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Many academics are envious of those who combine outstanding scholarly gifts with the judicious deployment of political skills. Certainly, there are few academics who rival Professor George Metakides' ability to take bold initiatives in academic research while shrewdly turning even the most forbidding political prospect into an advantage.
At an early age, George Metakides was reluctant to accept a negative answer from those who claimed to be in authority over him. While still a primary schoolboy his response to the cancellation of a planned school picnic was to march his fellow pupils to a local football pitch where they duly enjoyed the picnic. It is said that this act of defiance led to his expulsion from that school, but whether the ultimate sanction was applied or not George Metakides is a born leader and it is as an inspiring leader, not only in the field of mathematical logic - he holds the Chair of Logic at the University of Patras in his native Greece - but as Director of ESPRIT, the European Union-funded Information Technology research programme that we honour him today.
His achievements have been remarkable, particularly since from the start he had to fight hard to achieve the resources he believed necessary in order to achieve his purposes. It was against strong opposition that he won an allocation of five percent of the ESPRIT budget towards academic research. Through his powers of persistent and intelligent persuasion this sum rose within a few years to ten per cent and the sums of money involved are far from trivial. The annual ESPRIT budget for long term research is now something like fifty million pounds.
Professor Metakides has also been responsible for building up an impressive team of officers and research workers. As is appropriate for someone who loves fishing as a recreation he has been an astute fisher of men. He is a shrewd judge of character, and his capacity to woo a potential colleague is legendary. Once convinced that someone will add the right blend of qualities to the team he uses every legitimate form of inducement to ensure that persons of ability and promise are appointed to the post most suitable for the deployment of their skills. Even the choice of a speaker at a formal dinner is known to have been exploited by Professor Metakides for the attainment of a particular and necessary end. When his masters in Brussels were hesitant about the virtues of networking he invited a speaker from the Computing Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to address the ESPRIT Dinner. It was of course purely coincidental that the speaker extolled the virtues of networking, and that what Professor Metakides had desired duly came to pass. On such occasion a wistful but contented smile is known to cross his face.
But while he's astute in promoting his own research activities and in making sure that the research with which he is specially identified is properly resourced, he has also been active in doing everything possible to facilitate the research of those less happily placed. He is concerned for the wellbeing of the entire European scientific community, and he has been particularly eager to help those in the former Communist bloc who lack the advantages of their colleagues in the West and who have faced immense problems since the breakdown of the former system in the East. Not only has Professor Metakides created a research funding scheme on the model of the National Science Foundation in the United States of America, he has also provided effective support for scientists in Eastern Europe, taking particular care with regard to the provision of equipment and the enhancement of academic salaries, and doing this only when scientists in Eastern Europe have been properly and fully consulted about their real needs and urgent requirements.
It is evident therefore that George Metakides has a broad and imaginative vision of what scientific research entails and how it should be supported. But he is just as eager to relate research to the needs of industry. Through his efforts, many leading European information technology research groups have become partners in the industry-related ESPRIT Programme, so that the findings of academic research may be speedily and effectively applied to the needs of industry. Professor Metakides has had a strong influence on thinking in Brussels about the future information society. He is now in charge of ESPRIT as a whole, covering much more than information technology, and he master-minded the G7 Summit Meeting at Corfu at which the Information Society Initiative first received international political support from Heads of State.
Within the European Community and throughout Europe few men have contributed so much as Professor Metakides to the advancement of knowledge, the application of knowledge to contemporary needs, and the thoughtful review of future developments. Part of the secret of his success is his resourcefulness in evading the technicalities and delays of the Brussels bureaucracy. When ESPRIT badly needed additional accommodation he was told that if he acted through normal procedures he would have to wait for two years. Professor Metakides listened attentively, but acting on his own initiative arranged for the service contract rental of an entire building and in so doing got his extra space. When the internal auditors called for an explanation Professor Metakides just happened to be away on holiday. He got his building and he escaped censure.
Professor Metakides is the product of a broad education. A Greek by birth, he received his M.Sc. in electrical engineering and his Ph.D. in mathematical logic from Cornell University in the United States. After holding posts at Rochester University, Cornell and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he took up the Chair of Mathematical Logic at Patras in 1978. He has found time to indulge his love of his subject by co-authoring a recently published book on mathematical logic. George Metakides views large issues within a far ranging perspective. He is a man of immense vision. I therefore ask you Mr Chancellor to confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa.
Professor J.W. Derry
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Commentary on the Bible, by Adam Clarke, , at sacred-texts.com
The transfiguration of Christ, and the discourse occasioned by it, Mar 9:1-13. He casts out a dumb spirit which his disciples could not, vv. 14-29. He foretells his death, Mar 9:30-32. The disciples dispute about supremacy, and Christ corrects them, Mar 9:33-37. Of the person who cast out demons in Christ's name, but did not follow him, Mar 9:38-40. Every kind of office done to the disciples of Christ shall be rewarded by him, and all injuries done to them shall be punished, Mar 9:41, Mar 9:42. The necessity of mortification and self-denial, Mar 9:43-48. Of the salting of sacrifices, Mar 9:49; and the necessity of having union among the disciples of Christ, Mar 9:50.
There be some - This verse properly belongs to the preceding chapter, and to the preceding discourse. It is in this connection in Mat 16:27-28 (note). See the notes there.
And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, etc. - For a full account of the nature and design of the transfiguration, see on Mat 17:1 (note), etc.
A high mountain - I have conjectured, Mat 17:1, that this was one of the mountains of Galilee: some say Hermon, some Tabor; but Dr. Lightfoot thinks a mountain near Caesarea Philippi to be more likely.
Was transfigured - Four good MSS. and Origen add here, And While They Were Praying he was transfigured; but this appears to be added from Luk 9:29.
And they kept that saying - This verse is wanting in two MSS. and one of the Itala.
What the rising from the dead should mean - Ὁταν εκ νεκρων αναϚῃ, When he should arise from the dead, is the reading of D, six others, Syriac, all the Persic, Vulgate, all the Itala, and Jerome. Griesbach approves of it. There is nothing that answers to this verse either in Matthew or Luke.
And how it is written - Rather, as also it is written. Instead of και πως, And How it is written, I read καθως, As Also it is written of the Son of man, etc. This reading is supported by AKM, seventeen others, the later Syriac in the margin, Slavonic and Armenian. Some think the propriety of adopting this reading is self-evident.
Were greatly amazed - Probably, because he came so unexpectedly; but the cause of this amazement is not self-evident.
A dumb spirit - That is, a demon who afflicted those in whom it dwelt with an incapacity of speaking. The spirit itself could not be either deaf or dumb. These are accidents that belong only to organized animate bodies. See this case explained, Mat 17:14 (note), etc.
Pineth away - By these continual torments; so he was not only deaf and dumb, but sorely tortured besides.
When he saw him the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, etc. - When this demon saw Jesus, he had great rage, knowing that his time was short; and hence the extraordinary convulsions mentioned above.
If Thou canst Do any thing - I have already tried thy disciples, and find they can do nothing in this case; but if thou hast any power, in mercy use it in our behalf.
If Thou canst Believe - This was an answer to the inquiry above. I can furnish a sufficiency of power, if thou canst but bring faith to receive it. Why are not our souls completely healed? Why is not every demon cast out? Why are not pride, self-will, love of the world, lust, anger, peevishness, with all the other bad tempers and dispositions which constitute the mind of Satan, entirely destroyed? Alas! it is because we do not believe; Jesus is able; more, Jesus is willing; but we are not willing to give up our idols; we give not credence to his word; therefore hath sin a being in us, and dominion over us.
Lord, I believe - The word Lord is omitted by ABCDL, both the Syriac, both the Arabic later Persic, Ethiopic, Gothic, and three copies of the Itala. Griesbach leaves it out. The omission, I think, is proper, because it is evident the man did not know our Lord, and therefore could not be expected to accost him with a title expressive of that authority which he doubted whether he possessed, unless we grant that he used the word κυριε after the Roman custom, for Sir.
Help thou mine unbelief - That is, assist me against it. Give me a power to believe.
I charge thee - Considerable emphasis should be laid on the pronoun: - Thou didst resist the command of my disciples, now I command thee to come out. If this had been only a natural disease, for instance the epilepsy, as some have argued, could our Lord have addressed it, with any propriety, as he has done here: Thou deaf and dumb spirit, come out of him, and enter no more into him? Is the doctrine of demoniacal influence false? If so, Jesus took the most direct method to perpetuate the belief of that falsity, by accommodating himself so completely to the deceived vulgar. But this was impossible; therefore the doctrine of demoniacal influence is a true doctrine, otherwise Christ would never have given it the least countenance or support.
Prayer and fasting - See on Mat 17:21 (note).
This demon may be considered as an emblem of deeply rooted vices, and inveterate habits, over which the conquest is not generally obtained, but through extraordinary humiliations.
This case is related by both Matthew and Luke, but it is greatly amplified in Mark's account, and many new circumstances related. Another proof that Mark did not abridge Matthew.
They - passed through Galilee - See on Mat 17:22-27 (note).
But they understood not - This whole verse is wanting in two MSS., in the first edition of Erasmus, and in that of Aldus. Mill approves of the omission. It does not appear likely, from Matthew's account, that three of the disciples, Peter, James, and John, could be ignorant of the reasons of Christ's death and resurrection, after the transfiguration; on the contrary, from the circumstances there related, it is very probable that from that time they must have had at least a general understanding of this important subject; but the other nine might have been ignorant of this matter, who were not present at the transfiguration; probably it is of these that the evangelist speaks here. See the observations on the transfiguration, Mat 17:9 (note), etc., and Mat 18:1 (note).
And being in the house - That is, Peter's house, where he ordinarily lodged. This has been often observed before.
Who should be the greatest - See on Mat 18:1-5 (note).
We saw one casting out devils in thy name - It can scarcely be supposed that a man who knew nothing of Christ, or who was only a common exorcist, could be able to work a miracle in Christ's name; we may therefore safely imagine that this was either one of John the Baptist's disciples, who, at his master's command, had believed in Jesus, or one of the seventy, whom Christ had sent out, Luk 10:1-7, who, after he had fulfilled his commission, had retired from accompanying the other disciples; but as he still held fast his faith in Christ, and walked in good conscience, the influence of his Master still continued with him, so that he could cast out demons as well as the other disciples.
He followeth not us - This first clause is omitted by BCL, three others, Syriac, Armenian, Persic, Coptic, and one of the Itala. Some of the MSS. and versions leave out the first; some the second clause: only one of them is necessary. Griesbach leaves out the first.
We forbade him - I do not see that we have any right to attribute any other motive to John than that which he himself owns - because he followed not us - because he did not attach himself constantly to thee, as we do, we thought he could not be in a proper spirit.
Forbid him not - If you meet him again, let him go on quietly in the work in which God owns him. If he were not of God, the demons would not be subject to him, and his work could not prosper. A spirit of bigotry has little countenance from these passages. There are some who are so outrageously wedded to their own creed, and religious system, that they would rather let sinners perish than suffer those who differ from them to become the instruments of their salvation. Even the good that is done they either deny or suspect, because the person does not follow them. This also is vanity and an evil disease.
He that is not against us, is on our part - Or rather, Whosoever is not against You, is for You. Instead of ἡμων, us, I would read ὑμων, you, on the authority of ADSHV, upwards of forty others, Syriac, Armenian, Persic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Gothic, Slavonic, Vulgate, Itala, Victor, and Opt. This reading is more consistent with the context - He followed not us - well, he is not against You; and he who is not against you, in such a work, may be fairly presumed to be on your side.
There is a parallel case to this mentioned in Num 11:26-29, which, for the elucidation of this passage, I will transcribe. "The Spirit rested upon Eldad and Medad, and they prophesied in the camp. And there ran a young man, and told Moses, and said, Eldad and Medad do prophesy in the camp. And Joshua, the servant of Moses, said, My lord Moses, forbid them! And Moses said unto him, Enviest Thou for My sake? Would God, that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them." The reader will easily observe that Joshua and John were of the same bigoted spirit; and that Jesus and Moses acted from the spirit of candour and benevolence. See the notes on Num 11:25-29 (note).
A cup of water to drink - See the notes on Mat 10:42; Mat 18:6-8.
Thy hand - foot - eye - cause thee to offend; - See the notes on Mat 5:29-30 (note).
The fire that never shall be quenched - That is, the inextinguishable fire. This clause is wanting in L, three others, the Syriac, and later Persic. Some eminent critics suppose it to be a spurious reading; but the authorities which are for it, are by no means counterbalanced by those which are against it. The same clause in Mar 9:45, is omitted in BCL, seven others, Syriac, later Persic, Coptic, and one Itala. Eternal fire is the expression of Matthew.
For every one shall be salted with fire - Every one of those who shall live and die in sin: but there is great difficulty in this verse. The Codex Bezae, and some other MSS., have omitted the first clause; and several MSS. keep the first, and omit the last clause - and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. There appears to be an allusion to Isa 66:24. It is generally supposed that our Lord means, that as salt preserves the flesh with which it is connected from corruption, so this everlasting fire, το πυρ το ασβεστον, this inconsumable fire, will have the property, not only of assimilating all things cast into it to its own nature, but of making them inconsumable like itself.
Scaliger supposes, that instead of πας πυρι, πασα πυρια, every sacrifice (of flour) should be read, "Every sacrifice (of flour) shall be salted, and every burnt offering shall be salted." This, I fear, is taking the text by storm. Some take the whole in a good sense, as referring to the influence of the Spirit of God in the hearts of believers, which shall answer the same end to the soul, in preserving it from the contagion that is in the world, as salt did in the sacrifices offered to God to preserve them from putrefaction. Old Trapp's note on the place pleases me as much as any I have seen: - "The Spirit, as salt, must dry up those bad humours in us which breed the never-dying worm; and, as fire, must waste our corruptions, which else will carry us on to the unquenchable fire." Perhaps the whole is an allusion to the purification of vessels, and especially such metallic vessels as were employed in the service of the sanctuary. Probably the following may be considered as a parallel text: - Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shalt make go through the fire, and it shall be clean; and all that abideth not the fire, ye shall make go through the water, Num 31:23. Ye, disciples, are the Lord's sacrifice; ye shall go through much tribulation, in order to enter into my kingdom: but ye are salted, ye are influenced by the Spirit of God, and are immortal till your work is done; and should ye be offered up, martyred, this shall be a means of establishing more fully the glad tidings of the kingdom: and this Spirit shall preserve all who believe on me from the corruption of sin, and from eternal perdition. That converts to God are represented as his offering, see Isa 66:20, the very place which our Lord appears to have here in view.
If this passage be taken according to the common meaning, it is awful indeed! Here may be seen the greatness, multiplicity, and eternity, of the pains of the damned. They suffer without being able to die; they are burned without being consumed; they are sacrificed without being sanctified - are salted with the fire of hell, as eternal victims of the Divine Justice. We must of necessity be sacrificed to God, after one way or other, in eternity; and we have now the choice either of the unquenchable fire of his justice, or of the everlasting flame of his love. Quesnel.
If the salt have lost his saltness - See on Mat 5:13 (note).
Have salt in yourselves - See that ye have at all times the preserving principle of Divine grace in your hearts, and give that proof of it which will satisfy your own minds, and convince or silence the world: live in brotherly kindness and peace with each other: thus shall all men see that you are free from ambition, (see Mar 9:34), and that you are my disciples indeed. That it is possible for the salt to lose its savor, and yet retain its appearance in the most perfect manner, see proved on the note on Mat 5:13 (note).
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2012-13 Budget: A Look at County Human Services Pilot Program
July 3, 2012
More 2012-13 Budget Resources
Final Budget Analysis
Fact Sheets and Overviews
PBPC Budget Tables
Legislative Budget Tables
2012-13 Budget: Education Funding by School District (including Basic Ed & ABG)
2012-13 Budget: Education Funding by School District (including Basic Ed, ABG & Distressed School Funding)
Other PA Budget Resources
Governor Tom Corbett proposed combining the line items of seven county human services into a single block grant, called the Human Services Development Block Grant, beginning in July 2012. The programs include the Behavioral Health Services Initiative, Mental Health Services, drug and alcohol services previously included in Medical Assistance – Outpatient, Intellectual Disability Community Base funding, special county grants included in Child Welfare, and the Human Services Development Fund.
The block grant was not adopted and funding lines were restored in the budget, although overall funding was reduced from $842 million in 2011-12 to $758 million in 2012-13, with each program sustaining a 10% reduction.
Instead, the Welfare Code bill (House Bill 1261, Act 80 of 2012) creates a Human Services Block Grant Pilot Program. It also creates a new requirement that counties submit a consolidated human services plan. Details are listed below.
The Pilot Program
- Up to 20 counties each fiscal year may participate in the block grant program.
- Counties will receive the same share of total state dollars allocated to these programs as was appropriated in 2011-12.
- Counties must submit an initial block grant proposal to the Department of Public Welfare (DPW). However, the criteria with which DPW will review the proposals have yet to be determined. After approval, counties must submit annual pilot plans detailing how they intend to deliver services and ensure services are delivered in the least restrictive environment.
- Two public hearings must be held on county block grant plans prior to the submission to DPW.
- The block grant has a five-year phase in, although counties may request a waiver from this provision. The share of county human services funding that is allowed to be reallocated grows each year: 20% in 2012-13, 25% in 2013-14, 50% in 2014-15, 75% in 2015-16 and 100% in 2016-17.
- Counties may reallocate block grant funds to “county human services programs,” which are defined as aging services, services for dependent or delinquent children, or services to low-income individuals — as well as the services included in the block grant program. Counties would be permitted to use Intellectual Disabilities funding for child welfare services, for example.
- Counties may not eliminate any of the services (intellectual disabilities, mental health, homelessness, or drug and alcohol services) but may increase funds for one service and reduce funding for another.
- DPW retains the power to approve all plans, reallocate federal funds to assure compliance with federal law, audit counties and private contractors, and inspect financial records.
- Counties are still bound by federal and state requirements, and DPW will continue to monitor and enforce statutory requirements.
- DPW must submit a report on the block grant program by January 2014, then annually each February, to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, House Human Services and House Health committees and the House and Senate Appropriations committees.
The County Consolidated Human Services Plan
- DPW is authorized to establish a new uniform and consolidated process for counties to submit plans and reports on human services programs in the seven program areas subject to the block grant.
- The report includes information on the delivery of services by client population served, use and distribution of funds, and expenditures for each program, including block grant expenditures for counties participating in the pilot program.
- Prior to submitting a report, counties must hold at least two public hearings where individuals and families who receive services may testify about the plan.
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By Robert A. Guth and Don Clark
Nathan Myhrvold allows as how he wasn’t the most popular kid in school. But his business of making money from other people’s patents made him particularly unpopular at D: All Things Digital.
He faced sharp questions from audience members as to whether the business of his firm, Intellectual Ventures, is good for innovation or tends to hinder it. Myhrvold argued that one main reason for the animosity is that people find its business disruptive to the status quo–like important new companies like Facebook–and therefore threatening.
And there’s also a bit of hypocrisy, in his view. Some tech executives find it okay for companies to pay engineers handsomely to make inventions but that other inventors, such as those at companies that never made, shouldn’t benefit from sales of their patents, Myhrvold said.
“There’s an attitude in Silicon Valley that some kinds of meritocracy deserves to be rewarded,” while other kinds shouldn’t,” he said.
Intellectual Ventures, while it does come up with its own inventions, is best known for buying up patents from other companies. In many cases, the firm licenses them to other technology companies, though it subsequently resorted to some litigation after avoiding it for years. Along the way, the firm has often been given the derisive title of “patent troll.”
At the conference, Myhrvold argued that firms like his are helping turn bring about a mature, liquid market for patents as assets along the same lines that venture capitalists, private equity firms and public equity markets helped create markets for other assets.
That will help assure that inventors are rewarded for their work in a way that they often aren’t today. “It’s very hard for individual inventors,” to get paid, he said. “If the people who create don’t get paid, that ultimately is a problem.”
To make his point, he said that many big companies don’t invest in research that spawns inventions or handle their inventors well. Chief finance officers don’t see the value of investing in research, which they see at a “roach motel for dollars,” he said. “The dollars check in but they don’t come out,” he said.
Myhrvold was pressed on whether that his buying and enforcement of patents contributed to a recent spate of lawsuits, which left courts with little technology expertise, to decide important patent cases. The exchanges with questioners in the audience got heated at times, with some suggesting that Intellectual Ventures and the fear of litigation makes life harder for innovators.
Perhaps his strongest riposte was the fact that many large companies, including Google and Facebook, have bought major patent portfolios to serve to use for defensive reasons in suits.
“They are all doing exactly what I’m doing,” he said.
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CNN — Dog owners listen up.
One brand of dog treat is being voluntarily recalled because it could be contaminated with salmonella.
Nature's Recipe say the affected product is its "Oven Baked Biscuits with Real Chicken."
It was manufactured at the Del Monte Foods Pet Products plant in Topeka, Kansas and distributed nationwide.
The products were sold in 19-ounce stand-up resealable pouches and have a "best if used by date" stamp of "10-11-13" and "10-12-13."
Symptoms of salmonella infection in dogs include diarrhea, fever, vomiting and lethargic behavior.
The company says the recall is precautionary and advises anyone who bought the recalled treats to throw them away
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Last week, in NJ v. EPA, the D.C. Circuit invalidated the Bush Administration's regulations establishing regulatory limits and a voluntary cap-and-trade program for mercury emissions from power plants, as I noted here. The opinion was a decisive loss for the Bush Administration, if not for the industry. The Bush Administration's regulatory strategy was significantly less aggressive than that initially set in motion under President Clinton (albeit in the waning days of his administration), and now the EPA will have to do it again.
Whatever one's opinion of the need for greater controls on mercury emissions or the use of cap-and-trade for this sort of pollutant, the D.C. Circuit's opinion makes abundantly clear that the Bush EPA's effort was illegal. Indeed, after reading the opinion it is not at all clear to me that the EPA even tried to comply with the Clean Air Act's requirements in writing their rules.
On December 20, 2000, as the Clinton Administration was coming to a close, the EPA listed coal-fired utilities as a source of mercury emissions under Section 112(c) of the Clean Air Act (CAA), a decision that would require regulating mercury emissions as hazardous air pollutants under the Act. The Bush Administration did not agree with this approach to controlling mercury emissions, preferring a less stringent and more flexible regulatory strategy than that contemplated by the Clinton Administration. So in 2004 the Bush EPA sought to chart a different course -- one that would rely upon a voluntary cap-and-trade regime rather than stringent technology-based controls -- and that's where the problems began.
Section 112(c)(9) of the CAA only allows the EPA to delist a pollution source once the agency makes specific findings. Specifically, 112(c)(9) requires the EPA to determine that "emissions from no source in the category . . . exceed a level which is adequate to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety and no adverse environmental effect will result from emissions from any source." This is a difficult standard to meet in any case, particularly so in the case of mercury. Yet rather than try and comply with this standard, and make the requisite findings, the EPA instead contended that it did not need to comply with the plain language of the law, prompting the D.C. Circuit to compare the agency's reasoning to that employed by Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts.
The NRDC's John Walke, with whom I agree on relatively little, is unsparing in his critique of the EPA's position. He also notes that the EPA's cavalier approach to statutory interpretation is hardly unique to this case. It is disturbingly common.
there is a prevalent strain within EPA -- fostered by but not limited to political appointees – that approaches the responsibility of statutory interpretation with a linguistic relativism that verges on nihilism. Under this EPA school of thought and practice, words in statutes mean whatever EPA wants them to mean. While legal doctrines afford federal agencies discretion in areas where they are considered expert, for example in scientific matters, EPA abuses these doctrines in order to distort the act of reading the English language into a policy play thing. This is precisely why one sees courts resorting to rebukes that sound “like a civics lesson by an exasperated instructor” and “The Collected Works of Lewis Carroll” to characterize the absurdities of EPA’s positions.This has been a problem within the EPA for quite some time, in administrations of either political stripe. Yet this problem may be compounded by two factors somewhat unique to this administration: 1) the minimal attention paid to environmental policy questions, and 2) an expansive view of executive authority. Combined with the EPA's traditional resistance to statutory constraints, the result is an agency out of control and without adult supervision.
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“We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today, I signed up to participate in a 30 day Writing Challenge called #Trust30 which is organized through Seth Godin’s The Domino Project, and inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance which they will be republishing in celebration of Ralph’s 208th birthday… The basics of the Challenge are:
#Trust30 is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself. Use this as an opportunity to reflect on your now, and to create direction for your future. 30 prompts from inspiring thought-leaders will guide you on your writing journey.
When you sign up, at RalphWaldoEmerson.me, you commit to participate by signing a pledge; it confirms your agreement to follow the pledge details which are: Read the daily prompt they post from an original thinker and doer on RalphWaldoEmerson.me. Blog, journal, or create something on each of the 30 days, and if you choose, tweet your post using the hashtag #trust30 to show your support and involvement.
When feasible, I will add my answers to each prompt on my blog. Otherwise, I will add my reflections to a private journal offline. The key is to write/respond to the daily prompts. Do join in if you’re looking for new topics to write on and/or you’d like to participate in a supplementary writing exercise. It is not in conflict with our Daily Post prompts; it just gives us more options for our daily writings.
Now to answer the question of having 15 minutes to wrap up our time on this beautiful planet earth. The first thought that came to mind after my initial reaction to the prompt was … Of course, we turn to those we love to thank them for their loving care, their patience, their concern, and ask for forgiveness for any harsh words, slights or angry outbursts. As I thought of what more to do in such fleeting moments, a line from one of my favorite poems came to mind “What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?” It is from Leisure by W. H. Davies and I’ve added the full poem below. I think another thing I would do is to turn within; a prayerful moment of reflection for the life I have lived, offering/accepting forgiveness, and sending showers of gratitude to friends and angels, in the form of strangers, who crossed my path. What about you? What would you do? More below…
“So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man’s genius contracts itself to a very few hours.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Life is fleeting and while we enjoy it when we have it, eventually, it all does come to an end. This is not morbidity but reality, and once we come to terms with it, we can live our lives purposefully and richly. I love the poem because it is a reminder to enjoy the daily gifts of nature, a good meal, a chat, a hug, a kind word, a dance… I will hug my loved ones; one and all, and shower them with kisses and blessings. Perhaps, if there is time, we’ll share a meal and say a prayer and … stand and stare. What about you?
What are your thoughts? What would you do with your 15 minutes to live? What would you remember? what would you forgive? Do share! Thank you.
This post was inspired by a prompt from RalphWaldoEmerson.me: You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. 2. Write the story that has to be written.
Positive Motivation Tip: Enjoy the life you have and cherish all in it – Tempus Fujit.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self Reliance Prompt #1 (miriamgomberg.wordpress.com)
- 10 Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (holykaw.alltop.com)
- Hey, thanks. This life is awesome. #trust30 (caelanhuntress.com)
- Trust30 – Motivation for a month to get yourself writing (writingiscake.com)
- Self reliance (sashadichter.wordpress.com)
- Reflections: From Anger to Awareness… (eof737.wordpress.com)
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Security is a space in which intuition does not serve us well.
Therefore, I have formed the habit over the decades of starting the answer to questions that are put me with the words, "The principle is…….."
Having stated the guiding principle for my answer, I go on to answer the question.
This procedure does not always lead me to a simple and correct answer but it has served very well to prevent me from giving erroneous answers.
For example, one of the questions frequently put to me is, "Is thus-and-so mechanism secure."
The temptation to answer this question yes or no is often so strong as to be almost irresistible.
However, in this case the principle is, "Nothing useful can be said about the security of a mechanism except in the context of a specific application and environment."
Restating the principle reminds one that answering the question as asked invites one to say something foolish .
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Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announced Friday that it will stop providing drugs to women for abortions in the first nine weeks of pregnancy - a method used in about a fourth of the provider's abortions - because it says a new state law that criminalizes a physician's failure to follow a legislative-prescribed procedure is vague.
The new law, which went into effect Friday, requires the physician to inform the woman that she must return to the abortion facility for a follow-up visit 12 to 18 days after she takes the medication at home. The physician prescribing the drug also must perform an examination before giving the drug and must be physically present in the room when the woman receives the drug.
The law aims to ensure doctors aren't using Web cameras to consult with women about abortion-inducing drugs, as they do in some states to make abortions more easily available in rural areas. Supporters say the law sets a minimum standard of care for abortion providers.
Doctors who fail to tell women they must return to the clinic for a checkup face a maximum $10,000 fine; physicians who don't give an examination in person and who aren't in the room when the drug is given could face up to 3½ years in prison.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin still will provide surgical abortions. And the new law does not affect emergency contraception medication that women take within five days of intercourse to prevent, rather than terminate pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood provided just over 4,000 abortions statewide last year, including 1,100 medication-induced abortions, according to a spokeswoman.
Wisconsin Right to Life, which pushed for the new law, applauded Planned Parenthood's decision to stop providing drugs for abortions.
But the announcement set off a political firestorm among Democrats seeking to unseat Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election.
Planned Parenthood officials called the law vague and problematic during a news conference Friday, saying it poses "an intrusion on the doctor-patient relationship," creates a burden for both patients and physicians; and places ideological politics ahead of established standards of care.
Planned Parenthood currently does not specify who a patient follows up with after taking the abortion drug. It recommends a follow-up, but it could be with a family physician located hours from the clinic where she traveled to receive the medication. When she signs an informed consent, the patient agrees to see a physician within two to three weeks of receiving the medication, a protocol that follows established standards of medical care, according to Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood on Monday began alerting women who called clinics with questions about drug-induced abortions that they may want to act before Friday because the option might be suspended, said Deb Bonilla, vice president of patient services for Planned Parenthood Wisconsin.
"We're hopeful we could look at reinstituting medication abortions" once legal questions can be clarified, she said.
For now, "it's too ambiguous to put our doctors at risk," said Nicole Safar, public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin.
Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), author of the original bill, said Planned Parenthood "grossly misstated" the impact of the new law and called the organization's decision to suspend abortion drugs "a thinly veiled attempt to manufacture evidence of a fabricated war on women."
The Legislature "enacted minimum safety standards" after hearing "hours of testimony from women explaining their experience with abortion trauma," Lazich said. "Planned Parenthood is free to continue or discontinue providing chemical abortions. Ultimately, its decision today has nothing to do with the law."
A woman previously was required to give voluntary and informed written consent to an abortion.
Now, a physician is required to speak to a woman in person, without anyone else present, to determine whether her consent is, in fact, voluntary. If the physician has reason to suspect that the woman is being coerced, the physician is required to inform the woman of services for victims or individuals at risk of domestic abuse and provide her with private access to a telephone.
Planned Parenthood officials said their current policy already calls for privately asking the woman if her consent is voluntary.
The Wisconsin Medical Society lobbied Walker to veto the Republican-sponsored bill before he signed it into law two weeks ago.
"The Legislature should not insert itself into medical care decision-making," Wisconsin Medical Society President George Lange wrote in a March 20 letter to Walker. "People mistakenly believe that women who have chemical abortions pop a pill and, magically, they are no longer pregnant. Yet, FDA protocol for use of this two-drug regime is three to four visits to a doctor with close supervision," said Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life.
Before the law took effect, Planned Parenthood required two visits to the clinic and recommended follow-up with a physician of choice. The first clinic visit involves establishing pregnancy and counseling. A woman receives the medication to take home at the second clinic visit, which must be at least 24 hours later. The clinic attempts to reach the patient by phone two to three weeks after dispensing the medication to ask if she has followed up with a physician. If the clinic can't make phone contact, it sends two separate letters to the patient, Bonilla said.
The abortion drug taken over the course of several days was approved by the FDA in 2000. It terminates pregnancy by blocking progesterone receptors in the uterus, leading to a breakdown of the uterine lining. Progesterone is necessary to maintain a pregnancy.
Right to Life and others have raised questions about the drug's safety. The FDA has acknowledged a handful of deaths associated with the drug, as well as hundreds of hospitalizations and infections.
Democrats seeking to unseat Walker in the upcoming recall election pounced on Friday's announcement.
Tom Barrett condemned Walker and Republican lawmakers for requiring physicians to "follow medical practices set out by politicians."
Democratic opponent Kathleen Falk, a former Planned Parenthood Board member, accused Walker of waging a "war on women."
Barrett said the new law interferes with the patient-physician relationship and "is designed to throw up road blocks to reproductive choice."
