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Since appearing before Congress and lamenting the intolerance found in today's Republican Party, Jeb Bush is continuing to press his case, most recently in a National Review article entitled "The Grand Solutions Party."
Bush argues that President Obama has governed from a "One Ideology, One Party, and One Man" perspective -- "a centralized, planned, command-and-control government."
Bush suggests Republicans present an alternative governing style, one that embraces "policy experimentation and fresh approaches" and presents the GOP as the "party of competing ideas."
"It is time for the Republican party to offer an alternative. Not just an alternative to President Obama's agenda of liberal government, which is important to do. We need to present an alternative to his approach to governance in general. An approach that applies to every elected office."
For role models, Bush points to New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie, Louisiana's Gov. Bobby Jindal and Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels. These leaders have successfully worked with Democrats on contentious issues, and have expressed divergent opinions on issues such as immigration and social policy.
"The animating force of this governance is diversity and creativity of thinking. And that is how the Republican Party should always be," Bush wrote.
While acknowledging that Republicans should continue to believe in an ideology that encompasses individual achievement and opportunity, and small government, he stressed that strict adherence to ideology is not always practical when attempting to resolve complicated issues.
"Thick black lines of ideology are good at keeping people in, but they are also good at keeping people out. And our party can't win if we keep people out. Our goal is not to assemble a small army of purists. We need a nation of converts. We have seen the other way of governing. It has had its day. It has made its best case. It has failed."
Yet Bush's advocacy for open discussion and tolerance only goes so far.
It's how he uses that word "liberal" in associating the failures of Obama's reign. It sounds like a dogmatic slur word -- à la RINO -- and diminishes his call for the GOP to be more tolerant of differing philosophies and opinions.
In the political context, the term "Liberal" has undergone several revisions since the end of World War II and means different things to different people.
Within the Republican Party, which once had a very powerful liberal wing, the rabid, intolerant conservatism that Bush decries has succeeded in equating the word with extreme leftist ideologies such as socialism and Marxism.
In fact, Bush's description of Obama's reign in the White House as "One Ideology, One Party, and One Man" is more Orwellian than anything else.
For Bush to validate his message, he should be the first to stop using the buzzword "Liberal" in a derogatory manner.
Here's the bottom line: No matter what race, color, sex, or class -- and no matter what they call themselves -- most Americans are not moderates, which on its face disregards passionate belief. Rather, they are what I would call "liberal conservatives." They judge issues and causes case-by-case -- some liberal, some conservative -- informed by their personal upbringing, religion, beliefs and lifestyles.
In reality, there's a little liberal in every conservative, and a little conservative in every liberal.
Americans are disgusted with the control of both political parties by the extremes of the spectrum.
Bush is making a righteous argument for a paradigm change toward more dialogue, more compromise and more common sense.
To truly capture the hearts and minds of Americans, he just needs to be a little more liberal in how he speaks about change.
Published in Florida Voices on July 6, 2012
© Florida Voices
Follow Steven Kurlander on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Kurlykomments
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|January 26, 2012||Posted by Phil Vecchione|
A few months ago, I backed a Kickstarter for a product called Writers Dice, by Daniel Solis. I just got my dice this past week, and wanted to use them in my All For One game. So I started to think about how to work them in. I came up with three ways that I could use them to enhance my game and add a bit of randomness to it.
Writers Dice: A Quick Summary
Writers dice are d6’s, but rather than the standard numbers they have the following words on them: AND, OR, AS, SO, BUT, and IF. You use the dice to connect one thought to another. For instance: The heroes must enter the dungeon…ROLL…SO… that they can find the cure to the plague in the town…ROLL…BUT… the cure is guarded by trolls. Simple and fun.
The dice were not made for any specific game, though they are a great fit for story-based RPGs like Do: Pilgrims Of The Flying Temple or Fiasco. But what about more traditional RPG’s like D&D or my current campaign, All For One? How could these Writers dice help enhance the game?
As I worked on my most recent session notes, I sat the dice on the table next to me, and started to look for ways to integrate them into my game. I came up with a few ideas…
Idea One: Consequences of Failure
This concept is covered in the Writers Dice guide and is not my own idea, but its a natural fit. When a character fails a skill check, there should be consequences for their failure (something I talked about before). Often GM’s, myself included, take the mental shortcut and just say that the skill check failed. Writers dice can be used to help create consequences for failure.
GM: Make a Larceny check to pick the lock.
GM: You fail to pick the lock. Rolls: OR
GM: The lock does not open OR the lock opens but your lock pick is broken in the lock.
It can work just as well with with a successful check, but for my use, I am going to stick with just failure since success often has a good definition of what will happen built in.
Idea Two: Enhance Player Narrative
I like to include scenes in my game that are not key to the plot, but are there for the player to expand and grow their character. For instance: The character goes and talks to their teacher, goes shopping in town, or they decide to live it up in the tavern. In these cases, I typically will just ask the character how it went, and often get a very safe answer: “I talked to the shopkeeper for a bit and then got the equipment.”
With the writers dice, you can now ask the player to narrate and include one or more writers dice in their description. For instance:
GM: “You went to see your teacher…”
Player: rolls AS and AND
Player: …AS he was in the middle of an argument with another student, AND the student attacked my teacher.”
Now from a simple trip to visit his master, a new story has unfolded.
Idea Three: NPC Motivations
You can use Writers Dice to help decide how an NPC is going to react to a situation. Perhaps you know the overall disposition of the NPC: friendly, unfriendly, indifferent, etc, but the players now ask a favor. Using the Writers dice you can enhance the NPC’s response.
Player: Captain, you must take us across the sea, we need to get this cure to our people.
GM: The Captain is unfriendly. Rolls: BUT
GM: The Captain is no friend of yours, BUT her sister lives across the sea so she will help.
A Dash of IF and a Sprinkle of SO
Writers Dice can be a fun way to enhance your game. The word on the die takes you down a path that you may not have thought of at first, and in doing so can create those serendipitous moments of gaming that are unforgettable.
Writers dice are not out for general sale yet. I talked to Daniel Solis on G+ and he let me know that after all the Kickstarter backers have been sent their dice, they will be available for general sale. Details will be posted on his blog page about Writers Dice. That pages also has links for getting the Writers Dice app (iOS, Android, and Windows) as well as the Writers Dice Guide.
I have named three ways you could use Writers Dice in your game, now how would you use them? If you have a set, what ways have you worked them into your game?
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Are we this bored? Is our entertainment really all about watching the spectacle of ill-fated celebrities? Does their sorrow bring us joy? Can we say that these spectacles add to our lives in some meaningful way? It seems that we have, as Kierkegaard noticed in the 19th century, become passive spectators of life. When he wrote, though, he was talking about exhibitions at a theme park. As I write, I am talking about the bad deeds and self-destruction of others. It seems that we have become more passive (Albert Borgmann argued that real reality T.V. would be a show where the people did nothing more than watch T.V.) and delighted by the sorrow and brokenness of others.
I could go on and on listing the recent celebrity gossip, and you could as well. But we also know that people are interested in the spectacles of every-day people too. I struggle with this! I know that this is not a Christian behavior. It is certainly not in line with a Christian moral theology to delight in the mess of other people's lives, or to be so idle as to know all the gossip. But I do not think it could be seen as morally permissible by any major religion or system of ethics!
What would it mean for our communities if we took words like this seriously:
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. - Romans 1:28-32
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With the rise of the Internet as a medium for businessmen and women to communicate with one another, many companies are depending heavily on conferencing solutions to supplement or replace face-to-face meetings. Video conferencing has multiple advantages over face-to-face meetings, as it eliminates the need to travel, makes it easy to access and record information during the conference and enables communication over vast distances. Follow these steps to set up a workspace to get the most out of a video conference.
Webcams are somewhat quirky when it comes to lighting. Of course, you will need to make sure your office has enough light; many professionals become so used to working in dimly lit areas that they forget to turn more lights on during a conference. The direction of the light is also important: If the light comes from behind you, everyone involved in the conference will see you as a shadow or with a rather bright and distracting halo. Likewise, light that comes directly from above can cause multiple unflattering or distracting shadows. Since natural light can vary significantly over the course of a meeting, use artificial light whenever possible. Adjust the lighting as needed and check your image before the conference to make sure there are no brightness or shadow issues.
Besides making sure that you are properly lit, you will need to make your appearance on camera as professional as possible. At minimum, wear business casual attire from the waist up, and if there is any chance you will need to stand during the conference, be properly dressed from the waist down as well. Also pay attention to whatever is behind you; think of your video conferencing partners as guests in your home or office and prepare accordingly. If you work at home, get the dirty laundry or dishes out of the background and point the camera at a fairly neutral space such as a wall. Likewise, if you are going to video conference from your office, take the opportunity to de-clutter your workstation and make it presentable.
Make sure your microphone and speakers are close enough together to listen and speak naturally; ideally, use a combined microphone and headphone setup. Headphones of some sort are essential because using your computer’s speakers tends to cause feedback; during the conference, your microphone will pick up sound from the speakers and send it back into the conversation, creating an echo effect.
Save some time before the meeting begins to make sure all of the technology you are using is functioning properly. Turn on your video conferencing software and test your video, audio and microphone, looking for any issues. Nothing can derail a video conference faster than minor technical issues, so make sure your volume is on, your microphone is functional, your video is visible and so on prior to connecting with your colleagues. If you plan on using any additional software during the meeting, such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Word, have those programs open and run through the documents you intend to use to make sure everything is working as intended.
Make sure you have all of the information you need for the conference, whether print or electronic, readily accessible during the meeting. This includes any presentation materials you plan on using, of course, but it also includes additional resources that may be needed to answer questions and contact information for relevant people and organizations that may be discussed during the video conference. You don’t want to have to look up additional information while everyone else sits, waiting. Eliminate this potential issue by looking up as much as possible before the meeting begins.
Punctuality is as important for video conferences as it is for in-person meetings. Be on your computer with your equipment set up, your tech check done and your materials ready to go at least 10 minutes before the meeting is scheduled to begin. Having everything under control early will speak to your professionalism and get the meeting started on a positive note.
Brandon Serna is a small business and communications writer working with ACT Conferencing, a leader in digital communications and conferencing solutions.
About the Author (Author Profile)
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Archive for June 2010
I ran across an article that I wanted to share about how the Kindle is being used to promote literacy in children in third world countries. There’s an organization called Worldreader.org that recently brought 20 Kindles to a Ghana classroom and they will be doing trials of the program in other areas as well.
It’s a really interesting concept, I think. Just think about how many more books a child could have access to by using an e-reader that otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to physically get. They could use the text-to-voice option to learn new words or pronunciation. Obviously, there are some downsides like taking care of the Kindle itself to prevent damage. Check out Worldreader.org’s blog for more information on their trials and current projects including some interesting stories about how the Kindle was used in Ghana and how the kids adapted to it.
On Facebook, there was some debate in response to this article asking why they aren’t doing this here in the US and instead, spending the money in a country overseas that doesn’t help the children here with literacy issues. There does seem to be a lot of talk (and possibly some action) about adding e-readers to US classrooms for the same reasons. I’m sure this is a subject that we will hear more and more about in the coming years with the advent of the Kindle and other e-readers plus other technology like the iPad. What are your thoughts about e-readers in the classroom?
This book was just mentioned on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s summer reading list and coincidentally, I just finished reading it!
“The One That I Want” is about a woman named Tilly who is a guidance counselor in the same high school that she grew up in and she’s pretty satisfied with her life – married her high school sweetheart, hopefully trying for a baby on the way. One day, she visits the town festival after work and runs into an old friend that she grew up with who is a fortune teller of sorts who does something to Tilly and tells her that she will now have clarity. Tilly brushes her off until she all of a sudden blacks out and sees a vision, which ends up coming true. She keeps having blackouts and visions and eventually figures out what triggers them and is able to do it on-demand. Tilly knows that there’s nothing she can do to stop or change it because it’s obviously all happening for a reason. While she was out living her lovely little life, things were starting to fall apart and she has no control over it.
