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From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
|FACT ALERT: |
This article contains only half-truths and falsehoods. Anyone believing any of this crap will be captured, sent to a FEMA concentration camp and re-educated in the ways of the New World Order.
– You'll get it through your thick skulls, CIA.
“We deeply apologize for the MKULTRA program. We didn't expect people to be morphed into lobotomized zombies after injecting them with 25 grams of pure LSD everyday for 3 months. Stuff happens. Sorry about that.”
MKULTRA was a top secret mind control experimentation program which isn't so concealed anymore since the CIA was forced to admit its existence to the world following a wave of indignation when the scheme was exposed. The complaints have been filed by the families of upstanding citizens whose brains have been deeply fried. The unethical experiments were designed to study the psychological consequences induced by using massive amounts of drugs on oblivious individuals.
The CIA began running the project in the fifties, using American and Canadian citizens as guinea pigs. The illegal human experiments may still be going on as you read this highly sensitive report. The targets of those experiments were ordinary folks who consulted their trusted psychiatrist for mild problems, such as anxiety or depression and who were completely unaware they were actually being used in mind control experimentation. They were given something to worry about alright when they were given electroshocks with intensity levels that would kill a horse and halucinogenic substances in amounts that would make Lil Wayne feel something.
The covert and illegal operations included a wide range of human experimentations, while pursuing various goals, which were all aimed at developping the perfect drug to use in mind control instances and military applications. These "investigations" could very well have been used on your father, your aunt or that bizarre neighbor who cuts his grass so that the final result looks like a grassy owl. Here is an exhaustive compilation of the substances actively researched by the Agency's scientists. The official name of the testing operation appear in red and the substances researched during these tests are italicized.
Substance which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would discredit himself in public.
- Test subject: George W. Bush (Former US President)
- Result: GREAT SUCCESS! The substance actually exceeded all scientific expectations as W. was given a dose in his coffee before each public appearance, where he always proceeded to make a fool of himself. Some speculate that the amazing speech and cognitive impediements induced by the drug were helped to a degree by the fact that Bush was dumber than a box of rocks to begin with.
Codename: Answer failer
A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.
- Test subject: Barack Hussein Obama (Professional teleprompter user)
- Result: We could never know! The subject never answers questions directly, always relying on a teleprompter. An efficient method to remedy this would be to switch the teleprompter off, which in the rare instances observed, took the recipient into incoherent rambling. Sadly, the efficiency of the substance is not likely to be determined anytime soon since Mr. Obama shied away from responding to a single solitary question from the journalistic brass during his whole presidency.
Codename: Brain Bash
Substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, auditory torture and normally intolerable auditive stimuli and so-called "brain-washing".
Test subject: Andrew Sanders (Insurance broker)
Result: Impressive! Mr. Sanders was locked in a insonorized institutional chamber for what he believed would be a brainwave sound therapy to help him cope with the benign stresses of his daily life. At this point, the scientists looking at the subject's prone and oblivious person through the reinforced glass shook in fear of the moral implications relating to the sheer cruelty of the experience they were about to conduct. The silence was defeaning. Everyone held their breath as the lead scientist reached for the "play" button, unleashing a cacophony of unnamable noises in the test room, as the song Friday by Rebecca Black reverberated within its walls. Amazingly, the subject started mildly swinging his head back and forth, as if he appreciated the racket. Scientists were flabbergasted and exhilerated over such a successful drug, taking great care to turn the "music" off before venturing in the insonorized compound to retrieve the subject.
Codename: GIGA LSD
Substances which promote weakness or extreme distortion of the eyesight or hearing faculties sporadically throughout the day in the subject, accompanied with acute disorientation.
Test subject: Matt Lobster (Professional Internet user)
As any other day of his weekly routine, the subject popped a prescription pill before preparing himself to ingest an infect breakfast prior to heading to his workplace at the skyscraper occupied by the Uncyclopedia's headquarters. Shortly thereafter, the subject began hallucinating that his cereal bowl was whispering frivolous things towards him. He seemed quite a bit puzzled at first but then surprisingly started talking back to his bowl while looking at it in a charming manner. He was clearly emancipated. Then the episode wore off, leaving Mr. Lobster pretty confused, but in a hurry as his flirt with his kitchen apparel meant he would certainly be late at his job and his bosses would not appreciate this, so he stormed off to his means of transportation.
But as he would soon learn, it had to be the cadet of his concerns for this day when he started hallucinating a colorful spiral which replaced the road in front of his very eyes. Totally convinced he was now exploring some kind of Wonderland, the subject drove around at low speed, damaging everything in his path before his engine wore off just like a stock car, still firmly convinced he was in some fairy tale world. When a police officer finally got him out of the wreckage, Mr. Lobster looked at him straight in the eye and exclaimed: "Cinderella! I knew your car would turn into a pumpkin by midnight! Get aboard and let's go see the 3 Little Piggies before the Big Bad Wolf blow their houses up, and then we'll invite White Snow and the 7 Dwarves over! What do you think?"
The subject was institutionalyzed for life.
Codename: Boose Desintegrator
Materials which will prevent or counteract the intoxicating effect of alcohol.
- Test subject: The author of this article
- Result: TOTAL FAILURE. The substance actually caused the subject to write more inept articles while stumbling from time to time to his refrigerator to get another one, knocking off various objects in the process and even once knocking himself out on the corner of that badly placed kitchen table. For the sake of proper documentation, we should mention that the subject woke up the next morning only to find out that his cat had jumped on his keyboard and irreversibly wasted a 3KB edit. He also reported a terrible headache.
Various operations for various buzzes
Subproject 54 directly implied that there were 53 other subprojects, this particular one being nicknamed "Perfect Concussion", which was designed to erase a person's memory. It was deemed to be a quite useful and promising drug for people who had extra-marital affairs, and Bill Clinton took great interest in this experiment. Successful modern test subjects include O.J. Simpson and "Iron" Mike Tyson.
All of the substances in italic text above were substances which were tested on oblivious American and Canadian citizens, leading a reasonable individual to believe the governments of both countries really care about their esteemed peasants.
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Mercy Fund, HEAL Africa
In stricken eastern Congo, HEAL Africa treats hundreds of patients every month with a wide variety of needs:-
gunshot and rape victims from the fighting
people with malaria or any of the other diseases endemic to that region
people with AIDS
children with club foot (a widespread condition and a speciality at this centre)
older people in need of joint replacement.
Many women come for maternity care and help by the Safe Motherhood programme. Many are treated at the Goma hospital; many more by outreach teams across a vast area. Many need intensive or prolonged treatment.
For the vast majority of patients, HEAL Africa represents their only hope of care and a cure. Yet their medical ministry costs a vast amount of money. We are grateful to WorldShare supporters and the many other people and organisations who help.
A particular need right now is Heal Africa's 'Mercy Fund'. Patients who are able to do so are expected to pay something towards their own treatment costs. But many cannot – they have no resources. Many live from day to day only on what they can find to sell, or grow, or scavenge.
The Mercy Fund exists to fund the treatment of these needy people, so that the hospital’s funds are not rapidly exhausted by helping so many of the poorest. HEAL Africa has no desire to see treatment restricted to only those who can pay, but to maintain this standard, we need your help. These people only come for treatment when they have no other alternative.
To treat a poor patient costs on average £250. Can you give £250 to help one of the neediest people on earth to get desperately-needed treatment? Could you give a regular gift by Standing Order to help patients through the year?
We will try to tell you the name of the patient you are helping, so you can pray for them.
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When news happens, text LT and your photos and videos to 80360. Or contact us by email or phone.
Blackburn's debt levels increase despite UK trend
9:00pm Thursday 10th January 2013 in Blackburn
DEBT levels in Blackburn are rising and above the national average, says a charity helping families with financial problems reveal.
Figures from the StepChange Debt Charity show that the average unsecured debt level of people in the town contacting its helpline was on course to rise for 2012.
For the first nine months of last year, its average client in Blackburn owed £17,018. In 2011, the average owed was £16,406.
The rise in the average debt levels of Blackburn stands in contrast to the UK trend of falling debt levels and the national average of £15,995.
In the first three-quarters of 2012, StepChange Debt Charity advised 662 people in Blackburn regarding their debt problems. In 2011 that number was 778.
The charity is now warning consumers over the dangers of debt consolidation, and recommending the benefits of debt management.
It is urging anyone struggling to seek its help to draw up a detailed household budget and viable debt management solution.
Comments are closed on this article.
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We've all experienced it. On Sunday, we attend our meetings, participate in our
classes, chat with friends, and then go home for the day. At home, we prepare
lunch and/or dinner, call family and friends, visit with home and visiting
teachers and call on people we missed at church.
By the time we are sitting down at the dining table, someone inevitably asks
the following questions: "How was your Sunday School/Primary class?" "What
did you talk about today?"
In my house, these questions are often followed by: the "deer in the headlight"
glare and a lot of "uh, um" and "I don't know" responses. So, what do we do to
help alleviate the all too frequent and occasionally embarrassing (especially
when company is over) shrugs and "I don't knows"?
In my Primary class, I have started handing out brightly colored 4x6 note cards
with a bulleted outline of our lessons. I keep them short enough that parents
do not have to read the lesson, but provide enough information to trigger the
children's memories of what we talked about.
Thus far, I have received only positive responses from the children and their
families about the cards. In my house, my son loves giving the card to his dad,
who can then ask him the questions and listen to a beautiful six-year-old recite
his Primary lesson. What more can you ask?
There are smiles all around and we all feel so much better now that we know
what questions to ask and can listen to our children who are so excited to
share what they learned - every little detail.
Sunday afternoons simply don't come fast enough. I can't wait to hear my son
yell, "Hey Dad! Guess what we did in class today! Ask me anything, Dad. I can
tell you!" These are blessings of having notes taken for us, providing the right
key words to ask the right questions. Life is good.
Heather Best grew up in Washington State as a Navy brat. After a tour in the US Army, she pursued her education obtaining degrees in medical assisting and biology and is currently completing a degree in chemistry. Heather has volunteered over the years in public and private schools, hospitals and her community in various roles.
Heather currently resides in Greensboro, North Carolina, with her family, where she serves as the CTR 6 Primary class teacher for her ward.
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Mary H. Heekin, LCSW is a Senior Instructor at the University of Colorado Denver Depression Center.
Ms. Heekin specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy for mood and anxiety disorders and has received training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) as well as Prolonged Exposure (PE) for trauma related disorders. Her clinical work includes cognitive-behavioral and stress-reduction techniques, behavioral activation, and skills to aid in problem-solving and overall increased interpersonal functioning. Ms. Heekin has an interest in incorporating mindfulness and family focused therapy into her individual practice.
Ms. Heekin is a graduate from the University of Michigan where she earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology. She later pursued her MSW also from the University of Michigan and worked as a clinical intern in the University’s Depression Center. From 2006 to 2009 Ms. Heekin worked with Barbara O. Rothbaum, PhD at Emory University in Atlanta, GA on multiple trauma and anxiety related research projects including A Cognitive Enhancer May Facilitate Behavioral Exposure Therapy for Veterans with PTSD; a study using virtual reality exposure (VRE) therapy for combat veterans. Also while at Emory Ms. Heekin participated in a large scale predictors of treatment response study as a cognitive-behavioral therapist under the supervision of W. Edward Craighead, PhD.
Here at the University of Colorado Denver Depression Center Ms. Heekin continues her practice in evidenced-based treatment for mood and anxiety disorders and is a co-therapist for a series of group programs focused on treatment as well as relapse prevention.
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Saudi trims oil supply as Opec sees softer outlook
Vienna, June 12, 2012
Opec said on Tuesday the global oil supply and demand balance could ease further in the second half of the year due in part to a slowing global economy, and top producer Saudi Arabia was already trimming its output.
'Signs appear to be showing that the global economy is slowing further,' the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) said in a monthly report. Opec meets to set policy on Thursday.
'The second half of the year could see a further easing in fundamentals, despite seasonally higher demand.'
Opec cited factors including a slowing world economy, downside risks to demand such as from higher US gasoline prices and supply performing well in non-member countries, supported by growth in the United States.
The report said demand for Opec oil would average 30.74 million barrels per day in the second half of the year, unchanged from its previous forecast.
Opec is pumping much more than the demand for its crude and some members including Venezuela are expected to call at Thursday's meeting for the group to lower supplies to prop up prices.
In May, Opec produced 31.58 million bpd according to secondary sources cited by the report, 58,000 bpd less than in April but still 1.58 million bpd more than Opec's supply target of 30 million bpd.
'High Opec crude oil production standing above market requirements provides further confirmation that the market remains amply supplied,' Opec said.
But according to a second set of production figures reported by Opec and provided by the member-countries, Saudi Arabia has trimmed its production.
Saudi Arabia told Opec it produced 9.8 million bpd in May, down from 10.1 million bpd in April, the report said.
World oil demand would grow by 900,000 bpd in 2012, Opec said, unchanged from the previous assessment. - Reuters
More Energy, Oil & Gas Stories
- Taqa looking at share options
- Aramco seeks bids for power plant
- Qatar sets up $1bn energy infrastructure fund
- Sembcorp inks Oman utilities JV project
- Saudi diesel import set to hit record levels
- $1bn Salalah IWPP opened officially
- Saudi oil exports plunge in March
- Kuwait replaces top oil sector officials
- Iran to boost diesel exports to Iraq
- European oil price investigation widens
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Print publication: Monday, Jan. 23
Schools and taxes
As a grateful graduate of Portland Public Schools when my parents' property taxes supported them, I'm open to James Huffman's suggestion that a return to "the old-fashioned idea of local control" might ultimately be what's best for Oregon's education system ("Are Salem experts smarter than ones in Washington?" Jan. 18).
What Huffman's analysis ignores, however, are the voter-passed measures limiting property taxes that resulted in the centralized education funding and decision-making he laments. Until that changes, Huffman might want to turn his considerable knowledge and intelligence to supporting those, including Gov. Kitzhaber, who are trying to make the education system we have work best for all of Oregon's schoolchildren and college students.
Drugs and money
I've always been perplexed by claims made by opponents of the War on Drugs that legalizing drugs will somehow remove the profit factor ("Drug war's toll," Letters, Jan. 18). Profit is the driving force behind every industry in America, so why would it be any different for marketers of newly legal street drugs?
Aggressive advertising and slick promotion backed by large corporations would only add to the drug problem and expand addiction. I can see it now: "Get high with your cool friends Joe Cannabis, Ronald MethDonald, and Snap, Crack and Pop."
Regarding the editorial "Fattening up county coffers" (Jan. 19): The "heavy-handed soda tax" you describe may not be quite that heavy-handed. Moreover, this is not really a slippery slope ... gastronomically greasy at times, perhaps, but not slippery, unless you're talking about politically. The proponent of this initiative is not a politician with an ax to grind, but a physician, Gregg Coodley, who gets to see and then try to treat and reverse the effects of sugar-laden (high fructose corn syrup) beverages (among other things) on young and older adults. Is his soda-tax initiative perfect? Maybe not, but what in this world is?
Perhaps Coodley's attempt to remind and encourage us that every journey begins with one step -- sometimes a small step -- is an appropriate one. If people forget or minimize Coodley's message and his efforts for better health and a better future for our children and adults, then these kids and adults might not have the stamina, vigor or ability to get to any of those Multnomah County libraries that the proposed library service district would bring; or because of proliferative diabetic retinopathy, they might not be able to see/read any of those books, hard copy or electronic.
It's misguided to think taxing sugary beverages will promote healthy eating habits, as some Multnomah County residents are suggesting. There is no way to show that rising prices of soda will cause people to choose an apple or carrot instead of their favorite drink. Research on soda taxes from the Journal of Public Economics noted: "Reductions in calories from soda are completely offset by increases in calories from other beverages."
From a dietitian's perspective, the best way to effectively promote healthy eating is to go into communities and increase nutrition knowledge. People need to understand they can enjoy their favorite foods and drinks in sensible portions within a balanced diet.
I suggest we focus on instilling a lifelong healthy relationship with food and physical activity as ways to encourage healthy lifestyles, not taxes.
ALYSON MACE Lake
Mace is a registered dietitian and consultant to food and beverage companies, including Coca-Cola.
President Obama's decision to stop (for now) the Keystone XL pipeline was a good decision. If Canada decides to sell its northern Alberta tar sands oil to China or some other foreign country, at least we will not be party to the environmental degradation that will result.
If we were to get serious about taking action on Earth-friendly and environmentally sound projects, we would create far more long-lasting jobs than with the pipeline project.
So President Obama nixes the Keystone XL pipeline, environmentalists continue to block Oregon's effort to export coal and natural gas, and Oregon taxpayers will have to bail out bad loans to renewable energy projects. Perhaps liberals foresee fossil fuels going out of style and companies such as Solyndra providing jobs for the recovery, but I lack their optimism.
It's a dirty secret, but coal is a growth industry, and Oregon could miss the boat on this one. If China wants to burn our coal to make products we buy, let them. I'd rather Oregon export pollution than export jobs.
After reading the article "Activists challenge Coos Bay project" (Jan. 19) on dredging permits, I've concluded that the term "environmental activist" is an oxymoron. It would seem more appropriate to refer to these environmental groups as "inactivists," since they seem to prefer no activity over new activity.
For decades now, every proposal to increase commerce in our region's forests or waterways, regardless of the economic benefit to local communities, has been met with the same old rants: Don't log, don't dredge, don't build.
Today's environmental regulations are stringent, the permitting process lengthy. Our ecosystems have been and are being protected; our community's economic base and viability have not. The purported wave of tourist dollars has not replaced the loss of family-wage jobs in places such as Oakridge or Coos Bay.
But speaking of appropriate terminology, folks shouldn't worry so much about dredging. After all, the definition of old dredge spoils: new habitat.
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Why Romney could be a transformational president
One thing my presidential election model can’t tell you is what sort of Congress the next president is likely to end up with. But we can speculate.
If Obama wins the election, the odds are that he’s facing a Republican House, and perhaps even a Republican Senate. But it’s not a sure thing. Speaker John Boehner said he thinks Republicans have a 1-in-3 chance of losing the House. InTrade puts it a smidge closer to 1-in-4. But that’s assuming the full range of possible election outcomes. If the premise is that Obama is winning, Democrats have a slightly better chance of taking back the House, as that’s a scenario in which the election is definitely breaking their way.
Sidenote: InTrade gives Democrats a better shot at taking back the House than keeping the Senate. The reason is that Democrats are defending 23 seats, while Republicans are defending only 10. That’s because the 2012 Senate election is the follow-up to the 2006 Senate election, in which Democrats enjoyed an extraordinary wave. Now they’re left defending all those seats. So it’s entirely possible that Obama could win, the House could flip, but Mitch McConnell could become Senate Majority Leader.
Odds are, in other words, that if Obama wins, he will still be negotiating with Republican leaders in Congress. But the same can’t be said for Mitt Romney.
If Romney wins the election, it’s almost a sure bet that Republicans win control of both the House and the Senate. And that matters. Right now, the GOP’s agenda is the Ryan budget, and that’s entirely fiscal: It’s a premium support plan for Medicare, and tax cuts, and deep cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other domestic programs. All that can be passed through budget reconciliation — which is to say, all that can be made immune to the filibuster.
So if Romney wins and the Republicans take control, they could accomplish quite a lot on party-line votes, even if their majorities are slim, and Democrats are opposed. Indeed, Romney could end up being a fairly transformational president for conservatives so long as he’s paired with a Republican Congress.
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Ministers will tell MPs on Thursday that a new health advice service will help around 500,000 people a year stay in work and avoid falling onto benefits.
The new service will provide assessments and advice to employers and employees to help those on sick leave get back into the workplace.
Employers and employees will be able to phone a helpline or visit advisers in a network of local and regional offices.
Around 300,000 people a year fall out of work and onto benefits because of health-related issues.
However, ministers think that a significant amount of this job loss is needless and is both wasteful of individual talent and a burden on the taxpayer and on employers.
The new service is predicted to cut sick pay costs to business by up to £165m a year, according to estimates from the Department for Work and Pensions.
The measures will also cut the sickness benefit bill by up to £60m a year and increase economic output by up to £900m a year, officials say.
Lord Freud, a junior Work and Pensions minister, said: “The longer that people are out of the workplace, the harder it is for them to return.
“Faster practical intervention will help thousands of people each year stay in the workplace and off benefits. That outcome is good for employees, good for business and good for the taxpayer.”
The news will emerge in a Government’s response to a review which will include new measures to address the gap in access to advice and support to employees and thereby preventing short-term sickness developing into long-term benefit dependency.
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- On Air Program Guide
- A Blue View
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- Gil Sandler’s Baltimore Stories
- Humanities Connection
- Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast
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- The Morning Economic Report
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Trademark Board Hears Challenge To 'Redskins' Team Name
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:03:00 -0500
A group of Native Americans says the NFL's Washington Redskins should not be allowed to trademark the team name, which they say is offensive. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, part of the U.S. Patent Office, heard the case Thursday.
The five plaintiffs must now prove that "the name 'Washington Redskins' was disparaging to a significant population of American Indians back when the team was granted the trademarks from 1967 to 1990," according to an AP report on ESPN's site.
The case was organized by Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the advocacy group the Morning Star Institute, on behalf of young Native Americans. The plaintiffs' ages are important because in 2003, the trademark board overturned a ruling that stripped the Washington team of the Redskins trademark, in part because the plaintiffs had waited too long after coming of age to file their complaint.
Last month, Harjo told the audience at a symposium that "two-thirds of team names with Native references have been changed since 1970, with less than 1,000 remaining," as NPR's Kat Chow reported.
The Washington Redskins have maintained that the name is not meant to be offensive. But the AP reports that Judge Peter Cataldo, a member of the Trademark panel, said Thursday that "the team could have called itself the 'Washington N-word' with nothing but honorable intentions and still be subject to scrutiny."
CBS DC, which spoke with Harjo about the Blackhorse v. Pro-Football, Inc. case, explains her strategy:
"The motive is to force Redskins owner Dan Snyder into a change by weakening him financially. Redskins lawyer Robert Raskopf said during the previous case that the team would suffer 'every imaginable loss you can think of' if it no longer had the exclusive marketing rights to its name."
It's unclear when the board will rule on the case, but most observers believe it could be months before the findings are announced.
An earlier story by The Washington Post suggests that the board's ruling may have only a limited effect, "because trademark officials do not have the authority to halt the sale of goods containing Redskins images or logos, nor can they order the team to pay damages to the petitioners."
Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
IN FOCUS TODAY
Friday, May 17, 2013 - 4:41am
More than 17,000 Baltimore students miss 20 or more days of school a year. Many of these...
Friday, May 17, 2013 - 4:37am
WYPR's Fraser Smith and Karen Hosler talk about changes to the horse racing industry in Maryland...
Thursday, May 16, 2013 - 7:00am
Attorney General Doug Gansler may run for governor in 2014, but he's moving toward a decision...
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This Date in Caps History - March 19
On March 19, 1993, the Capitals defeated the Hartford Whalers 5-2 on the strength of Dmitri Khristich’s second hat trick of the season.
Mark Janssens got Hartford on the board first when he beat the Caps’ Don Beaupre just 1:47 into the first period. But Khristich pulled the Caps even at 2:51 with his 26th goal of the season. Khristich then put the Caps on top with his second goal in 59 seconds at 3:50. Peter Bondra’s 30th of the year came at 16:13, with Khristich picking up an assist. Washington’s Pat Elynuik notched his 17th of the season at 17:48, the fourth goal of the period against Whalers netminder Mario Gosselin. The Caps outshot the Whalers 16-5 in the period.
Midway through the second period, Hartford’s Eric Weinrich scored to shorten the Caps lead to 4-2. Jim McKenzie—now playing for the Capitals—assisted on Weinrich’s goal for Hartford. Washington again outshot the Whalers, 12-9.
The Caps defense was particularly stingy in the third, permitting just three Hartford shots on goal. Khristich completed his hat trick with a shorthanded empty-netter at 18:45 to wrap up the win for Washington.
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Why Academics Should Blog
I’m taking a Media Theory course at Concordia in their Media Studies MA program, which involves a fair bit of reading. I’ve come to the conclusion that all academics should blog. Here’s why:
1. You need to improve your writing
I have never read such dismally bad writing as that which is prevalent in academia. Not all of it is terrible, but the stuff that is bad is just atrocious. It’s wordy, flabby, repetitive, and filled with jargony mumbo-jumbo. I realize that jargon is the very stuff that you work with and to the extent that you need your topic-specific jargon to make a point, then you should use it. But there is a whole other class of general academic mumbo-jumbo that you need to cut out of your writing right now. Go read Orwell’s rules, and then Strunk and White, and then we can talk about it again. Hint: utilize=use, militate=block, empower=mumbojumbo. You need lots of practice writing clear, good prose and saying what you mean. Blogging will help you get that practice.
2. Some of your ideas are dumb
The sooner you get called out on bad ideas, the better. Blogging has an almost-immediate feedback loop, and if you write a discipline-specific blog, then your colleagues around the world will read it (if they don’t then you are doing something wrong). That means that when you have a dumb idea, you should hear about it quickly, and you can then reconsider. When you have a good idea, you’ll hear about it; when you have an incomplete idea, and some others chip in with suggestions, you’ll get a better-formed idea. Etcetera.
3. The point of academia is to expand knowledge
If you believe that the reason academics publish is to expand knowledge, then expanding it beyond the few tens or hundreds of your colleagues that read the obscure journals you publish in should be a good thing. Your ideas should matter (if they don’t you should try to come up with some better ideas). If they matter then more people should know about them, and right now almost all your ideas are locked up inside the walls of journals, academic conferences, and university quadrangles. Set them free, and the good ideas will spread, be built on by others, and knowledge as a whole will benefit.
4. Blogging expands your readership
Cross-polination of ideas makes for a more healthy intellectual ecosystem, and blogging means that anyone, not just those in your discipline, will be likely to read your stuff. This includes other academics, as well as the rest of us (politicians, policy developers, artists, engineers, designers, writers, thinkers, kids, parents, and on and on). Anyone might have an interest in your work, or nuanced ideas about how it might be improved, or indeed thoughts on how your thoughts might improve their own thinking on a particular (perhaps nominally-unrelated) topic. More readers, from a more varied background, means your ideas will have a bigger impact.
5. Blogging protects and promotes your ideas
By blogging a new idea, you put your stakes in the (cyber)ground, with dates and readership to attest to your claim. When you blog, you’ve published, meaning people know you have published, and further meaning that a much wider audience – anyone with an Internet connection – can get access to your ideas. Which leads to the next point.
6. Blogging is Reputation
In blogging links are currency: your reputation is made by who links to you and how often. It’s a built in, and more-or-less democratic system of reputation as defined by interest. By having your ideas online, the value of your ideas (as reflected by who is interested in them) becomes immediately apparent. The academic/journal system works in similar ways, with Journal references as the currency. So you should be right at home.
7. Linking is better than footnotes
Linking is much better than a footnote. It allows your readers to visit your source material immediately (assuming it too is online), so again is likely to expand knowledge by giving readers direct access to the ideas that underpin your ideas.
8. Journals and blogs can (and should) coexist
Blogs and (online) newspapers exist in a symbiotic relationship: bloggers sift through and refer to newspapers, sending traffic to them. Newspapers now blog, and bloggers write newspaper articles. There is a general sense that blogging can be a bit more free-form, a bit less polished. While newspaper articles are more rigourous and final. Something similar should happen with blogs and journals. If academics blog, they can evolve and develop a series of ideas. When the ideas are clearer and polished, they can move on to be journal articles. But let’s get those journals online and free as well. Speaking of which:
9. What have journals done for you lately?
Journals define your reputation, and don’t pay anything. That’s like blogging. They are exorbitantly expensive, have abusive and restrictive copyright terms, and are not available online to the general public. You can’t link to them, and often you can’t find them. That’s unlike blogging. Journals should all be open access and free online (as newspapers have come to be), and you should tell them that, and choose to publish in open access journals whenever you can. It’s good for knowledge, and you are in the knowledge business. You should support whatever is good for knowledge.
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taxi of tomorrow
A judge yesterday declared Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Taxi of Tomorrow project "void," casting yet more doubt on his ability to achieve an overhaul of the city's taxi fleet by year's end, when his term expires.
Seeking to neutralize criticism of its combustion-engine Taxi of Tomorrow program, the city on Monday announced that it was launchign an electric-taxi pilot program.(1)
Taxi drivers will no longer have to give up their hybrid cabs in exchange for combustion-engine Taxis of Tomorrow, according to new rules released today.
A councilman gets his hearing, and a taxi commissioner signals he's warming to wheelchair accessibility
Councilman Oliver Koppell will, after much trying, get his hearing on taxi wheelchair accessibility. The city's taxi commissioner, meanwhile, is sending faint signals that he might be warming up to the idea.
G. Oliver Koppell, a councilman from the Bronx, has invoked a rarely used City Council rule to force a vote on a bill that would require all new taxis to be wheelchair-accessible, but the move might well prove a symbolic one.
During his regular Friday morning radio appearance, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dismissed comptroller John Liu's bid to block the city's Taxi of Tomorrow contract as irrelevant, and then launched into a separate diatribe about the peculiar structure of the city's taxi industry.
"It is one of the great ripoffs of the public any place I've ever seen," he said, during WOR John Gambling show.
Apart from those who proposed it, designed it, and made it, nearly everyone who testified at a Thursday hearing on the Taxi of Tomorrow had only bad things to say about it.
London is introducing a Nissan taxi to city streets that in most ways closely resembles New York City's "Taxi of Tomorrow": it has a transparent rooftop, rear lights and temperature controls for passengers, sliding doors.
But in one fundamental way the two taxis, both Nissan NV-200s, diverge: In London, all of them will be wheelchair-accessible. In New York, none of them will.
Taxi medallion owners have had a tough year, from their perspective.
First, the Bloomberg administration chose a Taxi of Tomorrow that many of them disliked. Then the city created a whole new class of so-called Borough Taxis that medallion owners, and some taxi drivers, believe will steal business from the regular yellow cabs.
By year's end, tech entrepreneur Jay Bregman will have launched the latest application designed to improve the taxi-riding experience in New York City: Hailo. Like Uber and Taxi Magic before it, Hailo aims to do for car service what Seamless has done for the restaurant delivery business: enable clients and businesses to find each other online.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning unveiled the shareable 'Citi bike.'
This afternoon, Comptroller John Liu said he wouldn't approve the city's Taxi of Tomorrow contract with Nissan because the vehicle is not wheelchair-accessible, an action the Bloomberg administration called, "mysterious," "clearly ill-informed," and also legally suspect.
Shortly after comptroller John Liu said this afternoon that he would reject the city's Taxi of Tomorrow contract as it's now written, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio sent out a reminder that he didn't like the Taxi of Tomorrow first.
Today, at a press conference scheduled for noon, City Comptroller John Liu is expected to announce that he's rejecting the Bloomberg administration's Taxi of Tomorrow contract, erecting yet another possible barrier to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ambitious vision to overhaul New York City's taxi and limousine fleet.(1)
This week, the mayor's ambitious plan to recreate New York City's taxi fleet got hit by another lawsuit, yet made progress toward becoming a reality.
First, New York City Comptroller John Liu finally gave the go-ahead to a taxi dispatch contract that's central to getting the city's new taxi system off the ground. Second, the Taxi and Limousine Commission board approved the rules that will govern a new class of "borough taxis" to service New York City neighborhoods that are generally underserved by yellow cabs.
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The retail sector is leveraging near-field communications (NFC) to enable consumers to make purchases with their smartphones. I have one of these handy dandy gadgets now, and the prospect of using it to buy stuff both titillates and terrifies me.
It is a rare situation indeed when I can be counted among the early adopters of the latest technology breakthrough or social phenomenon. I suppose that's due in some measure to the fact that I come from comparatively humble roots. My folks both were blue collar, which meant that while there always was plenty of food on the table, the phrase "instant gratification" could not be found in our collective lexicon.
Nevertheless, I was at the very front of the line when the concept of the cashless society was borne. I almost never have cash in my wallet, and haven't for years, not because I don't possess any, but because I tend to spend it foolishly and impulsively. Not having it in my wallet makes that a lot harder to do. There's something about the simple act of having to whip out a credit or debit card that makes me think twice about the purchase. And when that happens, it gives me the time to recall one of my most trusted credos, which is to always base purchasing decisions on need rather than on want. The wallet then promptly returns to where it belongs — in my pocket — and my bank account is healthier for it.
For this reason I read with great interest — and some trepidation — an item in USA Today a couple of days ago about how the retail sector is leveraging near-field communications (NFC) to enable consumers to make purchases with their smartphones. (This happens to be a topic that contributing writer Merrill Douglas will be exploring in our March print edition.) I have one of these handy-dandy gadgets now, and the prospect of using it to buy stuff both titillates and terrifies me.
On the one hand, there are times when I don't want to carry my wallet for fear of losing it or having it stolen, such as when I go to the gym. Armed with an NFC-equipped smartphone, I could leave the wallet at home — no problem if I get pulled over, as I have memorized my driver's license number — because I could use the device to buy gas or pick up a gallon of milk if the need arose.
On the other hand, this ability could worsen significantly my already troubling Mountain Dew addiction. Do you have any idea just how many soda-pop machines there are out there?
What do you think? Tell us in the comment box below.
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When lawmakers of both parties raised their glasses in toast of President Barack Obama at a Capitol Hill luncheon Monday, House Speaker John Boehner remarked that the room, with its poor acoustics, had been the House chamber many decades earlier -- "at a time when our leaders weren't hearing each other all that well to begin with."
"But here, it's a century-and-a-half and many architectural improvements later, and we gather in the old hall to better hear one another and to renew the appeal to better angels," Boehner said. "We do so amid the rituals and symbols of unity, none more important than our flag," he continued, giving Obama and Vice President Joe Biden the flags which had earlier in the day flown over the Capitol.
His presentation as the nation's top lawmaker held more significance than a convergence of the two government branches: it was about two parties which waged bitter campaigns for federal office coming together to codify the administration.