Barrett and Falk both called it one of several Republican attacks on Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. The state also stopped funding to Planned Parenthood to provide breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraception and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
Walker's recall election campaign staff fired back a statement of its own:
"The fact is, under Gov. Walker, Wisconsin is helping more women screen for breast and cervical cancer than ever before through the Wisconsin Well Woman Program," the statement said. "Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett wants to take Wisconsin backward and is distorting the facts to score cheap political points."
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If things continue down their current path, Amazon's affiliate program will eventually go extinct in the US. Late Wednesday, California joined the growing list of states attempting to collect sales tax from online retailers like Amazon in an effort to help close the state's vast budget deficit. Amazon, in typical fashion, has aggressively pushed back, warning its California-based affiliates that they'll have their revenue streams cut off as of September 30 if the law ends up being enacted. (Update: Amazon has informed its California affiliates that it's shutting down the program immediately and not waiting until September.)
California's new law, signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday, requires online retailers to collect sales tax even if they have no physical presence in the state. How does that work when federal law states they have to have a brick-and-mortar store to qualify? Like the many other states before it, California counts Amazon affiliates who reside in California as a "physical presence." So, if Joe Blow runs a personal blog with affiliate links to Amazon products (you know, to make a few bucks on the side), he is effectively "selling" Amazon products and making money from them via his home in California.
Because of this "physical presence" technicality, the state wants Amazon to begin collecting sales tax from California residents, and subsequently pay it back to the state.
Amazon's reaction has been predictable: the company sent a letter to its affiliates in the Golden State earlier in the day on Wednesday warning that the affiliate program may soon be cancelled there due to the impending state law. "We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors," Amazon wrote. "Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action."
The aforementioned "other states" include New York, Illinois, Rhode Island, and North Carolina, most of which have seen their own Amazon affiliate programs killed for exactly the same reason. (Edit: New York managed to keep its Amazon affiliate program, presumably because it's such a huge market.) And, as noted by The Tax Foundation, there are a handful of others—Arizona, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Tennessee, Texas, and Vermont—that are considering passing similar "Amazon Tax" measures.
Not that the measures are necessarily helping much in terms of states collecting more tax revenue—Rhode Island General Treasurer Frank T. Caprio was recently quoted, saying, "The affiliate tax has hurt Rhode Island businesses and stifled their growth, as they’ve been shut out of some of the world’s largest marketplaces, and should be repealed immediately." FatWallet, which itself acts as a giant affiliate to Amazon and Overstock, ended up moving from Illinois to Wisconsin over the Illinois "Amazon Tax."
California's—and other states'—laws don't just affect Amazon either, despite the "Amazon Tax" moniker. Plenty of other sites offer similar affiliate programs (Overstock.com and Drugstore.com, to name a few) and will either have to rework the way they do things with California residents or cancel their affiliate programs as well. eBay also claims to we worried about how the tax affects small businesses and individuals who are not actually involved with these large corporations. "We believe that putting a tax burden on small businesses and treating them the same as giant retailers is unfair," eBay senior director of government relations told Internet Retailer. "eBay is advocating a threshold that accurately defines a small business, so that the sellers that are getting started aren't held back from growing in across the US."
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Symbion Power has said the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) has not paid ‘even one shilling out of a total of USD 20 million’ for the power generated until now by the power plants the US-based firm built in Arusha and Dodoma.
This is according to Symbion Power CEO Paul Hinks, who made the remarks over a telephone interview from the US when reacting to recent suggestions to the contrary in the Tanzanian media.
“Last year when Tanzania was in a crisis and Tanzanians were facing intolerable suffering, we stepped in and constructed two power plants, one in Dodoma and the other in Arusha. Both of them are operational and are delivering much-needed electricity to the country,” said Hinks.
“To date, Symbion’s invoices for the monthly bills have not been paid and we are now in August 2012. I wonder how many companies would have the confidence that we have demonstrated in Tanesco by building two power plants and delivering electricity and still not get paid our monthly fees,” he added.
Elaborating, the Symbion CEO said the only payments they have received so far are for their 120MW plant at Ubungo in Dar es Salaam.
“We haven’t been worried because we trust Tanesco and we trust the government and we know TANESCO have been having a tough time recently.”
The US-based energy firm is one of three power companies contracted by the government to assist in the implementation of a broader and government’s public-private partnership drive aimed to get the country out of power shortages.
Under the national power-rescue plan, Symbion Power was contracted to produce 205 MW and supply them to Tanesco.
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Storm'd again the whole day: we had a lecture from Mr. Williams, upon heat, in which he introduced his own system, which he first made public last year. Charles declaimed this evening in public, for the first time. Pass'd the evening with Mead.
of Boston, was 17
. He is said to be a good scholar, and a hard student; but his disposition is far from ami•
able. He is an only son, of a physician of eminence, and fortune in Boston; and has been too much indulged in every childish caprice, to make him studious to please others: his ideas appear to be, that the beings which surround him were created to administer to his pleasures, but that he was born wholly independent of them: whatever he sees, different from his own taste, he honours with a sneer, but when any person has boldness enough to return the sneer
Then his fierce eyes, with sparkling fury glow.2
He has not the least command of his passions, and any person of coolness might play upon his mind, and direct his rage, just as he should please.
But he can never be an agreeable companion; I was with him continually, for one week; and I should never wish to be with him again. His chum (Amory) is the only person that could live with him without quarreling, and he preserves peace only by giving way in every particular: a greater contrast of characters could not be found. Amory has every virtue which conspires to win the hearts of men, and Lloyd would be discontented, if he was placed at the right hand of omnipotence.
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The old gentlemen, from their peepholes in the Magazine, watched the progress of this remarkable affair of honour, as well as they could, with the aid of their field-glasses, and through an interposing crowd.
By Jupiter, Sir, he's through him! said Colonel Bligh, when he saw O'Flaherty go down.
So he is, by George! replied General Chattesworth; but, eh, which is he?
The long fellow, said Bligh.
O'Flaherty?hey!no, by George!though so it isthere's work in Frank Nutter yet, by Jove, said the general, poking his glass and his fat face an inch or two nearer.
Quick work, general! said Bligh.
Devilish, replied the general.
The two worthies never moved their glasses; as each, on his inquisitive face, wore the grim, wickedish, half-smile, with which an old stager recalls, in the prowess of his juniors, the pleasant devilment of his own youth.
The cool, old hand, Sir, too much for your new fireworker, remarked Bligh, cynically.
Tut, Sir, this O'Flaherty has not been three weeks among us, spluttered out the general, who was woundily jealous of the honour of his corps. There are lads among our fireworkers who would whip Nutter through the liver while you'd count ten!
They're removing thethe(a long pause) the body, eh? said Bligh. Hey! no, see, by George, he's walking but he's hurt.
I'm mighty well pleased it's no worse, Sir, said the general, honestly glad.
They're helping him into the coachlong legs the fellow's got, remarked Bligh.
ThesethingsSirareareveryunpleasant, said the general, adjusting the focus of the glass, and speaking slowlythough no Spanish dandy ever relished a bull-fight more than he an affair of the kind. He and old Bligh had witnessed no less than fivenot counting thisin which officers of the R.I.A. were principal performers, from the same sung post of observation. The general, indeed, was conventionally supposed to know nothing
p.90of them, and to reprobate the practice itself with his whole soul. But somehow, when an affair of the sort came off on the Fifteen Acres, he always happened to drop in, at the proper moment, upon his old crony, the colonel, and they sauntered into the demi-bastion together, and quietly saw what was to be seen. It was Miss Becky Chattesworth who involved the poor general in this hypocrisy. It was not exactly her money; it was her force of will and unflinching audacity that established her control over an easy, harmless, plastic old gentleman.
They are unpleasantdevilish unpleasantsomewhere in the body, I think, hey? they're stooping again, stooping againeh?plaguy unpleasant, Sir (the general was thinking how Miss Becky's tongue would wag, and what she might not even do, if O'Flaherty died). Ha! on they go again, and aPuddockgetting inand that's Toole. He's not so much hurteh? He helped himself a good deal, you saw; but (taking heart of grace) when a quarrel does occur, Sir, I believe, after all, 'tis better off the stomach at oncea few passesyou knowor the crack of a pistolwho's that got inthe priesthey? by George!
Awkward if he dies a Papist, said cynical old Blighthe R.I.A. were Protestant by constitution.
That never happens in our corps, Sir, said the general, haughtily; but, as I say, when a quarreldoesoccurSirthere, they're off at last; when it does occurI sayheyday! what a thundering pace! a gallop, by George! that don't look well (a pause)andandaabout what you were sayingyou know he couldn't die a Papist in our corpsno one doesno one ever didit would be, you knowit would be a trick, Sir, and O'Flaherty's a gentleman; it could not be(he was thinking of Miss Becky againshe was so fierce on the Gunpowder Plot, the rising of 1642, and Jesuits in general, and he went on a little flustered); but then, Sir, as I was saying, though the thing has its uses.
I'd like to know where society'd be without it, interposed Bligh, with a sneer.
Though it may have its uses, Sir; it's not a thing one can sit down and say is rightwe can't!
I've heard your sister, Miss Becky, speak strongly on that point, too, said Bligh.
Ah! I dare say, said the general, quite innocently, an coughing a little. This was a sore point with the hen-pecked warrior, and the grim scarcecrow by his side knew it, and grinned through his telescope; and you seeI sayeh! I think they're breaking up, aandI sayIit seems all overehand so, dear colonel, I must take my leave, and.
And after a lingering look, he shut up his glass, and walking thoughtfully back with his friend, said suddenlyAnd, now I think of itit could not be thatPuddock, you
p.91know, would not suffer the priest to sit in the same coach with such a designPuddock's a good officer, eh! and knows his duty.
A few hours afterwards, General Chattesworth, having just dismounted outside the Artillery barracks, to his surprise, met Puddock and O'Flaherty walking leisurely in the street of Chapelizod. O'Flaherty looked pale and shaky, and rather wild; and the general returned his salute, looking deuced hard at him, and wondering all the time in what part of his body (in his phrase) he had got it; and how the plague the doctors had put him so soon on his legs again.
Ha, Lieutenant Puddock, with a smile, which Puddock thought significantgive you good-evening, Sir. Dr. Toole anywhere about, or have you seen Sturk?
No, he had not.
The general wanted to hear by accident, or in confidence, all about it; and having engaged Puddock in talk, that officer followed by his side.
I should be glad of the honour of your company, Lieutenant Puddock, to dinner this eveningSturk comes, and Captain Cluffe, and this wonderful Mr. Dangerfield too, of whom we all heard so much at mess, at five o'clock, if the invitation's not too late.
The lieutenant acknowledged and accepted, with a blush and a very low bow, his commanding officer's hospitality; in fact, there was a tendre in the direction of Belmont, and little Puddock had inscribed in his private book many charming stanzas of various lengths and structures, in which the name of Gertrude was of frequent recurrence.
AndaI say, PuddockLieutenant O'Flaherty, I thoughtII thought, d'ye see, just now, eh? (he looked inquisitively, but there was no answer); I thought, I say, he looked devilish out of sorts, is heaill?
He was very ill, indeed, this afternoon, general; a sudden attack The general looked quickly at Puddock's plump, consequential face; but there was no further light in it. He was hurt then, I knew ithe thoughtwho's attending himand why is he outand was it a flesh-woundor where was it? all these questions silently, but vehemently, solicited an answerand he repeated the last aloud, in a careless sort of way.
AndaLieutenant Puddock, you were sayingatell menowwhere was it?
In the park, general, said Puddock, in perfect good faith.
Eh? ah! in the park, was it? but I want to know, you know, what part of the bodyd'ye seethe shoulderor?
The duodenum, Dr. Toole called itjust here, general, and he pressed his fingers to what is vulgarly known as the pit of
What, Sir, do you mean to say the pit of his stomach? said the general, with more horror and indignation than he often showed.
Yes, just about that point, general, and the pain was very violent indeed, answered Puddock, looking with a puzzled stare at the general's stern and horrified countenancean officer might have a pain in his stomach, he thought, without exciting all that emotion. Had he heard of the poison, and did he know more of the working of such things than, perhaps, the doctors did?
And what in the name of Bedlam, Sir, does he mean by walking about the town with a hole through hishis what's his name? I'm hanged but I'll place him under arrest this moment, the general thundered, and his little eyes swept the perspective this way and that, as if they would leap from their sockets, in search of the reckless O'Flaherty. Where's the adjutant, Sir? he bellowed with a crimson scowl and a stamp, to the unoffending sentry.
That's the way to make him lie quiet, and keep his bed till he heals, Sir.
Puddock explained, and the storm subsided, rumbling off in half a dozen testy assertions on the general's part that he, Puddock, had distinctly used the word wounded, and now and then renewing faintly, in a muttered explosion, on the troubles and worries of his command, and a great many pshaws! and several fits of coughing, for the general continued out of breath for some time. He had showed his cards, however, and so, in a dignified disconcerted sort of way, he told Puddock that he had heard something about O'Flaherty's having got most improperly into a foolish quarrel, and having met Nutter that afternoon, and for a moment feared he might have been hurt; and then came enquiries about Nutter, and there appeared to have been no one hurt, and yet the parties on the groundand no fightingand yet no reconciliationand, in fact, the general was so puzzled with this conundrum, and so curious, that he was very near calling after Puddock, when they parted at the bridge, and making him entertain him, at some cost of consistency, with the whole story.
So Puddockhis head full of delicious visionsmarched homewardto powder and perfume, and otherwise equip for that banquet of the gods, of which he was to partake at five o'clock, and just as he turned the corner at The Phoenix, who should he behold, sailing down the Dublin road from the King's House, with a grand powdered footman, bearing his cane of office, and a great bouquet behind her, and Gertrude Chattesworth by her side, but the splendid and formidable Aunt Becky, who had just been paying her compliments to old Mrs. Colonel Strafford, from whom she had heard all about the duel. So as Puddock's fat cheeks grew pink at sight of Miss Gertrude, all
p.93Aunt Becky's colour flushed into her face, as her keen eye pierced the unconscious lieutenant from afar off, and chin and nose high in air, her mouth just a little tucked in, as it were, at one cornera certain sign of coming storman angry hectic in each cheek, a fierce flirt of her fan, and two or three short sniffs that betokened mischiefshe quickened her pace, leaving her niece a good way in the rear, in her haste to engage the enemy. Before she came up she commenced the action at a long range, and very abruptlyfor an effective rhetorician of Aunt Becky's sort, jumps at once, like a good epic poet, in medias res; and as Nutter, who, like all her friends in turn, experienced once or twice a taste of her quality, observed to his wife, by Jove, that woman says things for which she ought to be put in the watch-house. So now and here she maintained her reputation
You ought to be flogged, Sir; yes, she insisted, answering Puddock's bewildered stare, tied up to the halberts and flogged.
Aunt Rebecca was accompanied by at least half a dozen lap-dogs, and those intelligent brutes, aware of his disgrace, beset poor Puddock's legs with a furious vociferation.
Madam, said he, his ears tingling, and making a prodigious low bow; commissioned officers are never flogged.
So much the worse for the service, Sir; and the sooner they abolish that anomalous distinction the better. I'd have them begin, Sir, with you, and your accomplice in murder, Lieutenant O'Flaherty.
Madam! your most obedient humble servant, said Puddock, with another bow, still more ceremonious, flushing up intensely to the very roots of his powdered hair, and feeling in his swelling heart that all the generals of all the armies of Europe dare not have held such language to him.
Good-evening, Sir, said Aunt Becky, with an energetic toss of her head, having discharged her shot; and with an averted countenance, and in high disdain, she swept grandly on, quite forgetting her niece, who said a pleasant word or two to Puddock as she passed, and smiled so kindly, and seemed so entirely unconscious of his mortification, that he was quite consoled, and on the whole was made happy and elated by the rencontre, and went home to his wash-balls and perfumes in a hopeful and radiant, though somewhat excited state.
Indeed, the little lieutenant knew that kind-hearted termagant, Aunt Becky, too well, to be long cast down or even flurried by her onset. When the same little Puddock, about a year ago, had that ugly attack of pleurisy, and was so low and so long about recovering, and so puny and fastidious in appetite, she treated him as kindly as if he were her own son, in the matter of jellies, strong soups, and curious light wines, and had afterwards lent him some good books which the little lieutenant had read through, like a man of honour as he was. And, indeed, what
p.94specially piqued Aunt Becky's resentment just now was, that having had, about that time, a good deal of talk with Puddock upon the particular subject of duelling, he had, as she thought, taken very kindly to her way of thinking; and she had a dozen times in the last month, cited Puddock to the general; and so his public defection was highly mortifying and intolerable.
So Puddock, in a not unpleasant fuss and excitement, sat down in his dressing-gown before the glass; and while Moore the barber, with tongs, powder, and pomade, repaired the dilapidations of the day, he contemplated his own plump face, not altogether unapprovingly, and thought with a charming anticipation of the adventures of the approaching evening.
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Leonardo Balada -
'... a choral composer of flair and creativity.'
A variety of background information on the Catalan composer Leonardo Balada (born 1933) is available from my review of the Naxos CD Guernica, released in 2004.
This newest disc in Naxos's ongoing Balada series is the first disc to involve voices. The CD contains two creative cantatas for chorus and orchestra. In the booklet notes, Balada talks of how choral music was an important and formative musical influence during his youth. Indeed, Balada has written a number of highly regarded cantatas throughout his career, and nearly all of his operas have significant roles for the chorus. To listeners who are only familiar with the previous orchestral releases, this disc reveals that Balada is a choral composer of flair and creativity.
No-res (Nothing) dates from 1974 and is subtitled 'a symphonic tragedy in two parts, for narrator, chorus, orchestra, and tape'. The work is based on a text by the French poet Jean Paris. The text is a 'collage' in numerous languages of small original phrases, single line extracts from other poetry, and 'nonsense' phrases in languages invented by the poet.
The work is Balada's 'answer' to the subject of death. It was written shortly after the death of his mother and deals with the ideas of death within his own rather atheistic world view. The piece is cast in two large sections. In the first part, the narrator provides numerous descriptions and images of death. The chorus and orchestra comment on his words -- focusing particularly on the universality of death and how not just humans, but indeed everything will die
[listen -- track 1, 9:45-11:21].
The shorter second part is an extended 'raging commentary' against death. The phrase 'I will not yield ... Never ... Never ...' returns as the poet and composer speak out against what they see to be the unfairness of death
[listen -- track 2, 0:00-1:10].
Copyright © 3 November 2005
Carson P Cooman, Pittsburgh USA
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The Sex Education of Mitt Romney
Campaigning in Sioux City, Iowa, last week, GOP presidential-nominee-to-be Mitt Romney got tripped up again by the issue of abortion. This abortion moment was perhaps made even more difficult for Romney by what appears to be a lack of understanding about some basic “birds and bees” stuff, and perhaps his failure to appreciate just how extreme the views are of the pro-life base that he is now trying to appeal to.
Romney’s troubles began when he was asked by a woman in the audience about an appearance he made on Fox News with Mike Huckabee. Talking specifically about Massachusetts, Huckabee asked Romney: “Would you have supported a constitutional amendment that would have established the definition of life as beginning at conception?” Romney quickly answered: “Absolutely.”
The woman in Iowa then observed: “That would essentially mean banning most forms of birth control … Could you help me understand why you oppose the use of birth control?”
If you watch the video closely, Romney reacts to that question with a sort of “Huh?” move of his head. He then explains that he is not against birth control, but he does believe that life begins at conception. On his campaign website, Romney says that he also believes “that abortion should be limited to only instances of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.”
Well, here is Romney’s problem. Pro-life activists make it clear that they believe that life begins when sperm and egg meet and form one single little cell called a zygote. The National Right to Life Committee declares on its website: “A new individual human being begins at fertilization, when the sperm and ovum meet to form a single cell.”
The woman in that Iowa audience is absolutely right, in that some of the most popular forms of birth control work in a way that would seem to be in conflict with the “a zygote is a person/there should be no abortions” position.
The pill, the patch, and the ring, all work, in part, by making it difficult for that that little zygote to become implanted in the lining of the womb. Perhaps Romney didn’t realize how this kind of birth control really works. And perhaps he doesn’t understand how popular it is.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, virtually all women (more than 99 percent) aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method, and 63 percent of reproductive-age women who practice contraception use non-permanent methods.
And though reasonable Republicans might say that it is ridiculous to even suggest that the social conservatives might try to turn back the clock and stop the use of such birth control methods, our recent history suggests otherwise.
In April 1967, William Baird was arrested in Hayden Hall on the Boston University campus for exhibiting a birth control device and distributing one to an unmarried woman. That was against state law. He was found guilty and faced up to 10 years.
The case made its way up to the Supreme Court, and in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the court ruled in Baird’s favor, finding that Massachusetts’ anti-contraceptive law discriminated against unmarried people.
The ruling expanded on an earlier Supreme Court finding in Griswold v. Connecticut that a Connecticut law forbidding contraceptive use by married people was unconstitutional. The court said the Constitution contained an implied right to marital privacy. That same concept of privacy would be a basis for Roe v. Wade in 1973. By the way, the Griswold in that case was Estelle Griswold, the executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut.
All of these cases were not too long ago. And the social conservatives of the GOP today are doing everything in their power to make contraceptives a lot harder to get. All of the candidates, including Romney, have promised to defund Planned Parenthood for instance, which will make it harder for millions of women to access reproductive health services and contraceptives.
And Ron Paul has introduced his “We the People” bill, which would prohibit the Supreme Court and all federal courts from hearing any future claims like Baird’s or Griswold’s. It would prohibit all federal courts from ruling on any state laws that concern the rights of privacy, sexual practices, sexual orientation, or reproduction, and it would prohibit the courts from relying on previous federal decisions in such cases. This flat-out means that the states would be free to march back into bedrooms and outlaw anything they darn well please.
Then there’s GOP candidate Rick Santorum, who appeared on my TV show some years back and made it clear that he thought that birth control was harmful to women and to our society in general. He believes that society should not tolerate sex outside of marriage. He has more recently said: “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country … It’s not OK. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm.”
How different things were for Romney back in 2002. He was running for a Senate seat against Ted Kennedy, and he seemed quite genuine and sincere when he said: “Many, many years ago, I had a dear, a close family relative … who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief, that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that …”
Now Mitt seeks the approval of social conservatives who want the government to be free once again to intrude into the most intimate and private affairs of people’s lives, “forcing their beliefs on others,” and marching under a banner on which is written, in large Orwellian letters: Freedom.
Personally, I believe Romney has wavered.
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The U.S. continues to experience a very marked slowdown in the growth of health-care costs, despite some widely misinterpreted new reports. And a growing body of evidence suggests the deceleration is driven by more than a temporarily weak economy -- which is good news for the federal budget and for workers.
National health expenditures rose just 3.8 percent from August 2011 to August 2012, according to an Oct. 11 report from the Altarum Institute. And Medicare spending increased by only 3.2 percent in the fiscal year ending in September 2012, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
These are remarkably low growth rates. Consider that over the past four decades Medicare spending increased by more than 10 percent a year.
Nevertheless, last month, many commentators falsely declared the end of the slowdown -- largely exaggerating the findings of a report issued by the Health Care Cost Institute. That report showed expenses for those with employer-sponsored insurance rose 3.8 percent in 2010 and 4.6 percent in 2011.
This modest change was initially described as a "surge." Yet by historical standards even 4.6 percent growth is very low -- and one shouldn't make too much of a 0.8 percentage-point change from one year to the next. What's more, employer- sponsored insurance is only one component of total health spending.
The Altarum figures, which cover total national-health expenditures, also showed a modest acceleration in 2011 -- but then the pace slowed again. "Our data indicate that the 2011 acceleration was not sustained," the report notes. "Spending growth declined in the latter half of 2011 and dropped even further in the most recent months."
So long live the slowdown!
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Perhaps there has been a time when you… –wished you had a best friend who was available to listen to something you were upset about –had a secret which was bothering you and you didn’t feel you could tell anyone –you felt so depressed, anxious,… continue reading So, who needs therapy anyway?
Tag Archives: counseling
As part of Mental Illness Awareness Week, Fountain Hill Center Executive Coordinator Amy Van Gunst shared her thoughts about the state of mental health in our state and what we need to do to improve.
As men, we are taught to possess life, not live it. The “American Dream” is really the Patriarchal Man Dream: Get the girl, get the job, get the house, get the money, get retired, and start playing. There is very little said about cultivating love,… continue reading Mid-life Crisis in Men: an Opportunity for Change
This is from a talk given at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, MI on March 17th 2008 by Dave Thornsen, PsyD, Licensed Psychologist. Most couples coming into therapy identify “communication” as the main issue that caused them to call. Communication can break down over finances,… continue reading The Communication Issues in Marriage Series – Honest Truth: the Down-side of Avoiding Conflict
The Fountain Hill Center for Counseling and Consultation has been providing quality counseling services to people of Oceana, Mason, Muskegon, and Newaygo counties since 2002. Initially their work began through a partnership with the New Era Reformed Church in an effort to assess and counsel… continue reading New Staff Joining New Era-Lakeshore Office
For nearly eight years now, therapists from the Fountain Hill Center for Counseling and Consultation, a private counseling practice in Grand Rapids, MI, have been providing accessible, affordable counseling to individuals and families of the communities in and surrounding Oceana County. Although this unique partnership… continue reading Grand Rapids Therapy Office Provides Accessible and Affordable Counseling in New Era
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Lawyers and clients are often unsure about what happens when they instruct a litigation services and software provider. Marketing materials inevitably reduce the processes to headings and bullet points using a limited vocabulary; technical specifications are just that. Neither leaves a potential buyer of services with a clear understanding of what happens once instructions are given to collect data for litigation, for responding to a regulator’s inquiry, or for internal investigations. Those facing their first case involving electronic documents may struggle to understand the concepts. These are best explained by simple descriptions of what happens from the moment instructions are given.
The provider will need to understand the time frames involved, the objectives of the project, the risks involved, the client’s budget and the resources available to assist with the project. It is very important at this stage that the provider, the client and the client’s lawyers communicate fully to ensure that each party understands the roles and objectives of the other parties.
There is no second chance to preserve data and a prudent provider will usually advise the client and its lawyers that it is important to preserve widely - preserving only a narrow amount of data early in the investigation exposes the client to a potential risk that crucial evidence relating to issues yet to be considered may be permanently lost. Once the data is preserved, the client and its lawyers will be free to dip into the ringfenced data sources as required.
Ideally, collection will be a joint exercise between the provider and the client’s IT team. Many factors will combine to dictate whether a provider attends at the premises or has a merely advisory role.
Processing & hosting
Processing is the stage which is least understood by those new to electronic disclosure, perhaps because it is a generic term with wide connotations. In the present context, it involves a set of computer applications which extract the maximum information from the data which has been collected and then uses that information to guide decision-making as to the next steps. The end result is a much smaller dataset and a series of reports which give an informed assessment of the case.
Once processed, the remaining data either moves to a hosted platform or is placed in a load file and exported to an alternative system, for example, at the law firm, that enables the review team to look at the documents.
Analysis is another seemingly technical term which embraces a range of easily understood concepts. The recurring theme of value to the company or its lawyers is that documents of a like kind can be grouped together. These features can make the ultimate review experience a more efficient and cost-effective exercise.
Document review is inevitably the most expensive stage in a typical exercise because it traditionally involves the reading (often at lawyers’ hourly rates) of all documents which have survived the prior processes described above.
The conventional approach, particularly in the context of formal proceedings such as litigation, is that the clients, or more usually their lawyers, set a team of paralegals and trainees to conduct a 'first-pass' review while more substantive work, such as privilege review or issue coding, is undertaken by more experienced, and hence, costly associates. Not every company or law firm has the resources or experience to undertake a large or complex review at short notice.
The lawyers, or their clients, may instead choose to outsource the review, that is, to engage the services of a process-driven document review company. A small number of providers offer an onshore document review service bringing qualified lawyers with relevant subject-matter and document review experience to work with the law firm and its clients to undertake all or the first pass of the review.
An effective response to urgent regulatory investigations, internal investigations, litigation and the like requires preparation. The tools and techniques described above are an important part of the establishment of an effective response. However, it is the implementation of a strong process-driven approach, devised with the assistance of solution-driven experts that will ensure that, whatever the matter, the company’s response is confident, timely, defensible and proportionate.
Deborah Blaxell is legal consultant at Epiq Systems Limited and Chris Dale, is founder of the e-Disclosure Information Project
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The Doha Conference ended with not much decided. The delegates extended the Kyoto Protocol but were unable to come up with a satisfactory agreement on who pays to reduce carbon emissions. Critics say the deal fell far short of what’s needed but the developed countries believe they will be fleeced by any deal that puts the entire burden on them. Michael Jacobs, writing in The Guardian, says the moment of truth will arrive in 2014 when a new comprehensive agreement must be reached.
Ottawa has surprised everyone by approving both CNOOC’s purchase of Nexen and Petronas’ bid for Progress Energy. The first was more or less anticipated but the latter comes as a big surprise. Industry Minister Christian Paradis says Canada won significant concessions in transparency on the deal. The approval undoubtedly heralds more Chinese mergers and acquisitions since the Chinese crave Canadian energy. But the Globe and Mail says PM Stephen Harper has drawn the line in the oil sands.
The US nuclear industry has responded to demands from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by drawing up plans for “airborne rescue wagons” in case of a nuclear disaster. Emergency equipment would be flown in from different parts of the country by helicopter. Following last week’s funding of a small reactor experiment at Oak Ridge, the UK also announced plans for pursuing what it calls “mini-reactors.” But geologists have discovered what they describe as a major fault beneath Japan’s Tsuruga reactor and it may have to close.
Following the news from Germany that the dash to renewables has actually increased the use of coal, California is also waking up to the realization that wind and solar need backups. “Renewable Energy Will Require More Use of Fossil Fuels” notes the Los Angeles Times. New Mexico renewable advocates are worried that a new plan that allows customers and utilities to choose their power source may undermine quotas for renewable energy. But the Department of Energy has announced plans to support a new "plug-and-play" system that would allow businesses and residences to install to install and operate photovoltaic panels in one day.
Finally, ExxonMobil (above) has surprised the world by supporting a carbon tax. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is astonished, saying the company can’t be serious. The Heritage Foundation is still opposed, calling the idea of taxing carbon “stale leftovers.” But David Frum, writing on CNN, says it’s “a tax we could learn to love.”
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Buschert, Norman C. (1872-1935)
Norman C. Buschert: deacon in the West Zion Mennonite Church near Carstairs, Alberta, was born 2 October 1872 near Kitchener, Ontario, and died 16 November 1935 near Carstairs, Alberta. He married Mary Weber, formerly of Berlin (Kitchener), on 2 December 1903. They were the parents of 6 children.
Norman Buschert purchased a homestead in the Carstairs district in 1900 and was one of the founding members when the West Zion Mennonite Church was organized in 1901. Mary Weber was one of two young ladies who arrived in Carstairs from Ontario in 1902. She and Norman were the first couple to be married in the West Zion Mennonite church. They remained in the community and continued to serve the church all through their married life.
In 1925 Norman Buschert was ordained by lot to the office of deacon, a position he filled diligently and sacrificially until the time of his fatal illness in 1935. He suffered a stroke in 1934 but regained his health briefly but died shortly after a second stroke in November of 1935.
Regehr, T. D. Faith, Life and Witness in the Northwest, 1903-2003: Centennial History of the Northwest Mennonite Conference. Kitchener, ON : Pandora Press, 2003.
Harder, Richard, ed. West Zion Mennonite Church: Centennial Scrapbook, 1901-2001. Carstairs, Alberta : West Zion Mennonite Church, 2000.
Stauffer, Ezra. History of the Alberta-Saskatchewan Mennonite Conference. Ryley, Alberta : Alberta-Saskatchewan Mennonite Conference, 1960.
©1996-2013 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.
MLA style: Regehr, Ted D. "Buschert, Norman C. (1872-1935)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. December 2003. Web. 25 May 2013. http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/B8592.html.
APA style: Regehr, Ted D. (December 2003). Buschert, Norman C. (1872-1935). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 25 May 2013, from http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/B8592.html.
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The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. Max de Pree
Animal lovers and activists around the world share a couple of common believes :
- That love is more powerful than hate and greed
-That if we work together we would have enough power to change things for the voiceless
-That we are the solution .
Today, more than ever , these ideas spread , faster and faster ,they find a platform to be voiced through each sincere animal lover and acitivist.
The world is smaller than ever and it is ever changing.
What stays constant is the struggle to prove indeed that these ideas are reality. that they find structure and form in everydays actions.
27 January 2013
Turkey – Yeniciftlik ; a vacation site that is widely known between animal lovers for the increasing number of stray population.The reason of this is the families dumping the pets they brought during the holiday season.