Typically, I would go into more detail about the storyline up to a certain point, but I think that you should pick up the book and read it yourself if you want to learn more. Telling you what the visions are and what happens would ruin all of the surprises and page-turningness (I think I just made up a new word). This is one of those stories that makes you realize that no one is perfect and life isn’t perfect. Sometimes things just don’t go the way you want them to, but it’s destiny and you just have to let it happen and then adjust your life from there. The book was really easy to get into and it was hard to put down!
This is Allison Winn Scotch‘s third book; I’ve also read and blogged about her second book, “Time of My Life“, and want to read her first book someday, too. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook. Personally, I like her cute and witty comments on random things and her running commentary on the TV show “The Bachelor” (or Bachelorette). She live tweets during each episode – love it!
I picked up this book (yes, a real-life book) in the clearance “bin” at my local Borders a few months ago. I can’t pass up interesting looking books under $5. And yes, I do judge the books by their covers. Although, I have bought some Kindle ebooks that have covers that I wouldn’t necessarily be attracted to in person.
Janie LaMarche recently lost her husband in a biking accident (PSA: please respect bicyclists and motorcyclists on the road!!) and she is really struggling to get on with her life. She finds out that her late husband had planned to get a porch built as a gift to her and makes an unlikely companion of the contractor, Tug (that’s his name). He knows how to deal with her attitude and doesn’t pity her. He is also fantastic with Janie’s little boy, Dylan, and her baby daughter, Carly. Janie also makes an even more unlikely companion of Father Jake Sweeney, the young Catholic priest who visits her weekly to try to help her through her grief. She can’t stand him at first and doesn’t want him there, but they learn to get along with each other and become friends, confessing things that they have not told other people.
While all of that is going on, Janie is also dealing with her hovering aunt, her protective cousin, her absent mother, her nosy but helpful neighbor, and a new girl friend who is the mother of one of Dylan’s friends. She is still having a really hard time getting over Robby and doesn’t want anyone else’s help or opinions of how she should deal. Janie IS lonely and has thoughts about the two man friends that she’s made, but really… a priest and a contractor? She eventually learns that she can’t do this along and really does need the people around her.
I really liked this book. I was really drawn into the story and wasn’t sure where it was going. Most of all, I really felt for Janie. Yeah, she acted like a total B-word sometimes, but she didn’t know how else to channel her anger and grief. It made her seem like a REAL person. I like that. I think Juliette Fay did a great job of making all of the characters seem like real people. There are so many times in other books where the characters just seem too perfect, or even too flawed, to be like someone you would actually know. This was Juliette Fay’s first novel, but I hope she writes more!
I saw a news release today on Amazon Kindle’s Facebook page that they once again lowered the price for the Kindle 2! It has went down in price from $359 about a year ago, to $259 late last summer, and now to $189.
One hundred eighty-nine dollars. FREE two day shipping. 600,000 books. Most of them under $9.99 and a whole lot that are FREE or super duper cheap. Seriously. If you don’t have one of these but you’ve been pining away for one for the past two years, then you need to run, not walk, to your nearest computer or smartphone with an internet connection and buy it. Now!
In other news, it kind of stinks that I got mine at last year’s price, but what can you do. I’ve had mine for a year and have 108 books on it. I’ve read most of them and a large number of them were free. So I still see that as a win.
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Click on any phrase to play the video at that point.Close
I just did something I've never done before. I spent a week at sea on a research vessel. Now I'm not a scientist, but I was accompanying a remarkable scientific team from the University of South Florida who have been tracking the travels of BP's oil in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the boat we were on, by the way. The scientists I was with were not studying the effect of the oil and dispersants on the big stuff -- the birds, the turtles, the dolphins, the glamorous stuff. They're looking at the really little stuff that gets eaten by the slightly less little stuff that eventually gets eaten by the big stuff. And what they're finding is that even trace amounts of oil and dispersants can be highly toxic to phytoplankton, which is very bad news, because so much life depends on it. So contrary to what we heard a few months back about how 75 percent of that oil sort of magically disappeared and we didn't have to worry about it, this disaster is still unfolding. It's still working its way up the food chain. Now this shouldn't come as a surprise to us. Rachel Carson -- the godmother of modern environmentalism -- warned us about this very thing back in 1962. She pointed out that the "control men" -- as she called them -- who carpet-bombed towns and fields with toxic insecticides like DDT, were only trying to kill the little stuff, the insects, not the birds. But they forgot this: the fact that birds dine on grubs, that robins eat lots of worms now saturated with DDT. And so, robin eggs failed to hatch, songbirds died en masse, towns fell silent. Thus the title "Silent Spring." I've been trying to pinpoint what keeps drawing me back to the Gulf of Mexico, because I'm Canadian, and I can draw no ancestral ties. And I think what it is is I don't think we have fully come to terms with the meaning of this disaster, with what it meant to witness a hole ripped in our world, with what it meant to watch the contents of the Earth gush forth on live TV, 24 hours a day, for months. After telling ourselves for so long that our tools and technology can control nature, suddenly we were face-to-face with our weakness, with our lack of control, as the oil burst out of every attempt to contain it -- "top hats," "top kills" and, most memorably, the "junk shot" -- the bright idea of firing old tires and golf balls down that hole in the world. But even more striking than the ferocious power emanating from that well was the recklessness with which that power was unleashed -- the carelessness, the lack of planning that characterized the operation from drilling to clean-up. If there is one thing BP's watery improv act made clear, it is that, as a culture, we have become far too willing to gamble with things that are precious and irreplaceable, and to do so without a back-up plan, without an exit strategy. And BP was hardly our first experience of this in recent years. Our leaders barrel into wars, telling themselves happy stories about cakewalks and welcome parades. Then, it is years of deadly damage control, Frankensteins of sieges and surges and counter-insurgencies, and once again, no exit strategy. Our financial wizards routinely fall victim to similar overconfidence, convincing themselves that the latest bubble is a new kind of market -- the kind that never goes down. And when it inevitably does, the best and the brightest reach for the financial equivalent of the junk shot -- in this case, throwing massive amounts of much-needed public money down a very different kind of hole. As with BP, the hole does get plugged, at least temporarily, but not before exacting a tremendous price. We have to figure out why we keep letting this happen, because we are in the midst of what may be our highest-stakes gamble of all -- deciding what to do, or not to do, about climate change. Now as you know, a great deal of time is spent, in this country and around the world, inside the climate debate, on the question of, "What if the IPC scientists are all wrong?" Now a far more relevant question -- as MIT physicist Evelyn Fox Keller puts it -- is, "What if those scientists are right?" Given the stakes, the climate crisis clearly calls for us to act based on the precautionary principle -- the theory that holds that when human health and the environment are significantly at risk and when the potential damage is irreversible, we cannot afford to wait for perfect scientific certainty. Better to err on the side of caution. More overt, the burden of proving that a practice is safe should not be placed on the public that would be harmed, but rather on the industry that stands to profit. But climate policy in the wealthy world -- to the extent that such a thing exists -- is not based on precaution, but rather on cost-benefit analysis -- finding the course of action that economists believe will have the least impact on our GDP. So rather than asking, as precaution would demand, what can we do as quickly as possible to avoid potential catastrophe, we ask bizarre questions like this: "What is the latest possible moment we can wait before we begin seriously lowering emissions? Can we put this off till 2020, 2030, 2050?" Or we ask, "How much hotter can we let the planet get and still survive? Can we go with two degrees, three degrees, or -- where we're currently going -- four degrees Celsius?" And by the way, the assumption that we can safely control the Earth's awesomely complex climate system as if it had a thermostat, making the planet not too hot, not too cold, but just right -- sort of Goldilocks style -- this is pure fantasy, and it's not coming from the climate scientists. It's coming from the economists imposing their mechanistic thinking on the science. The fact is that we simply don't know when the warming that we create will be utterly overwhelmed by feedback loops. So once again, why do we take these crazy risks with the precious? A range of explanations may be popping into your mind by now, like "greed." This is a popular explanation, and there's lots of truth to it, because taking big risks, as we all know, pays a lot of money. Another explanation that you often hear for recklessness is hubris. And greed and hubris are intimately intertwined when it comes to recklessness. For instance, if you happen to be a 35-year-old banker taking home 100 times more than a brain surgeon, then you need a narrative, you need a story that makes that disparity okay. And you actually don't have a lot of options. You're either an incredibly good scammer, and you're getting away with it -- you gamed the system -- or you're some kind of boy genius, the likes of which the world has never seen. Now both of these options -- the boy genius and the scammer -- are going to make you vastly overconfident and therefore more prone to taking even bigger risks in the future. By the way, Tony Hayward, the former CEO of BP, had a plaque on his desk inscribed with this inspirational slogan: "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" Now this is actually a popular plaque, and this is a crowd of overachievers, so I'm betting that some of you have this plaque. Don't feel ashamed. Putting fear of failure out of your mind can be a very good thing if you're training for a triathlon or preparing to give a TEDTalk, but personally, I think people with the power to detonate our economy and ravage our ecology would do better having a picture of Icarus hanging from the wall, because -- maybe not that one in particular -- but I want them thinking about the possibility of failure all of the time. So we have greed, we've got overconfidence/hubris, but since we're here at TEDWomen, let's consider one other factor that could be contributing in some small way to societal recklessness. Now I'm not going to belabor this point, but studies do show that, as investors, women are much less prone to taking reckless risks than men, precisely because, as we've already heard, women tend not to suffer from overconfidence in the same way that men do. So it turns out that being paid less and praised less has its upsides -- for society at least. The flipside of this is that constantly being told that you are gifted, chosen and born to rule has distinct societal downsides. And this problem -- call it the "perils of privilege" -- brings us closer, I think, to the root of our collective recklessness. Because none of us -- at least in the global North -- neither men nor women, are fully exempt from this message. Here's what I'm talking about. Whether we actively believe them or consciously reject them, our culture remains in the grips of certain archetypal stories about our supremacy over others and over nature -- the narrative of the newly discovered frontier and the conquering pioneer, the narrative of manifest destiny, the narrative of apocalypse and salvation. And just when you think these stories are fading into history, and that we've gotten over them, they pop up in the strangest places. For instance, I stumbled across this advertisement outside the women's washroom in the Kansas City airport. It's for Motorola's new Rugged cell phone, and yes, it really does say, "Slap Mother Nature in the face." And I'm not just showing it to pick on Motorola -- that's just a bonus. I'm showing it because -- they're not a sponsor, are they? -- because, in its own way, this is a crass version of our founding story. We slapped Mother Nature around and won, and we always win, because dominating nature is our destiny. But this is not the only fairytale we tell ourselves about nature. There's another one, equally important, about how that very same Mother Nature is so nurturing and so resilient that we can never make a dent in her abundance. Let's hear from Tony Hayward again. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersants that we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." In other words, the ocean is big; she can take it. It is this underlying assumption of limitlessness that makes it possible to take the reckless risks that we do. Because this is our real master-narrative: however much we mess up, there will always be more -- more water, more land, more untapped resources. A new bubble will replace the old one. A new technology will come along to fix the messes we made with the last one. In a way, that is the story of the settling of the Americas, the supposedly inexhaustible frontier to which Europeans escaped. And it's also the story of modern capitalism, because it was the wealth from this land that gave birth to our economic system, one that cannot survive without perpetual growth and an unending supply of new frontiers. Now the problem is that the story was always a lie. The Earth always did have limits. They were just beyond our sights. And now we are hitting those limits on multiple fronts. I believe that we know this, yet we find ourselves trapped in a kind of narrative loop. Not only do we continue to tell and retell the same tired stories, but we are now doing so with a frenzy and a fury that, frankly, verges on camp. How else to explain the cultural space occupied by Sarah Palin? Now on the one hand, exhorting us to "drill, baby, drill," because God put those resources into the ground in order for us to exploit them, and on the other, glorying in the wilderness of Alaska's untouched beauty on her hit reality TV show. The twin message is as comforting as it is mad. Ignore those creeping fears that we have finally hit the wall. There are still no limits. There will always be another frontier. So stop worrying and keep shopping. Now, would that this were just about Sarah Palin and her reality TV show. In environmental circles, we often hear that, rather than shifting to renewables, we are continuing with business as usual. This assessment, unfortunately, is far too optimistic. The truth is that we have already exhausted so much of the easily accessible fossil fuels that we have already entered a far riskier business era, the era of extreme energy. So that means drilling for oil in the deepest water, including the icy Arctic seas, where a clean-up may simply be impossible. It means large-scale hydraulic fracking for gas and massive strip-mining operations for coal, the likes of which we haven't yet seen. And most controversially, it means the tar sands. I'm always surprised by how little people outside of Canada know about the Alberta Tar Sands, which this year are projected to become the number one source of imported oil to the United States. It's worth taking a moment to understand this practice, because I believe it speaks to recklessness and the path we're on like little else. So this is where the tar sands live, under one of the last magnificent Boreal forests. The oil is not liquid. You can't just drill a hole and pump it out. Tar sand's oil is solid, mixed in with the soil. So to get at it, you first have to get rid of the trees. Then, you rip off the topsoil and get at that oily sand. The process requires a huge amount of water, which is then pumped into massive toxic tailing ponds. That's very bad news for local indigenous people living downstream who are reporting alarmingly high cancer rates. Now looking at these images, it's difficult to grasp the scale of this operation, which can already be seen from space and could grow to an area the size of England. I find it helps actually to look at the dump trucks that move the earth, the largest ever built. That's a person down there by the wheel. My point is that this is not oil drilling. It's not even mining. It is terrestrial skinning. Vast, vivid landscapes are being gutted, left monochromatic gray. Now I should confess that as [far as] I'm concerned this would be an abomination if it emitted not one particle of carbon. But the truth is that, on average, turning that gunk into crude oil produces about three times more greenhouse gas pollution than it does to produce conventional oil in Canada. How else to describe this, but as a form of mass insanity? Just when we know we need to be learning to live on the surface of our planet, off the power of sun, wind and waves, we are frantically digging to get at the dirtiest, highest-emitting stuff imaginable. This is where our story of endless growth has taken us, to this black hole at the center of my country -- a place of such planetary pain that, like the BP gusher, one can only stand to look at it for so long. As Jared Diamond and others have shown us, this is how civilizations commit suicide, by slamming their foot on the accelerator at the exact moment when they should be putting on the brakes. The problem is that our master-narrative has an answer for that too. At the very last minute, we are going to get saved just like in every Hollywood movie, just like in the Rapture. But, of course, our secular religion is technology. Now, you may have noticed more and more headlines like these. The idea behind this form of "geoengineering" as it's called, is that, as the planet heats up, we may be able to shoot sulfates and aluminum particles into the stratosphere to reflect some of the sun's rays back to space, thereby cooling the planet. The wackiest plan -- and I'm not making this up -- would put what is essentially a garden hose 18-and-a-half miles high into the sky, suspended by balloons, to spew sulfur dioxide. So, solving the problem of pollution with more pollution. Think of it as the ultimate junk shot. The serious scientists involved in this research all stress that these techniques are entirely untested. They don't know if they'll work, and they have no idea what kind of terrifying side effects they could unleash. Nevertheless, the mere mention of geoengineering is being greeted in some circles, particularly media circles, with a relief tinged with euphoria. An escape hatch has been reached. A new frontier has been found. Most importantly, we don't have to change our lifestyles after all. You see, for some people, their savior is a guy in a flowing robe. For other people, it's a guy with a garden hose. We badly need some new stories. We need stories that have different kinds of heroes willing to take different kinds of risks -- risks that confront recklessness head on, that put the precautionary principle into practice, even if that means through direct action -- like hundreds of young people willing to get arrested, blocking dirty power plants or fighting mountaintop-removal coal mining. We need stories that replace that linear narrative of endless growth with circular narratives that remind us that what goes around comes around. That this is our only home. There is no escape hatch. Call it karma, call it physics, action and reaction, call it precaution -- the principle that reminds us that life is too precious to be risked for any profit. Thank you. (Applause)
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Days before this talk, journalist Naomi Klein was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, looking at the catastrophic results of BP's risky pursuit of oil. Our societies have become addicted to extreme risk in finding new energy, new financial instruments and more ... and too often, we're left to clean up a mess afterward. Klein's question: What's the backup plan?
In her latest work, Naomi Klein wonders: What makes our culture so prone to the reckless high-stakes gamble, and why are women so frequently called upon to clean up the mess? Full bio »
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Future Shop's 2013 Future Generation Tech Lab program returns with $250,000 for Canadian high schools
Samsung Hope for Children to donate an additional $20,000 in technology grants
- Future Shop announced today its Future Generation Tech Lab program will award $250,000 to secondary schools across Canada in 2013.
- Applications are being accepted November 13 - December 20, 2012 via www.futureshop.ca/techlab.
- Future Shop is partnering with Samsung Hope for Children to award two additional technology grants each valued at $10,000 in consumer electronics product.
BURNABY, BC, Nov. 8, 2012 /CNW/ - Future Shop, Canada's largest retailer and etailer of consumer electronics, is pleased to announce the return of its Future Generation Tech Lab program. The 2013 program will provide $250,000 in total grants to deserving secondary schools across Canada. Founded in 2008, this program awards monetary grants to schools seeking resources to update the classroom technology necessary to inspire, motivate and empower today's students.
"In just four years, Future Shop has awarded 36 worthy high schools across Canada - from BC's Haida Gwaii to St. John's Newfoundland - with funds to help them transform lagging classrooms into high-tech learning havens," said Andrea Farnell , Community Relations Manager, Future Shop. "We are extremely excited to share that we will be awarding $250,000 to secondary schools in 2013. Our goal for the Future Generation Tech Lab program has always been to reduce the digital and economic divide for youth by providing them with state-of-the-art technology to stay inspired as they move into post-secondary education and into the workforce."
Past recipients of this program have dramatically transformed their classrooms into modern visual arts and animation studios, cutting-edge wood-working shops, updated language labs, video and music meccas, and much more. Since the program's inception, grants totalling more than $1.3 million have been awarded.
"We are always hearing from teachers how having newer technology in the classroom will expand what they can teach and how students will learn," said Farnell. "Our grants are about helping to build exceptional learning environments that give students and teachers the tools they need to excel."
Applications for 2013 Future Generation Tech Lab grants will be accepted starting November 13 through December 20, 2012. Winners will be announced in 2013. For more information and to apply, visit www.futureshop.ca/techlab.
Samsung Hope for Children offers $20,000 in technology grants:
Future Shop is excited to partner with Samsung Electronics Canada to award two additional $10,000 technology grants this year. The Tech Lab Grants powered by Samsung Hope for Children will see the selected schools receive premium Samsung products for their classrooms.
"Samsung is delighted to partner on such a meaningful initiative with Future Shop to give back and improve school environments for our youth," said Andrew Barrett , Vice President of Marketing at Samsung Electronics Canada. "Samsung is passionate about helping students elevate their learning opportunities through technology. We are looking forward to reviewing this year's submissions and helping students in two schools pursue their passions."
Applications submitted for a 2013 Future Generation Tech Lab grant will be considered for these special grants powered by Samsung Hope for Children, no additional application is required. Samsung Hope for Children is a global corporate social responsibility program centred on the three pillars of health, education and sustainability.
About Future Shop
With 149 stores across the country and the nation's premier web store (www.futureshop.ca), Burnaby, BC-based Future Shop is Canada's largest retailer and e-tailer of consumer electronics. The company employs more than 10,000 technology enthusiasts, has enabled its website, Futureshop.ca, to deliver unparalleled content about the products it sells. Futureshop.ca also hosts an online community forum and tech blog called Tech Yeah for technology beginners and tech-savvy experts to exchange ideas, reviews, tips and other consumer electronics information (www.futureshop.ca/techyeah). As a proud corporate citizen, Future Shop has developed solutions to recycle used electronics and is committed to employee volunteerism and supporting non-profit organizations dedicated to transforming local youth into Future Leaders (see www.futureshop.ca/futuregeneration).
About Samsung Hope for Children
Since our founding in 1969, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has worked with passion and purpose to actively serve as a generous and ethical corporate citizen everywhere we operate. The Samsung Hope for Children program was launched globally to bring attention to the worldwide need for childhood education, health, and environmental sustainability. Samsung Hope for Children was launched in Canada coincident with this Green Living Show 2012 program and will continue throughout 2012 with more initiatives across all three program pillars. It is one of the ways in which Samsung uses our innovation to create a better world. Follow Samsung Canada @ facebook.com/SamsungCanada or on twitter @SamsungCanada. For more information, please visit www.samsung.com
SOURCE Future Shop
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San Bernadino is on the bankruptcy bubble, joining a growing number of major cities that are succumbing to insolvency.
According to the Press-Enterprise, “city spending for the current fiscal year is projected to exceed revenues by more than $45 million if it is unable to find other revenues and/or cut spending.”
According to The Sun, personnel costs account for roughly 75 percent of the city’s expenditures – which reflects the disproportionate influence of the government employee unions.
“We are a city with very strong unions – as an older city that is often the case – and newer cities largely contract out many of the services we do in-house,” explains Mayor Pat Morris. “This city needs to represent the constituents – not the employees, but those who live here.”
Morris observes that employee pensions are “out of control,” which means that San Bernadino is headed in exactly the same direction as neighboring Stockton, and for the same reason. In addition, during the housing bubble San Bernadino spent extravagantly on a number of public projects of dubious worth that are now beyond its financial means. Accounting errors and other institutional ineptitude and corruption have exacerbated their plight.
San Bernadino is a city of roughly 200,000 and is the seat of an eponymous county that has a total population of roughly 2,000,000 people. A majority of the population is “Hispanic,” per the Census Bureau, and the median household income is well below the state average. Like other cities facing bankruptcy, San Bernadino is likely to curtail services before making severe cuts in personnel costs and other overhead – which will likely produce increased economic hardship for government dependents and enhanced social tensions.
The impending bankruptcy of San Bernadino is another illustration of the kind of man-made emergencies that should be taken into account by “preppers” who live in major cities. Every significant American city has a potential to go the way of Stockton, San Bernadino – or the entire nation of Greece.
Read more here.
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St. Mary’s Health System has been honored with a 2013 “Partner for Change, with Distinction” award from Practice Greenhealth, a national membership organization for health care facilities committed to environmentally responsible operations. The award is one of the organization’s seven Environmental Excellence Awards given each year to honor outstanding environmental achievements in health care sector.
The Partner for Change, with Distinction award recognizes healthcare facilities that have achieved improvements in their mercury elimination, waste reduction, and pollution prevention programs (above the Partner for Change basic criteria.) This includes at least 15% recycling, a more extensive sustainability program, and a show of leadership in the local community and/or in the health care sector.
“The Environmental Excellence Awards recognize success stories,” said Anna Gilmore Hall, executive director of Practice Greenhealth. “St. Mary’s Health System is a successful model of how health facilities can develop and implement pollution prevention programs to greatly improve the health of their patients, staff and community.”
St. Mary’s earned this prestigious recognition due to its efforts to reduce its electricity, oil, gas, and water consumption as well as promote food sustainability in the community.
St. Mary’s replaced its air cooled chiller with two high efficiency centrifugal chillers contributing to an annual reduction in electricity costs of more than $625,000 even while expanding its facility by approximately 100,000 square feet. As a result of these reductions St. Mary’s was the first hospital in Maine to earn the prestigious national Energy Star Award. Other facility upgrades led to a 9.5 million gallon annual reduction in water consumption. Duel fuel boilers give St. Mary’s the ability to track fuel markets and choose between #2 fuel or cleaner burning natural gas.
Through the work of St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, with the help of community partners, It has taken a lead role in a sustainability and food access study to learn how to best address the needs of the Lewiston/Auburn area. Additionally, Lots to Gardens, a youth and community driven program within the Nutrition Center, uses sustainable urban agriculture to create access to fresh food and to nurture healthy youth and a healthy community.
