of criticism about architectural practice and theory. Woods was a professor of architecture at Cooper Union, where taught until his death in 2012. His works are held in the collections of major museums internationally, including MoMA, the Whitney, MAK Vienna, and the Getty Research Institute. | <urn:uuid:027b142a-e14c-498f-8d13-612e57e2025b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=60776&int_modo=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955922 | 966 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Friday afternoon, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Congressman, Richard Hanna were in Utica to discuss why they're using Administration to fund the Weatherization Assistance Program and The State Energy Program.
The program helps families reduce their energy bills and makes homes more energy efficient.
"Over the last few years, we've seen devastating cuts to this program, and it basically means less families get the help they need, and a lot of families with children are going cold at night and that's not good enough," said Sen. Gillibrand. "We want to make sure the President keeps this as a priority."
"It's an efficient and effective way to put money into somebody's home that matters. It allows them to free up dollars to do other things," said Rep. Hanna.
Sen. Gillibrand says the average weatherization will save about $400. | <urn:uuid:681c9e7f-d9ea-42d1-9567-00d7fbc20cfe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cnyhomepage.com/fulltext-sports?nxd_id=171782 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966059 | 177 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Workers' Compensation Benefits
You may be entitled to workers’ compensation benefits if you are injured or become ill because of your job. Workers’ compensation covers most work-related physical or mental injuries and illness. An injury or illness can be caused by one event (such as hurting your back in a fall); by repeated exposures (such as hurting your wrist from doing the same motion over and over) or injury or illness developed gradually (like tendinitis or hearing loss). If your employer does not learn about your injury within 30 days, you could lose your right to receive workers’ compensation benefits.
Any injury arising from your voluntary participation in any off-duty, recreational, social or athletic activity that is not part of your work-related duties is not compensable under the Workers’ Compensation Program.
If You Get Hurt
Get Medical Care
If you need first aid, contact your supervisor. If emergency care is needed, call 911 for immediate help or go to an emergency room right away. Tell the medical staff that your injury or illness is job-related.
Your employer will advise you where to go for medical treatment. If you pre-designated a personal physician before injury (refer to Pre-Designated Physician section below) you may see him or her for treatment in certain circumstances. Otherwise, your employer has the right to select the physician who will treat you for the first 30 days. You may be able to switch to a doctor of your choice after 30 days.
Report Your Injury to Your Employer
Immediately notify your supervisor or the Workers’ Compensation Coordinator (WCC) at (209) 664-6921 so you can get medical help right away. Don’t delay. There are time limits. Your employer is required to provide you a claim form within one working day after learning about your injury. Within one working day after an employee files a claim form, the employer shall authorize the provision of all treatment, consistent with the applicable treating guidelines, for the alleged injury and shall continue to provide treatment until the date that liability for the claim is accepted or rejected.
If you pre-designated a personal physician, you may see that physician right after you are injured. A Pre-Designated Physician must be your personal physician or chiropractor who has regularly treated you and has your medical records on file and the physician agrees to be pre-designated. To pre-designate, completed the Pre-Designated of Personal Physician Form or the Pre-Designated of Personal Chiropractor or Acupuncturist Form and return to the Workers’ Compensation Coordinator (WCC), MSR340.
Information and Assistance: Refer to Guide Book for Injured Workers for additional information.
False Claims and False Denials
Any person who makes or causes to be made any knowingly false or fraudulent material statement or material representation for the purpose of obtaining or denying workers’ compensation benefits or payments is guilty of a felony and may be fined and imprisoned. | <urn:uuid:35e840c7-4fd4-4992-b5f9-afbd7fbe5dd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csustan.edu/hr/Employee_Benefits/WorkersCompensation/InjuryCausedByWork.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94724 | 613 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Why Susan Rice Should not be US ambassador to UN
Hello, Dearest Friends in America and all over the world,
I am starting a campaign here against the nomination of Ms. Susan Rice as the US ambassador to the United Nations.
For those of you who are not familiar with Nigeria's history, I will try to do a short story on how Ms Rice helped to thwart the democratic process in Nigeria and her role in the assasination of the Nigeria's president elect in 1998.
On June 12, 1993, Nigeria conducted the most freest, fairest and credible election since its independence from Britain in 1960. The election was annuled by the military regime and the winner of the election, Mr Moshood Kashimawo Abiola was thrown in jail.
There were lots of protests against the annulment in Nigeria and many Nigerian students lost their lives in the process. I lost a journalist colleague, whom we were both working for the same newspaper: The News in 1996. He was killed by the soldier while performing his duty as a journalist.
Susan Rice involvement:
Mr Abiola, Nigeria's President elect was to meet with American delegates led byThomas Pinkerin and Susan Rice in prison on July 7, 1998. Ironically, this was also the day he was due to be released from imprisonment.
After beign served a cup of tea by Ms Susan Rice, Abiola died of heart attack and this is not a coincident. Every Nigerians now knows the involvement of President Clinton with the Chagoury and Chagoury family, the corrupt Lebanese businessmen who control Nigeria's economy during the millitary rule.
I have attached the copy of New York Times Story which was forwarded to me by Omoyele Sowore, one of Nigeria's tireless anti-curruption fighter detailing Clintons link with the despotic millitary regime in Nigeria in 1990s.
What we can do. Please forward this to all your American friends and they will in turn petition their representatives and senators.
We do not need Susan Rice in the UN!
March 28, 1998
CLINTON IN AFRICA: THE POLICY; U.S. Stance Toward Nigeria And Its Ruler Seems to Shift
By R. W. APPLE JR.
President Clinton appeared today to signal a change in American policy toward Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.
Mr. Clinton, asked during a news conference here about his Administration's stance toward Nigeria's military ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha, said that ''if he stands for election, we hope he will stand as a civilian.'' He said he had sought advice on the matter from President Nelson Mandela of South Africa.
Previously, senior American officials said the United States would find it unacceptable if General Abacha ran as a civilian candidate in elections scheduled for August. Although Nigeria, along with its neighbors Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, supplies almost a quarter of United States petroleum imports, Mr. Clinton did not visit it on this trip as a sign of disapproval of the regime.
Asked about the remarks today, American officials said Mr. Clinton meant that if General Abacha released political prisoners, showed respect for human rights and supported a genuine transition to civil government, then the United States would not object to the general's candidacy.
Samuel R. Berger, the President's national security adviser, said this evening that what really mattered in Nigeria was ''whether there is truly an election that is free and fair.'' As things seem to be going, he added, it would be ''very difficult'' for the United states to accept the outcome of the election no matter who runs.
''The President spoke loosely, but there is no policy change,'' another White House official declared, speaking on condition of anonymity.
General Abacha seized power in 1993 after the military annulled the results of presidential elections. Many political prisoners, including the presumed winner of the 1993 races, remain in jail, although General Abacha has promised a return to democracy.
Nigerian Opposition Surprised
LAGOS, Nigeria, March 27 (Agence France-Presse) -- Nigeria's opposition coalition expressed surprise today over Mr. Clinton's statement.
''There is no justifiable cause for Washington to change its earlier position,'' said Senator Abraham Adesanya, the national president of the National Democratic Coalition.
''Abacha handing over to himself -- either as a military man or as a civilian -- is not acceptable to Nigerians,'' Mr. Adesanya said. ''It is immoral.''
December 19, 2008
In Clinton List, a Veil Is Lifted on Foundation
By PETER BAKER and CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton has collected tens of millions of dollars for his foundation over the last 10 years from governments in the Middle East, tycoons from Canada, India, Nigeria and Ukraine, and other international figures with interests in American foreign policy.
Lifting a longstanding cloak of secrecy, Mr. Clinton on Thursday released a complete list of more than 200,000 donors to his foundation as part of an agreement to douse concerns about potential conflicts if Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state in the Obama administration.
The donor list offers a glimpse into the high-powered, big-dollar world in which Mr. Clinton has traveled since leaving the White House as he jetted around the globe making money for himself and raising vast sums for his ambitious philanthropic programs fighting disease, poverty and climate change. Some of the world's richest people and most famous celebrities handed over large checks to finance his presidential library and charitable activities.
With his wife now poised to take over as America's top diplomat, Mr. Clinton's fund-raising is coming under new scrutiny for relationships that could pose potential conflict-of-interest issues for Mrs. Clinton in her job. Some of her husband's biggest backers have much at stake in the policies that President-elect Barack Obama's incoming administration adopts toward their regions or business ventures.
Saudi Arabia alone gave to the foundation $10 million to $25 million, as did government aid agencies in Australia and the Dominican Republic. Brunei, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar and Taiwan each gave more than $1 million. So did the ruling family of Abu Dhabi and the Dubai Foundation, both based in the United Arab Emirates, and the Friends of Saudi Arabia, founded by a Saudi prince.
Also among the largest donors were a businessman who was close to the onetime military ruler of Nigeria, a Ukrainian tycoon who was son-in-law of that former Soviet republic's authoritarian president and a Canadian mining executive who took Mr. Clinton to Kazakhstan while trying to win lucrative uranium contracts.
In addition, the foundation accepted sizable contributions from several prominent figures from India, like a billionaire steel magnate and a politician who lobbied Mrs. Clinton this year on behalf of a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement between India and the United States, a deal that has rankled Pakistan, a key foreign policy focus of the incoming administration.
Such contributions could provoke suspicion at home and abroad among those wondering about any effect on administration policy.
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said donations from "countries where we have particularly sensitive issues and relations" would invariably raise concerns about whether Mrs. Clinton had conflicts of interest.
"The real question," Mr. Levitt said, "is to what extent you can really separate the activities and influence of any husband and wife, and certainly a husband and wife team that is such a powerhouse."
Mr. Clinton's office said in a statement that the disclosure itself should ensure that there would be "not even the appearance of a conflict of interest."
Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for Mr. Obama, said the president-elect had chosen Mrs. Clinton for his cabinet because "no one could better represent the United States."
"Past donations to the Clinton foundation," Ms. Cutter said, "have no connection to Senator Clinton's prospective tenure as secretary of state."
Republicans have addressed the issue cautiously, suggesting that they would examine it but not necessarily hold up Mrs. Clinton's confirmation as a result. Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, which will consider her nomination, was in Russia on Thursday and unavailable for comment, according to Mr. Lugar's office.
But in an interview on Nov. 30 on "This Week" on ABC, Mr. Lugar said Mr. Clinton's activities would raise legitimate questions, adding, "I don't know how, given all of our ethics standards now, anyone quite measures up to this who has such cosmic ties."
Still, he indicated that he would vote for Mrs. Clinton and praised Mr. Obama's team for doing "a good job in trying to pin down the most important elements" in its agreement with Mr. Clinton.
To avoid potential conflicts, the Obama team, represented by its transition co-chairwoman, Valerie Jarrett, signed a memorandum of understanding on Dec. 12 with the William J. Clinton Foundation, represented by its chief executive, Bruce R. Lindsey. The five-page memorandum, provided to reporters on Thursday, required Mr. Clinton to disclose his past donors by the end of the year and any future contributors once a year.
The memorandum also requires that if Mrs. Clinton is confirmed, the Clinton Global Initiative, an offshoot of the foundation, will be incorporated separately, will no longer hold events outside the United States and will refuse any further contributions from foreign governments. Other initiatives operating under the auspices of the foundation would follow new rules and consult with State Department ethics officials in certain circumstances.
Federal law does not require former presidents to reveal foundation donors, and Mr. Clinton had until now declined to do so, arguing that many who gave expected confidentiality. Other former presidents have taken money from overseas sources, including President George Bush, whose son has sat in the Oval Office for the last eight years. The elder Mr. Bush has accepted millions of dollars from Saudi, Kuwaiti and other foreign sources for his own library.
Mr. Clinton's foundation has raised $500 million since 1997, growing into a global operation with 1,100 paid staff members and volunteers in 40 countries. It said it had provided medicine to 1.4 million people living with H.I.V./AIDS, helped dozens of cities reduce heat-trapping gases and worked to spread economic opportunity.
Mr. Clinton's advocates said that the disclosure on Thursday showed he had nothing to hide and that most of his largest contributors were already known.
Yet while unprecedented, the disclosure was also limited.
The list posted on the foundation's Web site — www.clintonfoundation.org — did not provide the nationality or occupation of the donors, the dates they contributed or the precise amounts of their gifts, instead breaking down contributors by dollar ranges. Nor did the list include pledges for future donations. As a result, it is impossible to know from the list which donations were made while Mr. Clinton was still president or while Mrs. Clinton was running for president.
Many benefactors are well-known Americans, like Stephen L. Bing; Alfonso Fanjul; Bill Gates; Tom Golisano, a billionaire who ran for New York governor; Rupert Murdoch; and Barbra Streisand. Bloomberg L.P., the financial media empire founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, contributed, as did Freddie Mac, the mortgage company now partly blamed for the housing market collapse.
Another potentially sensitive donation came from Blackwater Training Center, part of the private security firm hired to protect American diplomats in Iraq. Five of its guards have been indicted for their roles in a 2007 shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
The potential for appearances of conflict was illustrated by Amar Singh, a politician in India who gave $1 million to $5 million. Mr. Singh visited the United States in September to lobby for a deal allowing India to obtain civilian nuclear technology even though it never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. He met with Mrs. Clinton, who he said assured him that Democrats would not block the deal. Congress approved it weeks later.
Other donors have connections with India, a potential flashpoint because of tensions with Pakistan. Among them was Lakshmi Mittal, a steel magnate and, according to Forbes magazine, the fourth-richest person in the world. Mr. Mittal, who donated $1 million to $5 million, was involved in a scandal in 2002 in London, where he lives. After Mr. Mittal made a large donation to the Labor Party, Prime Minister Tony Blair helped him persuade Romania to sell him its state steel company.
Another donor [of between USD 1 and 5 million, see below] was Gilbert Chagoury, a businessman close to Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria, widely criticized for a brutal and corrupt rule.
Mr. Chagoury tried during the 1990s to win favor for Mr. Abacha from the Clinton administration, contributing $460,000 to a voter registration group to which Democratic officials steered him, according to news accounts. He won meetings with National Security Council officials, including Susan E. Rice, who is now Mr. Obama's choice to be ambassador to the United Nations.
Kitty Bennett, Don Van Natta Jr. and Margot Williams contributed reporting.
Clinton Foundation Donors: Search
Former President Bill Clinton released a list of thousands of donors to his charity, the William J. Clinton Foundation. The list is partial and will be updated as new data becomes available.