All stray population and carelessly dumped pets are taken to Yeniciftlik Shelter ; a place the municipality was proud of (!) until a couple of months ago after having worked hand in hand with some of the well known organizations and volunteers for months.
Sadly , the good will of the municipality (!) came to an end on 27 January.The dogs they have been housing and feeding with the volunteers help in Yeniciftlik Shelter disappeared suddenly and before anyone could see a trace.
The shelter volunteers,unaware of the fact that the staff designated by the municipality had helped disappearing the 200 dogs that they fed, treated and tried to find homes for , came to the shelter that day too.
A vision to remember a lifetime : the shelter was a desert.
According to the shelter staff , it was not their fault. They had simply opened the gates and the dogs ( 200 dogs ) had bolted…
The truth reveals it-self a bit later when the phone calls are made : the municipalities budget to keep the shelter running ( with the help of the volunteers who provided medical care and hundreds of packs of dog food each month !) was cut … The first thing they could think of was to disappear 200 souls in a rush .
200 souls that would translate into 200 stomachs to feed for them.
It is tragic however not new.
Exactly 6 months ago on 21 June, just a few kms away from Yeniciftlik shelter , same number of dogs have been buried under soil . The incident was disguised in a fire incident ;
You can read about Eregli fire incident HERE
On this occasion we would also like to share here various articles from newspapers in Turkey sharing similar incidents that took place over many years :
…to count a few, however the list is long.
Has anything changed? Mass killing continues but authorities take the activists less seriously.
Whilst turkish animal lovers focus on dog fur trade and on the ridiculous fantasies of dogs being sold to EU labs , the government works like a serial killer.
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Sept. 27, 1942
Thank you Miss Breed, for asking questions because it has helped me a lot — for then I know this letter has something of interest to you. Now to answer them — yes, we do have chairs and tables. Father made them out of scraps of wood which we found here and there. They may not be the best but they are substantial. We also have pillows which we brought from San Diego. But we do not have mattresses. We use some of our blankets as mattresses. In Santa Anita we were issued a spring bed and mattress, but here we were just issued a cot. Many people who are skilled are making beds. They say a wooden bed is much better for your posture. The cot sinks down in the middle while the wooden bed stays straight.
The movies are just grand. We see one every Saturday evening. It is shown outdoors. The screen is placed right in front of the oil tank and we sit (bring our own chairs) or stand and enjoy the movie.
The police and the post office and fire dept. is run by Japanese Americans. As yet I have not seen any persons connected with the army. There are no fence around this camp as there was in Santa Anita.
School has not begun yet and I do not know who the teachers are. But I shall write more fully about it after school begins. Yesterday we saw how a teacher's room is going to be furnished. There was a nice bed with a spring and mattress, nice Spanish style bedroom set, a soft chairs, lamps and linoleum on the floor. I was almost tempted to sit on the soft chair, sit before the large dresser and lay on the bed.
I received a letter from a friend who is now in Lamas, Colorado. During the days they were on the train, they had — fried eggs for breakfast — fried chicken, fried turkey, cookies, cakes, and canned fruits. When I read about this, my mouth watered and I certainly envied them. If I can only eat fried eggs and fried chicken just once more — maybe, as the saying goes, if I am a nice girl my wish will soon be granted.
The food here is grand. Every Sunday morning we have 2 pancakes, 1 boiled egg, cocoa. I think that's a grand breakfast. This evening meal was the best we ever had here 1 piece of steak, 1/2 sweet potato, lettuce, rice, veg. salad and catup. If you are interested I shall keep the menu for one week and inform you of it.
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An important job with an unsexy title, Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisors are charged with protecting farmland and open space and finding crucial funding and incentives to preserve natural resources.
We strongly endorse Durham native and small dairy farmer Kathryn Spann, who currently serves as associate supervisor to the five-member board, a volunteer, non-voting position. She has been the boards representative to the Farmland Protection Board since January.
Her grasp of environmental issues is vast, as is her understanding of the complex fundingcost-shares, conservation easements and budgets. Spann is converting her familys former 90-acre tobacco farm to livestockand thus can best understand the threats and opportunities to her fellow small farmers.
Spann also is rightfully concerned about our drinking water supply and the effect of development on that finite and vital natural resource: Rapid development is swallowing up Durhams farming and open space, she wrote in her questionnaire. These same areas serve as the watershed for our drinking water reservoirs. Development of these areas threatens water quality.
Spann has spent some time in the city, too, working as a lawyer, principal court attorney for the state of New York and a volunteer fighting to protect sensitive urban eco-systems in Yonkers, N.Y.
Danielle Adams, a full-time N.C. Central University student, is committed to protecting the environment, particularly in regard to preserving wetlands. However, she lacks experience, and seems to lean on the legacy of her mother, Stella Adams, the district supervisor from 1988-2000.
The issues facing the four-member Wake County Soil & Water Conservation District board are similar to Durhams, but even more so: finding the funds and incentives to protect farmland and open space from encroaching development.
Fred Burt, a Fuquay-Varina farmer, gets our endorsement. A registered Republican, Burt wants more funding for the Community Conservation Assistance Program to assist in developed areas. According to his Indy questionnaire, he also believes that the county must address the issue of development if we are to improve soil, water and air quality.
Open farmland and forestland provides the best and least expensive way to do this.William Cole grew up on a farm in rural Indiana. He is now a senior business consultant with Blue Cross/ Blue Shield. While he advocates for environmental protection of soil and water resources, we feel Burt, who currently farms, is better in touch with the issues.
Robin Hammond and Marcia Lieber did not return questionnaires.
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Senior Megan Baker Awarded Fellowship to Work in Moldova
Monday, August 6, 2012
For most college kids, summer means hanging out with friends, working a full-time job – or jobs, and maybe catching some rays.
Most don’t travel 6,300 miles from home to Moldova, a small European country tucked between the Ukraine and Romania.
It's probably safe to say that Megan Baker isn’t your typical college kid.
A senior Elementary Education major from Box Elder, S.D., Baker was selected, along with Moldovan Cornelia Calin, a former Augustana international student, for the prestigious American Cultural Ambassadors Fellowship (ACAF) Program, an initiative designed by the International Research and Exchanges (IREX) Board.
Together, they’re spearheading a project called “Bringing the World Together – One Ability at a Time,” a camp for people with special needs in Moldova.
“Even though this day camp is for people who have disabilities, we do not want their disabilities to define them. Rather, we want to show the world the abilities that they have. We believe that they have a lot to teach our world. Through this project we will be able to show the people of Moldova that these people are people who are contributors to society and long to be loved and accepted just like any other person,” Baker wrote on her blog.
The ACAF program supports fellowships for current U.S. undergraduate students to collaborate with 2011-2012 Global UGRAD scholars from Eurasia and Central Asia in their home countries. Global UGRAD fellows and U.S. students enrolled in the same university apply together to implement a short-term service-learning project in the fellow’s home country. This program is designed to give American students an in-depth experience of life in a Eurasian or Central Asian community and provide the opportunity for ACAF participants to utilize and further develop leadership skills through civic engagement.
Baker describes the camp as activities-focused with games, arts and crafts, songs, a service project, a scavenger hunt, a presentation about America and dancing. In honor of the 2012 London Olympics, the day camp will be Olympic themed. She’s also planning to take campers to Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, to visit a zoo and a museum.
“It is also our goal to spread the word to Americans. As we all know, people with special needs don’t just live in Moldova. There are people with disabilities all over the world. Time after time, I see people stare at and judge others with disabilities, and I don’t want to continue seeing that. I want people to accept them for who they are, talk with them, and be their friend. Upon returning to the U.S., I will have several presentations sharing my experiences and new-found knowledge. It is also my desire to become more involved with the communities of people with special needs in Sioux Falls, and encourage others to get involved as well,” Baker wrote.
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Fri January 20, 2012
Senate Vote Delayed On PIPA, Its Anti-Piracy Bill
Saying that "recent events" have raised questions, but that "there is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that there won't be a vote in his chamber next Tuesday on the Protect IP Act (PIPA).
That's the Senate's version of controversial legislation that supporters say would cut down on Internet piracy — but that opponents say would amount to censorship.
Wednesday, as we and many others wrote, Wikipedia and some other Web giants who oppose such legislation focused attention on it by "going black." And as NPR's David Welna reported, Wikipedia and the sites urged people "to complain to their lawmakers about the proposed anti-piracy legislation" and got a big response. "Heavy traffic caused more than half the official websites of senators to crash" on Wednesday, David found.
He also pointed out that "nearly half the Senate bill's 40 sponsors are Republicans, but many of them have withdrawn their support in the past few days." So, David said, if the legislation was to get through the Senate, it might first have to be altered.
Reid's decision now gives some time for such alterations. He gave no specific time for a vote, but said he's confident a compromise can be reached "in the coming weeks."
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Five years after more than 1,000 people were killed in election-related violence, Kenyans on Monday began casting votes in a nationwide election seen as the country's most important — and complicated — in its 50-year history.
Police issued alerts late Sunday of impending attacks, and the violence began even before the voting. Police in the coastal city of Mombasa reported a 2 a.m. attack by a gang of dozens; early reports indicated several officers — perhaps four or five — were killed.
Multiple factors indicated violence was likely: The police said late Sunday that criminals were planning to dress in police uniforms and disrupt voting in some locations.
In addition, intelligence on the Somali-Kenya border indicated Somali militants planned to launch attacks; a secessionist group on the coast threatened — and perhaps already carried out — attacks; the tribes of the top two presidential candidates have a long history of tense relations; and 47 new governor races are being held, increasing the chances of electoral problems at the local level.
Perhaps most importantly, Uhuru Kenyatta, one of two top candidates for president, faces charges at the International Criminal Court for orchestrating the 2007-08 postelection violence. If he wins, the U.S. and Europe could scale back relations with Kenya, and Kenyatta may have to spend a significant portion of his presidency at The Hague.
Kenyatta's running mate, William Ruto, also faces charges at the ICC.
Kenyatta, a Kikuyu who is the son of Kenya's founding president, faces Raila Odinga, a Luo whose father was the country's first vice president. Polls show the two in a close race, with support for each in the mid-40-percent range. Eight candidates are running for president, making it likely Odinga and Kenyatta will be matched up in an April run-off, when tensions could be even higher.
Near the Somali border, Garissa County Commissioner Mohamed Ahmed Maalim said Sunday that officials intercepted communications that indicated terror attacks were planned, including explosive attacks and kidnappings. "They are planning to interrupt the elections, but we will not allow them do so," he said.
Maalim said soldiers are patrolling the region to prevent attacks from al-Shabab, the al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group. He said 300 specialized troops known as GSU are patrolling the Dadaab refugee camp, where more than 400,000 Somalis live.
In Mombasa, police officer Aggrey Adoli said Monday that police were attacked by a marauding gang while on patrol.
At the Nairobi Chapel, an evangelical church in the capital, three pastors took turns Sunday praising the attributes of some tribes, drawing cheers from the congregation. The Kikuyus were praised for being entrepreneurial, the Luos for valuing education, and the Kalenjins — Ruto's tribe — for their loyalty.
"Tomorrow we celebrate our cultural diversity as a nation," Nick Korir said in his sermon.
"We ask you to shame all prophets of doom," a cleric at an evangelical church in Nairobi called Mavuno told a packed congregation. "This is a country we are all proud of despite the divisions that people talk about. There is a Kenya after tomorrow."
In the weeks leading up to Monday's vote, described by Odinga as the most consequential since independence from the British in 1963, peace activists and clerics have been praying that this time the election is peaceful despite lingering tensions.
Odinga's acrimonious loss to President Mwai Kibaki in 2007 triggered violence that ended only after the international community stepped in. Odinga was named prime minister in a coalition government led by Kibaki, with Kenyatta named deputy prime minister.
The candidates held their final rallies Saturday, a day of political attacks and denials following published comments in the Financial Times attributed to Odinga that election violence could be worse than 2007-08 if the vote is rigged.
The Financial Times on Sunday said that its story, because of an editing error, "may have left the incorrect impression" that Odinga "would not respect the result of a free and fair presidential election. We are happy to be able to clarify this point."
Some 99,000 police officers will be on duty during an election in which some 14 million people are expected to vote. Kenyans will also be electing new lawmakers, governors and other officials.
Kenyatta, 51, the son of Jomo Kenyatta, the country's founding president, is one of the country's wealthiest men. He studied at Amherst College in the U.S. before returning home to become a businessman and later his father's political heir.
In 2011 Forbes magazine listed him as the wealthiest Kenyan, worth at least $500 million, although he was dropped from a subsequent list because his personal wealth was hard to separate from that of his close relatives. The Kenyattas are said to own hundreds of thousands of acres of prime land across the country, a controversial point in a nation where millions do not own even a small plot of land.
Gladwell Otieno, a Kenyan who runs a think tank called The Africa Center for Open Governance, said it would "be difficult for (Kenyatta) to claim that he can do much" to tackle Kenya's historical land problem. But despite the baggage of wealth and the ICC charges, Kenyatta's team has done a good job of marketing him as "a youthful candidate" of hope, Otieno said.
"Our main concern has been the fact that he is indicted at the ICC," Otieno said. "A government led by him would immediately be paralyzed."
Odinga, 68, who has been prime minister since 2008, believes he was cheated out of victory in the last election. Odinga's refusal to accept the results in 2007 helped fuel tribal tensions, with many here seeing Kibaki's win as another example of the Kikuyus' overly broad influence.
A win by Odinga would make him the country's first Luo president, a feat never accomplished by his father, Oginga Odinga, who was Kenya's first vice president and himself a hero of the anti-colonial movement. The elder Odinga fell out with Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first president, straining Kikuyu-Luo relations for decades.
In a rally Friday in Kisumu, Odinga's hometown and the biggest Luo-dominated city, Odinga repeatedly used words like "freedom" and "change" to emphasize the epochal moment it would be for his people if he wins.
"Be prepared for freedom," he said. "This country is at the verge of total liberation."
Associated Press reporter Daud Yussuf in Garissa contributed to this report.
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re finding relative gauge of seed stitch vs. stocking stitch
Yes, Sue, one could knit swatches, but I am being lazy and felt sure the answer would be out there on the net. So far I have not found it, but surely there must be some sort of general guide for this sort of thing...
I don't know that there is a general guide. Since it's sort of like ribbing where you k1, p1, even though the next row is p1, k1 which would flatten out the rib effect, it doesn't seem like they'd be the same.
it would be cool to see how swatches compaired knit with equal lengths of the same yarn, knit in the same (or even different) sized needles in different Stitch patterns
maybe I will do that to see how things go
but I would love to have a refence about hat kind of info
like does a k1p1 ribbing knit up wider than a k2p2
or does a seed stitch knit up a longer swatch than a k1p1 rib
if anyone knows, let me know
Make this world a Better, and more beautiful place, that you have been in it
Good judgement comes from experience
but Experience comes from Bad Judgment ecb
I have a friend I consider an expert knitter who thinks seed would behave along the lines of garter stitch and, so there would be less stitches to an inch compared with stocking stitch.
That fits in with the pattern I was wondering about. The yarn it calls for is 18 st/4 inches in stocking stitch, but the pattern stitch for gauge is seed at 16 st/4 inches.
My dilemma is that I want to use yarn which is 16 st/4 inches in stocking stitch. I am knitting a 'Maggiknits' pattern which calls for Maggi's Tweed Fleck Aran (18/4). I want to substitute Rowarn Yorkshire Tweed Aran, which is 16/4. It is not a pattern to be mucked about with, so I can't just make it smaller. I guess I will use smaller needles than called for and hope to get away with it!
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University of Colorado School of Medicine Mission Statement
SOM Mission Statement
The mission of the University of Colorado School of Medicine is to provide Colorado, the nation and the world with programs of excellence in:
Education - through the provision of educational programs to medical students, allied health students, graduate students and housestaff, practicing health professionals and the public at large;
Research - through the development of new knowledge in the basic and clinical sciences, as well as in health policy and health care education;
Patient Care - through state-of-the-art clinical programs which reflect the unique educational environment of the University, as well as the needs of the patients it serves; and,
Community Service - through sharing the School's expertise and knowledge to enhance the broader community, including our affliated institutions, other healthcare professionals, alumni and other colleagues, and citizens of the state.
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you need one piece the size of what you want your finished project to be and then you can use what ever kind of wood you would like to cut for the pieces, we went with the plank pieces so that cutting was easier. I picked the pine that had different coloring in them
this is for the frame, I just held them up to the wood while at the lumber store. I wanted it to a little bigger then the wood so that there was some dimension with it also. It all depends on the wood you get and how thick you make yours
this is a must for lots of fun diy projects.
I went with gorilla glue for this one.
I looked on the net for the different veggies I knew I wanted and found some that had a similar look
I use liquitex matte gel I get it at hobby lobby or michael's
we used several different kinds and as you will see later we even used bricks to help with the gluing.
I only painted the back piece on this one but you can add colors to your pieces like the original has.
The first thing you need to do is decide on the size of the art that want to make. I went with 24 x 34. At first I had planned on painting the pieces like the original has, but once I saw the colors on the wood at the lumber store I stuck with just the natural colors of the wood and the transferring gave the pieces a vintage look which just made them perfect. This picture is listed as being on sale for 229.00 at the moment (the original price was $299.00). I was able to make my version for $52.00! It can be done for less depending on the wood that you buy. We just went with what hubby thought would be easiest for him to work with :)
Let's get started with the cutting. What we did is cut one piece at a time going in rows right to left. We would lay a piece of wood in the next spot to determine what size we wanted that one to be and marked it to cut. I have to say it was like making a puzzle. If you are good with a jig saw this is easy, I tried but for the life of me I couldn't cut a straight line to save my life so hubby was a big help there. The system that I found that worked the best is after a piece was cut I would number it, again going right to left row by row. When writing the numbers make sure you so it lightly so that it will erase off easily. I ended up with 31 pieces.
Now after lots of measuring and cutting, the backing board was covered. It's time to print and transfer the images. Again I just went onto the net and found clip art of the veggies that I wanted to use. I will say that since I was just using my printer for the images I need an image that has a lot of ink (meaning a lot of black coloring that will be printed). Getting a copy machine copy is the best way to make sure any transfer works well. Next I sized the images and then decided where they were going to be placed. I then turned them over and put the number on the back so that I made sure to put the right imagine on the right wood piece.
Time to do the transfers, you will need the gel medium and and sponge brush and of course the image. First put the number on the piece of wood on the back to keep track. You want to put a coat of gel medium just in the area that that the image is going, you will not only be transferring the ink but it will seal the wood in that area so it the extra ink will not bleeding into the wood, which is what gave mine that vintage look. Make sure that you put a good amount on but also make sure that it is smooth and no lumps and bumps. Once you have it lay your image face down and smooth it out gently, do this for all the pieces. Now the waiting begins. You want to let this dry very well so over night is your best bet to make sure that it is good and dry, you want to let it dry at lest 10 hours.
This is now where I have to have a long talk with my camera since it decided to mess up the pictures of this next step. Once the gel medium has dried completely just spritz the paper with some water and start rubbing the paper off. As you are rubbing some of the ink with be on your fingers and this is where I just rubbed my fingers on the rest of the wood to give it the vintage look. After all the paper is rubbed off your pieces this would be when you would add a paint color is you so choose. My suggestion for this would be to add water to the paint to make it more like a wash so that it is a light wash of color to the wood piece.
Almost there, let's break out the glue and clamps! Glue the first row down and clamp. It takes about an hour a row and you can only do one row at a time so that you get a good fit and nothing shifts. Now as you can see once that first row was done it was harder to use a clap to hold the wood piece on, so we just grabbed the extra bricks we had on the porch and used them to insure a good glue to wood contact.
This another part of the project that takes a lot of waiting but it is well worth it in the end. Woo hoo in the home stretch now. With all the pieces glued down its time to decide where you want to put the raised pieces, measure, cut, transfer and glue.
Lastly we cut the trim pieces to fit the finished piece to frame it. I did a light wash of color on the trim so that it matched the whole thing better. Glue it on and clamp. When its dry put your hanger of choice onto the back and hang up for everyone to admire. I so love the way it turned out and it looks better then I imagined it would in my kitchen.
One of the biggest tips that I would give with this project is that once you have the pieces cut for your first line, go ahead and do the image transfers and then glue them onto the backing board. We thought were were keeping everything lined up well when cutting all the pieces but once we started the gluing process the last row was hanging off some, so we had to cut the extra off with a router.
This project has been shared at:
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Become a Fellow
EDF Climate Corps selects and trains top-tier graduate students in energy efficiency, and matches them with leading organizations to build customized energy management strategies and solutions. In just five years, EDF Climate Corps fellows have identified $1.2 billion in total net operational costs and opportunities to cut $1.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, equivalent to the annual energy use of 150,000 homes.
Why become a Climate Corps fellow?
- As an EDF Climate Corps fellow, you are working on the ground inside a leading corporation, public sector organization or nonprofit, and leaving them with tangible recommendations that will save money and help the environment.
- Sustainability is a broad field. EDF Climate Corps fellows deepen quantitative and technical skills while becoming more effective change agents for sustainability.
- By participating in EDF Climate Corps, you will grow your network of sustainability professionals exponentially with established relationships with 100+ other fellows, 5 years of Climate Corps alumni, EDF experts, and contacts at your host organization to help you throughout your career.
“Our fellow had the ability to introduce us to some of the tools available to us that we weren’t aware of – tools that help us think about how we go about our work, how we think about energy and reducing energy usage for our restaurants.”
-- Jerry Sus, Senior Director of Development & Strategic Technology, McDonald's
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| 0.934648 | 288 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Family Home Box
Posted on 22 July 2012
July 22, National Parents’ Day
Happy Parents’ Day!
In the United States, Parents’ Day is held on the fourth Sunday of every July. This was established in 1994 when President Bill Clinton signed a Congressional Resolution into law for “recognizing, uplifting, and supporting the role of parents in the rearing of children.”
Parents love their children unconditionally and support them to get through the thick and thin of life. They often put their self-gratification aside, in order to nurture their children in a loving and secure environment.
It becomes imperative to dedicate at least a day to the parents, who readily dedicate their whole life for their children. That is why, since the establishment, Parents’ Day is celebrated with gusto.
Parents Day has today become a special day for the parents, their children and the society.
Surprise your dear mom and dad with a pretty DIY gift on this special occasion.
For instance, make an adorable Family Home Box and fill it with
HEARTWARMING FAMILY QUOTES AND FAMOUS SAYINGS ABOUT MOM AND DAD FOR 365+1 DAYS OF THE YEAR.
Check out the nicest quotes on parents and children relations here:
For inspiration have a look at Melissa’s gorgeous Home Gift Box, and create something similar with family photos on it:
Perfect Parents’ Day surprise, excellent gift idea for Mothers’ or Fathers’ Day, too.
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-"I don't know what color will match."
-"What do you mean?"
-"It won't match here, on my face!"
-"You mean on your skin?"
-"Yes, you know, because I am brown."
-"oh girl, the color will still show up. Don't worry."
-"This is why her skin is much better then mine. I like her face better."
I don't consider our family a transracial adoptive family. My sweet sister is just beautifully tanned all year round, born in the tiny Eastern European country of Bulgaria. I didn't think it was a big deal. I didn't think skin color issues were a thing we would have to deal with, it was the least of our worries.
But tonight, while standing in line to get the girls faces painted I found out the truth. Sweet sister notices that her skin is different. She wishes her skin looked like her little sisters skin. This spring she was SO proud of the color of her skin. She would walk around teasing us about how white we are. What changed since then?
So my question to you is, what do we do? How do we encourage her to be proud of the color of her skin? How do we let her know she is perfect just like she is? That the color of someones skin is not nearly as important as a persons heart? Any thoughts or advice? Talk to me!
Girlfriend is beautiful, I want her to truly know and believe that!
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Business lobbies and conservatives have become extremely good at hijacking progressive policy concepts and perverting them into something that suits their own agenda. European economic governance is a perfect example of this. In the nineties, trade unions and progressive politicians were staunch defenders of economic governance. At the time, the idea was that if all member states were to pursue expansionary fiscal policy at the same time a strong and powerful economic recovery would follow. Today, however, the concept has become to mean the exact opposite: European economic governance is now a system of rules and sanctions forcing member states into common and synchronized strategies of brutal austerity and wage dumping.
ECB president Mario Draghi, however, has outdone himself. Even prior to candidate president François Hollande’s official proposal of a “Growth Compact”, the ECB president took over the initiative by offering his own version to the European Parliament. As could be expected, the ECB’s version of such a “Growth Compact” is based on the idea of structural labour market reforms, thereby making explicit reference to the German Hartz reforms.
The problem is that labour market reform produces the same effects as fiscal austerity. Both policies have the immediate effect of taking demand out of the economy, thereby depressing instead of relaunching the economy. In a deregulated labour market with low job protection, poor unemployment benefit systems and very flexible wage formation systems, workers do not have the bargaining position to resist wage cuts and wage freezes, let alone to negotiate a limited wage increase. Moreover, a flexible labour market is also an insecure one: In the absence of stable jobs and robust social safety nets, households will be much inclined to save more and spend less. By devaluing labour, structural reforms deepen the recession.
What’s worse is that there exists a vicious link with fiscal policy. Structural reforms create recessions, which create deficits and debt, which forces governments to impose even more fiscal austerity, which then amplifies the recession.
The next predictable event is of course that financial markets, alarmed by the fact that the economy is caught in a persistent recession, continue to hike up interest rates on sovereign debt and restrict the lending of funds to the banking sector of the countries concerned. Official policy makers will take this as a further opportunity to argue that fiscal austerity needs to be stepped up to restore financial market confidence (which it evidently won’t do). It is a never ending horror story of cuts, leading to depression leading to even more cuts.
Mr. Draghi, along with the rest of the financial elite of Europe, will no doubt respond to the comments made above by arguing that it takes time for the benefits of structural reforms to materialize. If we simply wait long enough – so goes their logic – the economy will rise as a phoenix out of its ashes.
As president of a central bank, Mr. Draghi of all people should know better. Indeed, the bridge that usually links up the short with the medium term and helps economies to get over a situation of a chronic excess of supply over demand is monetary policy. At present however, monetary policy is severely constrained: Interest rates are almost at the zero mark and private sector agents across the Euro area member states are deleveraging excessive debt positions and so not willing to take on more debt regardless of lower interest rates. Monetary policy, to use a famous quote, is ‘pushing on a string’. Promoting policies that will choke off demand when the tool to kick start the economy is no longer operational is not a smart thing to do.
Besides monetary policy’s ineffectiveness, there is an even more fundamental reason why structural reforms will not work – not even in the long run. The basic fact is that one cannot build an innovative, productive and competitive economy on the basis of an impoverished society. With young qualified people massively leaving the country, the future work force increasingly being deprived of education because of fiscal austerity and a situation that is socially explosive, how are countries going to succeed in upgrading their economic and industrial structures so as to be more competitive in global trade? Even if wages are cut to the bone (and remember, others can always cut wages even more), is it realistic to think that industry in the North will close highly sophisticated plants and/or shift complex production techniques to countries where the human capital and social basis is in the process of breaking down? European policy makers are confusing industrial policy with labour market misery.
Recently, Mr. Draghi was quoted as saying that “social Europe is gone”. What he and others are ignoring is that when social Europe disappears, the strength of the European economy will disappear as well… It is time to stop Mr. Draghi and the rest of the financial elite in Europe from imposing their ‘Suicide Compact’ upon us.
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We're still far from guitar virtuosos, of course, something that isn't going to change until we learn those all-important techniques. Thankfully, whether it's sustains, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends or slides, Rocksmith has got it covered.
In this lesson we spend most of the time plucking our way through the game's many Technique Challenges, in a bid to graduate from Metallican'ts to Metallicans.
Lesson Three: Techniques
Rocksmith contains 12 Technique Challenges in total, covering everything from basic skills such as sustains and slides to more complicated techniques such as barre chords and tremolos, the latter of which make it easier to play repeat notes in quick succession.
Playing rapid, recurring notes has been a major stumbling block in our Rocksmith progress. Queens of the Stone Age song 'Go with the Flow', for example, is a real fast mover, and was one of the first songs we really struggled with in the main Career mode.
We revisited the song after getting a gold in the tremolo challenge. Having nailed the sections that were giving us so much trouble before - doubling our score in the process - it became clear how beneficial the Technique Challenges can be. The score-based Challenges also helped us with our shifting skills and improved our chord play.
Unfortunately, while we managed to get at least bronze medal on all of the Technique Challenges, performing double stops and harmonics to a high standard is a lot more difficult during actual performances. We particularly struggled with the mute aspect of double stops, which requires players to strum two notes simultaneously, muting out the strings that aren't needed.
Latest impressions as a teaching tool
Unlike the main Career mode, which will introduce new symbols and skills without warning or explanation, each Technique Challenge is detailed by the game's narrator and demonstrated with the aid of a video. With this in mind, it's definitely worth hitting the Technique Challenge section early on in your career.
Much like the songs themselves, challenges feature a sliding difficulty scale, so you're constantly being tested each and every time you play. We love this aspect of Rocksmith because it gives a clear indication of any progress made. The score-based element, meanwhile, encourages repeat play, which in turn improves your skills.
Even with a high-score element, however, Technique Challenges aren't as much fun as the Guitarcade mini-games, though they are just as essential. Fortunately, successfully scoring points in many of the challenges unlocks more of the aforementioned mini-games, offering players two vastly different ways to improve specific skills.
The Highs and Lows of Lesson Three
Highlights: More than doubling our score in Queens of the Stone Age song 'Go with the Flow' gave us an enormous sense of satisfaction and really proved how far we've come as guitarists. It's nice to have finally unlocked all of the Guitarcade mini-games too.
Low points: Despite having earned many a gold medal, some of the techniques are hard to apply in actual performances.
Join us later this month when we give our final verdict on Rocksmith and its merits as a guitar teaching tool.
Rocksmith is out now in North America and will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in Europe on September 28.
> Rocksmith blog: Digital Spy's first taste of the guitar teaching tool
Watch Queens of the Stone Age's 'Go with the Flow' music video below:
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I visited a class of Hawkins Middle School students in March to find out what they thought of SHB 1397, that would add information on statutory rape to sex education classes.
The bill requires public schools that offer sexual health education “to include age-appropriate information about the legal elements of sexual offenses where a minor is a victim and the consequences upon conviction.”
(Scroll down to see a video of some of the Hawkins students’ comments about the sex education bill.)
The 13- and 14-year-olds in Julie Sullivan’s humanities class already were immersed in improving information that gets out to their peers and students at the high school. They had conducted a survey at the high school that found only 20 percent of respondents knew the legal age of consent in this state.
The class is participating in Project Citizen, a national civics competition, with the goal of reducing teen pregnancy. The students are pushing to replace the old sack of flour exercise with use of realistic baby mannequins programmed to make demands on their “parents” just like a real infant.
Given that level of activism, I wasn’t surprised to hear that three students from the class recently testified on SHB 1397 before the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee. The students — Sophia Daley, Adin Welander and Morgan Young — showed poise and persuasiveness in their statements. All three are in favor of the bill.
Their testimony at the March 22 hearing can be viewed at 46:55 minutes into the taping, which included other bills.
“I strongly believe in this bill, because it will change so many people’s lives,” said Sophia Daley.
Daley knows a 14-year-old who was involved with a 17-year-old. The older teen is now branded “a sex offender for life.”
State law protects individuals under 18 years old by prohibiting sexual contact and sexual intercourse with partners who are significantly older. The designated age gap varies from five years or more for second degree sexual misconduct with a minor victim who is at least 16 but under 18, to the far more serious crime of first degree rape of a child, which applies when the victim is under 12 years old and the perpetrator is at least two years older.
“In reality, no one really wants to hire a sex offender,” Welander said. “It could have just been one mistake, but it’s kind of a really bad label, and they could’ve avoided that really easily.”
Young also focused on the long-term consequences. “What boss is going to hire a sex offender, and if they’re labeled a sex offender, their career is going to go down the toilet,” she said.
Christyn Daley, Sophia’s mother, has an 18-year-old son who is dating a 15-year-old girl. They’ve talked openly about what’s acceptable and potential consequences, but that’s probably not happening in every family, she told the commission. Daley is also a registered nurse concerned about the trend of younger students becoming sexually active.
Michael Young, Morgan’s dad, said, “As parents, we want to protect our children. We want to pretend things aren’t happening, but they are.”
Students these days are worldly but not not always well-informed, Young said. “We need to get out of the snow globe. We need to teach our children what’s going on so they can recognize and take power over their lives.”