It is through these efforts and programming that St. Mary’s was selected as a “Partner for Change, with Distinction.”
“We are very pleased to have our accomplishments recognized at a national level,” said St. Mary’s President and CEO, Lee Myles, “We are committed to reducing our
environmental impact and are continually monitoring our progress. Receiving this award is confirmation that we are on the right track.”
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As you work on your training for swimming, you will likely find yourself swimming laps in the pool on a regular basis. Your coach may assign you a specific number of laps per day or you may have your own number you strive for. No matter whether you have to swim the specific number of laps or you want to, counting those laps can be a challenge. Knowing how fast you completed those laps is another challenge, especially if you are working on your own. The SportCount Original Lap Counter and Timer can help.
As you swim back and forth across the pool, you need to be able to think about your technique instead of keeping track of how many laps you have done. The ability to keep track while still keeping your focus on swimming is difficult, if not impossible, for most people. When you have a lap counter that fits conveniently on your finger, you will be able to easily hit the lap counter every time you turn. When you climb out of the pool, you will have an accurate count of how many times you went back and forth across the pool. You can track up to 9,999 laps.
Having a finger lap counter can provide you with more advantages than just counting laps. Each time you hit the button on the lap counter, it will record the time it took you to complete that lap. Not only will it give you an average lap time for all the laps you completed, it can also provide you with your fastest and slowest times so you can see how much you have improved or how much work you still need. It can also tell you how long you spent in the pool total.
Being able to count your laps accurately, as well as keep track of your times, can be an excellent asset to swimmers who are looking to improve their speed. However, unless you have someone who can take the time to work with you and keep track of your laps and times, you won’t have an easy time doing it. That is unless you use a finger lap counter. The finger lap counter by SportCount is water resistant up to 50 meters, making it a great asset for swimmers who will spend all their time at the water’s surface.
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Eric Ericson, one of the leading figures behind the 'Swedish choral miracle' and one of the world's foremost choir artists, passed away on February 16th.
During his long and illustrious career, Ericson greatly influenced choral music in Sweden and internationally.
Ericson was a conductor for the male-voice choir Orphei Drängar, principal conductor for the Swedish Radio Choir (1952-1983), a teacher at Stockholm's Royal College of Music and the founder of the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir.
He led a number of elite ensembles and was deeply involved in encouraging amateur choir communities too.
In 1997, Ericson was awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize.
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Out of Hours Contacts
How to get hold of us
What You Can Expect
A quick guide to the process
For your peace of mind
Queries about your course
Queries about your house/flat
Queries about your safety
Queries about money
Queries about jobs
How to quit the habit
Queries about mental health
Queries of a personal nature
We know how hard it is to get a job whilst you're at University and so we want you to know that if you need advice with you CV or what to expect during an interview then you can come and see us in your Students' Union.
As well as us, there are lots of other places you can go for help and advice within the University so that you can earn some cash whilst you are still here and then get that dream job afterwards too. Our tip to you is to get as much experience as possible whilst you're at Derby as the competition in the world of work is tough - luckily enough, your Students' Union can help you with that too.
How do I get my National Insurance number?
You should have been sent a National Insurance number automatically just before your 16th birthday if both of the following apply:
- you live in the UK
- your parents or guardians are getting Child Benefit for you
If you haven’t received a National Insurance number contact the National Insurance Registrations Helpline on 0845 915 7006 for advice. Lines are open 8.30 am to 5.00 pm Monday to Friday.
For more information on your N.I Number and paying National Insurance, please click on the ‘National Insurance’ link at the bottom of this page.
Do I get minimum wage if I'm a student?
Almost all workers who work in the UK are entitled to the national minimum wage. But there are some groups who aren't entitled, including:
- self-employed people
- children who are still of compulsory school age
- the adult rate is £6.08 an hour
- the rate for 18-20 year olds is £4.98 an hour
- the rate for 16-17 year olds is £3.68 an hour
- the rate for apprentices is £2.60 an hour
It makes no difference to a worker's entitlement to the national minimum wage whether they work for you full time or part time, or whether they are an agency worker, a temporary or casual worker, a piece worker or a home worker.
Current rates of pay are as follows:
My employer hasn't paid me, what should I do?
All employees are entitled to be paid for the work they have done. They are also entitled to be paid if they are ready and willing to work but their employer has not provided them with any work to do, unless your employment contract says otherwise.
If you're an employee, you're entitled to be paid if you can't work because you are off sick or away from work on maternity leave, paternity leave or adoption leave, or parental leave. You are also allowed a certain number of days paid holiday a year.
In most of these situations, you are entitled to your usual wage whilst off work. There are some exceptions to these rules. For example, parents on maternity leave, paternity or adoption leave, or parental leave, are entitled to a certain amount of paid leave but the law sets out the rate at which this must be paid and it may not be as much as their usual wage.
If you are employee on sick pay, your contract may give you less pay than your normal pay. By law, most employees are entitled to the legal minimum statutory sick pay. Your contract may give you more pay than this.
You may be entitled to unpaid time off work in other circumstances, for example, in a family emergency or on jury service.
If you are still unsure why your employer has not paid you then you need to write to them to ask and give them a deadline as to when you expect a response. A copy of this should be sent to your Trade Union, if you are a member of one and also keep one for yourself. If you are in financial difficulty because of not being paid then the University’s Student Wellbeing Service may be able to offer you some assistance.
Where can I find part-time employment?
The University of Derby offers a Student Employment Service as part of the Careers Development Centre and this is a great place to find work which fits around your study whilst you are at the University of Derby. To register your details with the SEA you need to follow the link at the bottom of this page and sign up to receive vacancy positions which will be advertised directly to you, the students.
If you live in Derby then you can try these other options:
- Westfield Shopping Centre
- Derby Telegraph newspaper
- The local Job Centre Plus
- Join an employment agency in the city
- Look in shop windows when you get to Derby
If you live in Buxton then you can try these other options:
- One of the many bars and hotels in the town
- The local JobCentre Plus
- The Buxton Advertiser local newspaper
- Join Forward Recruitment for temporary work
I want to complain about my employer, but who to?
If you’re unhappy about something that your employer or a colleague has said or done, you should always try and talk about it with them. It’s a good idea to try to sort out problems early on. It’s a good idea to write down your concerns and anything that happens. This will be useful as a record and reminder of the situation.
If the issue is still unresolved, then you should put in a grievance. A grievance is a way of more formally raising your concerns, problems or complaints about work with your employer.
For further info on how to raise a grievance check out the ‘Making a Formal Grievance’ link at the bottom of this page.
Where can I get information about my rights in my workplace?
Your rights at work will depend on:-
Your statutory rights- Statutory rights are legal rights based on laws passed by Parliament. Nearly all workers, regardless of the number of hours per week they work, have certain legal rights
Your contract of employment -Your contract of employment is the agreement made between your employer and you (employee). This could be in the form of a written agreement or what has been agreed verbally between you. In addition, your contract of employment will also include ‘custom and practice’ agreements- things that may not be written but usually happens.
Your contract of employment cannot take away rights you have by law. However, employment law is complex, for further information on rights at work click on the ‘My Rights at Work’ link at the bottom of this page.
I'm being bullied at work, who can I tell?
Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect at work. You shouldn’t have to put up with bullying at work. Employers have a ‘duty of care’ to their employees and this includes dealing with bullying at work. There are measures you can take if you are being bullied.
Try to sort it out informally first, speak to the person who is bullying you to make them understand the effect their behaviour is having on you.
If the situation doesn’t get better as a result of speaking to the bully then it is best to talk it over with someone, namely your line manager or their direct line manager.
If that is not possible, seek help your human resources department or your trade union representative. Keep a diary of the bullying behaviour, e.g. times, dates and how you are feeling. You can make a formal complaint through your employer’s grievance procedure.
Where can I get some careers advice from?
The University of Derby has a Careers Development Centre with trained and experienced Careers Advisors and have offices within the Library at Kedleston Road or next to the Dome Shop on the Devonshire Campus in Buxton. To make an appointment you need to contact the following telephone number(s):
How do I make my CV look great?
A CV is the most flexible and convenient way to make applications. It conveys your personal details in the way that presents you in the best possible light. A CV is a marketing document in which you are marketing something: yourself! You need to "sell" your skills, abilities, qualifications and experience to employers. It can be used to make multiple applications to employers in a specific career area. For this reason, many large graduate recruiters will not accept CVs and instead use their own application form.
The things which you need to cover in your CV are as follows:
- Make it targeted on the specific job or career area for which you are applying and brings out the relevant skills you have to offer
- Ensure that it is carefully and clearly laid out: logically ordered, easy to read and not cramped
- Try to be informative but concise
- Most of all, make sure that it is all accurate in content, spelling and grammar. If you mention attention to detail as a skill, make sure your spelling and grammar are perfect!
If you need some help, then download the CV template at the bottom of this page and book an appointment with a Student Advisor in your Students’ Union.
Where can I go to get experience if every job I apply for needs it?
One excellent way of getting experience of leadership, time management, volunteering and other essential skills which employers look for is right here, in your Students’ Union. We actively encourage and support all of our members to become great leaders through sports clubs, committees, student groups and societies. We also have dedicated staff to help you set up new volunteering opportunities where and when you want them. Click on the link at the bottom of this page to find out how you can get involved and become the person to get the job when you finish your studies.
Where can I find local volunteering opportunities?
You can usually find lots of different volunteering opportunities right here, at University. Either through the Volunteering Unit at Kedleston Road or the Work Placement Office in the Dome at Buxton.
Volunteering whilst you are a student will significantly improve your chances of getting a job after University and equip you with a huge variety of transferrable skills to use in your chosen employment.
External agencies include:
- Community Action Derby
- Buxton Volunteer Centre
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Eagles vs. fireworks
There’s a very metaphorically patriotic debate going on in Narrowsburg over the effect of the fireworks on the local bald eagles. There is a nest on the flats and two out of the last three years, it seems the July 4th fireworks have caused eagles to fall from the nests. It’s basically the bald eagle (federally protected and national mascot) versus the fireworks (beautiful patriotic tradition of exploding lights and loud noises). The only way it could get any more patriotic would be to add the good old stars and stripes into the mix somehow.
To be honest, most of what I know about July 4th and Independence Day I know from the Broadway show “1776.” “1776” is a musical that follows John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson about the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence. Spoiler alert: they sign it.
They debate what the national bird should be: Franklin wanted the turkey, Adams the eagle, Jefferson the dove. Adams wins and they sing a song about it. (Had either Franklin or Jefferson won the debate, fireworks wouldn’t be a problem in Narrowsburg.)
It’s not that I don’t remember learning about this stuff in school. On the contrary, I remember doing it multiple times at different levels. American History was pounded into our brains from an early age. I have fond memories of a three-day class trip to Philadelphia when I was in first grade.
When I was in high school, I was in “1776” at the Forestburgh Playhouse. I played Joseph Hewes of North Carolina. “North Carolina yields to South Carolina,” was my line—I said it twice.
And here’s what sticks out to me about the signing of the Declaration that doesn’t usually get talked about on July 4th. The second act of the show is largely dedicated to the massive debate that was going on between the North and the South about slavery. In the end, they removed all mention of slavery and it was an issue that the country continued to debate for almost a hundred years and beyond. (I’ve recently seen “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire,” so I am feeling refreshed on this topic as well.)
They removed the mentions of slavery to unite around the Declaration of Independence. The heated debate led to unity and compromise. It was basically about everyone getting into the room and figuring it out together.
It’s usually hard for me to get patriotic, especially around July 4th. I don’t enjoy the commercialized patriotism: flags for sale and red, white and blue beer cans. It feels especially forced during an election year when everything seems split in two.
But stepping back and looking at the country, I can get excited about the debate that is constantly raging. We are constantly striving for more—for better. These days it’s a little frustrating to see the very natural debate on topics fall into political spinning as did the Supreme Court decision about health care last week.
Everything is played politically and spun. The coming months will almost certainly bring even more partisanship and heated debate. Hopefully, it will be the kind that can eventually band us together and lead to compromise.