But Republicans largely laid low on Monday, as Obama's second term opened with ceremony on the National Mall and an address in which he laid out the basics of an agenda. His biographer, David Maraniss, described the speech as one where "I could feel his heart beating."
"What he did is he took the Founding Fathers' riffs and language, Martin Luther King's language, so of King, and melded it into his own and put it into a sort of statement of action -- what he wants to do in the next four years," Maraniss said on CNN.
Obama identified specific objectives, saying, "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law" and that his administration "will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations."
The late Monday banner of the Drudge Report said it all for conservatives: "1,461 More Days."
The conservative group Americans for Prosperity described Obama's address as "a harshly ideological, aggressively partisan speech more appropriate for the campaign trail than for the solemn occasion of his inaugural ceremony. His address read like a liberal laundry list with global warming at the top. Americans have rejected environmental extremism in the past and they will again."
There were no Republican former presidents in attendance, as George H.W. Bush - recently released from the hospital - stayed home, as did his son, George W. Bush, who did not provide a reason but offered Obama "best wishes and prayers on this historic day" in a statement.
Obama's 2012 White House challenger, Mitt Romney, was off of the radar, while his 2008 challenger, Sen. John McCain, was in the audience. Obama's 2008 primary rival, Hillary Clinton, has served the past four years in his administration and attended the ceremony with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
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Guest post by Robert Patrovic
As ChildFund recognizes #GivingTuesday today, we are sharing the inspiring story of a father watching his daughter work hard – to give. Through ChildFund, Kara sponsors Mijael, a 6-year-old boy from Bolivia, and this year she raised funds to visit him.
My wife, Mary, and I have always tried to teach our children the value of their place in the world. We instilled in them a need to make the world a better place. Although we believe we’ve provided a comfortable home and life, we have always been sure not to focus on the attainment of personal possessions. There are almost no video games in our house (except for educational ones), no smartphones when they were kids, and we’ve always stressed reading, playing outside and giving.
Each of our three children, Jess, 23; Bobby, 20; and Kara, 15, is different, but they share that same value system. They have always volunteered for many causes both in and out of school. We have encouraged them to seek their dreams and have always taught them that hard work gets results. When they have truly wanted something, we have shown them paths to get it – always involving work on their part.
Kara, in particular, has always been one of the most giving people we know, even as a younger child. When, at 9 years old, she came to us with the idea of sponsoring a child, we were very encouraging (how could a parent not be?!). I helped her do the research on which organization operated the most efficiently, as she is conscientious about things like that. We decided on ChildFund. We helped supplement her monthly sponsorship payment and she did her best to keep in touch with Mijael over the years. At the time, he was 6 months old; Mijael is now 6 years old.
When she came up with the idea to actually visit Mijael, we saw this as an excellent learning opportunity and told her we would accompany her if she raised the money to go. This was in late January, a time where her schoolwork was especially heating up. Kara is a dedicated student and athlete. She played high school soccer and track and field and played for a club soccer team, as well – quite the demanding schedule.
Once Kara realized what it would take to put this trip together, she decided she wanted to invest more time, ultimately leaving the club soccer team. She used the extra time to really begin planning her big trip to Bolivia. She first placed a letter in our church’s bulletin and got a good response, which encouraged her further. She sent more letters and emails, developed budgets, researched flights, hosted fundraisers and even got some media coverage. The trip began taking on a life of its own, and Kara was at the forefront. How proud we were!
As the project grew in scope with more and more fundraisers, increased amounts of time and planning were required. At this time, Kara was given a “gift” of sorts. While playing soccer, she took a serious fall. She suffered a pretty serious concussion and broke her wrist. Kara could not participate in her normal activities. She was discouraged, understandably so, but this gave her the gift of time to spend on fundraising and planning her trip. Kara was making a hug jug of lemonade out of a large batch of lemons – a gift from God. Talk about getting inspiration from your own child!
Ultimately, Kara was successful; so successful in fact that she raised about $850 more than she planned. With the extra money she was able to provide gifts for 55 additional children and donate to two health care fundraisers in Tarija [Mijael’s community]. Although, I only went to accompany Kara, my own life was changed dramatically as well.
Kara has been, is, and continues to be a God-given gift and inspiration in our lives. I was moved by the impact that Kara had. At one point, she was honored as a Chapaca (resident of Tarija), which is an incredible tribute. In addition, the Tarija people called her a role model for their children because of her motivation to give. Imagine that, a child who comes from a wealthy country like the U.S., who is accustomed to living comfortably, being honored as a role model for children that have very little.
Kara has decided to continue to raise funds for Mijael, ChildFund Bolivia, and the various communities of Tarija. We are so proud of and inspired by our daughter.
Learn more about Kara’s trip to Bolivia.
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Promoting Human Rights & Rule of Law in South Africa
29 June, 2012
During the last two weeks of May 2012, police in Harare once again conducted operations to arrest women in bars and night clubs. According to the Harare police, these operations were part of an effort to reduce touts, street children and prostitution in the city. Zimbabwean human rights organisations have expressed dismay at these arrests, claiming that they discriminate against women who are randomly targeted for arrest simply for patronising a bar. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights provided legal services to some of the women who were arrested by the police.
During the March 2012 hearings of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on Zimbabwe, the government proudly explained that they were addressing prostitution through a zero-tolerance approach, referring specifically to a similar crackdown on sex workers in 2004. Yet, the government could not show that such an approach produced any positive results. The CEDAW Committee further noted that the disproportional and discriminatory impact of such arrests on women might be the result of “social beliefs that women should not be found in certain places at certain times”.
Research has shown that many poor women (and men) resort to exchanging sex for cash, food, clothing and shelter and to provide for their families. Economic determinants and continuous client demand means that sex work cannot be eradicated through a criminal law approach, and attempting to do so is futile.
The Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) 2010-11 released by the National Statistics Agency in March 2012 revealed that a quarter of all men who are currently married or living with a partner, have at some stage paid for sexual intercourse. Men who had paid for sex were represented across different income groups and education levels. In total almost one in five men in Zimbabwe between 15 and 54 years of age has ever paid for sex. So a significant section of the population has used the services of sex workers. Nevertheless, the low numbers of men (3%) who have paid for sexual services in the last year and the high rates of condom use on such occasions (88%), suggests that sex work is not as big a “problem” as many suggest. Comparing this information to the 2005-2006 ZDHS further shows no increase in the use of paid sexual services, and reveals that condom use during paid sex has consistently increased. In contrast, condom use is much more of a concern amongst young men: Men aged 15 to 24 were more likely than women to report multiple sexual partners in the past year (8%/1%) and only half of these men reported that they used a condom during their last sexual intercourse.
Currently, the act of selling or buying sex is not criminalised in Zimbabwe. Criminal laws however target acts which are potentially abusive towards sex workers, as well as acts which cause offence to or is a nuisance for the general public. The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act (2004) prohibits disorderly conduct in a public place; being a criminal nuisance; public indecency; and publicly soliciting another person for the purpose of prostitution. The law does not anticipate convictions for matters of a trivial nature. Acts of public indecency must also be sufficiently serious to warrant punishment (i.e. it must be persistent and cause serious offence to a person who witnessed the conduct). The new Act repealed the Sexual Offences Act and the Miscellaneous Offences Act although police continue to arrest sex workers on charges of “loitering for the purpose of prostitution” which is no longer a criminal offence.
The more protective provisions in the Act relate to prohibitions for living off the earnings of or facilitating prostitution (including someone who keeps a brothel or who blackmails sex workers); procuring; coercing, inducing or detaining persons to engage in sexual conduct; and allowing a child to become a prostitute. In theory, the fact that laws exist which are aimed at protecting sex workers, suggest that sex workers should be able to approach police for assistance, but this is not the case.
“The police are a huge problem. One night you can work and then all your money is just taken by the police. Police are really making big money from robbing sex workers.” “Police… usually stand outside night clubs, they arrest you and tell you that you are loitering, so when I don’t have money to bribe, they demand sex.”
“I remember when the riot police once picked us up, we were severely beaten, insulted and mocked by the police, I won’t forget that day. I was badly injured.”
“The police are very abusive and they treat us like animals.”
The disjuncture between criminal procedure laws and how they are implemented in practice when it comes to sex workers has been well researched. Yet, this shortcoming is not easily acknowledged or addressed by police departments and individual police officers. In countries where a zero-tolerance approach to sex work has been used, the clampdown on activities in one area inevitably moved it to another area. Thus policing of minor offences is often time-consuming and counter-productive, placing strain on police resources.
In democratic police systems, police powers must be used according to the rule of law and the power given to the police must be used with restraint and proportional to the crime it seeks to address. This is not the case in countries where police brutality is generalised, as is the case in Zimbabwe. The police are simply not seen as publicly accountable, legitimate or neutral and there is little respect for human dignity. But even if people generally abhor the brutality of the Zimbabwean police, somehow police abuse of sex workers is justified by some people. Surely, the unnecessary use of force against civilians by the police should never be tolerated? What is required is a senior police and political leadership which is committed to accountability, and which understands that the police must be exemplary in their restraint from the use of violence. Police should be expected to uphold human rights.
Allowing police to continue to harass and abuse sex workers sends a confusing message to police that police brutality will continue to go unpunished. This is not a good trend to perpetuate in Zimbabwe. Looking towards the future, one wants a situation where sex workers have positive experiences of police, where police respect the constitutional rights of all people and where there is much closer cooperation between sex workers and the police to prevent crime, nuisance, child prostitution and trafficking. This approach has been shown to be far more effective than a clampdown against sex workers.
Written by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and the Sexual Rights Centre in Bulawayo
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Open Space Conferences Show Why Smaller Can Be Better
Big conferences take you to Las Vegas, feed you well and feature keynotes in lavish ballrooms. Smaller events may lack the glamour but offer much more camaraderie. The end result is a much more productive use of your time, a more valuable group of new colleagues and a more robust to-do list.
Wed, January 02, 2013
CIO — A typical for-profit conference costs $400 a day and takes you to a getaway vacation city like Las Vegas, Orlando or San Francisco. The staff creates the program months in advance; attendees can expect good food, snack breaks twice a day and plenty of PowerPoint presentations.
While that type of conference serves a purpose, those characteristics were not the things that drew me to BarCampGR (Grand Rapids, Mich.), Test Coach Camp (San Jose, Calif.) or Open Agile-Testing Pacific Northwest (Portland, Ore.). Instead, what drew me was the opposite—all three events are open-space conferences.
The History of the Open Conference Model
When Harrison Owen was organizing the third annual symposium on Organization Transformation in 1985, he reviewed the comments from previous events and noticed something odd. No matter how much effort the planners put into the program, people still found the most value in hallway conversations.
Owen wondered if would be possible to build a conference entirely out of hallway conversations. The result was something known today as Open Space Technologies.
Think of Open Space Technologies as a framework that lets a group of people create the event schedule in real time, focusing entirely on what the actual attendees want to hear, share and talk about—the problems they want to solve and the ideas they have to solve them. (In practice, there may be a board with schedules, a unifying thread and some managers on hand to decide who does what when.)
To really understand the open space format, you need to experience it, or at least have it described in practice. I went to the three different open space conferences listed above to capture the story.
BarCampGR: Session Suggestions on a (Virtual) Wall
BarCampGR was the broadest of the three events. Mobile application development was popular, with a double-length session called "Objective-C Eye For the .NET Guy" and a talk on developing native Android UI applications. There were also presentations on distributed version control, hacking GIS systems, decoupling team active record and about how "Real-Time Systems Keep You ALIVE!" In addition to hardcore technical topics, there were sessions on using a slow cooker to smoke ribs, publishing an ebook, learning macroeconomic theory and removing malware.
The great story of the conference wasn't the talks, though, but how it was organized. When I attended BarCampGR for the first time, in 2008, the schedule (Friday night to Saturday night) was built on a big board where people who wanted to present showed up and wrote in what they wanted to speak about. Organizers put up a new board every few hours, with three in all.
By 2012, the organizers had something better in mind. Prior to the event, they create a Reddit page for attendees to submit ideas. Anyone could browse the selection, vote ideas up or down or leave comments. This way, by the time the conference started, submitters know if a particular event will be popular enough to propose and will have feedback to make the talk better.
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Update: According to an October 5, 2012 post on the ACS website, this case has been settled for $22,633,377.00. My thanks to attorney John F. Marsh of Hahn Loeser for calling this to my attention.
On September 18, 2012 the Supreme Court of Ohio issued a merit decision in Am. Chem. Soc. v. Leadscope, Inc., 2012-Ohio-4193. I’m going to call this the most awaited decision of the year. It’s got some David v. Goliath elements to it. It’s been pending for over a year—it was argued last September 7. And the decision is fascinating. Chief Justice O’Connor wrote the majority decision, but there was lots to say by others, particularly Justice Pfeifer. So come along for the ride. Warning—long post.
All of this is from the Court’s decision.
ACS is the world’s largest scientific society with over 164,000 members. It describes itself as “one of the world’s leading sources of authoritative scientific information.” It is chartered by the U.S. Congress. It has 1900 employees.
The largest division of ACS is Chemical Abstracts Service located in Columbus Ohio. Chemical Abstracts produces comprehensive databases of chemical information that are accessed by scientists and researchers. The long saga of this case began when three Chemical Abstract scientists began working on a software tool known as PathFinder that was supposed to make it easier for researchers to access and organize all the information in ACS’s databases. But Chemical Abstracts stopped work on PathFinder, to the disappointment of the three scientists. They left Chemical Abstracts to form their own company—Leadscope—to develop their own software product. Leadscope applied for and received a patent for its software.
The Falling Out
Robert Massie is the President of Chemical Abstracts, and reports to the executive director of ACS. Massie got worried that the departing scientists might have appropriated his company’s intellectual property. ACS learned about the patent. ACS marshaled its troops. Its Board of Directors approved legal action against Leadscope if necessary. CAS’s people met with Leadscope’s people. ACS demanded that Leadscope pay it $1 million and hand over its patent. That didn’t happen. Leadscope was operating on a shoestring at the time. ACS filed a suit in federal court against Leadscope and the three scientists personally. (collectively, “Leadscope”)
The Memo and the Newspaper Article
On the day the lawsuit was filed, Michael Dennis, the legal administration manager for Chemical Abstracts, and another manager, circulated an internal memo to all ACS staff about the lawsuit. The memo stated that the ACS was acting to protect its intellectual property and proprietary information. The memo advised staff members not to comment on the matter.
Ten days later the Columbus Business First newspaper published an article about the lawsuit. ACS’s outside counsel said this in the article:
“Our motivation in filing suit is to acquire back the protected information that they took from us.” Leadscope’s people responded that the lawsuit had no merit and that the timing was suspect.
The state lawsuit
ACS dismissed its federal court case and refiled it in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. Pertinent to this appeal are ACS’s claim for misappropriation of trade secrets and Leadscope’s counterclaims for unfair competition by way of malicious litigation, and defamation and tortious interference with business relations. The jury found against ACS on the misappropriation of trade secrets claim, and found in favor of Leadscope on its counterclaims for defamation, tortious interference, and unfair competition. Leadscope and the scientists were awarded a total of $26.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. The trial court denied ACS’s post verdict motions. The Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed the jury verdict in all respects, and upheld the trial court’s rulings on the post verdict motions.
On to the Heart of the Matter
Unfair Competition by way of Malicious Litigation.
The jury instruction on the unfair competition claim focused solely on whether ACS had brought its lawsuit in bad faith. The Court of Appeals agreed that malicious litigation can be the basis for an unfair competition claim in Ohio and that bad faith is the proper standard in evaluating such a claim.
The first key finding by the Ohio Supreme Court is that in order to state a claim for unfair competition, the complaining party must show that “the legal action is objectively baseless and that the opposing party had the subjective intent to injure the party’s ability to be competitive.” It took this two part test from a federal anti-trust case, Professional Real Estate Investors Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. 508 U.S. 49 (1993).
OK, Here’s Where Things Get really Interesting
So the Court held that to establish an unfair competition claim based on malicious litigation, a party has to show that the legal action is objectively baseless and that the opposing party had the subjective intent to injure the party’s ability to be competitive. But the Court also held the jury instructions that were given were inadequate because they failed to include the “objectively baseless” element.
The question you should be asking is, ok, then how is it that the Supreme Court upheld the jury verdict on the unfair competition claim if it found that the jury wasn’t properly instructed on it?
By Judicial Activism, Pure and Simple (the Good Kind)
And the answer is, “although the jury should have been instructed on the ‘objectively baseless’ standard, there is overwhelming evidence to support the jury’s verdict against ACS. ” says the majority opinion.
Yep. The majority evaluated all the evidence itself and decided Leadscope should win. Kinda like the old 13th juror thing, from the old days of criminal law. In fact, Chief Justice O’Connor was merciless in evaluating the quality of ACS’s evidence. She first found that ACS had totally insufficient evidence on its own misappropriation claim, which she characterized as “astonishing” considering the length of the trial and the amount of discovery. She noted that ACS’s own expert failed to make a convincing case for misappropriation. Here’s the nitty-gritty:
“On the testimony and evidence presented, ACS failed to prove that it had any, let alone sufficient, evidence to support its lawsuit. The record is replete with ACS’s speculation, surmise, and supposition, but wholly lacking of probative evidence from which a rational jury could conclude that misappropriation actually occurred. The jury could reasonably infer, based on the paucity of evidence presented, that the lawsuit was objectively baseless when filed.”
By contrast, O’Connor found Leadscope’s evidence that ACS had intent to harm its business as its motivation for filing the lawsuit very persuasive. And she went into great detail on this point as well.
One More Step
So, if the jury got the wrong charge, and the high court adopts a new legal standard, shouldn’t the case go back for a retrial? Usually, but not always, says this conservative jurist. In this one, we’re the decider:
“ Although the jury’s determination was made using the “bad faith” standard, the evidence presented was so lacking that even if the “objectively baseless” standard had been applied, the outcome would have been the same. We reach our determination with great respect to a jury’s role in the judicial process, but we also recognize that a court of last resort may decide the merits of a case when it adopts a new legal standard. That result is proper here, given the nature of the claims presented and the fact that a decade has elapsed since the lawsuit was filed. When an appellate court “adopts a new legal standard * * * on * * * [some] occasions, it applies the new standard itself and decides the merits.” (citation omitted).
Time to Stop for a Count
All of the Justices except Pfeifer agreed with the newly-articulated test for unfair competition. But Justices Stratton, O’Donnell, and Cupp weren’t feeling quite so activist about the outcome. They all thought the case should be remanded for retrial on the unfair competition claim. (example, from Justice Cupp-“I am unable to agree, however, that the jury’s determination on this claim can be affirmed as a matter of law upon this court’s own review of the record in our application of the correct standard.”)
Is it 3-3? Justice Pfeifer didn’t agree with the new test for unfair competition. He disagrees that objective baselessness has ever been part of malicious litigation law in Ohio. He did agree, however, that Leadscope had proved its case for unfair competition under the standard the majority announced. He also agreed that the court of appeal’s judgment on the unfair competition claim should be affirmed. He made a number of technical appellate nicety points about why the jury verdict should be upheld without even addressing ACS’s points about malicious litigation. So that’s four votes for keeping the verdict on the unfair competition claim, but not all for the same reason.
The Defamation Claim
Leadscope had also won a verdict on its defamation claim against ACS but the Court took that one away. Defamation is publication of a false statement with some degree of fault (e.g. knowingly or recklessly) which injures a person’s reputation or injures the person in his or her business. Usually in defamation cases the defendant is the media, but not in this case.
A majority found that the two publications Leadscope deemed to be defamatory—the internal memo and the comments in the Business First newspaper by ACS’s lawyer, were not defamatory as a matter of law. The Court found that read in context the internal memo was nothing more than an explanation about the lawsuit and a directive to employees not to talk about it. Nothing defamatory there. It also found that the newspaper article was a balanced presentation of the views of both sides, and a true and accurate summary of the pending case. Nothing defamatory there either. The Court reminded one and all that within the constraints of the Rules of Professional Conduct, lawyers are free to talk to the media and the public about their cases, although of course they cannot defame others while doing so.
Another Step into Activism
The Court noted that ACS had been held liable for statements made by its outside counsel to the press. The Court has never had to decide the issue of whether clients are liable for the statements of their lawyers, but decided to in this case, as a matter of first impression. This is known in the trade as vicarious liability—something my first year torts students are just learning about—you are stuck for someone else’s torts, just because of the nature of the relationship between you. In this case the Court held, with what it found to be the better reasoned weight of authority elsewhere, that a client can be vicariously liable for the torts of its attorney only if the client authorized or ratified the lawyer’s conduct. But this issue never came up at trial. The jury was never instructed about whether to decide if ACS was liable for its lawyer’s torts. There was no evidence that it had ratified or authorized the statements. And furthermore, the Court held that the statements weren’t defamatory as a matter of law. So all of this was a non-issue. But the Court decided it anyway, and this finding is part of the syllabus. It’s for future use. The trial court was ordered to vacate the defamation judgment in favor of Leadscope.
Chief Justice O’Connor was joined by Justice McGee Brown, Lanzinger, Stratton, and O’Donnell on the defamation claim.
Justice Pfeifer’s dissent on the defamation claim.
Justice Pfeifer wrote a passionate dissent on the defamation claim. He would allow the jury verdict to stand on this claim. He would find that with both the employee memo and the Business First Article, the statements made by ACS were false, made knowing they were false, and injured the reputation of Leadscope and the individual scientist defendants. He took issue with the majority’s characterization of the Business First article as balanced, finding it “a novel approach to defamation law that if the victim denies the defamatory statement, the defamer is shielded from liability…” He also discussed the limits of the qualified privilege of fair comment on matters in a pending lawsuit, which can be, and in his view was, overcome by actual malice in this case.
Here’s some of the flavor of his dissent:
“ACS, “one of the world’s leading sources of authoritative scientific information,” announced to an audience that included the scientific world and the financial world that virtually everything that Leadscope was built upon was stolen. A few words to the right audience can be ruinous. And the jury determined that those words were ruinous to Leadscope, Blower, Johnson, and Myatt. The majority has not demonstrated why those jury verdicts should not stand…”
“ACS levied the most serious accusation that can be brought against an inventor: you stole your invention. For the majority to determine that those words are not defamatory is unfathomable. This is not an instance where a court has been asked to determine whether a statement is simply rhetoric, satire, or hyperbole and thus not defamatory. There is no way to paint the comments at issue in this case as anything other than defamatory. There is no privilege extensive enough to protect ACS from liability for those statements.”
Justice Cupp agreed with “much, but not all” of the analysis in Justice Pfeifer’s dissent on the defamation claim. He saw a jury question as to both the memo and the newspaper article, and would uphold the jury’s determination in this case. So the vote on the defamation claim is 5-2.
ACS lost its misappropriation claim. Leadscope won its unfair competiton claim, but lost its jury verdict on defamation. How much money does that leave Leadscope? I’m no good on math. Someone else will have to figure that out. But it’s a big win for Leadscope, in principle. And one I applaud.
1.To successfully establish an unfair competition claim based upon legal action, a party must show that the legal action is objectively baseless and that the opposing party had the subjective intent to injure the party’s ability to be competitive.
2. In determining whether a statement is defamatory as a matter of law, a court must review the totality of the circumstances and read the statement in the context of the entire publication to determine whether a reasonable reader would interpret it as defamatory.
3. A client is vicariously liable for its attorney’s defamatory statements only if the client authorized or ratified the statements.
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Simmons School of Management, Fish Family Foundation Lead New Initiative
BOSTON (September 25, 2007) — In an innovative new program designed to help empower women in Japan to break through their traditional background roles and become leaders in social change, several Japanese women have come to Boston to receive intense exposure to American women's leadership strategies, and the strategies of successful American non-profit organizations.
The Japanese Women's Leadership Initiative, organized by the Simmons School of Management , is an unusual collaborative effort funded by the Fish Family Foundation and founded by Boston civic leaders Atsuko Toko Fish, Catherine Crown Coburn, and Mary Lassen. The Simmons School of Management is the only business school in the world designed for women.
Fish, a Boston civic leader who moved to Brookline, MA, in 1983, said she was so impressed with American women's leadership in non-profit organizations and social policy that she joined forces with the other women to design an initiative that would begin showing Japanese women how they can and should take a leadership role in helping solve Japan's growing societal needs.
Under the initiative, the women are paired for five weeks with executives of leading non-profit organizations in greater Boston, shadowing the executives daily to learn about successful practical strategies for dealing with a variety of social problems. The immersion is supplemented by tutoring and mentoring in non-profit management through the Simmons School of Management executive education program, led by SOM professor Patricia Deyton, a national authority in non-profit management. The women also are participating in the SOM's executive education program, Strategic Leadership for Women.
The women, who began their fellowships in early September and return to Japan Oct. 18, are keeping daily diaries and developing their own ideas for implementing social change in their native country. After they return, they will meet regularly among themselves; create networks with other women; and meet with a wide range of university, business, political and media leaders to begin a dialogue about social responsibility and policy change in Japan.
The partnering Institute of Cultural Affairs in Japan selected the women through a competitive process, including a written essay about personal goals for non-profit leadership and social reform. They must have seven to 10 years of experience in the social, political or business sector in Japan, and demonstrate a strong commitment to leading social change. Fish said the goal is to have the program grow yearly, ultimately building a network of empowered women in Japan who will support other women in social change, and, eventually, policy leadership.
Two of the women are working closely with leaders of two non-profit agencies: Ellis Memorial & Eldredge House, Boston's first settlement house, which has a wide range of educational and social services for children and adults; and the Web of Benefit in Wellesley, MA, which works throughout greater Boston to promote liberation from domestic violence. The third woman is meeting with a number of women executives of leading non-profit agencies in the area.
Co-founder Fish says that while there are numerous non-profit groups in Japan, most of them are small groups of volunteers working in their immediate community, with no experience in systemic social change. The groups often receive their direction and their funding from the government; donations are not tax-deductible.
Fish says Japan has growing social problems in areas such as domestic violence, trafficking from abroad, and lack of childcare and eldercare services. She said Japan's shrinking birthrate means that the population is aging quickly; if the leadership role is dependent solely on men, Japan will experience a shortage of labor and of leaders in social change. And while the traditional non-assertive role of Japanese women is changing, she says, the pace must quicken.
"Who will support our society if Japanese women don't help lead?" Fish asks. "Women must learn to lead and to become deeply involved in moving Japan forward. Our country needs them."
"Our hope is that women in this program will learn a great deal about social and political change from American women leaders and successful non-profit organizations, and then take it back to spread to other women. These women are passionate about helping their country. We want this initiative to be an important way to help empower them, to unlock their potential and the potential of other Japanese women to lead social change."
The women awarded fellowships in the inaugural Japanese Women's Leadership Initiative — all from Tokyo — are Masako Hiramatsu, Sun-hae Bae, and Yuka Hayasi.
For further information about the fellowship, contact Atsuko Fish at [email protected] or Simmons School of Management Professor Patricia Deyton at [email protected]. Reporters contact Diane Millikan at [email protected]
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Director of Marketing/Communications
Kalimah Redd Knight
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding a new program at Case Western Reserve University to prepare 24 high-achieving science and math undergraduates for teaching careers.
Cost and security concerns about bringing health care record keeping into the 21st century through electronic health records (EHR) have led to a call for an effective regulatory and oversight system from a pair of Case Western Reserve University professors.
Michael Merzenich, one of the world's premier researchers on brain development, is the featured speaker at the Allen and Constance Ford Distinguished Lectureship Series from 4:30-5:30 p.m., Tuesday, November 4, at the Wolstein Auditorium.
Case Western Reserve University has received an anonymous $2 million gift to endow the program directorship of the Coulter-Case Translational Research Partnership in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. Biomedical engineering is a joint program of the Case School of Engineering and the School of Medicine.
Stephen Sondheim's macabre musical thriller, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, will be presented by Case Western Reserve University's student-run theater group, the Case Footlighters, just in time for Halloween. Not only are students producing, directing and starring in the production, many of the engineering majors in the group are also building the set and props, including the infamous barber's chair where Sweeney Todd performs his evil deeds.
Two Case Western Reserve University alumni were added to the Board of Trustees at the governing body's October 17 meeting. Gregory L. Eastwood, M.D., who served on the board from 2003-2006 until he was named the university's interim president during 2006-2007, was reinstated to the board. Eastwood is a 1966 alumnus of the Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Larry Sears, a Cleveland-based entrepreneur, engineer and educator, was appointed to a four-year term. Sears is a 1969 graduate of the Case Institute of Technology.
Frank N. Linsalata, the outgoing chair of the Case Western Reserve University Board of Trustees, and his wife, Jocelyne are donating $3 million to his alma mater, earmarking the funding to specifically enrich the undergraduate student experience on campus. A private announcement of the gift was made at Frank Linsalata's final board dinner as chair on Friday, October 17.
A sundial designed and built on campus and installed in front of Thwing Center on Euclid Avenue has kept time for 25 years. The original designs and photographs of its construction were presented recently as a gift from the creators of the Cleftlands Sundial to University Archives.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced that Brian Cobb, assistant professor of pathology at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, is a 2008 NIH Director's New Innovator Award Recipient. As one of only 31 grant awardees in the nation, Cobb will receive a grant of $2.35 million over five years for his research program.
President Barbara R. Snyder announced today that Case Western Reserve University completed the 2008 Fiscal Year with a budget surplus of $127,000, a sharp turnaround from the previous year's $20 million deficit.
Case Western Reserve University's Squire Valleevue Farm in Hunting Valley may be green, but if the university finds it feasible, the 389-acre farm will become even greener with the installation of an energy-generating wind turbine. If implemented, the wind turbine would showcase alternative energy and yield significant economic, environmental, research and educational benefits for Case Western Reserve students and faculty.
Charles Rosenblatt, professor of physics and macromolecular science at Case Western Reserve University, and his research group have developed a method of 3D optical imaging of anisotropic fluids such liquid crystals, with volumetric resolution one thousand times smaller than existing techniques. A research paper detailing the team's findings appeared in the September 21 advanced online publication of Nature Physics. The print version will be available soon.
Case Western Reserve University President Barbara R. Snyder and Provost W.A. "Bud" Baeslack said today that Gary J. Simson has announced his resignation as dean, effective at the end of this academic semester. Starting today, Robert H. Rawson Jr. will serve as Special Advisor to the Provost for the School of Law; he will become interim dean once Simson steps down. President Snyder expressed her appreciation on behalf of the law school and the University for Simson's work over the last two years. Under his leadership the law school raised $1.8 million in the first quarter of this year, and this year's entering class has one of the highest academic credentials in the school's history. Simson will remain in his position as a tenured professor of law.
Case Western Reserve University will host a one and a half day workshop that will explore the technological solutions for reliable electricity storage, the effective integration of renewable energy, and national grid security on Monday and Tuesday, October 20-21, at 8 a.m. (both days), in Nord Hall.
A team of theoretical and experimental physicists, with participants from Case Western Reserve University, have designed a new black hole simulator called BlackMax to search for evidence that extra dimensions might exist in the universe.
Scientists have studied the night sky for thousands of years searching for clues to help them understand the universe. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) team, including Case Western Reserve University Professor of Physics and Astronomy John Ruhl and graduate student Zachary Staniszewski, achieved a major milestone toward using a new technique to probe the most mysterious component of the universe, dark energy.
Case Western Reserve University's sustainability efforts have earned the institution a Northeast Ohio Environmental Award.
Paleontologist Darin Croft from the department of anatomy in the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine will be the host committee chair for the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) at the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, October 15-18. This is the first time SVP has held its meeting in Cleveland.
Escaping into a virtual world of Second Life is showing promise as a way to divert real world pain when visiting the dentist, according to a thesis project at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine.
The Flora Stone Mather Alumnae Association of Case Western Reserve University will distribute its remaining endowment in a series of gifts to Case Western Reserve University -- a combined commitment of $5 million. The commitment was publicly announced on October 4, during the association's annual reunion tea honoring the fiftieth reunion class.
The Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has been awarded $26 million in funding to participate in The National Children's Study, the National Institutes of Health's comprehensive study on the interaction of genes and the environment on children's health.
Although the rich hues of red and gold are usually associated with the fall season, Case Western Reserve University will be awash in traditional Spartan colors on Blue and White Day Friday, October 3. In honor of Homecoming and Alumni Weekend, the entire campus community is encouraged to wear the school's colors.
Dianne D. Anderson, who has held numerous executive and managerial positions at BP since 1983, has been named the first executive director of the Great Lakes Institute for Energy Innovation at Case Western Reserve University. She begins her new duties today.
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What do gaming managers at casinos and flight attendants have in common? They are among the nation's most surprising six-figure jobs, according to Forbes, which compiled the list of occupations from Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Not all gaming managers and flight attendants make six figures. For example: "The top 10 percent of gaming managers, whose primary responsibilities are overseeing staff and catering to gamblers, earn $106,220 a year, while the average annual salary is $69,600," according to Forbes.
Using recent BLS data on average salaries by occupation, I offer my own list of surprises:
- Economists make less than mathematicians: $86,700 versus $90,930.
- Pharmacy aides make less than crossing guards: $21,120 versus $23,460.
- Fishers, working a notoriously dangerous job, make $28,280. Plumbers make about 70 percent more, at $47,350.
- Subway and streetcar operators earn more than twice the salary of ambulance drivers: $47,740 versus $22,310.
- Lawyers earn an average of $118,280 a year.
- For the price of one lawyer, you could pay the salaries of a rehabilitation counselor ($33,350) and a substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselor ($37,830) and still have enough left over to pay a marriage and family therapist ($45,310).
- Reporters and correspondents earn $43,170, so they'd have to work a full year plus about 3¼ months to make their editors' average salary: $55,020. [Editor's note: Yes, editors obviously are underpaid, but they do get the last word.]
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Prune: A plum preserved by drying, having a black, wrinkled appearance
Plum: A prune before it’s preserved by drying…
Around the first of September the Italian plum trees begin to drop their fruit and I swing into harvest frenzy.