Donations larger than $25,000,000
-- The Children's Investment Fund Foundation
Donations from $10,000,001 to $25,000,000
-- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
-- Stephen L. Bing
-- COPRESIDA-Secretariado Tecnico
-- Fred Eychaner
-- Frank Giustra, Chief Executive Officer, The Radcliffe Foundation
-- Tom Golisano
-- The Hunter Foundation
-- Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
-- The ELMA Foundation
-- Theodore W. Waitt
Donations from $5,000,001 to $10,000,000
-- Government of Norway
-- Nationale Postcode Loterij
-- Haim Saban and The Saban Family Foundation
-- Michael Schumacher
-- The Wasserman Foundation
Donations from $1,000,001 to $5,000,000
-- S. D. Abraham
-- Absolute Return for Kids (ARK)
-- Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi
-- Alltel Corporation
-- Nasser Al-Rashid
-- Smith and Elizabeth Bagley
-- The Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation
-- Richard Caring
-- Gilbert R. Chagoury
-- Citi Foundation
-- Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative - Canada
-- Victor P. Dahdaleh & The Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Charitable Foundation | <urn:uuid:66d9b08f-077f-4b83-8f1f-92a6731e2f3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://saharareporters.com/petition/why-susan-rice-should-not-be-us-ambassador-un | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959201 | 3,070 | 1.710938 | 2 |
I recently came across a response to my October post on the Euthyphro Dilemma, which I thought it worth responding to. The response, written by philosopher Brian Zamulinski, was itself written in October, but I missed it until just a few days ago. In it Zamulinski says that my arguments defending the strength of the Euthyphro objection to the divine command theory are unsuccessful:
To repeat, Adam’s reformulated divine command theory is that morality is constituted by the commands of an essentially loving God. Now, if E (for “entity”) essentially possesses P (for “property”), then E possesses P in all possible worlds in which E exists. So, by hypothesis, God is loving in every world in which He exists. God is not just contingently loving, that is, loving in at least one possible world in which He exists
On the basis of an analogy, Thibodeau claims that “we may know with certainty that an all-loving being will not issue a command to torture children, but, given that he is omnipotent, it remains the case that he can issue such a command.” The analogy is to someone who will not but who could jump from the Empire State Building. The analogy is irrelevant because the possible jumper is only a contingent jumper. For the parallel to hold, it must be possible for an essentially non-jumping person to jump. Thus, Thibodeau equivocates between an essentially loving being and a contingently loving being. Thibodeau has a second objection that also fails: it begs the question in that it presupposes that a non-loving being can create morality.
In my original post, I gave two arguments for the conclusion that the Euthyphro Dilemma defeats to the divine command theory (DCT) because it shows that the DCT implies that morality is arbitrary and contingent. My first argument was supposed to show that even an all-loving being is able to make cruel commands, and thus that the DCT implies that it is metaphysically possible that a cruel act such as torturing a child is morally obligatory. The second says, essentially, that even if we thought that an all-loving being cannot command torture, this does not help the DCT since it is possible that there exists a divine commander who enjoys (and commands) cruelty for its own sake. If it is possible that such a being (whom I called Asura) exists, then it is possible that torturing children is morally obligatory. Zamulinski says that both of these arguments fail; the first because I have misunderstood or misinterpreted Adams version of the divine command theory, the second because I have begged the question. In this post I will respond to the second of Zamulinski’s criticisms and I will follow up with a later post that will address his first criticism.
For now what I am particularly interested in is the following statement:
Thibodeau has a second objection that also fails: it begs the question in that it presupposes that a non-loving being can create morality.
This claim strikes me as incredibly odd. Why, if Adams is permitted to assume that an all-loving being can create morality, am I not permitted to assume that a non-loving being can do the same thing? Now, it is true that I actually don’t believe that a non-loving being can create morality, I am assuming it only for the sake of creating a reductio of the divine command theory. But I cannot see that there is any problem with this assumption.
Adams version of the divine command theory assumes something that I believe is false: that an all-loving being can create morality. I believe this is false because I believe that no person, loving or otherwise, could have control over moral facts (that is, have the capacity to change moral facts or to bring them into existence). But I am not and was not trying to make this point. My point was only to draw out the absurd consequences of the divine command theory. My tack was to say that if we are permitted to assume that an all-loving being can create morality, then surely we are permitted to assume that a non-loving being can create morality. Zamulinski has not shown that this is an unreasonable argumentative move.
If we knew how God is able to create morality, then maybe we would be in a position to say that a non-loving being cannot do it (or at least that we are not warranted in supposing that he can). Maybe being all-loving endows God with some special capabilities that a non-all-loving being would not have. But has Adams actually shown how God creates morality? Well, the divine command theory says that God does it by issuing commands. But a non-loving omnipotent being can certainly issue commands. Then is there some reason to believe that the commands of a non-loving being would be ineffective, that they wouldn’t actually create morality even though God’s commands can? If this is what Adams or Zamulinski or anyone else believes, then we need an argument for it. We need to know why it is that being all-loving endows God with the capacity to create morality; we need to know how it works. There is no such argument that I am aware of. As it stands, given that Asura (the evil Creator from my example) is at least as powerful as God, it is reasonable to think that if there is something that God can do, then Asura can do it as well.
The structure of my argument, to which Zamulinski objects, is as follows:
(1) If God can create morality, then so can Asura.
(2) There is some possible world in which Asura commands the torture of children
Thus, (3) In that world, the torture of children is morally obligatory.
Thus, (4) There is some world in which the torture of children is morally obligatory.
Therefore, (5) It is metaphysically possible that the torture of children is morally obligatory.
I cannot see how premise (1) begs the question. The question is not, “Can a non-loving deity create morality?” but “Does the divine command theory have the consequence that morality is arbitrary and contingent?” Remember, Adams modification of the divine command theory was motivated by a need for a reply to the Euthyphro Dilemma, not because it is somehow difficult to believe that a being who is not all loving can create moral properties.
Again, my working assumption is that if there is some feat that God (assuming he exists) can accomplish, then, absent any obvious reason to think otherwise, we are justified in believing that any being that is omnipotent will be able to accomplish the same task. It is worth pointing out, however, that Adams’ God is limited in the things that he can do. According to Zamulinski, God cannot command the torture of children, for example. Thus, a being who is not essentially limited, in the way that Zamulinski, Adams, and Matthew Flannagan all agree that God is, can do more than God can do.
With this in mind, I will now reformulate my argument to explicitly refer to a being who is essentially unlimited rather than to the non-loving being Asura:
Conisder the supernatural being who we’ll call Yod: Yod is the omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving creator. In fact the only way in which Yod differs from God is that Yod is not essentially all-loving. There are worlds in which Yod is all-loving, but there are also worlds in which he is not. Yod is not essentially all-loving because he is omnipotent. Being omnipotent, it is possible for him to do anything, including issue cruel commands, such as that children be tortured. Issuing such a command may entail changing his character traits, but being omnipotent means being unlimited, which in turn entails not being limited by one’s own character traits. Since Yod is omnipotent, he can change his own character. Thus there is no problem in supposing that Yod, even though he is actually all-loving (and thus has not actually commanded the torture of children), can command the torture of children. Since Yod can command torture, there is some possible world in which he does command torture and thus, if the divine command theory is true, there is some possible world in which torturing children is morally obligatory.
Notice that this version of the argument does not assume that a non-loving being can create morality, it assumes that an all-loving being who is not essentially loving can create morality. This is not so far from Adams’ presupposition that an essentially loving being can create morality. And until we have some argument that shows why only an essentially loving being can create morality, if Adams’ presupposition is allowable, mine must be as well.
Notice also that I have claimed that Yod’s being omnipotent requires that he not be essentially loving. This observation, which is the basis of my claim that an omnipotent being is able to command torture, will be expanded and defended in my next post. | <urn:uuid:3458833a-9145-4160-a04f-0a8157d52ba3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://notnotaphilosopher.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/euthyphro-and-omnipotence-part-1/?like=1&_wpnonce=4beaf334a2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968547 | 1,922 | 1.59375 | 2 |
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio - Teenagers in Cleveland Heights are facing a strict curfew following a string of fights at a street fair last weekend. Between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., anyone under 18 years old must be supervised by an adult in the Coventry and Cedar-Lee neighborhood.
City Council enacted an emergency law Wednesday night, effective immediately.
The dramatic new curfew rule follows a rash of fights that broke out last weekend during a street festival on Coventry Road. Witnesses described a chaotic flash mob involving hundreds of kids that disrupted business, stopped traffic and kept police busy. Council members said families were intimidated and businesses were forced to close early for safety reasons.
Reaction on the street is polarized. NewChannel5’s Dan Haggerty has talked to many people with strong opinions who do not want to be identified. Teens tell Dan the 6 p.m. curfew is extreme, especially during daylight hours. They say it’s not fair that everyone is being punished because of the actions of some people.
One business owner said he’s worried about losing clients because of the curfew.
A city worker who asked to remain anonymous said the fighting was crazy and has scared people away from the Coventry area. He warned that something should be done to stop unruly teens from taking over the streets.
Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Latest News Headlines
A new study has determined for the first time just how quickly frogs and other amphibians are disappearing around the United States. | <urn:uuid:cb386afd-721e-4511-bfd9-ad20bd6f8c99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/cleveland_metro/cleveland-heights-issues-new-curfew-warning-teens-to-stay-out-of-coventry-area-after-6pm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964517 | 336 | 1.585938 | 2 |
of the Manzil Co-operative Society Ltd board of directors
Isa Jerome Chambers.
Photo: Lester Forde
Imagine being able to buy your own home without the burden
of paying interest rates or a mortgage loan.
Interest-free home and property ownership is exactly what
T&Ts newest co-operative, Manzil Co-operative Society
Ltd, seeks to offer its members.
The Manzil home acquisition plan is based on a declining balance
approach which places the buyer and the co-operative as co-owners
on the property. Under the terms of the programme, the buyer
does not repay an interest-bearing loan.
President of the fledgling co-operative, Isa Jerome Chambers,
said the organisation is based on the tenets of Sharia, or
Islamic religious law derived from the Quran.
idea for Manzil came out of a need for the provision of Sharia-compliant
financing in the area of property development, said
Chambers on Thursday during an interview at the co-operatives
Santa Maria Plaza, Mucurapo Road, St James, office.
He also stressed that Manzil, registered as a co-operative
in December 2005, is not a fly-by-night concept,
or a front for any radical Muslim group.
So worried was he about the latter, Charles, a Muslim of African
descent, revealed that he was hesitant about accepting the
post of president.
is firstly an Islamic financial institution, Chambers
What this means is charging interest, or riba, is not permitted.
Chambers said Manzil is an alternative for Muslims interested
in property and land development, but without the obstacle
The Quran, he explained, states that engaging in usurythe
collection or payment of interestis prohibited.
the Quran says stay away from riba, do not deal in it,
nor take, nor give; the choice is clear, he said.
Chambers said this is the biggest difference between Manzil
and other co-operatives.
But if the co-operative will not charge interest, how is the
company to make money?
According to Chambers, Manzils profit lies in trade.
now, we are concentrating on buy-and-sell transactions, as
opposed to going through the financing process, he said.
Chambers explained that unlike other banks, which loan a prospective
buyer money, in Islamic mortgage transactions, the institution
purchases the property.
The financial institution then re-sells the property to the
buyer at a profit, while allowing the purchaser to pay in
During the stipulated payment period, both parties will be
co-owners with the buyer having the option to purchase the
co-operatives share in the property.
Because this type of commerce is based on Islamic laws, there
are no penalties to the buyer for late payments.
Chambers also said if a member encounters problems in making
payments repossession is not automatic.
a person is unable to afford to pay, the majority share holder
can sell the property at market value, explained Chambers,
who has worked out of the office of the Commissioner of Co-operatives
for the past 15 years.
And even then, said Manzils treasurer Wayne Herbert,
the co-operative can only recover what it is owed and the
member is refunded their initial investment.
But repossession, said Chambers, is extreme, because in most
cases, allowances would be made for persons in financial difficulty.
all these agreements, we are relying on the person to behave
like a good Muslim, said Chambers.
Which brings us to another major issue.
Membership in Manzil is only available to Muslimsof
whole entity is really there for the welfare of the Muslim
community, to provide one of the basic requirements for man
and that is a home, said Chambers.
As part of their commitment Manzil has a Sharia board, consisting
of Islamic scholars, including Mufti Waseem Khan and Sheik
Yusuf Talal De Lorenzo (member of the Canadian Islamic Bank
and Dow Jones Company Sharia board).
Sharia board is a requirement for Islamic financial institutions,
said Chambers. The management has a commitment to pay
attention to what the Sharia board has to say.
The board ensures all investments comply with Islamic law.
Islamic financial organisations are forbidden to invest in
businesses engaged in the production, or trade, of alcohol,
pork, gambling and un-Islamic media, like pornography.
must ensure that everything complies (with Sharia) because
it is easy to slip into interest in a capitalist society,
The September 2, launch of Manzil at Rasam Restaurant, City
of Grand Bazaar, Valsayn, signalled the co-operatives
readiness to enter the real estate business.
Although the membership now stands at 65, Chambers said because
of the unique service Manzil offers this number is expected
to grow at a rapid rate.
development is one of our long-term projects. We are not trying
to make gated Muslim communities, but we are creating homes
for the general public, said Herbert.
Bheemal Ramroop, Commissioner of Co-operatives at the Ministry
of Labour, who attended the launch, wished Manzils new
board success, but issued a note of caution.
constantly vigilant. Weve had organisations with intentions
of getting into housing, but they have not delivered based
on the expectations of members, he said. We have
societies getting into this area without doing research and
in their enthusiasm to get ahead sought to purchase property
without realising they could not get the proper approvals
and now the land is of no use to members, Ramroop added.
In challenging the board of directors to ensure accountability
and transparency in all its dealings, Ramroop said Manzils
venture was a much needed service, particularly with the escalating
cost of housing and real estate.
Kwesi Atiba, of the Islamic Resource Society, also offered
the fledgling co-operative words of encouragement and commended
the board for taking up the challenge to provide affordable
housing in T&T.
Also addressing the gathering was Yacoob Ali, president general
of the Anjumaan Sunaat Ul Jamaat Association.
and deprivation affects the mass of Muslim people in the Diaspora,
organisations like these help look after our brothers and
show we are a people who care . he said. | <urn:uuid:6e46123a-06a9-4d32-b115-042e2d17205b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://legacy.guardian.co.tt/archives/2006-09-18/business3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940304 | 1,367 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Herald Outdoors Columnist
Hunting has changed a lot over the past few decades. It isn’t like it was even as recently as, say, 20 years ago. Heaven knows it’s a far cry from the glorious sporting days of the thirties and forties, times when many folks in these parts hunted not only for sport but often for supplemental sustenance as well.
When hunting seasons begin opening in the early fall, I often think on this. I ponder the changes, those that have occurred during my own lifetime and the lifetimes of my sporting ancestors.
Many of these changes have been negative. Gone are the days, for instance, when much of the land was freely accessible to practically anyone who wished to shoulder a rifle or shotgun and venture afield in search of game. Many woods and fields trod by our hunting forebears no longer even exist, replaced now by industry, local commerce and sprawling corporate agriculture.
On the other hand, some differences are positive. Market hunting and wanton wildlife destruction at the hands of hunters are now illegal and collectively abhorred by most modern sportsmen.