And so we are back to the metaphorical eagle vs. firework debate. Is there a way for both to exist? Would the presence of a National Park Ranger on the river in front of the eagles’ nest during the fireworks to monitor for any eagle difficulties suffice for both sides? Just don’t throw those red white and blue cans in the river.
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It’s my contention that the first super adventure was a slim, 28-page module called Dwellers of the Forbidden City, published by TSR, Inc., in 1981. “Proto-super adventure” might be a more accurate term. It was really just a setting that was ripe for exploration, combined with a single quest that barely scratched the surface of its possibilities.So opines James Wyatt in the 4e Dungeon Masters Guide; I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. Dwellers of the Forbidden City is a module with which I am very familiar, as it's one of my all-time favorites. As I noted elsewhere, I consider it a near-perfect example of late old school adventure design, which emphasizes locales over plots and being suggestive rather than being exhaustive.
The adventure as published called for the characters to track down goods recently stolen from merchant caravans. To do that, they had to find the Forbidden City, and a way into it, and track down a wizard who had made his home among the ruins. A straightforward quest—but what made it exceptional was the number of possible ways to accomplish that single goal. This adventure pioneered the idea of nonlinear exploration. No dungeon corridors channeled the characters’ movements. There were at least four ways to get down into the crater where the Forbidden City lay, each one detailed as a mini-site within the larger setting. The characters could choose their approach and go whatever way they wanted to in the ruined city.
Within the city itself were three factions of monsters. The yuan-ti made their first appearance in this adventure, and they were accompanied by froglike bullywugs and
humanoids of highly questionable heritage called mongrelmen. Long-armed, arboreal humanoids called tasloi rode giant wasps through the jungle trees. Fighting the bullywugs or the tasloi didn’t bring the characters any closer to finding the lost caravan goods, but there they were anyway.
An all-too-brief section at the end of the adventure took a tentative next step, suggesting other quests that might bring the characters into the Forbidden City. With more detail, more fleshed-out quests, and another hundred pages or so, Dwellers of the Forbidden City would have been a spectacular super adventure—four years before the landmark release of The Temple of Elemental Evil, which more properly deserves that description.
Mr. Wyatt makes it clear that, while he remembers the broad outlines of the module, he never really understood the reasons behind its contents and presentation. I've bolded a number of sentences that I think nicely illustrate the heady mix of historical rootlessness and self-serving nonsense contained in the above quote, a mix that, in my opinion, is emblematic of the design principles on which the new edition is founded.
Let's look at just one of those bolded statements, because I think it's the key one: "This adventure pioneered the idea of nonlinear exploration." Really? Dwellers of the Forbidden City was written in 1981, which is seven years after the release of OD&D and four years after the release of AD&D. If you take a look at almost any listing of published D&D modules, you'll see quite a few were released between 1974 and 1981, including such classics as Keep on the Borderlands and the entirety of the Giants/Drow series (and this isn't even including the many more modules produced by Judges Guild during the same period). Given this, what does Mr. Wyatt mean? The next sentences explains it quite clearly: "No dungeon corridors channeled the characters’ movements." That's a funny thing to say in my opinion. Far from channeling movement, dungeon corridors actually provide options. Do we go this way or that way? It's absurd to attribute linearity to dungeons, because a well-designed dungeon allows the players many options and alternatives, none more obviously better than the others. Anyone who's read reminscences of the adventures beneath Castle Greyhawk or Blackmoor Castle would know this.
So what is going on here? Mr. Wyatt elaborates on his thought further still in the conclusion of the second paragraph: "There were at least four ways to get down into the crater where the Forbidden City lay, each one detailed as a mini-site within the larger setting. The characters could choose their approach and go whatever way they wanted to in the ruined city." Add to this the statement later, "With more detail, more fleshed-out quests, and another hundred pages or so, Dwellers of the Forbidden City would have been a spectacular super adventure ..." And there we have it. It's not that there weren't "nonlinear" adventures before Module I1; there clearly were, as I've discussed at length previously. Rather, it's that those modules didn't flesh out the possibilities, instead leaving them to the individual referee to create in response to player choice. Because Dwellers of the Forbidden City fleshed out four likely possibilities in detail, it qualifies as having "pioneered the idea of nonlinear exploration" while modules like Descent into the Depths of the Earth or Vault of the Drow don't qualify, because they leave most of the possibilities as just that -- possibilities that a referee can choose or not choose to actualize depending on his players' actions.
I realize this may seem like a nitpick and perhaps it is. If so, my apologies. However, I'm increasingly convinced, as I read more and more of 4e at length, that there is nothing -- and I mean nothing -- left of the old school here. This is a game whose history is a blank page, despite the ritual invocation of the past every chapter or so. I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys this game or appreciates it virtues; I myself can see how finely tuned its design is. But I hope I can forgiven for saying that it bares as much relationship to the game I call Dungeons & Dragons as this guy has to this guy. More power to you if you like the former rather than the latter, but please don't attempt to claim they share any significant genetic material.
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Womble on Tour recently commented on the case of the sick bastards who raped and disfigured a 16 year old girl. Their sentences were pitifully short for such a disgusting crime.
Now it seems, in Scotland at least, once in prison the poor mites' delicate feelings must be protected. The warders must choose their words carefully, at pain of disciplinary action, so as not to cause possible offence to the prisoners.
Capability Scotland's Elspeth Molony explained: “The word ‘daftie’ is used as a derogatory term. It implies there is something bad about them."
Of course there's something bad about them. That's why they're in prison you bovine daftie.
The Scottish Prison Service’s equality and diversity manager, Rob Hastings, defended that the guide "is not PC gone mad", concluding: "You have to keep chipping away at these attitudes."
How about I chip away at your teeth with a clawhammer instead, eh Rob?
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Home / News
From a night of more sleep than she had expected, Marianne awoke the next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had closed her eyes.
Elinor encouraged her as much as possible to talk of what she felt; and before breakfast was ready, they had gone through the subject again and again; and with the same steady conviction and affectionate counsel on Elinor's side, the same impetuous feelings and varying opinions on Marianne's, as before. Sometimes she could believe Willoughby to be as unfortunate and as innocent as herself, and at others, lost every consolation in the impossibility of acquitting him. At one moment she was absolutely indifferent to the observation of all the world, at another she would seclude herself from it for ever, and at a third could resist it with energy. In one thing, however, she was uniform, when it came to the point, in avoiding, where it was possible, the presence of Mrs. Jennings, and in a determined silence when obliged to endure it. Her heart was hardened against the belief of Mrs. Jennings's entering into her sorrows with any compassion.
"No, no, no, it cannot be," she cried; "she cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it."
Elinor had not needed this to be assured of the injustice to which her sister was often led in her opinion of others, by the irritable refinement of her own mind, and the too great importance placed by her on the delicacies of a strong sensibility, and the graces of a polished manner. Like half the rest of the world, if more than half there be that are clever and good, Marianne, with excellent abilities and an excellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid. She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself. Thus a circumstance occurred, while the sisters were together in their own room after breakfast, which sunk the heart of Mrs. Jennings still lower in her estimation; because, through her own weakness, it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself, though Mrs. Jennings was governed in it by an impulse of the utmost goodwill.
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Wikinews Shorts: January 1, 2009
A compilation of brief news reports for Thursday, January 1, 2009.
Slovakia starts using euro today
The European country of Slovakia will have the euro replace the koruna as its official currency, starting January 1, 2009. Slovakia is the sixteenth country to start using the euro. The official conversion rate is set at 30.126 koruna to one euro.
Joaquín Almunia, the European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner, stated that the conversion will be "a proud moment for the euro area [...] the euro has become the symbol of EU identity and is protecting us against the tremendous external shocks that we have had to cope with since the summer of 2007."
January 1 also marks the tenth anniversary of the euro being introduced as globally exchangeable currency.
- "Slovakia poised to embrace euro" — , December 31, 2008
- "Slovakia Becomes 16th EU Country to Adopt Euro" — , December 18, 2008
- DPA. "Brussels hails Slovakia's 'superb' euro entry" — , December 29, 2008
Attempted baby-theft in Tennessee
A woman in Tennessee, United States dressed up like a nurse and tried to steal a baby from a hospital's maternity room but police arrested her. Adriene Johnson, 24, is now in custody after trying to steal the baby. The woman entered the hospital's maternity room dressed in scrubs and was going to take the baby's temperature said police.
Security was alerted to Johnson when she tried to take the baby out of the hospital. The room was then locked down and the baby was handed over to the doctor. Johnson was on bond after being arrested by police on Monday. She was also charged with trying to steal a baby's rocker from a Wal-Mart which she tried to get a refund on.
- Associated Press. "Police: Dressed as nurse, woman tries stealing kid" — , December 31, 2008
- "Woman dressed as nurse tries to steal baby from maternity ward" — , December 31, 2008
Spanish Wikinews reaches 4000 articles
Wikinoticias, the Spanish edition of Wikinews, has reached 4000 articles two days after the Polish edition had published its 9000th article. The news item was published today at 8:27PM (UTC) and it has information about the death of the South African anti-apartheid activist and politician Helen Suzman.
Wikinoticias is the seventh largest Wikinews edition, based on number of published stories.
|This is a complete or partial translation of the article "Wikinoticias llega a los 4000 artículos", from the español language Wikinews, published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.|
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Lightning strike destroys NH baseball facility
GOFFSTOWN, N.H. (WHDH) -- A lightning strike sparked a huge fire that left a New Hampshire little league team with nothing. The fire quickly spread across the field leaving thousands of dollars in damage behind.
Flames stretching 30 to 40 feet high left almost nothing behind at Allard Park, home of the Goffstown Babe Ruth League. The Allard family, which lives nearby, said it all started Saturday afternoon with a lightning strike.
“They were very loud, almost explosion like. Right then and there we knew that something was wrong,” said Chris Allard.
Equipment for 80 young baseball players and pitching and batting cages were destroyed in the blaze. The flames wiped out the field’s water system, electric system and more.
“There’s a lot of memories. A lot of kids have gone through this complex. There’s a lot of memories tied to that building,” said Kevin Baines, President of the Goffstown Babe Ruth League.
The building was used year round for training for young athletes, but the league says what's most important is finding a way to get the players back on their feet by spring.
“We're gonna make it work. We're determined to do that. There are kids relying on us to make it work,” said Baines.
The league's president says they lost about $10,000 worth of equipment in the fire. They will try and replace the equipment with help from the people of Goffstown. League officials will meet later this week to determine what they need to do to recover from the fire.
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Gaza's Graveyards for The Living: Now Flooded with Sewage Water
Haneen Khader had no option. As soon as she learned of her father’s death, her March wedding celebration had to be canceled.
Forty-one-year-old Bassam Khader, an unemployed construction worker, had tried everything to provide a basic living for his family, to no avail. His only option was to work in the tunnels—known as “the trade of death” and considered the most dangerous job in Gaza.
In 2006, following Hamas’s victory in Palestinian elections, Israel sealed off its borders with Gaza, and Egypt, which borders Gaza to the east, followed suit. Heralded as necessary to prevent arms from entering the strip, the blockade resulted in the people of Gaza being cut off from many of life’s basic necessities. Without the ability to import or export anything, the tunnel industry was born in the city of Rafah on the Egyptian border.
It was in one of those makeshift burrows, to the international market of goods, that Khader perished. For workers still employed underground, the news gets worse. In early March, Egyptian troops started a new tactic to shut down the tunnels: by flooding them with sewage water.
According to Interior Ministry Spokesman Islam Shawan, there are now at least 900 tunnels operating between Gaza and Egypt. The flourishing business is a distressing signal of Gaza’s economic isolation. A World Bank report released last week found that the Israeli restrictions have caused "lasting damage" to the competitiveness of the Palestinian economy.
Even if these tunnels seem like a reasonable and inevitable workaround, there is little oversight or regulation controlling the working conditions, said Hazem Hanyia, a lawyer at the Independent Commission for Human Rights.
Bassam Khader disappeared at the end of January while working inside a tunnel following heavy rain and flooding of the sewage system in Rafah’s Al Junina neighborhood.