A block up the street from my house are two derelict plum trees I consider my own. Every morning I make my way up the hill to “my” trees, with a couple of plastic bags that once held the morning paper. I call the trees mine because the absent owners of the lot they sit on seem neither to care either for the trees nor their produce, but I do. If I don’t collect the plums they just rot and get eaten by ants, birds, and yellow jackets.
Picking plums is like hunting Easter eggs, because the plums hide in the tall grass under the tree like so many blue-frosted Easter eggs. (Prune plums aren’t ready if you have to pluck them off the tree; they have to drop. Commercial pickers shake the trees.)
I come home laden.I make one batch of plum jam each fall (the best jam in the world), then transform the rest into prunes.You slice them in half, remove the pits and place them on racks in the food dryer for a couple of days per batch.
Since I don’t use any chemicals on them, I bag them up and keep them in the frig or freezer.Prunes are of course famous for helping with “regularity”, but in more recent years nutrition experts extol their anti-oxidant content.
Whatever. I love them. My family loves them. My friends love them. A baggie of my home-dried prunes or a jar of the jam is a cherished hostess gift or stocking present.
I know I said that my favorite dessert in the world was blackberry cobbler, but I forgot my other favorite dessert: plum kuchen.Keep reading: the recipe is at the bottom of this post.
Yesterday I drove past MY trees on the way back from an errand and noticed someone standing under one of them.She had her hands full of MY plums. It turned out to be my dear friend Kathi!
“What are you doing picking MY plums?” I demanded.
“Have you got a baggie in your car?” she responded. “My hands are full and I’ve got a ways to walk yet.”
Kathi and I are going to have to duke this one out. She can go find her own damn tree because there are other derelict prune trees in the ‘hood. In fact Clark County WA, where I live, used to be one of the top prune-growing areas in the US. No kidding.
These trees are vestiges of an agricultural crop that sustained the area for about fifty years starting in the 1880s. By 1900 more than 435,000 prune plum trees were producing 819 tons of fruit a year. I’m not sure whether that was fresh or dry weight.
Prunes were popular because they could be shipped long distances without spoiling. Records from that time suggest that 75% of the crop went to Germany, Austria and Poland.They sold for fifteen cents a pound until after World War I.
After the 1930s California began producing prunes in greater variety and more cheaply and local business declined. A World War II embargo banned shipments to Germany. Then an insect infestation destroyed many orchards, and growers turned to other crops.
Most of the old trees, including mine, are still small, gnarly, sickly. Most are missing at least half their branches, and the branches that remain are often dying or thickly covered with small branches known as water spouts.
And yet, every fall the miracle happens – perfect purple plums plop from the tired old branches – and I am so grateful.
Plum Kuchen (from Gourmet Magazine, ca 1975)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Sift together into a mixing bowl:
2 c. flour
2 T. sugar
½ t. salt
¼ t. baking powder
With a pastry blender or two knives, cut into the dry ingredients until the mixture looks mealy:
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter.
Pat an even layer of the mixture firmly over the bottom and halfway up the sides of an 8” square baking pan. (I prefer an 8” round spring form pan – when you remove the side it looks more like a French tart.)
Over the bottom pastry, arrange:
1 lb. Italian prune plums, halved and pitted.
Sprinkle the fruit with a blend of:
¾ c. sugar
1 t. ground cinnamon
Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes.
Beat together and pour over the fruit:
1 c. sour cream,.
Continue the baking for 30 minutes longer. Serve warm or at room temperature.
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Massive plan for downtown traffic restructuring on Miami City Commission's agenda
By Frank Norton
Downtown driving in Miami could be reshaped today by city commissioners.
Changes to two-way streets, a tunnel under the Miami River and the rerouting of Interstate 395 below ground, among dozens of other projects, are included in the Downtown Miami Transportation Master Plan.
"I fully anticipate a unanimous adoption of the plan," said City Commission Chairman Johnny Winton, who helped initiate the study three years ago.
An endorsement by the commission would clear the way for city administrators to begin prioritizing funds, said Clark Turner, transportation planner for the city.
He said much of the plan was designed to work with elements of Miami-Dade County's estimated $17 billion transit plan, funded in November by passage of a half-cent sales surtax.
The study estimates the city will receive annual proceeds of more than $10 million from that surtax.
The Miami Downtown Transportation Master Plan, as it is called, has one goal: create a 24-hour transportation network capable of supporting aggressive population growth in an increasingly 24-hour destination.
The city estimates that up to 34,000 residential units could rise downtown over the next 20 years, bringing up to 80,000 new residents to the area.
While that could raise an added $15 million to $34 million in annual tax revenues, it would also require an infrastructure overhaul.
Otherwise, the study warns, "traffic congestion will worsen and not only discourage new business and residential investment but also push existing businesses to relocate."
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Recording labeling playback. Frankfurt-based artist Michael Riedel has been investigating the issue of reproduction and repetition since his first performances in the context of the legendary art space Oskar-von-Miller-Straße 16, which he initiated at this address in Frankfurt in 2000. This was the venue of repetitions or copies of exhibitions, concerts, readings, club evenings, and of the Freitagsküche (Friday Kitchen), an event amidst art and life continued to this day. Riedel works with recorded conversations, films, performances, or other artists shows. His system of production is based on the combination of these elements into ever new variations and on the transformation of one medium into another. Through the process of transcription, for example, Riedel transfers voice recordings into the visual realm, defamiliarizing and expanding them with the help of technological means in order to ultimately reproduce them in a new variation or replay them. With Kunste zur Text, the Schirn Kunsthalle
presents a first retrospective of Michael Riedels work.
Michael Riedel was born in Rüsselsheim in 1972. He lives and works in Frankfurt today, where he graduated from the Städel School in 2000. Relying on the principle of repetition, the artist is not concerned with the authentic reproduction of a certain event or content, but with the difference the transformation from one medium into the other entails. Riedel made a name for himself with his performances in the art space Oskar-von-Miller-Straße 16, where he, together with some of his friends, realized a manifold program comprising reenactments of installations, concerts, films, and club evenings as repetitions of the original events, so to speak.
Located next to the preserved portico of the old City Library, the Portikus, the Städel Schools exhibition hall for contemporary art, repeatedly provided a reference point for Riedels performances, as the exhibitions presented there were restaged in the space Oskar-von-MillerStraße 16. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Nine Dark Pictures by Gilbert & George, the Portikus itself became the venue of an intervention titled Gert & Georg (Gilbert & George) on March 23, 2002. Michael Riedel and Dennis Loesch had engaged two actors who, keeping a discreet distance, mimicked the movements of Gilbert and George following them for about two hours a subevent realized in the same place as the opening. In 2004, Michael Riedel founded the Friday Kitchen at the address Oskar-von-Miller-Straße No. 16. Riedels Friday Kitchen has established itself in Frankfurt as a social meeting place and restaurant; it recalls the days of the restaurant Food (19721974) in New York, which had been founded by the artist Gordon Matta-Clark among others.
After the building had been torn down in 2006, the Friday Kitchen was continued in Berlin for two years before it opened its doors again in Frankfurt, at Mainzer Landstraße No. 105, in 2010. In 2003, Michael Riedel presented a one-to-one reconstruction of Oskar-von-Miller-Straße 16 as a sculpture with life-size black and-white pictures of the various events at the group exhibition Kontext Form Troja in the Secession in Vienna. In 2006, he evoked the demolition of the building by having the complete exhibition space sewn in fabric and loosely put over the existing architecture in the context of a presentation at the Fine Arts Fair in Frankfurt.
In his conceptual practice, Riedel relies on a wide variety of media and formats from works on canvas, film, video, and audio recordings to artists books, posters, installations, and events depending on the reference point of the work and the degree of its media transformation. He uses the strategy of recording, labeling, and playback. In Riedels work, a recording is by no means a one-to-one reproduction of a club evening or reading, but a copy containing all the recording equipments fluctuations in quality, all technical flaws. Rather than showing the mere achievement of the translation such as of a given text into a new text Michael Riedels works reveal the possibilities provided by often just minimal interventions into the extant material. The resultant works frequently serve as starting points for new ones.
Beginning with early works such as Michael S. Riedel (1997), a lecture held at the Städel School, which the artist concluded by putting a pager bag with his name over his head while saying I am Michael S. Riedel and thus equating himself as an artist with his work and ending with quite recent works, the exhibition at the Schirn for the first time juxtaposes various of Riedels work series to form a new installation, which offers an insight into the artists manifold production methods. From the publication Gedruckte und ungedruckte Poster (Printed and Unprinted Posters, 20032008) and his sequence of poster and PowerPoint paintings (2010), Vier Vorschläge zur Veränderung von Modern (Four Proposals for Changing Modern, 2007) and Frieze (CMYK) (2007) to Filmed Film Trailer (2008) an 8:05-minute summary of the Filmed Film archives (19992002), which Riedel recorded from more than ninety films screened in cinemas in and around Frankfurt the confrontation of individual series in the Schirn Kunsthalle visualizes and elucidates the method of recording and copying, transforming something from one medium into another, and playing it back in a new version.
The space Oskar-von-Miller-Straße 16 will also be present at the Schirn in a room especially opened for the show and turned into a walk-in sculpture with posters and flyers. The principle of repetition recurs in the architecture of Kunste zur Text. Riedel uses the walls of the previous show, Edvard Munch. The Modern Eye as a projection surface for his own presentation. A large wall surface Riedel developed from the exhibition poster Poster (Kunste zur Text) (2012), which is based on the source code of a website referring to the show, serves as a frame.
Solo exhibitions of Michael Riedels work have been shown in the Kunstverein, Hamburg (2010), the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main (2008), the Kunstraum Innsbruck (2007), as well as at the David Zwirner Gallery, New York (2005, 2008, 2011). The artist also presented his works in major group exhibitions in the Galleria Civica dArte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM), Torino (2010) and the Tate Modern, London (2009), at the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007), the Moscow Biennial in the Lenin Museum (2005), a.o.
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Updated: A paper by James Hamilton argued that the recent oil price shock was a key factor putting the US into recession – at least between Q4 2007 and Q3 2008. It received a lot of coverage, including some from us.
Merril Lynch’s London-based commodities team has joined the club:
In our opinion, the Great Recession of 2008-09 is the result of a simultaneous
shock of surging energy prices and mounting credit problems (Chart 8). The crisis was precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, but it was the oil price spike that killed emerging market growth. We firmly believe that the world economy would not have contracted so sharply in 4Q08 without the tremendous oil price spike to $150/bbl that occurred in 3Q08 (Chart 9). [Scroll down for charts]
But what’s interesting is their analysis of what this could mean. The central problem of this crisis, they say, is “a fundamental misallocation of capital”.
The large increase in gobal liquidity has resulted in sharp increases in EM equity
and commodity prices. But any impact of commodity price increases on headline
inflation will not likely come until 4Q09, as oil prices are only a fraction of what
they were last year. In the meantime, capital flows are heading into emerging
market equities at full speed, as global investors recognize the severe limitations
to economic growth in OECD economies.
Our economists believe that a jump in oil prices to the $70-80/bbl range could start to pose some meaningful risks to economic growth in OECD countries. Meanwhile, our economists see the risks to growth in the $90-100/bbl range for EMs.
Of course, we are still some way off those price points, and as they note in their report, some Opec members are already beginning to relax their adherance to quotas. As ever, all eyes will be on the next Opec meeting, this Thursday.
Update: Riccardo Barbieri, chief economist at Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch, expands on the theme in the ‘View of the Day’ column in tonight’s FT. $70 or $80 a barrel would not at all be dire for advanced economies, he says (somewhat reassuring as Saudi oil minister al-Naimi today mentioned a $75 target). But it’s all about timing:
“As long as prices rise only moderately from here – say, revisiting the $80 a barrel level by year-end, this would not pose severe risks for the advanced economies, while the emerging ones would be able to tolerate even higher levels, say, $100, in due course,” he says.
Mr Barbieri says the main issue is whether oil’s rise is part of the “reflation trade” seen in the equity and credit markets, or whether it reflects a significant increase in oil demand.
“It seems that the oil market has mostly responded to improving expectations concerning the timing of the recovery more than to an actual pick-up in demand,” he says. “The oil futures curve has flattened significantly in recent weeks, with late-2009 and 2010 contracts rising a lot less than the front ones.”
Barbieri says that the Opec producers would not likely allow prices to jump too quickly:
“Given the precarious state of the global economy, it makes sense to us to expect that Saudi Arabia would boost production if prices moved up too quickly,” he says.
Volatility is in no-one’s interests; nor is a worsening recession.
James Hamilton’s 70-page report is here (PDF), and the examination of the 2007-08 recession begins halfway through.
If high oil prices are what caused the recession, then lower prices should… (FT Energy Source)
Was the US recession caused by the oil shock of 2008? (FT Energy Source)
Further evidence on the influence of oil on the US economy (The Oil Drum)
Can the oil shock alone explain the financial crisis? (Atlantic)
Did the oil boom of 2008 cause crisis? (WSJ)
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At the Havana Bienal, concepts like political correctness and radical chic got all shook up.
Havana has changed a lot in the last two years. Some parts still look like bombed-out ruins. Others are starting to resemble sets from Guys and Dolls. There are still lots of American classic cars, giant, sleek Chevys and Pontiacs with gleaming, sculptural hood ornaments (coffee-table book, anyone?). But now they share the road with brand-new, air-conditioned taxis. Starbucks, the Disney Store, and a Frank Gehry Guggenheim are still a distant future. The question for American business is: how distant?
|Havana was the first stop for Ciudad Transportable (Transportable City), 2000, the movable metropolis constructed by Los Carpinteros.|
|Courtesy Grant Selwyn Fine Art|
In this curious mix of capitalism and communism, concepts like political correctness and radical chic get all shook up. It’s been ages since U.S. citizens who traveled to Cuba were automatically assumed to support the socialist cause. For a growing number of American tourists visiting the island these days, revolutionary culture can seem deceptively quaint—the Socialist Realist style so retro that they can forget it comes in a package with repression. Those patriotic highway billboards (and there are no other kind) celebrating Rebels and denouncing Imperialists may be photogenic, but they only get more ironic as the number of tourists increases: in today’s Cuba, everyone knows, the capitalists from abroad get treated a lot better than the locals.
Even at a time when tourism in Cuba is growing by leaps and bounds, the American invasion for the opening of the Havana Bienal last November was spectacular. There were about 3,000 Americans in the city for the show—curators, collectors, dealers, trustees, museum directors, critics, journalists. It was impossible to eat in a paladar, one of the government-tolerated, privately run restaurants, without running into someone you’d seen the week before on 57th Street. One artist who had a big party told me he’d never thought he’d ever hear so much English in his own backyard. New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bronx Museum, Art in General, and several private dealers, among others, brought organized groups to Havana or hosted events to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. So did the U.S. Interests Section, our diplomatic representative in Cuba, which showed works by exiled artists, including José Bedia, Luis Cruz Azaceta, and Arturo Cuenca, brought by Virginia Shore, a curator for the Art in Embassies Program of the U.S. Department of State. While dollar-wielding Cuban Americans are welcomed in Cuba, artworks by its prodigal sons are not. The country held up Shore’s passport so long that she almost missed the opening. Later, Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Relations sent a letter of protest to the Section, complaining that its show “profoundly offends” the Bienal’s organizers by trying to “divert attention” from the larger exhibition’s important “cultural presence.”
The thing was, many foreign guests were distracted from the Bienal, but not by art they could see on 57th Street. For first-time visitors taking in the historic modernist architecture and postnuclear ambience of the place, the city itself was competition enough. Add to that the user-unfriendly nature of the informational materials—the map listed venues around the city that had works on view, but not the artists being shown there; the catalogue listed the artists, but not the venues—and tracking down work became unnecessarily difficult.
|Patriotic billboards can seem quaint to foreign tourists, who may forget that they come in a package with repression.|
There was the sense that the Bienal, which featured mostly installations by artists from more than 90 countries, wasn’t what the Americans had come to see (and they certainly didn’t come for the only one-person show devoted to an American, “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Fiction or Reality”). They wanted Cuban art, which has been enjoying an international vogue lately. The real action was not in the exhibition spaces, but rather in the studios, as air-conditioned buses and vans fanned out to ateliers across the city. American businessmen may fret about being excluded from the bandwagon, but art collectors have no such problem. In Havana, an American can pay for a $5,000 drawing with the wad of bills in his sock, roll it up, and carry it home. It’s perfectly legal—art is exempt from the U.S. embargo. As for more elaborate pieces—paintings, sculptures, installations—they can be sold and shipped in more elaborate transactions. Sometimes, artists said, the visitors seemed more interested in what the work cost than in what it was about. And sometimes, they revealed, they made enough money from sales to live on for the next year. During that pre-Thanksgiving weekend, individuals and institutions collectively spent hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, according to anecdotal evidence. The Cubans are learning fast how lucrative cultural tourism can be.
The phenomenal hotness of Cuban art has created a new genre of artist-under-communism—a kind of unofficial/official artist. Consider some of the most successful—and most prominently featured—Cuban art in the Bienal: the portable tent city (cathedral included) by the artist collaborative Los Carpinteros; the dysfunctional microphones installed by another collective, Galería DUPP, around the perimeter of El Morro, a former fortress; Abel Barroso’s Café Internet Tercer Mundo(Third World Internet Café), which was indeed a café, although the computers (in case anyone there decided to check if there was a U.S. president yet) were made of cardboard. All of the works, in some way, played on the nation’s Rube Goldberg–meets–Kafka esthetic. Contemporary Cuban art often evokes themes of exile, emigration, and the absurdities of daily life. Yet despite its subtle critiques of Cuban society, the generation of 30-something artists was not forced into exile, like Bedia and his compatriots. Instead, they are permitted to travel outside of Cuba, sell their work abroad, and keep their earnings, thereby bringing dollars into the country and joining its privileged elite. Many Cuban artists now have personal computers and e-mail. Getting a phone line is another matter.
All the artists are aware that what you can show abroad is different from what you can show at home, where censorship—and, consequently, self-censorship—remain looming problems. How—and how far—you can push the envelope is always in question. Tania Bruguera, a Cuban artist who has a flourishing international career, knew this when she assembled an installation for a dark, dank space in La Cabaña, which used to be a military prison. On the floor she spread sugar cane, which soon began to emit a rotting smell. Overhead, she installed a television monitor, which played a loop of familiar moments from Castro’s life. If the tape seemed subversive, it’s because the man himself evokes so much emotion—as does the specter of watching him get older, and older, and older….
But that’s not, ostensibly, what caused the problem. On the Bienal’s opening weekend, Bruguera staged a performance in the installation. As visitors turned away from the monitor and their eyes adjusted to the obscurity, they saw four nude men making a series o
f repetitive gestures: rubbing themselves, wiping themselves, etc. Bruguera’s intention was to stage the piece once, but because many people were left outside, she decided to repeat it a few days later. That morning, however, she received a call telling her not to. The military authorities in charge of La Cabaña had objected to the male nudity.
Robin Cembalest is the executive editor of ARTnews.
Copyright 2013, ARTnews LLC, 48 West 38th St 9th FL NY NY 10018. All rights reserved.
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Project Cafe: The Tech Behind Nintendo's Next Console
New pricing, hardware, design, and release information uncovered.
More details of Nintendo's forthcoming console, codenamed Project Cafe aka Wii 2, have been revealed to IGN, including the system's estimated pricing, release, console design, processing architecture, and name.
According to sources with knowledge of the project, Nintendo's next console could have a retail price of anywhere between $350 and $400 based on manufacturing costs, and will ship from Taiwanese manufacturer, Foxconn, this October, putting the earliest possible retail release anywhere between mid-October and early November.
However, Nintendo could also opt to build up a sizable supply of the system and allocate more time for software and games development by launching in early 2012. Similarly, Nintendo could attempt to lower the retail price of the system with lower profit margins to make the price more alluring.
Since the manufacturing is taking place in Taiwan, the earthquakes and tsunami that hit Japan last month will not impact the console hardware as previously expected.
Additionally, IGN has learned that the system will be based on a revamped version of AMD's R700 GPU architecture, not AMD's Fusion technology as previously believed, which will, as previously reported, out perform the PlayStation 3's NVIDIA 7800GTX-based processor. Like the Xbox 360, the system's CPU will be a custom-built triple-core IBM PowerPC chipset, but the clocking speeds will be faster. The system will support 1080p output with the potential for stereoscopic 3D as well, though it has not been determined whether that will be a staple feature.
In terms of the design of the console itself, the overall size will be comparable to that of the original Xbox 360 and the system is likely to resemble a modernized version of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).
As reported last week, it will indeed utilize controllers with integrated touchscreens and be capable of streaming games to each controller, though given the power of the system, could also feasibly provide a virtualized console for each individual unit.
Finally, Nintendo is considering naming the console Stream, though it is potentially one of several names currently being vetted by the company.
We contacted Nintendo representatives, but they declined to comment on "rumors or speculation."
For more on Project Cafe, stay tuned to IGN.com.
More Project Cafe/Wii 2
|Wii 2 is Project Cafe||The Controller||Editor Reactions|
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Uncertainty surrounding a historic Montgomery cemetery may be coming to an end. The Oakwood Cemetery Annex, home to the grave of country music legend Hank Williams, may soon have a new owner.
Bills in the Alabama State House and Senate would effectively transfer ownership of the cemetery to the city of Montgomery, which has already been maintaining for the grounds for years.
The cemetery has been in receivership since 2004 after the previous owner died without leaving the property to anyone. It is now owned by the Alabama Department of Insurance, but the city spends between $5,000 and $7,000 per year to maintain it.
"We said to the insurance department, we'll maintain it," Mayor Todd Strange explained. "You pay us. And we've been asking for that payment for now three years."
Strange said it is important the cemetery be maintained because of the tourist traffic it receives.
"The grass is cut low. We've seen several maintenance men on the other part of the cemetery," said Jimmy Bark, whose family visited the Hank Williams grave site. "It looks pretty nice to me."
Strange also said taking ownership of the cemetery would allow the city to do a thorough inspection of the records of the plots at the Annex, and perhaps re-open it to burials.
The Department of Insurance supports the bill, according to Mark Fowler, the Department's Government Relations Manager. Fowler said the bill reflects an agreement between Commissioner Jim Ridling and Mayor Strange.
The bills are pending in House and Senate committees. Any action would be subject to the approval of the Montgomery County Circuit Court.
In addition to Hank Williams, the cemetery is also the final resting place to three Confederate general of the Civil War and four former Alabama governors.
Copyright 2013 WSFA 12 News. All rights reserved.
1720 Valley View Drive
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From the playlist : Bill Mason: Beyond the wild, beyond the paddle
The film was shot in April 1973 at the aptly named Icy Cape in Alaska, an abandoned Eskimo village once known for spring whaling. The World Wildlife Fund sponsored the expedition, which included several American scientists and was originally going to include four Soviet biologists working in tandem with the Americans. For some unexplained reason, the Soviets pulled out at the last minute. Bill Mason, acting as director/cameraman, and soundman Chester Beachel were added to the group to document the event.
While the divers were prepared for shooting in the frigid waters, they never anticipated that the visibility underwater would be so poor. Nonetheless, they managed to get some spectacular footage of the whales from above and below the ice. The film was shown on TV and enjoyed great success in the non-theatrical market. It also won several wildlife film awards.
— Albert Ohayon
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Now in its 12th year, the CIF Model Coach Award program is designed to recognize coaches who have served as positive role models in their schools and communities, and who have exhibited the traits apparent in the 16 principles of Pursuing Victory with Honor.
The 14 winners, nominated through their local CIF section office, will receive an award and be honored at their sport's state championship or at an event of the recipient's choosing.
A model coach demonstrates and teaches the six core ethical values: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and good citizenship (the "Six Pillars of Character"). The CIF believes that the highest potential of sports is achieved when teachers-coaches consciously Teach, Enforce, Advocate and Model (T.E.A.M.) these values and are committed to the ideal of Pursuing Victory with Honor.
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- the manual for your router is on the cd. read it. don't be ignorant about your router. that only gets you into trouble.
- after you have learned about your router, login to the router and set up the router and its wireless with WPA2 Personal with AES Encryption, give it an ssid, and a passkey ( I suggest you put the passkey on a cd, then you can copy and paste it in where it's needed).
- if you change or make any passwords, or ssid's, write them down on a piece of paper and file it, and also put it on the text file on the cd using notepad.
- then go to your wireless laptop and turn on your wireless and wait 15-40 seconds.
- then right click on your wireless connection and pick setup or click on it and pick setup, whichever the case is. you want to get to wireless setup.
- choose manual configuration.
- enter the ssid, passkey twice, and encryption type (WPA2 Personal or something close to it).
- once you have all the info in and all the dialogs are closed, refresh wireless networks list, and pick yours. connect. enter the passkey twice.
- close all those dialogs.
- right click on the wireless connection and pick repair. you should be connected now.
it's probably easier than this, but I didn't know for sire if it was really going to connect or not, it didn't seem like it was going to unless I did all these things.
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Society & Culture - Posted by Amy Hodges-Rice on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 14:45 - 0 Comments
Corporate political gifts go unrewarded
RICE (US) — Corporate political activity doesn’t necessarily improve the bottom line, a new study shows.
Researchers at Rice University and Long Island University investigated the relationship between corporate political activity and financial returns on a set of 943 S&P 1500 firms between 1998 and 2008. They found that firms’ political investments are negatively associated with market performance.
The findings also show that cumulative political investments worsen both market and accounting performance, and that firms placing former public officials on their boards experienced inferior market performance and similar accounting performance than firms without such board members.
The study will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Strategic Management Journal and available online in the fall.
“The view of corporations meddling in politics to the downfall of public interests is nothing new,” says Doug Schuler, study co-author and associate professor of business and public policy at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business.
“Since our country’s founding, corporate political activity has been seen as promoting its own interests and agendas over those of the broader public. This study simply demonstrates that it might not be quite the return on investment that corporate America or the public at large believes it to be.”
The paper outlines four reasons to explain what the study calls its “largely unexpected results”:
- Managers who support corporate political giving may in general take overly risky business decisions.
- Corporate political giving may represent poor-quality investments.
- Corporate political giving is difficult for shareholders to monitor.
- Personal reasons of senior managers, such as self-aggrandizement, ideological beliefs and other pressures may influence corporate political activity.
Contrary to these findings, the study suggests that corporate political giving is positively associated with market performance for firms in highly regulated industries.
“We believe this may reflect the critical role that government can play in controlling resources and limiting behaviors through its rulemaking and enforcement processes, necessitating some level of political activities by the regulated firms,” Schuler says. “In regulated industries, firms are better able to target specific agencies and get to know their staff, which is more likely to result in more stable interactions.”
Schuler hopes the research will challenge the preconceived notions about corporate political giving and focus on agency theory to better understand this practice.
“Like the explorers in search of El Dorado, there is a belief that political investments in D.C. will produce ‘riches around the river’s next bend,’” Schuler says. “Unfortunately for these politically investing firms, our results strongly show that the lucrative financial returns may never materialize.”
Rice University and Long Island University funded the study.
More news from Rice University: http://news.rice.edu/
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| 0.942659 | 610 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The NS Profile: Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee could have been a billionaire if he had sold his invention, the World Wide Web. Inst
Twenty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web among a small circle of fellow computer enthusiasts. Today, the 56-year-old Briton remains one of the internet's most vigorous advocates. Its vast success, however, has had a downside: it has exposed him to a bombardment of requests from visionaries, obsessives and rubberneckers, as well as hordes of children demanding help with school projects. All expect him to exist as some kind of open-source human being.
Berners-Lee has never been an enthusiastic self-publicist. Nowadays, he shelters behind carapaces of email gateways and protective staff. He seldom gives interviews. If you're not persistent and pertinent, you may not even earn a rebuff. "I'm quite busy," he explains - a huge understatement - when eventually we talk on the phone.
“I have built a moat around myself, along with ways over that moat so that people can ask questions. What I do has to be a function of what I can do, not a function of what people ask me to do." (He tends to use techy terms such as "function" quite a lot. He doesn't mind "geek", either.)
That the creator of the web - a father of two children, separated from his wife and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he pursues his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - has to live like an electronic Howard Hughes is just one of the many paradoxes that his invention has thrown up over the past two decades.
Nevertheless, Berners-Lee is campaigning for ever more openness, pushing for the internet to exist as a free-for-all, unfettered by creeping government interference or commercial intrigue. He believes that access to the internet should be a human right.
Born to mathematician parents in west London in June 1955, Berners-Lee studied at Oxford University, graduating with a First in physics in 1976. In 1980, he joined the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, better known as Cern, as a consultant but left a year later to become director of the tech firm Image Computer Systems.
Returning to Cern in 1984, he started working on hypertext to help researchers share information. His new project could easily have been dismissed as another case of a back-room enthusiast tinkering with clunky, electronic networks: even though he had the ability to construct a computer using a soldering iron and an old television set, Berners-Lee was just one of many sandal-wearing scientists.
“I wanted to build a creative space, something like a sandpit where everyone could play together," he says now. "Life was very simple. I was too busy to think about the bigger questions. I was writing specs for the web, writing the code. My priority was getting more people to use it, looking for communities who might adopt it. I just wanted the thing to take off."
Berners-Lee formally introduced his hobby-built system to the world on 6 August 1991 by posting a message on an internet bulletin board for fellow hypertext program developers. That day, he put the world's first proper website online. It explained what a website was and gave details of how to create one. Neither initiative caused any immediate interest.
It feels odd to picture him struggling to convince people of the web's potential. "It was just a load of hard work," he says - "getting up in the morning and thinking, 'What the hell will I do today? Should I ask people at Cern to instal browsers? Should I get more servers running, write more code for browsers, or should I talk at a conference? Or should I do my own website as an example for other people?'"
At the time, computer fans were an obscure minority, their efforts loudly derided by analogue hipsters. Steadily, however, the World Wide Web gained momentum as the limited group of early users - computer scientists and military and government agencies - expanded until it attracted a critical mass in the mid-1990s. Now, according to the analyst Internet World Stats, over 30 per cent of the global population - more than two billion people - have online access.
Berners-Lee could have become a billionaire by charging royalties for his invention. Instead, in 1994, he gave it to the world for free, without a patent. "If I had made the web into a product, it would have been in somebody's interest to make an incompatible version of it," he says.
He liberated his precocious brainchild while trying, like any conscientious parent, to guide its path. To this end, he created the World Wide Web Consortium, to help spread high technical standards for building websites, browsers and devices such as televisions that offer access to web content. It hardly sounds like the glamorous end of the action - but then, Berners-Lee is known for preferring to live modestly, driving clapped-out cars and wearing cagoules. He concedes that the web has grown far beyond the scope of his first imaginings. "I did not dream that it would attain its present scale. It was just supposed to be successful . . . Then again, it is supposed to be the World Wide Web."
The vast expansion of the web demands a change of ethos, he believes. We should no longer consider internet access as optional. "Originally, the web was intended to be universal, to work for any culture or any software, but we did not say that it should work for everyone as individuals. That wasn't important when you didn't need the web to function in everyday life. Now, things such as 0800 numbers are being replaced by websites. If you are not on the web, you will have problems accessing services."
He worries that the web may become a new cause of global inequality, rather than a positive force for mass collaboration. "The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect."
That's not just talk. In 2008, he launched the World Wide Web Foundation, which campaigns to promote internet usage. Back then, he thought that global expansion was desirable. Now, he sees it as essential.
For many of us in the wealthy west, the web has brought the opposite problem. Connectivity has left us constantly at our employers' beck and call. Six in ten workers in the US check their emails while on holiday, according to a survey by the communications company Xobni. Conversations are seldom completed without someone checking a smartphone. We seem unable to switch off.
Berners-Lee acknowledges the problem. "We will find a way to deal with this new medium and learn how to use it appropriately. We are still learning the ground rules. Certainly, one-to-one time without any electronics is something that people should treasure."
He quickly returns to a favourite theme: technology will bring us the answers to the problems caused by technology. "Every now and then, someone will invent a nifty new program to help us to cope with this," he says brightly. "When we are in our meeting room, we have laptops open and running. They enable people to join the meetings while working in other countries. They also help to run the debate. The laptops feature bots that tell us when it's our turn to talk. They remind us what we want to contribute. In cases like this, face-to-face interactions are enhanced."
For Berners-Lee, communication holds the most promise of solving all of our trickiest problems. When I ask him what he is most proud of achieving, he says: "That the World Wide Web is an open platform. I'm pleased that it was designed very cleanly so that programs can talk to each other across the net. It means that there is one information space where you can put everything. I am chuffed to bits when someone tells me, for example, that they found some medical information online that has really helped their life."
His greatest fear is that the opposite might happen - that the web could be killed off by a large company or government. "That is why I campaign for commercial net neutrality," he says. "If large corporations control our access to the internet and determine which websites we can go to, we will lose its openness and its democratic nature. We can all help to campaign for the right to connect. It is essential that we keep the space open as a white sheet of paper that anyone can use, without being spied on, blocked and diverted."
Nevertheless, government encroachment is already rife, according to data from the press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders. Almost all of the developed world's internet is moderately to pervasively censored by the authorities. Only a small number of nations, including Mongolia and Madagascar, have a completely open web.
Countries such as China, Iran and Egypt can even switch off the service. Proposed laws in the United States would enable the government to shut down websites that allegedly breach copyright laws. Net-freedom lobbyists fear that these powers could be misused to block political campaigns, for instance. And the Digital Economy Act, passed last year in the UK, gave the government powers to instruct service providers to cut off the internet account of anyone suspected of copyright infringement.
Berners-Lee also worries about the web's potential as a conduit for extremism. "I was following a Twitter debate on net neutrality recently, when I realised that no one was saying anything in the middle ground. They were all vehement and angry. It may be the case that, with fast communications, reasoned opinions just don't propagate. These conduits accelerate people's emotions.
“Also, you get conspiracy theorists and religious cults emerging. Every now and again, human beings get organised in ways such as the Nazi takeover of Germany or the Heaven's Gate mass suicide. These were geographically limited - but could they spread through the internet in the name of some cause or religion?"