Statistics and opinions for the most part indicate that hunting might be in trouble, here and elsewhere. Hunter numbers continue to decline as we, for various reasons, give up the sport or, as youngsters, fail to appreciate it or pursue it from the outset. Sadly, it is often now socially and politically correct to vilify existing hunters and at the same time work diligently not to create new ones. Through it all, more and more hunting land (not to mention valuable wildlife habitat) is ground to rubble beneath the developers’ bulldozer treads.
Yet, some of us continue while many ask why. Heck, we often ask why ourselves. After all, we no longer need hunting to help feed our families. Rules, regulations, and expenses today are apt to make it a complicated, costly venture. And face it, few landowners want us around anymore.
So why do we persist? Well, to a hunter, the answer is not so difficult to formulate or understand.
To a hunter (and by that I mean a traditional sportsman and conservationist, not a hunter in name only), hunting means much more than shooting and killing within allotted legal boundaries of space and time. Hunting is far more than that.
Hunting is the genuine extra-sensory experience of a Deep South autumn, an autumn that stretches long into “official” winter. It is acorns and dry leaves that crunch beneath the hunter’s feet as he walks a carpeted forest floor. It is a crisp morning and a cup of hot coffee, sipped in predawn darkness in the friendly confines of a deer-camp kitchen. It is a hurried, nutritionally unbalanced breakfast bolted in haste lest the hunter miss the first covey of quail, the first flight of mallards, or perhaps his appointed time to climb into his tree stand.
Hunting is the familiar heft and feel of a favored firearm, the smell of Hoppe’s #9 solvent subtly emanating from the barrel. It is old, comfortable boots and an old, no less comfortable pointer, retriever, or hound.
Hunting is a special place. A beaver-impounded cypress pond where the ducks always pitch in at daybreak. A bottomland woodlot where the squirrels are fat and sassy. A briar field where the bobwhites hide and the cottontails scamper. A trail where that once-in-a-lifetime whitetail buck is bound to show himself sooner or later.
Hunting is fellowship, sporting camaraderie unlike any other human association. It is old buddies, contemporaries, fellow sportsmen who see the world as you see it. It is new companions who look to you to lead by word, deed and example, to show them what hunting is and how it can come to mean to them what it has long meant to you.
Hunting is a rite of passage. It is the look on a son’s or daughter’s face immediately after the first gray squirrel succumbs to the crack of the new Christmas .22. It is learning to respect and love the woods, the creek, the deer, the raccoon, even the lowly ’possum.
Hunting is in the blood, an inherent bond passed down from beloved outdoorsmen who have gone before. It is a beautiful thing for which I am truly thankful.
Oh, how I pity those who don’t understand that. | <urn:uuid:f305aa65-5edc-455f-93c2-b99af27e507e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albanyherald.com/news/2012/aug/12/outdoors-column-hunting-means-much-those-who-do-it/?opinion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955026 | 945 | 1.617188 | 2 |
I can bless a death this human, this leaf
the size of my hand. From the life-line spreads
a sapped, distended jaundice
toward the edges, still green.
I've seen the sick starve out beyond
the grip of their disease.
They sleep for days, their stomachs gone,
the bones in their hands
seeming to rise to the hour
that will receive them.
Sometimes on their last evening, they sit up
and ask for food,
their faces bloodless, almost golden,
they inquire about the future.
One August I drove the back roads,
the dust wheeling behind me.
I wandered through the ruins of sharecrop farms
and saw the weeds in the sun frames
opening the floorboards.
Once behind what must have been an outhouse
the way wild yellow roses bunched and climbed
the sweaty walls, I found a pile of letters,
All afternoon the sun brought the field to me.
The insects hushed as I approached.
I read how the world had failed who ever lived behind
the page, behind the misquoted Bible verses,
that awkward backhand trying to explain deliverance.
The morning Keats left Guys Hospital's cadaver rooms
for the last time, he said he was afraid.
This was the future, this corning down a stairway
under the elms' summer green,
passing the barber shops along the avenue that still
performed the surgeries, still dumped
blood caught in sand from porcelain washtubs
into the road-side sewer. From those windows,
from a distance, he could have been anyone
taking in the trees, mistaking the muse for this new
warmth around his heart—the first symptom
of his illness—that so swelled the look of things,
it made leaves into poems, though he'd write later
he had not grieved, not loved enough to claim them.
|From Vesper Sparrows by Deborah Digges (Antheneum, 1986). Copyright © 1986 by Deborah Digges. Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.| | <urn:uuid:7ee51d4e-ccf4-4acd-94b1-2d792e07e5ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poets.org/m/dsp_poem.php?prmMID=19202 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955611 | 454 | 1.710938 | 2 |
S O U N D O F F
|February 18, 2012|
|Subject: Bring Home the Bacon Today By Chuck Sylvester|
My advice to the public is to “bring home the bacon” today, while you can still afford it.
Why? Because government employees have yielded to pressure from individuals who wouldn’t know a pig from a poke, and given them powers to dictate how they feel Pig Growers should grow their pigs. You see, they don’t like the humane way Pig Growers use farrowing crates; even though a few hundred years experience led to their knowing the safest way for pregnant sows to deliver and keep piglets alive, is to provide a crate.
The dictators want the sows to have their piglets in open space, where the sows – a somewhat clumsy animal – can lay on and kill a number of their piglets. A very sanitary animal, the sows will then eat their dead piglets. Not knowing the difference between the dead and alive piglets, the sow will also eat a few live piglets while cleaning up the mess.
The dictators care not the farrowing crate is the safest area for piglets to stay alive, thrive and grow. They want the babies to get crushed.
You’ve probably figured it out by now. And yes, you’re right: Farrowing in an open space will cut the number of finished market hogs, and the hog supply reduction will force up the price of bacon.
The dictators will be happy, because their piglet killing will result in eradicating the Pig Growers livelihood and eventually kill the whole hog business.
Better bring home the bacon today!
|Land And Water USA
www.LandAndWaterUSA.com (970) 284-6874 [email protected] | <urn:uuid:0df474b6-27da-40c3-8d5e-9b1333d577bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://landandwaterusa.com/Letters_GN/2012SoundOff/2-18BringHomeTheBacon.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930842 | 380 | 1.601563 | 2 |
By rejecting the complex Sacramento budget settlement, Californians have brought about an earthquake of national significance as has not been seen since the passage of Proposition 13 over thirty years ago. Once again, California voters handed politicians something they fear more than anything else, constraints on the ability to raise taxes and raid revenues for their pet interests.
Some, like long time Los Angeles Times statehouse reporter George Skelton thinks it’s the voters’ fault, as he suggested in his recent op-ed. The problem, we are told, lies with voters. The state’s massive fiscal crisis, which I and others warned was coming, was apparently unforecastable to California politicians and their enablers, like Skelton.
Blame the voters will become a large part of the national and local media spin. It is not the first time. Consider Proposition 13. The problems that led up to Prop 13 were years in the making, and they were well understood. Inflation and rising home prices were increasing taxes beyond what citizens were prepared to pay. Sacramento tried several times to address the problem, but then as now, politicians couldn’t make hard decisions. The entrenched interests, notably the public employee unions, would not hear of anything that might shrink state revenues.
Contrary to some versions of history, Proposition 13 was not backed by oil companies, land developers and other business interests. In fact, most opposed it.
Proposition 13 backers were outmanned, outspent and certainly without much media support. The measure was passed because after years of incompetence in Sacramento, California voters, like Medieval peasants, grabbed their pitchforks and torches and stormed the castle. They passed Prop 13.
Some interpret this story as showing voter ignorance and fickleness. I interpret it as showing that California voters are patient, but only to a point. Once they have reached a certain point, California voters take matters into their own hands. The results are invariably far more onerous for the state than if the political class had effectively faced the issue. Part of the reason for this is because the voters have fewer tools available to them. Legislatures and governors may have scalpels, voters have only axes.
Gray Davis was the victim of a similar uprising. He took the fall for a government that had failed. Arnold was going to be different. He would be the Governator. He won election promising mortal combat with special interests. In 2005, he tried to change things but was outmaneuvered by his union-backed opponents. After losing round one, he became Gray Davis but without his predecessor’s grasp of the essentials of government. As the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters has pointed out, hubris and ignorance make a deadly combination.
Now, we have a budget crisis, and California voters are unwilling to give Sacramento a pass. Why?
Maybe they don’t think they are getting value for their increased investment in government. California spent about $2,173 per resident (2000 dollars) in the 1997-1988 budget. The 2007-2008 budget spends about $2,738 (2000 dollars) per resident. That represents a 26 percent increase in real (inflation adjusted) per-capita spending in ten years.
What have California voters purchased with their 26 percent increase in government spending? Are the roads 26 percent better? Are schools 26 percent better? What is 26 percent better?
That is Sacramento’s problem. It is very hard to identify what good that this increase in spending has purchased. If it has been a good investment, why haven’t California’s leaders convinced the voters?
Maybe you can make a case that we are 26 percent better off; maybe not. I don’t know, but then I haven’t seen a strong effort to make the case. Instead, we get predictions of doom. We’ll cut back on teachers. We’ll let prisoners out of jail. Skelton says “And, oh yes, the elderly poor, blind and disabled – welfare moms and children's healthcare? They'll take the biggest hits, as usual.”
The problem with predictions of doom is that they don’t ring true, or they sound as if the political leaders will punish voters for forcing the leaders to face a budget constraint. Voters can remember 1997-1998. California had teachers. Prisoners were in jail. Healthcare was provided for those with the least resources. If California had these essential services then, and the State is spending 26 percent more now, why cut those essential services now?
That is the question the California’s leaders have to answer soon. Today Sacramento faces a crisis. The governor and the legislature will have to deal with a real binding budget constraint, and how they choose to deal with that constraint will make a huge difference. They could show leadership. They could make difficult choices. They could stand up to the special interests that will spare no effort to punish them.
They may not. They may try to punish voters by cutting essential services. They may try even more Enron-style accounting tricks. They may sell assets or use federal money to push the problem to future legislators and governors. They may make poor choices. They may avoid cutting entitlements and public employee pensions, the real source of the state’s fiscal distress.
We are heading towards a convulsion, not only here in California but in a host of high-tax, high-regulation states now controlled by their own employees. This includes New York, Illinois, and New Jersey for starters. In the age of Obama, with its celebration of bigger government, this suggests perhaps a whiff of a counter-revolution.
Bill Watkins, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Economic Forecast Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a former economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington D.C. in the Monetary Affairs Division. | <urn:uuid:159c3b79-d786-4fe6-948a-1957c7ef4b92> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newgeography.com/content/00809-california-meltdown-when-doubt-blame-voters | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97242 | 1,221 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Chartered Accountancy is a dynamic, challenging and rewarding profession. All the countries have their own Accountancy Association which regulates the quality and quantity of the professionals in this field. Chartered Accountancy Course is a professional course in Accounting introduced in our country in 1949, with the enactment of the Chartered Accountants Act. It is the responsibility of the ICAI to conduct the Chartered accountancy (CA) Course. The course involves a blend of theoretical education and practical training which run concurrently and equips a student with knowledge, ability, skills and other qualities required of a professional accountant.
Onlinecacoaching is the helping hand in building world class CA's . We help equipping future chartered accountants with top quality education and values.
Coaching is being provided by professionally qualified chartered accountants whose vast professional experience and knowledge are invaluable aids to the standard teaching experience
ONLINE CA COACHING provides coaching for every level- CPT,IPCC/PCC and CA Final. It is regarded as the best coaching point by CA students' community.
We are committed to provide the best online coaching. | <urn:uuid:53b67c23-f960-400e-b2af-81c341489719> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.onlinecacoaching.com/index.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936463 | 228 | 1.773438 | 2 |
I would love to learn more about the old favourites of the 6 gods. Which includes:
Harpies - previous servants of Dwayna. They probably got jealous of Dwayna favouring other races (giants or humans) before them, and hence betrayed Dwayna.
Giants - previous kings of all races. Used to rule the world with powerful magic before they were abandoned by the 6 gods. Even then, their pure size is often enough to devastate entire armies. Its lucky for the world today that giants are rare and only fights alone.
Jotuns - The old favourite of the gods. Like the giants they used to wield powerful magic. Then they started killing themselves for racial purity and the gods abandoned them.
Ogres - Relatives to the Jotuns. Now they only care about their pets. They might have been close to Melandru.
Ettins - Another giant race that we know almost nothing about.
Norns - Today they developed a culture of spiritual worship. But in the ancient days they used to worship the 6 gods. But once again they were abandoned by the 6 gods. Legend has it that humans came from the Norns.
Humans - The favour of the 6 gods after the giants. But after the defeat of Abaddon, the 6 god left the world. So they too were abandoned by the 6 gods.
Abaddon - Originally magic was reserved for the giants. But Abaddon decided to give magic to every race, hence the start of bloody conflicts where no race overrules another. When the other 5 gods decided to limit the use of magic though bloodstone, Abaddon got so enraged that he started a war against all 5 other gods. What truth drove this god of knowledge to such extremes? | <urn:uuid:86b2d0dd-f27b-47c5-af2c-7172114c3f65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?508111-What-races-and-groups-would-you-like-to-learn-more-about&p=5821734 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967215 | 362 | 1.757813 | 2 |
“You are so motivated to make sure the trip goes smoothly, because you know that the organs of these two kids are now going to save the lives of more than just a handful of other kids.”
Air Partner’s Philip Mathews
Phil Mathews wanted to be a pilot since childhood, but bad eyesight precluded that dream. Instead, after graduating from England's University of Buckingham in 1989, he began a job as a check-in agent at London's Gatwick Airport. He was hired just for summer vacation, but he wound up being promoted to flight dispatcher and manager of general operations and spending four years there. Then, in 1997, he became vice president of U.S. air-charter broker FlightTime, for which he opened a London subsidiary.
In 2002, Mathews moved to London-based Air Partner as senior vice president. The company, which began in 1961 as a school for military pilots converting to civilian flying, changed its focus to aircraft brokering in 1983. It now has $324 million in annual sales and 20 offices worldwide. It neither owns nor operates aircraft; instead, it works with more than 700 charter operators. It is the world's only publicly traded air-charter broker (listed on the London Stock Exchange) and the only firm to hold a royal warrant as supplier of aircraft charter to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Mathews, who has played an important role in the company's growth, became president of its U.S. operation in 2003. We talked with him in New York recently about that operation and about Air Partner's global plans.
You are looking at how Air Partner can apply its skills in markets such as China, India and South America. How do those markets differ from your current ones, and what do you need to do to apply your skills?
They all have different challenges in terms of regulation, bureaucracy and ways of doing business. In China, there's a shortage of aircraft and the airspace is regulated by the military, so that's a very different environment. We need to understand what those differences are and how we can leverage our core competencies to be successful in those markets.
You have said that there's a lot more you can do in the U.S. Can you elaborate?