Left without help from overworked emergency crews, Khader’s family had to borrow money to rent an excavator and hire workers to dig 65 feet underneath the Gaza-Egypt border. When eight workers were brought out injured but alive, Khader’s family was hopeful that he too might be OK.
Nine days later, his body was found. His wife was able to identify him only by the clothes he had worn the day he disappeared. She was convinced that the tunnel owner was to blame and insisted that he knew it was unsafe to work during heavy rains. But, as a condition for Khader to get his wages for the week, the owner forced Khader to work a half day.
“What hurts me most is that the tunnel owner has never been questioned by the authorities,” Muna said.
For a few weeks, Khader had worked in a rarely used tunnel, making it difficult for the family to identify the owner. Owners they knew denied employing Khader. As much as Muna blames ownership, she says the Gazan government is also responsible by not banning such work during heavy weather conditions.
The government “did not even bother to offer condolences as part of a social solidarity with the family of the victim,” says Muna.
Muna tried to call members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, but nobody returned her calls.
Since 2006, 235 people have died in the tunnels according to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. Among them, 20 workers were killed by Israeli missile strikes on the tunnels—597 were injured due to tunnel collapse and still more by electrocution accidents.
The tunnels themselves are quite profitable for the few families who own them. Tunnels are licensed by the Rafah Municipality, which provides electricity and additional services. The government collects taxes on fuel, construction materials, cars, food, and other supplies secreted into the strip. Even so, worker safety has never been a high priority.
Hazem Hanyia of the Independent Commission for Human Rights studied the working conditions within the tunnels and found they do not meet minimum standards for workers—functioning in violation of most nations’ labor laws.
Wages aren’t great either. Khader received between 50 and 80 shekels for a 12-hour day ($13 to $21). These workers are undervalued, underrepresented, and, worst of all, easily replaceable.
Workers who survive accidents receive only basic emergency treatment, and to those who die, tunnel owners offer the family some compensation not considered adequate under legal or Islamic Sharia requirements, says Hanyia.
A dead tunnel worker who is single gets $5,000. A married worker gets a $10,000 one-time payout. Hanyia says this is not enough. Eventually, Khader’s family figured out who owned the tunnel but received no redress.
Nabil Al Mabhouh, spokesman of the Ministry of Labor in Gaza, says the tunnels are an “emergency phenomenon” only made necessary by Israel’s siege on Gaza and closure of the usual trade crossings.
Left without recourse, Khader’s brother Zaki, took to protest by setting up a tent at the tunnel opening with little hope that those in charge will acknowledge the plight of a family on the border of total desperation.
More news from Gaza:
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LETTER: Too much segregation in Aiken
Too much segregation in AikenIt was an honor and privilege to participate in the Black History Parade of Feb. 17. The chilly day was warmed by the family atmosphere and festive mood.
There were, however, several ironies that bring me pause of discomfort. I have attended numerous parades in Aiken, all of which have encompassed a community route of Park Avenue to downtown Laurens Street – except for the Black History Parade given the more isolated route of Hampton Avenue.
This choice coupled with the Aiken Standard’s choice of parade day headline “Cotton is king” next to the smaller headline “Black History Parade moved to today” is an unfortunate message to our community – a message perhaps only trumped with the Black History Museum on York Street sitting empty and unfunded for many years while other community buildings continue to be funded.
Segregation, in a word is not the enemy, it is we who are upholding it.
Editor’s note: According to Sgt. Jake Mahoney of the Aiken Department of Public Safety, the Black History Parade organizers requested the Hampton Avenue route rather than using the traditional downtown parade route.
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BY: Follow @Kredo0
The Obama administration is clandestinely trying to resume funding a U.N. body that officially recognized the “State of Palestine.”
But members of Congress say that they won’t stand for it.
A footnote tucked into the president’s recently unveiled budget proposal reveals the administration’s intent to resume funding for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, otherwise known as UNESCO.
UNESCO caused an international firestorm last year when it accepted Palestine as a member – despite the fact that Palestine is neither a state nor a full member of the U.N.
Congress responded to UNESCO’s unwarranted intrusion into the Middle East peace process by invoking a U.S. law that prohibits funding of any international organization that recognizes a Palestinian state.
Now, however, Obama is aiming to resume UNESCO’s funding – ignoring the Palestinians’ ongoing quest to establish a state via the U.N., rather than through direct negotiations with Israel.
According to a footnote in the White House’s budget summary: “The Department of State intends to work with Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO. Should the Congress pass this legislation, this funding is sufficient to cover the FY 2013 UNESCO assessment and the balance of the FY 2012 assessment.”
Foreign policy voices in Congress – and well as former government officials – tell the Washington Free Beacon that this simply won’t happen.
“This decision once again proves that the President is no friend to Israel,” Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) told WFB. “Once again, the president is trying to skirt the law and Congress so that he can hurt our ally Israel and reward the enemies of peace. Why else would he request full funding for an organization that has allowed totalitarian regimes to hijack its agenda and further their single-minded campaign to destroy Israel?”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “has made it very clear that he’s going to continue to pursue this effort” to achieve statehood at the U.N., said Richard Schifter, a former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs during the Reagan administration.
Schifter, chair of the American Jewish International Relations Institute, went on to describe Obama’s move as “troublesome,” and noted that there would likely be “overwhelming Congressional consensus to not go in this direction – and when I say overwhelming, I mean overwhelming.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also expressed vehement opposition to resuming U.S. funding for UNESCO.
“I am deeply disappointed that, rather than standing up for U.S. law and for our key ally, Israel, the administration is seeking to remove this roadblock to the unilateral recognition of a ‘Palestinian state,’” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement. “Any effort to walk back this funding cutoff will pave the way for the Palestinian leadership’s unilateral statehood scheme to drive on, and sends a disastrous message that the U.S. will fund U.N. bodies no matter what irresponsible decisions they make.”
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Goodbye India, Hello Ghana:
A Volunteer’s Journal
Even if all she managed to do in India was to give one child a few hours of hope, then she did accomplish something, writes Preeti Tijoriwal, who has now gone to volunteer in Ghana.
(Above): Children, even from underprivileged backgrounds, are remarkably vivacious in India. [Preeti Tijoriwal photo]
I am continuing to learn a lot from my experience at Deepalaya — for example, how incredibly inefficient NGOs can be. Let alone creating an entire Special Education program — I have hardly been able to convince the teachers that it is a good idea to plan their lessons in advance or set some goals for their student. Change is a very slow process. I have found that people have good intentions but not everyone knows how to effectively act on them. Deepalaya, for example, is a very large organization with a noble cause — to help the less fortunate people of India receive an education and health care. Unfortunately, their mission seems to have shifted from service to fundraising and networking. Deepalaya seems to be going through the motions rather than performing a service. The question I keep asking myself is how can I help break the habit and actually make some sort of small dent in the quest for progress. I have recently gotten involved with another NGO called Sshristi. They have a similar mission of educating less fortunate children. About a month ago they began a new program for the street children in the area. During the day these kids hang out at the traffic light begging for money. Every afternoon for two hours we invite them to school to learn some basic math and Hindi. These kids are about as tough as they get, at least on the exterior. They have seen and experienced more “life” in their youthful years than most of us have. Right now they are wild, and they mostly come to school for the free food that they get. But they also enjoy the feeling of safety and comfort. Most importantly, they keep coming back, and that’s two hours out of their day that they are not on the streets. To me this is bigger than a small dent — this is a fist-size hole in the pursuit of progress. This is seva.
One of my friends asked me the other day, how I am liking India. When I said that I am loving it, he proceeded to ask me why. I said that was a good question and I am not sure what the answer is. I know part of the reason why I am enjoying my time here is because I have been lucky enough to make some wonderful friends. Even the middle of nowhere (i.e. Winchester, Va.) can be enjoyable if you have the right people around. But I think the main reason why I am having such a wonderful time is because I know this is an invaluable experience and a time in my life I will always cherish. Not to sound too preachy/sentimental/spiritual but if you have not already done so, I strongly encourage everyone to take a step out of your comfort zone and do something you thought you’d never do — even if it is something small and seemingly insignificant. I am sure it will make a huge impact on you.
(Above): A monkey being offered a drink. Monkeys are frequently tamed and used to amuse crowds in India. [Preeti Tijoriwal photo]
Gandhigiri in Action?
At the end of my day at SShristi today, I caught an auto to take me home. As I mentioned before, these auto drivers are quite badmash, and this one definitely tried to take me for a ride — both literally and figuratively. I had to do some haggling but I talked him down from 50 rupees to 35 rupees (about $1). When we got to the intersection, a few of the kids I work with came running up to me to say hi. I playfully scolded them for not coming to school today and told them I hope to see them on Monday. As we were driving away the driver asked me if I knew those kids. I told him I teach them at a school down the street. He was shocked! He could not figure out why I would want to “waste my time” with such kids. He didn’t mean it in a rude way — he was just curious. I told him that my hope is that these kids will learn something and then maybe someday they won’t be begging on the street corner anymore. After all, they are the future of this country! We continued to talk the whole way about why I wanted to help these kids, and I could see his interest growing. When we got to my destination, I handed the driver his money. He just looked at me and gave me 5 rupees back. Now it was my turn to be surprised! Of course I let him keep the 5 rupees, but his little gesture brought a huge smile to my face. A glimmer of hope that one person can make a difference…
Next Stop Ghana
I arrived back in the U.S. a few weeks ago and have begun preparing for my next adventure. I am about to embark on a three-month journey in Ghana. I'm sure I will have many wonderful things to share with you about this completely new and unfamiliar place once I get there! For now I would like to share some closing thoughts about my time in India.
The quality of life in India, as I am sure is the case with many developing nations, depends largely on a person's wealth. India is a great place to live if you have the resources, and it can be unforgiving to those who don't. After four months of staring poverty in the face, the hardest part of my day was saying no. When an 8-9 year old child comes up to you wearing nothing but a raggedy thin sweater, pants that barely reach his ankles, and no shoes in 47 degree weather, it is hard to walk away. It is hard to say no to a young, frail mother holding two children, one on each side, and another child hanging on her sari. Sure, I know beggars in India know how to put on a show — kids carrying kids, mothers with multiple children, people with limps or limbs cut off — but I can't imagine that this is a show they enjoy performing every single day for a meager buck. The government of India counts about 26 percent of the population below the poverty line. Officially, that means these people make less than about $0.20 a day. A report conducted in 2007 found that another 50 percent of Indians live off of less than $0.50 a day. Although there is a growing middle class, there is still a gaping disparity between the wealthy and the poor, and this fact is visible almost everywhere you go. It's hard to ignore a young girl asking for a couple rupees ($0.05) from a lady walking toward her four-story home with marble flooring and a jacuzzi on the terrace. It's even harder to look away from a young rag picker searching for recyclable items and eating disposed food straight out of a garbage can in front of a Lacoste store. I don't mean to sound so grim and discouraging, but this is reality in India, and for me it has been important to genuinely recognize it.
(Above): A classroom for a school that provides education to underprivileged children in New Delhi. [Preeti Tijoriwal photo]
After four months of staring poverty in the face and shamefully saying no to hundreds of people, I still find myself hopeful that things can and will change for the better. Everyday people across India are working to make a difference, and although progress is slow, very slow, change is evident. At Sshrishti, kids who have only been attending school 2-3 years have already far surpassed the educational level of their parents. They can read and write in Hindi and can even read and write basic English! Certainly, right now it is hard to say what their futures hold for them, but I can say with confidence that it will be better than their present. They have already gained so many valuable life skills that put them ahead of so many children who come from similar backgrounds — heck, even children who come from much more stable backgrounds. They know how to be prompt and appropriately dressed. They are respectful and attentive to teachers/leaders. They know how to ask questions. And they have the desire to be successful. These kids have the ability to provide better lives for their families and cross the poverty line. Education is a tool that once you have it, it cannot be taken away, and it is a very powerful tool. I continue to struggle with the quality of education people in India receive. Imperfections always tend to stick out like a pimple in the middle of your forehead. But I'm beginning to understand the impact even these seemingly small steps toward advancement can make on a person's quality of life.