Despite these concerns, Berners-Lee remains resolutely optimistic about the future of his invention. "The web is now coming of age. We have to look at it and decide how best to use it for science and technology. I think it can do uniquely important things," he says.
These are big aspirations. A couple of decades ago, they would have sounded wildly optimistic; now, they sound eminently reasonable. If an inventor with a more typically inflated ego had created the World Wide Web, he would no doubt be declaring his genius and demanding the right to lead his creation into its promised land. Not Berners-Lee. His ambitions are characteristically self-effacing. No one person can lead the web, he believes. Humanity and the internet will progress only if our egos coalesce in one global effort.
“With many of the significant problems we have now got, such as cancer, no one person can hold all the pieces of the puzzle together in their head. The challenge is whether we can put some pieces of that puzzle together from different heads around the world.
“When I started the web, I wanted to foster creative interconnectivity, in which people from all around the world can build something together. It's about trying to create a sort of human meta-brain - getting connected brains to function as a greater human brain. With these things, we have to trust in humanity. I think human nature, on balance, is wonderful. If we use the web properly, we can enhance that."
Tags: The Internet
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Aahh, the dreaded shiny brake...
Aahh, the dreaded shiny brake pad. Take fine-grit sandpaper and clean the glaze off the pad so it can be used again.
5. What's the condition of your brake pads?
This could be the root of your brake problems. If you have no brake pads left, then you need to break down and replace them. But let's say there's a lot of meat left on them. Do they have the dreaded shiny glaze? Pads can develop a shine on them from exposure to intense heat. This shine or glaze will cause the brakes to not work as effectively. The glaze will make the pad slide on the rotor instead of stopping it. To the driver, this feels like he or she has lost the brakes. The driver will push the pedal harder in an effort to stop, which will only cause more heat and you're back to boiling the fluid.
It's pretty easy to tell if you've got this problem. Take your hand and run it across the brake pad, if it feels like you're running your hand across glass then you need new pads. Take some gritty sandpaper and run it across the brake pad and take the shine off. It's extremely easy to do. Just make certain that you mark which pad was on the inside and which was outside, so that you don't reinstall them backwards.
6. What's the condition of your rotors?
Rotors have to be inspected after every race, because you don't want one of these coming apart in the middle of a race. Just like the pads and brake fluid, the rotors are going to experience an extreme amount of heat. Under this extreme heat, it's possible for rotors to warp and cause vibrations.
Rotors will often show hairline...
Rotors will often show hairline cracks in the center (see arrows). These cracks are not a major issue. However, if any of them start to move toward the outside/inside edge of the rotor, then the whole rotor will need to be replaced.
Extreme heat aside, if you take a hard driver-side collision, common sense tells you to check the left-side rotor to make certain that it's not bent or warped. A few years ago after a hard left-side wreck, I found out that I actually bent the right front rotor. Unfortunately, our team didn't realize the problem until the next race when a mysterious vibration cropped up. We lost valuable time during practice trying to hunt down the origin of the vibration. Guess what? It was a bent right front rotor, the result of my hard left-side wreck the week before.
Rotors wear just like your brake pads, and throughout a season you need to inspect them each week. Look for hairline cracks such as those shown in the picture (left) with the arrows. While these cracks are not a problem yet, if any one of them start to move toward either the inside or outside edge of the rotor, then it will have to be replaced.
When running your brake lines,...
When running your brake lines, remember to keep them as far from the headers as possible, but also keep them from getting in the way of the upper control arm.
7. What's the condition of your brake lines?
The most often overlooked item when it comes to brakes is your brake lines. Brake lines can either be aluminum or steel. I'd suggest using steel because it's just that much more durable. Plus, whether you're using aluminum or steel, the end of the line where it connects to any fitting needs to be flared so it fits flush. The aluminum lines are more susceptible to cracking at the flared end. This can lead to a leak once the fluid heats up.
The other thing you need to check when inspecting your brake lines is where they have been run in the car. Brake lines need to be as far away from the engine or headers as possible. Also, when running the lines from the master cylinder to the right front wheel, the line should cross the car on the inside of the firewall. This will keep the brake line away from extra heat that the engine produces.
8. Where was your brake balance set?
If every time you get on the brake the car pushes like a dump truck or snaps loose, you can bet that the problem is in your brake balance adjuster. You need to find out how much front brake you're running compared to the rear. All you need is a brake pressure gauge set. They cost around $80 and are available from retailers like Speedway Motors. These gauges can be mounted to the dash, although most racers just use them outside of the car. Have you ever heard, if my adjuster is in the center at 50 percent, then I'm running 50-50 on brakes right? Not necessarily. It all depends on your master cylinders.
Now after an accident, look...
Now after an accident, look at every rotor to make certain that no rotor has been chipped or cracked. This rotor was on the opposite side of the car from where the impact was taken.
Having the right parts is...
Having the right parts is essential to running the brake lines correctly.
Notice here how the brake...
Notice here how the brake lines have been run on the outside edge of the firewall. This will heat the brake fluid up quickly. I suggest running the brake lines on the inside of the firewall to help reduce the brake fluid heat buildup.
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Twitter today released the newest version of its application programming interface (API)—the specifications third-party developers have to adhere to when building applications that run on the Twitter network—and the tech community had a communal aneurysm. Twitter's API v1.1 limits what those aforementioned third-party developers are allowed to do. You should care because it means some of your favorite Twitter apps are going to go through a pretty drastic change.
One of the most contientous points deals with the aesthetics of third-party apps:
"To ensure that Twitter users have a consistent experience wherever they see and interact with Tweets, in v1.1 of the Twitter API we will shift from providing Display Guidelines to Display Requirements, which we will also introduce for mobile applications. We will require all applications that display Tweets to adhere to these. Among them: linking @usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile, displaying appropriate Tweet actions (e.g. Retweet, reply and favorite) and scaling display of Tweets appropriately based on the device. If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key."
In short: if an app doesn't display tweets the way Twitter wants, they will get shut down. Another interesting—and by interesting I mean wholly f'd up—part of the new API guidelines deals with the amount of users a third-party app can accumulate Twitter is not allowing third-party apps to exponentially grow. Going forward, popular apps with more than 100,000 users will only be able to double its user-ship.
"If your application already has more than 100,000 individual user tokens, you'll be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you reach 200% of your current user token count (as of today) — as long as you comply with our Rules of the Road," Twitter wrote today on its blog.
As you can imagine, the news of these changes sent shockwaves through the tech world, prompting people to release their vitriol (and sensible opinions) on—where else?—Twitter.
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| 0.935434 | 434 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Cohesive Saratoga Springs trail system advancing
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Trail networks have been making baby steps for years in the Spa City, and some community organizations are working to push those steps into a run.
The vision of the Greenbelt Trail is one of a continuous 10-mile loop, linking all of the smaller “trails to nowhere” into a cohesive network for alternative transportation.
“It was a visionary idea 20 years ahead of its time,” said Jeff Olson, a principal at Alta Planning and Design.
His company was retained by a handful of organizations, including Saratoga P.L.A.N. and Saratoga Regional YMCA, hoping to propel the concept laid out in the city’s first Open Space Plan into reality.
The end goal of the project is to make Saratoga Springs a hub for trails being developed from the southern tip of the county to the north and east to west.
Before that, though, organizers are hoping to link the distinct trail segments sprinkled around the city.
“These were all thought of as parts of an interconnected system,” Olson said of the Bog Meadow, Spring Run and Railroad Run trails, though he said there are some notable gaps left in the system. “This plan will be looking at what’s feasible and come up with alternatives showing what can be done.”
The Greenbelt Trail plan is in its infancy. But Olson and members of the steering committee are trying to determine where and how the trails can be linked, so when funding becomes available, or major reconstruction projects provide opportunity, those links can be made.
Olson said the Spring Run Trail was the perfect example of that. Plans were complete for that for a decade before federal funding became available for “shovel-ready” projects as part of a national stimulus package.
“It takes efforts like these to make that possible,” he said. Continued...
Also included in the Greenbelt Trail network are the trails through the Saratoga Spa State Park and the Geyser Road Trail, which have been edging forward.
Funding for engineering on that trail is included in the city’s 2013 capital budget and would link the southwest corner of the city to Saratoga Spa State Park and the Railroad Run Trail, bridging one of the gaps in the Greenbelt Trail system.
“That’s just one more piece of the puzzle,” said Maria Trabka, executive director of Saratoga P.L.A.N., which is integrally involved in the project. She said as these trails have been getting finished over the last few years “naturally people said, ‘What’s next? Let’s go for the bigger picture now.’ ”
Jim Letts, executive director of Saratoga Regional YMCA, was involved in the development of Railroad Run, when the YMCA donated land to the city for development of the trail.
He said between the existing trails that are being linked and the city’s adoption of Complete Streets, which emphasizes alternative modes of transportation, “there are a lot of pieces that are falling into place to make this possible.”
Letts said this will not only give residents an active way to get outside, but he said it could provide a tourist attraction many larger cities also are working to develop.
“I think this would be a big attraction for anyone staying in hotels,” he said, giving tourists and residents alike the ability to go for a 10-mile run or bike ride on a loop that would take someone around the entire city.
Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce President Todd Shimkus also argued it could be an attraction for companies trying to bring top talent to the region, like GlobalFoundries, which cited quality of life as one of its reasons for moving to Saratoga County.
The chamber’s strategic plan now includes more emphasis on trails, which Shimkus said are among the most desirable features of communities that young professionals look for.
“It’s one of the pieces that provides that balance between economic development and quality of life,” he said. Continued...
Olson said reaction to the plan in the community has been significant, with more than 50 people attending a recent public meeting on the project.
“Before we build a trail in a community, we like to build a community into the trail,” he said.
The plan doesn’t only have the support of community organizations. As an adjunct professor at SUNY Albany’s Geography and Planning Department, Olson has recruited the help of his graduate students and Skidmore College students to do research on wetland mitigation, comparable trail systems and opinion research that will push this project forward.
For more information about the Saratoga Greenbelt Trail or to learn about upcoming public forums, go to saratogagreenbelt.weebly.com/.
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Barbara Lombardo is the managing editor of The Saratogian.
Updates on Spa City and Saratoga County business news and trends.
This blog aims to supplement the daily coverage published online and in the paper.
Reporter Caitlin Morris offers insights into the issues affecting Saratoga County residents.
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Big tech firms and private prisons represent two industries vigorously lobbying to influence the scope of legislation aimed at overhauling U.S. immigration policy, a political priority in Washington.
Microsoft, Facebook, and Intel want lawmakers to support increasing the number of visas available to highly skilled workers, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money in politics.
Others, like Corrections Corporation of America, which builds detention facilities to house illegal immigrants, have contributed heavily to the campaigns of lawmakers who take tough stances on the issue.
In all, 359 lobbying clients pressed their positions on immigration reform to officials at nearly every level of government, including the White House, Congress and the Homeland Security Department, according to the analysis for 2012. The figure is up from the 317 clients lobbying on immigration from the previous year.
It is difficult to track exactly how much each spends on lobbying an issue, campaign finance experts say. However, tracking the number of times something specific is mentioned on disclosure reports indicates its importance to a company or industry.
"They're not spending this money just willy-nilly. They have a goal and they're trying to achieve that goal legislatively," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group.
"You have to be sure they're writing the legislation for the right reasons and not just trying to benefit one particular company," Ellis said.
President Barack Obama underscored the need for comprehensive immigration reform earlier this year stressing the need to better enforce related laws, provide a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented workers already in the country and reform the legal immigration system.
The so-called "Gang of Eight" in the Senate and a similar bipartisan group in the House are working on crafting a reform framework leading up to what could be one of the year's biggest legislative showdowns.
"The reason immigration is on the table now is the outcome of the last election," said Judith Gans, manager of the immigration policy program at the University of Arizona. "No political party likes to lose and the Republican party realized that their unfriendly stance toward immigrants was creating a coalition in the Democratic Party."
The upcoming legislative battle will create winners and losers, and businesses are doing everything they can to ensure they can influence the outcome.
"We will see Congress make it easier for that high-skilled, cutting-edged talent to come to the U.S. But if they don't address the channels for low skilled workers to come to the U.S., illegal immigration will continue," Gans said.
The nation's tech sector, which has come to rely strongly on highly trained and science-savvy foreign workers, has long had a vested interest in immigration policy.
When Congress failed to take action on the issue, big business and their lobbyists turned their attention to agencies and lawmakers for support in increasing the number of H-1B visas.
Those are used by companies to temporarily employ foreign workers with special skills.
But H-1B visas are capped at 65,000 annually for those with undergraduate or professional degrees. Another 20,000 are reserved for candidates with graduate-level credentials. The competition is fierce for slots and available caps are often exhausted quickly.
Microsoft spent $8 million last year in broader lobbying efforts and filed 33 disclosure reports dealing with immigration --- twice the number of lobbying reports of companies like Intel.
Microsoft, which contributed $814,645 to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, submitted four reports showing that some of its lobbying efforts were directed at the executive office of the president.
The company also lobbied Congress and 22 other federal agencies and offices on issues like corporate tax reform and antitrust law.
But the second-highest number of lobbying reports filed by the company dealt with immigration.
Other tech companies also lobbied heavily.
Intel spent $3.7 million in overall lobbying and filed 16 reports. Facebook spent $3.9 million in overall lobbying and filed eight reports, including those for lobbying the executive office of the president and the White House.
"The reality is that in the United States, we are creating unfilled jobs faster than we are creating new filled positions," Brad Smith, Microsoft's executive vice president and general counsel, said during a speech at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution last year about his industry's need for more highly-skilled workers.
Tech companies say they look for qualified U.S. workers first, but are having a tough time finding college graduates with the needed skills to work in science and technology fields.
A significant portion of these corporate workforces are comprised of well educated, highly-skilled foreign nationals who are highly sought after and can only go to work for an American company if they are extended an H1-B visa.
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Tracking your exercise habits can now be easier with a new invention that doesn’t come in a box of Kellog’s Special K cereal.
Airun has recently released a unique fitness product called Airun +. Despite looking like an ordinary running shoe, the invention was designed to give individuals an increase of intensity in their footwear. The Airun + gives runners an opportunity to gain more of a workout on an everyday basis.
One of the main features of the product is the controller. As the core of the shoe, the controller has two modes: INFO and EXER. The INFO mode is where a user inputs important information like: weight, height, age and gender. By using the EXER mode, the user can then discover certain statistics related to their current fitness condition and performance. Such statistics include your: BMI, amount of calories you should burn each day, how many calories you have burned during an exercise and what distance you have travelled while running.
Another feature the special footwear has is interchangeable weighted insoles. Instead of wearing ankle weights, the weighted insoles challenge the body without putting excess pressure on your joints. Individuals can start off with the simple lightweight insole and as their performance progresses, they can move on to the heavy weight insole. Airun has stated that this unique feature will help you increase the exercise value of normal activities by 3 times. So instead of increasing your workout to raise your performance, you can adjust the shoe itself.
Like other fitness devices, the Airun + is basically a specially-designed shoe that can help calculate your performance and progression. It’s very interesting that a company has actually integrated such dynamic technology into a running shoe. Most manufacturers focus on material and how comfortable a shoe is, but Airun did things differently by actually including advanced technologies in their product.
But hopefully they will come out with more colours for the Airun +. Black and yellow are pretty simple and it would be interesting to see if they can incorporate new designs. Either way, the new technology in the Airun + shoe is bound to kick your exercise routine up a notch.
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Airdrie's recycling services accepting Christmas trees, packaging
Staff at Airdrie’s Waste and Recycling Depot are reminding residents to recycle their Christmas cards, boxes, wrapping paper, gift bags and packaging after the holiday season.
“It can all be recycled,” said Waste and Recycling Team Leader Susan Grimm, adding the ribbons and bows must be removed first.
“We have the facilities in place, we make it as easy as we can. We want people to come and we want to leave the world a better place for our kids.”
Wrapping paper can be put into the mixed paper bin, while plastic and Styrofoam should be removed from cardboard boxes and put in the appropriate containers.
Stretchy plastics, including cellophane and the plastic film that encases cardboard boxes, can be recycled and should be put in the same bin as plastic bags.
All the materials will be baled and sent away to a variety of locations to be recycled into new objects.
Real Christmas trees will also be accepted at the Eastside Recycle Depot until Feb. 1. The dropoff site is located just outside and to the right of the depot. Grimm said the location is well marked by signage.
FortisAlberta and Asplundh are partnering with the City of Airdrie and chipping the trees at no cost, said Grimm.
The resulting mulch will be used in city planters, beds and pathways throughout the coming year.
Grimm said all decorations, tinsel and tree bags must be removed before the trees can be chipped.
The tree bags can be recycled in the main depot area.
Grimm encourages residents to take advantage of the service, adding garbage collectors won’t pick up the discarded trees.
“The hours are convenient and it keeps the trees out of the landfill,” she said.
The Eastside Depot is closed Dec. 24 and 25, open Dec. 26 to 30 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1.
The Westside Depot is open 24 hours, 7 days a week through the holiday season.
For more information, visitwww.airdrie.ca
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| 0.931745 | 468 | 1.6875 | 2 |
New Delhi, May 25 (IANS) With rash driving and road rage spreading like cancer, a programme is on here to teach cab drivers road safety as well as the virtues of punctuality and etiquette. With the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimating India's loss due to road accidents at $20 billion a year, cab companies are now enrolling their drivers for the special lessons.
According to a 2010 report by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, there were 490,000 road accidents in India in 2011, of which 78 percent were blamed on drivers' faults.
These accidents killed 125,000 people, down from 2010's 134,000.
Realising the poor efficacy of awareness campaigns that "preach" more than teach, GlobalTHEN has designed an interactive, multi-media, Bollywood-style programme.
Pawan, a fictional character, plays the role of an ideal driver. Cab companies and other private firms are making a beeline for the programme.
"The main aim is to scale up the motivational level of the driver - to instill in him the sense of responsibility of his job and make him realise that his job is just as dignified as anyone else's," Ram Badrinathan, CEO and founder of GlobalTHEN, told IANS.
"Pawan Ko Kahin Dekha Kya?", as the programme is called, uses Bollywood style dialogues, songs and riddles to teach the importance of punctuality, knowledge of area, hygiene, car maintenance, etiquette and safety.
It shows how Pawan handles difficult situations, puts safety as a priority, and comes across as the ideal driver in a non-preachy manner, he added.
The programme, which rolled out in February, has trained more than 500 drivers till date. It has private cab, tourism and radio taxi companies and BPOs signing up. Government bodies have also enrolled their drivers.
Tata Motors feels that technical skills aside, the workshop is crucial in helping drivers gain confidence and respect for their job - all of which make them responsible behind the wheel.
"This programme's focussed approch on behaviour and motivation is just as important and is often neglected," G.S. Uppal of Tata Motors told IANS.
Sakshi Vij, vice president of cab company Carzonrent, added that encouraging soft skill training ultimately promotes defensive driving and thus safe driving.
"Focus on soft skills will encourage respect for traffic signal and road safety," Vij told IANS.
The programme packs six sessions with 26 activities that include drama, poetry and music.
Ravi Kumar, a driver, described the experience as thrilling.
"Bahut kuch seekhne ko mila (I learnt a lot)," he exclaimed, adding that despite not sleeping well the previous night because of night shift, he didn't realise how time flew by.
"Small things like wishing good morning or smiling and wearing clean clothes make a lot of difference in the customer's attitude and helps us earn respect for our work," added Biki, another driver.
Ravi Prakash Tyagi of travel portal Make MyTrip, which has 50 drivers enrolled and plans to sign in 125 more, added that such initiatives will help improve the quality of public transport.
"In places like Delhi and Gurgaon where cars and buses ferry thousands and thousands every day, such road safety programmes are critical," Tyagi said.
To woo local taxis, Badrinathan of GlobalTHEN said: "We are now trying to approach the taxi unions through a different medium to convince them to join the training."
India has a dubious record of having the most number of road accident deaths in the world.
(The author can be reached on [email protected])
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Prudential employees and their families pitched in to help clean up a local charter school Saturday as part of the company's Global Volunteer Day.
A team of volunteers met at the Briarmeadow Charter School in southwest Houston. Their plan was to help clean up the outside, but the bad weather forced them to move inside and come up with a different strategy.
"We had a project to do outside. We were going to power wash the side and trim some shrubs," said Linda Richard with Prudential.
Students, parents and other volunteers from Prudential focused on what needed to be done inside by cleaning out storage closets and getting rid of things they don't need.
"We're cleaning out areas we really never get to, so it's a great time to clean the closets out and clean out those little corners and make sure our school is really great looking," said Briarmeadow Charter School Principal Peter Heinze.
Officials with Prudential said Global Volunteer Day was introduced in October of 1995 to celebrate and encourage employee volunteerism. That first year, officials said more than 5,000 employees and their families and friends worked on 100 volunteer projects in the United States and Japan. Prudential officials said last year, more than 28,000 people participated in 750 projects worldwide.
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| 0.978235 | 266 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Without a doubt, in the Bulgakov ménage of the 1930s we see the functioning of an authentic salon, externally altered by the difference in eras. In the evenings, with a frequency and regularity that can only astonish those who know from his archive just how much Bulgakov accomplished, the Bulgakovs entertained guests: friends, musicians, composers, artists, actors, or simply acquaintances who were interested in literature. A mere recital of the names gives an indication of the wit and intellect on display at those gathering: actors from the Moscow Art Theatre and Vakhtangov Theatre; film stars; foreign actors who were performing the host’s plays abroad; among the artists were Dmitriev, Vil’yams, Boris Erdman; among the musicians, conductors and composers were Golovanov, Asafiev, Melik-Pashaev, Samosud, Shebalin, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Dunaevsky, Shaporin… Akhmatova and Zamyatin called in when visiting Moscow from Leningrad; Nikolai Erdman was a welcome guest. … What is important is the gathering of artistic talent in the broadest sense, people of different creative professions, a living current of ideas, images, thoughts and plans.
Verses, improvisations, epigrams… just as in the drawing rooms of the previous century. And albums too, only no longer the albums of young ladies or society lionesses. Bulgakov had his own albums: reviews and newspaper articles collected and stuck in scrap-books as a record of his literary reception. They are preserved in his archive and were for a long time not released to researchers, so explosive and eloquent are they as documents of their epoch. Many shrill voices merge here into a ragged but aggressive choir.
Fragments of the old-fashioned salon, squeezed by the new times and cramped for space, persisted stubbornly, seizing every opportunity to appear. The large town houses that accommodated operas, masquerades and balls gave way to 47 square feet in which four people lived (The Bulgakovs, Elena Bulgakova’s younger son by her previous marriage and the housemaid). The luxury of the salons in Pushkin’s day had shrivelled in the new socio-economic conditions. Now the domestic “salon” was for Bulgakov first and foremost a means of forming and sustaining a circle of personal contacts that were an essential part of his life as a writer. In order to continue working he needed to sense a reader who did, despite everything, exist. Literature turned away from open, outward-directed forms – journals, almanacs, editorial offices, literary clubs and evenings – and took refuge in privacy. The domestic replaced the public space.
from Bulgakov: the novelist-playwright by Lesley Milne
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| 0.966777 | 594 | 1.8125 | 2 |
What is the Origami Envelope Project?
What do people do when they find an envelope with a little extra cash if they cannot return it to the owner? Does it help them out? Does it brighten their day? I stayed up one night thinking of how to go about this, and thus the Origami Envelope Project was born.
I folded 10 envelopes, placed a $10 bill inside, along with a short explanation and instruction sheet. Each envelope will be left somewhere in Austin and maybe even a couple in other parts of the country as I travel during the end of May. Shortly after leaving the envelope, I will post a picture of the envelope and some detail on where I left it.
Whoever finds the envelope will be asked to leave a comment or send an email saying where they found the envelope and what they plan to do with the $10.
A little social experiment to see how I can change someone’s day through a small gift.
Keep an eye on this page as it is updated with locations of envelopes and the responses as I receive them.
Envelope #1 was left at Starbucks on Oltorf and I-35, Austin on May 7, 2012. Found by Marcus who doesn’t know what he will do with it, but was discussing keeping a positive outlook when it was found.
Envelope #2 was left at Panera Bread on William Cannon just off MoPac on May 8, 2012. Found by David, 52, who is undecided on his use of the money, but is considering putting Envelope #2 back into the wild for another person to find.
Envelope #3 was left at the Austin Mini Maker Faire on May 12, 2012. It was found by a father and son attending the faire. The father gave the $10 to his son to pay the barber to cut his hair which he has been growing out for two years. He plans to donate his hair to Locks of Love.
Envelope #4 was left at Starbucks on William Cannon and MoPac on May 14, 2012. Nicole, a barista, shared the $10 with her co-workers in the tip jar. Nicole decided to put Envelope #4 back into the world herself, so keep an eye out for further updates on this one.
Ahh the envelopes have gone out and I have not updated in a while. Here’s what’s been happening:
Envelope #5: I can’t for the life of me remember where I left it, and so far no one has claimed it online.
Envelope #6 was left at Squeeze In when I visited Reno for my Aunt’s wedding a couple of weeks ago. It was found by Heidi, who sent this lovely email and is also going to put the envelope back into the wild.
Hello, My name is Heidi and I am 51 years old and I found envelope #6. I found it on Wednesday 23rd of May 2012.I found the envelope at my work. I work at the Squeeze In (Best Omelet’s on the Planet) located at 5020 Las Brisas Blvd, Reno, NV 89523. It almost got thrown away, it was in a stack of newspapers that I was straightening, and the beautiful envelope caught my eye. The “Please Open Me” is what saved it from the trash.This is such an awesome idea. At first I had decided to give the money to a homeless person but I have now decided I will give $10 of my own to a homeless person and put this envelope back into circulation. I will be traveling to Maui next week for my daughters wedding and have decided to drop it off there for someone else to find.I really like the whole idea of making someones day brighter by finding this beautiful envelope. Whether is it because they need the money or just enjoyed the process like me..
What brought you to Reno and what day did you drop it off?Thanks, Heidi Davis Reno NV
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An oil and gas exploration company was experiencing hydraulic hose failures, which was costing them downtime and money. Inspection by the local ParkerStore personnel discovered that improper hose routing was causing abrasion to the hose, leading to failure.
An oil and gas exploration company based in western Pennsylvania and Ohio grew concerned due to the premature failure of several high-pressure hydraulic hose assemblies. The failures, which were occurring at the most expensive phase of the extraction process, led to loss of time and money.
The drilling superintendent went to the local ParkerStore to discuss the problem with the manager. The hoses — 34-in. ID SAE 100 R17 / ISO11237 — were failing as the rig feeder moved the drill pipe into the drill head to go down into the well, according to Parker. After closer inspection it was determined that abrasion was to blame. Improper installation, insufficient bend radius, and a lack of abrasion-resistant hose covers, such as Parker’s Tough Covers, resulted in deep cuts from the rails on the equipment that moved horizontally. Several hoses also had deep rub marks from rubbing against each other as well as some of the smoother equipment. On top of the abrasion, sudden failures would occur when a hose pulled out of the fitting, which also resulted in spilled oil.
The ParkerStore manager recommended several solutions: the use of two on-site crimpers for immediate replacement of hose assemblies, the use of Parker hose with an abrasion-resistant cover, and rerouting of hoses properly. The rerouting would prevent hoses from pulling out of the fitting and also minimize rubbing. In addition, store personnel provided on-site training in the ParkerStore for the rig hands and supervisors.
For details, call (216) 896-3000 or visit www.parkerstore.com.
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| 0.970205 | 379 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Debt showdown may be delayed: Republicans press for three-month stopgap bill on US borrowing
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seeking to regain their budget footing versus President Barack Obama, Republicans controlling the House are moving quickly to try to defuse a potential debt crisis with legislation to prevent a first-ever U.S. default for at least three months.
The Republicans are giving up for now on trying to extract spending cuts from Democrats in return for an increase in the government's borrowing cap. But the respite promises to be only temporary, with the stage still set for major battles between the GOP and Obama over taxes, spending and deficits.
The first step comes Wednesday with a House vote on GOP-sponsored legislation that would give the government enough borrowing leeway to meet three months' worth of obligations, delaying a showdown next month that Republicans fear they would lose.
Republicans leaving a two-hour meeting Tuesday afternoon appeared confident that the measure would pass.
While it's commonly assumed that the Treasury Department wouldn't allow a disastrous default on U.S. Treasury notes, the prospect of failing to meet other U.S. obligations such as payments to contractors, unemployment benefits and Social Security checks would also be reputation shattering. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other GOP leaders have made it plain they don't have the stomach for it.
Exit polls: Netanyahu wins narrow majority in Israeli election, centrists gain ground
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line allies fared far worse than expected in a parliamentary election Tuesday, preliminary results showed, likely forcing him to reach across the aisle to court a popular political newcomer to cobble together a new coalition.
While Netanyahu appeared positioned to serve a third term as prime minister, the results marked a major setback for his policies and could force him to make new concessions to restart long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians.
His most likely partner was Yesh Atid, or There is a Future, a party headed by political newcomer Yair Lapid that showed surprising strength. Lapid has said he would only join a government committed to sweeping economic changes and a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.
Addressing his supporters early Wednesday, Netanyahu vowed to form as broad a coalition as possible. He said the next government would be built on principles that include reforming the contentious system of granting draft exemptions to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and the pursuit of a "genuine peace" with the Palestinians. He did not elaborate, but the message seemed aimed at Lapid.
Shortly after the results were announced, Netanyahu called Lapid and offered to work together. "We have the opportunity to do great things together," Netanyahu was quoted as saying by Likud officials.
10 Things to Know for Wednesday
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Wednesday:
1. A SHORT-TERM REPAIR FOR THE DEBT CEILING
The House will vote Wednesday on a GOP measure to give the government enough borrowing leeway to pay three months' worth of bills.
North Korea warns it will strengthen 'nuclear deterrence' in reaction to UN punishment
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea swiftly lashed out against the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of its December launch of a long-range rocket, saying Wednesday that it will strengthen its military defenses -- including its nuclear weaponry -- in response.
The defiant statement from North Korea's Foreign Ministry was issued hours after the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning Pyongyang's Dec. 12 rocket launch as a violation of a ban against nuclear and missile activity. The resolution, which required approval from Pyongyang's ally China, also added to sanctions against the North.
The Foreign Ministry called the launch a peaceful bid to send a satellite into space rather than a test of long-range missile technology. It said North Korea "should counter the U.S. hostile policy with strength, not with words."
The statement ominously warned that North Korea will "bolster the military capabilities for self-defense including the nuclear deterrence."
The wording "considerably and strongly hints at the possibility of a nuclear test," analyst Hong Hyun-ik at the private Sejong Institute think tank near Seoul said Wednesday.
Poll: Most back path to citizenship for illegal immigrants as Republican opposition declines
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 6 in 10 Americans now favor allowing illegal immigrants to eventually become U.S. citizens, a major increase in support driven by a turnaround in Republicans' opinions after the 2012 elections.
The finding, in a new Associated Press-GfK poll, comes as the Republican Party seeks to increase its meager support among Latino voters, who turned out in large numbers to help-re-elect President Barack Obama in November.
Emboldened by the overwhelming Hispanic backing and by shifting attitudes on immigration, Obama has made overhauling laws about who can legally live in the U.S. a centerpiece of his second-term agenda. In the coming weeks, he's expected to aggressively push for ways to create an eventual pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country.
The poll results suggest that the public overall, not just Hispanics, will back his efforts. Sixty-two percent of Americans now favor providing a way for illegal immigrants in the U.S. to become citizens, an increase from just 50 percent in the summer of 2010, the last time the AP polled on the question.
In an even earlier poll, in 2009, some 47 percent supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Russia begins evacuating nationals from Syria as civil war rages
MASNAA, Lebanon (AP) -- Key Syrian ally Russia began evacuating its citizens from the country on Tuesday as the civil war gathered momentum in the capital Damascus with intense fighting around the international airport.
The evacuation was the strongest sign yet of Moscow's waning confidence in the ability of its ally President Bashar Assad to hold onto power. The U.N. chief said Tuesday that a diplomatic conclusion to the war seems unlikely.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the Russian evacuations indicate "the continued deterioration of the security situation and the violence that Assad is leading against his own people."
Four buses carrying about 80 people, mostly women married to Syrians and their children, crossed out of the country over land into neighboring Lebanon in the early afternoon. The land route was presumably chosen because of renewed fighting near the Damascus airport.
The first of two planes sent to pick up the Russians took off late Tuesday from Beirut and landed shortly after 5 a.m. (0100 GMT) in Moscow. Russia's Emergencies Ministry, which sent the planes, said the passengers were being given medical examinations before leaving the airport. It was unclear if any of them had been injured in the fighting.
Fight between 2 people leads to gunfire on Texas college campus, worker caught in crossfire
HOUSTON (AP) -- A fight between two people erupted in gunfire Tuesday at a Houston-area community college, catching a maintenance man in the crossfire and leaving students and others cowering in classrooms.
No one was killed, but the volley of gunshots heard shortly after 12 p.m. on the Lone Star College campus sparked fear of another campus massacre just more than a month after 26 people were killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
The shooting happened outside between an academic building and the library where Luis Resendiz, 22, was studying on the second floor. An employee called police and then herded the 30 to 40 people in the library into a small room and told them to crouch down, he said.
Keisha Cohn, 27, was in a building about 50 feet away and began running as soon as she heard the shots.
"To stay where I was wasn't an option," said Cohn, who fled from a building that houses computers and study areas. All the students eventually were evacuated, running out of buildings as police officers led them to safety.
Pa. ex-pastor awaiting trial in 1st wife's death convicted of fatally bludgeoning 2nd wife
STROUDSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- A former pastor awaiting trial in the 1999 death of his first wife was convicted Tuesday of fatally bludgeoning his second wife nine years later.
Arthur "A.B." Schirmer, 64, was called the "sinister minister" by a prosecutor who said he clubbed Betty Schirmer on the head with a crowbar, then loaded her into their car and staged a low-speed accident in an effort to conceal the crime.
The ex-clergyman was motionless as the jury returned its verdict 90 minutes after getting the case, and he said nothing while being led from the courtroom in handcuffs.