The United States is the largest market for private jets in the world and we still have–by comparison to the size of the market–a relatively small business. I think there is significant opportunity to grow our footprints in the U.S. We just started a freight business here that is proving highly successful, and there's a huge opportunity for us to grow that part of the business.
How are you investing in your products to keep up with innovation?
We have just launched a freight product called Time Critical. Essentially, it means that you can ship anything–a part as small as a Blackberry–from door to door via air. Somebody will knock on your door, pick it up and it will be delivered on its own aircraft to wherever it needs to go; and you can track the entire process online. Unlike FedEx, this is a highly personalized bespoke service for high-value shipments and is updated manually, not by barcodes. You are sent SMS messages at every step of the way; that has particular application to the automotive industry, for instance, where small parts need to be moved as a matter of urgency. We're continuing to look at how we can improve technology and how we can apply innovation to the services we offer.
What's unique about Air Partner's jet card?
You can use it in any of our service areas–North America, Europe or the Middle East. And it is fully inclusive, so the price you see is the price you will pay. In most if not all of the competitor programs, you receive invoices months after your trip for overnights, landing fees, permits and catering. And our program isn't based upon scale. Competitor programs have thousands of card members. We tailor ours to deliver concierge-level service. An account manager will look after a finite number of card members and will know their needs intimately.
You created Rapid Air Support in 2000 and a year later changed its name to Emergency Planning. What is this service and what does it do?
It's an insurance policy that organizations can have [for] expatriate workers in sensitive parts of the world. They will contract with us and we will draw up a contingency plan should the need arise for them to evacuate their people at short notice. We will have already checked the local airfields and ascertained where the aircraft are. Our clients make one call and in a matter of hours, if not minutes, plans are activated.
You've flown 269 tons of relief aid and rescue equipment to Japan [ater the earthquake and evacuated almost 800 people from the country. What was that experience like?
It wasn't easy. But the fact that we were doing something humanitarian rather than purely commercial made it all the more satisfying. The airport was open but there was great demand. As we were trying to get in, people were trying to get out. You're also up against significant time pressure, and only very limited aircraft were available to conduct the mission with a lot of governments jockeying to control those. We were very fortunate because we had strong relationships in the region so we had the first choice of available aircraft.
Why do you think some business travelers are moving to private jets from first-class airline travel?
I think first class is predominantly something airlines keep for their frequent flyers. A colleague flew to Fort Lauderdale this week and out of 12 first-class seats, 11 were frequent flyers on upgrades. If you want a true first-class experience–arriving at a small FBO, walking straight through, hopping onboard your aircraft and having catering to your specification in comfort–flying privately is the best option.
It looks from your financials as if the downturn in the economy and in the business jet field hit Air Partner pretty hard.
I would dispute that. Prior to the downturn, we bought a management company at Biggin Hill, a small business airfield in London. We had some Lear 45s under management, so we acquired that business in 2007, and when the downturn came, that business was hit relatively hard. Last year, we divested ourselves of the Biggin Hill business. We refocused our efforts on our brokering activities and our results are back on track.
You're saying your financial troubles were all due to Biggin Hill?
Why have you opted to offer everything from business jets to commercial jets to freight aircraft rather than specializing?
Because we see ourselves as an aviation solutions provider, as opposed to a private jet broker. We want to be able to provide an aviation solution, whether it be a helicopter or a 747 freighter. We want to be able to deliver the same quality of service, no matter what the nature of the payload or the passenger, wherever they might be in the world.
It sounds as if you're going after a pretty wide market. How does that jibe with what you said earlier about aiming your jet cards at a select audience?
We want to be able to offer quality aviation solutions to a quality client base, and yes, we want a broad client base, but we are involved in a lot of segments. If you take the private jet segment, for example, no, we aren't particularly interested in six guys who want to get to Vegas as cheaply as they can for a bachelor party weekend, but we would be interested in taking six senior executives to Palm Beach to play golf. So there is quality in all the segments we are representing, be it the government or the high-net-worth or the corporate.
Do you expect pricing to go up or down in the charter market?
A lot of demand went out of the market post-2008 and pricing fell. It has not yet recovered to where it was, but it has increased. Obviously fuel is a significant component, and a lot depends on if fuel has spiked and where fuel goes in the future. I think it will be a long time before the market becomes as heated as it was pre-2008. Customers are looking for value, and they're savvy as to the options available to them and in how to procure charter. So I don't think prices will be able to significantly increase, certainly in the medium term, the way that things were moving pre-crash.
What do you think of the fractional-share business?
I think the true cost of fractional ownership is now becoming apparent and perhaps some of the shortcomings, too. The origin of the guaranteed-availability, guaranteed-pricing model was in a different economic climate from the one that we are in now, one where people were prepared to pay a premium to receive guaranteed access. Demand and supply have adjusted now so that's not so much an issue. However, one constant through all of this is charter, and I think that will continue. Access to information will improve the competitiveness of the market, but I still think charter will remain.
Why should a private jet traveler use a broker rather than go directly to an operator?
If a private jet traveler is flying the same trip from his own local airport consistently, that individual would have less use for a broker. He would be able to develop a relationship with his supplier, leverage his buying power and consistently use that aircraft. However, very few people in my experience fly the same trip from the same airport consistently.
A broker like Air Partner offers you professional, impartial, comprehensive advice. On top of that, a broker should be able to give you some peace of mind. All of our vendors in the U.S. are either Wyvern approved or ARGUS Gold or better.
We work with our customers to ensure that the operators understand their requirements. Very often, we'll be at the airport to make sure the catering is prepared, all the arrangements are in place and everything runs smoothly.
Does Air Partner offer deadhead flights at a discount?
We do, but it's very difficult because a deadhead by definition is going to rely on either an outbound or an inbound trip, and one of the advantages of chartering your own aircraft is flexibility. It's quite likely that a trip would get delayed by an hour or two, and if somebody's then buying the deadhead leg, what happens there? It's more difficult than it sounds.
Resume: Philip Mathews
Position: President, Air Partner, Inc. (U.S. subsidiary of Air Partner, plc) since 2003
Previous Positions: Commercial manager, Aircraft Chartering Services; vice president, FlightTime (U.S. charter broker). Joined Air Partner as senior vice president in 2002.
Education: B.A., Politics, Economics and Law, 1989, University of Buckingham, UK
Personal: Age 43. Married with two children. Lives in Naples, Fla. In his little free time, he plays with his kids, watches cricket and rugby, plays golf and watches American politics on TV. | <urn:uuid:b5226eb4-0e12-460b-bd6f-1c7eaa8e32bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bjtonline.com/comment/136 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977813 | 2,272 | 1.5 | 2 |
The Almaz Shipbuilding Company (Russian: Судостроительная фирма Алмаз) is a Soviet/Russian manufacturing enterprise, specializing in military and commercial ship design, development and production. Headquartered in St. Petersburg, the factory has 165,000 square metres located in the central part of St. Petersburg on Petrovsky Island (near the Gulf of Finland). On May 24, 2008 Leonid Grabovets was appointed as General Director for one year. It was founded in 1901 for the production of motorboats. It has produced more than a thousand military and commercial ships.
See also
External links | <urn:uuid:b3c13052-9b02-48fc-a08f-5a30da16c65a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almaz_Shipbuilding_Company | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953542 | 147 | 1.515625 | 2 |
In the new two-volume work ‘The Story of Eames Furniture’ by Marilyn Neuhart and John Neuhart the authors take a journey through time, going back both to the early beginnings of modern furniture design and to their own past. The focus of this book is therefore not, as is the case in the volume ‘Eames Design’ by the same two authors, on recording the entire Eames creative output complete with films, graphics and exhibitions. ‘The Story of Eames Furniture’ concentrates on the furniture design and the background to the great myth, as well as the origins of the entire Eames empire. The book deals with the numerous influences of other designers who have become famous, as well as with the loyal staff who worshipped the legendary designer pair. Again and again there is reference to the fact that Charles and Ray Eames demanded unconditional devotion to work, both from themselves and others. | <urn:uuid:b3748321-77af-49df-b2bd-f33152110e4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailytonic.com/tag/herman-miller/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968054 | 191 | 1.578125 | 2 |
A reflection on St. John 6:56-69
Well, now he stepped in it, didn’t he?
I don’t know why he used the words “flesh” and “blood.”
There were other words Jesus could have used, gentler on the ears, less offensive to his listeners, but he doesn’t concede one inch.
Flesh? Sarx in Greek. Just the sound of it grates on the ear. Jesus could have said soma, body. Much nicer, I think, but, no, he has to say sarx.
The Greek word for “blood”? We get the English word leukemia out of that one.
If no one eats his flesh and drinks his blood, they have no life because they have not fed on the Bread of Life.
There it is. He just lays it out and lets them deal with it.
The predictable reaction sets in.
“This is a hard teaching,” many of his disciples grumble. “Who can accept it?”
“Hard,” let me point out, is a wimpy translation of the original Greek. “Hard” doesn’t begin to capture the sense of scandal his words created.
Another translation has it more accurately: “When many of Jesus’ disciples understood what he was saying, they asked, ‘Who can stomach stuff like that?’”
Get it? Eating and drinking? They couldn’t stomach it.
You’d think maybe Jesus would soften it just a little bit, make it more—oh, what’s the word I’m looking for—palatable?
Jesus would say: “Let’s all just simmer down a minute and talk this over, see if we can’t reach some compromise or something. I like you folks a lot and I’d sure hate to lose you as members.”
There is no compromise.
No apologies, no explanations, no qualifiers.
Just that “hard” teaching many of them could not stomach. And they would follow him no more.
Hard teachings? Oh pish. You can find six hard-to-stomach things in the Bible any time you might actually care to open it. Things that strike right at your heart, things that are inconvenient, things you don’t want to hear, things you wish you could forget after you have heard them.
Some of the people that day didn’t like what they heard, so they walked away.
But we wouldn’t do that, would we?
The challenge Jesus gives to those who walk is interesting. “This flesh and blood is hard to stomach?” he asks. “Try this, then. What if you see the Son of Man ascend to the place where he was before?”
You know what that means, right? Crucifixion. In the Gospel of John, whenever you hear this line of conversation about the Son of Man going “back to where he came from,” crucifixion is the subject under discussion, because crucifixion is the only way he’s ever going to get there.
Whenever we hear anything about the Son of Man being glorified, lifted up, or made manifest, what you are hearing is crucifixion. That’s the way the Gospel of John is written.
What Jesus is saying is simple:
You don’t like the Bread of Heaven and flesh and blood? That’s offensive? You think that’s hard?
Suppose then you should see the Son of Man crucified all bloody hanging from a cross?
If you want to talk about what’s hard and offensive and what isn’t, let’s get real.
Yet, the emphasis of the story today isn’t upon those who walked away offended.
And the focus of the story isn’t even about why they were offended. The emphasis is upon those who remain—because they have nowhere else to go.
Peter, bold in his faith, issues his admission of helplessness. “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Peter spoke for the disciples yet not one of them, not even Peter, remained when the real test came. Each disciple betrayed Jesus after his arrest. We and the disciples, we stand together in our abandonment of “hard” and “difficult” teachings.
Yet even as we walk away the stubborn tug of baptism, the persistent hunger for bread that lasts, calls to us and like Peter we too are floundering. “Where else would we go?”
We have nowhere else to go except back to the Christ we have denied.
That’s why baptism is our chance for daily repentance. With repentance comes forgiveness. Sometimes it works the other way ‘round, too. Knowing there is forgiveness prompts repentance.
We walk away, yet there is no place else to go—except back to the Lord we rejected. There at the table the Bread of Life gives himself in exchange for our life. At the table we become what we eat. At the table, where Jesus knew it would be.
Russell E. Saltzman is dean of the Great Plains Mission District of the North American Lutheran Church, author of The Pastor’s Page and Other Small Essays, and a featured author at First Things magazine web site. | <urn:uuid:06725aa3-a413-4aa2-90bc-bdadeaa48378> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clcumary.com/13-pentecostordinary-time-20-19-august-2012/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9594 | 1,161 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Kehä I (Ring I) is the busiest highway in Finland, carrying up to 113,000 vehicles per day. It is the innermost of the three beltways in the Helsinki region, running from the easternmost part of Espoo to Itäkeskus in eastern Helsinki for a total of 24.2 kilometers, of which 16 are in Helsinki. It is primarily for local traffic, before the large road numbering change in the 1990s and the reconstruction of Kehä III, it was also meant for bypassing Helsinki.
Kehä I has at least two lanes per direction for its entire length, and the speed limit never exceeds 80 km/h due to heavy traffic. With the introduction of new interchanges, speed limits have been changed (and will be changed) from 60 or 70 to 80 km/h. Eventually, all intersections on Kehä I will be upgraded to interchanges. However, the road is not constructed as a motorway, which limits its capacity.
A major modernisation project is under way at Leppävaara, Espoo, where the road is being set into a tunnel. The aim is to ease the flow of traffic in what is the worst traffic bottleneck in the Greater Helsinki region. | <urn:uuid:c9c88fda-f345-457f-adcd-cfae3c9e236e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Keh%C3%A4_I | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951295 | 253 | 1.8125 | 2 |
In a David Brooks NYT op-ed column (“Après Rahm, Le Déluge”) of a week ago:
The Chicago school system is a classic case of a bloated, inefficient Economy II organization. The average Chicago teacher makes $76,000 a year in a city where the average worker makes $47,000 a year. Rising school costs have helped push the system deep into the red. Meanwhile, the outcomes are not good.
This passage begins by asserting that the Chicago system is bloated and inefficient. The next sentence asserts that the average Chicago teacher makes 1.6 times as much as the average Chicago worker, leaving us to calculate by Gricean relevance that the second sentence follows the first because teachers’ salaries are bloated, bloated implicating that these salaries should be much smaller (perhaps around the average worker’s salary, or even less). All of these are arguable propositions. | <urn:uuid:e6519642-fe58-4120-9adb-96ce503a47b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/category/semantics/implicature/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955756 | 190 | 1.703125 | 2 |
May 18, 2013
Warning signal from Venezuela
Secret police target Lanata
The harassment in Venezuela of Jorge Lanata, the journalist who has become an unofficial leader of the political opposition to the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is more significant than it might seem at first sight.
Lanata, who was travelling with a camera crew to cover the presidential elections for the Clarín Group, was detained for questioning by state intelligence agents both going into and out of Caracas. The procedures used to harass him and his colleagues are familiar, reminding me of the time when I travelled to Cuba to represent a human rights non-governmental organization at a United Nations conference in Havana.
Upon arrival, I had my first encounter with the men from the Minint, the somewhat sinister name given to the Ministry of Interior. They wanted to send me back to Miami. But as a condition for holding the conference in Havana, which gave Castro-Communist Cuba a token of international prestige, the United Nations secured a guarantee that everyone from organizations affiliated with the UN must be allowed into Cuba to attend the conference. A journalist who travelled on the same plane was sent back because his US passport revealed that he had been born in Cuba.