(Above): A barber shop that serves a lower middle class clientle in an Indian town. With its walls plastered with gaudy Bollywood posters and numerous photographs of highly distinctive haircuts, its floor strewn with leftover hair, and the entire place reeking of cheap aftershave, these places are hard to miss. [Preeti Tijoriwal photo]
When anyone asks me how my experience was, I always answer, “It was great! I loved it.” Yet, I still have a hard time articulating why. In India I found myself doing things that I never had time for or never made time for here. I joined a classical dance class. I went out and explored many different parts of my city. I hung out with friends. But really what made living in India such an invaluable experience was having the opportunity to be somewhere where I was not always comfortable and I was not always confident in what I was doing. I quoted Gandhiji earlier. He said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” I did not go to India with the intention of finding myself, but it seems like I rediscovered parts of me that had been lost in the daily grind. I learned about my own flexibility and ability to adjust to my surroundings. To be honest, I am not sure if I accomplished anything concrete. I did not create a brand new Special Education program from curriculum to daily lesson plans. But I did realize that even if I couldn't fix everyone's problems, I could show them that I care and am there for them. More than anything else, I discovered how truly fortunate I am.
When people ask me what I am going to do in Ghana, I often respond that I am going to change the world… one child at a time. It's easy to be an idealist, and it's even easier to be a cynic. But it's important to keep things in perspective. Don't forget that there are people in this world who live off of $0.50 a day or less. There are children and seniors without anyone to take care of them. And there are people who work day in and day out of hard labor just to provide one small meal to their families. Even if all you can give is an hour of your time to these people, you have given them a whole hour of love, care, and support that they so desperately need. Even if all I managed to do in India was give one child a few hours of hope, then I did accomplish something. And all I can hope now is that I can do the same in Ghana. If you ask me why I am going, it is to perform seva, “selfless service.”
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Main Entry: ju·ry
Inflected Form(s): plural juries
Etymology: Middle English jure "jury," derived from early French jurer "to swear," from Latin jurare (same meaning), from jur-, jus "right, law" --related to JUDGE, JUST 1: a body of persons sworn to inquire into a matter of fact and give their verdict 2: a committee that judges and awards prizes at an exhibition or contest
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(CNN) -- With the Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of the President Obama's health care law, more patients than ever have been asking for my thoughts about health reform.
I practice primary care in southern New Hampshire near the Massachusetts border, which gives me a firsthand look at how health reform has impacted my neighboring state. Despite flaws with the Massachusetts approach, and the president's Affordable Care Act which is modeled after it, I believe that health care reform needs to move forward.
Over the years, I have encountered too many cases of patients who are inadequately served by our current health care model. Some of their stories are heartbreaking, others are deeply worrisome.
Some time ago, I had one middle-aged patient with diabetes, whom I'll call Mark, requiring high doses of insulin to control his blood sugar. He faithfully saw me every three months, where I made careful insulin adjustments so his sugars wouldn't go too high or low. But all of a sudden, he stopped coming. I didn't hear from him until a year later, when I received a call from the emergency department telling me Mark was found in a coma because of a critically high sugar level. Thankfully, he survived his hospital stay, and when he came for a visit afterward he explained how he had lost his job, and thus, his health insurance. He couldn't afford to see me or buy his medication.
According to the 2010 Commonwealth Fund survey, 72% of jobless Americans said they couldn't afford to fill a prescription or obtain needed medical tests. Worse, 40% said that medical bills forced them into difficult financial decisions, such as depleting their savings, or being unable to pay for necessities like food, heat or rent. These are choices patients should never be forced to make.
But it's not only patients without insurance who suffer. Others are in a situation like another patient of mine, whom I'll call Linda. She recently told me that her sister was diagnosed with colon cancer, a disease with a strong genetic component. I recommended that Linda have a colonoscopy. Unfortunately, her health insurance plan had a deductible in the thousands of dollars, making a colonoscopy prohibitively expensive.
Last year, a study from the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, found that families enrolled in high-deductible plans like Linda's cut back on health care that was clearly beneficial, like cervical cancer, breast cancer and colon cancer screening. According to the study, "these cutbacks could cause a spike in health care costs down the road if people end up sicker and need more intensive treatment."
The Affordable Care Act would help patients like Mark, by providing him a way to obtain affordable health insurance regardless of his job status. Beginning in 2014, health reform would expand the eligibility of Medicaid and provide federal tax credits to help buy private insurance. On average, 17% of the nonelderly population nationwide would be helped, with numbers as high as 36 to 40% in parts of Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and California. And for patients like Linda, health reform would prohibit cost sharing for many preventive screening tests, including colonoscopies.
My support of the Affordable Care Act is tempered, however, by a serious flaw: Its benefits cannot be fully realized without a strong primary care foundation. In the United States, the number of specialists to primary care doctors is about 70-30, a ratio that's reversed in the rest of the world. That primary care deficit is a far bigger threat to health reform than if the Supreme Court were to rule President Obama's law unconstitutional.
Having health insurance doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to see a doctor. In Massachusetts, more than 95% of residents have health insurance, the highest in the country. However, a 2011 Massachusetts Medical Society survey found that more than half of primary care doctors were not accepting new patients, while the average wait time for an appointment exceeded one month. When you consider that health coverage will expand to 32 million Americans in 2014, whether our strained primary care system can handle that burden is a serious question. An inability to see a primary care provider will force patients to already crowded emergency departments, where health care is often the most expensive.
The Affordable Care Act doesn't do nearly enough to make primary care enticing, despite the anticipated shortfall of primary care providers approaching 30,000 by 2015. Medical students, concerned by their average school debt approaching $160,000, often eschew primary care in favor higher paying specialties. And the bureaucratic burdens of primary care, including paperwork and spending time on the telephone refuting insurance company denials, are overwhelming. According to an Annals of Internal Medicine study, 30% of primary care doctors considered leaving the field entirely, citing burnout, time pressures and administrative hassles.
These concerns, however, shouldn't stall health reform. Instead, they need to be addressed as the Affordable Care Act is modified and improved on in the coming years. Far too many patients can no longer afford to obtain basic care. It's their stories that have made me realize we desperately need to fix our broken health care system, and accept health reform despite its shortcomings. We cannot let the pursuit of perfection become the enemy of doing the right thing.
Patients like Mark and Linda need help now.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion
Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kevin Pho.
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Reputation: 0 Neutral
- Active Posts:
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Topics I've Started
Posted 12 Mar 2013Hi all:
I wanted to repair and old piece that I had glazed last year. This was a bisqueware teapot that I had painted with Duncan Concepts underglaze. I fired this piece at Cone 06 and then discovered that the glaze crawled away around the handle. It left some unsightly bare spots, exposing the white bisque underneath.
Well, I went ahead and took this piece and warmed it in the microwave for a few minutes, to that the glaze would stick to it a little bitter. I used two coats on these bare spots. I fired it again at Cone 06 and the glaze crawled away again!!! UGH....I really want to save this piece somehow.....any suggestions?
Thanks so much.
Posted 27 Jan 2013Hi all:
I found out that I may be moving in a few months and will have to sell or put my kiln in storage.
I will be moving into a rental house. Can you suggest a good small kiln (Cone 04-06 Firing) that plugs into a standard outlet? 120V?
Thanks so much
Posted 13 Jan 2013Hi!!!
I will be doing some test pieces soon. I'm pretty new to this and unsure of how to go about it. I already have a few pieces that I made using Amaco 480 mid/high fire clay.
Now I want to try using some of the Potter's Choice glazes (layering, etc). I am really excited about using these glazes on my test pieces!
How would I use my manual kiln to do this? I have 3 switches (Low, Medium, High)and cones ready. How long for each L-M-H setting to get the right effects/oxidation for these particular glazes?
Attached are some images.
Thanks so much in advance!
Posted 11 Nov 2012Hi Everyone:
I'm stuck on what to do here. I will be decorating this rather large bisqueware bread platter just on the top portion (24" L) and then glaze fire to Cone 06. Trouble is, I can only set it at an angle in my little kiln.
Can I do this? Will this piece be ok touching the sides of the fire brick?
Thanks for your advice in advance.
Posted 6 Nov 2012Help!
Has this happened to anyone?
When I did a Cone 06 fire, I had pieces of firebrick fly off and stick to my glazed pottery! I then get these little 'burrs' in my beautiful work and I have to sand them off.
I just vacuumed the heck out the inside of my kiln again, so hoping that will solve this ongoing issue.
Any other advice?
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By Kristen Steele
I really want to get my grandparents out of their cars and onto their bikes. How can I get them interested in riding? Are there bicycles out there built specifically for the comfort of seniors?
– Hopeful Granddaughter
Many seniors love to reminisce about their two-wheeling days. I would first talk with your grandparents to help revive their interest in saddling up. Cycling gives seniors a relatively low-stress means of exercise that has been proven to increase health and longevity. It is also a great, inexpensive and social activity that can help them stay active and connected to their community in their retirement years.
Then, help them find a bike that’s right for them. Go to a bike retailer rather than a big box store. They will be more passionate about cycling and more knowledgeable about what’s on the market. Step-through frames make it easy to get on and off a bike. Recumbents may be the right choice for seniors with back issues. Tricycles may work for those who have trouble balancing or are afraid of falling. If hills are a major deterrent, they could try an electric bicycle that will give them a boost up hills and help them save energy for the flatter parts of the ride.
Once they find a bicycle that suits them, they’ll need a safe place to ride. Many people, seniors included, are nervous about riding in traffic. If your grandparents are in this camp, look for some car-free trails or off-road paths to start. You can also seek out local road riding classes that can help them hone their skills while boosting their confidence. The League of American Bicyclists hosts an online directory of these courses at bikeleague.org/programs/education/course_schedule.php.
Lastly, support your grandparents in their new mode of travel. Invite them to go on a ride with you. Buy them a membership to their local bicycle advocacy group. See if there are any senior bicycling clubs in your area they could ride with. If cycling becomes a social activity as well as a way to stay fit, they’re more likely to keep riding for years to come.
Cycling gives seniors a relatively low-stress means of exercise that has been proven to increase health and longevity.
Reached a bump in the road? Feel like you’re spinning your wheels and no one’s listening? The Advocate is here to help.
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The temporary installation of artwork by Ricky Swallow and Lesley Vance at the Huntington constitutes not only the first time the work of these two artists—husband and wife, sculptor and painter—has been displayed together, but also the first time contemporary art has been installed in the mansion of Henry E. and Arabella Huntington, a Beaux-Arts style structure built early in the 20th century that served as a backdrop to the Huntingtons’ evolving collection of British and French art of the 18th century. Given the relationship of Swallow and Vance’s work to art of the past, the resulting dialogue with the permanent collection will strike the visitor as both familiar and new.
Exhibition Dates: November 10, 2012, to March 11, 2013
Huntington Library, Art Galleries, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA, November
Catherine Hess is Chief Curator of European Art of the Huntington Art Collections. Christopher Bedford is Chief Curator of Exhibitions, Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University. Suzanne Hudson is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Southern California.
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I observed an interesting debate on Twitter a couple weeks ago between an advocate of "enterprise" computing and an Amazon Web Services champion. After it went back and forth I bit, I offered my contribution: Somebody is using a ton of AWS, and it's growing like crazy.
Listening to this debate reminds me of the Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus discussion about how two people can discuss something and still fail to understand the other person's basic perspective. In the case of this Twitter debate, the discussion failed to address a key question: What are the requirements of the applications running in those environments?
The crucial fact is that those who defend enterprise computing fail to grasp the fact that legacy IT infrastructure and operations don't address the requirements of new application types that I label the "three M's"-mobile, media and marketing. These apps are flocking to public cloud computing because they're not well served by traditional infrastructure and are much more aligned with what cloud computing brings to the table.
It's critical to understand the characteristics of these applications to understand why demand for cloud computing is in its early growth phase-and why we're about to see its already rapid adoption accelerate even further.