The students later took a tour of the state Capitol and posed with Gov. Jay Inslee, as you can see from this photo sent in by Michael Young.
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Get organized with these simple organization tips.
(page 5 of 6)
Create a flawless filing system
Imagine pulling out a drawer and finding the file you need in seconds. Just a fantasy? It doesn't have to be. Once you have a working system in place, the filing cabinet of your dreams is within your grasp.
Color-coding? Reserve 2 or 3 colors for specific file types. More than 3 becomes too difficult to remember.
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With $58 billion in claims to pay for last year alone, U.S. insurers are jacking rates, canceling policies, and learning to cope with climate change.
Fortune Magazine, Aug. 24 2006
(Fortune Magazine) -- Mary Alice and José Martín's bungalow survived Katrina - but got hit in June. That's when Allstate informed the couple that their home, a mile from the glistening Gulf of Mexico, would no longer be covered for windstorm or hail.
"Here it is the middle of hurricane season," Mrs. Martín fumes. "Who in the world is going to sell me a windstorm policy right now?"
The Martíns are hardly alone. All along the Gulf Coast and Eastern seaboard, most major home and commercial insurers, including Allstate, Nationwide, State Farm, and St. Paul Travelers, , are variously increasing premiums, ratcheting up deductibles, narrowing terms of coverage, and turning away new customers.
In 18 states, from southern Texas to the northern tip of Maine, insurance companies are scrambling to reduce the risk of major hurricane-related payouts. The upshot: For the 43% of the U.S. population who live and do business in these states, rates are likely to rise between 20% and 100% over the next year, according to the Insurance Information Institute. (In the rest of the country, premiums are expected to rise about 4%.)
The insurance business is in the midst of a sea change.
Unpredictable weather, American migratory patterns, and soaring real estate values are increasing risks for insurers and putting pressure on their financial prospects. In response, companies are changing the rules of engagement with their customers.
It's not the best PR move for an industry still mired in post-Katrina lawsuits. Nonetheless, the effects are already being felt in places like Gulfport, Miss., and Cape Cod, where homeowners' insurance coverage is becoming more expensive, harder to get - or both. Critics blame the industry, saying it is using the trauma of Katrina as a ruse to raise rates. Insurers, though, blame the weather.
A changing climate shakes the industry
Says Allstate CEO Edward Liddy: "We are in a period of increased land and sea surface temperatures. When you couple that with more people living along coasts and dramatically increased home values in those areas, that's when you step back and you say, 'Wait a minute. This is not yesterday's game.' "
Publicly, insurers have not accepted the theory of global warming, which says that the accumulation of greenhouse gases - in part because of activities like burning fossil fuels - is changing weather patterns. What the industry does believe is that, for whatever reason, weather isn't what it used to be.
Insurers are the world's best fortunetellers. Your insurance provider can reveal more about your future than you care to know: the likelihood of your teenager's getting into a fender-bender; the number of years a daily bran muffin can add to your life; or whether your home's brick foundation will last another 50 years. The actuarial formulas that provide those answers are the cornerstone of the business.
Until recently, insurers were convinced that their calculations for predicting hurricane damage - known as "catastrophe models" - were accurate. But the 2004 and 2005 Atlantic hurricane seasons were off the charts: Seven of the ten most destructive storms in U.S. history occurred in those years; 2005 saw a record $58 billion in insured losses.
The 2005 season "shook insurers' confidence in their models," says Robert Klein, director of the Center for Risk Management and Insurance at Georgia Tech University.
Debate flares over reliability of risk models
Enter Robert Muir-Wood, a dapper British catastrophe specialist who has been modeling weather since the mid-1980s. A decade ago Muir-Wood joined the insurance industry's primary source of catastrophe-programming tools and data, Risk Management Solutions (RMS), based in Newark, Calif. He is now its chief of research.
What "cat modelers" like Muir-Wood do is fairly straightforward. If an insurer wants to estimate, say, potential losses from a hurricane striking Miami, modelers plug a series of data points into a standard formula. First they assess the likelihood of such an event by reviewing historical weather data, plotting area locations where past hurricanes struck land, then tracing the paths those storms took.
Next they factor in the insurer's inventory of policies held, using street addresses, zip codes, and other geographic coordinates, taking into account each building's height, age, and structure. Putting it all together, number-crunchers estimate possible losses - the cost of rebuilding structures, relocating displaced families, and compensating for business interruptions - minus any special terms in the policyholders' contracts, such as deductibles and coverage limits.
It's a tidy methodology - but does it still work? That was the question many insurers were asking. Muir-Wood says cat modelers have always accepted the 100-year average of history for forecasting future hurricanes. But since the mid-1990s, hurricane activity in the Atlantic has increased in both frequency and severity, according to data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
From 1985 to 1994, an average of nine hurricanes per year formed in the Atlantic; an average of one each year was severe (categories 3 to 5). From 1995 onward, an annual average of 16 storms formed. On average four were severe. The question is whether this change is an anomaly or the beginning of a new pattern.
Rather than rely on his hunch that weather history was becoming bunk, Muir-Wood gathered four of the world's best minds on the subject of hurricanes. He put them in a hotel conference room in Bermuda last October, and asked them to slog it out until they reached a consensus forecast for hurricane activity.
Experts reach a consensus
Muir-Wood's main objective was to decide whether the 100-year history of Atlantic hurricanes could still serve as a guide for devising insurance models for future disasters. And what happened in that hotel room is now making itself felt in tens of millions of living rooms and offices.
Consensus did not come easily. The experts held varying opinions on many aspects of hurricane behavior. There was MIT professor Kerry Emanuel, for instance, an expert on thermodynamics and climatology. Emanuel, a recent convert to the theory of global warming, had just concluded research that found a link between rising sea-surface temperatures and the increasing destructiveness of hurricanes.
Another participant was Jim Elsner, a professor of geography at Florida State University and an authority on the mechanisms controlling hurricane frequency and their tracks. Elsner's work centers on what he believes are rather predictable multiyear cycles of increasing and decreasing hurricane activity. These cycles have remained unchanged for eons, he believes, and therefore may not be attributed to global warming.
Tom Knutson of NOAA focuses on the possible long-term effects - well into the century - of greenhouse gas accumulation on hurricanes and typhoons. Mark Saunders, a professor of geophysics at University College London and an authority on hurricane forecasting, is a staunch believer that human activity is causing global warming in the form of rising sea-surface temperatures - the chief cause of increased hurricane activity.
With the window shades pulled to prevent the sun's glare from obscuring their projection screen, Elsner, Emanuel, Knutson, and Saunders haggled over the weather charts. Muir-Wood moderated the discussion.
Emanuel recalls he didn't like being asked to make definitive forecasts. "What's that Yogi Berra quote? 'Prediction is very hard, especially when it's about the future,' " he jokes. "The problem I have as a scientist is, I like to attach very large caveats to things."
Emanuel took issue, for example, as did Knutson, with Elsner's and Saunders's assumption that there was a strong connection between increased hurricane frequency since 1992 and the rate at which hurricanes struck land.
But on the big question - whether hurricane patterns in the near future will resemble those of the past century or the accelerated pattern of the past decade - the four unanimously agreed. In the next ten to 15 years, they said, severe hurricanes would strike land 30% more often than in the past century.
On that basis, Muir-Wood went back to the drawing board. "It is now unwise and unsafe to use the historical baseline to view future financial risk," RMS warned insurers last winter.
Insurers feel the squeeze
The influence of this new math is cascading onto other financial sectors, ultimately putting further pressure on insurers. Even as insurers begin readjusting the risk they carry in 18 coastal states, rating agencies are prodding them to maintain higher surpluses in anticipation of larger future payouts.
At the same time, reinsurance - the insurance that insurers purchase to hedge risk - is becoming scarcer and more expensive. Reinsurers like XL Capital and Swiss Re are based in Bermuda and Europe, making them exempt from U.S. pricing regulations. They have begun charging higher rates, both to make up for last year's payouts and to build reserves against future disasters.
Squeezing insurers from the other direction are the state insurance commissioners who regulate rates and try to hold them down. "It's been a persistent and severe problem that state commissioners suppress premiums well below rates necessary to cover risk in some areas," says Robert Hartwig, executive vice president and chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group. When they cannot charge what they believe is necessary, insurers either reduce coverage or simply pull out.
Then there is the matter of demographics. Over the next 30 years, more than half of projected U.S. population growth is expected to come in the states being hit the hardest by extreme weather - events like drought, fire, tornadoes, and hurricanes.
And thanks to what State Farm CEO Ed Rust Jr. calls "America's love affair with warm water and warm weather," the most vulnerable parts of those states - coastal areas - are growing fastest of all. "It's like in California, you go up into the most beautiful areas back in the canyons," says Rust. "But about every ten years you get a wildfire going through, and everything's gone. And you ask people, 'Well, why do you live there?' And they say, 'Well, it's beautiful for ten years, and then you rebuild.' Which raises the question, Who should pay for all that?"
The answer to that question is playing itself out in similar ways at various companies and in several regions.
Concerned that the Northeast is overdue for a major hurricane - the last one was in 1938 - many property and casualty insurers are scaling back. In Massachusetts, Hingham Mutual Insurance, citing higher storm damage projections and rising reinsurance rates, said recently it will not renew some 6,500 homeowner policies this year on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and two coastal Massachusetts counties.
Allstate, the nation's No. 2 personal-property insurer, said this year it would no longer offer new policies on Long Island, in New York City, and Westchester County as part of a broad effort to reduce the company's "risk profile" along the Gulf and East Coasts.
In South Carolina, Lexington Insurance (a division of AIG) is restricting new business to homes valued above $500,000. Allstate has stopped writing new policies in parts of the state.
After being hit with seven hurricanes in the last two seasons, Florida is close to a full-blown insurance crisis. In 2005, Allstate canceled 95,000 homeowner's policies in Florida. The company plans not to renew 120,000 policies by November and is writing no new policies in the state. Allstate is severely limiting its risks in Florida, in part because the state is one in which "we do not get adequate rates in that regulated system," says Allstate CEO Edward Liddy.
"If you talk to someone from Florida, they say, 'Boy, in the last five years, my home has gone up 80% in value,' " says Liddy. "But if you ask them, 'Well, are you paying 80% more for your insurance?' they would say, 'Oh, no! I only want to pay 8% more.' There's a disconnect."
As insurance becomes scarcer, a growing number of Florida homeowners are seeking policies from the state-funded insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corp. Created by the Florida legislature after private insurers retreated from the state in the wake of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Citizens is now Florida's largest home insurer.
Last June, Florida's state legislature was forced to bail out the fund with $715 million from the state's surplus. Meanwhile, the number of Citizens policyholders continues to grow, jumping from 777,000 in 2004 to some 1.2 million today. Many of those homeowners have seen their premiums double in the past year.
Warr points excitedly at the sites of future construction projects. "That's all been zoned for condos," he says, waving his hand toward one lot. "A big hotel's going over here," he says, speeding past another. Despite Katrina, Gulfport's economic pulse is certainly beating. In the past year the city has added nearly 1,500 jobs, mostly in manufacturing and shipbuilding. The new economic activity, combined with an exodus of families affected by Katrina, has created a labor shortage.
Still, while Gulfport is brimming with optimism, it is also feeling the tremors of the insurance upheaval. Some 3,500 homes were destroyed. Many of Gulfport's 71,000 residents (the population pre-Katrina) are waiting for their insurance settlements - or worse, they're involved in one of the many lawsuits against insurers over Katrina flood claims.
"These insurance issues - the slow claims payments from Katrina and the skyrocketing premiums afterwards - are the only thing holding us back," says Warr.
That may be taking optimism too far. As insurers retreat from the Gulf Coast, a growing number of homeowners are signing up for the state-run Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association. Before Katrina, the "windpool," as Mississippians call the state insurer of last resort, covered homes and businesses worth $1.8 billion. By the end of this year, the total coverage is expected to rise to $4 billion. For the owner of a $250,000 home, state windpool premiums rose 97% this year, to roughly $3,500.
Mississippi insurance commissioner George Dale fears the windpool could end up like Florida's overburdened disaster-insurance program. He's been on a campaign to keep private insurers on the coast.
"We've had several unofficial conferences with many of the companies, where we've begged, pleaded, implored them to continue writing new business on the coast," says Dale. To little avail: "Only Farm Bureau and Allstate have indicated they'll continue to write - but without wind coverage."
Construction costs are also on the rise as a result of higher insurance premiums. From big, multimillion-dollar casino projects to small jobs like raising home foundations to meet new FEMA building codes, Gulfport is rebuilding - at a cost.
Wind coverage "used to be 0.5% of total building costs," says Henry Martinez, CEO of GM&R Construction, based in Waveland, Miss. "Now it's 3% - if you can get it."
Builders naturally pass on the increased cost of premiums and bigger deductibles. Those rising costs concern John Walton, regional president of Whitney National Bank. "It's already affecting the building of affordable housing," says Walton. "We need to have places for people making $40,000 a year. That's who worked in the casinos and the hotels here. Those people are gone, and we need them back."
With the city's own annual premium up 50%, to $1.5 million (out of an annual budget of roughly $50 million), Warr trimmed costs by leaving playgrounds, park fences, gazebos, and the like uninsured for catastrophe loss.
Critics of the insurance industry say the new models are just an excuse to raise premiums. In June, J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), testified before Congress that "RMS has become the vehicle for collusive pricing" among insurers. "It's clear that the insurance industry sought this move to higher rates," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee last June.
It's a fair criticism that competition among risk modelers is not as robust as it could be: RMS and its two competitors, AIR Worldwide and Equecat, help to set prices for the entire industry. Insurers insist that they are facing real pressures.
That is true enough, but don't get out the violins just yet. Insurance is the world's biggest industry ($3.4 trillion in annual revenues, compared with a mere $1.6 trillion for Big Oil). And even with all its disasters, 2005 was a very profitable year for U.S. property and casualty insurers. Collectively, they saw profits rise 11%.
Still, convinced weather-related disasters will cause more and more damage, companies are looking beyond higher premiums for answers. Liddy helped draft legislation that would diminish the states' powers to regulate rates, while setting up a national disaster reinsurance fund seeded with capital from insurers.
Untethering insurers from price regulation and bringing in the government as a reinsurer sounds like a massive bailout to critics. CFA's Hunter also wonders, "Why should we be adding another thing for the federal government to screw up?" But Liddy - who likes to point out that it was the insurance industry that created the nation's first fire departments - insists that involving the federal government as a backstop makes sense.
The politics are only beginning. But there is little doubt that a large chunk of the country will see its spending power, already eroded by high energy prices, further drained by escalating insurance costs. Moreover, the states being hit hardest may find sharply higher insurance costs a deterrent to new investment. In a sense, higher insurance rates are a tax - people have to pay up, and the rate affects everyone, directly or indirectly.
One immediate outcome: "This has got to have a depressing effect on housing markets," says Robert Litan, an economist with the Brookings Institution. "The extra cost of insurance will be a haircut on the value of your house."
The Martíns, by the way, finally did get insurance, this time from State Farm. But now the premium is $3,000, almost three times what they paid Allstate in 2005.
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It is a commonly asked question to statistically obsessed cricket fans as to whether cricket is played on paper. Unfortunately, the sheer cliché status of such a question denotes the overuse of such a statement to rebuke carefully compiled and water tight statistical arguments – a sort of “I know you are but what am I” ad hominem slur.
After carefully working through the many filters of Cricinfo Statsguru, to show why Sachin Tendulkar is a far greater batsman to Ricky Ponting, a fan may feel confidently smug that they have proved the superiority of their favourite Indian masterblaster™ as a Test batsman* to Ricky Ponting. But then, alas, the Australian responds with a scathing attack on Tendulkar’s record in South Africa – the toughest batting conditions on the face of the planet. He is a mere flat track bully if he cannot amass an average greater than 39.76 (to two decimal places) in South Africa. And then it begins, the Indian fan will shut statsguru, roll up the sleeves and then note the unquantifiable (yep, it is a word) mental pressure that Tendulkar faces, the “weight of a nation” which weighs him down exponentially more than the 3lb blade which he wields so elegantly.
*Of course, we need not begin to argue Tendulkar’s superiority in ODIs; we need not waste the time.
Other than the word exponentially, all that can be documented on paper mathematically and scientifically has left the vicinity. We have established now that cricket is not being played on paper but rather is a complex psychological game – does such a game, free of thinned, pulped, whitened wood truly exist?
Indeed, I find two examples of the psychological game of cricket – stark opposites and hopefully the credibility, usefulness and significance of such examples can help us find an answer to the question which I’m sure you, and certainly I, would think far easier to pinpoint.
The first of my examples is Marcus Trescothick, does his mental illness detract from his legacy – is his lack of mental longevity, requirement to reconsider the length of a career in determining a player’s legacy? Indeed, a short career at Test level (whether cut short by injury or merely a career in its infancy) creates a mystique, a magnifying of a player’s quality as an untapped potential – a sort of ‘what more can be achieved...experience will only help this player’ and so on. Alas, such a phenomenon has struck (if I may use that word for an internet fan and commentator state of thought) many an Indian fast bowler who has debuted with poor to average statistics and people merely assume future improvement – the speed is there, the swing is there, surely the rest will fall into place. Few people consider the adrenaline rush, the mental thrill of playing for one’s country, a thrill which will no doubt fade as a bowler reached his 20th ODI inside their first year – thrill turns to tedium – pace turns to a gentle bit of nip, and the natural zip and swing seems to vanish as quickly as it came. Indeed, Michael Hussey is a fantastic example of such – with the basic technique to succeed at First Class cricket, superhuman concentration and application could take him to fantastic heights and many thought out that the world can be modelled by a normal distribution, there may be one at a height greater than the rest but two?! No, the mathematical model of humans would not allow it. The sheer reduction of cricketers to their statistical achievements glosses over the possibility that great amount of mental concentration and application are not always possible over a period greater than a few years. Indeed, for one for whom the game is down to the conscious strength of the mind rather than the unconscious reflexes of the body, great lows may follow, as has been the case in Michael Hussey.
Indeed, I wished to go on to talk about the way that Trinidad and Tobago’s national camaraderie, not present in the West Indian team, which is a mere collection of nations, has led the aforementioned to become far greater than the sum of its parts, but I fear I’m boring you already. To finish, I’d like to posit that although statistics may be useful and accurate in predicting and modelling the cricketing world, we must not do injustice to the mental and psychological game which can elevate performers just as it can take them down – the extent to which the game becomes more detached from the psychological and more attached to the physical is one where we will see a great deal of homogeneity, something detrimental to the unique game of cricket…
Navjot Singh Sidhu - “Statistics are like miniskirts, what they show is tantalising but what they hide is crucial”
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When I first looked at one of the polls, I was taken back by the selection of forced-choice categories. First of all, industry heavy IBM SPSS was not identified as a distinct choice, but instead lumped with Weka and Oracle. I would have set up Oracle and SPSS as separate choices and perhaps included Weka with Other Open Source. In addition, I would have added S-Plus and SQL (non-Oracle) as separate categories. What I might have missed, though, turns out to be the most selected choice of all: Excel.
I must admit, I'm not an Excel guru. An open source type, I use Open Office Calc when I “spreadsheet”, but even then barely at an intermediate level. I generally use Calc for planning and other modest computation tasks. Though I've programmed with it, I've never liked Excel's macro language and, truth be told, don't care much for its Visual Basic interface either. Where many use Excel for data manipulation, I currently use Ruby. When in the past I've embedded Excel in programs, it's been to use the graphics with agile languages Perl and Python. But aside from investigating capabilities, I've done very little spreadsheet statistical work, even though there's now quite a bit of stats functionality included. It seems I'm never without access to superior statistical platforms like SAS, S-Plus and R. So why would I condescend to work with a tool that's not designed for my complicated statistical needs? Indeed, I'd say my most common use for spreadsheets is as a universal storage format for data transfer.
Apparently, there are many poll respondents who disagree with my thinking. In one poll, where three data mining choices were allowed, Excel was selected by over 38% of 486 respondents and was indeed the top pick overall, outdistancing even SAS and R. The ABADMPM discussion includes supportive Excel for analytics comments like: “Truly MS Excel is a great tool for analysis.”, “I'm using MS Excel at most as we can do a lot with this by using PIVOT Tables through which we can do both weighted and unweighted analysis.”, “Surely Excel is popular, accessible, and easy. I use it daily.”, and, “First let me defend excel as god's gift to analysts. The flexibility, presentation, scalability and usability (yes all different) are unmatched by any platform.” Yikes! Maybe I've been missing out all these years?
I take some solace, though, from being on the same side of the Excel as Statistical Platform discussion as statistician, author and R community luminary Patrick Burns. Burns' thoughtful but provocative article Spreadsheet Addiction comes with strong admonitions on the proliferation of Excel for statistical analysis.
The author offers two points of departure defending traditional statistical packages against Excel: 1) “The perception of the ease-of-use of spreadsheets is to some extent an illusion. It is dead easy to get an answer from a spreadsheet, however, it is not necessarily easy to get the right answer. Thus the distorted view.” and 2) “The difficulty of using alternatives to spreadsheets is overestimated by many people. Safety features can give the appearance of difficulty when in fact these are an aid.”
Burns cites a litany of computational problems with Excel. As examples of how to get the wrong answer easily, he offers the ambiguity of value and formula, challenging the reader to: “create a column of calls to a random function ("=rand()" in Excel). Now sort those cells.” A second illustration has to do with numeric precision: “If you write a text file (csv or txt) from Excel or Works, then numbers will be written with a limited number of significant digits. Microsoft is aware that there is displeasure about this, but regards it as a "feature".....This loss of precision is especially troublesome since it limits the use of Excel as a staging area for data -- gathering data from one or more sources and writing the data out to be used by other programs ...There is a trick to get full precision, however -- turn the numbers into text. One way of doing this is to use the concatenate function with just one argument.” Finally, Burns notes a common spreadsheet problem he calls Data Extent. “It is extremely common for data to be added to a spreadsheet after it has been created. The augmentation of data can go wrong, rendering a correct spreadsheet incorrect ...When there is separation between functions and data, it is possible to refine the functions so that they work on all data of any size. In spreadsheets, where there is no such separation, it is easy for bugs to creep into the calculation on any use of the spreadsheet. “ Yes, been there; done that.
The author pulls no punches decrying the graphics metaphor of Excel. He starts by taking on the omnipresent Excel 3D pie chart, noting the gratuitous orientation of this and other Excel visuals: “Much, much worse is the three-dimensional effect. In most graphics a three-dimensional effect merely makes the graph harder to interpret.”
But Burns is a statistician and saves his most strident comment for last. “to the extent that Excel's poor statistical functionality has driven people to other programs, it has been a service. A spreadsheet is not a proper place to perform statistical analyses except in the very simplest of cases. “ He cites the scathing presentation: Problems With Using Microsoft Excel for Statistics, by statistician Jonathan Cryer, as evidence. Stats-intensive Excel users should review this document carefully. Cryer's conclusion: “Due to substantial deficiencies, Excel should not be used for statistical analysis. We should discourage students and practitioners from such use. The following pretty much sums it up: Get the Right Tool for the Job! Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Excel for Statistics!” Ouch!
A compromise, noted by some in the ABADMPM discussion, includes using Excel in tandem with one or more statistical packages such as SAS or R. No doubt, Excel is well connected to relational databases and just about any other data source. And many analysts are magicians using Excel to pivot and otherwise “munge” their data into formats friendly for data mining. Certainly Excel's ubiquitous connectivity to just about any other analytics tool minimally pre-ordains it to a top-tier supporting analytics role. So perhaps Excel can function well as a statistical assistant, “serving” the preliminary needs of more comprehensive statistical platforms. One illustration of this approach is the marriage of R and Excel. An unabashed R advocate, I like the freely-available RExcel addin a lot and recommend it enthusiastically to the Excel community. My motto: Render unto Excel the things which are Excel’s, and unto R the things that are R’s!
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I recently found my mother's great grandfather in the 1930 Census in Indianapolils. His name is William Parker; born in GA about 1852. I have been trying to find him for the past 2 years. My mother's family stories and the family names on my family tree confirm for me that I have the correct person in the 1930 Census. I had William Tucker Parker, Mary Lou (Parker) Rivers [my great grandmother] and Eula Bell (Parker) Ivey on my tree as siblings; but could not find parents for them until recently.
After searching backwards for him in Georgia, I found him in 1920 US Census in Hootenville (Upson) GA; 1910 US Census in Carsonville (Taylor) GA; 1900 US Census in Reeves (Upson) GA; 1880 Marriage to Vessie Parker; 1870 US Census in Wilkinson, GA (Subdivision 139) and (this is where the "maybe" comes in) 1860 Slave Schedule for Thomas H. Parker in Wilkinson, GA.
There are other William Parkers in other counties in the lower part of the state of GA; but this William Parker lives closer to Upson County, GA, which this family seems to have lived in or near for a few generations.
When I look at my mother's family, the Rivers' side (her grandfather's surname) and Parker's side (her grandmother's maiden name), both families lived in the areas surrounding Upson County, GA. In 1900, my mother's grandmother and grandfather lived in Reeves (Upson County, GA). Her grandfather's father, Doc Rivers and his family lived in Reeves. Her grandmother's father (William Parker and family) also lived in Reeves.
I looked at the names above William Parker's name in the 1870 US Census for Wilkinson County, GA. It is the children of a white family named Parker. I looked at the page before to find out the name of the head of household. It was Robert N. Parker. I figured out that if William was born in 1852, he should have been 8 years old in 1860. I looked at the slave schedule for R.N. Parker in Wilkinson County, GA. He didn't have a slave male slave who was 8 yrs old; but his father Thomas H. Parker did. I even checked out the other Parker's in Wilkinson County. I believe that it is Thomas Parker. I also paid attention to the fact that in 1870, William Parker is a farm laborer living with a family named Stubbs. He's 18yrs old. Philis Stubbs is a domestic servant and Viney Stubbs in only 10yrs old.
Here's what I was thinking: William Parker and the Stubbs family are possibly working for or share cropping on Robert N. Parker's farm. I think the way they ended up on the farm is because of Robert being Thomas H. Parker's son.
Can someone tell me if what I am thinking,about William Parker being a slave on Thomas H. Parker's plantation or farm, makes sense?
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Hoyt Lakes, MN (NNCNOW.com) - Despite attempts by environmental groups to slow or block the emergence of Copper Nickel mining in Northern Minnesota, one non-ferrous mining company is poised to begin operations in about a year.
Two major, international companies are quite advanced in their efforts to open copper nickel mines in the geologic formation in Northern Minnesota known as the Duluth Complex.
Stretching from Aitkin County to Ely, it contains more than four billion tons of valuable non-ferrous metals. If these minerals are mined, experts say there's enough to keep plants producing for more than 30 years.
Several mining companies have begun test drilling and would like to open copper nickel mines in region.
Polymet is ahead of its other copper-nickel mines by virtue of the fact that it started first. Once it gets its permits in place, it will be even further ahead because of the fact that it bought this LTV mine from Cliffs, and with it came a lot of working infrastructure."
“We're looking at the supplemental draft being out this spring,” said LaTisha Gietzen, the vice president of Public, Government and Environmental Affairs for Polymet.
Once that draft is reviewed by the public then state and federal environmental agencies will create the final Environmental Impact statement.
“ At the end of an EIS, we all see what the potential environmental impacts are, and then the state agencies use that information to move forward on permitting,” said Ann Foss with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Once those are complete, we'll be able to start construction,” LaTisha said.
Getting to this point has taken PolyMet almost ten years at a cost of some 46 million dollars. PolyMet's CEO says its time and money well-spent.
The modern rules and regulations set a high standard and threshold, and it's our job to design a project and make sure we can meet those standards,” said John Cherry, president & CEO of PolyMet.
But Ian Kimmer, representing the environmental group, "Friends of the Boundary Waters", doesn't trust that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency sets high enough standards to protect the environment.
“The state agencies are okaying something that the federal government wouldn't,” Kimmer said.
PolyMet officials are well aware of the environmental concerns and say they've worked closely with the Department of Natural Resources as well as the MPCA.
“ You have to meet the environmental standards and lots of companies are looking at not only meeting them, but going beyond,” said Paul Eger, a consultant and environmental enginner.
Scientist Paul Eger, has, for years, studied a closed Iron Range mine site in which iron sulfide metals were exposed to air and water and leeched out contaminating the nearby watershed.
“It was a situation that occurred and that we were able to learn from it and our regulations and rules were developed after that,” Eger said.
Eger says scientists have been able to use the knowledge gained through treating the pollution at the Dunka mine as they move toward opening copper-nickel mines.
The operation and some of the techniques that we've used there, we understand those better, those can be applied to future mining as well,” Eger said.
“ That's the responsibility we have, to ensure our projects and mines are protective of the environment, and that's our obligation,” Cherry said.
Last month PolyMet shared results of its new reverse osmosis treatment system that removes sulfate from water to meet state standards.
“We just finished treating over a million gallons of water with elevated sulfate levels to demonstrate that the technology is robust enough to be used in this case,” Cherry said.
The plan is to have a water treatment plant, along with leak detection monitoring wells in place when the plant opens.
“We want to make sure we get it right so we can open a mine and have minimal impact on the environment,” LaTisha said.
PolyMet officials say their mine will directly employ 360 people.
A recent study at the University of Minnesota-Duluth showed an additional 600 indirect jobs would also be created with an overall economic impact in St. Louis County of $515 million a year for an estimated 20 to 30 years.
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Monkey Fist Keychains for your keys or self-defense hand-made to order in the style and colors of your choice. For those truly looking for unique defense tool, check out Paul's Tactical Monkey Fist Bolo!
Monkey Fists are nothing new -- as a matter of fact they've been around for hundreds of years! Also known as a sailor's knot, the monkey fist was used to pass lines from a ship to shore or from one ship to another ship.
The monkey fist was used at the end of a line to add weight usually tied around a small weight, such as a stone, marble, tight fold of paper, or a piece of wood. A thicker line will require a larger object in the centre to hold the shape of the knot.
Monkey Fists were commonly used as melee weapons by sailors embroiled in street and tavern fights during the 1800s and the use of the monkey's fist became common in the street gang subcultures of the 1800s. Now, fast forward a couple hundred years and Monkey Fists are back. Now you can carry a Monkey Fist too!
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THE DL-Online published an editorial about budget negotiations at the Capitol. They agreed with the chambers of commerce that spoke at the Capitol and met with the Governor about how cuts to LGA lead to higher property taxes for individuals and businesses. Both the chambers and the DL-Online agree that it’s time for the legislature to meet the Governor halfway on raising revenue.
They called for compromise, saying the governor and Legislature must come together to produce a budget compromise that includes both cuts and a state revenue increase.
The group said that the disproportionate cuts to LGA over the past years have driven up property taxes 65 percent across the state since 2002, with greater Minnesota taking the biggest hits.
“We already know what a tax increase looks like. It looks like this — a property tax statement — which our businesses and families have been slapped with year after year because of the continued cuts to LGA, and we’ve had enough of that,” said Dan Dorman, a former Republican state representative and current executive director of the Albert Lea Economic Development Agency.
Read the entire editorial here.
State Revenue Increase Better Than Property Tax Increases
(St. Paul, MN)– Local chambers of commerce from across the state gathered Monday for a State Capitol press conference to explain that local government aid is critical to business growth and livable communities throughout the state and that the governor and legislature must come together to produce a budget compromise that includes both cuts and a state revenue increase.
The group said that the disproportionate cuts to LGA over the past years have driven up property taxes 65% across the state since 2002, with greater Minnesota taking the biggest hits.
Continue reading »
Mayors across the state are speaking up against LGA cuts in the tax conference committee report. If the reductions are signed into law, they would put even more pressure on property taxpayers and could further reduce core services.
ST. PAUL - A Republican tax bill that cuts state payments to cities upset city leaders. The House-Senate tax conference committee agreed late Thursday to trim Local Government Aid as it wrapped up a tax bill, and phasing out aid to Duluth, St. Paul and Minneapolis. Comments rolled in all day Friday.
“Last night, the tax conference committee decided to cut an additional 29 percent of Local Government Aid funding and cripple the state’s largest cities by phasing out their funding,” said Park Rapids Mayor Nancy Carroll, president of the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities. “The House and Senate majority’s plan to balance the state budget by relying entirely on spending cuts and property tax increases is unacceptable.”
Read the article in the Bemidji Pioneer here.