His conviction brought cries and tears of joy from the family of Betty Schirmer, who prosecutors say suffered mortal brain injuries when he attacked her on July 15, 2008.
"Today, she can finally rest in peace," said her son, Nate Novack, who thanked prosecutors for "bringing my mom's killer to justice."
Did she or didn't she? Beyonce questioned about lip syncing national anthem at inauguration
WASHINGTON (AP) -- There's no question Beyonce's rendition of the national anthem was a roaring success. The mystery: was it live or lip synced?
On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marine Band told news outlets that Beyonce had lip synced at President Barack Obama's inauguration. Master Sgt. Kristin duBois said the band was notified at the last minute that Beyonce would use a pre-recorded voice track.
But by late afternoon, the Marine Corps backed off that statement.
Marine Corps spokesman Capt. Gregory Wolf said that because there was no opportunity for Beyonce to rehearse with the Marine Band, it was determined that a live performance by the band was ill advised. Instead they used a pre-recorded track for the band's portion of the song.
"Regarding Ms. Knowles-Carter's vocal performance," Wolf's statement continued, "no one in the Marine Band is in a position to assess whether it was live or pre-recorded."
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Over at Forbes, Larry Downes looks at recent actions from the FCC and calls them a “hat trick of errors on Internet regulations”:
With Congress in recess and Washington largely abandoned last week, the FCC issued three major orders. Comprising some four hundred pages of dense text, the rulings addressed widely different topics: reporting the progress of broadband deployment by private networks, price regulation over middle mile Internet (what the agency calls “special access”), and the proposed sale to Verizon of wireless spectrum currently being warehoused by a consortium of cable companies.
The timing was no coincidence. In its last major overhaul of the agency in 1996, Congress left the FCC with almost no authority over the Internet, whether content, transmission or the devices and software that consumers use to enjoy it. All three of last week’s orders pushed well beyond the FCC’s legal authority. Issuing them in rapid succession was the act of a petulant teenager, loudly defying a parent he knows has already left the room.
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The 2012 host faces numerous challenges, including tight budgets, security concerns, and a dearth of homegrown Olympic champions in many sports.
Follow that! Even before Beijing passed the Olympic baton to London on Sunday, British officials were gearing up to face a formidable challenge in matching the 2008 Games. The Chinese have raised the Olympic bar and some 2012 Games organizers are already trying to manage expectations.
Boris Johnson, the London mayor who received the Olympic flag on Sunday, has stressed that although “dazzled” and “blown away” by the Beijing Games, he is not intimidated. But Mr. Johnson and others who will preside over Olympic preparations face three challenges that the Chinese had less trouble with: security, homegrown Olympians, and cash flow.
The first was underscored hours after London was awarded the 2012 Games in 2005, when the July 7 bombings startled Londoners into realizing that they, too, were on the front lines in the battle with Muslim extremists. The Olympic site is positioned in the middle of one of Britain’s largest Muslim communities in the east London neighborhood of Stratford.
But the authorities don’t want the metallic grip of security to squeeze the joy out of the Games. According to Games minister Tessa Jowell, “The key thing is that the security is effective and keeps people safe, but it is not oppressive.” A security blueprint is expected at the end of the year. The aspiration is to enable people to soak up the atmosphere inside the Olympic park, even without tickets to venues – a bit like Wimbledon.
When it comes to the competitions, however, the hope is for anything but Wimbledon-like performances. In the tennis championship, Britain hasn’t won a medal in men’s or women’s singles since 1977. There are concerns that the British won’t come up with home champions to grace the 2012 Olympics. Only 12 years ago in Atlanta, the team won just one gold and failed to make the top 30 nations.
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New Channel Islands High School girls' basketball coach Eugene Ayala has come up with a win-win idea: creating a special-needs basketball camp for people with disabilities.
"We're trying to bring something positive to the community through the school," Ayala said of the two-day camp that opened Thursday. The camp is a cooperative effort between the school and Oxnard Recreation and Community Services, with sponsors from the community kicking in.
Ayala, whose sister Gerri Lynn Ayala has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, wanted to start a program to let the young women on his team interact with people with special needs, with each group learning valuable lessons from the other.
"It's a learning experience for all of us here," Ayala said.
Tiarah Umu, 16, one of the Channel Islands team's top players, said she initially was apprehensive about working with people with disabilities because she didn't know what to expect.
"I was nervous at first. I've never worked with kids before. But I'm warming up to it. Some of them are learning my name and a lot of them are having fun," she said.
The camp features students from Channel Islands, as well as some young men from Camarillo High School, teaching those with disabilities how to dribble, pass and do cone drills. Camarillo boys' basketball program assistant David Mitchell said the camp not only gives the students a chance to learn how to relate to people who may have different needs, but it also breaks down perceived barriers between the Camarillo students and the Oxnard students.
"I went to school at Channel Islands. It's good to bring the Oxnard and Camarillo kids together for special projects," Mitchell said.
Danielle Brown, who is a varsity basketball player for Channel Islands, said she is enjoying working with her new coach.
"I like his discipline. I like this idea and I think we'll have a good season," she said. "We're still warming up to each other, but he's a good guy."
Danielle, who led her contingent of special-needs kids across the gym in an impromptu cha-cha line, said she had never worked with children with disabilities.
"This is my first time. I love kids and I understand them. I love doing this. I wouldn't mind getting a job working with these kids," she said before going back to patiently showing the campers how to dribble the ball.
Bianca Davies, program administrator for Cole Vocational Services, a vocational day program of the Mentor Network based in Ventura, said the camp is a great way for her students to enjoy themselves.
"This is close to my heart. I graduated from Oxnard High School in 2008 and played basketball," Davies said. "The kids come here and socialize, meet new people and reminisce with other people they've met before at different events."
Ayala's mother, Mary Clary, of Ojai, was at the camp, where six of her 16 children were helping out or participating. Clary said programs like the basketball camp are important for her as a caregiver for her daughter.
"This should definitely go on once a month," Clary said.
Ayala was pleased to see more than 30 special-needs campers lining up and donning colored vests for a day of basketball.
"I want to do more," he said. "I'd like to get this up and going so we can do it with other sports."
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Opinion: Ziff Davis Internet's Jeff Angus writes that it's possible to restructure existing organizations to make processes more efficient by balancing what tasks automated systems handle and which are a human's responsibility.
Assemble a ZBA team from multiple disciplines that go beyond the disciplines that designed your current systems.
Only a minority of the group should be professional technologists, and you should have at least two members who are cooperative end users who do line work and who aren't good with technology (people who normally need a lot of help, but not professional complainers, either).
Start your ZBA exercise on underperforming pieces of your existing portfolio.
Do any of them fall short because of imperfect design, delivering the wrong information, or the right information in forms that create too much friction to use?
Do any lack of end-user buy-in? Are any of them using technology to do things people have done better? What would you have to do to dis-automate pieces of them or the entire project?
You can add texture to the answers if you interview end users; the cooperative-but-low-tech members can be superb interviewers for this purpose.
Your interviewers, however, have to make sure they don't intimidate informants or make them feel like they have to display understanding when they don't.
Move on to projects that have not yet been set in stone.
Here you have the opportunity to do rationalization in its most purely profitable way especially if your goal is a business-oriented and not just gadget-oriented one.
How do human skills and technology best complement each other to achieve your goal?
Play with the concept of zero-based automation, that is, if you had no existing automation to get you to the defined goal, which pieces are humans intrinsically poor at to a degree that it would be worth inventing technology from scratch to assist or replace the humans?
What pieces do people never improve by their touch but only create the opportunity for degradation? What technology exists that might work as a replacement?
Don't Be Make Yourself Roadkill
Even if you're too timid to be a leader in this unstoppable trend, you can prepare yourself to hop aboard by running these kinds of thought exercises now.
The farther you strip away the concept of technology-as-human-replacement and build instead on the idea of open-eyed realism in creating partnerships between technology and human aptitudes, the higher the potential returns and competitive advantage.
The end of the intensification cycle has a few bits of margin to squeeze out, but they are diminishing returns on diminished principal.
Much of the gain to be harvested is in zones where social pushback will be high enough to undercut the calculated benefits.
A prime example (of both gains and whirlwinds to be reaped) is the British initiative to use prisoner-tracking technology to make sure workers don't take unauthorized breaks and to help them navigate the stock in large, dynamic warehouses.
Those intensifications of de-staffing projects will still exist.
There are still mediocre gains to be had in them for organizations with a strong commitment to mediocrity.
The big rewards will be in rationalizing your technology, and in getting the most out of people, technology and the patterns that bring out the complementary value of the two.
Jeff Angus is a management consultant and has been working with IT since 1974. He has held IT management positions in user interface design, marketing, operations and testing/analysis. Look for his book, "Management by Baseball: A Pocket Reader." Jeff's columns have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Baltimore Sun. He can be reached at [email protected].
Check out eWEEK.com's for the latest news, reviews and analysis on IT management from CIO Insight.
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have to send to Singapore. I sent for them, but the dealers were out of
stock and asked whether they were to send to England for them. I cabled
a rush message, "Send to the moon if you can't get them nearer!" They
arrived in about eight weeks' time.
before they arrived there was a crisis in my affairs. One day Walton,
liquored up to the gills, rushed into my office shouting and swearing,
and told me I'd have to pay him for the twelve weeks or so he had been
kept waiting for the parts or—and then he pulled his gun on me.
was in my office alone, as it happened, and it would have been fatal to
shout for help. But here was an infuriated wild beast; the look in the
man's eye was sufficient to tell me that he had gone out of his mind.
It was past mid-day and everyone in town had already gone home to
dinner. There was little chance of anyone crossing the plaza at that
time. Yet my luck held. The unexpected happened. An American pearler
from Mindanao, who had just come ashore and was passing my office,
looked in at the open door and took in the situation at a glance. He
seized the fellow's arms from behind and made him drop the gun. I asked
for the man's deportation after that. He was shipped out, and a few
weeks later he had to be taken to the madhouse.
this time the amok-runners were again getting so bad that no one who
hadn't very pressing business would go out of the city gates. One day
an American officer and his wife and children went for a short stroll
almost within sight of the citadel walls and within call of the sentry
at the gate. A jura-mentado came hop-sway-dancing along and slish—took
off the officer's head, as you might cut a cabbage from its stalk, and
slash—went an arm and half his trunk ere the head rolled upon the
ground. The amok ran on towards the market, leaving the poor woman
bewildered and the children staring at what had just been their father.
Government decided that something drastic had to be done. But what
measures can be taken against madmen? The officials pondered deep and
long. Then someone had an
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The piece contains SPOILERS for "Life of Pi."
Ang Lee’s "Life of Pi," adapted from the best-selling novel by Yann Martel, is a gorgeous film, and its visual splendor is of a rare and special kind: there’s a real sense of joy here, both in the act of image-making and in the resulting images themselves. "Life of Pi" is set, for the most part, on a small lifeboat lost at sea, inhabited only by an adolescent boy (Suraj Sharma) and a full-grown Bengal tiger. Pi -- our young hero -- has just seen his family vanish under the waves one stormy night, along with the steamer ship that was to bear them to America with a zooful of animals in tow (hence Pi’s ferocious feline companion). Lee seems happily oblivious to all the limitations associated with filming a blockbuster on a lifeboat, gliding along the meager area available to him with effortless grace. There are some wondrous images on display here -- a fluorescent orca whale leaping from the waves to trace a perfect arc across the sky, or the star-studded heavens reflected so perfectly in the sea that Pi’s lifeboat seems to hang in midair – and Lee’s camera takes them in with appropriately starry-eyed awe.
The catch is that "Life of Pi" aspires to be more than a showcase for its director’s visual chops: it wants to make us believe in God, and belief, in Yann Martel’s world, is an awfully flimsy thing. (Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS follow) In the film’s final minutes, an adult Pi, having just finished telling his story to an aspiring writer friend, introduces another. In this version, there are no tigers, no magic islands, no fluorescent orca whales. There’s hunger, murder, and bloody revenge; no redemption, only survival. No one can say for sure which story is true. "Which do you prefer?" Pi asks. The writer pauses. "The one with the tiger." Pi pauses significantly, then replies: "And so it goes with God."
When people say that they believe in God, though, they don't usually just mean that they'd prefer a world with God to one without Him. To believe that which you’d prefer is, quite literally, wishful thinking. Faith does consist of choosing one state of affairs over another, but it's about choosing not the one you’d prefer, but the one you take for truth: in fact, I’d argue that the faithful are distinguished in part by their capacity to believe some things they might not want to believe. The sort of truths that demand belief tend to be those that can’t be rationally proven; we need more than reason to believe, which might be why at the press conference for "Life of Pi" Martel characterized faith as "a need to believe something that is fundamentally unreasonable." The equivalent, in short, of believing a story involving giant glowing orca whales to one involving cabin fever and murder -- because you’d really rather the first story be true, logic be damned.
God, or the idea of God, is inscrutable, unfathomable, and difficult -- but not unreasonable. Faith demands a leap, but it is not a leap from logic into illogic. It’s as if, having guided us to a certain point, our rational faculties were to stop dead. We can’t take you any farther, they’d say -- but they’d point to a speck far in the distance, and tell us to follow the indicated path. The faithful never throw reason to the wayside; they follow its lead even after they’ve left its explicit jurisdiction.
The point here is that, by setting faith up as a matter of preference, Martel doesn’t have to choose one out of several mutually exclusive religions: he can believe them all, simply by preferring that they’d all be the case. "How can you be a Christian, a Hindu, and a Muslim?" Pi’s friend asks. "Religion," he replies, "is a house with many rooms." The implication is that we get to build the house -- that religion is, essentially, whatever we’d like it to be. In those moments when it reaches most desperately for profundity, "Life of Pi" ends up trading in these sorts of vague spiritual proclamations: adrift, like its hero, in an undifferentiated sea of preferences, fancies, and whims.
And that position -- unmoored, unstable, even empty -- ends up doing for Lee what it did for Pi: it opens up a specific way of seeing, an almost childlike receptiveness to the fantastic and the impossible. Perhaps "Life of Pi"'s lack of any visual inhibition, its willingness to submit to and luxuriate comfortably in images that defy expectations or even possibility (a human tooth lodged in a flower, a tiger pacing a raft, a glow-in-the-dark whale) stems from its philosophical weightlessness, from its conviction that faith is unbound by logic or rationality. To watch "Life of Pi" is, in some sense, to watch a grown man take that warm, fuzzy feeling he felt as a child in the presence of something incomprehensible, or at least impossible to empirically prove, and turn it into doctrine -- and if he has to embrace a pretty shaky conception of faith from then on out, at least he has the consolation of getting to see reality as only a child can.
All of which goes to show that "it’s visually stunning, but..." can sometimes translate to "it’s visually stunning because..." -- and that we might be forgiven in overlooking a film’s philosophical flimsiness if it means letting us do for a few hours what we’ve long since forgotten how to do: toss our reasoning aside, and gape in awe.
Max Nelson studies philosophy at Columbia University, where he is the co-founder of the undergraduate film journal Double Exposure. He thinks everyone should be excellent to one another. This piece is part of Indiewire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Critics Academy at the New York Film Festival. Click here to read all of the Academy's work.
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Introducing… Chris Rackley
I first noticed Chris Rackley’s art when I found a link to his thesis exhibition, Behind the Sky (January 2012). The DC-based artist is a MFA graduate from George Mason University (and member of Floating Lab Collective) who creates “cinematic vignettes” inspired by distant worlds and sci-fi films. His work was recently featured in a group show at Artisphere in celebration of Countdown to Yuri’s Night called Elevator to the Moon: Retro-future Visions of Space. Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity. So I emailed Chris for a quick Q&A to hear more about his inspirations, creative practice, and new work. Here’s what he had to share.
On a daily basis, what inspires you?
Scientific research related to the fundamental nature of the universe is fascinating. Knowing about the most basic structures of reality has always been a thrill for me. Years ago, when I worked in a darkroom developing X-ray images trying to make money after college, I spent hours trying to understand special relativity. As soon as it was safe to turn on the lights in the darkroom, I would read from a textbook on modern physics, working through the problems on my old TI-81 graphing calculator. After a few minutes, more X-ray film would arrive for me to develop and I would have to turn off the overhead lights and return to work. In the dark, I thought about Einstein’s postulates, reviewing his thought experiments again and again until, in the dim red light, my mind would finally comprehend and I could see. Understanding special relativity for the first time was like waking up from deep sleep. Although I did not like my job, and despised confinement in a small darkroom, I felt as if I could see beyond the walls into the very fibers of the fabric of reality. I felt powerful and I felt free.
Today, my RSS feeder includes updates from Fermilab, CERN, NASA, and Wolfram’s MathWorld and I continue to seek moments of lucid understanding by learning about current physics research. I am obsessed with efforts by physicists to find a theory to explain everything and I recently lost an entire afternoon to reading about the construction of a Holographic Interferometer at Fermilab. When I make artwork, I work to maintain a sense of connection to the structures behind the everyday, visible world.
Can you explain your creative process?
I am always working on several projects at once. Some ideas work best as paintings; others work better as video pieces or as drawings. The pieces come together around a collection of ideas and interests in a process not unlike the way planets form. My reading in physics, math, philosophy, and science fiction exert a sort of gravitational pull on a variety of media, techniques, and methods. I collect images, videos, old electronic parts, discarded plastic; anything that seems like it could become part of a little world goes into my categorized collection. Sometimes I keep something to use as a reference for a painting because I prefer to paint from life whenever possible. Other found objects sit in my collection for a long time, maybe a year or more, before an appropriate occasion arises: a plastic cup may finally become a rocket ship or an old telephone may become a rover. For me, art making is a way of knowing. If I am ever wondering what to make next, I usually ask myself what it is that I want to learn.
Latecomers to the Universe, installation view, 2012.
What are your thoughts on CERN’s Higgs Boson announcement?
For me, the significance of CERN’s update on the search for the Higgs boson is that the universe is still full of mysteries. Rather than view the announcement as the discovery of the final piece of a puzzle, it might be better to think of the detection of a Higgs-like boson as merely one piece of a small section of much larger puzzle from which many, many more pieces are missing. Even if the properties and behaviors of the particle recently uncovered at CERN are found to exactly match predictions, physicists like Brian Greene keep reminding us that the mathematical model used to make those predictions is still far from supplying a complete description of the universe. Extending the puzzle analogy, not only are there missing pieces to the particle physics puzzle, but the puzzle box with the completed picture on the front is also missing. In other words, physicists are still in hot pursuit of a mathematical model that can describe the whole picture of the universe. I get the sense that understanding of the fundamental nature of the cosmos is at a beginning rather than an end and it seems as though physicists are on the verge of some very startling discoveries.
How do you view the connection between art and science?
Experimentation with physical observables as an approach to discover new knowledge is present in the methodologies of both science and visual art. Scientists and artists spend a great deal of time isolating and scrutinizing matter, time, and space, seeking for something behind or inside the surface of everyday experience. The fruits of both disciplines offer a shift in how the world is perceived. As an example of a perceptual shift offered by science, everyday experience tells me that time runs the same for everyone everywhere, but Einstein’s theories say that my movement alters the speed of time—when I go for a run, my watch runs more slowly. An example from art: everyday experience tells me that a color like cadmium red is always the same, but Josef Albers’ paintings show me that a color can change depending on surrounding colors.
Scientific and artistic discoveries require imagination in order to strike out from what is already known into unexplored territory to contribute to a body of knowledge. It is strange that efforts in the fields of science, art, math, and technology came to be viewed as divergent activities, and especially strange that art making was viewed as a less rational or less intellectual activity. These activities did not seem to be at odds in the minds of Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci, nor do they seem to be at odds in the minds of contemporary artists like Tim Hawkinson.
Long Voyage, installation view, 2012.
What are your current favorite artists, books, or movies?
Sarah Sze has found a poetic way to relate mundane objects to the elegance of cosmic structures. With installations like A Certain Slant, I feel as though I am seeing the fundamental forces involved in the formation of a world. Ian Burns’ work creates an aesthetic moment that is at once beautiful, silly, and intellectually engaging and his pieces display an economy of means that I find attractive. Tim Hawkinson makes pieces that often utilize ingenious mechanisms that seem to originate in the mind of a mad scientist. John Wood and Paul Harrison also make work that I find humorous, especially since they deliver it with straight faces. Their performance pieces feel like science experiments because they use minimal materials to isolate an aesthetic moment in the same way scientists isolate physical phenomena in a laboratory. The work by these artists has helped me understand how to make art that is inspired by scientific ideas while avoiding merely diagramming or demonstrating scientific concepts.
What are you working on right now?
Recently I have been making contraptions consisting of wood construction, lights, motors, found objects, and my own paintings. I think of the contraptions as little reality experiments. A small video camera and a television monitor are paired with each contraption, and from the point of view of the camera, a cinematic image is revealed on the monitors. The images on the monitors are inspired by science fiction film and television. Ambient “space noise” is generated by the motorized movement of the contraptions and amplified.
To design the structure for each piece, I borrow strategies developed by special-effects artists who created cinematic images before the advent of computer generated imagery. Each piece is designed such that visitors can enter the scenes on the televisions by placing themselves, or part of themselves, in front of the camera. The scale of the viewer’s body relative to the objects on the screen changes with each image—in one scene the viewer is larger than a galaxy while in another the viewer fits comfortably inside an impact crater.
Walk-in Crater, installation view, 2012. (View the piece on Vimeo.)
In addition to making the viewer’s scale uncertain, the narrative connection between the images is also unclear. Although science fiction aficionados will find familiar tropes (a planet seen from orbit, a desolate planet surface, an exterior view of a space ship, etc.), the absence of the human figure and the physical separation between the scenes on the monitors allows viewers to insert themselves as explorers or invaders.
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USDA racism case: Ousted rural development director not sure she'd take job back (videos)
Published: Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 11:52 AM Updated: Wednesday, July 21, 2010, 11:54 AM
WASHINGTON -- The woman at the center of a racially tinged firestorm involving the Obama administration and the NAACP said today she doesn't know if she'd return to her job at the Agriculture Department, even if asked.
"I am just not sure how I would be treated there," Shirley Sherrod said in a nationally broadcast interview. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today he would reconsider the department's decision to oust Sherrod over her comments that she didn't give a white farmer as much help as she could have 24 years ago.
She said later in a broadcast interview that she might consider returning if she had the chance, saying she's received encouraging calls, including one from the NAACP.
The White House called the Agriculture Department Tuesday night after more information about Sherrod's remarks emerged, a White House official said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the call, said the White House and the department agreed that the case should be reviewed based on the new evidence.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson called on the administration today to apologize for Sherrod's treatment, saying he had talked to Vilsack Tuesday night before the secretary said he'd take another look at her ouster.
A conservative website posted video of Sherrod's remarks, causing a furor which led to her condemnation by the NAACP and her ouster by Vilsack. Until Tuesday, she was the Agriculture Department's director of rural development in Georgia. Then, she said, she was pressured by superiors to resign.
Sherrod said her remarks, delivered in March at a local NAACP banquet in Georgia, were part of a larger story about learning from her mistakes and racial reconciliation, not racism, and said they were taken out of context by bloggers who posted only part of her speech.
Vilsack's statement came after the NAACP posted the full video of Sherrod's comments Tuesday night.
"I am of course willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner," Vilsack said.
The Obama administration's move to reconsider her employment was an absolute reversal from hours earlier, when the White House official said President Barack Obama had been briefed on Sherrod's resignation after the fact and stood by the Agriculture Department's handling of it.
But growing calls for the administration to reconsider the decision put pressure on Vilsack, who stressed that the decision to ask for her resignation was his alone. The NAACP, which initially condemned Sherrod's remarks and supported her ouster, later said she should keep her job. The civil rights group said it and millions of others were duped by the conservative website that posted partial video of her speech on Monday.
Appearing in a nationally broadcast interview this morning, Sherrod said she "couldn't get the people I was working with" to listen to her explanation.
She said the tone of her comments posted on the website were misleading because they lacked context. "That's not me. If you look at my life's work, you would know that's not me."
"... If they would have looked at the entire tape, I don't see how they could have come away thinking I was a racist," she said.
Sherrod said she was "particularly hurt" by the NAACP's condemnation.
"All of my life has been about civil rights work and fairness," she said. Asked if she would go back to the department if asked, Sherwood said, "That's one ... I just don't know at this point."
The white farming family that was the subject of the story stood by Sherrod and said she should stay.
"We probably wouldn't have (our farm) today if it hadn't been for her leading us in the right direction," said Eloise Spooner, the wife of farmer Roger Spooner of Iron City, Ga. "I wish she could get her job back because she was good to us, I tell you."
As Sherrod reached out to media to plead her case and more people came to her defense, the administration faced criticism that officials nervous about racial perceptions overreacted to her comments and made her a political sacrifice amid dueling allegations of racism between the NAACP and the tea party movement.
In the clip posted on BigGovernment.com, Sherrod described the first time a white farmer came to her for help. It was 1986, and she worked for a nonprofit rural farm aid group. She said the farmer came in acting "superior" to her and she debated how much help to give him.
"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land," Sherrod said.
Initially, she said, "I didn't give him the full force of what I could do" and only gave him enough help to keep his case progressing. Eventually, she said, his situation "opened my eyes" that whites were struggling just like blacks, and helping farmers wasn't so much about race but was "about the poor versus those who have."
The two-minute, 38-second clip posted Monday by BigGovernment.com was presented as evidence that the NAACP was hypocritical in its recent resolution condemning what it calls racist elements of the tea party movement. The website's owner, Andrew Breitbart, said the video shows the civil rights group condoning the same kind of racism it says it wants to erase. Biggovernment.com is the same outfit that gained fame last year after airing video of workers at the community group ACORN counseling actors posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.
In his original statement on the matter Tuesday morning, Vilsack said he had accepted Sherrod's resignation and stressed that the department had "zero tolerance for discrimination." Later in the day, after Sherrod spoke to the media about the intention of her comments, Vilsack sent out a second statement that said the controversy surrounding Sherrod's comments could, rightly or wrongly, cause people to question her decisions as a federal employee and lead to lingering doubts about civil rights at the agency, which has a troubled history of discrimination.
Sherrod said officials showed no interest in listening to her explanation when she was asked to resign. She said she was on the road Monday when USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook called her and told her to pull over and submit her resignation on her Blackberry because the White House wanted her out.
"It hurts me that they didn't even try to attempt to see what is happening here, they didn't care," Sherrod said. "I'm not a racist. ... Anyone who knows me knows that I'm for fairness."
Sherrod appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN and NBC's "Today" show.
(Associated Press Writers Ben Evans and Mary Clare Jalonick authored this report.)
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About Newham Bookshop
Newham Bookshop has been running for nearly thirty four years. In these days when the going is hard for many small businesses, and for independent bookshops in particular, it is a significant achievement for a bookshop to survive for such a time, and Newham Bookshop isn’t just surviving, it’s positively thriving.
Founded to provide a source of books, education and play materials as part of the service of the fledgling Newham Parents’ Centre, it was for many years the entrance to the centre which had its offices and teaching rooms upstairs and alongside.
Over this time, the bookshop has established an important role in its own right. We provide students, teachers, parents and the whole community with the books they require, all with an efficient service in welcoming and friendly surroundings.
Our stock covers a wide range of subjects, but we tend to specialise in the literary and academic titles of particular interest to our customers. Half of the shop is dedicated to children’s books and education materials. Apart from education, we have excellent selections on social studies, politics, history, and counselling and self-help. As each new ethnic group arrives in east London, they descend on Newham Bookshop to buy bilingual dictionaries. New visitors and customers are often surprised to find such a rich variety in a part of London that has not seen the growth of bookshops that has occurred in more affluent areas of the city. Our reputation has spread across the whole of east London.
We also work in schools, helping to set up and run their school bookshops, and with local and national organisations, providing bookstalls at their conferences. We also regularly take authors into schools to read their books and discuss their works with many enthusiastic pupils.
And then there are the Newham Bookshop Events. We invite authors to talk about their work, sign copies of their books and meet their fans. The range of guests is very broad, as you can see from the current season of events advertised on our blog.
Many people have supported us over the years: our loyal customers; many schools and teachers in Newham and elsewhere; Newham Council, and many councillors and officers; our author friends, their public relations people and their publishers; and our supportive partners in the bookselling trade. But last and not least, the many volunteers who have helped in and around the shop and made it possible for us to survive and thrive. We are sure you know who you are; we can’t give names as we’d be bound to miss someone out.
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The Hepworth Wakefield gallery designed by David Chipperfield Architects opens to the public this Saturday.
With 10 naturally-lit exhibition rooms, the gallery in Yorkshire is the largest purpose-built space for art in the UK and will display over 40 works by sculptor Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975), who lived locally.
The building is composed of a grouping of trapezoidal blocks and also contains learning studios, an auditorium, an archive, and a café and shop.
The gallery is accessed via a new pedestrian bridge across the River Calder, next to which the building is situated.
Photography is by Iwan Bann.
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MojoKid writes "At a press event for the impending launch of AMD's new Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 series graphics cards, the company took the opportunity to provide an early look at the first, fully functional samples of their upcoming 'Llano' processor, or APU (Applications Processer Unit). For those unfamiliar with Llano, it's 32nm 'Fusion' product that integrates CPU, GPU, and Northbridge functions on a single die. The chip is a low-power derivative of the company's current Phenom II architecture fused with a GPU that will target a wide range of operating environments at speeds of 3GHz or higher. Test systems showed the integrated GPU had no trouble running Alien vs. Predator at a moderate resolution with DirectX 11 features enabled. In terms of the Radeon 6800 series, board shots have been unveiled today, as well as scenes from AMD's upcoming tech demo, Mecha Warrior, showcasing the new graphics technology and advanced effects from the open source Bullet Physics library."
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Patio Plans can be found or you can create your own Patio Designs. Whether you choose to use Paving Stones or another material, nearly anyone can Build a Patio of their own, adding a relaxing space to their garden.
As seen in the first video, you should think of which elements you want to include in the patio. You can take ideas from nature, such as the cracked ice pattern created by Patio Pavers, or something else similarly organic in nature. This gives a softer feel to the patio.
Other elements may include a wall, built from bricks or stone. Stone offers a more natural look and allows for the incorporation of other elements, such as a stone bird bath or miniature pond carved from a larger rock.
An outdoor fireplace or fire pit can offer a central focal point and a place to gather when lit. It is also a wonderful way to make the patio usable even in cooler months, as you will have a source of heat outside.
Most people choose to bring in their furniture, though it could also be built in place, so consider where you want to place tables and chairs or benches and create Patio Plans accordingly. When you Build a Patio, it is usually easiest to have everything planned out ahead of time so you do not end up with any oddities.
In the second video, you will see how to lay Paving Stones. It is important to prepare the patio area carefully so that your patio will last for many years. The area will need to be excavated and a solid base laid and compacted. Without these steps, the Patio Pavers may shift and settle over time, creating an uneven surface.
Good Patio Plans will help you lay out the Patio Pavers properly. You will know exactly how many you need and what the design should look like. In cases where you are using pavers instead of stones, you may change up the design. Herringbone is a popular way to go, but you may also choose to do a diagonal patio design or a brick-like design. No matter which you use, having a design in mind and on paper will ensure that you have enough pavers and that the patio turns out well.
It is not difficult to Build a Patio if you have taken the time to plan ahead and make sure that you prepare the area carefully. Watch the videos to learn more about planning your Patio Designs.
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At an early morning public hearing Tuesday, no one spoke in favor of legislation to remove smart planning principles from the Iowa Code.
The House Local Government Committee heard from local government officials who argued against House File 268 and said there is no good reason to remove the principles from Iowa law.
“There is no public benefit in removing the smart planning principles from the Code, but there are many benefits in keeping them,” said Bret VandeLune, Polk County planning and development manager and president of the County Zoning Officials of Iowa, which is part of the Iowa State Association of Counties.
Originally introduced by Rep. Dawn Pettengill, R-Mount Auburn, HF 268 would eliminate smart planning principles and other local comprehensive development guidelines from the Code.
Iowa law requires that the 10 principles be considered “are required to consider and may apply” in making planning, development and zoning decisions.
Like VandeLune, two others who spoke against the bill emphasized that the principles are a framework or guideline for local officials and citizens as they discuss development issues.
Offering an “on-the-ground, in-the-trenches” perspective, Carlisle Mayor Ruth Randleman, a former Republican legislative candidate, said that as a taxpayer herself, “I would feel cheated if my elected officials did not wisely anticipate the future needs of my community and address them in a cost-effective manner.”
In her community, Randleman said, the principles have supported improved cost effectiveness in meeting infrastructure needs, improved stewardship of natural resources, better support for the free market, more choices for housing and transportation, promotion of economic development and protection of individual property values.
Elmer Rudolph of Dallas County signed up to speak against HF 268, but declined this morning. After the 11-minute hearing, said his opposition was unchanged.
“Everybody had nice things to say, but they can do that whether this is in the law or not,” Rudolph said.
“It’s voluntary and you can do this whether it’s in the code or not. Why have it?” he said.
Rudolph is right that state law “imposes no mandate whatsoever on our cities or counties,” Less Beck, , Linn County Planning & Development director, said in written testimony. “Rather, it simply provides a framework for decision-making should cities or counties choose to accept it.
“The Iowa Smart Planning Principles can guide such a discussion; HF 268 seeks to stifle it,” Beck said.
That there were so few speakers did not surprise Chairman Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, who scheduled the hearing at the request of committee Democrats. He was surprised 30 to 40 people attended the hearing.
“This is a small enough issue that I’m surprised so many people showed up,” he said.
The bill is eligible for floor debate.
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http://thegazette.com/2013/03/19/no-support-at-public-hearing-for-bill-to-repeal-iowa-smart-planning-principles/
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Statutory help for inspectors general
Lawmakers propose measures to safeguard the independence of federal agencies’ IGs
- By Mark Tarallo
- Jul 09, 2007
Improving Government Accountability Act
Inspectors general have been a potent force in making government accountable ever since Congress created the IG position 30 years ago. Now some members of Congress are mounting an effort to ensure that IGs remain independent and effective watchdogs for decades to come.