Once in Cuba, I was followed and harassed in ways both picaresque and menacing. A colleague from the human rights organization got the jitters and left early.
When I finally left Havana my bags were searched and my notes and documents reporting the human rights situation were seized at the José Martí international airport.
It was routine police state procedure and it was exactly what Lanata and the other Grupo Clarín journalists were subjected to at the Simón Bolívar airport in Caracas. (How galling it is that two countries that restrict freedom of expression have airports named after genuine advocates for freedom.) Lanata, José Gil Vidal and Nicolás Wiñazki, of Clarín, and Gabriel Conte, editor of MDZOL, a digital newspaper in Mendoza, were given special attention by secret police who erased their reportage from their electronic equipment, alleging espionage, a charge that was not followed up.
The significance of this quasi-totalitarian attempt to restrict freedom of information by the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service is that it is an indication of what could happen in Argentina if President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner should decide to imitate her friend President Hugo Chávez by trying to silence dissident voices and establish state control of the media.
It was clear from the start that the late president Néstor Kirchner and his widow viewed a free press as an enemy. Both the Kirchners set out to continue on the national stage the same policies restricting freedom of information that were imposed in their native province of Santa Cruz, which Néstor Kirchner dominated for almost two decades.
In my view, this caudillo-like attitude has kept the Kirchner administrations in the dark. Without a free flow of information from varied media outlets, any government is bound to lose touch with reality.
Freedom of information is not the same as freedom of expression. In Argentina today there is no limit on the latter, but there is a severe lack of public information. Instead of interplay between the government and the press, which requires not only frequent news conferences called by the President and her ministers, but also access to them by individual reporters, Cristina, like her husband, speaks over the heads of journalists. Instead of allowing the press to be a bridge to the people, the Kircher style of government bypasses the media. Without an established right to know, similar to that secured by the US Freedom of Information Act, the press and the people are locked out. Another consequence of the Kirchner “dog in a manger” attitude is a deepening estrangement from mainstream international thought. That is partially explained by the refusal of the President to give interviews to foreign correspondents. Their requests are not even acknowledged.
President Fernández de Kirchner pays lip service to freedom of expression but does not “walk the walk” by encouraging an exchange of views. The result has been a polemical cacophony of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Because of the lack of leadership and no identified common cause that brings politicians together, the place that, in a democracy, is occupied by the political opposition has been filled by journalists.
The opposition press, which prefers to call itself the independent press, has become like a political alliance, a coalition that has formed around key issues that the traditional parties have so far failed to communicate effectively to the public. These issues are, in no particular order but in line with my own preference: the defence of democracy; indignation over corruption; and concern about personal safety.
The star role has been filled by Jorge Lanata, who, in response to the government’s programme 6,7,8, came up with Periodismo para todos (“Journalism for everyone” which is also a jibe at the government’s Fútbol para todos, which provides free coverage of Argentine Soccer League matches.) Lanata has assumed the leading role in opposing the government with his popular Sunday night programme. It is a mixture of stand-up comedy, which Lanata does fairly well, exposure of corruption, which he does brilliantly, and saucy satire at the expense of official idiocy.
The satire is delivered by Fátima Florez, who does a devastating impersonation of Cristina Fernández http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=IE-OCDexYrU&feature=endscreen and Martin Bilyk, who is hilarious as former Cabinet chief Aníbal Fernández and as Hugo Chávez. Florez reminded me of Tina Fey’s exquisite send-up of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.
I have followed Lanata’s career from afar since 1983 when he was the founder with Gabriel Levinas of the magazine El Porteño, which was the first serious journalistic challenge to the military dictatorship.
Returning for four months every year since 2010, I was here when he announced on the eve of his 50th birthday that he had decided that he would celebrate his half century by speaking out, never holding anything back.
He has been able to keep that promise with even greater effectiveness by joining the Clarín Group, which has provided the resources that have allowed him to reach a larger audience.
He has been critical of Grupo Clarín which, while far from being a monopoly, became the biggest media organization in Argentina by buying up newspapers and buying out radio and television stations. However, in a country where the state owns radio and television networks, no rival can ever achieve a monopoly. Additionally, the Kirchner administration has built up a network of private media that support the government.
Ten years ago, the expansion of Grupo Clarín was a problem because independent media were being squeezed out. Today the problem is the expansion of media that is either state-controlled or aligned totally with the government.
The fact that Jorge Lanata was targeted in Venezuela and that the Argentine ambassador sided with the secret police should serve as a warning that totalitarianism is a temptation that authoritarian governments and their officials find hard to resist.
That is why it is important to defend both media and journalists that oppose the imposition of a quasi-totalitarian state like Venezuela or a totally totalitarian state like Cuba, both of which would probably get an “I like” on their Facebook pages from many in the Kirchner administration. | <urn:uuid:0a627ea6-826d-4d6d-a5dd-c317ca01337c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/114104/warning-signal-from-venezuela | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966856 | 1,578 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Franklin County taxpayers could be asked to pick up the tab for those who do not read directions on their absentee ballots.
According to Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Ben Piscitelli, the board ordered envelops before the final ballot was ready.
The ballot turned out to be heavier than the board originally thought, and the postage required on them increased to 65 cents.
Instead of noting on the envelop how many stamps are required, it just reads “Place stamp here.”
Voter Donna King just learned that voting in Franklin County takes a close eye for instructions to do it right.
“I am glad I read (the instructions), because I might have just put one stamp on the envelope and put them in the mail,” King said. “For people who vote absentee, I think it’s important to be as clear as possible.”
USPS Postmaster Robert Cavinder said that the post office has decided to deliver the ballots despite the insufficient postage to make sure that every vote is counted.
“There is some almost insignificant number that have insufficient postage on them, but we’re going to go ahead and deliver them (to) make sure those votes get counted,” Cavinder. “We’ll deal with that after the election.’
Piscitelli said that taxpayers will be charged whether they pay the right postage or not.
‘”Taxpayers are going to pay either way,” Piscitelli said. “Tax dollars support the post office and the election board.”
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for more information. | <urn:uuid:90e56bb6-8b89-42e6-8e9b-bf0301a9a19b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2012/11/02/watchdog-us-postal-service-considering-billing-board-of-elections-for-absentee-ballot-postage-confusion.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961067 | 344 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Skiing Mauna Kea, Hawaii
Mention the idea of skiing in Hawaii, and it either sounds like some far-fetched novelty, or maybe a rarified bucket list item (or even a code for doing drugs). But once you realize that Mauna Kea, on the Big Island of Hawaii, means white mountain in Hawaiian, and that it gets snow during the winter months (along with Mauna Loa), then suddenly it's not such a crazy idea.
More to the point, where else can you wake up, go surfing in board shorts, then load up the car with skis or a snowboard and drive to the top of the tallest mountain on earth (when you count that it starts 19,000 feet below sea level and rises to 13,796 feet above), make a few turns on the white stuff (a.k.a. pineapple powder) and be back at the beach in time for another surf and a mai tai at sunset? All amid a tropical paradise?
Of course, all of that is a little easier said than done. There are no lifts, lodges, or grooming on Mauna Kea, and the change in altitude from sea level to just under 14,000 feet in a single day can be physically brutal. The window for scoring good snow and conditions is also quite small. Oftentimes when the snow is the best, the summit road is closed, barring access (unless you feel like hiking the last 7,000 vertical feet to the top). When the road is open, the snow conditions can be sketchy, with ice, wind crust, and runs that end abruptly – into razor sharp lava rock. Thus skiing Hawaii's "white mountain" isn't for the faint of heart, or novices of any kind. But when you do get lucky and the conditions line up, runs in excess of two miles down volcanic bowls for 2,500-4,500 vertical feet are well within the realm of possibility.
Amazingly, there's an outfitter on the Big Island that rents skis and snowboards ($50/day plus $100 deposit), can arrange for shuttle transportation to the top (the rental car companies on the Big Island discourage driving to Mauna Kea's summit in their rigs and will charge you handsomely for the privilege if they find out you did), and even guide you down. So, if you want to make a check next to the "ski in Hawaii" or "surf and ski in the same day" boxes on your bucket list, give the guys at Mauna Kea Ski Corporation a ring and they'll get you sorted. You might just be able to throw a little of that snow in a cooler to mix with your sunset cocktail back on the beach. | <urn:uuid:538c94d7-3489-4ae2-ba22-02da8a51293b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/skiing-boarding/skiing-pineapple-powder-in-hawaii-20121228 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935783 | 565 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Science is a process of inference to the best explanation. A hypotheses is a current best explanation and experimental data is but one way we try to verify whether such explanations fit with data.
In that sense evolutionary theory is one of the best explanations as it provides a unified explanation of data gathered from a variety of fields using a variety of different methods and has suggested programs of further research that have resulted in further discoveries and explanations that cohere with, and thus support the evolutionary meta-explanatory framework.
Having personally worked side-by-side at the bench with half a dozen other orthodox biologists and having studied with others and after having been professionally and personally acquainted with yet more, I can say without reservation that the vast majority of us who believe that standard evolutionary theory is the best explanation and that attempts at so-called reconciliation with Torah is unnecessary and foolish. We do not write articles on Torah and science, we do not publish in Tradition or the Jewish Observer or even attend the UOJS conferences anymore since they became nothing more than weekend getaways for MDs and DDSs to get CMA credits.
We simply publish in scientific journals like all our colleagues in the small sub-fields that most laypeople would probably find rather boring. We do not get involved in these intrareligious fights because they are driven solely by religious dogmatic considerations which we do not share in by laypeople with religious dogmatic agendas who will not be persuaded by argument or by evidence.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
What Orthodox Biologists Do
The following was left as a comment by "MJ" to an earlier post. I thought it would be valuable to give it prominence as a post: | <urn:uuid:588d45e1-3b6d-4676-9a26-23c63d16c1c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rationalistjudaism.com/2009/12/what-orthodox-biologists-do.html?showComment=1261060501890 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967923 | 339 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The ceaseless succession of new Canon and Nikon SLRs has a certain predictability, but an unusual model came out of left field today: Canon's astrophotography-oriented EOS 60Da.
The 60Da is a close cousin to the Canon EOS 60D, a higher-end 18-megapixel model geared for enthusiasts. But the 60Da has one big difference: its infrared filter has been modified so it doesn't screen out so much "hydrogen-alpha" light, a deep-red 656.28-nanometer wavelength of light produced by excited hydrogen atoms.
By letting in about three times the amount of hydrogen-alpha red as a regular 60D, the $1,500 60Da can capture much better photos of energetic nebulae, Canon said. It's due to go on sale this month.
Canon has experience in this market: in 2005, it started selling the EOS 20Da for astrophotography. Canon hasn't released any successors in seven years, though, and it has no competition in this niche. Meanwhile, technology has improved quite a bit.
Resolution has jumped from 8 to 18 megapixels, but perhaps more importantly, maximum ISO has increased too. The 20Da reached ISO 1,600 with an extended ISO 3,200 mode, but the 60Da reaches ISO 6,400 with an extended ISO 12,800 setting. And Canon said today the hydrogen-alpha sensitivity is about one and a half times better with the 60Da than the 20Da.
One of the main features of the 20Da was live view, which lets photographers compose shots using the LCD screen. At the time, live view was virtually unknown among SLRs. Now it's standard, but the 60Da makes it a lot more useful by virtue of its articulated LCD screen. That's doubtless handy to make viewing less awkward, when the camera is mounted to a telescope.
The 60Da also comes with useful accessories: the Canon RA-E3 remote controller adapter, an AC adapter, and a AVC-DC400ST video cable to watch the live view output on a TV.
Updated at 11:45 a.m. PT with comparative hydrogen-alpha performance of the 60Da and 20Da. | <urn:uuid:23dcbc35-df82-4c89-92f4-c0e512039984> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57408450-264/canon-60da-tackles-astrophotography-after-7-year-hiatus/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954942 | 460 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Monday, August 6, 2012
Olympics Post - Be Social from India
The Games of the XXX Olympiad are beginning their second week, and sadly, my Olympics-themed series is rounding the curve with the end in sight. To coincide with the festivities in London, I wanted to commemorate the special event on my blog. So, to create an international dialogue about the evolution of social media, I have invited experts to answer questions and share their insights. In the words of Vala Afshar, "Don't do social, be S.O.C.I.A.L., which means be sincere, open, collaborative, interested, authentic, and likeable." Tune in every couple of days to see which country will be represented and who will be featured. And if you comment during the Olympics on Twitter or elsewhere in social media, don't forget to use the hashtag #London2012.
Today's expert is Pervara Kapadia, a social media expert based in Mumbai, India. You can connect with Pervara on Twitter @PervaraKapadia.
Which social network is most popular in your country?
With over 51 million users, India ranks as the third largest market for Facebook. Twitter is also a popular site.
How are your country’s legislators dealing with the privacy issue resulting from social media?
At a corporate level, people are developing policy and procedure manuals, but at the national level, privacy legislation is still in development.
How are major businesses in your country using social media as a marketing tool to promote products or services?
The largest brands in India are Tata Docomo, Fastrack, Kingfisher, Vodafone Zoozoos, and Nokia India. These brands are leveraging social media to connect with customers and obtain feedback.
What is the most valuable social media advice you can offer?
It’s important to focus on relevant content as well as frequency.
In what ways will smartphones and tablets further evolve in your country?
According to a Gartner report from earlier this summer, four significant forces will shape businesses in India during the next five years: IT, mobile, cloud, and social media. The adoption of new technologies will be driven by individuals who are young, well-educated, and tech-savvy.
NEXT POST WILL FEATURE AUSTRALIA.
Posted by Debbie Laskey, MBA | <urn:uuid:082b88c7-58f7-4181-b39d-7abf7edee00b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://debbielaskey.blogspot.com/2012/08/olympics-post-be-social-from-india.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936187 | 493 | 1.570313 | 2 |
is the Founding Director of the Bridge Program, which provides college classes to low-income adults in Los Angeles, at no cost to students. He is an expert in Justice and Education, The Politics of Psychology, and Postmodern Philosophy.
has an impressive history of university administration and accreditation, scholarship and teaching. A short sampling of his expertise includes, Diversity and Multiculturalism, Higher Education Issues, and School Safety in Academic Environments.
has more than 40 years experience as a professor and educational leader. He is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities and President Emeritus of AULA and an expert in American Utopian Communities, Religious Worldviews, and History of Philosophy. | <urn:uuid:38f65095-d3b3-4683-b92d-f7b2c726b0ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antiochla.edu/expertsubject/philosophy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948975 | 139 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Archive for November, 2009
My wife and I are celebrating our 35th anniversary with a Thanksgiving week getaway on the panhandle of Florida. Later today we will enjoy a southern version of the traditional banquet, this one will featuring all sorts of grits – the chef’s specialty. I expect some oysters too – mainly harvested just down-beach at Apalachicola. Also, at the local Piggly-Wiggly I noticed lots of sweet potato pies laid out, along with pecan pies, of course. If I lay off the grits, maybe I will keep some room for a piece of the pecan pie, preferably with some whipped cream on top.