Mayor Chris Coleman, City of Saint Paul
Mayor R. T. Rybak, City of Minneapolis
When a bill was passed at the State Capitol to eliminate Local Government Aid (LGA) from Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth, mayors from greater Minnesota and across the state didn’t lie low: instead, they came to the defense of Minnesota’s job-creating core cities and have stood by us in defending a policy that has served our entire state well for over 40 years.
Why? Because LGA has been instrumental to the success of Minnesota. LGA keeps local communities economically vibrant by helping taxpayers pay for critical services and keeping property taxes down for businesses and families.
Continue reading »
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman joined New Ulm Mayor Robert Buessman, North Mankato Mayor Mark Dehan, and Mankato City Council member Mike Laven in Mankato to highlight the importance of LGA to southern Minnesota and the whole state. The Mankato Free Press covered the story here and KEYC’s story can be viewed here.
Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak attended similar press conferences in Alexandria and Moorhead. He was joined in Alexandria by mayor H. Dan Ness, Elbow Lake mayor Jay McNamar and Morris mayor Sheldon Giese. In Moorhead, Rybak spoke with city council member (and mayor pro-tem) Greg Lemke and other city officials. KSAX wrote about the Alexandria stop here and Inforum covered the meeting in Moorhead here.
On Tuesday, April 26th, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman met with New Ulm Mayor Robert Beussman, Mankato City Council President Mike Laven and North Mankato Mayor Mark Dehen. They highlighted how a large majority of area businesses support LGA and support keeping it at its current levels for all cities.
From the Mankato Free Press:
Mankato attorney Randy Berkland spoke to the business community’s interest in the program: “Having a vibrant city and surrounding vibrant small towns is good for our growth.”
“We recognize a sharing of the pain. Our concern is when the cutbacks are directed at one place,” Berkland said.
Read the Mankato Free Press story here
The Twin Cities Daily Planet ran a series of articles about LGA and how the budget battles at the legislature could affect the future of Minnesota’s cities. These four stories highlight some of the voices in the debate and the possible consequences of the bills under consideration at the Capitol:
Cut LGA? Fighting words for mayors across Minnesota
What “no new taxes” means for local property owners
Looking for the money: What about local sales taxes?
Mayors to state lawmakers: We don’t want the Twin Cities to become Detroit
The Albert Lea Tribune turns to botany as a metaphor to describe the interconnectedness of Minnesota communities. Their April 4th editorial focuses on the importance of LGA in equalizing property taxes across the state and helping all communities provide basic services.
It has become frustrating for people in Greater Minnesota and in Minneapolis and St. Paul to see increasing property taxes, industrial taxes and fees and yet have fewer services - all thanks to the annual barrage the suburban leaders make on local government aid.
Granite Falls Mayor Dave Smiglewski said it best last week in a conference call: “Minnesota is one state and we succeed or fail based on whether we work together.”
Read the entire editorial here
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Subaru Outback to Become “Light Truck” to Avoid Fuel Economy Rules
As of next year, Subaru’s Outback sedan will be classified as a “light truck,” thanks to some technical modifications to its ground clearance and back bumper position. The revised classification will place the car … er, truck in a category requiring (as of 2005) 21.2 miles per gallon; in contrast, each automaker’s fleet of standard passenger cars must average 27.5 mpg. More than semantics are at stake: Since the regulatory categories were put in place in the 1970s, the automotive industry has developed the minivan and the SUV, both wildly popular and both classified as light trucks, meaning that well over half of all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. are held to less stringent fuel economy standards. As a result of this loophole, average fuel economy is lower than it was two decades ago, despite a variety of advances in fuel-saving technology. The move is particularly ironic for Subaru, whose vehicles are popular among SUV-disdaining enviros in college towns across the U.S.
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Posted by essie chamblee
on June 06, 2000 at 11:32:55:
In Reply to: Easiest diabetic diet? posted by Alisande on April 29, 2000 at 22:21:35:
: I'm trying to help a friend who has Type II diabetes. He's overweight, and I'm hoping the diabetes can be eventually controlled with diet and exercise. The literature says diabetics need to count carbs and fats. I know my friend--who lives alone--will find a lot of detail overwhelming. Is there an easier way?
: I've been eating low-carb for four years and found it the easiest way to lose weight. Does wonders for my triglycerides, too. Is an extremely low-carb diet dangerous for someone with adult-onset diabetes? Thanks for the help.
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| 0.961581 | 171 | 1.773438 | 2 |
|Advertisements for the big guys at the end of the tournament.|
|Sumo wrestling is Japans most famous long standing traditional sport.|
Two 300-350 pound men with giant wedgies make their way onto the floor of the dohyō (sumo ring) made of clay mixed with sand as one pounces on the other and the loser falls flat onto an onlooker. This was what took place at the very first match I saw an the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament on day 14 at sumo stadium in Rygoku, Tokyo. Why would they put the audience members and judges so close to the ring? In my personal opinion, it's all for affect, the crows goes wild when one of the audience members gets flattened by a giant sumo and it is by far one of the funniest things I have ever witnessed in my life! According to Japan Guide, there are no weight restrictions or classes in sumo, meaning that wrestlers can easily find themselves matched off against someone many times their size. This was often the case in the matches I saw where one man was easily 70 pounds heavier than the other.
There are about 6 sumo tournaments per year in Japan each lasting 15 days and 3 of which are held in Tokyo. If you happen to be in Japan during one of these tournaments purchasing the cheapest ticket up in the nose bleed section for 3,600 yen about $35 USD will be the best money you ever spend during your time in Japan.
Attending a sumo tournament can be an all day event. The doors opened at 9 am and the last fight was at 6pm. In the morning the amateurs compete and then later into the afternoon the pros start coming out and the stadium gets packed. I was lucky to see a geisha sitting up in the front rows of the ring dressed beautifully in a robe with her white face and perfect posture. You may also see the sumo wrestlers enter and exit the stadium from the front entrance. Before and after the tournament you will see groups of sumo wrestlers getting in and out of taxis and even hopping on their bikes. When I arrived at the stadium I saw one of the lower ranking sumo professionals getting on the subway, and another hopping on his bike!
A good think to know about attending the tournament is that you can bring any of your own food and drinks inside the stadium. Yes, this means you can buy a case of beer and bring it into the stadium so that you don't pay $5 for a small and $7 for a large Asahi. I learned this the hard way when I saw fellow audience members busting out their sushi and drinks brought from home. However, I did equate the Japanese sumo match to a good old fashioned base ball game and went and bought a hot dog $3 and a large beer! You can exit the stadium once and re-enter, so you can also go out to get lunch or leave for a while and come back.
One of my co workers was smart enough to find out about a radio rental for $1 that translates the Japanese radio televised version of the tournament into English. This was very helpful for knowing who was up against each other and what their past rankings were. Some of the sumo wrestlers were foreigners from Brazil and Mongolia and there was even one white guy who defeated a Japanese wrestler. Professional sumo is only practiced in Japan, and Wikipedia notes that there are currently 55 wrestlers listed as foreigners. So when you see a foreigner they really stand out, and the Japanese crowd goes wild. As the tournament goes on the fans become more and more enthusiastic and men with flags enter the ring. At first I thought the flags were just for show based on the wrestlers ranking, but then I learned afterwards that the flags are actually sponsorships.
The entire experience was one of excitement and awe. The actual wrestling matches happen so quickly that if you turn to talk to your neighbor it will be over by the time you turn back. Everything happens so fast, so keep your eye on the ring, and you wont miss a thing. For those of you that are near sighted, I know this may sound silly, but I strongly recommend for you to not forget your glasses on the day of the sumo match. I forgot mine, and found myself watching most of it through the zoom on my camera! There is nothing better than getting an up close glimpse of those wrinkly and hairy chests and jiggling butts as the sumo wrestlers literally slap their own butts.
|Sumo poses outside of Rygoku.|
|A full house for the final sumo matches with the big shots.|
|Another big match, you can see the stadium filled up to the max.|
|Views from the top of the sumo stadium in Tokyo really give you a good panorama.|
|More sumo poses outside Rygoku.|
|This sumo is signing autographs after the tournament.|
|This sumo stopped to greet his biggest fan : )|
|Man, sumo wrestler, man.|
|There's nothing like a hot dog and a beer at a sumo match in Tokyo!|
|Outside of Rygoku stadium.|
|Sumo wrestlers exiting a taxi cab at Rygoku stadium and entering.|
|Flags that line the outside of Rygoku.|
|One of the entrances into the stadium. There are many shops lining the entrance with souvenirs.|
|A market inside that donated its profits to the earthquake charit|
|Sumo wrestling figurines.|
|A sumo wrestling vending machine.|
|Bright lights inside Rogoku stadium.|
|Pictures of sumo champions that line the stadium walls.|
If you have any questions or comments about "Gone Seoul Searching in Japan: Sumo Wrestling at Ryogoku Stadium in Tokyo" please leave them in the comment box below or email them to [email protected]
Gone Seoul Searching by Marie Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at [email protected].
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The boards of three regional Planned Parenthood branches — North Texas, Central Texas and the Capital Region — have voted to merge, forming a $29 million-per-year mega-organization with 26 clinics up and down the Interstate 35 corridor.
The merger vote, in the works for more than a year, creates Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, the eighth-largest affiliate of the nation’s most ubiquitous reproductive health and abortion provider.
“The timing is right, in terms of looking ahead at the challenges we will face politically, and from a health care standpoint,” said Leslie MacLean, board chairwoman of Planned Parenthood of North Texas. “We felt like it was an obligation to look at all of the options to make us smarter and more efficient.”
It’s estimated that the new regional affiliate, covering 58,000 square miles from Austin to Denton and Fort Worth to Tyler, will serve 120,000 patients in 2013. It will provide birth control for 103,000 people and perform an estimated 8,500 abortions per year, in addition to screening tens of thousands of people for breast and cervical cancers and sexually transmitted infections.
Amid legislative funding cuts and Republican lawmakers set on forcing Planned Parenthood out of Texas, the goal is to make the regional partners more efficient and streamlined, the merger's advocates say. (Following the budget cuts of the last legislative session, the three Planned Parenthood branches in merger talks watched their annual state family-planning funding drop from more than $5 million combined to nothing. Several clinics were forced to close.)
The result, they hope, will be an organization that has deeper pockets — and even more political influence.
"By defunding family planning, the governor and socially conservative lawmakers are not only hurting the women Planned Parenthood serves. They're hurting women across the state," said Ken Lambrecht, who heads Planned Parenthood of North Texas, and will be president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas starting in September under the proposed merger. “We hope this will enable us to be a stronger voice for all of those women."
Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, said Planned Parenthood's "sense of entitlement to our tax dollars" is misguided.
"If you are in the business of providing or promoting abortions, then Governor Perry doesn't think we should be in the business of funding your efforts," she said.
Texas Tribune donors or members may be quoted or mentioned in our stories, or may be the subject of them. For a complete list of contributors, click here.
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The thought of boarding a long haul flight with a toddler (or young children) in tow is enough to make even the most seasoned traveler break into a cold sweat.
Before she turned to gin and Valium, Mrs S posed the question to our wise community of Mothers and, as per usual, they answered the call and gave such practical, inventive advice that we’ve put them all together as a comprehensive ‘how to survive flying with children without resorting to drinking’ list*.
Don’t leave home without it.
- Relax all rules associated with television and load an ipad with all their favourite shows.
- Take a lightweight foldaway stroller for use in the terminal, but have the children walk (if able) as much as possible. Use the stroller for hand luggage.
- Take more nappies/clothes/wipes etc than you think you’ll need. Pack them in individual ziplock bags containing 1 x nappy, wipes, and a change of clothes per bag.
- Find a quiet spot in the terminal and let the kids make noise. Lead them in some exercises – jumping jacks, stretches etc, to help them burn energy.
- Attach a name tag to your child in a somewhat disguised place (not obvious enough that a stranger could call their name).
- Take a photo of your children in the clothes they are travelling in to assist if they wander off.
- Once through security, buy enough water for all of you for the duration of the flight.
- You can buy healthy-ish lollipops to help with ear discomfort on take off and landing.
- Explore your options in homeopathic/natural remedies such as Brauers Calm and Rescue Remedy
- Where possible, book a night flight.
- Acknowledge and recognise that parents are doing their absolute best to keep their kids calm and happy (this is what you can mentally send the other passengers in the plane!)
- Speaking of other passengers, one of our Mums handed out earplugs to the people in the seats around her in case of ‘banshee like wails’ and found that most people smiled and appreciated the offer, but didn’t take the earplugs!
- Wrap little surprises – sticker books, stories, activities and stagger them. Giving one each hour, on the hour.
- Magic Erase drawing boards can solve the problem of pens and pencils rolling under the seats.
- Sleep when (if!) they do. Even if just to rest your eyes.
- Assume you will neither sleep or do anything other than tend to the needs of your children. Then you’ll be pleasantly surprised if you get to do anything else!
- Break up your trip. Stop over for 10 hours. Find a hotel, sleep, shower and let the kids have a run around and play. Then check in for your next flight.
- Baby Carriers are wonderful travelling tools for babies (even toddlers if you have something like an Ergo or Manducca)
- Make and take your own baby food.
- If breastfeeding be sure to keep hydrated with plenty of water.
- Try and get bulkhead seats. Not only do you have more leg space, but it eliminates the problem of having a seat in front of you reclined into your lap (which will inevitably have a small child on it!). And it means no little feet kicking and little hands pulling at said seat.
- Create a little ‘nest’ for sleeping. One with a head on your lap, other with feet. The grown up sits on the aisle.
- No sugary food. At all.
- Dress them and yourself in light, breathable clothing in layers that can be removed (particularly in descent when the air seems to go off and people can easily overheat)
- Take enough plastic bags to store any dirty clothes, fash cloths etc.
- Explore your options to be assisted through terminals/customs quicker. Some airlines offer ‘Meet & Assist’ programs.
- Take the car seat for toddlers. Then they are sitting in a seat they are familiar with being in for longer periods of time and can quite often amuse themselves for a longer time than if sitting in a big aeroplane seat.
- Pre-arrange special kids meals or dietary requirement meals. This means you will be served before the other passengers.
- Use the restrooms when the other passengers are eating to avoid queues.
- Play to their sense of imagination and wonder. Can you create different scenarios? Perhaps you are al in a rocket ship? A magic carpet?
- You will get there. All will be well. You will get through it. You will sleep again.
*kidding – we by no means advocate taking anything that will impair one’s judgment when there are children in their care.
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Welcome to EpiWords – a new module of the EpiNorth project!
We would like to offer to you the result of many years of work. EpiNorth project, as you know, has been publishing the bilingual (English – Russian) journal under the same name since 2000. Since that time we have published many articles on many different topics within epidemiology, infectious diseases and public health and have accumulated many medical, statistical, laboratory and epidemiological terms in both Russian and English. We have decided to gather these terms in a bilingual glossary, which we call EpiWords. We hope that this glossary will help to diminish the terminology difficulties in professional communication among health care specialists from different countries in the EpiNorth region.
We continue to enhance and improve the EpiWords glossary which now contains about 1500 terms and word combinations in Russian and English and is freely available. EpiWords is a complementary source and its terms are not intended to replace medical information provided by other published or online available dictionary/glossary sources. Terms are arranged in alphabetical order. To navigate the attached glossary use bookmarks. If you need to find bookmarks, go to View → Navigation Panels → Bookmarks.We will do our best to find and publish new terms in a timely manner.
Don't find the term you were searching? Please send suggestions, comments or questions to [email protected] .
We hope you will find EpiWords useful! EpiWords Glossary (click here to open)
In order to open EpiWords, please, download the latest version of Adobe Reader.
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Last Wednesday, May 25th, I reached a milestone in my cancer journey. A milestone that here in Cancer World is considered a big deal. It’s a milestone that we all hope to reach, a milestone marked by hope and triumph. Yesterday was my 5-year cancerversary.
Why are five years of survivorship such a big deal? It’s all about statistics. When a person is diagnosed with cancer, doctors will talk about survival rates as a way of discussing a person’s prognosis. These rates are calculated based on the percentage of patients who live at least five years after being diagnosed with cancer. The 5-year survival rate is a standard used across Cancer World, regardless of the type of cancer.
So for instance, a person with early-stage cancer of any type might be told that their 5-year survival rate is 90%, meaning that person has a 90% chance of still being alive five years from now. Someone with late-stage cancer might have a survival rate of only 10%. Survival rates differ depending on type of cancer, stage of cancer, age of onset, race, gender, and probably a million other factors. It’s a big ol’ confusing pile of numbers best understood by doctors, researchers, and scientists.
But to your average, every-day cancer patient, what we hear is “five years” and a percentage. To those of us in the trenches, making it to five years really means something. It doesn’t matter if the odds are in our favor or not. It doesn’t matter that making it to five years is really no predictor that we’ll make it to six. It doesn’t matter that in reality, “five years” has no significance other than to calculate a statistic. However misguided our thought process may be, hitting the 5-year mark is a significant milestone in the life of a cancer survivor.
So as my own 5-year cancerversary approached, I fully expected to have a celebratory attitude. I circled the date on our wall calendar, writing “My Cancerversary! 5 years!!” in big letters, and surrounding it with a bunch of stars for emphasis. I told my husband I wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate the occasion. I contemplated witty and obnoxiously upbeat status updates I could post to my Facebook profile. I even scheduled my annual oncology appointment on my cancerversary, as some sort of poignant gesture.
Yet once the day was here I didn’t feel celebratory at all. Instead of feeling the hope and triumph of my own survival, I spent most of the day missing my mom. According to those all-important survival rates, Mom only had a 15% chance of making it to five years. But made it she did, and we all felt a huge sense of relief. Our own misconceptions about what “five years” really meant led us to believe she was in the clear, that she’d beaten cancer. So when she died of a recurrence less than a week after her 8-year cancerversary, our whole family was shocked. Even with as much as I know about breast cancer – at least as much as your average, every-day cancer survivor can know – I still couldn’t fully wrap my head around Mom’s recurrence until my own oncologist explained it to me. Contrary to popular belief, five years doesn’t mean you’re cured. The hard truth is that in Cancer World, there’s no such thing as a cure.
Well, at least not yet. Even though I spent the day in a melancholy mood, that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope to be had or triumph to be celebrated. While at this stage of the game there is no cure, that doesn’t mean there will never be one. Until then we’ve got screening tools that can catch cancer earlier than ever before, and some seriously kick-ass treatments that are saving lives. Without those things, Mom wouldn’t have had the eight additional years that she did, and I wouldn’t have had the past five. That’s definitely something.
I didn’t end up going out to dinner on my cancerversary, or posting a witty and obnoxiously upbeat status update. I just wasn’t feeling it. But I also knew that even though I miss my mom terribly, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have wanted me to spend my cancerversary sad. So when my husband offered to at least make something special for dinner there was really only one clear choice: hot dog casserole. This is a dish I loved as a kid and something I will forever associate with my mom. Even after I grew up and moved away, she continued to make it for me every time I visited, even in her final years. So Bill made it exactly the way my mom always did, and we ate until we were stuffed.
As it turns out, that ended up being the perfect way to celebrate my 5-year cancerversary. I didn’t need to commemorate it with fanfare or obnoxious wit. All I really needed to do was to look around and be thankful that I’m still here, thankful that my mom had the extra years that she did. Thinking about her throughout the day and then remembering her with a classic kid-food casserole was enough. And you know, even if nothing miraculous or magical happens at five years – or six, or eight, or ten – it’s always worthwhile to take pause and be grateful.
Don’t miss a word – subscribe to Lemon Margaritas to get an email update whenever a new blog entry is posted. All for the low, low price of FREE! Click here to subscribe. And if you like what you see, be sure to check out Susan’s other P-I blog, Adoption Adventures, for more silliness, wit, and heartfelt reflections.
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Clean Cities FOA to Promote Community Readiness for Plug-in Electric Vehicles and Charging Infrastructure
April 19, 2011President Obama has a goal of putting 1 million advanced technology vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015. In support of this goal, and emphasizing electricity as a transportation fuel, this Funding Opportunity Announcement seeks projects to plan and implement policies, procedures, and incentives that facilitate that development. The planning and policy activities will prepare communities for successful deployment and implementation of plug-in electric drive vehicles. Overall, this effort will help to decrease the nation's dependence on petroleum and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by accelerating the deployment of plug-in electric drive vehicles and electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). This FOA will serve as a pilot program to stimulate community based electric vehicle infrastructure readiness planning and implementation activities in anticipation of larger electric vehicle deployment efforts in the future.
There are several one-time actions you must complete in order to submit an application in response to this Announcement (e.g., obtain a Dun and Bradstreet Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number, register with the Central Contractor Registration (CCR), and register with Grants.gov). Applicants who are not registered with CCR and Grants.gov should allow at least 21 days to complete these requirements. It is suggested that the process be started as soon as possible. Applications are due by 6/13/2011. For more information, use FedConnect and refer to Sol# DE-FOA-0000451.
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CITY FOCUS: Arab Spring? A licence for De La Rue to print money
Collapsing regimes such as Libya’s caught up in the Arab Spring have thrown up some lucrative opportunities for banknote printer De La Rue.
Revolutions, of course, mean change – and one of the first things a new government alters is the face on its currency.
‘A bank note is the calling card of a country,’ says chief executive Tim Cobbold, who opened the doors of De La Rue’s Basingstoke headquarters yesterday for the first time since it was plagued with a banknote printing scandal.
Old money: Banknote printer De La Rue can trace its history back 198 years
The FTSE 250 firm prints sterling for the Bank of England, and 150 other currencies around the world. It also produces secure documents, including UK passports and New York driving licences.
In total, it prints 27m such ‘products’ for 45 countries. ‘The Arab Spring could be quite good for us,’ says finance director Colin Child. ‘We have good links with governments across the Middle East. It could be like Eastern Europe in the 1990s. That was a golden period for us.’
De La Rue, founded in 1813, could use a little good news. It has come through a year of turmoil that has seen the business forced into crisis talks with its largest currency customer, the Reserve Bank of India over production problems, as well as lose a chief executive and fend off three takeover bids from French rival Oberthur.
This bad run led De La Rue to turn in poor full-year figures in May. The business saw its pre-tax profit fall 24.6 per cent to £72.8m, while its revenues slipped 17 per cent to £463.9m on the back of its production problems and a fall in volumes.
Cobbold replaced James Hussey in January. Hussey left after the production foul-up, which has still not been fully resolved. By May, Cobbold had come up with a plan to repair De La Rue’s reputation, get its profits moving forwards, and defend it against repeated interest from its smaller suitor.
He plans to boost operating profit from £40.4m to ‘in excess of £100m’ in three years, claiming the firm can get back to its historic revenue growth rates of around 4 per cent a year by strengthening its sales force, using its scale to add new business and cutting costs by £30m over three years.
De La Rue (down 3.5p at 895p) will post its first set of half-year results under Cobbold next Tuesday.
Its list of major investors, which include the Prudential, Black- Rock and Legal & General, will want to see signs that the secretive business has made a steady first step.
Shareholders will also want to hear why they should stick with De La Rue’s management rather than side with Oberthur, which analysts say is likely to come back with an offer in January which could top £925m.
Cobbold is keen to emphasise the prospects for his industry is good. He says 150billion banknotes were printed in the world last year, and the number is increasing at a rate of between 3 per cent and 5 per cent a year.
This is the case even in developed countries, where notes older than around nine months tend to clog up hole-in-the-wall machines.
Of those 150billion, 85 per cent are printed on the presses of national governments.
The rest is handled by De La Rue, the largest commercial and only listed printer in the world, as well as a number of privately-owned firms such as Oberthur and Germany’s Giesecke & Devrient.
These commercial firms print the whole of a currency for smaller nations, or handle overspill orders when the presses of large countries are at capacity.
Cobbold stresses the ‘high barriers to entry’ to the business that count in his favour.
As an example, he points to a sorting machine known as a De La Rue 7000, which is the size of a Rolls-Royce and is used by central banks, and the world’s biggest commercial ones.
He will not tell us the price, but the machine can sort old notes from new and good notes from bad, and store or shred 1,800 of them in a minute.
But the firm’s best asset may be its staff. The senior management team have cultivated relationships with political leaders, ambassadors and central bankers all over the world for the last twenty years, and sometimes longer.
It is their job to win and keep their contracts. But over the next few months De La Rue’s top management will be engaged in another charm offensive, telling its investors the grass is far greener where they are – rather than in Oberthur’s garden.
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Need better rankings in Google? Search Engine Optimisation is the answer but what is it?
Understand how Google search works and what needs doing to improve your position in the results. Get confidence to do it yourself or to know what you need someone else to do.
For most business people doing the accounts, invoicing, etc are the least favourite job. However FRESHBOOKS, came to my rescue...
29 March 2010
Video is under used by small and medium sized businesses. There are so many ways to make use of video from adding interactivity to your site to reducing customer support problems to creating products or giveaways. For more ideas on using video in your business and how to create video with and without a camera listen to the 7 minute podcast.
21 March 2009
Consider this – a recent study of how businesses convert leads into new customers showed that you need to approach 8 new businesses that have never heard of you to get one customer (1 in 8). If you were to approach out of touch but old customers to promote a product or service the figures [...]
26 January 2009
What is a sales person to you? In your mind what do salespeople do to get business? Is your image of a salesperson similar to a stereo-typed used car salesperson? Do you see a salesperson as a slime-ball who doesn’t mind lying to get business? Will do anything to get the business? For some people [...]
15 December 2008
Do you know there are many sites where you can register your company details – for free? Below are some tested links to sites that offer free listings and most take no more than 5 minutes of your time – you will know by return mail or telephone call your entry is active – and [...]
15 November 2008
The mention of Branding always starts ringing warning bells in my mind. Especially after experiencing a "Marketing" person who really only understood big company branding. The following presentation is a lot of slides but do get started it is not to heave and you soon find yourself clicking through the slides wanting more. | View [...]
22 October 2008
This podcast asks the question should you blog for your business. Find out what a business blog can do for you and how to get started.
The experts at www.towergateinsurance.co.uk will help you out with any kind of business insurance policy you wish to invest in. A lot of businesses choose business insurance nowadays as it offers a considerable amount of security and reassurance to companies.
Direct Line also provide Public Liability Insurance cover. Have a look!
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Book Review: The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing by Pat Dorsey
The author, Pat Dorsey, is currently the Director of Equity Research for Morningstar. Morningstar has historically been known for their 5-star scale of mutual fund ratings, but several years ago began applying the same scale to individual stocks. Since Morningstar's focus is on durable competitive advantage, the firm's investing philosophy correlates very well with that of the Magic Formula and of MagicDiligence. That makes the book particularly relevant and much of my stock analysis is based on techniques outlined in it.
The Five Rules... is more or less a two part book. The first half deals covers the title, laying out the five rules for successful investing and then proceeding to expand on each of them. Without spoiling too much of the book, Dorsey's five rules are:
1) Do your homework.
2) Find economic moats.
3) Have a margin of safety.
4) Hold for the long haul.
5) Know when to sell.
This first section then continues on to introduce the investor to the techniques of stock analysis. Topics covered include detailed explanations of each financial statement, the points of emphasis to look for in a good investment (such as growth potential and financial health), how to spot accounting blowups before they happen, how to value a stock, and so forth. For everyone interested in stock analysis, from 10 year pros to those just beginning to dip their toes in the market, these chapters contain invaluable and vital information. Nearly every investor will learn something new about evaluating companies and valuing stocks. One particularly valuable chapter is titled "The 10-Minute Test", which will help you quickly throw out stocks that are not worth your time, while highlighting investment opportunities that warrant additional research.
The second half of the book is equally useful. In this section, Dorsey calls upon Morningstar's sector analysts to lay out the intrinsic moat qualities and the factors that separate good and bad companies in a variety of sectors, including Health Care, Consumer Services, Media, Banks, and so on. It's no secret to MagicDiligence Members that some industries are inherently better investment hunting grounds than others, and this book explains why. For example, retail is generally a difficult place to invest - there are no customer switching costs, tons of competition, and constantly changing consumer trends. On the other hand, most medical device makers have very high switching costs, as surgeons are trained on one company's products and are loathe to learn the intricacies of a competing product, unless there is a very good reason to do so.
To close this review, a personal observation. Most investors routinely cite classic investing books like Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor as the place to start for novice investors. I respectfully disagree. I've read many of those great classics, but no one book has explained the details of company and equity analysis as directly or relevantly as this book. This is one of the most overlooked investing books out there, and comes highly recommended to all investors.
Disclosure: Steve owns no stocks referenced here.
Joel Greenblatt and MagicFormulaInvesting.com are not associated in any way with this website. Neither Mr. Greenblatt or MagicFormulaInvesting.com endorse this website's investment opinions, strategy, or products. Investment recommendations on this website are not chosen by Mr. Greenblatt, nor are they based on Mr. Greenblatt's proprietary investment model, and are not chosen by MagicFormulaInvesting.com. Magic Formula® is a registered trademark of MagicFormulaInvesting.com, which has no connection to this website. The information on this website is for informational purposes only and solely represents the views and opinions of the author. No warranty is provided or implied as to the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of this information. This information may not be construed as investment advice of any kind. The proprietor of this website is not responsible in any way for losses or damages resulting from the use of this information. Alexander Online Properties is not a registered investment advisor. All logos are trademarked properties of their respective companies.
© 2008-2013 Alexander Online Properties.
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In an October ’08 political gaffe, Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden declared, “Mark my words, it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America.” The most incorrect aspect of Biden’s prediction was the six-month timeline.
President Obama has entered the fray of what might be the most challenging national security and foreign policy crisis of his administration: the Iranian threat. There is little doubt – far less than there was when the U.S. (arguably prematurely) invaded Iraq in 2003 – that Iran is on a rapid path to nuclear weaponry. Nuclear experts, foreign policy strategists, think tanks, and politicians have all made clear that Iran is working to build nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to American allies and a grave threat to the peaceful democratic world. These sentiments are echoed from the Security Council to the White House, and from Tel Aviv to Riyadh to the EU and Canada.
Over recent weeks there has been increased speculation that Israel will seek a preemptive and/or tactical strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future. Some suggest this may occur as early as April, and it is the Israeli military’s fashion to surprise its enemies. The conservative Netanyahu Administration might believe that if an attack is imminent, it should occur before the U.S. presidential elections for a few reasons. First, the American people will hold more political clout than after the elections, and the public likely would support the mission. Second, as a second-term president, President Obama might reject an Israeli request for American support in a strike. Third, if the Israeli government is denied American support for a strike prior to the election, political repercussions could favor Governor Romney, who could be more willing to support the Israelis.
President Obama’s Iran strategy seemingly has been among his administration’s greatest shortcomings. His commitment to presidential level negotiations with the Iranian government without preconditions was naïve and consequential. The Iranian government rejected the president’s extended hand due to its upcoming presidential elections, seeking to have the new Iranian presidential administration begin any potential negotiations. The election, which gave rise to the Green Revolution, was an opportunity squandered for Obama, who was too silent as Iranians fought for and failed to achieve democracy. Now President Obama must realize that although supporting military action against Iran must be a last resort, he needs to support a Western democratic attack against Iran if it occurs. Not supporting such an attack – regardless of the specific means of support, and assuming the mission is reasonable, worthwhile, winnable, and well calculated – would be another crucial opportunity wasted.
President Obama must find a way for his administration to support a military response to dangerous Iranian aggression, in line with its foreign policy strategy, should a need for that response arise in the short or long term future.
An Iranian nuclear weapon is a danger the world cannot afford, and President Obama might be the last line of defense against such an outcome.
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Homo economicus at the Ballpark
Posted by Adam Benforado on October 12, 2011
Looking at ESPN.com on Monday evening, as I watched the once lowly Detroit Lions continue their strange journey to respectability, I came across a survey:
Which of these NFL teams, currently under .500, has the best chance of making the playoffs?
Personally, I don’t think any of these teams are going to make the playoffs. But what was fascinating about the results was that ESPN recorded the responses by state and there were stark differences as you moved around the country. New York was the only state in the entire nation to think that the Jets had the best chance of making the playoffs, Pennsylvania had the highest percentage of votes cast for the Eagles of any jurisdiction, and the Falcons fared the best in Georgia.
This got me wondering: If humans were the rational actors of neoclassical economics would we have professional sports?
I posit that the answer is no.
Without naïve realism, optimism bias, confirmation bias, and countless other cognitive quirks, I never would have stuck with the Redskins all of these years or suffered through countless disappointing Liverpool matches and Wizards games.
Only a human being — a situational character — could have stayed a fan.
A computer would soon have decided to spend Sunday afternoons gardening or learning Spanish.