Many federal officials agree that IGs play a crucial role in government, but they often disagree on whether more measures are necessary to ensure the independence and accountability of their offices. Those disagreements, observers say, could threaten the success of legislative efforts to strengthen IGs.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) has introduced the Improving Government Accountability Act, which would give IGs greater protection when an agency executive or the president wants to fire them.
Cooper’s legislation has the support of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who announced June 28 she would introduce similar legislation in the Senate. “I’m thrilled to have her leading the fight over there for IG reform,” Cooper said.
McCaskill said several recent incidents have prompted questions about IGs’ objectivity and accountability. For example, a House committee has been investigating NASA’s IG, Robert Cobb, who has been accused of using his position to shield the Bush administration from embarrassing failures at the agency. McCaskill also cited the case of the Homeland Security Department’s IG, Clark Kent Irvin, who alleged he was not reappointed because some people in the agency had labeled him a traitor and turncoat.
Such incidents prove the need for the Cooper bill, McCaskill said. “Inspectors general have been rooting out government waste and inefficiencies for three decades, and it’s time to update our laws to make sure that these offices have the tools and resources they need.”
Reports that some IGs feel compromised prompted Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) to hold a June 21 hearing on IG reforms and solicit comment on Cooper’s bill. Towns is chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Government Management, Organization and Procurement Subcommittee.
Some current and former IGs expressed support at the hearing for Cooper’s legislation. “There is widespread support in the IG community for many provisions in the bill,” said Phyllis Fong, the Agriculture Department’s IG. Kenneth Mead, former IG at the Transportation Department, said independence is critical to preserving IGs’ effectiveness. “The job of the inspector general is to speak truth to power,” he said.
Others, however, have expressed doubts about Cooper’s bill. A panel of government oversight experts organized by the Government Accountability Office offered mixed views on many provisions of the measure, according to a GAO report on the panel’s findings released at the House hearing. A majority of the panel’s experts did not favor establishing a fixed, seven-year term for IGs, saying that could disrupt current agency/IG relationships.
Panelists also had mixed views about a provision in Cooper’s legislation that would allow IGs to make direct budget requests to Congress and the Office of Management and Budget. GAO auditors had other concerns about the legislation’s provision for giving IGs separate personnel authority. “In providing such authorities to the IGs, there could be a great disparity in how this would be implemented by each IG office,” the auditors wrote.
Opponents of the proposed legislation include Clay Johnson, OMB’s deputy director for management. In testimony at the hearing, Johnson argued that the general quality of IG work is superb, accountability is strong, and IGs should not act as “junkyard dogs.”
Cooper said he was open to modifying his bill and would participate in a bipartisan effort toward that end. “I’m confident we can convince our colleagues to strengthen the role of IGs and give them greater independence,” he said. Tarallo is a freelance writer in Washington.
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| 0.961513 | 867 | 1.625 | 2 |
New York Considers Banning Cars From Times Square
Fresh from his appearance on the Live Earth concert broadcast on Saturday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is looking to tackle car congestion in one of the most well-known intersections in the world. Bloomberg is looking to hire a Danish consultant, Jan Gehl, who is responsible for tackling traffic issues in London and Copenhagen.
Gehl’s ideas for New York City are already public. He would ban most car traffic from Times Square, raise parking prices and reduce the number of parking spaces throughout the city. He’d also like to see certain avenues close down and replace streets with tree-lined areas for cafes.
That sounds great and all, but we wonder how New Yorkers will respond.
Auto-Matic Proposal (NYDailyNews.com)
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| 0.933776 | 166 | 1.617188 | 2 |
There’s nothing like a few revolutions to focus the mind. The lesson the world’s smartest authoritarians are drawing from Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution and its neighborhood copycats is simple: It’s all about jobs.
“The leadership in China is always worried about how do you stay ahead of the growth to create enough jobs,” says Dominic Barton, the global managing director of consulting firm McKinsey, who has lived in Asia for much of the past decade. “They have to create over 30 million jobs a year. … They know that if they don’t and there are disruptions and the people don’t have jobs, there will be revolution.”
To illustrate how focused China’s Communist rulers are on jobs, Barton described work he had done helping the Chinese government structure its economic stimulus in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The Chinese authorities came to him with a very specific question: What sort of discount should you put on TVs in Tier 3 cities? “It was a very focused question. And the reason was, they were trying to create consumer demand in a very sophisticated manner.”
The mandarins wanted McKinsey’s advice on how exactly to implement their TV stimulus program: Should the price of televisions be cut by 25 per cent, or should consumers be required to pay the full price, then apply to their mayor for their 25-per-cent rebate? Barton says that once he understood how precise the request was, he “did the McKinsey thing” of talking about how important it was to make sure the project worked and had an impact. One Chinese official wasn’t impressed by his spiel, Barton recalls: “He says, ‘I think we have a different definition of impact than you … If this doesn’t work, we are going to have probably 12 million people that won’t have jobs. And you should know that all of the revolutions in our 5,000-year history have occurred in the countryside.”’
The Middle East’s remaining autocrats are swiftly learning the Chinese lesson, as illustrated vividly by Saudi Arabia’s new $36-billion (U.S.) stimulus program, which includes a 15-per-cent pay increase for public sector workers. As Jack Welch, the former chief executive of GE, described it this week, “In this recession, China did incredible things,” adding that “it is a little bit like what the Saudis are trying to do now to keep everyone happy.”
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Every election is the most important election in history because each election tweaks the direction of history.
I don't see any winners in the recent election except the media, who received the money spent in the most expensive election in history. The business of media did quite well. And their business requires division and conflict, which sells their products.
I don't think that the billionaires lost. Obama is as much in their pocket as Romney - just a different group of billionaires. And the Tea Party didn't lose either. They have all the more reason to continue recruiting because they lost. Their hope is: "2016!" And they are already gearing up for it.
Nate Silver certainly won personally. But his win is a win for narrow minded bigotry and racism. How so? His success was in predicting the election based upon sub-group or demographic analysis. So, now with his analysis and social media, politicians can customize their message to each demographic, each race or cultural sub-group. No longer will politicians be concerned for telling the truth. Rather, they will shape the truth to fit the preconceptions of the various demographics.
The biggest loser is truth itself, as our leaders will increasingly tell us exactly what we want to hear. Each different group will hear a different message catered to garner agreement with some narrow minded preconception or another. The purpose of the campaign is no longer to describe how the candidate will govern. Rather, the sole purpose of the campaign is now to win elections. And winning elections will tend to maintain the status quo. Why would those who currently hold power want to change the structures of power? And anyone who gets elected will have no incentive to change the election process that she dominated.
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ORANGEBURG, S.C., Feb. 29 (UPI) -- U.S. doctors or nurses are often cited for excellence, but environmental services staff are now getting their due for keeping hospitals clean, officials say.
Karren Keitt, a member of the environmental services team at the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg, S.C., has been named this year's recipient of the Hygiene Specialist Excellence award, sponsored by UMF Corp.
George Clarke, chief executive officer of UMF, said the award, in its second year, was established to acknowledge the contribution of environmental services, the first line of defense in providing a safe patient environment and reducing healthcare-acquired infections.
Healthcare-associated infections in U.S. hospitals cost about $40 billion a year, said a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
"We want environmental services employees to be recognized for their critical role as the 'first line of defense' in reducing the risk of healthcare-acquired infections and ensuring a safe patient environment," Clarke said in a statement.
This award comes as more hospitals are beginning to realize that environmental hygiene can play a significant role in improving patient satisfaction scores, Clarke said.
"At the end of the day, it is people like Karren Keitt who make the difference on many different levels -- infection prevention, patient satisfaction and ultimately a hospital's bottom line," Clarke added.
|Additional Health News Stories|
WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) --Natura Pet Products is voluntarily recalling some of its dry pet food because of potential salmonella contamination, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland, June 19 (UPI) --Iceland's new prime minister this week cited the country's mackerel fishing dispute with the European Union as a prime example of the value of sovereignty.
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For many people, Halloween just isn’t Halloween without the right scary costume. After all, Halloween is the one night where supposedly the dead come back to life, witches are at the full power, and it is socially acceptable to run around town in a scary costume sporting fake blood or a creepy monster mask scaring innocent people.
One of the ways to make a scary costume scarier is to go for a look that people are afraid of. Think of your favorite Halloween horror movies and build a scary costume around that idea. Frankenstein, werewolves, alien monsters, Michael Myers, and other classics make for greet scary costumes. Often times, a horror costume isn’t as much about what it looks like as how it is worn. Anyone can walk around in a zombie costume and cause moderate frights with their scary costume. But for the big scares, you can’t just walk – you have to lurch, stumble, and groan like the undead monster that you are pretending to be. If you get that down, then your horror costume will be that much scarier.
Another way to make your scary costume even scarier is to set the atmosphere where you are wearing it. For instance, if you are dressing up to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters of your neighborhood it helps to decorate your home and yard as well. An undead zombie is a more convincing horror costume if your yard and home are decorated like a graveyard or a crypt. The same thing goes for your Halloween party. Keep the light dim, decorate with scary decorations, and play creepy music to set the mood. You should remember that Halloween is the one holiday of the year where it is ok to be scary. In fact, many people look forward to the opportunity to be scared out of their skins. So take advantage of it by making the most of your scary horror Halloween costume.
Find truly frightening Halloween costumes only at Halloween costume sale. We have a variety of gothic/scary just to make it right for you so select any one of devil girl costume, Lucifer costume, wicked queen costume or death conqueror costume and many more other gothic/scary costumes and props.
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| 0.935921 | 449 | 1.664063 | 2 |
598 Myocum Rd, Myocum NSW 2481, AustraliaHistory
10 older records found on this numberPhone Type
Digital Mobile ServiceLatest Holder
Telstra Corporation LimitedNumbering Area Last found
September 2012Other Formats
0419771514 / 0419-771-514 / 0419771514 / 0419 771 514 / 004 197 71514
Your population figures for Myocum are utter nonsense! Myocum's population is barely more than 1000. See here for verification: http://localstats.qpzm.com.au/stats/nsw/north-coast/northern-rivers/myocum .
In 2006, there were 9,883 persons usually resident in Myocum: 49.8% were males and 50.2% were females. Of the total population in Myocum 1.7% were Indigenous persons, compared with 2.3% Indigenous persons in Australia. more
82.3% of persons usually resident in Myocum were Australian citizens, 17.3% were born overseas and 7.9% were overseas visitors.
72.3% of persons usually resident in Myocum stated they were born in Australia. Other common responses within Myocum were: England 5.0%, New Zealand 2.4%, United States of America 1.4%, Germany 1.0% and South Africa 0.5%.
English was stated as the only language spoken at home by 85.0% of persons usually resident in Myocum. The most common languages other than English spoken at home were: German 1.1%, French 0.6%, Japanese 0.5%, Spanish 0.4% and Italian 0.4%.
* statistcs taken from the 2006 Census for postal area 2481 conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics
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Everything Old is New Again
I have spent a good deal of time recently looking at two new trends in journalism – the tendency toward journalism collaborations, and the increased emphasis on community engagement. Obviously, neither of these ideas is “new” in the sense that they’ve never been tried, but the rate at which they are being adopted is a clear sign of some fundamental shifts in the way reporting is done.
Recently, however, a few bits of information came my way and reminded me that everything old is new again.
Community Engagement, Commenting, and Sharing
Some of the hottest debates at conferences I have attended recently have been around how news organizations can build affinity with their audiences and deepen their engagement with local communities. A key part of this debate surrounds policies related to commenting and how to encourage (or restrict) sharing on social networks.
These seem like contemporary debates, brought on by recent advancements in technology, but then a non-journalist friend sent me this note:
I’m reading “A Short History of the Printed Word,” by Robert Bringhurst, and I just came across something you might find interesting:
“The first American newspaper was not attempted until September 1690, when Publick Occurences Both Forreign and Domestick was published in Boston by Benjamin Harris. It was small in format, 6 X 9 1/2 inches (15 X 24 cm) when folded, and consisted of four pages. The third page was left blank in case the purchaser wished to write in a news bulletin before passing it on.”
So, basically, the first newspaper in the U.S. was designed to encourage community participation in journalism. And it’s not hard to imagine that blank page being used for “commenting,” too. Sort of like internet journalism.
I couldn’t agree more. Even though the technology has changed, the impetus is the same. Jay Rosen may not have coined the term “the people formerly known as the audience” until a few years ago, but clearly the publishers of Publick Occurences understood the value of crowdsourcing and made space for people to be a part of news creation.
At the recent Future of News and Civic Media conference at MIT, I led a discussion on journalism collaborations. Scott Rosenberg, the co-founder of Salon, captured the tone of the conversation well: “There is a professional transition in the field from an environment where competition was the dominant mode of interacting with other organizations to an era where dividing labor and sharing might serve the public better.”
Indeed, I have been trying to capture evidence of this shift in my ever-growing inventory of journalism collaborations, and this summer I’m working on a few case studies. However, it was recently brought to my attention that collaboration was a key element in launching the New York Times.
Matt Schafer, fellow researcher, writes:
In 1848 a political organizer by the name of Thurlow Weed suggested to New York banker George Jones and New York politician and journalist Henry James Raymond that an endeavor of “journalistic collaboration” could have great advantages for the city of New York. In 1851, Jones and Raymond’s collaborative effort created The New York Times.
Obviously, the newsroom collaborations we are exploring now are of a different nature than this, but the fact that the New York Time’s founders thought of their endeavor as even remotely collaborative is interesting. In developing the idea for the Times, they each brought specific resources and talents to the table that made the it a success. That’s one of the defining principle regarding how we talk about collaboration between newsrooms today.
In thinking about the rise of new newsroom collaborations it is useful to think about how a newsroom itself functions. Journalism is seldom done in solitude. Journalists, sources, editors, copy-editors, printers, web-designers and others work together to see each piece through. In thinking about what lessons we can learn from these new journalism partnerships across organizations, we should also be aware of what we can learn from the collaborations that happen within newsrooms as well. They are just as messy, complicated, and rewarding as many outside collaborations.
Aggregation – Journalism’s Oldest Profession
Finally, earlier this spring I was at Harvard Law School for a conference on the legal and policy debates shaping journalism. Josh Benton from the Nieman Journalism Lab gave a fantastic talk on the history (and future) of aggregators. News aggregation is, of course, another hotly debated issue within journalism. Some argue that aggregators help bring context and clarity to the 24 hour news cycle, while others claim that aggregators are little more than leeches getting rich off of other people’s work.
Benton reminded us that, in fact, journalism is the original aggregation. Journalism has always been about pulling together information from diverse sources and helping make sense of it. More specifically, Benton pointed out that in the early history of the press in America, postal rate policy allowed newspapers to exchange copies of their papers with those in other cities at no cost. Why? Because it was key to the distribution of news. Papers would regularly “cut and paste” news from papers around the country into their local editions, aggregating the news of the nation and reprinting it locally. Benton also offered many other examples of how aggregation in its many forms has been a part of journalism in America. Watch the whole video here.
Community engagement, commenting, sharing, collaboration and aggregation. These debates are as much about the history of journalism as they are about its future. It’s worth looking back as we move ahead. There are lessons to be learned from the past – both in how these ideas were implemented at the time, and in what has changed since. We are undoubtedly facing uncharted territory as we imagine journalism in the digital age, but the fundamental values that inspire our concern for the information needs of communities and democracy remain the same.
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Britain's mission to the United Nations called on North Korean leaders to "refrain from further provocation." France said it "deplores" North Korea's statement, telling its leaders that they need not to threaten, but instead to work toward dismantling their nuclear and missile programs.
In addition to Panetta's statement, the United States added sanctions against more North Korean bank officials and a business linked to the regime's nuclear weapons program.
The Treasury Department announcement targets two Beijing-based representatives of Tanchon Commercial Bank and a company -- Leader (Hong Kong) International Trading Limited -- that the U.S. government says shipped machinery and equipment in support of North Korea's nuclear program.
The organizations are "part of the web of banks, front companies and government agencies that support North Korea's continued proliferation activities," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen.
"By continuing to expose these entities, and the individuals who assist them, we degrade North Korea's ability to use the international financial system for its illicit purposes," he said.
North Korea, which often issues bellicose statements in its state media, said Thursday that it rejects all Security Council resolutions concerning it, describing the most recent resolution as "the most dangerous phase of the hostile policy" toward it.
Analyst: Threat meant as a deterrence
The threats toward the United States, a constant theme in the North's propaganda, have more to do with deterrence than a desire for full conflict, Pinkston said.
"I don't believe they have the capability, the intention or the will to invade or destroy the United States," he said. "They wish to deter interference from the U.S. or any outside powers."
North Korea's successful rocket launch last month nonetheless changed the strategic calculations for the United States, showing that the North's missile program is advancing despite an array of heavy sanctions imposed on it.
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"One of the most common sentiments voiced in the wake of 9-11 was how important it is to appreciate our partner, spouse or lover every day, not just on occasions like Valentine's Day," said Kayser, author of When Love Dies: The Process of Marital Disaffection.
"Women I've talked to who have battled breast cancer say much the same thing. They value their time with their husband or lover in ways they didn't before, whether it's an evening of conversation or a one-hour walk. They don't say, 'Well, since my cancer appeared, Valentine's Day has been really special.'"
But Kayser, who has shared her expertise with the Boston Globe, Hartford Courant and Boston Magazine, among others, also notes that even crises like a serious illness do not necessarily strengthen the bonds between couples.
"Whether stressful events or a crisis brings family members closer together depends on the quality of their relationship before the stress," said Kayser.
"For those families or couples who already have strong and close relationships, the stress tends to elicit their care, compassion, and emotional support for each other, which enhances their relationships. When family members do not have supportive and caring relationships to begin with, the stress will likely put an added strain on their relationship, which only exacerbates the problems between them."One critical question for a couple confronting a crisis, Kayser says, is how both individuals' perceptions of the problem align with one another.
"Perhaps the wife sees the crisis as something that affects them both almost equally, while the husband views it as having an impact more on one of them than the other. Perhaps the problem is seen in emotional terms by one spouse, while the other regards the situation more in terms of how it will change the household routine.
"Just because they have different views doesn't necessarily mean they don't have a good relationship that will help sustain them through the crisis, either. The point is, you just can't assume that, somehow, 'love conquers all' when a couple is dealing with a serious matter."
Return to February 14 menu
Return to Chronicle
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It’s amazing how quickly a whisper turns into a roar.
Take Wood Badge tickets, for example. Each one leaves a lasting legacy, but 50, 500, or even 5,000? That kind of impact reverberates across the Scouting universe for generations.
At my Wood Badge course in August, 50 Scouters each crafted five tickets. That’s 250 boosts to Scouting in North Texas from our course alone.
Some of you might be wondering: What is a Wood Badge ticket? Well, after the six-day course ends, participants aren’t done. To earn those iconic beads, a Wood Badger must complete five projects, called tickets. The tickets allow Scouters to give back to the program and to “realize their personal vision of their role in Scouting.”
That focus on Leaving a Legacy is a huge part of the spirit of Wood Badge. And it’s the subject of today’s fifth and final Wood Badge Wednesdays post.
Leaving a Legacy
Chances are anyone who’s heard of Wood Badge knows about the Wood Badge ticket. It’s the most outward-facing element of the course, and — if you ask me — the most important.
Think of tickets as the Eagle Scout projects of the Wood Badge world. Once an Eagle Scout has moved on (gone to college, moved to an adult volunteer role, etc.), his Eagle project lives on.
Similarly, Wood Badgers get five opportunities to dramatically improve Scouting — and themselves.
But to fully understand the profound impact Wood Badge tickets have on the nationwide Scouting movement, we need to do the math.
Each year, 300 Wood Badge courses take place across the country, with an average of 36 participants per course.
That’s 10,800 Wood Badgers. Now, 80 percent of those Scouters will complete their tickets, giving us 8,640 Wood Badge graduates per year.
Multiply that number by five tickets per person, and you get an incredible 43,200 completed tickets each year.
Wow! That’s 43,200 tangible improvements to Scouting. It’s 43,200 significant steps toward helping packs, troops, teams, and crews run smoother and have more fun. That’s a 43,200-piece orchestra, and each instrument’s played by the Scouting equivalent of Yo-Yo Ma.
In short: Wood Badge is an opus that would make Mr. Holland proud.
Why a ‘Ticket’?
Why are these personal goals called tickets? Here’s how the Wood Badge staff explained it:
In Baden-Powell’s day, those in the military were expected to pay their own way back to England at the end of their service. If a soldier was stationed on a remote Pacific island, that could be quite an expensive trip home.
So in the interest of thriftiness, soldiers nearing completion of their duties would seek assignments closer and closer to England. Once their service was officially over, those who did this had short, cheap trips home to their family.
This process is called “working your ticket,” and those words play a big, fun part in the Wood Badge course. That’s all I’ll say…
My Wood Badge Tickets
Each Scouter’s ticket items are personal, and there’s no requirement that they be shared with anyone other than the course’s troop guide (the staffer who guides each Wood Badger).
But I’d like to share my five with you, including the rationale behind each.
- Wood Badge Wednesdays: Incorporating one’s professional skills is encouraged, and that was my thinking behind including this blog series as a ticket item. I had two goals in mind with these five posts: First, I wanted to summarize my most memorable Wood Badge lessons and rekindle the fire within myself and others who have completed Wood Badge. Second, I wanted to encourage others who haven’t taken the course to consider signing up — without giving away any of the surprises that make the course so special.
- Journalism Merit Badge: I have a degree in Journalism, but I never actually earned this merit badge as a Scout. I’m looking forward to making up for that mistake at my troop’s winter camp in February when I teach Journalism merit badge to a group of Scouts. I’ve never taught a merit badge, but I’m excited at the prospect of sharing what I know to the next generation of reporters, editors, or consumers of news.
- Blogging and Social Media Course: Please, call me ”Professor Bryan.” But seriously, I’m going to co-teach a course at Circle Ten Council’s University of Scouting in January, giving me a chance to share what I’ve learned when creating Bryan on Scouting and helping run Scouting magazine’s Facebook and Twitter channels. I’m expecting an engaging discussion where the participants teach me as much as I teach them.
- Writing Conference: One of the five tickets can involve personal growth, and so I’m attending a writing conference next year. My thinking is that by improving my skills in writing and editing, I can make Scouting magazine and Bryan on Scouting even better tools for volunteers.
- Troop Web Site Redesign: Like most Scout units, my old troop’s Web site could use a little work. A great Web site is well-designed, easy to navigate, and has the information parents and Scouts need. Ours has the information but needs some help on design and navigation. That’s where I come in. I can’t do the backend, technical “stuff,” but I’ll prepare a written report of ways in which the Web site can be improved, including a sample design.
What’s Your Legacy?
If you’ve completed your tickets, I’d love to hear about them. Please use the comments section below to describe your favorite ticket or recount some of your best memories from completing them.
About Wood Badge Wednesdays
This is Part 5 of a five-part series called Wood Badge Wednesdays. Here’s the schedule for the entire series; each week I explored one of the five central themes of Wood Badge for the 21st Century:
- Living the Values (Sept. 12)
- Bringing the Vision to Life (Sept. 19)
- Models for Success (Sept. 26)
- Tools of the Trade (Oct. 17)
- Leading to Make a Difference (this post)
It’s Your Move
Ready to take Wood Badge for yourself? Start by contacting your local council to learn how.
You’ll either take a weeklong course, like I did, or a course that spans two weekends (some consecutive, some not). Either way, you’re in for the time of your life!
Anyone from any council also has the opportunity to sign up for Circle Ten Council’s Wood Badge course at Philmont. The next course is held in August 2013 at Scouting’s paradise in New Mexico. Here’s the course link!
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Our new "married bishops" from the Church of England
The UK Guardian's Stephen Bates has a bit of snarky column about the five bishops defecting from the Church of England, in which he asks some interesting questions:
"What makes Catholics suspicious is, if Broadhurst and his ilk were so convinced of their Catholicism, what has taken them so long to convert? They could have done so at any time. It would have been arduous, conceivably long, possibly lonely, maybe even difficult and certainly low-profile, but it would have had an integrity which seems lacking now that they have had so long to get used to the single issue motivating them now: the ordination of women as bishops, so long after they were first consecrated priests."
This has always been my question about welcoming folks who are fleeing their own communion angry. Why now? Of course anyone is welcome to join the Roman Catholic Church, but why all the special consideration for this group? Their own "ordinariate," no celibacy (at least for those grandfathered in), their own liturgy.
If anything, they are certainly not courtesies extended to those of us born into the Latin rite. The ways of Rome on this one are mysterious indeed.
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Verizon given $1.25m fine for allegedly blocking tethering apps
Verizon Wireless, one of the biggest carriers in America, has agreed to stop blocking its Android subscribers from using third party tethering apps.
The ruling from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has also left Verizon out of pocket - $1.25 million (£805k) out of pocket to be precise.
Teetering on the tethering tightrope
Tethering, or the act of using one’s phone as a wireless hotspot for tablets and laptops, was originally acceptable with Verizon so long as users pay $20 per month in their contract.
However, utilising third party tethering apps allows users to get around the charge, and in May last year Verizon requested to Google that they block all access to third-party tethering apps.
The media reform group Free Press objected to this and filed off a complaint citing that Verizon were not adhering to FCC net neutrality conditions, in a manner which “restricts consumer choice and hinders innovation regardless of which carrier adopts such policies”.
It has to be noted that Verizon wasn’t the only carrier facing the wrath of Free Press, with AT&T and T-Mobile also cited at the time of the complaint.
Verizon had won a heavy chunk of the 700MHz mobile broadband spectrum in 2008 auctions, and having agreed to the FCC conditions alongside their $4.7bn (£3.03bn) payout, did not adhere to them.
Subsequently, while this news has come as a relief to Free Press, they warned: “While we are pleased that the FCC finally acted...we remain concerned that consumers of other carriers lack the same basic protections that Verizon’s customers have under the law”.
Verizon had said in a statement: “Verizon Wireless has always allowed its customers to use the lawful applications of their choice on its networks, and it did not block its customers from using third-party tethering applications.”
What can be inferred from both statements is open to interpretation.
Consumers winning the battle?
This is another piece of good news for consumers, though not so good for operators.
Last month the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) enforced new regulations against telcos in order to give “materially greater protection” to consumers against the likes of bill shock and poor customer service.
Telecoms guru David Werdiger, writing exclusively for TelecomsTech, said that the Australian telecoms industry had “dodged a bullet” with the new code.
But what does this and the news from ACMA say about the telecoms industry? Is there a trend emerging?
- » Forget IM, is Skype’s Video Messaging the next disruptor?
- » “Provide clarification on PRISM”, says EU commissioner
- » Upside for multi-screen video delivery via gateways
- » The Connected Consumer Cloud - One place to rule them all
- » Neelie Kroes’ “highest level” roaming plan support doesn’t include the GSMA
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More people are finding improved health when they cut back or eliminate gluten from their diets. We shed light on this sticky subject. Also the latest on super-gluten.
Aren’t wheat allergies like the Snuggies of diseases? Everyone has one this year.
—Crosby Braverman in “Parenthood
If you’ve read about gluten-free diets or seen the gluten-free label added to everything from breakfast cereal to cold cuts, you too might be wondering if this is the latest fad in a long line of diet crazes. The reality is plenty of people need to cut gluten from their diet—not to lose weight, but out of medical necessity.
But are you one of those people? To figure it out, you might have to cut out gluten for a trial period and see how you feel. The good news is you don’t need a doctor’s prescription and you can start today.
What's it like to have a brain injury? Lori Mertz shares her personal story and offers resources for recovery.
February PechaKucha event at the State Room. One of the presentations has sparked a creative solution for a problem I’ve been grappling with a while. I don’t have paper in my purse, but I do have a pen—and some body limbs available for notes, which I take copiously. When the lights go up, my friends burst out laughing. I look like a fast tattoo artist had his way with me in the dark.
It takes a lot of work—intention—to keep this machine—me—running. I learned how to do this after a bicycle accident and subsequent traumatic brain injury (TBI) I sustained nearly 11 years ago. Because of this experience, I know where all my (metaphorical) Achilles tendons are. I learned about them, along with many other things, from my doctor, my speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, counselor and spiritual therapist, friends and family, and all the amazing others who have at one time or another comprised my health care team.
When I get tired or overwhelmed or overstimulated, or sometimes excited, as at the PechaKucha gathering, my short term memory gets worse. I’ve learned I have only a certain amount of space and energy and when it fills up or is exhausted, I panic. In an effort to remember, I compulsively write things down. As part of my success strategy I also filter what and who I’ll give my energy, attention and focus to.
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NORDERSTEDT, Germany – A German Muslim has introduced the country’s first Muslim taxi service through which Germans can arrange shared car rides of the same sex, The Local.de website reported on Friday, January 27.
“Many Muslim brothers and sisters complained that they can’t use conventional offers because the gender segregation stipulated by Islam is not implemented,” Selim Reid, a 24-year-old from Norderstedt, city of about 70,000 near Hamburg, told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.
The idea of the website, Muslimtaxi.de, was first introduced by Reid after a personal experience of his parents.
He said he was inspired to create the site because of Muslims’ bad ride-sharing experiences.
In 1996, his parents, who are originally from Iraq, caught a ride with a Muslim-hating driver who spent the whole time criticizing them.
“The driver and the people with him swore the whole way about foreigners in general and in particular about my mother’s head scarf,” Reid told the newspaper.
“He thought that my parents do not understand German,” he added.
The new site, launched late 2011, is based on the same principle as other popular websites like mitfahrgelegenheit.de , which lets cost-conscious Germans arrange shared car rides.
Those interested in offering rides specify their gender, asking price and how many passengers they can accommodate.
Potential passengers contact the driver directly.
Germany has between 3.8 and 4.3 million Muslims, making up some 5 percent of the total 82 million population, according to government-commissioned studies.
Germans have grown hostile to the Muslim presence recently, with a heated debate on the Muslim immigration into the country.
A recent poll by the Munster University found that Germans view Muslims more negatively than their European neighbors.
According to a 2010 nationwide poll by the research institute Infratest-dimap, more than one third of the respondents would prefer "a Germany without Islam."
In operation since late last year, the website has sparked criticism as a trial to create a parallel society for German Muslims.
Reid denied such accusations, saying that the service offers an opportunity for non-Muslim riders interested in knowing more about Islam.
“Those really looking for dialogue will find it by using Muslim Taxi,” Reid said, The Local reported.
He added that the service was welcomed by thousands of grateful riders who said it was filling a niche.
“The separation of the sexes is part of our faith, and Islam is part of Germany's.”
Over the past few years, Germany has been gripped by a fierce debate on immigration and integration.
The controversy was spurred in 2009 by central banker Thilo Sarrazin, who accused Muslim immigrants of undermining the society which is becoming less intelligent because of them.
Chancellor Merkel weighed in, saying that multiculturalism has failed in Germany.
But the remarks have drawn angry reactions, with German president Christian Wulff stressing that Islam is part and parcel of German society.
German politicians have also called for recognizing Islam as an official religion in the Christian-majority country.
Related Links:Germany Teaches Islamic Theology
German Muslims Suffer Job Discrimination
German Islam Meeting Sparks Criticism
Anti-Muslim German Banker Sparks UK Fury
German Muslims Want Public Service Quota
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Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
March 15, 2011
Tapping into your childhood dreams is an important part of living a full and fulfilling life. Randy Pausch, the brilliant professor at Carnegie Mellon who moved the nation with his carpe diem attitude when diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, dedicated an entire section of his legendary book, The Last Lecture, to ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’. Whether you dreamed of becoming an astronaut (as he did) or becoming a writer (as I did), our childhood dreams tell us a lot about who we are and what we’re made of.
Kristi Yamaguchi would agree.
Remember Kristi, that dazzling 1992 Olympic Gold Ice Skating Champ, who danced in the rink (then later With the Stars)? She captivated us with her levity, her charm, her so-not-Tanya-Harding heartfelt flair. She is as beautiful today, posing with her two equally lovely daughters, on the back flap of her new children’s book, Dream Big, Little Pig!
Together with Linda Oatman High, she authored a truly inspirational work with adorable illustrations by Tim Bowers. Her children’s charity Web site, Always Dream, supports young people to really go for it. Whole Hog.
Poppy, the peachy pig who dreams big, goes through a series of failures, but not without her cheerleading friend and family to keep her going. She yearns to be a star, the center point of inspiration for herself and others. When she discovers ice skating, it’s no longer important that she’s not perfect. She skates for the magic she feels.
Kristi recognizes that the support of her family, along with her own hard work, is what got her to where she is today. She also realizes that not every child has that same support network. Thus her charity, Always Dream, was born.
Whenever I read such children’s stories aloud to my kids (now ages 9 and 11), I can’t help but get choked up. Are they hearing the message? Do they feel encouraged to realize their childhood dreams that are still forming? Will they understand the importance of cherishing those desires and cultivating them in the soil of their souls?
This morning I decided to test it out. As my son and I discussed his fears of not doing well in math, I encouraged him to keep going for his dreams, like Poppy.
“Yeah,” he smirked. “But that pig doesn’t have to go to school!”
Hmmmm…I might need to write Kristi about that one. Perhaps there’s a sequel in the works. Poppy Practices Pre-calculus?
Dream big, my power of slow lovelies. Dig deep within yourselves to the place where your childhood desires reside. You will find that your true self has been cradled in your web of dreams all along.
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I was at an event last night hosted by Women's Post and a woman entrepreneur in the audience who was in the events planning business in Ontario asked why harmonized sales tax (HST) was charged being charged on gratuities (she had noticed this since the implementation of HST). She noticed that venues and caterers were quoting (1) the charge for the room and/or (2) the food/beverages and (3) a mandatory gratuity and that HST was being charged on all charges, including the gratuity.