Earlier this week we stopped by an interesting museum in Apalach’ (as the locals refer to it). It celebrates the achievements of a local physician, John C. Gorrie, who invented the ice-making machine. He is also considered to be the father of refrigeration and air conditioning. Obviously the folks here in Florida hold Dr. Gorrie in high esteem for his dedication to cooling things off. What interests me, being that I am a chemical engineer, is how steam powered Gorrie’s ice machine. That seems very counter-intuitive, but the thermodynamics are explained nicely here by the inventor:
“If the air were highly compressed, it would heat up by the energy of compression. If this compressed air were run through metal pipes cooled with water, and if this air cooled to the water temperature was expanded down to atmospheric pressure again, very low temperatures could be obtained, even low enough to freeze water in pans in a refrigerator box.”
For a picture of what he patented in 1851 and historical background, see this Wired magazine article by Randy Alfred.
Getting back to the Thanksgiving feast this afternoon and thinking about the oysters, I suppose we will be given a choice of raw ones laid out on ice (thanks to the local inventor) or one cooked with steam. Coming from the middle of our continent, it may be too much of a stretch to eat uncooked shellfish. In fact, it makes me a bit queasy just thinking of it. Although I fancy myself an experimentalist, sometimes I must draw a line in the sand.
PS. One thing I find curious is that the oystermen (sorry ladies) still do their harvesting the old-fashioned way with tongs – see this video, for example .
A recent article in my local newspaper, the Stillwater Gazette, provided enlightenment on our school district’s new way of adding numbers – from left to right, rather than right to left. I might have to try this – maybe it will help me improve my accuracy when tallying checks on deposit slips. (I always hand-calculate these as a way to maintain my math muscles.)
Supposedly this left-to-right approach makes it easier for children to learn, because it goes in the same direction for processing numbers as for reading words. Here’s how it works. Let’s say that you and your spouse both collect up pennies and the first jar nets 237 cents versus 159 for the second. How much in total can be taken to the bank? The way I learned to add one first adds 7 and 9, recording 6 as the right-most digit (the ones column), and then carrying a 1 to the second column (the tens). This carrying part is where I sometimes get off, mainly due to my poor handwriting, which even I cannot always read. The new left-to-right approach eliminates a lot of carrying, but not all, I figure, as shown in the following case. Start by adding the left-most (hundreds in this case) column of numbers:
Do not forget to put in the zeroes to hold the place of what you just added. Now go to the next column to the right and add it:
= 90 (4 + 5)
And so forth until there’s no more columns:
= 16 (7 + 9)
Finally, tally up all the numbers you calculated:
I have a feeling that the old saying about not trying to teach an old dog new tricks might be operative for me in regard to this new math. I think I will just keep adding the old way, or admit that using a calculator or, better yet, a computerized spreadsheet for doing my deposits would be smarter. Am I shortchanging myself (pun intended)?
PS. This innovation in learning math struck a chord with my son Hank, who programs for Stat-Ease. He made me aware that “endianness” is a major issue in coding. Evidently programmers continually feud over the order in which bytes in multi-byte numbers should be stored – most-significant first (Big-Endian) or least-significant first (Little-Endian).* The “endian” terms come from Jonathan Swift who mocked the pettiness of social customs, such as which end one ought to first attack when shelling an egg.
“…the primitive way of breaking Eggs, before we eat them, was upon the larger End: But his present Majesty’s Grand-father, while he was a Boy, going to eat an Egg, and breaking it according to the ancient Practice, happened to cut one of his Fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his Father published an Edict, commanding all his Subjects, upon great Penaltys, to break the smaller End of their Eggs.”
– Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, A Voyage to Lilliput, Chapter IV.
*For more details, see Basic concepts on Endianness.
In today’s “AskMarilyn” column by Marilyn vos Savant for Parade magazine she addresses a question about the game of Scrabble: Is it fair at the outset for one player to pick all seven letter-tiles rather than awaiting his turn to take one at a time? The fellow’s mother doesn’t like this. She claims that he might grab the valuable “X” before others have the chance. Follow the link for Marilyn’s answer to this issue of random (or not) sampling.
This week I did my day on DOE (design of experiments) for a biannual workshop on Lean Six Sigma sponsored by Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business (blended with training by www.MoreSteam.com.) Early on I present a case study* on a training experiment done by a software publisher. The goal is to increase the productivity of programmers by sending them to workshop. The manager asks for volunteers from his staff of 30. Half agree to go. Upon their return from the class his annual performance rating, done subjectively on a ten-point scale, reveals a statistically significant increase due to the training. I ask you (the same as I ask my lean six sigma students): Is this fair?
“Designing an experiment is like gambling with the devil: only a random strategy can defeat all his betting systems.”
– RA Fisher
PS. I put my class to the test of whether they really “get” how to design and analyze a two-level factorial experiment by asking them to develop a long-flying and accurate paper helicopter. They use Design-Ease software, which lays out a randomized plan. However, the student tasked with dropping the ‘copters of one of the teams just grabbed all eight of their designs and jumped up the chair. I asked her if she planned to drop them all at once, or what. She told me that only one at a time would be flown – selected by intuition as the trials progressed. What an interesting sampling strategy!
PPS. Check out this paper “hella copter” developed for another statistics class (not mine).
*(Source: “Design of Experiments, A Powerful Analytical Tool” by Christopher Nachtsheim and Bradley Jones, Six Sigma Forum Magazine, August 2003.) | <urn:uuid:e66e36f3-812f-4c9a-8c70-49e6f53fd052> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/2009/11/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956749 | 1,668 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Corsham Technologies is now Corsham Technologies, LLC, registered in the state of New Jersey. I’ll have to update some pages here. It also means we’ll be charging NJ sales tax for sales to customers with shipping addresses in NJ.
I’ve been doing consulting work full-time for about a month now and haven’t spent as much time in the lab as usual, but this weekend I should be ordering another batch of PC boards for some new products.
5K of memory was fun, but there is a lot of code out there that resides at $2000 and won’t fit in less than 8K, so the next logical step was a larger board. This is not a product yet, but the first pass experimental board seems to be working well. It provides RAM from $0400 to $13FF (4K) and then from $2000 to $FFF7 (56K) for a total of 60K. The KIM monitor runs as it always did, and all interrupt vectors still branch through the existing KIM monitor code.
No, the 128K RAM chip is not vintage, but the other three chips were definitely around in the 1970s. Replace the RAM chip with banks of 2114 and the rest of the logic would still work.
Here it is in the static test jig, sometimes called Kimulator or Kim-Sim:
And here it is tied into the KIM-1 while a non-stop memory test has been running for a couple days now without a single problem:
The ribbon cable plugs into the I/O board. In case you wondered what that 10 pin connector was for, this is it.
So when will this be real? I need to run a couple more experiments to add one more feature, then it’s time to order another set of boards.
So back “in the day” when I was first getting started in computers, S-100 machines were awesome displays of power and sophistication (and money). They were well out of my teenage allowance reach, while a KIM-1 was affordable. My goal was to eventually build an S-100 machine and get CP/M installed. It took nearly 35 years, but finally did:
Okay, so it’s got some modern stuff like an IDE board, but it’s still S-100 and is definitely running CP/M
It’s maybe 20 pounds, sucks a lot of power (notice the huge power supply on the right hand side of the chassis) and probably has less memory/processing power than the wireless keyboard on my iMac.
But’s it’s S-100 running CP/M, so it’s definitely got the cool factor going for it. | <urn:uuid:225e27db-4af0-472a-b5bd-1382a315627b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.corshamtech.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967015 | 575 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Valentine’s Day, the holiday of romance, roses and Hallmark cards, is coming up this Thursday.
Sweethearts throughout the country are scheming to surprise their significant others. Singles are scrambling for some sort of connection, desperate not to spend the holiday alone. And schoolchildren are covering shoeboxes with shiny foil, cutting out red construction paper hearts and signing their names to paper cutout figures of Scooby Doo and Strawberry Shortcake, ready to share with their besties and the other kids in their class.
But one group of young people is planning to celebrate Valentine’s Day in a special way. Two dozen kids, ranging in age from 7 to 17, will be sharing smiles through song and vignettes performed through the month at convalescent homes throughout the region.
While performing a mash-up of the musicals You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!, the group plans to reach out to senior citizens to let them know they are not forgotten this Valentine’s Day.
The group is known as the Volunteer Valentines, and are an offshoot of West Deptford Little Theatre. WDLT founder Susan Schramm hand-picked the two dozen performers from last year’s summer theater participants and has been working with them since October to prepare this presentation, a gift to the community to kick off the organization’s 40th anniversary year.
“Volunteer Valentines is when we go to different shows and we bring valentines to different people who may not usually get valentines,” explains Alli Sanders, 15, a sophomore at Gloucester Catholic. “I think it’s a great idea, because the older people don’t expect it and it makes them happy and smile.”
Sanders points out that doing something for others to enjoy has been the motto of WDLT for the past four decades.
“In theater, we’re taught to make our own sunshine,” she says, referring to the organization’s theme song. “So giving some sunshine to other people makes me happy. We’re passing our message on.”
Traditionally, the casts of each Charles Schulz-inspired musical is relatively small. However, Schramm double-cast the show, having two children portray each of the familiar characters from the classic Peanuts comic strip. For example, Sanders is sharing the role of Sally with Rose Cairns, also a 15-year-old sophomore.
“I am excited by the idea of Volunteer Valentines,” says Cairns, a Gloucester County Institute of Technology (GCIT) sophomore who is also the reigning Miss Teen West Deptford. “Volunteer Valentines will give the cast of Charlie Brown the chance to volunteer, spread love and have the community enjoy our show.”
The lead role, that of Charlie Brown himself, is shared by Connor Fesili and Christian Hoedt. Fesilli, 17, who is currently juggling this role with the part of Horton the elephant in Holy Angels Parish’s production of Seussical, says he’s looking forward to interacting with the older people in the audience.
“At the end of the show we will go around the audience and hand each of the elderly a valentine,” he explains. “It’s a new experience that I’ve never tried before. I was so excited I even went out and bought my favorite valentines to hand out!”
Those who meet Fesilli after a performance will be treated to Spongebob Squarepants lollipop valentine card.
The Volunteer Valentines will be doing four performances of their show, called A Musical Evening with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Friends. The opening performance will be on Sunday, Feb. 10, at the Woodbury Mews. Next weekend, the show will be performed twice—on Friday at the Church of the Incarnation in Mantua and on Sunday at Manor Care in West Deptford. The final show of this run will be on Feb. 24 at Pitman Manor, though the group hopes to perform one last time in April as a fundraiser for WDLT.
The teens participating in Volunteer Valentines have a variety of ways they plan to celebrate this Thursday—from going to the movies with friends to baking for family and from playing with younger siblings to going out for Chinese. But all of them see the value in volunteering to share some love with those who may be forgotten come Feb. 14.
“It’s important for teens to interact with seniors because we can discover how rewarding it is to make someone else’s day a little better,” points out WDHS freshman Nikki Poulos, 14. Poulos, who is also representing West Deptford in this year’s All South Jersey Choir, will be sharing the role of Frieda in the Volunteer Valentines shows.
Though the kids had no idea of Schramm’s plan when they joined the group, they embraced the idea of making this more than just another show.
“Volunteer Valentines is a great idea, in my opinion. It just shows every senior citizen that everyone is loved and no one is forgotten,” says Juliana Vernacchio, 16, a sophomore studying performing arts at GCIT.
“I love community service because I love to put smiles on other people’s faces and make them feel good inside,” adds Vernacchio, a showstopper who sings and dances her way through the role of Snoopy, everyone’s favorite beagle. “I think it’s important for teenagers to do volunteer work because it shows that teens still care.”
Giving of their time and talents, these teens and their younger costars will be letting the older people of the county know they’re loved this Valentine’s Day, in a way that construction paper hearts and Whitman samplers never could. | <urn:uuid:b45c6499-cf6b-462f-9e41-3283989610de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westdeptford.patch.com/groups/arts-and-entertainment/p/happiness-is-a-volunteer-valentine | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943181 | 1,263 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Posted By MSH on September 19, 2012
I’m sure by now readers have heard the recent announcement that Dr. Karen King of Harvard has announced (in Rome at a conference) that she is in possession of a small fragment of a Coptic manuscript that has Jesus addressing his wife (the line reads: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …’”). The manuscript also mentions a woman named Mary. (For all the lines translated into English, go here - an NBC news item that kindly includes a link to my initial thoughts on the fragment posted on my PaleoBabble blog.)
While the fragment doesn’t provide evidence that Jesus was married (it only provides evidence that someone living a few centuries after Jesus thought he was married, or at least wanted to cast him as such), I don’t see any theological problem with him being married. But there’s no evidence for it, especially in the New Testament. There is certainly no sexual problem, unless your theology is twisted into some idea that intercourse is inherently wrong. My point here is that Jesus would not have recoiled from marriage because it would have meant he’d have to consummate the marriage. That’s quite an unbiblical view of sex (let’s just cut the creation mandate out of our Bibles, shall we?). In biblical theology, Jesus was as human as the rest of us, though he was certainly more. As I posted earlier about his humanity, he grew up as any of us did, which means he went through puberty. He would have experienced sexual attraction. Sexual impulse is not sinful; it’s human — our bodies working the way God made them, with a procreative impulse. Biblical morality, however, prescribes boundaries for their expression; it just doesn’t require their execration. Again, how biblical is your theology about the humanity of Jesus? Sadly, this is one area that tends to be awfully tradition-driven.
Rather than problems, though, I’d say there might have been practical and theological obstacles to marriage for Jesus, though an obstacle doesn’t mean it couldn’t be so. What do I mean by obstacles?
I think the text is clear (Luke 2:41-52) that by the time of the temple incident, when Jesus had reached his teen years, he knew who he was and that he was on earth to fulfill God’s plan for salvation history. (By the way, this passage ends with the noteworthy Luke 2:52 – another interesting juxtaposition of divinity and humanity). While that would not of necessity have caused Jesus to refrain from marriage, it feels a little callous of him taking a wife knowing he was going to die in the near future. But that read naturally depends on the debate over whether Jesus did (or could have) offered the kingdom to Israel in a genuine way (i.e., could the Jews have embraced him as messiah in view of OT prophecies that called for a suffering messiah). This is a significant debate in biblical studies with good arguments on all sides. If the answer turned out to be “yes,” then Jesus would have only known he was going to die for sure after his rejection. The gospels record that “from that time forward” Jesus began to tell them he would die. (But if that’s the case, what about those OT prophecies? I have my own answer for that, but I won’t digress.) You get the picture.