* * *
Related Situationist posts:
- The Situation of the Vancouver Riots
- March Madness
- Attributing Blame — from the Baseball Diamond to the War on Terror
- Patriots Loss = ‘poetic justice’
- The Unlucky Irish: Celtics Fans and Affective Forecasting,
- The Unproductive Situation of Picking Underdogs in the NCAA Tournament
- Cheering for the Underdog
- Subconscious Human Bias in NCAA Tournament Selection
- The Situation of Objectification, and
- Hoyas, Hos, & Gangstas.
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Most Active Stories
Fri October 21, 2011
For Poor, Cain Says His 9-9-9 Plan Is Now 9-0-9
This past week, republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has been hit hard over his 9-9-9 tax overhaul plan. During the last Republican debate, Cain's plan was attacked as regressive, meaning that it would hit the middle-class and poor Americans hardest.
As we reported on Tuesday, that's what the Tax Policy Center found — that Cain's plan would increase taxes on those making less than $200,000 but decrease them for those making more than $200,000.
In a campaign stop in Detroit, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza defended his plan and announced a tweak to it for the poor.
For people living under the poverty line, "your plan isn't 9-9-9, it's 9-0-9," Mr. Cain said in a policy speech in Detroit. "Say amen, y'all. If you are at or below the poverty line...then you don't pay that middle 9" – i.e. the individual flat tax.
Mr. Cain's bold 9-9-9 plan – which includes a 9% individual flat tax, a 9% business flat tax, and a 9% national sales tax – has helped vault him into the top tier of GOP presidential candidates. It's also put tax policy squarely at the heart of the Republican economic-policy debate, and apparently led rival Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, to embrace his own radical rewrite of the tax code this week.
The Detroit News reports that Cain offered further tweaks to his plan, saying for example that struggling areas could get rates set at 3-3-3. Cain called those "empowerment zones." Here's how he explained it:
Cain said his changes would help businesses in areas in need of economic development, such as those facing high unemployment. But he was careful to differentiate them from other efforts, such as community development grants; Cain's plan relies on businesses to work together to create those environments in the neighborhoods, instead of relying on government spending and mandates.
"One of the things that I believe in is empowering cities to help themselves and empowering workers and individuals to help themselves," Cain said in Detroit. "This is not an entitlement program. So the cities will have to step up and remove some of the barriers that are within their city limits, so that the cities do what they can do to help themselves we will have the 9-9-9 legislation so structured that they will get additional benefits."
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Mr. W. A. Croffut, communicates to the National Republican of the 26th the following graphic description of scenes at the hospital:
I was on the field of battle at Bull Run on Sunday, and am sufficiently recovered from the complete prostration which followed my march of sixty miles – from Vienna to battle and back to Washington – to be able to give a brief account of what I saw. I was but a civilian; my chief occupation was to help carry off the wounded, and minister, as far as possible, to their comfort.
I assisted to bear several to the hospital at the corner of the woods – near the battle field – perhaps 150 rods from the enemy’s batteries. Such a scene of death and desolation! Men, dying and dead, covered the floor and filled the yard with frightful misery. Civilians and soldiers turned surgeons, and amputated and bound up the wounds of the injured and dying. A shell from the enemy struck harmlessly near the front yard, and cannon balls flew over and around, with their prolonged “whish!” as if the sacred white flag above our heads, honored by all the people besides, was a special target for the hateful and insolent “Confederacy.” I learn that this hospital was burned soon after, with all is suffering inmates by the heartless and diabolical foe.
Soon after, a man was brought along on his way to the other hospital, and I assisted in carrying him thither. It was somewhat farther off, on the road of approach, and was extemporized from a church which we had passed just before reaching the battle-field. It was a scene too frightful and sickening to witness, much more describe. There were in it, scattered thickly on the floor and in the galleries, sixty or seventy, wounded in every possible way – arms and legs shot off, some dead, and scores gasping for water and aid. The pulpit was appropriated for a surgeon’s room, and the communion table of pious anarchy became an amputation table, baptized in willing blood, and consecrated to the holy uses of Liberty and Law! The road and woods, on either side and all around, are strewn with maimed and mutilated heroes, and the balls from the rifled cannon go over us like winged devils. There sits a colonel, with his arm bound up, asking to be put on his horse and led back to his regiment; here lies a captain with a grape shot through his head, and blood and brains oozing out as we touch him tenderly to see if he his dead; and yonder comes in a pale chaplain, cut by a canister, while, sword in hand, he led his brave little parish, in the name of Almighty God, to the fight. And again we enter the hospital with him. Oh, God! What a hideous sight! Step into this gory tabernacle. You may grow pallid and faint, and some even of the strong-hearted do, or you may find yourself cool and self commanding, as I do, against my own anticipations, amid such sights and scenes. I have known men who could walk up to a flashing wall of bayonets unblanched, who would faint at the sight of suffering. Look around you here. The grim chambers, where the deity of a strange despotism was worshipped, is turned into an altar of Freedom, and sanctified anew by the warm life of heroes. Fit choir, that in the galleries – the intermittent yells of the dying and the subdued groans of brave men! Eloquent preacher, in that pulpit so long defiled! Glorious burden on that sacramental tablet, splendid wine there flowing – where Christ has been so often crucified. Precious and acceptable Eucharist! And these are the services to day, in this chapel of paganism, once dedicated, with lying lips, to God. The house what Baal built rises over a holocaust of heroes. And this is the holy Sabbath day – the world’s White Day, so long kept as a blessed symbol of fidelity, purity, humanity, liberty, and peace!
That ghastly picture of carnage will be ever present before my eyes, and those half smothered sobs and groans, will always ring their dreadful chorus in my ears.
And now on, and on past us fly the panic-stricken troops. We are not beaten, but these think we are, which is just as bad for our cause to night. Good generalship and guarded baggage wagons would have saved us, we of the unmilitary corps think, but it is too late now. And so the whole nation is to suffer then, for the dark crimes of years – the South for its terrible guilt of commission, and the North for its moral debauchery which has betrayed it to such fearful complicity. Had we remembered the Divine decree “though hand joined in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished.”
May God purify the religion, and warm the heart, and quicken the conscience, and open the eyes of the nation! May we learn now the lesson which a few brave souls of the North have striven long to teach, and speedily wash our bloody hands and begin to do the righteous thing!
W. A. Croffut.
St. Paul Press, 8/2/1861
Contributed by John Hennessy
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Biggest show in town
The fact that a jury was picked so quickly was something of a surprise because Butler County is home to just 15,000 people. In fact, there isn't a proper stoplight in the whole county just a few flashing red-lights. There was much speculation that it would prove impossible to find an impartial jury in such a close-knit community. Prosecutors filed a conditional change-of-venue motion, to take effect if they couldn't find a jury in Butler County, so Becker's speedy trial rights would not be violated. Just in case, Judge Carroll had a jury pool of 200 ready to go in nearby Wright County, but released them when a Butler County jury was selected.
Aside from rebuilding from the tornado, nothing gripped the attention of Butler County residents more than the Mark Becker trial. The courtroom was generally full of townspeople, law enforcement agents and high school students who had been given leave by teachers to attend the trial.
Reporters from Waterloo, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines television stations attended the trial throughout, as did print reporters from all over the state. When the trial began on February 12, 2010, it was the biggest story in the state of Iowa.
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Fast food giant McDonald's is testing PayPal mobile payments technology at restaurants in France, according to Reuters.
The pilot, running at 30 sites, enables customers to order food on smartphones through a McDonald's app, or online, and then pay with PayPal before picking up their burgers at a separate line.
McDonald's, which has over 30,000 restaurants around the world, is also working on a more in-depth mobile service, says Reuters. At a recent franchisee conference in Orlando, Florida, the firm showed off technology - "coming within the next 24 months or so" - that lets users order and pay using PayPal's digital wallet and app.
PayPal has already signed up more than 15 major US retailers to its in-store payments tech but a deal with McDonald's would prove a major coup in a competitive market which recently saw rival Square bag coffee chain giant Starbucks.
PayPal could heat up mobile payments race if McDonald's test pays off - Reuters
Excellent salary with uncapped commissionMilton Keynes
© Finextra Research 2013
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I agree with the others here. The moderators have also been given the ability to delete all comments on a particular question or answer quickly, and when comments start to outweigh the value of a question or answer we often delete them with a note stating this.
To summarize the sections below:
- Comments is a useful moderator tool
- Comments are disposable
- Comments can be invalidated
The comments is there to provide awareness of shortcomings of an answer when it does not constitute someone posting a complete new answer. I have to admit it has become a useful moderator tool on the main sites since it helps us quickly identify problems or areas we need to address.
It is also less likely that we will delete an answer rather then a comment. I would suggest you spend a little bit more time on the site and you will soon see why comments have such a limited scope. There was a stage where comments weren't allowed at all.
The OP of the question or answer can edit these at any time, which can quickly invalidate comments, forcing them to be removed. So you may add something significant in a comment, and the OP decides to delete it later, or change the whole answer to be more effective. This has happened in the past.
"Twitter-like" is a very elegant explanation for why this is such a terrible design.
To answer this comment. What you consider a terrible design has taken more then a few months to tweak and work at to get right. SO was not slapped together overnight, and Jeff and the team works extremely hard to implement useful features. I would further suggest that you spend some time going through the past feature request, and you will see how much work has actually gone into the commenting system.
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Switzerland has unveiled a novel double-decker cable car, allegedly the primary one in the earth, close to the metropolis of Lucerne. The cable car, baptize The Cabrio, soar up the Standerton ton at a dizzying tallness of 1.9km transport 60 passengers at an occasion, with space for 30 on the open-air top hit. According to Funzday.com, however, Cabrio is not the world’s merely mid-air tram by means of double-deck cabins. There are two others: the Vanoise Express that traverses the Ponturin gorge in France and the Shinhotaka Ropeway that climb Mount Hotaka in Japan. But together have with these upper floors. The Cabrio is the merely one with an open-air knock down that offers magnificent and clear view of the vale below. Enjoy.
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Camille Giraud Akeju
Director, Anacostia Community Museum
Camille Giraud Akeju is director of the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum since December 2005. As director, she is responsible for advancing the museum's mission to document, preserve and interpret African American culture and history from a community perspective.
Before coming to the Smithsonian, Akeju, 55, served since 1999 as president and CEO at The Harlem School of the Arts, where she was responsible for administration, programming, fundraising and community relations. Since 1964, The Harlem School of the Arts has provided beginning to advanced instruction in dance, music, theater and the visual arts from preschool students to young adults.
From 1998 to 1999, she worked at The Valley Inc. in New York City as chief operating officer, where she oversaw all issues and activities relating to personnel and contract and funding requirements. The Valley Inc., based in central Harlem, is a youth services organization, offering employment services for jobs and internships; dropout-prevention programs and afterschool activities; and leadership development.
From 1991 to 1998, Akeju worked as executive director at Mind-Builders Creative Arts Co. Inc. in Bronx, N.Y., forging new program partnerships with such organizations as the Museum of Modern Art; instituting new policies and procedures to strengthen the organization's infrastructure; expanding community outreach with an in-school arts-access lecture and artists residencies series; and forming effective volunteer networks to support the needs of the organization.
As curator and collections manager at the New York Transit Museum from 1986 to 1991, she established a fine arts gallery within the museum to highlight the work of established and emerging artists who use mass transit as a theme in their artworks; mounted the museum's first major interpretive exhibition; participated in the museum's major fundraising campaign and assisted in coordinating the NYC Transit Authority’s first auction of mass transit memorabilia.
Akeju has served as a peer reviewer with the Multicultural Arts Initiative in Pittsburgh and as a member of the board of directors and site/program evaluator for the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. She also is a judge for the NAACP’s ACT-SO Fine Arts Competition in Westchester County, New York.
She received the Crowned Jewel Award for Women in Leadership (2003) from C. Ottley Strategies Inc., New York City, and the Recognition of Service to Youth Award from Open Eyes Productions Inc. (1996).
Akeju earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, with a concentration in printmaking and secondary art education, in 1974, and a master's degree in art history, with a concentration in African American art in 1981 from Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Akeju was born in the Bronx and grew up in Mount Vernon, N.Y. She has two grown children.
# # #
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MLK Dedication and Our Daily Lives
By Rich Harwood
I was out sick all last week and flat on my back, but one thing I crawled out of bed for on Sunday was to watch on TV the dedication of the MLK Memorial. We often want to lionize King – and well we should – but I am even more struck by how he personally persevered and the lessons for ourselves.
King’s legacy, and that of those who came before and after him, can be hard to fully comprehend; it was that large. It is also moving to see how his words and actions – indeed, his approach – still resonates so deeply today. He is an American icon, touchstone, and conscious for us all.
And yet, it would be easy to honor King without truly recognizing how he fought his way forward. It is by examining his personal struggles that those of us who seek to create change and build a better society must examine ourselves.
So, here are some things that this weekend’s dedication brought to the fore for me:
• There was a moment, or probably a constellation of moments, which led King to answer a larger calling to step forward and to knowingly declare, “Here I Am.” In this way, King made a declaration first to himself of his intentions and the personal values that would guide his life’s work. I have come to believe that each of us, in our own way, must make such a personal declaration.
• But the declaration on its own was never enough. King faced enormous personal doubts along the away and he questioned his own religious faith at times. Yes, even King had doubts and fears. What about each of us? My own personal experience – and my experience over 25 years of working with change-makers – is that such doubt and fear is always present, sometimes in the forefront of our mind, other times in the background. They are natural, and we cannot escape them. And they are not a sign of weakness, just our human frailties. So, the question is not whether such doubts exist within each of us, but how we choose to deal with them: are we willing to face them squarely, work through them, understand that they are part and parcel of our lives, and not let them consume us?
• For every victory King had, he experienced even more defeats and setbacks. This each of us must know if we wish to create change and a better society. And here, again, the question is not whether such defeats and setbacks will happen, but how we choose to deal with them. For with such setbacks, we, as individuals, inevitably must confront loss and pain and deep frustration. Nothing good comes easily. It seems to me that we must not try to escape this pain and loss, but to embrace it, learn from it, grow from it, and continue to search for better and more effective ways to move forward.
• These lessons also require us to take a long view of our efforts. Toward this end, we would do well to adopt a kind of “impatient patience.” Isn’t this what King did? He never let go of his sense of purpose, nor did he not sit idly as his efforts ebbed and flowed. He pushed, and pushed and pushed! But he knew that his efforts, and those of others, would come about only over time. Indeed, recall this well-known quote of Abolitionist Theodore Parker that King often used: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Yes, “impatient patience” is what we must exercise.
• Finally, King expressed and lived by an enduring belief in “people.” Imagine how many times he and his fellow travelers were imprisoned, attacked with water hoses, and had rocks and debris thrown at them, among other things. Even amid all these trials he maintained his deep faith in the capacity of people to choose a better path. Our own challenge today is to make sure we do not say that we hold this belief, but act in ways where we are do not truly live it out. I believe King reminds each of us that we must examine our own belief in people – especially amid the evil and bad things that do occur – and whether our actions actually match our words.
What is so beautiful and compelling about King’s messages is that they ask us to strip away our to-do lists, the press of our daily projects, our immediate funding needs, and to ground ourselves in what truly is important. They tell us that we cannot out run doubt, pain, fear, even despair; that they are real and human reactions to the very struggles embedded in what seek to do. Our task, as individuals, is to declare, “Here I am” and to engage fully in what stands before us and within us.
So, as we celebrate King’s enormous contribution let us use this occasion to remind ourselves of our own journey and the choices we must face and how we can continue down a path of creating stronger communities and a better society – for all.
It is easy to take our freedoms for granted, many of us do everyday. But when you think about it, what part of our daily lives have not been affected by the actions of Dr. King? What are some key ways that our daily lives are different? Do you have a story you would like to share with us on this subject? Please let us know.
A dynamic public speaker, Rich Harwood is a frequent keynote for foundations and national organizations. He is an expert contributor on national and syndicated media outlets including MSNBC, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN’s Inside Politics, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Special Report with Brit Hume, C-SPAN, and many others. He is also the author of Hope Unraveled: The people\’92s retreat and our way back (2005), Make Hope Real: How we can accelerate change for the public good (2008) and numerous studies, articles and essays chronicling vital issues of our time. His most recent written work, Why We\’92re Here: The Powerful Impact of Public Broadcasters When They Turn Outward, is being published and distributed in Spring 2011. You can follow him on twitter @RichHarwood and facebook.com/richharwood.
You can read Rich’s posts every Tuesday on State of the Re:Union’s website.
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Site problem? Tell us. Copyright Children of Peace.
Design and build by Croque-en-Bouche website design. Aware of EU cookie legislation,
Reg. Charity Number: 1112301
In this moving and thoughtful article, one of our Palestinian Youth Ambassadors,
Mahmoud Masri tells his story:
"My name is Mahmoud. I am a person with many hopes and little opportunities to realise
my hopes. I am from Askar Refugee Camp on the outskirts of Nablus in the North of
the West Bank. I live in a house like the rest of you and I go to school and I have
friends and family.
Since I started really seeing the events around me, I saw that my life is full of
conflicts. My mother is from Balata refugee camp and my father is from Askar refugee
camp. I am 15 years old.
I feel like something in my childhood is missing. I have a normal childhood but with
a lot of things missing. I saw kids on TV running with their kites accompanied by
their parents and I longed to have a day such as that. I have always dreamed of seeing
the sea but I have never seen it although it would only take an hour to drive there
from my house. I cannot go there because Palestinians are not allowed to cross the
border between the West Bank and Israel.
Lately we have been granted permits to go and so I hope that I will see the sea.
When I arrive at the sea, I want to build a sand castle and dive to the bottom of
the sea and watch the fish swimming there. I think swimming must feel like flying,
like I am unstoppable because I am free.
Welcome to my life. I will be a Youth Ambassador for Children of Peace. I am the
captain of my hope ship.
I have been through many difficulties but every difficulty I have been through has
made me stronger.
Three years ago was the last time I saw the Israeli army entering into the refugee
camp where I live. I was twelve years old. They came in jeeps in the middle of the
afternoon and I saw them arrest children and adolescents. When they arrived, I felt
terrified and excited and I started running after them to see what they would do.
I saw them arrest people from the street and from their homes and everyone they saw
throwing stones. The moment escalated and bullets were fired.
At that time I thought the only way to respond was for us to arm ourselves and fight.
But now when I think about the situation, I have a vision that we can fight without
guns and bloodshed. Now I have started the journey of changing my environment and
working towards a future of peace.
In conclusion, I heard about the charity through a friend. I have read about the
accomplishments and hopes of the charity and I have found out that it is related
to my dreams and hopes. I feel like I can do something to change the situation around
me and to make opportunities available for my generation and the generations to come.”
Children of Peace welcomes young people aged 14-20, from across the world, but principally
in Israel and Palestine to join our flourishing Youth Ambassador Programme who share
our notions of peace, reconciliation and tolerance.
The Programme provides exciting opportunities for our Youth Ambassadors and builds
links between its members. The Director of the Programme is Sally Becker, recognised
as the "Angel of Mostar" and Goodwill Ambassador, Mahmoud Jabari is the Head of Mentoring.
MY LIFE OF HOPE BY MAHMOUD MASRI
Thousands of vulnerable children in Israel and Palestine suffer from the conflict.
Your donation could help ensure they receive the support they urgently need.
Donate online and help us to help the children
"Children, the forgotten victims of the conflict"
Please make a positive difference to the children’s lives and to build peace.
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Physical Therapy in Corpus Christi for Shoulder
Welcome to the Humpal Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine Centers resource about shoulder issues.
A shoulder injury can happen in any sport, and shoulder pain can be brought on from something as simple as sleeping in the wrong position. Whether you have damaged your rotator cuff because you were a little too overzealous at touch football with your friends on Sunday, or you are sore from trying to weed the garden and paint the garage in one afternoon, this is the part of our website that we have designed with you in mind.
It is our aim to provide you with the information and tools to help you recover from a shoulder injury and to prevent future injuries from occurring.
When you have proper information about how to stay healthy, you will find that your playtime will be more rewarding, your sleep with be more sound and your daily grind won't wear you down.
Click on a link below to learn more about:
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1. Not Reading the Rules
Reading sweepstakes rules can be tedious, but skipping them can cause you to waste the time you spend entering. For example, I often see entries into writing contests where people have exceeded the minimum length. Their entries will be discarded, whereas paying close attention to the rules could have resulted in a win. Even sweepstakes with random drawings can have special criteria that are important to follow.
2. Not Letting Sponsors Contact YouMake sure that you aren't making any typos in your email address, street address, or telephone number that could be keeping sponsors from getting in touch with you when you win by looking over your information carefully before hitting the "Submit" button. Using an automatic form filler like Roboform can help to prevent typos, but you should still look over the information before you send it off.
3. Not Using All Your Chances
Some sweepstakes give you more than one chance to win. Perhaps you can play more than once per day, or maybe you can get extra entries for sweepstakes referrals. By reading the rules and paying attention to all of the ways you can improve your chances, you will receive many more chances to win.
4. Not Entering Often Enough
Entering regularly is one of the keys to winning sweepstakes. If you enter only 15 minutes every day, it's still better than entering only now and then. Entering daily will give you a broad range of entries, and will help you win more regularly as well.
5. Entering the Wrong Sweepstakes
Everybody wants to win the big prizes, but entering the sweepstakes with higher odds of winning prizes is important to stay motivated to enter regularly. I recommend having a good mix of sweepstakes, including daily and one-time sweepstakes, at least a few instant sweepstakes, some with big prizes and others with lots of prizes to win.
6. Getting Disqualified
Related to reading the rules carefully is being sure to follow them so that you don't accidentally disqualify yourself. Organizing your entries so that you don't enter more often than allowed in the rules can help keep from ruining your chances to win.
7. Not Checking Your Email Regularly
You'd be surprised at how many people do win, but never receive their win notifications, or they discount them as scams. Checking your email regularly, making sure that your inbox is never too full to receive mail, and knowing the signs of a real sweepstakes win will help you to avoid letting your wins pass you by.
8. Winning Notifications Sent to SpamAnother problem when it comes to checking sweepstakes email is that some winning notifications can be mistaken as spam by your email provider. In order to be sure that you really receive your wins, set your spam filter as low as possible and be sure to check your spam folders regularly.
9. Missing Winning Phone Calls
Another way that you could win and never know it is if you miss your winning telephone call. Many sponsors won't leave messages if they aren't able to reach you, and they'll try only a certain number of times before they move on to the next potential winner. Be sure to follow these tips to make sure that your winning phone calls actually reach you.
10. Not Being Patient Enough
This is probably the hardest advice of all, but sometimes you're not winning because you simply haven't waited long enough to receive your prizes. Some people win after their first week of entering sweepstakes, but for most it takes much longer. Everyone goes through dry spells, and it's important that you don't give up. Stick to your strategy and keep entering, and the wins will follow sooner or later.
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OTTAWA, Ontario, 24 September, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A 64 year old Grandmother who has spent the last 18 years peacefully protesting Toronto’s abortion clinics - spending a little less than 10 of those years behind bars for doing so - appeared on national television last week to tell her countrymen how freedom of expression in Canada is being trumped by the abortion issue.
“People when they are talking to me will say, ‘well, what did you do [to go to prison]?’ And I say: ‘I was on a public sidewalk, I was offering women help to save their babies, offering them referrals or places to go.’ But you’re not allowed there. They’ve made up injunctions that you can’t be there. And people are astounded.”
Linda Gibbons, 64, who is hailed as Canada’s most often imprisoned pro-life sidewalk counsellor, spoke with Brian Lilley from SunNews in Ottawa during prime time on Friday.
Viewers of the show learned how three abortion clinics in Toronto have an injunction that prohibits any pro-life activity within a defined bubble zone. The injunctions make it impossible for any sidewalk counselors to offer alternative information or assistance to abortion-bound women without risking certain arrest and heavy penalties.
CLICK ‘LIKE’ IF YOU ARE PRO-LIFE!
Gibbons said that she has been jailed “many times” because of her refusal to obey the injunctions in her eagerness to reach out to pregnant women entering the clinics for abortion.
Gibbons, who herself has suffered the experience of having an abortion, said that the trauma women suffer from abortion arises not only from killing their unborn babies, but also from “trying to reconcile yourself with what you’ve done the rest of your life.”
“Often [when] women [are] going into the clinic, you’ve got seven seconds to make an appeal to her, something that would make her aware of the child within her, or to just let her feel that ‘you’re not alone,’ and that ‘there’s somebody here who cares for you,’” she said.
Lilley highlighted during the interview the “double standard” that exists in Canada when it comes to the issue of abortion, pointing out that Canadians, because of freedom of expression, can protest right outside the Prime Minister’s office with “megaphones and large crowds blocking the doors” but that the same Canadians cannot protest outside of certain abortion clinics in Canada - even silently - because “you will be arrested.”
“If [Gibbons] were an anti-globalization protester who had spent one night in jail for violent protest, she’d be a hero to the consensus media. If she called for the release of terrorists, she’d be granted much more airtime, more column inches in the newspapers, and be treated better than she is now.”
“Where is the media outrage over the treatment of Linda Gibbons?” Lilley said.
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FORT WORTH, TX.-
On June 26, the Amon Carter Museum
presents Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s50s. This groundbreaking exhibition is the first to bring together South American and U.S. geometric abstraction and includes a range of paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, drawings and films. Constructive Spirit will be on view through September 5; admission is free.
Featuring 85 works by more than 65 abstract artists from Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela, this special exhibition organized by the Newark Museum (Newark, N.J.) provides a fresh and innovative look at modernism in the Americas during a dynamic and cosmopolitan period. The exhibition begins with the arrival of Joaquín Torres-García in New York City in 1920 and culminates in the 1950s, as North and South American abstract artists converged in international exhibition venues such as the Bienal de São Paulo.
Constructive Spirit includes works by renowned artists including Joaquín Torres-García, Arshile Gorky, Gyula Kosice and Jesús Rafael Soto, as well as artists who deserve much wider recognition, such as Geraldo de Barros, Lidy Prati and Charmion von Wiegand. Largely drawn from the Newark Museums superb collection of U.S. geometric abstraction, the exhibition also includes major works on loan from acclaimed private and public collections across both continents, such as Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Malba-Costantini Foundation (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and Whitney Museum of American Art.
By bringing together artists that are typically separated from one another in historical accounts, the exhibition suggests both conceptual and aesthetic parallels that cut across time, national borders and media, says Mary Kate OHare, associate curator of American art at the Newark Museum and the exhibitions curator. Artists in both South and North America worked with a pictorial and sculptural vocabulary of simplified shapes that make little or no reference to the natural world. Together, their work demonstrates the flexibility of the geometric language, revealing its capacity for both systemic and intuitive approaches to abstraction as well as a broad range of goals spanning the spiritual to the political.
According to Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture at the Amon Carter Museum, the exhibition also provides thought-provoking parallels to the Carters collection. Since Constructive Spirit includes works by artists such as Alexander Calder, Stuart Davis and Louise Nevelson, among others who are represented in our permanent collection, the exhibition expands our understanding of their work. We see how the artists, who adopted the hard-edge lines and geometric forms of constructive abstract art, operated on an international playing field.
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brought a new sense of political and social immediacy to pop music: not only did incendiary hits like "Beds Are Burning" and "Blue Sky Mine" bring global attention to the plight of, respectively, aboriginal settlers and impoverished workers, but the group also put its money where its mouth was -- in addition to mounting benefit performances for groups like Greenpeace and Save the Whales, frontman
even ran for the Australian Senate on the Nuclear Disarmament Party ticket.
The band formed in Sydney in 1971 as Farm
, and originally comprised guitarists Jim Moginie
and Martin Rotsey
, drummer Rob Hirst
, and bassist Andrew "Bear" James
, a law student known for his seven-foot-tall stature and shaven head, assumed vocal duties in 1975, and the group soon rechristened itself Midnight Oil
. After months of sporadic gigs, they began making the rounds to area record companies; following a string of rejections, the group formed its own label, Powderworks, and issued their self-titled debut -- a taut, impassioned collection of guitar rock which quickly established the Midnight Oil
sound -- in 1978.
After declaring their independence from the music industry, Midnight Oil
grew increasingly active and outspoken in the political arena; after performing in opposition to uranium mining, they supported the Tibet Council before turning their attentions to the unfair practices of the local music industry, and formed their own booking agency in response to the monopoly exerted by area agents and promoters. With their 1979 sophomore effort, Head Injuries
, the band scored their first hit single, "Cold Cold Change," and earned a gold record. James
left the band the following year due to health problems; with new bassist Peter Gifford
, they cut the EP Bird Noises
, another chart success.
With 1981's Place Without a Postcard
(recorded with producer Glyn Johns
), Midnight Oil
achieved platinum status on the strength of the smash "Armistice Day," which won the group an American deal with Columbia Records. Their follow-up, 1983's 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
, spent over two years in the Australian Top 40; after 1984's Red Sails in the Sunset
made his run at Senate, losing by only a narrow margin. Participation in the Artists United Against Apartheid project followed, leading directly into Midnight Oil's
increased interest in the battles of Australia's aboriginal settlers and a tour, dubbed "Black Fella White Fella," with the aborigine group the Warumpi Band
The aborigines' plight came to the fore on 1987's Diesel and Dust
, the Oils'
breakthrough record; sparked by the hit single "Beds Are Burning," the album reached the U.S. Top 20 and made the band a household name. After bassist Dwayne "Bones" Hillman
) replaced Gifford
, Midnight Oil
returned with 1990's Blue Sky Mining
, which they followed with a concert outside of the Exxon corporation's Manhattan offices in protest of the company's handling of the Alaskan oil spill. (A film of the performance titled Black Rain Falls was later released, with profits going to Greenpeace.) The album Earth and Sun and Moon
appeared in 1993, followed three years later by Breathe
. Midnight Oil
next resurfaced in 1998 with Redneck Wonderland
. The Real Thing
, only available in Australia, followed in 2001. It was a solid collection of new songs and live tracks from Midnight Oil
's magnificent run at the Metro Theatre in Sydney. Capricornia
, issued on Liquid 8 in spring 2002, marked the band's 14th album of their career. In December, Peter Garrett
announced his split from the band after 25 years. Garrett
, who left Midnight Oil
on good terms, wished to pursue other challenges.
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The concert, a piano duo performance, will be held Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Jacksonville State University’s Mason Hall, third floor. The concert is free and open to the public.
Steward is associate professor of music at JSU, and Beckman is senior associate dean for academic affairs and director of graduate studies in the College of Music at Florida State University.
“Doctors Beckman and Steward possess superb musicianship developed under the tutelage of some very fine teachers at Ball State University,” said festival coordinator Wendy Faughn. “This pair of pianists, both earning doctorates in piano performance, will demonstrate quality technique and sensitive interpretations of beautifully-written pieces by composers including Maurice Ravel and Franz Schubert.”
The practice of four hands at one piano was developed beginning in 1815 in the early Romantic period, because owners of the homes where the musical soirees were held often had only one piano, Steward said.
“The advantage for the pianists is better unison with the parts,” she added. “We can feel the music as one. And, the visual effect is interesting.”
The duo will play “Three Wedding Dances” by Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti, whose music was used in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” A shy and gracious man, Ligeti was known for his restless, vivid imagination and for re-inventing his style throughout his career. These short, modern pieces were probably rooted in Hungarian folk music tradition, according to Beckman.
They will also play Franz Schubert’s “Fantasie,” a 17-minute piece both beautiful and animated. According to the text “Discovering Music” by Howard D. McKinney, the Austrian composer suffered from poverty and illness, depending on friends to get by. But despite never having a home of his own, this master of melody accomplished much in his 31 years. He intended his compositions to be sung, usually at gatherings in the homes of Vienna’s cultivated middle class.
Next on the program is one of French composer Maurice Ravel’s most enchanting works — “Mother Goose Suite,” reflecting impressions of “Beauty and The Beast” and “The Fairy Garden” — followed by “Slavonic Dances” by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. “Dances,” which ranges from slow, moody and dark to a very fast, driving rhythm, caught the public’s fancy immediately, according to the text “Music” by Roger Kamien.
Swing with the Tommy Dorsey Band
Between 1925 and 1945, big bands provided the dance music for ballrooms and radio broadcasts around the country. To people who liked popular music, big bands meant Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington — and Tommy Dorsey, among other groups. Not only were some of the best instrumentalists found in these bands, singers such as Frank Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey and Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman emerged as headliners in their own right, according to “Popular Standards” by Max Morath.
The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra performs Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m. in the renovated gym of the Oxford Civic Center. The event is coordinated by the Oxford Arts Council.