The answer is that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) considers the mandatory gratuity to be extra consideration for the supply (say, of the venue.food/beverages/etc) rather than a contribution towards the salary (non-taxable) of the employees that will be working the event. The CRA had taken this position with the goods and services tax (GST). GST/HST is payable on the consideration for the supply and since the gratuity is considered by the CRA to be additional consideration, it goes into the calculation/formula. As a result, the CRA takes the position that GST/HST is payable on the added consideration that is the gratuity portion.
I have seen the same analysis used by CRA when they look at gratuities paid on restaurant meals, resort vacation packages, hair salon services, spa services, etc - whenever there is a mandatory gratuity OR when the gratuity is included in credit card payment (that is the recipient pays adds a gratuity to a credit card payment). For example, when I go to the hair salon, I pay by VISA. Before I indicate my PIN number when I use my chip card, I am asked whether I wish to add a tip or gratuity and I usually add 15%-20% of the tax-excluded price for the services rendered. The CRA when auditing such service providers/venues, adds the gratuity amounts to the consideration for the services and calculates the GST/HST owing.
Based on the cases I have seen, often the service provider does not charge the GST/HST on the gratuity portion and has to dip into their pockets to pay a substantial assessment.
The morale of the story is that when possible, recipients should give waitresses/waiters and service providers cash tips when they are adding an amount to the bill for the exceptions services performed by the individual to the recipient. If the gratuities are in the invoices or in the credit card payments 13/113 of the amount in Ontario (12/112 in BC, 15/115 in NS, 113/113 in Nfld/Lab. and NB) will not go to the waitress/service provider and will be remitted to the Receiver General of Canada. This is unfortunate because the individuals affected are making low hourly wages and rely on the gratuities as employment income (to make ends meet).
I have been involved in structuring the payments so that more money goes to the real people who work very hard for the additional employment income - it is possible if a business plans in advance of the CRA visit.
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Poor Data Management Costs Healthcare Providers
Healthcare organizations collect massive amounts of data but often fail to translate it into actionable insights, Oracle report says.
From Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges surveyed 333 C-level executives at enterprises spanning 11 industries, 30 of whom came from healthcare organizations. According to the survey, 100% of healthcare executives say their organization is collecting and managing more business information today than it was two years ago, with an average increase of 85%.
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However, the avalanche of information has disrupted data management. The study shows that 47% of healthcare executives say their organization cannot interpret and translate the information into actionable insight, and 40% say their current systems aren't designed to meet the specific needs of the industry. Recognizing that their organization could advance its financial standing if they could harness clinical, financial, and other data to generate efficiencies in their operational workflow, the poll shows that healthcare executives intend to bolster their business intelligence strategy.
To turn their fortunes around, 63% of respondents said their top priorities include improving the ability to translate information into actionable insight, while 50% said they are focused on implementing tools to collect more accurate information, and 47% seek more customized systems/applications to meet their needs.
[ Is it time to re-engineer your clinical decision support system? See 10 Innovative Clinical Decision Support Programs. ]
Many providers also favor developing technology partnerships with other organizations, with 63% of healthcare executives saying their organization is in the process of implementing information systems that will support the delivery of care beyond the walls of their facility.
While generating analytical data to drive efficiency within a health organization is essential, proving to other business partners that the organization is efficient is equally important, according to Neil de Crezcenzo, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Health Sciences Global Business Unit.
"When healthcare executives say their top priority is the ability to translate information into actionable insights, what that means to me is that these executives want to prove as a healthcare institution to the payers that we're better, for example, at treating congestive heart failure," de Crezcenzo said in an interview with InformationWeek Healthcare.
Since hospital reimbursements will increasingly be tied to quality metrics and patient outcomes under healthcare reform, it's no surprise that healthcare executives want to use technology to closely monitor their patients. The poll revealed that 73% of healthcare executives cite patient relationship management and 70% quality of care as the areas in which they are most actively gathering and analyzing information to drive efficiency.
Besides patient information, 63% of respondents identified financial management and 57% reported risk management as additional areas in which they are actively gathering and analyzing information.
With regard to the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), 34% of healthcare organizations that participated in the report say they're using EHRs extensively and using the information to improve the delivery of care. However, 43% say that while they have an EHR in place, they are still not capturing enough or the right information; 20% have started to implement an EHR but do not have it in place yet. Only 3% of healthcare organizations note that implementing an EHR is not a priority at this time.
Like other research, Oracle's report highlights the difficulties that are inherent in using EHRs that compile unstructured data on physician notes, discharge summaries, and other information, according to de Crezcenzo.
He also observed that because clinicians need data quickly, healthcare delivery organizations must shift to systems that electronically transmit analytical data to clinicians in real or near-real time.
"Senior healthcare executives are going to have to [incorporate] the algorithms, calculations, and analytical engines that provide those insights on a much faster basis with much larger volumes of data, and the complexity around that data didn't exist before," de Crezcenzo said.
Evidently, it will take some time to implement an effective business intelligence strategy. According to the report, 40% of healthcare executives gave their organizations a grade of D or F on their preparedness to manage the data deluge. Seventy-seven percent of respondents gave their organization a C or below, and no healthcare executive felt their organization deserved an A.
In this InformationWeek Healthcare virtual event, EHRs: Beyond The Basics, experts will discuss how to improve electronic health record systems. It happens July 31.
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Maputo, 9 Feb (AIM) - Ten of the 20 filling stations planned for rural areas, under the project named "Geographical Incentive", have now been completed, according to Energy Minister Salvador Namburete.
"Geographical Incentive" is a fund created by the government to support expansion of access to liquid fuels in remote areas.
The building of the filling stations began in 2009, when Mozambican contractors were hired in each of the selected districts. Some of them, however, did not meet the government's conditions, and their contracts had to be scrapped. Interviewed by AIM, Namburete said "In the first phase of building these rural filling stations unfortunately we had problems with some of the contractors because of the poor quality of their work and we had to cancel some of the contracts. But there are at least 10 of them that have been confirmed as being completed and are in perfect operating conditions".
Some of the areas where there were problems with the contractors included the districts of Murrupula, Mossuril and Mogincual, in the northern province of Nampula. "There were problems in Nampula. These were the poor quality of the work, which the inspection team could not accept, and so we had to annul their contracts and start everything afresh", Namburete explained. "This was an initial experience, but the government's commitment to the project remains strong and most contractors are behaving with responsibility".
According to the Minister, the filling stations built in the districts of Chigubo and Massangena, in Gaza province, Funhalouro and Mabote, in Inhambane, and Metangula, Marrupa and Mavago, in Niassa, have been completed and approved.
Namburete said that his ministry is to appraise the operational state of these filling stations before they begin to sell fuel. That has already started in Funhalouro and Mabote.
He said that contracts with the managers for these infrastructures have already been signed.
"All the completed filling stations already have managers, who were selected through public tenders", Namburete said. "The criteria were that the managers must be residents in the respective districts and have experience of management, among other requirements. The contracts have already been signed".
The filling stations have a water supply system and, in areas not yet connected to the national grid, they draw their power supply from solar panels.
Although 10 of the units are not yet completed, the National Energy Fund (FUNAE), the institution that is implementing the project, has already started the second phase to build 21 more such stations.
"Twenty one filling stations will be built this year in the second phase, and we will add the 10 that were not completed in the first phase, totaling 31 units", said Namburete.
He explained that the problem of fuel supply in rural areas is connected to the cost of transporting fuel, because of the long distances, on top of which comes the matter of the quality of the product, and security. Namburete believed that these problems will be minimised with the filling stations built by the government. The project is to build a total of 50 filling stations in various districts across the country.
According to the government's statistics, 43 per cent of the 227 filling stations existing in 2008 were concentrated in Maputo city. Mozambique has 128 districts in its 11 provinces, and the government's target is that all the districts should have at least one filling station by 2012.
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FAU Experts on U.S. Presidential Debates and Elections
BOCA RATON, FL (October 9, 2012)
– With the U.S. Presidential Debate coming to Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida Atlantic University political science experts are available to comment, including:
- Kevin Wagner is an associate professor in the department of political science in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at FAU. He is an attorney with a doctorate in American politics with an emphasis on U.S. institutions such as the presidency. Wagner has expertise in the field of political behavior, including public opinion, campaigning and elections and is one of the leading authorities on the effects of technology on politics and campaigning. Wagner can be reached at 561-297-3218 (office), 561-252-1794 (cell) or [email protected].
- Kevin Lanning is a professor of psychology at FAU’s Wilkes Honors College. He has published more than 30 books, chapters and papers in psychology, politics and measurement. Lanning’s current research focuses on the psychological foundations of political liberalism and conservatism. He can be reached at 561-799-8652 (office) or [email protected].
- Robert Rabil (Middle East) is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the department of political science in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at FAU. His areas of expertise are the Greater Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. Rabil can be reached at 561-297-3215 (office) or 561-302-0470 (cell) or [email protected].
- David Cratis Williams is an associate professor in FAU’s School of Communication and Multimedia Studies. He is a former assistant debate coach at the University of North Carolina and at the University of Kansas, and also a former director of debate at Wake Forest University. Williams can be reached at 561-297-0045 (office) or [email protected].
-FAU-About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six-county service region in southeast Florida. FAU’s world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of three signature themes – marine and coastal issues, biotechnology and contemporary societal challenges – which provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU’s existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.
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| 0.931682 | 692 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Ever since I started aggressively paying down my mortgage about 5 years ago, I've heard numerous arguments for why it's foolish to do so. Although I agree that I need to have money in an emergency account, I still feel that sending my mortgage company extra money every month is a better use of my extra funds. If I had purchased my home at the age of 20 or 25, perhaps I could have taken my time to pay down my mortgage. However, my husband and I bought our home when we were in our mid-30s.
Still, I'm willing to think about the different arguments for not paying down my mortgage faster.
It's better to pay off credit cards
According to an article by the Associated Press, with mortgage interest rates reaching a historic low, it makes more financial sense to pay off higher interest credit cards rather than paying down a mortgage. One of the reasons I delayed paying extra on my mortgage is because I had a few credit cards I needed to pay off. However, now that I'm free of credit card debt, it makes sense to tackle my other consumer debt.
It's better to save for retirement
If I didn't have any money saved for retirement, I'd be aggressively putting money in my 401(k) rather than paying down my mortgage faster. However, as long as I'm on track with my retirement savings goals, I rather work on my goal of being mortgage free. After saving 10 percent of my income toward retirement, I use my extra money for other goals. I won't need to have as much money saved for retirement if I have no mortgage payment to make.
It's better to get the tax breaks
I often hear that it's better to have a mortgage in order to receive tax breaks. It's true the federal government allows people to deduct their mortgage interest from their income if they itemize their deductions. However, people such as me who take the standard deduction receive absolutely no tax benefit from having a mortgage.
It's better to invest in the stock market
Financial experts say once a person has built up an emergency fund, saved for retirement and for their children's college, they may consider paying down their mortgage. But even then many argue that people could get a better return on their money by investing in stocks. In my case, our mortgage interest rate is 4.624 percent. I would rather have a home that I own without any mortgage payment rather than invest in a stock market that could deliver negative returns.
My husband and I hope to be able to retire in our current home in another 25 to 30 years. It's nice to know that we will have the option, though, to retire earlier simply because we paid off our mortgage earlier than required. Financial experts say that paying off a mortgage early is usually an emotional decision rather than a financial decision. In my mind, it's important to consider the emotional side of money situation before making a decision. I'm extremely happy that we made the choice to accelerate our mortgage payoff. We should be free of a mortgage in another 7 or 8 years, God willing.
*Note: This was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Do you have a personal finance story that you'd like to share? Sign up with the Yahoo! Contributor Network to start publishing your own finance articles.
More from this contributor:
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| 0.98293 | 676 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Not long ago, I wrote about a 0.3mm pitch wafer-scale BGA we received and were asked to place. The gist of that article was that those parts are very small and we d0n’t yet have a process that we feel will give the quality, reliability and consistency that we want to deliver. That means officially, we don’t, at the moment, support that form factor.
However, as it turned out, we went ahead and built it and the x-rays all said it looked good. Whew! We still don’t officially support it, but we’re working on it. If you have one of these things, you can always give us a call and see if it’s something our manufacturing engineers are comfortable with. If they say “sure, send it in,” it will be a non-standard, essentially, experimental, operation so our normal guarantees won’t apply. It will be “we’ll do our best.”
But that’s not the point. The point is that there are still a number of unanswered questions with 0.4mm pitch, and now we have a smaller one??!!
I’ve only seen 0.3mm pitch in two places: some data from Amkor, and the datasheet for this part.The part in questions is a Maxim MAX98304 Mono 3.2 Watt Class D amplifier. The entire package is just 1 x 1mm.
There is still a lot of difference of opinion on solder mask defined (SMD) vs. non solder mask defined (NSMD) at super small pitch like this. For BGAs 0.5mm and lager, the general consensus and IPC recommendation is NSMD. At 0.4mm, the Beabgleboard folks at Ti recommend SMD to reduce bridging. But I’ve had other folks say they get good results with NSMD. For 0.4mm, we’ve had best results with SMD. It’s more than just that though, you also need to religiously follow the manufacturer’s recommended pad sizes and such.
For this part, the datasheet shows the pad size (0.18mm), but doesn’t cover the SMD vs. NSMD question. Instead, it refers to a Maxim app note (#1891) for that bit of information.
Of course, this is where it gets sticky. That app note, as of this writing, shows 0.5mm and 0.4mm, but no 0.3mm. It does reference IPC-7351, which is a very good thing, but I don’t think IPC-7351 has 0.3mm pitch covered yet. Ugh. The 0.3mm part we placed used SMD pads.
It’s not just Facebook where you can designate something: “It’s complicated.”
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Pillar to Post: Peter Welander's Blog
News and comment from Control Engineering process industries editor, Peter Welander
Rising sugar prices: Food vs. fuel?
January 19, 2010
If you think your mid-afternoon sugar boost is getting more expensive, you’re probably right. Sugar costs have been rising for a while and are getting to levels not seen an almost 30 years. Needless to say, this affects products like candy immediately and directly. Confectionary prices are up almost 10% over this time last year. Raw sugar on world markets is up by 42% over January 2009, and almost double the level in 2008.
There are many contributing factors that are all working together to push the needle. There have been poor cane crops in Brazil and India. Domestic sugar beet production also suffered due to the cool, wet summer. To make matters worse, sugar beet acreage was down as farmers hoped to make more money planting corn.
Resource and commodity pricing problems are going to become more common as the world economy recovers. I suppose we should be gratified to see such signs, even though they may be painful for a time.
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| 0.971515 | 237 | 1.796875 | 2 |
266 U.S. 507
45 S.Ct. 148
69 L.Ed. 411
FALL, Secretary of the Interior, et al.
Argued Dec. 11, 1924.
Decided Jan. 5, 1925.
Mr. Preston A. Shinn, of Pawhuska, Okl., for appellant.
The Attorney General, for appellees.
[Argument of Counsel from page 508 intentionally omitted]
Mr. Justice SUTHERLAND delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant, an adult member of the Osage Tribe of Indians and without a certificate of competency, brought this suit against the Secretary of the Interior, Wright, the superintendent of the Osage Agency, and Wise, a special disbursing agent charged with the duty of paying and disbursing funds and moneys due individual Osage Indians, to secure a mandatory injunction commanding and requiring that moneys and funds due appellant under the Act of March 3, 1921, § 4, c. 120, 41 Stat. 1249, 1250, be assigned and paid over to him, alleging that the same was being unlawfully withheld. The act requires the Secretary to cause to be paid to each adult member of the Osage Tribe not having a certificate of competency one thousand dollars quarterly, etc., payments to be made under the supervision of the superintendent of the Osage Agency. But section 2087, Rev. Stats. (Comp. St. § 4056), provides:
'No annuities, or moneys, or goods, shall be paid or distributed to Indians while they are under the influence of any description of intoxicating liquor, or while there are good and sufficient reasons leading the officers or agents, whose duty it may be to make such payments or distribution, to believe that there is any species of intoxicating liquor within convenient reach of the Indians,' etc.
In virtue of this provision payments to appellant were refused. This refusal is attacked by the bill of complaint upon the ground that section 2087 and all orders, rules, or regulations issued thereunder by the Secretary of the Interior, in so far as appellant is concerned, are unconstitutional. The facts upon which it was determined that appellant came within the statutory prohibition are not in question.
There has been no service upon the Secretary, and he has not appeared in the suit. The other defendants were served, the case went to trial, and the bill, after a hearing, was dismissed for want of equity and on the merits. But the suit was one which required the presence of the Secretary, and the bill should have been dismissed for want of a necessary party. Gnerich v. Rutter, 265 U. S. 388, 44 S. Ct. 532, 68 L. Ed. 1068; Warner Valley Stock Co. v. Smith, 165 U. S. 28, 34, 17 S. Ct. 225, 41 L. Ed. 621. The statutory direction to case quarterly payments to be made (subject to section 2087) is addressed to the Secretary. The power and responsibility are his. Neither Wright nor Wise have any primary authority in the matter. They can act only under, and in virtue of, the Secretary's general or special direction. In the absence of it no payments or disbursements properly can be made. Authority in the superintendent to supervise such payments is not authority to cause them to be made. The statement of this court in the Gnerich Case (page 391 [44 S. Ct. 533]) is pertinent here:
'They act under his direction and perform such acts only as he commits to them by the regulations. They are responsible to him and must abide by his direction. What they do is as if done by him. He is the public's real representative in the matter, and, if the injunction were granted, his are the hands which would be tied.'
In the Smith Case, suit was brought against the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of the General Land Office to enjoin them from exercising further jurisdiction with respect to the disposition of certain public lands, from further trespassing upon complainant's right of quiet possession, and to command the issue of patents to plaintiff. The suit abated as to the Secretary because of his resignation, and it was held that it could not be continued against the Commissioner alone. We quote from the opinion (pages 34, 35 [17 S. Ct. 228]):
'The purpose of the bill was to control the action of the Secretary of the Interior; the principal relief sought was against him, and the relief asked against the Commissioner of the General Land Office was only incidental, and by way of restraining him from executing the orders of his official head. To maintain such a bill against the subordinate officer alone, without joining his superior, whose acts are alleged to have been unlawful, would be contrary to settled rules of equity pleading.'
Counsel for appellant directs our attention to other cases, where this court proceeded to determine the merits notwithstanding the suits were brought against inferior or subordinate officials without joining the superior. We do not stop to inquire whether all or any of them can be differentiated from the case now under consideration, since in none of them was the point here at issue suggested or decided. The most that can be said is that the point was in the cases if any one had seen fit to raise it. Questions which merely lurk in the record, neither brought to the attention of the court nor ruled upon, are not to be considered as having been so decided as to constitute precedents. See New v. Oklahoma, 195 U. S. 252, 256, 25 S. Ct. 68, 49 L. Ed. 182; Tefft, Weller & Co. v. Munsuri, 222 U. S. 114, 119, 32 S. Ct. 67, 56 L. Ed. 118; United States v. More, 3 Cranch, 159, 172, 2 L. Ed. 397; The Edward, 1 Wheat. 261, 275, 276, 4 L. Ed. 86. In any event, this case falls within the principles definitely established by the Gnerich and Smith Cases.
Decree reversed, with directions to dismiss the bill for want of a necessary party.
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| 0.964818 | 1,288 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Our objections, and those of others, to ICANN’s sale of exclusive rights to .book, .author, .read and other new top-level domains have gained some traction in the media. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the Telegraph and many others have written about our concerns that private placement of such terms will, as Scott Turow wrote, allow “already dominant, well-capitalized companies to expand and entrench their market power.”
Before we get to our question, here’s some background. Top-level domains are the .com, .org, etc. in Internet addresses. Such domains in the past have been open, allowing virtually anyone to claim any available domain (mynewbook.com, for example) by paying a fee to Network Solutions, GoDaddy or other registrars. Most of ICANN’s proposed new top-level domains, however, will be closed, allowing proprietary control over these domains. This seems fine for genuine brand names — .pepsi, .nike, .gucci — but problematic for the long list of generic domains ICANN plans to sell, such as .news, .blog, .cloud, .art, .search. The full list is here.
Now here’s our question: Does anyone know why ICANN* is doing this?
We haven’t found a satisfactory answer, which, to us, suggests someone stands to profit handsomely. Is that right? Or is there a public purpose to this that we’re missing?
*ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It’s a private company with vast power over the Internet, but seems answerable to no one.
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<urn:uuid:f1fe2748-52a9-4d19-bc6e-7d982378b627>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/whats-up-with-icanns-move-to-privatize-the-internet-namespace/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.932351 | 360 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Frank and fearless advice... when it suits
Politicians live in a fantasy land. It's a basic part of their professional armour. And part of this is Mr Frank and Mr Fearless – part of the mythology used by politicians to defend bad decisions.
When something goes wrong, there is the usual raft of excuses. Usually it goes something like, “I wasn't fully briefed; I wasn't briefed on that specific issue; the department didn't raise that with me” etc.
Is this starting to sound familiar?
Then, the politicians will tell you there is a longing for an apolitical public service that gives frank and fearless advice.
The implication is that somehow all this has changed. The reality is that frank and fearless advice is still delivered – usually on a daily basis, However, ministers only want frank and fearless advice when it suits. And that is if it delivers a strong and positive headlines. (If it delivers anything else, then the conversation is always about who – apart from the minister – is going to handle it and who can we blame.)
Government decisions are not made in a protected policy vacuum; they are made with one eye on the politics of the day, to local members, vested interests and local lobbying and, sometimes, even with the consideration of good public policy.
For instance, there are a large number of small schools scattered throughout suburban Brisbane which, given financial constraints, should be closed. That would be the frank and fearless advice.
The reality is that closing them and the chances of the decision surviving the outrage of local parents and MPs is very low. Every politician loves their local parents and citizens association – none want to be known as the local member who closed their local school.
Government is about votes – not good public policy outcomes. So public servants, based on past experience of the lack of political will on some subjects, find ways to provide reasonable public policy despite political sensitivities.
Obviously, the way advice is provided has changed. The public service does not exist in management isolation; it will continue to change to reflect the way politics is played and public sector management practised.
It doesn't mean the advice has become more politicised or less robust. What it does mean is that there is a massive risk-aversion culture in the public sector that places a higher priority on protecting a minister from tabloid headlines.
This is now more important because it is a sad fact of modern politics that few ministers either have the experience, skills or content knowledge capable of carrying a public argument – as opposed to a few television grabs – that could persuade a community to accept unpopular new policies and outcomes.
And the need to protect the minister has extended to the constant demands of the 24-hour news cycle. Ministers are briefed every day about media implications. It is the first consideration and beware the public servant who fails to recognise the media sensitivity of an issue and does not ensure the warning messages are passed up the line.
Public servants have watched politicians go to extraordinary lengths to avoid negative media and if that means publicly blaming the public service – well far better to blame a group that will not publicly contradict you than to suffer a little political embarrassment.
That tends to breed self-protecting behaviour. They see the influence of media advisers within a ministerial office and note that the major area of interest for the minister is the press release and the press conference.
They also see the media strategies in play – putting up the director-general for bad news press conferences and leave the lovely, glowing “positive” stories for the minister. This strategy was abandoned during the Beattie years on the grounds that the directors-general were becoming better known than the ministers.
Ministers are protected by the fact that no one knows what advice has been given. Certainly the briefing notes are not generally released, except when it suits a political strategy. The advice only becomes an issue when things go wrong. That's when you can see politicians sprint for the umbrella of wriggle words, which brings me back to: “I wasn't fully briefed; I wasn't briefed on that specific issue; the department didn't raise that with me”.
The show Yes, Minister is still the best primer on the interaction between the public service and executive government and more recently, there is an embarrassing alignment with Hollowmen.
The oldest strategy is still in use, that is for the minister to side step the issue and allow the department or agency to take the full force of the blame. After all, who is going to publicly contradict a minister or government? Public servants rarely correct the public record.
Part of the problem with Mr Frank and Mr Fearless is the political illusion. Public servants sit and hear political promises of the support for a frank and fearless public service culture and then see politicians:
- sprinting to blame someone – "I didn't write that speech, it was the department's fault";
- introduce changes to employment to make it easier to sack public servants – security has always been been seen as the the protection needed to provide frank and fearless advice and increases their vulnerability to the minister's whim ("Tell me what I don't want to hear but don't worry – there'll be no splashback"); and
- focus ministerial attention on press releases, media clips and one-page cheat sheets for media conferences and parliamentary question time.
All of which makes it difficult to accept the premise that bad government decisions are the result of a lack of frank and fearless advice from the public sector.
Then there is the ministerial fear of Freedom of Information; Right to Information and 101 other avenues now existing for information to escape – the prospect of this, and how it might be responded to, occupies a great deal of ministerial attention.
The other great myth is the general idea that there has been increased politicisation of the public service.
Concerns about the love of an apolitical public service would carry a great deal more weight if:
- the government didn't appoint a former Liberal MP and one-time Queensland Liberal Party president Michael Caltabiano as one of the first acts to head a major department and push professional public servants to one side;
- you don't appoint the former Opposition Leader's chief of staff David Edwards to head the Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation; and
- you don't appoint one of your transition team, Ross Musgrove, to a major position within the Public Service Commission.
Like most work forces, public servants watch the rhetoric and the actions. When they see the direct contradiction between the act and the statement they know they are simply dealing with another bunch of politicians.
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<urn:uuid:b36f6e49-4925-4b9d-8e88-8e150acecfeb>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/frank-and-fearless-advice-when-it-suits-20120709-21rhv.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.963254 | 1,346 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Can I play poker at home?
Playing games of poker in your own home, between friends and on
a non-commercial basis, is legal as long as all of the following
conditions are met:
- Play must take place in a private dwelling.
- Play is part of a domestic occasion (such as a private
- The rest of the participants must be your legitimate guests or
- Members of the public can not join in.
- You cannot ask people to pay a fee, separate from the stake, to
take part. This is the case whether the fee is expressed to be
voluntary or compulsory, particularly if players are prevented from
playing if they do not make the “voluntary” donation, or there is
strong peer pressure to make the donation.
There is no limit on the stakes and prizes when playing poker at
Persons under 18 are allowed to participate in poker that is
played at home.
Page last reviewed: June2012
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<urn:uuid:1f5a2c43-ec11-453c-be58-d0dcd03fb3c7>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/gf-faqs/poker/can_i_play_poker_at_home.aspx
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.932524 | 203 | 1.53125 | 2 |
HARTFORD—State Rep. Sean Williams cast votes that supported Connecticut’s business community when a majority of lawmakers did otherwise, according to a recently-released report from the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. CBIA assigned each of the members of the state’s House of Representatives a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” for their votes on seven pieces of legislation the association’s membership considered crucial to economic growth—and job creation. The legislation covered topics such as the state budget, education reform and environmental cleanup of former manufacturing sites. Williams scored favorably on each bill.
Those votes, all cast during the 2011 and 2012 legislative sessions, influenced organizations and media outlets that downgraded Connecticut’s already-poor reputation as a state that’s unfriendly to businesses, said Williams, who represents the 68th General Assembly District covering Watertown and part of Woodbury.
“Too few legislators understand that the decisions they make inHartford, though sometimes well-intentioned, produce negative consequences for businesses that are struggling to maintain the jobs they’re offering, let alone create more,” he said. “The Governor and his Democrat colleagues like to say ‘Connecticut is open for business,’ but their actions are roadblocks for struggling residents who just want this state to turn a corner toward an economy that offers solid jobs that can support families. These votes are classic examples of politicians saying one thing then doing another.”
Over the last two years Williams, ranking House Republican on the legislature’s Finance Committee, offered “no tax increase” budget proposals that included tax relief for small and mid-sized businesses. Williams has been a vocal critic of Gov. Dannel Malloy’s program that has Connecticut handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to major corporations to maintain existing jobs. He is instead a proponent of lower taxes and less regulation as a way to grow our economy and create jobs.
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<urn:uuid:194b73ea-4ba1-41e4-ab27-6bec4a0c2abc>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://cthousegop.com/2012/08/williams-bucks-majority-supports-businesses-through-legislative-action/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.953068 | 407 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Norman Smith’s letter of June 24 asked a number of questions when responding to my letter of June 19. My answers follow.
I have noticed that Democrats have a different way of looking at thrift, logic and unprejudiced facts.
I want to make it impossible for the fraudulent or unqualified to vote. Your candidate should not be defeated by such people. In Maine it is still too easy to slip past the current regulations. We need better proof of eligibility, and if this is an impediment to voting, it is only because you do not take elections seriously.
Why should “independent” Angus King donate funds to any political party? However, he endorsed and contributed to Barack Obama and that ought to tell you something about this liberal spender.
President Obama has shown that he is racist and inexperienced, among other unfavorable characteristics. Should state officials accept his nonsense?
The United States government historically has functioned on a two-party system, with transient third parties appearing and disappearing. Other countries have multiple parties and usually need to form awkward coalitions to get anything done.
FOX is the only TV network that is fair and balanced. I take it as a compliment that my questions reminded Smith of FOX. The other networks have a bias and listeners eventually consider that as balanced, thus making FOX look like a radical right wing organization.
Thomas F. Shields, Auburn
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<urn:uuid:5cbd54ad-264a-4be4-b32f-29db830e9445>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.sunjournal.com/comment/101742
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.965196 | 283 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The viewing angles of the SyncMaster 173P are excellent, like they should be with a PVA matrix. The specification says they have been enlarged from 170° to 178° in this model, mostly by making the screen framing thinner. The viewing angles are really limited by the plastic framing that rises above the screen level if you measure them according to the standard methods. The color reproduction is beyond criticism, too, as smooth color gradients look perfect and there is no trace of “jaggies” or irregular brightness distribution. Moreover, the monitor was shining evenly in dark, without any light spots where the backlight lamps were.
By default, the brightness setting is set to 80%, and the contrast setting to 50%. To reach a screen brightness of 100nit (1 nit = 1 candela per sq. meter), I dropped the brightness control to 38% and the contrast to 30% (I should warn you against taking these values as a reference – they may be different in another sample). You can work with this monitor in a dim room without problems, setting the brightness and contrast settings to their lowest (you should know, though, that it is not recommended to look at the screen in full darkness, because it hurts the eyes – there should always be a light source, however dull, like a desk lamp).
Besides the independent regulation of the RGB settings MagicTune offers three variants of the color temperature: Normal, Reddish and Bluish. The first temperature results in 6070K white and 6290K gray. The second setting corresponds to 4580K white and 5090K gray; the third one to 8350K and 7830K, respectively. As you see, the monitor is originally set up carefully, since there is a small difference between temperatures of different colors. Note also that the color temperature settings are blocked when you switch to the DVI input – the monitor automatically enters the Normal mode.
As we might have expected, the color curves look very good, save for blue, which is slightly lower than should be. This is evident because the temperature in the Normal mode is below the necessary 6500K.
The response time of the SyncMaster 173P turned to be typical for a PVA matrix. It is exactly 25msec on black-white-black transition, but when there is a small difference between the pixel initial and final states (for example, when a gray object is moving on a light-gray background), the response time exceeds 100msec!
The contrast ratio is excellent. It is over 700:1 at low brightness and the luminance of black is practically invisible even in darkness.
The SyncMaster 173P is, beyond doubt, among the best monitors in its class. I had had some apprehensions about the lack of the control buttons, but the program for controlling the monitor proved to be much better than any onscreen menu. The excellent design, aluminum case, portrait mode, the possibility of placing the panel in practically any position you like, very good color reproduction and excellent contrast ratio all make this monitor an excellent choice for both office and home. That is, if you buy a monitor for work, not for games. Regrettably, the low response time of the PVA matrix make the SyncMaster 173P unsuitable for dynamic games. If you need good responsiveness, you’d better take a look at the following model…
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<urn:uuid:2ffd9592-4176-4b76-b4d3-93f27e38c109>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/monitors/display/samsung-2_3.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.935352 | 689 | 1.59375 | 2 |
- Tom Terrific
- November 17, 1944
- 6' 1"
- 195 lbs
- Major League Debut:
- 4-13-1967 with NYN
- Allstar Selections:
- 1967 ROOK, 1969 CY, 1969 TSN, 1973 CY, 1975 CY, 1975 TSN
- Hall of Fame:
Often referred to simply as The Franchise during his time in New York, Tom Seaver was the greatest player in New York Mets history. The righthander helped bring a level of respectability to a franchise that previously experienced little in the way of success, eventually leading his team to two National League pennants and one world championship. Seaver did so with an air of professionalism that made him one of the most admired and respected players of his time.
Born in Fresno, California on November 17, 1944, George Thomas Seaver honed his pitching skills first at Fresno High School, and, later, at the University of Southern California. He spent just one season in the minor leagues with the Jacksonville Suns of the International League before joining the New York Mets at the start of the 1967 campaign. Employing near-perfect pitching mechanics during his delivery to home plate, Seaver was already a finished product by the time he arrived in New York. The 22-year-old hurler captured N.L. Rookie of the Year honors by winning 16 games for the last-place Mets, while compiling an ERA of 2.76, striking out 170 batters, and finishing among the league leaders with 18 complete games and 251 innings pitched. Seaver earned the first of seven consecutive selections to the All-Star Team.
Seaver made a mockery of the so-called "sophomore jinx" the following year, winning another 16 games for the ninth-place Mets, throwing 14 complete games, and placing near the top of the league rankings with 278 innings pitched, 205 strikeouts, and a 2.20 ERA. It was the first of a record nine straight years in which the righthander surpassed 200 strikeouts.
Miracle Mets and first Cy Young Award:
Tom Terrific took his game up a notch in 1969, winning the N.L. Cy Young Award, finishing second in the league MVP voting, and leading the Mets to their first world championship. Seaver led all of baseball with a record of 25-7, and he also placed among the National League leaders with a 2.21 ERA, 208 strikeouts, 18 complete games, and 273 innings pitched. After winning Game One of the NLCS despite allowing five earned runs in seven innings of work, Seaver lost the first game of the World Series to the Baltimore Orioles, permitting the Birds four runs in the five innings he pitched. However, the Mets' ace was far more effective in Game Four, notching a 2-1, complete-game, 10-inning victory to put his team on the brink of winning their first World Series. At season's end, Seaver was presented with both the Hickock Belt as the top professional athlete of the year, and Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year award.