Another obstacle, or at least potential reason to avoid marriage on Jesus’ part, would have been the issues raised by having children. I’m thinking here of succession struggles (read the books of Kings for that) and any superstitious weirdness that might ensue about the nature of any children (I don’t think that would have been complicated — they’d have been human and nothing more, since deity doesn’t have DNA, and is not transmitted by DNA — but in a pre-scientific culture, that would not have been an easy parsing).
Anyway, just thought I’d muse a bit in the wake of the new manuscript find. | <urn:uuid:72ecfe0d-138a-4cfc-bced-e77dd428d394> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://michaelsheiser.com/TheNakedBible/2012/09/humanity-jesus-jesus-married/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98381 | 874 | 1.75 | 2 |
Back in the Spring, citizens approved a board change — going from SEVEN single-member districts to a FIVE plus TWO at-large system. The lines are now being drawn: On paper, in the media and in the proverbial sand.
We assume many of you thought by 2013 this board alteration thingamajig would be a done deal.
Heh! Think again. Buried at the bottom of today’s Enterprise article is a caveat that would make this process even more polarizing.
Not only does the BISD board have to vote on the changes, but the redrawn district needs to be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice. And “speed” ain’t their middle name.
Part of the problem is numbers. Demographer Tom Sanders has the near impossible task of splitting up the district into five equitable slices, while still maintaining fair and equal minority representation. A task made tougher by the fact that more whites than blacks vote, yet Beaumont is more African-American in total population.
“To make it real short and simple, the two at-large districts will not be considered minority districts by the Justice Department because they’re not majority black,” [Sanders] said. “Your challenge is to draw three minority districts, one white and one toss up and it’s real hard to do considering the population is the way it is.”
Already, you’ve got two board members speaking out against ANY changes. Said Zenobia Bush:
“I’m not in favor of a 5-2 district, I didn’t vote for it and I don’t support it, but I’m obligated as a board member to do what our voters want. Some people will be happy regardless of what you draw, but there are people happy now with seven single-member districts. Unless some miracle falls out of the sky that everyone will be happy with, the plan won’t make people happy. I don’t think I’ll be happy with it.”
So consider her a “NYET!” Same with Woodrow Reece.
No matter the difficulties, school board president Woodrow Reece said he just wants to get it right. “I don’t agree with it, but it was voted upon,” he said. “I just want to make sure they’ve (demographer Tom Sanders and Melody Chappell) done their homework and give us the best plan they can within the law.” Chappell said trustees do not have to unanimously approve a plan to be submitted to the Justice Department.
But here’s the biggie:
[Chappell] said that if a plan is not approved in time for the 2013 election, she expects the election to follow the single-member district plan now in place.
Conspiracy theorists UNITE! Can you imagine the stink that would unleash?
THESE ARE DRAWN UP JUST FINE
- “I’d rather be a champion of the powerless than a lickspittle of the powerful.”
- Texas judges are the bomb.
- “Aggies should just man up.”
- Wanna stay married? Move.
- Rednecks for Obama.
- The Sanger ISD convocation seems like a hoot! | <urn:uuid:551fab1e-7b3d-4c39-8374-f376858ef682> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.beaumontenterprise.com/bayou/2011/08/26/beaumont-you-voted-for-it-but-that-doesn%E2%80%99t-mean-it%E2%80%99ll-actually-happen/ | 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 | 0.953474 | 712 | 1.679688 | 2 |
One of their most loyal patrons is an old gal who comes in each spring and just lays around for a month at a time. She has been doing it for about 10 years and has become so well known they even feed her.
She is a wild mallard duck and has nested at the store in various planter pots, among the soil aid bags, and near a decorative pond. This year she has bedded down in a large pot at the entrance to the garden center. Her mates–a couple of greenheaded drakes–have the run of the store while the doors are open.
So quiet is the duck we call “Daffy,” she is often overlooked by shoppers intent on finding just the right flowers for their springtime displays. We are not certain Daffy is really the original mother duck. Their lifespan is 7-9 years and most go off to that Great Duck Pond in the sky after only 2 years. However like salmon, ducks tend to return to their place of birth each year.
As soon as the ducklings hatch each year, Daffy leads them across the parking lot to the nearby Boise River for their introductory swimming lessons.
To insure more advertising-free Boise Guardian news, please consider financial support. | <urn:uuid:d4201051-66f7-419d-8ff7-0ed346505a82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boiseguardian.com/2010/05/11/repeat-customer-at-garden-store-lays-around/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98007 | 256 | 1.625 | 2 |
Helping to find room at the inn
“...love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”Matthew 19:19
I picture the phone call, my dad’s slight hesitation and—in my mind—hear him agree to the unusual request.
He gets in his Buick and drives to the motel where the caller said a couple would be waiting. I see my dad take the woman’s arm and guide her to the backseat. He then helps the husband, disabled from a work accident, and situates him in front before placing the man’s walker in the trunk.
As they leave the parking lot, the couple’s four young children peer out from behind the motel door.
They motor down the interstate under brilliant sunshine. The husband—Joseph—does most of the talking since Nyalak, who my dad calls “Little Mama” because he can’t pronounce her name and because she’s pregnant, does not know much English.
When they arrive in Lincoln, Dad takes them to the state capital where he once spent a decade, crafting legislation and helping others, before moving to Washington D.C. for another 10 years doing the same in Congress.
This time he’s the one asking help, without assistance from aides, for a Sudanese couple trying to rent a home.
Dad helps them sign papers at the capital and in a housing office at another location. They visit a Sudanese market before arriving at the couple’s prospective new home next to the Burlington-Northern railroad tracks.
The proximity to the tracks doesn’t bother “Little Mama” who tells my dad she “likes trains” as one rumbles by, blaring its horn.
Spirits are high as he wheels the Buick toward home.
The threesome stop in York for an early supper at Burger King (“Little Mama’s” choice)—a white-haired gentleman in his early 80s, a very tall man with a walker and a woman dressed in native garb.
Upon reaching home, Dad is bone tired. Joseph and “Little Mama” are grateful for his help.
He tells me about his whirlwind adventure the next day, noting that he experienced firsthand how folks from different countries and cultures have similar dreams and desires to those of us born and raised in the United States.
By listening to his inner voice and reaching out to Joseph and Nyalak, he was given a gift much more satisfying than those that come wrapped in paper and bows.
To borrow from Dr. Seuss, I believe my dad’s heart “grew three sizes that day.”
- Consultant retained for Lake Helen City engineer finalizing design
- Surveys reveal BBQ challenge successful
- Tears, laughter, dancing highlight GHS graduation
- ‘Circle of Friends’ said to be successful
- Tiani Reeves leads a group of five Swede state qualifiers
- Swedes place 8th at Cozad Invitational
- Golfers improve on West Wind course
- Legion baseball season begins May 23 | <urn:uuid:d9809579-6efe-4327-80da-d16e77bba925> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gothenburgtimes.com/?option=com_content&view=article&id=2307:helping-to-find-room-at-the-inn&catid=4:column&Itemid=5&fontstyle=f-smaller | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947424 | 654 | 1.523438 | 2 |
JUNEAU -- Litterbugs, beware. The city is no longer willing to pick up after you.
Think of 2012 as the year that broke the camel's back, says George Schaaf, the city's Park and Landscape Superintendent.
Maybe it was the deer carcasses in the middle of a parking lot. Could have been was the live clams, which were thrown in the street around the same time there were reports of paralytic shellfish poisoning. Perhaps it was the endless supply of tires, refrigerators and sofas at Montana Creek Drive.
"It's just demoralizing," Schaaf said, adding, "It started out as here's another year, another pile of trash. Our guys have to go take care of it again. There's got to be something we can do."
So he did. Schaaf recently reached into his department's budget and with his boss' approval purchased several portable, battery-powered trail cameras for a couple hundred dollars each. He installed them last month at various popular dump sites to catch litterers in the act.
At least six people have been caught and ticketed so far, he says.
Lead Community Services Officer for the Juneau Police Department Bob Dilley says that's the most they've ever issued in a year's time.
"The cameras seem to be very effective in figuring out who it was," Dilley said, noting the cameras are picking up license plate numbers.
The most recent catch was two weeks ago when a blue Chevy flare side pickup dumped a bed load full of tires in front of the shipping container on Montana Creek, right in front of one of the trail cameras.
It was too dark in the evening for the camera to pick up a plate number, but the truck was so distinguishable, Schaaf recognized it later when he was driving about town. He called police, who issued a citation punishable by up to $200.
When asked about privacy concerns, Schaaf said his staff only looks through the video footage when his staff finds litter at a specific place.
"We go and look at it when there's reason to," Schaaf said. "So if somebody dumps a sofa, we go pull the chip and find out who dumped the sofa. We all have a lot better things to do than to sit and look at all the hours of footage that actually come through."
Schaaf added that Juneau is not the only city to go to extremes to target litterers.
"It turns out there's communities all over the country doing the same thing," he said. "The state of Delaware has a grant program that funds the purchase of cameras statewide, and they put them over dump sites."
Juneau has a multitude of popular dump sites, Schaaf and Dilley said, including in North Douglas, Sunshine Cove, Shane Drive, Allen Court and near the university.
Schaaf says he intends on moving the cameras to various spots so they won't be in one place too long.
"Wherever we have a problem, we can put them," he said.
The most frequent items discarded are household trash, yard waste and furniture, he says. The deer carcasses, which are usually skinned and gutted, are an annual staple found when the snow melts.
"It wears on you after a while," Schaaf said. "A lot of it is disgusting stuff."
But the gross factor isn't the only reason for the cameras. The cost of paying to pick up the trash is.
Schaaf estimates the city spends about $10,000 a year in picking up the garbage in staff time, equipment and dumping fees.
"We pay the dump, just like everybody else," he said.
It cost approximately $5,000 to clean up the Montana Creek Road area two weeks ago, he said. It took three days, as well as a Bobcat and three large trucks to get all the garbage out of there, he said.
Schaaf speculates most people are trying to get out of paying dumping fees when they litter. It costs about $25 to go to the dump, which Dilley says beats getting a $200 ticket.
"It doesn't cost that much to go to the dump," Dilley said.
There are also recycling centers that take metal and other materials the dumps do not accept, Dilley added.
The city has many anti-littering ordinances that all fall under Code 36.30, which prohibits littering in public places, parks, lakes and fountains, throwing litter from vehicles and aircraft and littering on vacant lots, to name a few. State statute also prohibits littering and can carry up to a $1,000 fine.
Schaaf said the burden of picking up rubbish was keeping his staff, which is up to a dozen in the summer, from doing the work they do best.
"It takes them away from maintaining ball fields, repairing playground equipment, the things that most people think would be important for a park maintenance department," he said. "But you have to have four guys spending two days picking up trash, nothing else is getting done."
Now with the cameras installed, the superintendent says his staff, as well the Public Works Department staff which also picks up the garbage, feels more empowered.
"That's been the best part," he said. "They feel, I think, empowered, like it's not a losing battle and that the people are being held responsible."
He added, "As good as that is, the ultimate goal is for it to just stop. We don't want to have to have cameras. We don't to have to deal with dumping. Hopefully, people will just be responsible and take their trash to the dump like they should." | <urn:uuid:bdf68809-87d4-4e2e-b026-033fc1ec0a4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adn.com/2012/05/20/2473035/juneau-installs-security-cams.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983356 | 1,185 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Feds' next challenge: targeted data attacks
- By Patience Wait
- Jul 01, 2005
'With the developments we've seen in spyware, it's not surprising we're seeing these attacks now.'
'Cyber security Industry alliance's Paul Kurtz
J. Adam Fenster
Federal agencies are facing a new set of low-level but targeted Trojan horse software cyberattacks aimed at obtaining specific information from PCs.
These malicious e-mail messages contain stealth programs that direct infected computers to transmit sensitive and confidential information elsewhere.
U.S.-CERT officials would not comment on the new rash of attacks, but private-sector security experts confirmed an increase in targeted Trojan horse activity aimed at federal departments.
Roger Thompson, director of malicious content research for Computer Associates International Inc., said 'it would be na've' to think government systems aren't being targeted.
'We have entirely too much evidence to believe it's circumstantial,' he said. 'I've been told by people that I know, believe and trust that it's happening.'
According to a report published by SecurityFocus.com, a Web site dedicated to cybersecurity issues and owned by IT security vendor Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., similar attacks have been detected during the past year targeting agencies in other countries in addition to the United States.
'These electronic attacks have been under way for a significant period of time, with a recent increase in sophistication,' the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC), the U.K. equivalent of U.S.-CERT) said in a warning issued last month of attacks on British government and corporate systems. 'The attackers' aim ap- pears to be covert gathering and transmitting of commercially or economically valuable information.'
Agencies in Australia and Canada also issued alerts to government agencies and companies that are part of those nations' critical infrastructure.
One U.S.-CERT official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 'the NISCC bulletin was good security hygiene.'
'The fact that we're starting to see tailored attacks targeting government information systems that may seek to extract or alter information really should not surprise anybody,' said Paul Kurtz, executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, based in Arlington, Va. 'Particularly with the developments we've seen in spyware, it's not surprising we're seeing these attacks now.'
Alan Paller, director of research for the SANS Institute in Bethesda, Md., said the government's silence on the issue is not surprising under the circumstances.
'This administration doesn't want to admit the problem [of cyberthreats] is much worse than they thought it was,' Paller said.
Bob Dix, former staff director of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, said the attacks 'are just another manifestation of the lack of investment' in security measures.
'For years the focus has been, for federal agencies particularly, around features and functionality rather than security,' Dix, now a vice president of Citadel Security Software Inc. of Dallas, said. Agencies have focused on such things as patch management instead of a comprehensive strategy for vulnerability management and remediation.
'This is just the latest call to arms for folks,' he said.
Executives with other major computer security companies confirmed the attacks have been under way for some time.
'What we're all seeing, starting last year and coming into this year, is a changing profile of attacks,' said Vincent Weafer, senior director with Symantec. 'What we saw [were] unremarkable Trojans, things you'd see regularly coming into us. What is different is, they're creating thousands of these variants [and] they're using spamware to target specific entities.'
Kurtz believes cyberattacks can be categorized into three waves:
- Those that go after sensitive personal information
- Those that are closely related to the first, but go after proprietary information, such as economic or government intelligence on plans, programs and other actions
- Those that target control systems such as infrastructure for power grids.
'We need to anticipate' the third wave, Kurtz said.
To read the NISCC report, go to www.gcn.com
and enter 441 in the GCN.com/search box. | <urn:uuid:0cc331f0-1395-4557-8915-821a4506ceb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gcn.com/articles/2005/07/01/feds-next-challenge-targeted-data-attacks.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944282 | 895 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Tommy the Tom
1994 – 2009
By Zinta Aistars
"When tomorrow starts without Tommy remember the wisdom of our ancestors and elders:
"They are not dead who live in the hearts they leave behind. (Tuscarora)
In death, I am born. (Hopi)
I will be known forever by the tracks I leave. (Lakota)
Whether it be on the soft earth or in our hearts (Sharmagne)
After dark all cats are leopards. (Zuni)
And you gave Tommy the love and freedom to be both. (Sharmagne)
"We are made from Mother Earth and we go back to Mother Earth." (Shenandoah)
“Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath if a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."