By 1945, military service had interrupted the careers of many seasoned musicians and most of these bands broke up, but Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra survived. After Dorsey’s death in 1955, Buddy Morrow took up the baton. Now based in Orlando, Fla., the orchestra is hosted by saxophonist Terry Myers.
Come to dance or just to listen. Tickets, $20 in advance, can be purchased at Cheaha Banks, BB&T Banks, Noble Banks and the Oxford Civic Center. Tickets are $25 at the door. For more information, call Theresa Haynes at 256-832-0000.
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PIFC was founded in 1989 following the passage of ballot measure Proposition 103. Since then, PIFC has worked diligently to play a leadership role in the development and passage of California state government policies to help individuals have access to personal insurance.
Ensuring Access to Homeowners’ and Earthquake Insurance
Following the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the homeowners’ insurance market had all but collapsed, threatening the ability to close home escrows. PIFC played a major leadership role in the development of the California Earthquake Authority (CEA), which ended the homeowners’ insurance crisis and, to this day, ensures that Californians have access to both homeowners’ and earthquake insurance. The CEA is now the largest earthquake insurance company in the world.
Helping Customers Understand their Auto Repair Options
PIFC was the lead proponent of AB 1200, a bill signed into law in 2009, designed to help consumers better understand their options to obtain high quality insured car repairs.
Protecting Wildfire Victims
Following the 2003 and 2007 wildfires in San Diego, PIFC worked to craft laws to better protect disaster victims. These laws guarantee that insurance companies fully serve their customers when tragedy strikes:
- Once a state of emergency is declared, additional living expenses (ALE) – which fall under a homeowners’ insurance policy – will be provided for a period of 24 months.
- No policy may be cancelled as a result of a claim for home reconstruction.
- Increased the amount of time to rebuild and still receive replacement cost.
- Created a California Residential Property Insurance Bill of Rights.
Low-Cost Auto Insurance
PIFC supported bills led to the passage and expansion of the state’s Low-Cost Auto Insurance Program. This program, now operating on a statewide basis, ensures that low-income drivers have access to auto liability insurance, reducing the number of uninsured motorists on the roads.
Tow Truck Bill of Rights
PIFC worked in conjunction with the California Tow Truck Association to pass AB 519 in 2010, which created a “Bill of Rights” for consumers who have had their vehicles towed. This measure ensures that consumers better understand their towing charges and understand the requirements for getting their cars released from tow facilities.
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Scientists Feel Miscast in Film On Life's Origin
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: September 27, 2007
A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called ''Crossroads.''
The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant's Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford University in England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.
But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed say they are surprised -- and in some cases, angered -- to find themselves not in ''Crossroads'' but in a film with a new name and one that makes the case for intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. The film, ''Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,'' also has a different producer, Premise Media.
The film is described in its online trailer as ''a startling revelation that freedom of thought and freedom of inquiry have been expelled from publicly-funded high schools, universities and research institutions.'' According to its Web site, the film asserts that people in academia who see evidence of a supernatural intelligence in biological processes have unfairly lost their jobs, been denied tenure or suffered other penalties as part of a scientific conspiracy to keep God out of the nation's laboratories and classrooms.
Mr. Stein appears in the film's trailer, backed by the rock anthem ''Bad to the Bone,'' declaring that he wants to unmask ''people out there who want to keep science in a little box where it can't possibly touch God.''
If he had known the film's premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. ''At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,'' he said.
Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.
''I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people's views are different than mine, and that's fine,'' Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. ''I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren't.''
The growing furor over the movie, visible in blogs, on Web sites and in conversations among scientists, is the latest episode in the long-running conflict between science and advocates of intelligent design, who assert that the theory of evolution has obvious scientific flaws and that students should learn that intelligent design, a creationist idea, is an alternative approach.
There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. And while individual scientists may embrace religious faith, the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature. As scientists at Iowa State University put it last year, supernatural explanations are ''not within the scope or abilities of science.''
Mr. Stein, a freelance columnist who writes Everybody's Business for The New York Times, conducts the film's on-camera interviews. The interviews were lined up for him by others, and he denied misleading anyone. ''I don't remember a single person asking me what the movie was about,'' he said in a telephone interview.
Walt Ruloff, a producer and partner in Premise Media, also denied that there was any deception. Mr. Ruloff said in a telephone interview that Rampant Films was a Premise subsidiary, and that the movie's title was changed on the advice of marketing experts, something he said was routine in filmmaking. He said the film would open in February and would not be available for previews until January.
Judging from material posted online and interviews with people who appear in the film, it cites several people as victims of persecution, including Richard Sternberg, a biologist and an unpaid research associate at the National Museum of Natural History, and Guillermo Gonzalez, an astrophysicist denied tenure at Iowa State University this year.
Dr. Sternberg was at the center of a controversy over a paper published in 2004 in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a peer-reviewed publication he edited at the time. The paper contended that an intelligent agent was a better explanation than evolution for the so-called Cambrian explosion, a great diversification of life forms that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago.
The paper's appearance in a peer-reviewed journal was a coup for intelligent design advocates, but the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, which publishes the journal, almost immediately repudiated it, saying it had appeared without adequate review.
Dr. Gonzalez is an astrophysicist and co-author of ''The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery'' (Regnery, 2004). The book asserts that earth's ability to support complex life is a result of supernatural intervention.
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| 0.969532 | 1,044 | 1.601563 | 2 |
By Greg Gelpi
A "coding error," which caused Morrow High School not to be recognized as making Adequate Yearly Progress, has been corrected.
The Clayton County school system appealed the decision to the state Department of Education and recently learned of the state's decision to accept the appeal.
The Georgia Department of Education ruled that Morrow High School did indeed make Adequate Yearly Progress based on standards set forth by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
School spokeswoman Camille Barbee Olmstead explained that students who transferred out of Morrow High School were incorrectly listed as having dropped out of school. Upon further inspection, school officials discovered the error and successfully appealed to the state to award AYP to Morrow High School. Schools are penalized for not graduating the required number of students.
"There were actually some students who had withdrawn from Morrow and enrolled at other schools, but were not coded as having withdrawn," Olmstead said.
According to a letter sent to Clayton County schools Superintendent Barbara Pulliam by State Superintendent of Education Kathy Cox, Morrow High School made AYP after an apparent coding error was corrected. The school was found to have successfully graduated the required number students in 2004.
In the summer, school officials learned that Morrow High failed to make AYP based solely on its graduation rate. High schools must meet benchmark requirements in the number of students it tests as well as the number of students that it graduates to be considered as making AYP.
"We are pleased to be able to grant the appeal, as two graduates, now coded correctly, are included in the graduation class size calculation," Cox said in a letter dated Nov. 1 to the school system. "Additionally, the number of dropouts has been recalculated."
Morrow High made AYP last year as well.
"I am ecstatic that this error has been rectified and now Morrow High can join the ranks of those schools that have made AYP," Pulliam said.
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Fewer long weekends await Pinoys in 2011
GMANews.TV – Tuesday, December 21
* IM Story
(Updated 7:41 p.m.) With just a a few weeks remaining before the year ends, Malacañang on Monday announced the holidays for 2011. However, there will be fewer long weekends next year as compared to this year.
According to Proclamation No. 84, the following regular holidays and special days for the year 2011 shall be observed in the country:
A. Regular Holidays
New Year’s Day – January 1 (Saturday)
Araw ng Kagitingan – April 9 (Saturday)
Maundy Thursday – April 21
Good Friday – April 22
Labor Day – May 1 (Sunday)
Independence Day – June 12 (Sunday)
National Heroes Day – August 29 (Last Monday of August)
Bonifacio Day – November 30 (Wednesday)
Christmas Day – December 25 (Sunday)
Rizal Day – December 30 (Friday)
B. Special (Non-Working) Days
Ninoy Aquino Day – August 21 (Sunday)
All Saints Day – November 1 (Tuesday)
Last Day of the Year – December 31 (Saturday) C. Special Holiday (for all schools)
EDSA Revolution Anniversary – February 25 (Friday)
“Proclamations declaring national holidays for the observance of Eid’l Fitr and Eidul AdhaHijra, or the lunar calendar, or upon Islamic astronomical calculations, whichever is possible or convenient, will be issued after the approximate dates of the Islamic holidays have been determined in accordance with the Islamic calendar,” Proclamation No. 84 says.
Fewer long weekends
Even though Proclamation No. 84 cites Republic Act No. 9492—which moves holidays, except those religious in nature, to the nearest Monday—Proclamation No. 84 returns the commemoration of holidays back to their original dates.
Only at least three holidays will give the public long weekends: Maundy Thursday and Good Friday; National Heroes’ Day (August 29, the last Monday of August); and Rizal Day (December 30, Friday).
For students, there will be four long weekends after the EDSA Revolution Anniversary on February 25 (Friday) has been declared a special holiday for schools.
The public enjoyed 11 long weekends in 2010.
In a phone interview, chief presidential legal counsel Eduardo de Mesa said it is within President Benigno Aquino III’s discretion whether or not to move holidays that are not religious in nature to the nearest Monday because RA 9492 says the said holidays can be moved “unless otherwise modified by law, and/or proclamation.”
He said the legality of not moving holidays to the nearest Monday was settled when Aquino declared Aug. 23, 2010 (Monday) a regular working day even though former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had moved the commemoration of Ninoy Aquino Day from August 21, a Saturday, to the nearest Monday.
Under RA 9492, holidays that are not religious in nature can be moved to the nearest Monday “unless otherwise modified by law, and/or proclamation.” – KBK, GMANews.TV
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Sarkozy wants global carbon talks in Paris: groups
PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to hold international talks in Paris next year to seek agreement on carbon emission cuts following the Copenhagen climate conference, environmental groups said on Tuesday.
Sarkozy met representatives from several environmental campaign groups to discuss last week's Copenhagen meeting, which ended with a bare minimum agreement that fell far short of the ambitions France and many other countries had set.
In a statement, the presidential office said only that Sarkozy had "evoked the conditions of the mobilization that France intended to bring in the coming months" during a lunch with NGOs.
Arnaud Gossement, spokesman for the France Nature Environnement group, said after the meeting that Sarkozy had announced plans to invite the countries which are home to the world's four major forest basins to Paris at the end of January.
He also intended to invite the 28 countries that signed the final Copenhagen accord to a meeting in April or May.
The aim of the meeting would be "to implement the 50 percent objective by 2050," Gossement said, referring to the European Union's ambition of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent of their 1990 level by the middle of the century.
But he added that Sarkozy believed that not all of the 28 countries would attend the meeting. "He doesn't see China or Saudi Arabia joining the meeting," Gossement said.
A Chinese official said earlier this week that Beijing will treat talks on a binding global climate change pact in 2010 as a struggle over the "right to develop," signaling more tough deal-making will follow the Copenhagen summit.
(Writing by James Mackenzie; Additional reporting by Yann Le Guernigou; editing by David Stamp)
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MOSCOW, October 25 (RIA Novosti)
A high-ranking North Korean Army official was reportedly executed with a mortar round for drinking liquor during the 100-day mourning period after Kim Jong-il's death, South Korean media reported on Thursday.
According to the Chosun Ilbo daily, General Kim Chol, who served as vice minister of the Army, was executed by a firing squad in January on the order to leave "no trace of him behind, down to his hair" given by Kim Jong-un, who took over as head of state after the death of his father in December 2011.
The newspaper quoted a South Korean government source as saying that Kim Jong-un ordered loyal officials to "get rid of" anyone caught misbehaving during the mourning period for his father.
Besides the assistant chief and an assistant chief of the General Staff Department, frontline commanders were also executed, the source said.
Kim Jong-il also purged dissenters, even those caught for minor infractions, after the death of his father Kim Il-sung in 1994, the South Korean daily said.
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In light of the present situation in the Middle East, Russia and Israel find themselves facing common challenges. Under these newly emerging situations, Russia sees its partnership with Israel as a potential asset in resolving acute regional issues. From a Russian perspective, the compatibility of Israeli and Russian interests could contribute to such a partnership.
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Fri August 31, 2012
Brigham City Temple Opens Doors to Reveal No Secrets
Correction: On August 31, 2012, we erroneously reported that the Brigham City temple would help take some of the pressure off the nearby Logan and Pocatello temples. There is no LDS temple currently in Pocatello. The corrected version of the story is below:
For 3 weeks, the newest temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is open to the public. This is a special invitation to a place that has a reputation as secretive, but regular temple-goers would rather it be understood as sacred. For non regular temple visitors, who are in fact restricted except on this special occasion to even set foot in an LDS temple, this is a hospitable gesture.
Before the Brigham City Temple in Box Elder County is dedicated to its official task of serving members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its doors are open wide to an anticipated 300,000 visitors, some of whom have no idea what to expect.
The Church uses the metaphor of a beacon. A shiny white temple in the middle of a town is supposed to attract attention. But is that why the doors are open wide enough to include non-members of the Church? I ask 2 missionaries working at the temple how many visitors they suspect are members of the Mormon Church.
“They told us that probably 90% are members, so we were to treat everyone kindly because we don’t know which are which.”
And they should know. The missionaries, or Sisters, are working at the temple 6 days a week for 4 weeks during their time of service in nearby Ogden.
I’m part of the 10% of non Church members visiting the temple. A curious member of the public who won’t pass up an opportunity to sneak a peek behind a usually closed door.
Tour groups are herded onto buses from the parking lot of the nearby airbag factory to the temple and directed into makeshift rooms in the parking garage of the temple itself, where we watch a video that gives a very brief overview of the purpose of temples to the Church.
Then we pass through a line of volunteers who cover our street shoes with paper surgical booties. There’ s no explanation for why this is happening but when we get inside and see the snow white carpet of the temple rooms, it seems quite sensible.
What’s surprising about a Mormon temple is that it isn’t cavernous inside like an old world cathedral. It’s more like an office building made of overly-decorated administrative offices. There isn’t that much gilding. It’s more subtle than that. At least at first. As you head higher and higher into the temple, the ceilings get higher and more, well, celestial with sparkling glass bead chandeliers and some tastefully done gold leaf painting of peach blossoms on the ceiling which is a major theme of this particular temple, located in the heart of Utah’s fruit orchards.
The peach blossoms make sense for one of the more rural of the Church’s 139 temples. Even though Brigham City has fewer than 20,000 residents, the temple will serve 40,000 Mormons in Northern Utah and Southern Idaho, taking some of the pressure off the nearby Logan temple.
At the end of the tour, we take off our shoe coverings and throw them in the trash and are encouraged to stay and mingle in the parking garage over cookies and bottles of water. Everyone tries to get a picture of their family in front of the temple but it’s nearly impossible. The temple is gleaming white and every one is backlit. The temple is 165 feet tall and we are ants on the screens. We get back on the bus and back to the parking lot. Some of us will be back. Some of us never will.
The Brigham City Temple will be dedicated on September 23 in a ceremony that will be broadcast into local LDS churches throughout the region.
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I use to wonder about the use of the word UGH but now it fits. Labels!!!!! UGH!!!
I have spent a little time this week reading about labels. Belinda, over at The Halfway Point, wrote about labels this week. Jane, at They Call Me Jane’s Blog, also wrote about labels this week. Both got me thinking, as I have for some time, how labels affect us. I also had drinks with a dear friend this week who threw some thoughts into my mind about labels, too.
Belinda talks about growing into labels as in the first time an adult called her and classmates women. She also talks about some labels that do not bother me such as “human,” the one label that connects us all.
Jane talks about labels overshadowing accomplishments. She sets this post in the historic winning of the Best Director Oscar by Kathryn Bigelow. I have to admit I was long asleep by the time this Oscar was given out, even if I did catch a little of the show. And, I am with Jane when she says, can we get over the fact that Bigelow has a vagina and focus on her accomplishment? Shouldn’t the accomplishment be the focus of post-award shoe interviews, not her being female?
My own experience with labels frustrates me to no end. I have been labeled because I am no longer married. I have been labeled because I attend public meetings and speak my peace. I have been labeled by those not in my relationships as to what those relationships are. All of these labels have, whether I accepted them or not, influenced the growth of me as a person or the relationship as a living thing.
Labels put constraints on people, on relationships, on life. If you are labeled, just as an example, as ADD while a child, you carry this label and the expected behaviours with you all your life. Sometimes, the label is just that but other times, people will figure why bother to get the behaviours in check when that is what is expected.
When you are in a relationship, others always want to know what that relationship is. Seldom will anyone live with the answer “we’re friends” for long when a relationship is between a male and a female. Other people expect a different type of relationship between the sexes, especially adults. And, at times, it is these expectations that push and change and ultimately mold a relationship. These expectations put pressure on those in the relationship, whether they admit it or not. The pressure then, also, molds where the relationship goes. It is impossible to stay out of this type of a trap unless the relationship is totally hidden.
So what do you think of labels? Have you had good or bad experiences with them? Have you ever had someone label you something you are not or do not want to be?
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Young golfers in Wilmington test skills at youth golf challenge
Updated: 07/08/2012 01:00 PM
By: Jason Lucas
WILMINGTON--One of Wilmington's more challenging golf courses played host to a group of young golfers on Saturday. The Country Club of Landfall hosted its first Carolina Junior Golf Skills Challenge on its Nicklaus course.
"It's really exciting because I really like the course, especially the speeds on the greens." Sarah Funderburg, a 12-year-old golfer who competed in the event.
More than 45 kids ages 5-17 participated in the event where the young golfers practiced putting and chipping in addition to mastering their swings on the driving range.
"By doing these types of things, it helps us get precision in them," explained Carolina Cahill, a 12 year old golfer who participated in the challenge. "If those skills are good when you're playing, then you will shoot better."
Sara Bush, the head golf professional for Country Club of Landfall, created the event to give young golfers in the Wilmington area more opportunities to hone their skills
"It's great, you can see the joy on their faces when they sink a put or hit a long drive." said Bush. "That's definitely what it's all about, that early exposure."
Bush's goal for the Carolina Junior Golf Skills Challenge is to make the event a summertime tradition for kids and the country club.
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6.58K Views0 Comments0 Likes
Since MOOCs were at the top of the list (identified as part of the 'first horizon', or entering mainstream use in a year or less), we'll start with that.
6.01K Views2 Comments0 Likes
One of my favorite comments ever was from a teacher who was talking about her journey bringing technology into her classroom and developing activities around the tools she had found.
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Educators, have you ever wondered if your students are really learning when you teach? Soon you’ll have to wonder no more.
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Alumnae Theatre will be throwing open its historic doors once again (the building, originally a fire hall, dates from 1904) for this year’s edition of Doors Open Toronto. One of the themes this year is the celebration of “City Builders” – people who shaped Toronto’s architecture and history.
Alumnae Theatre will celebrate the contributions of Pamela Terry (1926-2006) to this theatre in particular and also to Toronto’s cultural scene. In 1958, Terry directed the first Canadian production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. For our 1959/60 season, she directed the very first play written by esteemed Canadian poet James Reaney – The Killdeer. Through the ’70s and ’80s she directed Canadian premieres of plays by Peter Handke and Vaclav Havel. In recent years Terry promoted Alumnae Theatre’s participation in cultural festivals such as Doors Open Toronto, and took charge of the company’s participation in Toronto’s first Nuit Blanche in 2006. We will be producing The Killdeer in April 2013 as part of our “Countdown to 100″ retrospective, in which one play from our past decades (Alumnae Theatre Company was founded in 1919) will be re-mounted each season until the 100th anniversary in 2019.
Archival material from Pamela Terry’s theatre career will be on display in our lower lobby area.
In addition, Doors Open visitors are welcome to tour areas of the theatre – volunteer guides are available to answer questions about the exhibits and architecture. Check out the Doors Open website at
http://www.toronto.ca/doorsopen2012 More than 135 architecturally, historically, culturally and socially significant buildings will open their doors for the weekend and highlight the people who built our city. All for FREE! Alumnae's hours are 10 am - 5pm on Saturday, and 1 - 5pm on Sunday.
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This afternoon I am meeting with our new intake of academic staff on the Learning Technologies module. It looks like we have a great group of people this year and I'm looking forward to working with them to explore their use of technologies in teaching and learning.
This afternoon we'll be introducing ourselves and I'll run through the structure of the module - 7 workshops, each addressing a different theme. Over the next few months we hope to introduce participants to some new technologies and new ways to use those technologies to support teaching.
Today we'll also take a look at some social networking. Fiona will introduce an activity based around social bookmarking, and then we're going to have some fun using twitter. We're using the hashtag #cel263, so please keep up with participants by following the tag, and join in the conversation.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. drug regulators are changing the label for Merck & Co Inc's recently approved Victrelis treatment for hepatitis C to show it should not be taken with some widely used HIV medicines.
"Co-administration (of the two drugs) ... is not recommended at this time because of the possibility of reducing the effectiveness of the medicines, permitting the amount of HCV (hepatitis C virus) or HIV ... in the blood to increase," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday.
The FDA and Merck first warned about the issue in February based on the results of a drug interaction study, but a label change could further crimp sales of Victrelis.
Victrelis, approved last May, attacks the hepatitis C virus that over time can lead to chronic liver disease or liver failure. Many patients with hepatitis are also infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which weakens the immune system and is fatal without treatment.
The drug interaction study tested healthy volunteers who took Victrelis and the widely used HIV treatment Norvir (ritonavir) with one of three other anti-HIV pills. All of the HIV drugs work by blocking protease, an enzyme the virus needs in order to replicate.
The study found Victrelis reduced the concentrations of the HIV drugs in the blood.
The FDA said it is changing the label for Victrelis also based on a small clinical trial presented last month that studied a total of 98 people.
The trial results were not as conclusive as the drug interaction study. The trial tested people with both HIV and the hepatitis C virus, and gave some people Victrelis plus an older combination hepatitis C therapy, and others only the older combination treatment (peginterferon/ribavirin). All patients were given a type of anti-HIV pill.
Out of the 64 people taking Victrelis, three had a rebound in their HIV, while four of the 34 people taking only the older combo drug had a rebound of the virus.
Merck has said it still plans a larger drug-interaction trial of Victrelis with other HIV drugs.
The FDA said it would communicate any new information about taking Victrelis together with the HIV drugs when it becomes available.
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Salute to the Negro Leagues
We’ll have a special post later today. And given the early start for the Sunday game, we’ll skip around the horn.
However, we did promise pics of the Negro Leagues uniforms. Here’s an idea of what you’ll see on the field this afternoon.
The Kansas City Monarchs
The Royals will be wearing Monarchs jerseys. The Monarchs were one of the most storied and successful franchises in the Negro Leagues. The uniform the Royals will be wearing was worn from 1951-52 by the Monarchs.
Kansas City played 37 seasons in the Negro Leagues and was a 1920 charter member. The Monarchs won 10 pennants, with the first coming in 1924 over the Hilldale Giants of Philadelphia. Negro League greats like Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Turkey Stearnes, Newt Allen, and of course Buck O’Neil (who also managed the team) all played for the Monarchs.
Some great Major League players also donned Monarchs unis before making it big in the big leagues. Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks and Elston Howard are just a few of the famous names who played ball for awhile in Kansas City.
The Royal Giants
The Giants, appropriately, will wear Giants uniforms. This version of the Royal Giants was an All-Star team that barnstormed throughout California. There were also Royals Giants teams in Brooklyn and Boston.
The uniform the San Francisco Giants will be wearing is the same one worn by the Royal Giants who toured Japan in 1927 as one of three tours of black players who played in the Land of the Rising Sun. The 1927 tour featured Hall of Famer Biz Mackey and the team went 35-2-1, playing in Hawaii, Korea and Japan. Major League Baseball took a cue from the early tours in Japan and later sent Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig among others.
Here’s the Royals Official Game Notes.
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The new Zagato Volpe is the Italian car goes racing in the sector of small electric cars, to provide a minimum consumption. This is a car that is in line with Renault Twizy, however stress that this car is much closer to a car, to have a frame, windows and everything inside as everything would be ready in a car. The big news, of course, is that you can move using only the electric motor. The only problem is that this version will only be able to run at 48 km / h, so it will be difficult to remove by road, would be a vehicle whose sole purpose it could give within the city.
However, for those who need the Zagato Volpe also sometimes point out the city and travel on roads faster can opt for an engine that combines electric drive with the combustion engine so that it will accept both gasoline as natural gas can charge the battery on the fly that feeds the electric motor. The end result is a car that can achieve a range of more than 300 kilometers at a speed of 105 km / h.
It is also worth its weight below 500 kg, allowing it to an even lower energy consumption. We also noticed all the equipment you will, coming to have as an additional control system stability, so we can say that the Vole Zagato is much safer than other electric cars is now on sale in the area.
Comments published at Zagato Volpe:
At the moment we haven´t any comment published here
Write your comment at Zagato Volpe:
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First, a short history lesson: Some of you may have read about “The Day After” even if you’re not old enough to remember it. A 1983 made-for-TV movie about the aftermath of a nuclear war, it was not so much a film as a happening. Its graphic depiction of what may have been our greatest fear provided fodder for water-cooler conversations for weeks on end. It provoked us, sobered us and may even have affected our foreign policy. Then-President Ronald Reagan drew a direct line of causality from the airing of the film in 1983 to the signing of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty four years later.
In short, it scared the living daylights out of us.
And remember, all this was about a fictional nuclear holocaust. The day after it aired, I talked with a woman who had survived a real one.
At least, I tried to. But when I broached the subject, she called a halt to the conversation. She told me she just couldn’t talk about it.
You understand, she told me.
And I said I did, although strictly speaking that was a falsehood. Appreciate it? Yes. Respect it? Sure. But how could I understand it? I hadn’t seen what she had seen. I hadn’t even begun to endure what she had endured. How could anyone who wasn’t even alive on Aug. 6, 1945, let alone present and invested in Hiroshima, Japan, possibly understand?
But what moved me most was what happened next. She began to tell me about what happened in the brief instant when the bomb detonated and the eternity that followed. She told me a horrific tale of bodies incinerated, of family decimated, of weeks of scavenging, of months of watching for radiation poisoning, of days of watching the sky in panic, terrified that the same hell might descend again.
I was a complete stranger to her, and yet all this came out like some toxin she had been waiting years to expel. I have some appreciation of why it was impossible to talk about. It was almost impossible to listen to.
There is a kind of methodology, a catastrophic box score, that we use for measuring loss when disaster strikes. We estimate the loss of property and the damage to the infrastructure. We sum up the numbers of displaced and the dead. Usually, there is a stratospheric dollar figure, representing an estimate of what it will cost to set things right.
Japan’s recent earthquake and tsunami have overwhelmed the world with its massive wave of casualties. Right now the grisly task of counting them goes on apace.
But some casualties are not easily counted or even recognized. Perhaps Japan has a deep-seated sense of this — as deeply rooted and hard earned as any nation on earth.
Hence the inevitable sense of recognition in the recent news stories describing the relief efforts of the Japanese Red Cross and the 2,400 nurses it has enlisted who are trained to provide post-disaster psychological support.
Yes, there is a mammoth tragedy in the number of lives lost. But there are also lives damaged and lives transformed forever. There are lives in which peace of mind is now an alien concept — and may be so for the indefinite future.
This is not to say it is a simple matter to treat the wounded and bury the dead. But some of the most profound wounds extend beyond the physical.
Remembering this, it’s hard not to think about the day after — and a survivor who couldn’t stop talking about what she couldn’t bring herself to say.
Clayton Hardiman is a Chronicle columnist. E-mail: [email protected]
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The Language of Blood, Jane Jeong Trenka; Greywolf Press; 2005
I’m still processing whatI think about this book. I’ve read other reviews and it seems that The Language of Blood stirs strong feelings in every case, whether you love it or find it offensive. For adoptive parents, I think we could all learn something from it.
The Language of Blood is a creatively written personal memoir of a Korean-born adoptee. The book begins with a letter from Trenka’s birthmother explaining why she and her older sister were sent to the United States – much more information than I suspect most Korean-born adopted people have. The sisters are adopted by a Lutheran couple in rural Minnesota, who, following the conventional wisdom of the time, raise the girls as “good, white, Lutherans”, and in Trenka’s opinion, deny their Korean heritage. The book focuses on Trenka’s search for identity through relationships with her birth family in Korea. She combines a variety of writing styles – the mix of techniques mirroring her own identity struggles.
While some of Trenka’s opinions may be difficult for adoptive parents to read, we cannot deny Trenka her experience, nor that it is probably the experience of many interracially adopted people. If we are to learn what the book has to offer, I think we need to suspend judgment, at least those of us who are adoptive parents. Is Trenka unfairly harsh to her adoptive parents? Possibly. Does she give short shrift to the relationship with her sister, who seems to have had the same upbringing with less identity crisis? Maybe. Is she unduly critical of American culture, while painting a rosier picture of Korea than is due? It probably depends on your own race.
The Language of Blood is a deeply honest, personal story. Trenka shares intimate thoughts and details about time spent with her birth family in Korea. In contrast, her descriptions of her life growing up and relationships with her adoptive family leave much more implied. She does a masterful job of using writing styles that enhance the meaning of the words.
Many of Trenka’s emotions and feelings seem to be very raw and near the surface. I could imagine that some would advise that she should have waited to write the memoir, giving her a more mature perspective later in life. But I think that it would have been our loss.
As our own children are growing up, we don’t want them to have an identity crisis as an adopted person, or as a member of a multi-ethnic family. But they might anyway. Denying it will not make it go away. If we discount Trenka’s experience, we risk losing some valuable insight from a brave and creative woman. It may not be our experience, nor our children’s, but what we learn from Trenka is of value nonetheless.
– Debbie Kaufman
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I can eat bread without butter, but I can make a lot more meals with these few things in my refrigerator. Bought on sale, none of these are very expensive--in fact, they are very inexpensive additions to your pantry that make a lot more meals possible.
Apples I like apples because they are long keepers. If you get a lot of them for cheap and they start to get mushy on you, run them through the grater and stick them in pancakes, muffins, and breads.
Margarine Cheaper than butter, spreadable margarine is a good way to get all that homemade bread down.
Eggs Powdered eggs work in many recipes, but not in anything that has souffle-like tendencies. (You can, however, substitute powdered egg whites in that case). Eggs are a good, inexpensive source of protein. When they go on sale, I buy 12 dozen at a time (Yes, that's 144 eggs at a time!) When we sit down to eat, my family can easily eat 18 eggs for breakfast, along with toast and fruit salad. Eggs are good past their date, too. If you want to hard-boil eggs, use the oldest ones; they peel easier. I keep my opened can of powdered eggs in my refrigerator.
How Long Do Eggs Stay Fresh?
According to the American Egg Board (www.AEB.org):
"The oil coating which seals the shell's pores helps to prevent bacteria from entering the egg and reduces moisture loss from the egg. RAW SHELL EGGS REFRIGERATED IN THEIR CARTONS WILL KEEP FOR ABOUT 4 TO 5 WEEKS BEYOND THE PACK DATE WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT QUALITY LOSS. (The pack date is usually a number from 1 to 365 representing the day of the year starting with January 1 as 1 and ending with December 31 as 365.)"
"Properly handled and stored, eggs rarely "spoil". If you keep them long enough, they are more likely to simply dry up! But, don't leave eggs out at room temperature. They'll age more in 1 day at room temperature than they will in 1 week in the refrigerator. Room temperature is also an ideal temperature for bacterial growth."
Sour cream If you can afford to put sour cream in your budget, you can make a whole lot more meals. It also substitutes nicely for heavy cream in many recipes. It is usually just fine past the expiration date as long as it hasn't been opened--even 2 months past the date. I buy mine on sale and don't buy more until the next sale.
Powdered buttermilk You can keep powdered buttermilk on the pantry shelf until you open a container. I keep it opened in the refreigerator after that because because of the fat content. I have kept one container in the fridge for years without it going rancid. It makes a nice addition to certain recipes. It does not have the same leavening abilities as fresh buttermilk, which is important in many recipes.
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en
| 0.969735 | 636 | 1.671875 | 2 |
With the 4th of July falling on a Wednesday this year, there are going to be an unusual number of opportunities to practice long exposure photography. Official firework displays are definitely more spread out than usual, plus there will be opportunities to play with sparklers in your own backyard. Time for some fun!
The steps below apply to any sort of long exposure photography that is used to capture a light source. It could be fireworks, sparklers, or even a glow stick. Real talk: glow sticks are easier to work with. They don't burn out, so you test and retest and shoot and shoot again until you get the effect you want.
Step 1: Forget auto mode. It won't work. Instead, switch to manual mode.
Step 2: That goes for your focus as well. Auto focus just won't work when you're trying to do long exposure photography. Sparklers and fireworks move too much and it's too dark for auto focus to do a good job of tracking. Set your focus manually and don't stress about it. It won't have to be precise in order to get the job done.