Seaver pitched extremely well again in 1970, compiling a record of 18-12, throwing 19 complete games and 291 innings, and leading all N.L. hurlers with a 2.82 earned run average and 283 strikeouts. On April 22 of that year, the righthander struck out 19 San Diego Padres, including a record 10 in a row to end the game, to tie Steve Carlton's then-major league record for a nine-inning game.
Even though he finished second in the Cy Young voting to Ferguson Jenkins, Seaver had perhaps his greatest season in 1971. In addition to compiling a record of 20-10 and throwing 286 innings, The Franchise hurled a career-high 21 complete games, while also leading the league with a career-best 1.76 ERA and 289 strikeouts. After being overshadowed by Philadelphia's Steve Carlton in 1972 despite winning 21 games himself, Seaver claimed his second Cy Young Award the following season when he led the Mets to within one game of their second world championship. The righthander finished the 1973 campaign with a record of 19-10 and a league-leading 2.08 ERA, 18 complete games, and 251 strikeouts. He then led New York past the heavily-favored Cincinnati Reds in the NLCS, winning one of his two starts, while compiling a 1.62 ERA against the Big Red Machine. Seaver failed to earn a victory against Oakland in the World Series, losing his only decision, but he allowed only four earned runs in 15 innings of work, for an outstanding 2.40 ERA.
A sore hip limited Seaver to 11 victories in 1974, but he returned the following year to win the Cy Young Award for the third and final time in his career. The righthander led the National League with 22 victories and 243 strikeouts, and he also finished among the leaders with a 2.38 ERA, 15 complete games, and 280 innings pitched.
The Mets' feeble offense enabled Seaver to win only 14 of his 25 decisions in 1976, even though he led all N.L. hurlers with 235 strikeouts and also placed among the leaders with a 2.59 ERA, 271 innings pitched, and five shutouts.
Departure from New York:
The 1976 campaign turned out to be Seaver's last big year in New York. Contract squabbles and philosophical differences with Mets General Manager M. Donald Grant led to a trade of the star righthander to the Cincinnati Reds on June 15, 1977. In what was referred to in the New York newspapers as The Midnight Massacre, Seaver was dealt to the Reds for pitchers Pat Zachry and Dan Norman, young outfielder Steve Henderson, and second baseman Doug Flynn. The departure of Seaver broke the hearts of Mets fans and destroyed the morale of the team, which finished near the bottom of the league rankings the next several seasons. Meanwhile, Seaver continued to excel in Cincinnati, winning 14 of his 17 decisions with his new team to finish the year with a record of 21-6. He also compiled an exceptional 2.58 ERA, completed 19 games, and led the league with seven shutouts.
Tom Terrific had four more strong seasons for the Reds, before his pitching skills began to fade. He was at his very best during the strike-shortened 1981 campaign, when he led the league with a record of 14-2, compiled an outstanding 2.54 earned run average, and finished second to Dodger lefthander Fernando Valenzuela in the Cy Young voting. After Seaver's record slipped to 5-13 the following year, Cincinnati traded him back to the Mets for three players. The righthander finished the 1983 season with a record of only 9-14 for the lowly Mets, but he posted a very respectable 3.55 ERA. Left unprotected in the free agent compensation pool at the end of the year, the 39-year-old righthander was claimed by the Chicago White Sox, with whom he spent the next two seasons. Seaver won a total of 31 games for the Sox in 1984 and 1985, one of which made him a member of the exclusive 300-victory club. He spent the 1986 campaign with the Boston Red Sox, retiring at the end of the year with a career record of 311-205, an ERA of 2.86, 3,640 strikeouts, and only 3,971 hits allowed in 4,783 total innings of work.
Seaver led his league in wins and ERA three times each, in shutouts twice, in complete games once, and in strikeouts five times. He was a 20-game winner five times, compiled an ERA under 2.50 five times, threw more than 250 innings 11 times, and struck out more than 200 batters on ten separate occasions. Seaver was named to 12 All-Star teams, and, in addition to winning the Cy Young Award three times, he placed in the top five in the balloting another five times.
Tom Seaver was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on January 7, 1992, receiving in the process the highest percentage of votes ever accorded any player (98.84%). Greatly respected by his teammates and opponents alike, Seaver has been identified by Hank
Aaron as the toughest pitcher he ever faced. Furthermore, in an ESPN poll among his peers, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Jim Palmer, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Bert Blyleven, and Don Sutton all agreed that Seaver was "the best" pitcher of their generation.
On May 19, 2008, Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox hurls a no ...
On May 19, 1981, Pittsburgh Pirates starter Jim Bibby narrow ...
On May 19, 1970, the lawsuit filed by former St. Louis Cardi ...
- 1969 World Series, 1973 NLCS, 1973 World Series, 300 wins, All-Star, Baseball History, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Cy Young Award, New York Mets, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver
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<urn:uuid:9cbdd0bf-bcee-4ade-a2c9-d3ff65778a3c>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.thebaseballpage.com/players/seaveto01?order=sacrifice_hits&sort=asc/bio
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.96998 | 1,861 | 1.546875 | 2 |
When it comes to federal taxes, ‘democrat math’ doesn’t add up
With summer coming, your thoughts may be turning to whether you'll need a second mortgage to afford a drive to the beach - or even to the grocery store.
But, of course, to the spendaholics in Washington, gasoline costs must really seem like chump change - compared to the federal budget. When I was surfing the 'Net the other day, this headline from the Associated Press screamed out for attention: "Democrats Agree on $2.9 Trillion Budget." Yes, that is "trillion" with a "t" - and nearly three trillion at that.
It should be said that the Democrats give the old term "new math" new meaning. For, along with their huge budget blueprint, they also announced that there would be a $41 billion budget surplus in five years.
Five years is a long time, especially in "Democratic years." It means that your child could graduate from high school and from college before you'd ever see a dime of the surplus.
But wait - I am getting ahead of myself here. For the Democrats don't really intend for you, the average taxpayer, to benefit from that surplus. Because, you see, according to Dem calculations, that surplus five years hence can only occur if some of President Bush's tax cuts are allowed to expire.
That's right - the Democrats in power on Capitol Hill are once again declaring war on tax cuts.
Under the Democratic blueprint, taxes on income, dividends, and stock sales will rise in 2011 - what I would call a blueprint for economic stagnation.
There's strong evidence that the tax cuts approved in 2001 and 2003 helped to jumpstart a stalled economy - but Democrats are apparently closing their eyes on the evidence. Why? Because it conflicts with their vision of government being the primary engine of economic growth, rather than business.
Democrats are holding out a ray of hope for the middle class in the form of the possibility of renewing some tax cuts totaling about $180 billion. The pay-as-you-go rule would also be applied - meaning that spending increases in Medicare, children's health care, or farm subsidies would have to be paid for up front so that the deficit won't grow larger.
The problem is that the plan does not limit the financing to spending cuts, but also permits tax increases in other parts of the budget to make up for shortfallS.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, was quoted as saying, "We've been placed in a deep hole. This plan will dig us out."
But a Republican, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, burst the Democratic bubble by noting that the budget blueprint would yield "the largest tax increase in U.S. history."
It's clear Democrats are gearing up for the 2008 election. The problem is that, quite simply, their numbers do not add up.
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St. Charles Herald Guide is the complete local news in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.
Get your local news, sports and information from the Parish's award winning paper.
St. Charles Herald Guide has what you need.
Parish President V.J. St. Pierre, along with eight other parish presidents and...
The St. Charles Parish Council has hired attorney Tim Marcel to represent them...
Little more than a week after officials from 14 parishes took a trip to Washington,...
In the still darkness of the morning, three crabbers in a pickup truck arrived at...
Dr. Rodney Lafon boiled down his decision to announce his retirement last month to...
Over the past four months, those who often travel the elevated portions of I-10 and...
Need lot a lot cleared or a pond dug, call for a free quote. Big or small, we can do it all.
Chaisson out as port director, Aucoin named successor - 543 views
Joel T. Chaisson Sr.’s eight-year tenure as executive director of the Port of South Louisiana will officially come to an end on July 14.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.heraldguide.com/details.php?id=2259
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.962199 | 844 | 1.703125 | 2 |
With hotter weather on the way -- more people will be taking to the water, but it's important to remember even though water levels are low, they can still be dangerous.
Just this afternoon -- a woman had to be rescued from the Truckee River.
Sparks firefighters responded to the river just east of Marietta Way around 2:30 pm.
There they found the 50-year-old woman in the river and unconscious.
She had experienced some kind of medical problem. Along with that -- they say she may also have developed hypothermia. "With the temperature of the river at this time hypothermia is always a concern so she will be treated for hypothermia for the exposure in the river, she was in there an unknown amount of time," says Sparks Fire Capt. Matt Toni.
Firefighters say the woman did regain consciousness as they were moving her, but her condition is unknown at this time.
Firefighters say it's always a good idea to have a friend with you if you go in the river -- just in case.
Saturday, May 25 2013 2:16 AM EDT2013-05-25 06:16:04 GMT
Aces Release 5/24/2013 In his first game of a Major League Rehabilitation Assignment from the Diamondbacks, infielder Willie Bloomquist boosted the Reno Aces to an 8-5 win over the Tacoma RainiersMore >>
Bloomquist went 2-for-4 with four RBI and a run scored.More >>
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<urn:uuid:d07feb4a-5e88-4031-a45a-3c4d2ab24360>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.ktvn.com/story/18960425/woman-rescued-from-truckee-river-in-sparks
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.972626 | 309 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Hurricane Ravaged Homes Could Mean Tax Assessment Reduction [AUDIO]
If your home suffered significant damage or was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, you may qualify for a reduction in your assessment for the tax year 2013 under New Jersey law.
The damage has to have taken place between October 1, 2012 and January 1, 2013.
“First, the property owner must notify their municipal assessor in writing by January 10, 2013 to tell them the property was damaged,” said Atlantic County Tax Administrator Marge Schott. “It’s also a good idea to take photos of the damage and enclose those photos because the assessor will come and inspect the property, but in some cases, the property owner may have already made repairs. Keep copies of the photos along with all records and correspondence”
The assessor will come and inspect the property. “Based on how much the material depreciation on the home is, the assessor will reduce the assessment which will, in turn, reduce the taxes. Unfortunately, if you don’t notify the assessor, the only option is to file a tax appeal for the year 2013. But, then you’ll be paying taxes for the full year of 2013 until there is a court hearing and a judgment is issued. So, it’s very important to notify the assessor,” said Schott.
For additional information, contact your local tax assessor.
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When Seiling hears people talk about the sequester, they are usually most worried about longer waits at airports. But she says that doesn’t compare to the wait her clients have had. “Everyone who is on the waiting list right now has been waiting since 2001,” said Seiling.
Bright Hope International helps faith communities provide aid and assistance to the extreme poor in some of the world’s most devastated countries. The group works in areas such as crisis response, orphan relief, and recently started a program to rescue girls from the sex trade in northern India. We’ll talk with Bright Hope's CEO and president, C.H. Dyer.
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The pattern that I have mentioned before, has been consistent for centuries. A sensitive or exceptionally gifted individual discovers or senses a phenomenon and describes it.
The current bunch of scientists or experts shout ‘Fraud,’ ‘ Liar,’ ‘ Charlatan,’ ‘Impossible,’ and the like—without of course making any attempt to investigate what they perceive as nonsense. After about thirty years or so the phenomenon is absorbed into the enlarged scientific vision and the scientists and experts talk about it as if they had known it all along.
Of course by that time they are shouting ‘Fraud,’ ‘Nonsense,’ and so forth about something else on its way to orthodoxy some thirty years hence.
One example I have written about ad nauseam over the years is the persecution of vitamin and diet-therapy supporters in the 50’s through the 60’s by the medical authorities, who now talk learnedly about the importance of vitamins, supplements, and proper nutrition, though many of them know less about nutrition than their receptionist, particularly if she is in Weight Watchers.
Another fine example is the out-of-body experiences (OBE’s) which have been known about by many people for thousands of years. Yet only in the past thirty years has the possibility that body and consciousness are sometimes separable entered into things conceived of as possible by the scientific fraternity.
Some therapists are now actually training people to exteriorize, as they call it. And of course the military researchers of the major powers have been trying to find ways to use this now acknowledged human ability as a method of spying, or gathering military intelligence. Elisha, in the Second book of Kings had already forestalled them by centuries.
Elizabeth Kuhbler-Ross and a number of other brave souls with sound professional reputations, have spoken of OBE’s as verifiable facts capable of being understood by experiencing them.
But why in the name of Truth does it take so long for occult material to be read, let alone tested? The Tibetan Book of the Dead was translated by Wentz over 70 years ago. I used it in my social studies lessons in the 50’s. It details the out-of-body experiences for Tibetans for 49 days after the death of the body, with advice on how to interpret what seems to be happening, and what to do in various circumstances in order to make an optimum transition from living from a human perspective in a human body, to living from a subtle world perspective in the subtle body that was there all time but largely unacknowledged.
The book contained the accumulated data of centuries of work of trained and gifted psychics from the only theocracy in the world. The experts on other matters dismissed it as superstition, without reading it of course, and thereby wasted decades trying to discover what has already been known for centuries.
Muldoon’s text book on astral projection was published in 1929, yet well over seventy years later it is still news to some people that the phenomenon has been known about and taught for millennia. Muldoon was possibly the most famous projector in the last century. He lived most of his life in Wisconsin and had his first OBE at age 12.
He came into the literature because he read the work of the British psychical researcher Hereward Carrington who wrote a book called Modern Psychical Phenomena. In that book was a chapter about the experiences of the French projector Charles Lancelin. Muldoon wrote to Carrington and pointed out that Lancelin was probably an unconscious projector, and that he, Muldoon could project consciously after years of practice and might be a good source of new data for researchers.
He gave Carrington so many new concepts and details about the procedures that the researcher began a professional association with Muldoon, which resulted in the book The Projection of the Astral Body in 1929. This classic is still available in occult and metaphysical bookstores, though nowadays there are dozens of others inspired by the careful work of Muldoon and Carrington.
The experience of apparently leaving the body behind, and being able to see it—connected to the less dense body by what looks like an infinitely extensible cord of light— has been shared by millions of people over the centuries.
Most reported OBE’s come under the heading of autoscopy: seeing oneself from a distance. This quite frequently happens during experiences that shock the body.
Many accounts have been written about people watching complete operations on their bodies whilst under anaesthesia. George Sava, for instance, wrote a series of very popular books about his life as a surgeon. In A Surgeon Remembers, that came out in 1953, he recalled an operation on an elderly Mrs. Frances Gail.
She came out of her post-operative coma, quite annoyed at being brought back to her body, as many people are. She told Mr. Sava verbatim the discussion he had about whether to operate, and the replies of the operation room staff. I said Mr. Sava instead of Dr. Sava, because surgeons in England regard themselves as way superior to mere physicians, and are called Mister, to distinguish them from doctors. They are insulted to be called Doctor, and let you know the protocol immediately.
Mr. Sava then concluded " It is indeed a disquieting thought…that every time one operates one’s activities are under observation from the patient’s astral body hovering overhead."
Dr. Russell MacRobert was staff doctor at Lennox Hill Hospital in NYC when he was assigned to operate on a clergyman with a painful ear disorder.
The patient was under extra deep anaesthesia, and the surgeon was about to start when he found that he was missing an instrument vital to the operation. He swore vigorously before going to his instrument case and had to be prepared all over again while the instrument was sterilized before he could begin the operation.
All this time the astral body of the clergyman was watching and listening, and he told the surgeon the complete story on coming out of the anaesthetic.
A surgeon I know personally told me that his heart operating team had been warned to watch their conversation during the operations because it was an unexplained (and of course uninvestigated ) medical fact that the patient often knew what was going on, though medically unconscious.
My own uncle experienced watching his body do things from the other side of the deck, after being hit by machine gun fire when his Air Sea rescue launch was attacked by a German plane during the war.
But experiences like these are kindergarten standard and extremely numerous. The experienced astral travellers who can move about the planet, and remember what was seen and heard, are fewer, though still numerous.
Muldoon was the most famous person of this sort, if we exclude the Biblical references. Another was Oliver Fox, the English scientist who wrote Astral Projection.
Robert Monroe founded the Mind Research Institute in Virginia, and performed many experiments involving visiting people astrally, writing down a dated version of the trip, and then checking with them. His discovery as a sound engineer was that feeding specific, and slightly different frequencies into stereo headphones would produce projection in the hearer. And it was repeatable. Anyone who wanted to project could go to the Monroe Institute and experience it for themselves.
His book Journeys Out of the Body was published in 1971, and described in some detail the interpenetrating universes in which we live. This occurred at about the time that the quantum mechanics people began to make public the latest multiple universe ideas from the world of advanced physics. One interesting factor of his work to spiritual scientists was that the creatures and beings experienced by his team of travellers were identical to those experienced by the Gnostics in the 1st century when they wrote about going through the seven gates, each one guarded by one of the visible planets.
Projection may be what was actually taking place in the remote viewing being taught to Intelligence Officers in the then US military secret program in October of 1977. This was a successful experiment in using paranormal abilities as an intelligence gathering tool. It was only initiated because of the suspicion that the Russians might be using psychic methods to garner intelligence data.
The Autumn 1998 issue of the British magazine Kindred Spirit had a long article about the work of Joseph W. McMoneagle, who was one of the original six officers recruited for the project.
This project showed experimentally in the bleak area of the training of soldiers that it is possible to travel about, either in an etheric body, or by knowing how to think about where you want to go. This is fact. Debate about it as fact is based on ignorance, not a scientific attitude. Yet the wranglers and explainers away are still there, seeking their own comfort level.
Look at this scenario. Less than a century and a half ago, before the Eskimos contacted the sugar society of America, the phenomenon of toothache was totally unknown to Eskimos. They didn’t even have a word for it in their language. So let’s consider just for a moment that the unsugared Eskimo is the dominant culture, and that you have a toothache.
There is no way that you could convey your experience to the concerned psychiatric investigator. He would cleverly explain away all your symptoms and behavior as "all in your mind" and part of a rare dentopathy syndrome, just as insensitive and ignorant white coated experts do today, when someone is experiencing mental phenomena that they themselves don’t experience. In India, when someone’s Kundalini awakens and begins to clean out the garbage of many lifetimes, it is recognized as a spiritual phenomenon and there will be people who understand what it happening, look after them, and honor their attainment.
Here, such people are treated to make them ‘ normal’ like the experts. Drugs and electric shocks are possibilities in the spiritually ignorant West.
But if that expert experienced a toothache himself it might change his whole attitude. He would find other ways to explain your pain that hadn’t occurred to him before. And of course it would likely mean ostracism from his peers, and being labelled a crank, if he reported it professionally.
Kuhbler-Ross investigated OBE’s for years as one of the few professionals who considered that they were genuine phenomena. Fourteen years after she began work on them she had her own experience. Now she is fearless. She knows. The ignorance of the experts cannot alter her experience, no matter how clever that expert may be.
But so much of this kind of phenomenon MUST be experienced. Debate and wrangling won’t produce the experience which is the only valid test. The pseudo-objective attitude of the scientist, and the special consciousness that it involves are not adequate to the task.
The military experiments, and Munroe’s repeatable methods would be enough evidence in any other field of knowledge. Many concepts have been accepted in science with far less evidence. But peer pressure from an extremely left brained group makes it difficult for scientists to realize that their valid and valuable method of testing and organizing knowledge is inadequate in some areas of human life.
Many physicians meditated in secret in case their critical colleagues thought they were weird to do something so irrational. Only after an MD wrote The Relaxation Response, and there was a medical term for it, did they begin to come out of the woodwork and recommend it to stress patients.
My amazing mentor once said this, " If a question can be answered with words then it is not a fundemental question. Fundamental questions can only be answered with an experience, not a sentence." Good advice. Believe your own stuff. It’s all you have. Don’t let the doubts of someone without your experience influence your unchallengeable, but incommunicable knowledge. Remember the Eskimo! — rhymes with Alamo, should be easy to recall.
Douglas Buchanan from Tid Bits vol I, #18. Out of the Body
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PITTSBURGH -- Gov. Tom Corbett and union leaders want lawmakers to approve a $1.7 billion tax credit to lure a new petrochemical plant to western Pennsylvania, but some tax experts say that would run counter to sensible tax practices and would be unfair to other businesses.
The first-term Republican governor, who ran as a pro-business conservative, proposes Pennsylvania's largest-ever financial incentive -- a tax credit of $66 million per year for 25 years. In return, Shell Chemicals has tentatively committed to build a multibillion-dollar petrochemical refinery about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
Union leaders from the United Steelworkers and the AFL-CIO have endorsed the plan, as well as some Democratic politicians.
But David Brunori, a professor of public policy at George Washington University and author of "State Tax Policy: a Political Perspective," described the idea as "Soviet thinking."
Brunori said numerous studies show that the best tax systems have low rates, are broadly based, and treat all businesses equally. "What the governor's doing is opposite of that," he said. "There's absolutely nothing good about what the governor is proposing."
One leading advocate of free markets also said the plan doesn't add up.
"It's unfair to the companies that don't get the breaks," said Chris Edwards, editor of DownsizingGovernment.org and director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute. "I think it makes a really bad tax policy."
Edwards said politicians around the country seem to have "a weakness for giving narrow tax benefits to their favorite industry." He said it would be better to lower tax rates for all businesses in Pennsylvania.
Both Brunori and Edwards note that Shell has argued that the tax credits would help justify the company's investment risk given the chances that much of the Marcellus Shale gas could be shipped to other regions, for use by other companies. The company says that without a large, steady supply of gas, it can't justify the huge investment to build the plant.
But Edwards said businesses are supposed to take risks.
"It does seem bizarre that they want the government to cover their private business risk," he said.
Houston-based Shell plans to tap into the enormous new supply of natural gas coming out of the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich rock formation thousands of feet under Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. The so-called ethane cracker would convert natural gas liquids to ethylene, which chemical manufacturers can then use to produce chemicals that go into plastics, tires, antifreeze and other products.
West Virginia and Ohio also have offered Shell large tax credits, and Brunori said fear may be what really motivates politicians in such cases.
"Nobody wants to be blamed for losing a big company," he said.
Shell's announcement last year of its plans for the refinery seemed to signal the return of major industry to the northeast United States for the first time in decades. The plant could create up to 10,000 construction jobs, 500 permanent jobs, and inspire many other companies to locate to the region.
But some companies now want to ship the gas down to existing or new plants on the Gulf Coast, some want to ship it to Canada, while others want to export it overseas. Energy industry analysts agree that the Marcellus is generating plenty of competition and even market turmoil.
"We are likely to see grand plans by many firms. Some will fail. Some will succeed. Some investments will be abandoned. Others will produce high rates of return for their investors," said Jay Apt, director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center in Pittsburgh.
Shell's plans could be slowed or derailed by competitors or even national politics, added Fadel Gheit, an oil and gas analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. in New York City. A political decision, for example, could allow the export of natural gas liquids, he said.
The market price for the gas in Europe or Japan is double or triple the price in the U.S. Even factoring in the difficulty and cost of transportation, some companies still want to export the bounty.
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There was a temporary interval in American life when a shooting spree by a madman would have been viewed as the crime of one man. The dead would have been mourned. The killer, if he had been taken alive, would have been punished, and while the memorial might have been accompanied by some leading sermons, the country would have been spared the media exploitation and blame-a-thon that invariably follows such events.
A shooting takes place and the media urges that millions of firearms be confiscated. Every crisis requires that more freedoms be sacrificed for that overriding public danger that the talking heads are screaming about this week over news feeds from every corner of the globe. There are no more private lives. Only public ones. Everyone will sooner or later pass before the camera and be judged by millions of strangers in a narrative that will transform him or her into a hero or villain in the great social struggle against the public danger of the day.
Calling Adam Lanza a madman has little meaning now. The madman retreats to a private world of his own making. But the collective culture does not recognize madness as a detachment from the crowd. Instead it views it as yet another social malady to be solved. Re-open the asylums. Provide more mental health funding. Open hotlines for anyone with suicidal thoughts. Social solutions for a social society coping with the anti-social.
But even our madmen are public figures now. Cut off from the collective culture by their minds, they still strive to connect to its most fundamental value. Fame.
America's spree killers don't drive pickup trucks with gun racks. They aren't NRA members and have never opened a bible. They are young, mentally ill and famous. They are exactly like the real and fake celebrities who crowd magazine covers, television screens and paparazzi-choked premieres. But they can't sing or dance, and have no unique way to embarrass themselves into staged fame. Instead they kill their way to being famous.
As schizophrenic as our shooters were, as unable to connect to the groupthink of the larger culture, they understood the one thing that we valued. And they got it in a brute force way. They became what every girl with dyed blonde hair waiting on line to impress the judges of television's dueling singing competitions, every waiter with sunglasses waiting to become a movie star on Rodeo Drive, every "internet personality" leaning precariously over a webcam on YouTube, every kid trying out rhymes on his friends and building a fake biography of all the people he shot in drug deals gone bad, want to be. Famous.
In mass culture, fame is the only oxygen of the individual. It is the only thing that distinguishes the vanishing individual from the herd. The celebrity is to 21st Century America as the general, the writer, the poet, the politician and the genius were to former eras. All these things and many more have been distilled down to the simple status of celebrity. You are either famous or you aren't. You either have a private life that everyone knows about or your private life has already been repealed by the overriding public dangers of cow farts, racism and large sodas. You are either a slave to the public or just a public slave.
A culture of crowds makes crazy people even crazier. There's nothing for paranoia like a major city and these days we all live in the major city of a culture that is crowded in even its most rural areas. Crowd culture expects everyone to follow the leader, to join the meme, to move with the flow, but that is something that crazy people cannot do. The madman is always out of step and out of sync, the paranoid schizophrenic occasionally makes a compelling leader, but he is unable to be a follower.
Madness can at its simplest be viewed as the gap between his thinking and our own. Like cultural differences, it often explodes into violence, but unlike cultural differences it cannot be bridged because there is no common language. The madman is a member of a unique culture of one. He is a citizen of himself. He has his own laws, his own values and even his own mental language. And it is one that no sane person will ever understand.
If the madman has lost the ability to speak to the crowd, the crowd has equally lost the ability to speak to the individual. The madman suffers from a defective mental vocabulary and the mad society has lost the ability to formulate concepts relating to individual behavior.
In our society the individual is always seen as putting on a public performance of accepting or rejecting group values. All private lives become a public competition to see who recycles the most, is the least racist, the most giving and the best example of what a cog in the great social machine should be. Every individual act is a commentary, not ultimately on the individual, but on the social machine. Crime is no longer a private act, but a public one, that emerges out of social factors such as the poverty rate, race relations, the availability of firearms, cold medication in pharmacies and the amount of funding for midnight basketball, outpatient mental health therapy and a thousand others.
All private plans are a public danger. All individual acts are really collective acts. There is no "I" in individual. There is only the crowd, its avatars who live out their fantasies and entertain them, and the masses shuffling off toward their daily labors until they are released from the grind and allowed a few hours to entertain themselves watching their avatars live a public show of private life.
How does one speak of individual responsibility to such people and how can they be expected to distinguish individualism from madness? The ant hive cannot be expected to think of the ant. It cannot understand anthood apart from the hive.
The Blame-a-Thon continues. Blaming Adam Lanza for his own actions is insufficient. Even blaming his dead mother is insufficient. Individuals do not matter. Only groups do. Corporations. The NRA. The Tea Party. Private tragedy becomes a political event complete with campaign speeches and fundraising letters. Organizations converge. New offices are opened and phone lines are installed. Press conferences are given. "This is a wake up call. A call for action. It's time we did something."
Within an hour, the responsibility is transferred from a killer to the society at large and then to the groups that do not share the values of the new collectivist society. War is declared. Press releases are faxed. Letters are sent out. "We need your help, Michael." "Stand with us, Susan." The dead are buried and their bodies are used to make the mulch of a new wave of political repression and profiteering. The dead, like singing competition contestants, are ultimately disposable, as are their killers. It is the producers and the judges who endure.
There is more danger than safety in the crowd. Not only can the crowd not deter a madman, for the same reason that Kitty Genovese bled to death lay dying for an hour, but the crowd is also mad. It is a madness that is harder to detect because it is the madness of a crowd. The individual irrationality of a madman is detectable by outsiders, because of its conflict with the group reality, and even to the person of the madman by that same conflict, which fuels his paranoia toward the outside world, but the group cannot detect its own irrationality and is too large and pervasive for its irrationality to be recognized on the outside.
Our crowd is not yet as collectively insane as Adam Lanza, but it's getting there. And it will not be pretty when it does. The madness of crowds is not a pretty thing. It can be seen in the hysterical crowds that greeted Hitler or the equally hysterical crowds swooning at the sight of a celebrity. Individual madness is flawed chemistry, but crowd madness is a will to madness, a raving desire to be one with the collective view, to be famous or almost famous, to exchange reason for sensation and individuality for the group immortality of the group.
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How To Look After Your Christmas Tree
If you buy a live Christmas tree, then there is a good deal you can do to ensure that it gets through the season unscathed, and still has at least most of its needles intact!
When you bring it home, the first thing to do is to ensure that you leave in a cool place until you are ready to take it indoors.
Round the back of the house or in the garage are ideal. Try to only bring indoors when necessary, as they will not tend to last for more than a couple of weeks in total.
When you bring the tree inside, ensure that there is a saucer or container (often the stand) that can contain water.
Ensure that you check the water level every day or two, and add more water to the base as necessary.
Also place it sensibly - if it right next to the radiator, then the tree will not last too long. As a general rule try to keep the room with the tree quite cool.
Remember that decorations such as lights give out heat, which warm up the tree. Therefore always switch lights off at night - this saves you some electricity, too!
Questions about christmas:
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- Taxes on some wealthy French top 100 pct of income: paper
- North Korea fires short-range missiles for two days in a row |
- Israel warns against Russian arms supply to Syria
- Shooting death of gay man rocks New York's cradle of gay rights
- Female hostage died from police bullet in New York standoff: official
U.S. military extends many benefits to same-sex partners
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon announced on Monday it would extend more of the benefits offered to spouses of heterosexual troops to those of gay personnel but acknowledged some key benefits, like housing, would still be off-limits, at least for now.
The step came 17 months after the Pentagon scrapped its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on openly serving homosexuals in the U.S. military and will affect the day-to-day lives of their spouses in ways big and small - from allowing them to finally get military I.D. cards to granting hospital visitation rights.
But outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in a memorandum explaining the move, noted his actions were limited by U.S. law, specifically the Defense of Marriage Act, which is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court and which defines marriage as a union between a man and woman.
"There are certain benefits that can only be provided to spouses as defined by that law," said Panetta, who is expected to retire in the coming days.
"While it will not change during my tenure as secretary of defense, I foresee a time when the law will allow the department to grant full benefits to service members and their dependents, irrespective of sexual orientation."
Pentagon officials estimated the cost of the policy change would be negligible, since it would only affect around 9,000 spouses of active duty and reserve members and another 8,000 retirees. They hoped the changes would go into effect by the end of August.
The announcement came on the eve of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address and just weeks after he made history by becoming the first U.S. president to praise progress on gay rights in his inaugural address.
"Secretary Panetta's decision today answers the call President Obama issued in his inaugural address to complete our nation's journey toward equality," said Allyson Robinson, head of the advocacy group OutServe-SLDN and an Army veteran. The moves will substantially improve the quality of life of affected spouses, she said.
DEFINITION OF A SPOUSE
Pentagon officials, briefing reporters on the decision, explained that other sensitivities, bureaucratic considerations and even the spirit of the U.S. law were also taken into account. But the big problem Defense Department attorneys ran into were legal ones, when a benefit was limited to a "spouse" as formally defined by the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA.
The Pentagon said it was still reviewing whether certain benefits could still be extended to the spouses of gay and lesbian servicemembers, even under existing law, like some housing benefits and burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
A USA Today/Gallup poll published in December found that approval of same-sex marriage among the general public had risen to 53 percent in 2012 from less than 40 percent in 2005. Young adults were the most supportive.
Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. Last November, Maryland, Maine and Washington became the first states to do so through the ballot box.
But opposition still runs deep in parts of the country. The USA Today/Gallup poll found gay marriage opposed by a majority in the South. North Carolina in 2011 added a voter-approved ban to its constitution. Some 30 states have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.
(Editing by Philip Barbara)
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Thursday, November 1, 2007
November 2007 Readback
After introducing the 300 Knot Club, Columbia began to receive photographic evidence from aircraft owners of groundspeeds in excess of 300 knots. The company has subsequently inducted these pilots into the club. “The 300 Knot Club is simply a way to celebrate what a purpose-built speedster can accomplish in the hands of a skilled aviator,” said Columbia Aircraft VP of Sales Randy Bollinger. “People purchase a Columbia because they want to fly comfortably as fast, as far and as safely as possible, in an aircraft that was engineered around a 310 hp twin-supercharged powerplant, all the way to the fringes of the envelope. The club is just another way for the Columbia community to bond and have fun while doing what they love to do—flying the Columbia.” More information is available at www.flycolumbia.com.
New Engine Technology
New York–based Xerion Avionix has received the go-ahead from the FAA for installation of its AuRACLE engine-management system into general aviation aircraft. The system operates with four- and six-cylinder engines and has a five-inch color screen that can be configured to display data including rpm, fuel flow, oil temperature and pressure, CHT, EGT, OAT, TIT, percentage of horsepower and much more.
“The FAA has allowed us to integrate a complete overview of up-to-the-second engine data with a state-of-the-art fuel computer,” said Xerion’s Eric Hathaway. “Now general aviation pilots can literally micromanage the aircraft’s engine performance and fuel consumption with a single, intuitive, digital presentation.”
The AuRACLE system is authorized for installation on the Beechcraft Bonanza A36, and Xerion is seeking retrofit STCs for all major aircraft types. More information is available at www.xerionavionix.com.
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Labels: Avionics, Books and DVDs, Buyer's Guide, New Products, Pilot Gear, Handheld Gadgets, Best Buys, Gear
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