~Sharmagne Leland-St. John-Sylbert
He’s just a cat. Only a cat. But how often did I think that God must have created the animal to teach us, as if His superior creation, how to live and how to love. And still we do not learn.
Tommy knew how: to live and to love. About 15 years ago, my son, Markus, brought him home in his school backpack. We lived in the country then, fields and cows for neighbors. This little kitten was roaming around in the field grass yowling for a mama that wasn’t and for sustenance it appeared he had not had in a long time when my son, walking home from school, noticed him. He was an estimated few days old, maybe a couple weeks at most. My little boy human child handed me the little boy cat child, and said: “Can we help him?”
Would sure as heck try.
I’d never seen so much spunk. The tiny tuxedo cat was pathetic in appearance. His tuxedo was mussed and in patches—he had mange. His watery eyes were full of puss. His nose ran and his little wisps of breath came with effort—bronchitis, we would learn.
Goodness, I already had two cats. We had only days ago agreed to take another black calico kitten, naming her Jiggy, another rescue story of a mother cat and litter someone had thrown into the Kalamazoo River in a sack. My dear friend Jerry had a soft heart and no tolerance for feline abuse, pulled the sack from the river, and was now busy trying to find homes for all. I took the one. Jiggy was youth beside my old calico, Poga (Latvian for button, as her eyes were as big as), yet another rescue story and several times over. Poga was closing in on 19 years. And then, there was Holly, Jerry’s golden retriever, who enjoyed staying with us in the country where she could walk in freedom and enjoy the expansive bounty of nature.
Oh, another cat…
But look at him! Squirming with life, trilling a purr in his ribbed little body when I rubbed a finger under that little chin. Off to the vet we went, with no idea how I would pay… it was not an easy time in my life then, financially.
I listened as the vet shook his head and pronounced his verdict: should put the little guy down. Not a chance. Far too sick. Body covered with fleas, too.
I glanced down at our feet while the vet droned on. That little kitten was skittering from one corner of the clinic to the other. Between our feet then off again. Falling and getting up again. Curious as a cat should be.
“Look at him,” I said. “Who am I to say die when this kitten is obviously so interested in living?”
Vet smiled. Okay. So he sent me home with a shopping bag of pet meds, and when I got home, my son gave up his bedroom for quarantined space. All his furniture came out. Bare hardwood floor and walls, just an old blanket for comfort. We would call him Tommy the tomcat, because there was something so masculine about the way he moved. A swagger, like a little cat version of John Wayne.
Pills, ointments, cuddles and rocking that little life like someone’s child… and he became another one of mine. The furry one. To add to my furry crew, always room for one more.
Fifteen years later, my heart was pinned to that cat heart. We had shared many paths, and he kept teaching me how to love. He was a faithful tom when the human kind were not. He loved me even when I was cranky and undeserving. He thought I was wonderful when I was anything but, and it had nothing to do with who had the hand that fed him—although that was always a moment of joy for a cat born in starvation. And Tommy loved the Alaskan Malamute, Suni, that came into our lives. No bias against species here. Especially once the 125-pound dog understood the 12-pound cat was boss. After Suni was Guinnez, each with their own rescue story, and Guinnez would get boxed, left right left, with soft white paws when he disobeyed … but the chow pup showed deep respect and abiding love for his fellow critter in the house. Guinnez learned to wash his face like a cat from watching his admired cat brother. Guinnez walks along the back of the sofa and perches on the sofa arm, 46 pounds of him, as if he, too, were a cat, because he could see: being a cat was a wise thing to be.
Only Jiggy never quite liked him. Starvation was in Tommy’s bones, and he would steal food from his sister cat at the blink of a cat’s eye. Hisssssssssss. Swat! Yum.
But for me, he was my little tuxedo man, all grace. His coat now shining like silk, and as soft. He kept his tux meticulously clean, up until he was diagnosed as diabetic, requiring two insulin shots per day. The old body was getting worn out. His cleaning was not quite so meticulous. I snipped the mats from his fur where he couldn’t reach them. He tolerated it.
Every night, coming home from work, Tommy and Guinnez would greet me at the door, Jiggy keeping a more dignified (and safer) distance. No matter how taxing the day, my furry family always cheered me. Human children grown and gone, I still had my three fuzzed musketeers to love and amuse.
How to know what transpires in those little minds? I have often thought we greatly underestimate the wisdom of the animal. Our own ignorance, and arrogance, to think we alone ponder and reason and know the full range of emotion. I always had to wonder what Tommy thought in that sweet little head. At night, Guinnez would sleep at my feet, Jiggy up on top of the pillow, but Tommy…. Oh, Tommy knew his place. He swaggered right up to my face, little tuxedoed cowboy that he was, and curled up to put nose to nose. I would open my palm just below my chin, and he would slide his paw in. Paw in hand, hand in paw, we slept.
Just a cat. But I always knew I was important to this little someone.
So when at least my vacation had arrived, and I headed up to my much loved Keweenaw… I worried about Tom the tom. Every time I leave, he gets a little weaker. It’s not just a play on words to say I knew that cat would die for me. I explained to my parents, critter sitters and house warmers that they were in my absence, how to give him his insulin shots, how to feed him the special dietary cat food, how to love him just so and tell him I’d soon be back…
My vet is a very good vet. She has doctored my little tom through various illnesses and brought him back to life more than once. She always told me he was sweet natured, even when the people there had to poke and prod him, as if understanding, purring his funny trill in acknowledgement. They were convinced nearly a year ago that he was about to die. I sat in the “goodbye room” with him for most of that day, petting him, whispering to him, until he came around again, his appetite for life… and food… returning, and amazing all.
But I knew this time was different. I knew he was in pain because of yet another blockage. While giving him momentary relief with a catheter, the vet showed me the ultrasound of his bladder, a tatter of bumps and lumps, more blockages to come. His blood work amazed her, she said. No reason this kitty should still be alive. His blood sugar was through the roof, his kidneys were shot, his bladder filled with blood, and another column of numbers that matched no living creature she’d ever worked on.
“Must have been love,” she said, her own eyes watering. “He must have wanted to see you one more time.”
Just a cat. But I pressed my lips to that tiny head, our eyes meeting just one more time. When she pressed the needle into the vein in his back foot, I could not hold back the sobs, and felt no shame. No shame in my grief. In loving an animal who loved me more, and more purely, than most humans have.
I’ll miss you, Tommy. I’ll miss you. I think you are wise enough to know how much.
Epilogue: Tonight, I will dig the soft earth of this patch of land where I live, and Tommy will rest beside Poga, who died the first night I moved into this house. My son and I plan to plant a small evergreen atop their adjacent graves. | <urn:uuid:37268b14-a637-413a-9498-ed30f8c81477> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zintaaistars.blogspot.com/2009/09/tommy-tom-1994-2009.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985149 | 2,191 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The Italian Portfolio:
Evidence of Hands on Stone
Colors, Lines and Shapes
January 25, 2008 - March 14, 2008
Reception: February 1, 2008
Artist Statement by Jeff Curto
Since 1989, I have been photographing the architectural landscape of Italy, exploring the visual splendor of its religious, public and vernacular structures. These objects are the evidence of patient application of hands on stone, allowing extraordinary things to be created from ordinary materials. Over time, layers of the past and present combine to create something that will remain to be seen in the future.
My photographs are my response to this subtle layering of the ancient and the contemporary in Italian architecture. For me, the buildings, their materials and the light that plays on them not only describe the passage of time but also the sense of proportion, beauty and attention to minute details of life and living for which Italy is justly famous. Though the hands of the men and women who crafted these structures are always visible, I eliminate the physical presence of people in the photographs to place the emphasis on the objects themselves. In this, I am following the documentary tradition in photography, though my objective is to give the images a sense of timelessness, much like the structures themselves possess.
I work with a large format camera for its ability to express nuances of tone and detail as well as for the deliberate actions which the camera requires and which I enjoy. While the camera and the film inside of it are "old" technology, my prints are inkjet. The film is scanned and the images are printed with pigment inks on rag paper, so the 16 by 20 inch prints, like their subjects, exhibit a respectful mixture of the past and the present, with an eye to the future.
Artist Statement by Tanya Lunina
The variety of the world of photography and its different genres make photography a kind of activity which requires a careful and creative approach. Also, photography is an opportunity to see the world by the eyes of other people.
My current exhibition presents my experience in close-up photography, specifically, an amazing world of flowers. It is always interesting for me to photograph flowers not only as their botanical views but also look at them from different angle. I try to find something unique and emphasize their colors, lines or shapes. The result sometimes is wonderful. Depending on appropriate light, colors of flowers become brighter, saturated and deeper or softer and smoother. Lines and shapes have visual effects. Depending on direction, lines add dynamics or elegance one or another image. Shapes give minimalism and completeness for a picture.
I take my pictures digitally and usually use natural directional or diffuse lighting. Close-up photography is the open project for me as I believe this theme is endless.
I hope you will enjoy the exhibition and find your own vision or feeling about my pictures. Please, also, visit my web-site www.tl-photography.com where my other works are presented. | <urn:uuid:d7310d29-4b1e-46c0-a0b9-6b82b61b6768> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fnal.gov/pub/Art_Gallery/archive/CurtoLunina/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944533 | 605 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Although many book shops have closed, with the arrival of digital downloads, book and audio clubs seem to grow in strength. One of my friends who is a member of her local book club says that about 80% of the people download the reading materials, rather than buy the book at a shop.
As an author, I have more than a passing interest in these trends. In particular, I am interested to hear that many people are now preferring to listen to a book on an audio system, rather than read the book. As a result, I have started recording more and more of the biographical interviews with amazing people, such as Elvis Presley, Michelangelo, Coco Chanel, Marie Curie and others.
Also, I have started to record more support material, such as articles and highlights emerging from our work on the psychology of amazing people and their achievements.
People in book clubs will soon be calling them book and audio clubs as the balance will move more towards listening. The next phase will be Audio Visual Clubs. This wil arrrive with publication of the new Apple i books and the enhanced E Pub 3 versions on the Android based delivery systems. I have seen what can be done and it is truly amazing.
We will publish our first versions this month. At the click of a finger, you can gain a full story inclusive of the written words, the audio, the illustrations, the video and all the support documents with which you can play. We have built quiz applications into our muti media publications, as they are called.
So, when someone says they are going to a Book Club, think way beyond the old days of a hard back printed book. Today, you can have an engaging experience where the book comes alive with audios and visuals and the click and play facility associated with children’s online games.
In the process, we will all learn more quickly, but that will be a necessity in order to survive. As Lewis Carroll said, in this Alice in Wonderland book, -‘you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’ | <urn:uuid:bb727406-e290-420e-8a65-de5a64eb9e9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://myamazingpeople.com/book-and-audio-clubs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971211 | 449 | 1.632813 | 2 |
- Story Ideas
- Send Corrections
TRENTON — The statewide devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy prompted Gov. Chris Christie on the morning of Halloween to use his constitutional authority to reschedule the Oct. 31 holiday to Monday, Nov. 5, but Trenton and other New Jersey municipalities aren’t following the governor’s executive order.
“The guidance we’re giving all towns is to postpone their celebrations until Monday,” said Kevin Roberts, a spokesperson for Christie. “We believe that much time is necessary to ensure conditions are safe enough for towns to take part in them. Compliance with the order is a local matter, but it’s one we feel is necessary to ensure that Halloween celebrations happen in way that is enjoyable and safe for children.”
Hurricane Sandy barreled toward New Jersey on Oct. 28, striking the state on Oct. 29 as a “super storm” of high winds and torrential rains that “produced unprecedented severe weather conditions, including enormous storm surges and devastating flooding,” according to Christie’s executive order.
“The hazardous conditions created by Hurricane Sandy make the traditional community celebrations of Halloween, including neighborhood ‘trick-or-treating’ walks both dangerous to our state’s children, and imprudent at a time when all New Jerseyans are struggling to cope with their losses,” Christie said in his order.
On Wednesday, the Mercer County municipalities of Trenton, Hopewell Borough, Hopewell Township and Pennington affirmed they will celebrate Halloween on Saturday, Nov. 3, not Nov. 5 as Christie ordered.
“Saturday affords us a better opportunity for a family day during the day and early evening,” Hopewell Borough Mayor Paul Anzano said on Wednesday in explaining why his borough will host Halloween on Saturday rather than next Monday.
But Christie’s executive leadership proved persuasive for some communities.
The governor’s order prompted West Windsor on Wednesday to change its Halloween plans. Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh originally announced West Windsor would have Halloween on Nov. 3 but later said he agrees with Christie’s order and will comply with it.
Ewing Mayor Bert Steinmann, after consulting with his emergency management and public works advisers, on Tuesday made the call to celebrate Halloween Nov. 3. But when Christie issued the order on Wednesday, that prompted Steinmann to consider going with the Nov. 5 date, instead, according to Steinmann.
Steinmann said he wished Christie issued the executive order before Oct. 31 but praised Christie’s leadership during the storm crisis. “I believe the governor is doing a fantastic job in managing the storm crisis for the state of New Jersey,” Steinmann said of Christie on Wednesday.
In terms of Halloween, “I’m willing to consider doing it on Nov. 5 but will consult with my people and make a phone call with all my residents and try to make it uniform with New Jersey,” Steinmann said.
The issue of concern is that Nov. 5 comes after daylight saving time ends — meaning the sun will set about 5 p.m. — and Monday is a school day, Steinmann said. He said 90 percent of Ewing resident are projected to have electrical power restored by Friday and that he is “very confident” Ewing Township could host a safe and enjoyable Halloween on Saturday.
To end any confusion, Steinmann said he will soon put out a message on whether Ewing will keep Halloween set for Nov. 3 or move it to Nov. 5 to be consistent with Christie’s order.
Princeton Township and Princeton Borough on Wednesday advised Princetonians to not go out for traditional Halloween activities on Oct. 31 “due to treacherous conditions. The roads remain unsafe, many are without lights, power lines are down and trees and other obstructions persist over many of our roadways. We urge residents to remain in place and will work with the school district to announce any other alternative Halloween plans in the days ahead.”
The Mercer County communities of East Windsor, Hamilton, Hightstown, Lawrence, Robbinsville and West Windsor on Wednesday confirmed they are celebrating Halloween on Nov. 5 to comply with Christie’s order. | <urn:uuid:38b5ac2a-5328-4613-85bf-4481df5c6e81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trentonian.com/article/20121101/NEWS01/121039922/christie-orders-nov-5-halloween-trenton-among-those-opting-for-saturday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933443 | 889 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.