Step 3: Drag out that tripod or find a level surface at the right height to put your camera on. You're going to need to leave the shutter open for longer than you can possibly stand perfectly still. On the topic of equipment, a remote is helpful in this instance. It's not required, but it is helpful.
Step 4: Set your ISO relatively low. I know that normally if you're shooting at night, you want a higher ISO. Not this time. You are going to use ISO to control how much of your background is visible. A higher ISO will make it possible to see the person behind the sparkler or glow stick, the entire city, or whatever. A lower ISO will help you get a solid black background. Important note: you can prevent overexposing the image with the ISO.
(If I had used a lower ISO and a higher aperture, you wouldn't be able to see the trees in the background. Neither way is right or wrong ... it's a personal preference.)
Step 5: Set your aperture somewhere between f/4.0 and f/7.0. You are going to have to fire some test shots to see where you need to be based on your conditions. Aperture is also responsible for helping you make the background disappear an appropriate amount.
Step 6: Set your shutter speed to a slow setting. How low depends on what you're trying to capture. One second is plenty long for some fireworks, while I had to bump all the way to 5 seconds to do some sparkler writing. I like to time out what I'm planning to draw with the sparklers and glow sticks before I actually take the shot. It's never an exact science, but it saves me some time to draw an "F" in the air without the sparkler before I set the shutter speed. That way I know how fast it needs to be before I have fire shooting all over the place.
I'd like to tell you exact numbers for steps 4-6, but it will depend on what you have going on around you. Fire off some test shots, thank the lords of digital photography that you can delete the duds, and adjust as needed.
There's more about writing with sparklers and fireworks photography over here.
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President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.
Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.
According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.
The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.
At the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama-Biden effort was hit with a similar scandal. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."
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en
| 0.964696 | 251 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The all-new Volvo V40 is sleek, spectacular and sexy. Add to that new high-tech features to an already full deck of safety and support systems from larger models and the all-new Volvo V40 will be the most intelligent and safest car in its segment.
The new features include world-first Pedestrian Airbag Technology, Lane Keeping Aid with haptic auto steering, an ingenious Park Assist Pilot, automatic Road Sign Information, Active High Beam and a Cross Traffic Alert radar system at the rear.
The all-new V40 also features Volvo's groundbreaking Pedestrian Detection with full auto brake - as well as enhanced City Safety low-speed collision avoidance system which now operates at speeds up to 50 km/h.
Park Assist Pilot - making parallel parking easy
A study by global research institute TNS reveals that one-third of European drivers have problems with parallel parking. In a similar study by UK insurer elephant.co.uk, around two-thirds of interviewed drivers stated that they felt uncomfortable in parallel parking situations.
The new Park Assist Pilot makes parallel parking easy and precise by taking over and operating the steering wheel while the driver handles the gearbox and controls the car's speed. The parking manoeuvre is based on front, rear and side-facing ultrasonic sensors.
When the driver activates the Park Assist Pilot the sensors start to scan the side of the car. When a parking slot measuring a minimum of 1.2 times the car's length is detected, the driver is notified by an audible signal and advised to stop via a message in the instrument cluster.
The display guides the driver step by step via texts and animations in the instrument cluster until the car is correctly parked. Although the driver initially engages reverse gear and continues to control the speed of the car, steering is taken over by the Park Assist Pilot. When parking is completed the driver is notified by an audible signal and a text message.
The all-new Volvo V40 can also be equipped with a rear park assist camera and park assist sensors front and rear.
Lane Keeping Aid - active help to stay on course
Studies show that many accidents take place in non-critical traffic situations and good weather conditions due to driver distraction, drowsiness or illness. Approximately 30 percent of all accidents in Volvo Cars' statistical accident database are accidents with an initial road departure. About 75 percent of these occur on roads with speed limits of 70 km/h or more.
The new Lane Keeping Aid in the V40 helps the driver stay in the intended lane. This feature applies extra steering torque to the steering column when the car gets too close to a lane marking and is about to leave the lane. The system is active at speeds between 65 km/h and 200 km/h.
The forward-facing camera monitors the left and right lane markings. Lane Keeping Aid registers the car's progress between the lane markings and takes action if the driver shows signs of unintentionally drifting out of the lane.
As a first step Lane Keeping Aid applies gentle steering wheel torque to help the driver steer back onto the intended course. If the car leaves the lane, the technology generates a distinctive warning through a haptic vibration in the steering wheel.
Enhanced Blind Spot Information System - for better visibility
The V40 is the first Volvo to offer the enhanced Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), which is radar-based. The technology can now also monitor and alert the driver to rapidly approaching vehicles up to 70 m behind the car. Of course it still informs the driver about vehicles in the blind spots on both sides of the car.
BLIS helps the driver avoid potentially dangerous lane-changing manoeuvres. The enhanced BLIS is based on radar sensors located in the rear corners of the car, behind the bumper cover. The radars continuously scan the area behind and alongside the vehicle.
Warnings are displayed in LED indicators located in each A-pillar. A steadily glowing LED indicates when the radars cover a vehicle in the zone. The second warning level - LED flashing - occurs if the driver uses the turn indicator when the first alert is active.
Cross Traffic Alert - covering your back
Cross Traffic Alert uses the radar sensors at the rear end of the car to alert the driver to crossing traffic from the sides when reversing out of a parking space. This is especially helpful in tight and crowded areas where the side view might be limited due to infrastructure, vegetation or other parked cars.
The function warns of traffic up to 30 metres from the car. Smaller objects like bicycles and pedestrians may also be detected, but not always and only at a shorter distance. The alert, which remains active as long as the target is present in the zone, is delivered to the driver as an audible signal and a warning in the centre screen.
Road Sign Information - an extra "eye" on the traffic environment
High speed is a contributory cause behind a significant part of all fatal road accidents. European Road Safety Observatory (ERSO) studies show that speed is a contributing factor in 30 percent of all fatal accidents. A Swedish Road Administration research shows that between 100 and 150 lives could be saved on Sweden's roads every year if drivers kept to the speed limits.
Road Sign Information supports the driver by displaying road signs in the instrument display. The forward-facing camera can detect speed limit signs as well as "no overtaking" signs. The road sign icon is shown until another sign is detected.
Road Sign Information can be combined with the Speed Alert function, which provides the driver with a visual warning in the speedometer if the speed limit is exceeded.
Active High Beam - more relaxed driving in the dark
The new Active High Beam technology in the Volvo V40 helps the driver utilise high beam more efficiently. It also offers automatic switching between high and low beam at the right moment.
The technology uses a forward facing camera together with sophisticated image processing to offer the driver the best possible visibility at night.
The camera monitors other vehicles and their headlamps and tail lamps. Advanced image processing software analyses this data and provides information about the position and direction of other vehicles. The calculation serves as the basis for automatic switching between low and high beam.
The all-new V40 can be equipped with Active Bending Lights - swivelling headlamps that follow the sweeps and bends of the road.
Visibility in poor conditions is also enhanced with the option of an electrically heated windscreen and a rain sensor, which automatically starts and regulates the wipers when it rains.
Adaptive Cruise Control & Distance Alert - keeping the distance
The all-new Volvo V40 can be equipped with Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which promotes comfortable driving by using radar to automatically maintain a set time gap to the car in front.
The driver sets the desired maximum speed and chooses a time interval to the vehicle in front. When the radar sensor detects a slower vehicle, the car's speed is automatically adapted to match the vehicle in front.
The Queue Assist function on cars with automatic gearbox maintains the set gap all the way down to standstill, making this comfort-enhancing system extremely useful even in slow-moving queues with repeated starting and stopping.
Distance Alert is a feature that helps the driver keep a safe distance to the vehicle in front. The driver chooses between five different time gaps via buttons on the steering wheel. The selected gap is shown in the speedometer display. A light in the head-up display informs the driver if the gap to the car in front becomes too short.
Pedestrian Detection - unique in this class
Pedestrian accidents occur every day in our increasingly intensive traffic environments. In Europe, 14 percent of all traffic fatalities are pedestrians. The corresponding figure for the USA is 12 percent and in China the proportion is over 25 percent.
Pedestrian Detection with full auto brake can detect if a pedestrian steps out into the road in front of the car. If the driver does not respond in time, the car can warn and automatically activate the brakes. No other car in this class features a similar technology.
Pedestrian Detection with full auto brake consists of a radar unit integrated into the car's grille, a camera fitted in front of the interior rear-view mirror, and a central control unit. The radar's task is to detect a pedestrian or vehicle in front of the car and to determine the distance to it. The camera determines what type of object it is.
Thanks to the dual-mode radar's wide field of vision, pedestrians about to step into the roadway can also be detected early on. The innovative technology is programmed to trace a pedestrian's pattern of movement and also to calculate whether he or she is likely to step into the road in front of the car. The system can detect pedestrians who are 80 cm or taller.
In an emergency situation the driver first receives an audible warning combined with a flashing light in the windscreen's head-up display. If the driver does not react to the warning and a collision is imminent, full braking power is automatically applied.
Pedestrian Detection with full auto brake can avoid a collision with a pedestrian at speeds up to 35 km/h if the driver does not react in time. At higher speeds, the focus is on reducing the car's speed as much as possible prior to impact.
The car's speed has considerable importance for the outcome of the collision. A lower speed of impact means that the risk of serious injury is significantly reduced.
Pedestrian Airbag Technology - a world first
In order to mitigate the consequences if a collision with a pedestrian is unavoidable, the Volvo V40 features newly developed Pedestrian Airbag Technology, a world first.
Sensors in the front bumper register the physical contact between the car and the pedestrian. The rear end of the bonnet is released and at the same time elevated by the deploying airbag.
The inflated airbag covers the area under the raised bonnet plus approximately one third of the windscreen area and the lower part of the A-pillar.
The raised bonnet and airbag will help reduce the severity of pedestrian injuries.
Collision Warning and auto brake - with full braking power
Up to 90 percent of all road accidents are caused by distraction. Half of all drivers hitting another vehicle from behind do not brake at all prior to the collision.
Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake is a further development of the Collision Warning with Auto Brake technology already introduced by Volvo Car Corporation. The all-new V40 can detect, alert and automatically brake if the car risks colliding with another vehicle in front.
The aim of the initial warning is to alert the driver so that he or she can brake or avoid the danger. If the driver does not react in time to the warning, the car automatically activates full braking power.
With automatic braking, the collision can be avoided if the speed difference between the two vehicles is up to 35 km/h.
Collision Warning and auto brake was considered the best auto braking system in the world in a test by German organisation ADAC in 2011. In the all-new V40, auto brake performance at higher speeds has been improved compared to previous versions.
City Safety - now active up to 50 km/h
Rear-end impacts are common in dense city traffic and when driving in traffic queues. About 75 percent of these collisions occur at speeds below 30 km/h and in 50 percent of cases, the driver has not braked at all prior to the collision.
In 2011, the benefits of the City Safety technology were documented in another IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) report quoting a reduction of the collision frequency by up to 22 percent.
Insurance claims involving the Volvo XC60 show that City Safety reduces the cost of personal injury claims by 51 percent - while vehicle repair costs were lowered by more than 20 percent.
The all-new V40 is the first Volvo that features an upgraded City Safety system. This system is now active at speeds up to 50 km/h (previously 30 km/h).
City Safety keeps an eye on traffic in front with the help of a laser sensor that is integrated into the top of the windscreen at the height of the rear-view mirror.
The car automatically brakes if the driver fails to react in time when the vehicle in front slows down or stops - or if the car is approaching a stationary vehicle too fast.
The collision can be avoided if the relative speed difference between the two vehicles is below 15 km/h. If the speed difference is between 15 and 50 km/h, the speed of impact is reduced to minimise the effects of the collision.
A study by Swedish insurance company Volvia shows that Volvo cars equipped with City Safety are involved in approximately 20 percent fewer rear-end accidents than cars without auto brake.
Driver Alert Control - detecting and warning tired drivers
Studies by German insurance organisation GDV show that one out of four accidents on the Autobahn is caused by driver fatigue. Swedish Road Administration accident data indicate that tired drivers are causing up to 30 percent of all accidents.
Driver Alert Control is designed to detect and warn tired drivers. The system can also cover other situations where the driver is distracted.
Driver Alert Control consists of a camera, a number of sensors and a control unit. The camera continuously measures the distance between the car and the road lane markings. The sensors register the car's movements. The control unit stores the information and calculates whether the driver risks losing control of the vehicle.
If the risk is assessed as high, the driver is alerted via an audible signal. A text message appears in the car's information display, displaying a coffee cup symbol to advise the driver to take a break.
Full set of crash safety features - including new knee airbag
The all-new Volvo V40 also features world-class crash safety including a safety cage with effective deformation zones and various grades of high-strength steel.
Safety belt pre-tensioners are standard in the front and outer rear seats and the front seats are equipped with whiplash protection (WHIPS) to help prevent neck injuries. Both the driver and front seat passenger seat have dual stage airbags. There are also side airbags integrated in the front seat backrests.
The driver's side is also fitted with a new knee airbag. It is installed in the dashboard above the pedals and deployed together with the other airbags in the event of a frontal collision.
The Roll Over Protection System includes a robust body structure, seat pre-tensioners and Inflatable Curtains. The Inflatable Curtains cover both sides, from the A-pillar to the C-pillar, and deploy in frontal offset, side or rollover accident situations.
A closing velocity sensor collects information and interprets pre-crash data in order to prepare the restraint systems - belts and airbags - for the expected crash violence in low and mid-severe frontal accidents.
ISOFIX attachments are standard and Volvo Car Corporation offers thoroughly tested child seats that cover ages from newborn up to 10 years.
Personal Car Communicator
The V40 is available with a Personal Car Communicator remote that enables keyless drive. The remote can both transmit and receive signals, providing the driver with locking and alarm information. The positions of the driver's seat and the door mirrors are stored in the memory when the car is locked.
Thomas Broberg, Senior Safety Advisor Volvo Car Corporation:
"The all-new V40, the most compact car in our V-range, has class-leading safety. It is also packed with more intelligent support systems than any previous Volvo. Yet another important step toward our vision that nobody should die or suffer serious injuries in a new Volvo car by the year 2020."
"Volvo is leading the development of spearhead technology that helps the driver avoid collisions. All the features are designed around the driver, helping him or her to stay alert and well informed to avoid collisions and dangerous situations. The all-new V40 is the first car in our model range with technology that actively helps the driver steer clear of danger."
"The safety systems are intelligent and work together to make driving more pleasant and safe. They are designed to warn about threats. If necessary, they can also step in and intervene in critical situations. And, in some situations where the collision is unavoidable, there are safety features to help mitigate the consequences. However, this does not mean that these sophisticated systems take over the driving. Their main task is to assist the driver, thereby making the driving experience more comfortable and less complicated."
- The all-new Volvo V40 will go on sale in South Africa early next year.
- Specification on local models may differ from that mentioned in this press release.
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In order to strengthen its research capabilities, enhance its core competitiveness in the domestic and international markets, and promote sustainable development, Sinovel has attracted renowned experts and scholars in wind power from home and abroad, and has established its technical R&D center with a team of more than 800 technical engineers with rich experience in the design and development of wind turbines. The Center covers a wide range of disciplines, such as aerodynamics, numerical analysis, machinery, hydraulic pressure, electric systems, automatic control, and software development. The Center has developed the 1.5MW, 3MW, 5MW and 6MW series of grid-friendly and internationally advanced wind turbines, which are adaptable to various wind and environmental conditions. Each of the above models meet all the requirements for grid integration and the grid codes of different countries, such as high/low voltage ride-through technologies, wind turbine model checking, and active/reactive power managing technologies. Moreover, each wind turbine model has been tested and certified by relevant inspection bodies.
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| 0.950759 | 204 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The Only 'Success' in Iraq is that U.S. Troops Are Leaving
Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq is reportedly set to come to an end, with most of the roughly 40,000 soldiers currently stationed there set to be removed by year's end. But let's make no mistake: contrary to what you're likely to hear from the political and media establishment, the only thing worth celebrating is this war's end, not what it accomplished.
On October 21, President Obama announced that, "After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over." By the end of 2011, he said, "The last American soldier will cross the border out of Iraq with their head held high, proud over their success, and knowing that the American people stand united in our support for our troops."
While the words may be intended to soothe - no one likes to know they have fought for an ignoble cause - the truth of the matter is that there is no "success" for any American to be gloating over. And though the president and his surrogates are selling the announcement as the fulfillment of an oft-repeated promise made on the campaign trail, the fact is it's a promise the Obama administration made every effort to break.
While Obama pledged just this past August that he would have "all our folks . . . out of there by the end of the year," Wired reports that a private army of 5,500 U.S. mercenaries will be staying on in Iraq to guard the 10,000 State Department employees - yes, 10,000 - who aren't leaving Iraq anytime soon. And CNN reports 150 troops are set to remain though 2012 "to assist in arms sales."
If Obama had his way, it's fair to say the U.S. presence in Iraq would be even larger.
Over the summer, for instance, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared he had " every confidence" Iraq would request - "request" - an extended U.S. presence beyond 2012. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, traveled to Iraq to urge leaders there to "make the decision absolutely as soon as possible," with the Washington Post reporting that Mullen insisted any extension "include guarantees of legal immunity for American forces."
In the end, President Obama did not decide the bulk of U.S. forces would leave Iraq, however much his partisan supporters - and partisan detractors like Mitt Romney and John McCain - might like to argue that to be the case. Rather, Iraqi leaders rejected his administration's generous offer to extend the military occupation of their country, forcing him to abide by the agreement to withdrawal most U.S. forces by the end of this year to which his predecessor, George W. Bush, had already agreed.
Considering what American forces did to their country, it's not hard to see why.
Sold variously as a preemptive war of self-defense and an altruistic, humanitarian war of liberation, the 2003 invasion of Iraq tore apart a society that had already been wrecked by a decade of brutal U.S. sanctions that denied Iraqis everything from clean water to basic medical supplies, an embargo that left roughly a half-million children under the age of five dead - a catastrophic human toll that President Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told the world was " worth it."
The U.S. invasion of Iraq itself resulted in the violent deaths of no less than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, according to the most conservative estimate. A 2006 study by the British medical journal Lancet found that up to that point there had been more than 650,000 "excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war," factoring in the lack of medical supplies and the civil war the invasion set off. Polling firm Opinion Research Business estimated in 2008 "that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens" died as a result of the conflict.
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Try this quinoa pancake recipe from Keeper of the Home
Quinoa (pronounced “KEEN-wah.”) may sound foreign to many people but it dates back thousands of years to the Inca’s. Quinoa is a complete protein and contains all nine essential amino acids and has twice as much fiber as most other grains. Quinoa also contains Lysine, iron and is rich in magnesium, manganese and riboflavin. This heart healthy grain is also believed to contain anti-inflammatory properties.
To prepare quinoa you will want to rinse the seeds to remove any bitter taste caused by the quinoa saponins. Cook one part quinoa to two parts liquid. Once the mixture comes to a boil, reduce heat and cook for 15 minutes. I like to add olive oil, garlic and pepper to my quinoa but there are a lot of recipes on the world wide web so you won’t have any problems finding one you like. Be sure to check out the delicious pancake recipe pictured in this post. A perfect addition to your next celebratory brunch.
Taking the time to appreciate our surroundings and enjoy life’s simple pleasures might be an acquired skill. Still the numbers are growing for those who want the simpler life and who are actually taking the steps to achieve this dream. Learning to be satisfied with less is certainly a key factor. Many choose a simple life for different reasons: less stress, healthier lifestyle, and more time to devote to family, friends and to the things enjoyed most.
For some the choice of a cottage lifestyle is inviting. Its quaint simplicity echoes the peaceful repose that many of us desire. Though we aren’t always able to live in our perfect dwelling we can certainly bring to our own homes a piece of its unique charm.
- Keep televisions in a t.v. armoire so that they are hidden when not in use. Exposed electronics can take away from the tranquil atmosphere.
- Add fresh flower arrangements. Use faux flowers if you have allergies. Tip: Wildflowers look wonderful in old mason jars!
- Do not block natural light. Open blinds and curtains and let the sun kiss your home with its beauty.
- Use a sofa cover to get a softer look. Do not be afraid of white! White covers are actually easy to clean in the washing machine and you can usually add a little bleach. But always read the cleaning label for any fabric for proper cleaning instructions.
- Create a small flower garden that you can view from a window. Even a patio can be transformed to a little haven of its own.
- Perhaps just a corner nook is all you need: carve out space and make it yours. Perhaps a window view overlooking your flower garden?
- Most importantly dress your home with love and laughter. Spend quality time with family: read a book together, play a game, take a leisurely walk or take turns choosing the activity!
There is no set of rules when planning a scavenger hunt but to make it most enjoyable consider the interests of the child.
Here are some ideas from a birthday scavenger hunt we had for my daughter when she was young and an avid reader of Nancy Drew:
- The day began in the morning when the doorbell rang and a mysterious package was left at the footstep addressed to my daughter. Inside the package included detective business cards with her name on them, a pocket watch, a pen, and her first clue.
- The first clue led us to a special location where she was to look for something red. A red scarf was tied in a tree and she had to climb the tree (with help) to reach another hint.
- She was directed to a friends house where she had to kayak a short distance in a lake (again with help) to find a floating bottle with the next clue.
- And with assistance she climbed to the roof of the house to find a gift waiting and another clue that guided her to a secret compartment in the pocket watch.
- The clue in the pocket watch led to a surprise party at an ice cream shop where all of her friends had gathered to wish her happy birthday. Her next clue was hidden under one of the tables.
- This led to a clue in her pen, which directed her to our favorite bookstore. Inside the bookstore she was sent to the Nancy Drew section in which another hint was found in one of the books.
- She was then directed to find a mysterious person with a hat who gave her the clue to her final destination: A family birthday party where her final clue was hidden in a walnut shell that led to a treasure box.
Ideas for hiding clues:
- Freeze a clue in an ice tray.
- Carefully open a walnut, take out the nut and replace with a clue. Glue shell back together. And place in a bowl of walnuts.
- Hide a clue in a pen, pocket watch, or compass.
- Get friends involved by having them secretly waiting at different locations with funny hats.
- Get other peopled involved and ask them to wear a bright-colored smiley face that your child has to find.
- Hide clues in favorite stores at the mall (with the permission of management).
- Empty an old chap stick tube and place a clue.
- Create funny rhymes that lead to clues.
If you are looking for a great gift idea, try learning and documenting your family genealogy. What a wonderful gift idea that keeps on giving throughout the generations.
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Singing National Anthem 'could be illegal'
FOOTBALL supporters could be jailed for singing God Save the Queen or Flower of Scotland under the SNP's new law to crack down on sectarianism.
Making the sign of the cross or singing Rule Britannia could also be regarded as an offence under certain circumstances once the legislation comes into force next football season.
Community safety minister Roseanna Cunningham yesterday said that such songs and gestures could be regarded as offensive acts when she was questioned about the SNP's anti-sectarian bill being fast-tracked through parliament.
She said: "A sign of a cross is not in itself offensive, but I suppose in circumstances such as Rangers and Celtic fans meeting each other on a crowded street, it could be construed as something offensive."
Ms Cunningham's failure to rule out fans being arrested for singing the National Anthem was described as "worrying" by opposition politicians, who warned that there was a "potentially explosive loophole" in the legislation.
Senior figures in the legal fraternity urged the government to adopt a "common sense" approach to its Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill.
Concern that people could be at risk of being dragged through the courts for singing the National Anthem came as police questioned whether the 500,000 the government has set aside to implement the legislation would be enough.
Conservative justice spokesman John Lamont asked the minister if she could envisage the singing of either the National Anthem or Flower of Scotland "becoming offensive behaviour within the act?" Ms Cunningham replied: "The glib answer to that is 'no, of course not'. But the problem is, for a criminal offence, it is all the facts and circumstances that surround that, that may turn them (sic] into problematic."
She added: "Perhaps it might have been more appropriate to, say, look at Rule Britannia, which I understand is one (song] frequently used on one side of the terraces. Now, I would not regard (that song] as offensive, but it is exactly why we don't start defining which songs, and listing the songs … it really is a matter of facts and the circumstances of the case whether something is or is not offensive."
She went on to suggest that Celtic fans making the sign of the cross could also be judged offensive. "I have seen hundreds of Celtic fans (behave] in a manner which I can only describe as aggressive - making signs of the cross, gesticulating across an open area to Rangers fans."
The new law is being rushed through Holyrood before the parliament rises for the summer recess in less than two weeks. The speed with which it is being examined by MSPs has raised fears among lawyers that it will not be scrutinised properly.
The bill outlaws religious, homophobic and racist abuse by fans at, and on the way to and from football matches. It is also designed to crack down on fans spreading bigoted abuse on the internet. Under the legislation, those found guilty of the new offences of "offensive behaviour" or "threatening communications" can expect sentences ranging from a 40 fixed penalty to a five-year prison sentence or unlimited fine. The bill was introduced by the SNP government to tackle the bigotry that has marred football matches for decades, but which plumbed new depths recently. Scotland's sectarian problem - which previously has seen controversy surrounding Paul Gascoigne of Rangers imitating flute-playing Orangemen and rows over Arthur Boruc of Celtic crossing himself - reached dangerous levels last season.
Parcel bombs were sent to Celtic manager Neil Lennon, his QC Paul McBride and former MSP Trish Godman, a Celtic fan.
The proposed law does not include a list of proscribed songs. But Ms Cunningham suggested that even God Save the Queen, Rule Britannia or Flower of Scotland could be deemed offensive in certain contexts.
Her comments led to opposition politicians claiming that the new law could criminalise people for singing the National Anthem or crossing themselves. Mr Lamont said: "I am now very concerned about how this legislation might be interpreted. For example, if you are a republican Scot, could you then claim that someone singing God Save The Queen is a sectarian attack on you? If you are English, could you then claim that someone singing Flower of Scotland is a sectarian attack on you? The minister did not rule out this possibility, which is very worrying."
Mr Lamont added: "We have said all along that everyone wants to beat sectarianism, but laws must not be rushed … if the situation is not resolved quickly, then we will consider putting an amendment down to clear up this potentially explosive loophole."
Labour justice spokesman James Kelly added: "The minister's inability to clarify what the bill does in relation to these matters begs the question how police officers will be able to enforce the legislation in just over a month's time."
The Bishop of Motherwell, Joseph Devine, agreed that any sign, song or picture can be abused. He said: "The minister is correct in saying that in certain circumstances such gestures can be provocative.
"In themselves, the sign of the cross and the National Anthem are noble and honourable expressions, but they can be manipulated for evil intent. Those who intentionally and malevolently exploit and corrupt such eminent symbols should be held to account."
Ms Cunningham said that the aspect of the law designed to tackle internet hate crimes would also apply to offensive graffiti, T-shirts, posters and recorded speech.When asked whether it would also apply to tattoos, she said: "I suppose, arguably, if someone tattooed a death threat all over their body, then it is falling within the ambit of this kind of communication. But I would caution the member against reductio ad absurdum (reducing to an absurdity]."
The cost of the new legislation also came in for criticism with Les Gray of the Scottish Police Federation saying the government estimates were "way off the mark".
Mr Gray said implementing the new legislation properly would require more officers at football grounds, on supporter buses and in pubs.
The Scottish Government has said it does not envisage "significant additional costs" associated with the introduction of the laws, estimating they would not exceed 500,000 in 2011-12. It estimated costs in future years of between 700,000 and 1.5 million.
But Mr Gray said that 700,000 would not "even scratch the surface of what is required".
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Weather for Edinburgh
Friday 24 May 2013
Temperature: 2 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: North east
Temperature: 5 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: West
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| 0.965433 | 1,377 | 1.59375 | 2 |
“… the Iowa Department of Public Health found Legionella disease in a hospitalized patient who claimed to have contracted the bacterial disease, which can cause pneumonia, during Memorial Day weekend at the Ottumwa Days Inn spa. The Ottumwa Health Department was made aware of the complaint on June 10. “
Gates said that the pool met code when it was last inspected in March by the city. One of the requirements for the pool facilities is that they have a certified pool operator. That person is in charge of testing the chemicals and making sure the facilities meet the requirements of the city and state codes. The Days Inn did not have a certified pool operator, Gates said. However, Gates noted, Legionella disease has not been confirmed to be present in the Ottumwa pools. They are awaiting test results that should be returned later this week.
“These rules are important because people can get sick if they are not complied,” Gates said, adding that she’s never had a complaint like this in her experience in the health department.
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| 0.983241 | 215 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Parents now have a complete, cutting-edge and comfortable place to turn for all their parenting questions and concerns. The Children's Museum of Houston, together with the Houston Public Library, opened the Parent Resource Library, the first of its kind in the country, in the Children's Museum in the spring of 1999. Since then, nearly 1,000 visitors a week have used the library, checking out books, thumbing through resources and printing information off the internet while their children read children's books or play with educational toys right alongside them.
Admission to the Children's Museum is not required to visit the library. Just let their box office staff know. You can apply and receive a new library card but cannot renew expired cards or pay outstanding fines.
Visit the Parent Resource Center web site.
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| 0.947294 | 159 | 1.78125 | 2 |
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
When I first read “Self-Reliance,” these words sunk into me, but I must have skimmed the rest of the essay. Emerson’s style and vocabulary put me off, an experience which I attributed to 150 years of drift in the English language. The problem only got worse as I read his other essays: I kept wondering when he would get to the point, or worse, if he had a point worth getting to (see: “English Traits”).
Recently I pulled down from the shelf a used, still-beautiful American Library hardcover collection of Emerson’s works I’d been lugging around, and decided to give him a second chance, starting with “Self-Reliance.” This time, the essay had a more powerful effect. Themes that were obscure before — the challenge to find original thought, Emerson’s pleas for the reader (or perhaps the writer) to avoid conformity — now seemed to apply to my life in unexpected ways.
If I want to be fully human, I need to create my own ideas — I can’t merely adopt ones I find lying around. Coming from Emerson, this otherwise bland message is a sharp reminder that even when I think I’ve worked something out, I still need to maintain the “integrity” of my mind, through the proper care and feeding of my ideas. Take veganism, for example: I can decide, given some evidence and critical thought, to eat a vegan diet, but pretty soon I may start calling myself a vegan, which means opting in to the vegan community. And that is quite a mixed bag, in Emerson’s view. Claiming membership for oneself in such a group poses a problem: what if I act not because I still believe in the shared values of the group, but because I want to continue to belong, to be known as, a vegan? The question evokes Foucault’s analysis of the Panopticon, a prison in which the prisoners know they are being watched, but do not know when. A human being living a busy, highly-connected life can find him or herself in this role far too often, I think, and the result is that our actions mean different things than we pretend they do. If we act with the warden on our back, then the meaning and our ultimate experience of our act changes; ideals may become prisons.
All that aside, I can’t claim to be a perfect vegan. After a year or so of trying to eat a vegan diet, I’m enthused and especially happy to live closer to an ideal that Peter Singer originally drove home for me. On some occasions I’ve called myself a vegan and have been called one. But have I been 100% consistent? No. Every once and a while I eat something that I know or suspect has dairy in it. Usually this happens when someone offers me food as a gift, or when I’m at a restaurant and I forget to ask. At these times I have competing values. Sometimes I value generosity from another human being more than I value my decision not to eat animal products. Likewise with waste: I can’t ever send food back; I hate wasting food.
I suspect that the desire to remain consistent in action, despite feeling conflicted, is a problem other vegans face. The world is complex, and we respond to it with principles that sometimes compete. Emerson would probably find that acceptable. The integrity of my mind is more important than achieving 100% consistency. After all, if the primary reason I eat tofu instead of cheese on any given day is that I wish to identify as a vegan, and not because I consider tofu healthier for the planet, then I will have lost my integrity, even if I remained consistent in action. As Emerson wrote, “I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions.” Not only my actions, but also my intentions, create the evidence that I am truly human.
Of course, what occurs to me as examples of “foolish consistency” may not occur to you. In my day-to-day life I think most about my family, technology, and food politics. A healthy critique of IT industry wisdom would do me good, but not you, perhaps. Instead, I will only encourage you to read “Self-Reliance.” And then, join me in re-reading it, some years from now, after the dust has settled, so that we can snap to attention once again.
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Sunday, February 19, 2012
Organize your life online with Evernote
Thanks to Steven Anderson for sharing this video about Evernote on his blog. Evernote is a web-based file organizer and sharing tool. Think of Evernote as Diigo for your files, pictures and notes.
Imagine what teachers could do with Evernote in the classroom.
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| 0.948074 | 77 | 1.710938 | 2 |
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