Cloud Computing and Mobile: A Different User Population
Legacy enterprise applications could be tuned to a couple operating systems and a few browsers. They also had very predictable user populations and use patterns. The emphasis for these kinds of applications vis-à-vis infrastructure is to implement a static environment and make it difficult to modify.
Mobile applications, on the other hand, are a very different. They run on a bunch of different devices, which increases the combination of interfaces that applications need to be able to support. Moreover, companies often provide API interfaces to their applications to enable independent developers to create applications outside the purview of the company's own IT organization-the company won't even know what devices are going to be in the user population.
The growth of APIs is one of the real underreported stories of the past couple years, but it's huge and very much driven by a mobile application world. (The upshot of this is that mobile applications pose significant challenges to the design and operation of legacy applications.)
Public cloud computing environments, by contrast, are well-suited for the demands of mobile applications. High-load variability is easily handled by their very large infrastructures.
Cloud Computing and Media: Huge Traffic
It's something of a misnomer these days to talk about a media company, since every company is becoming a media company. Video is becoming the sine qua non of how companies communicate with important stakeholders. And it's huge. Every year Cisco Systems comes out with five-year projections of Internet traffic, and every year the company ups them. The reason? Video.
Every company is leveraging video in one of the following ways-and this list is certainly not exhaustive:
- Marketing campaigns, particularly those with a clever or snarky twist, like the Will It Blend? series from Blend-Tec that has racked up 221 million views. Every company's fervent wish is that its marketing video will go viral and drive heightened consumer interest in its products.
- Partner, user or employee training. There's no faster way to demonstrate how to use a product than with a video. Plus, video is much more engaging than written documentation.
- Announcements. Video is a good way to make a company's announcements stand out from the blizzard of written press releases spewed onto the Internet every day.
Video is a huge consumer of bandwidth, and it's very sensitive to latency disruptions. The average company's internal network is insufficient to support the kind of traffic video requires, and the network capacity that is available is tuned to support legacy transactional application needs. When you marry mobile and video, it's obvious that legacy infrastructures are inadequate to support the requirements of these applications.
Cloud Computing and Marketing: Constant Change
Now that marketing and advertising have shifted decisively to the Internet, their nature is changing as well. Because ad delivery used to be so difficult, marketing and advertising campaigns remained static. Rolling out a new TV ad across the U.S. required getting new tapes to multiple TV stations and cable/satellite providers. The process-especially making sure everyone had the right version of the ad-was so time-consuming that changes were relatively infrequent.
Today, by contrast, online marketing and advertising campaigns are served up centrally. This reduces the change overhead by more than 90 percent.
But guess what? Reduced friction encourages more change. In turn, that requires changes to both infrastructure and application code. In other words, it means a radically reduced application lifecycle-and that runs smack into legacy infrastructure managed to reduce change, with management controls such as ITIL imposing manual processes to control infrequent change.
The expectations of the next generation of marketing and advertising is that campaigns can be rolled out quickly, modified rapidly and terminated immediately. If you read my last post on cloud computing budgets, you know this kind of application is projected to be a majority of IT spend in 2017.
Consequently, the expectations of the majority of IT spending are going to confront the legacy practices and processes for enterprise infrastructure and applications. It's not going to be pretty. While many in the IT community have an unspoken wish that things will settle down and we'll go back to the old ways of doing things, that wish can pretty much be written off. These expectations aren't going to go away.
If anything, one can predict they will be even more strongly pushed as the possibilities of what can be done with online marketing become more embedded in the discipline. In five years, the everyday expectation will be marketing campaigns tuned daily-or even hourly-in according to real-time analytics performed on tracking data.
I expect the discussion to be over in five years. The definition of enterprise will have expanded to incorporate the requirements of the three M's, and the practices and processes of legacy IT will have been discarded as inadequate for the needs of the three M's. Mobile, media, and marketing will force as much change into IT as the PC did-and, as the change plays out, with just as much disruption.
Bernard Golden is the vice president of Enterprise Solutions for enStratus Networks, a cloud management software company. He is the author of three books on virtualization and cloud computing, including Virtualization for Dummies. Follow Bernard Golden on Twitter @bernardgolden.
Read more about cloud computing in CIO's Cloud Computing Drilldown.
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This is a guest post from Eoin Brazil (Dr), Technology Transfer Lead, Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC)
Register for the free Financial Industry and High Performance Computing on eventbrite. Date: Tue March 13th.
ICHEC are hosting a free workshop for financial sector companies where invited speakers will outline the rapid changes in hardware technology and where computing can utilise this hardware to have a profound impact on their business. From front to back-office, from portfolio construction to trade execution, from data capture to quarterly reports – there are business processes that are inherently parallel and amenable to high performance computing.
The financial industry, like other industries is increasingly concerned about the transfer of data into information, information into action, and action into profit. There are two forces acting upon the financial industry, firstly the need to reduce the time to get things done and secondly the need to expand the amount of work done in that time.
This seminar will introduce how your company can leverage current off-the-shelf hardware to tackling uncertainty. It does so by highlighting where and how this has already done with practical examples. International speakers will discuss where this technology is:
- Reducing risk (by knowing more, by providing more detail, by dealing with larger amounts of data)
- Getting to answers faster (this can be reducing cost or dealing faster with market uncertainties)
- Making better utilisation of existing IT infrastructures (leveraging existing hardware resources more efficiently and more effectively to tackle problems)
The aim of this breakfast briefing is to highlight the potential benefits of this technology to the Irish Financial industry as one means of achieving business innovation. More information about the programme is available here
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Tips on Applying for Financial Aid for your Family Member with Autism
This is a blog post by J-Jaye Hurley, Autism Response Team coordinator on the Autism Speaks Family Services team and the mother of a child with autism.
1. Print all pages of the application and read them carefully. Twice. . . These applications are usually lengthy and complex so you must review their own requirements. Many applications ask for similar items (tax statements, IEPs, etc) but they are ALL in a different format. If you do not provide the information they request AND in the format they request, you can be denied. If you do not send in all the information at the same time, you can be denied. Also review their application criteria before you apply. A friend of mine filled out a long application only to realize they didn’t provide assistance for the therapy she was interested in. Know all requirements before diving in.
2. Be aware of deadlines. Some family grants are year-round but the majority I applied for had specific deadlines. In fact, I was unable to apply for one that I wanted because I missed their annual deadline. If you are requesting therapy notes or letters of recommendation, make sure you allow plenty of time to gather all information, complete application and send in PRIOR to that deadline. If they receive your application after the deadline, you will be denied.
3. Be concise and honest. Most organizations review thousands of apps, and the majority of the application is financial information. However, most apps ask the parent for some personal information about the child. Make sure you tell them about your child, why you need their help and how this will make a difference for your child and family. They don’t need your entire life story, but they do need you to be honest and upfront about your needs and situation. Most of our stories speak for themselves so just be yourself and speak from the heart. We are passionate parents and advocates by nature so go with what you know – your child.
4. Get recommendations. Some applications say they will accept letters of recommendation but don’t require them. I recommend your seeking those letters as they only serve to provide additional information on your child and family to this anonymous committee. Ask your therapists, physicians or family members. You can save letters and use them for multiple applications each year.
5. Have a friend/spouse review your apps. Before you mail in your completed applications, have someone review it for you. My husband caught typos & had suggestions. As a former English teacher, I always recommend having another pair of eyes review your writing. Applications are no exception!
6. Include a picture of your beautiful child! This helps bring a personal and real connection to those reading your applications.
7. If at first you don’t succeed, apply and apply again! I was turned down for some of my applications and I plan to re-apply before 2011 deadlines. Make a copy of your completed application, as it stays basically the same from year to year. It is much easier to update last year’s application than start from scratch on a 10 page app. Update your new information and try again.
Check out this article in Family Services Community Connections.
Family Services provides resources and information. If you have a question, contact the Autism Response Team today. If you’re concerned that your child may be affected with autism or if you’ve received a diagnosis, browse the Tools for Families section, where you’ll find our 100 Day Kit, and the Autism Video Glossary. If you’d like to do a quick search for service providers near you, selectFind a Local Resource and browse the Resource Guide.
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With bulldozers on the horizon, 8,500 protesters marched up Laguna Canyon Road in 1989 to preserve the undeveloped landscape leading into Laguna Beach. A similar effort to preserve open space by an initiative known as Measure CC on next Tuesday’s general election ballot has been, in contrast, a slow-burner.
That’s not to say there isn’t heat under foot.
With state and federal funding for open space exhausted, proponents say Measure CC, which would levy an annual $120 tax on each parcel in Laguna, is a locally funded way to continue what began 23 years ago: buying and preserving what remains of large, undeveloped tracts scattered throughout town and near adjacent open space. They say the measure (www.lagunaopenspace.com), which would raise an estimated $20 million over 20 years, provides an alternative revenue source giving city officials the capacity to act when land becomes available. The initiative must pass by a two-thirds majority of voters.
Earlier last month, opponents, led by the Laguna Beach Taxpayers Association, jumped into the fray with an oversize mailer attacking the measure. It argues that the measure would create a citizens’ oversight committee with unchecked say on how the money raised by the parcel tax, estimated at $1 million annually, is spent. They also argue that open space should be acquired in uninhabited areas, not in neighborhoods.
The measure states tax money will be used solely to purchase undeveloped residential parcels ranging in size from two to 80 acres from willing sellers. Its proponents, preservationist groups such as Village Laguna and Laguna Greenbelt, say the timing is right to add to open space. When cyclical land values peak again, especially in a seaside town, lots once considered unbuildable could attract new speculation. Opponents counter that the economic recession makes an additional tax an undue burden, especially among the town’s considerable elderly population.
“For 20 years at $120 a year, that’s just too much for me to afford,” said homeowner Sandi Werthe, a widow living on a fixed income. “Property taxes and all expenses go up every year and social security doesn’t go up with it. It would be an additional strain on an already strained income.”
Other residents look to the hills and have seen the slow disappearance of untouched land. “This is a legacy for my children and grandchildren,” said Charlotte Masarik, an avid hiker whose home is Measure CC headquarters. “It upsets me because I’m in the back country all the time and I’ve watched over the last 30 years how the vistas have changed because what we thought were unbuildable lots got built on. Unspoiled hillsides have now got mega-mansions on some of them.”
Howard Hills, a spokesman for the taxpayers’ association, said that’s a misplaced sentiment. “Measure CC is not what our open space legacy is all about,” he claimed. “The sponsors of Measure CC should have just dedicated the revenue to the city’s existing open-space budget for the elected City Council to manage. They should be spending their resources on the existing legacy and working with open space in uninhabited, not residential, areas.”
City Manager John Pietig said that’s possible and, in fact, has been done. The city’s current $190,000 open space fund was supplied by property taxes. The council could continue that, Pietig said, “but it would be at the expense of some other service.”
There is no dedicated revenue stream for future funding, he added, and government funding to purchase “nonessentials” like open space is nearly history. State grants from Prop. 12 will run out next year.
Michael Gosselin, a local realtor supporting the measure, isn’t worried about the measure’s potential impact on city revenue, should private land be purchased for public open space and be removed from property tax rolls. “The lion’s share of the parcels unbuildable today will always be unbuildable,” he said, “because the city is not going to loosen the requirements in terms of steepness or access for fire safety.”
Opponents’ primarily object to a provision in Measure CC that establishes a citizens’ committee to oversee open space parcel acquisitions proposed to the City Council. The measure, according to Hills, creates an unbridled “unelected bureaucratic body with a tax dollar slush fund to be doled out by political appointees.” He attributes the committee’s scope to a “shrewdly and cleverly” written description of the committee’s responsibilities.
“It’s about the $1 to $1.5 million budget that will be the only budget in the city government exempt from the ups and downs inherent to the fiscal health of the community,” Hills said. “What other office in City Hall is going to have a guaranteed budget for 20 years that can’t be reduced?”
Paul Freeman, spokesman for Measure CC, called Hills’s approach a fear tactic. “They’re making stuff up,” Freeman said. “They know if they say scary things, it will resonate with people who may be generally skeptical about government.”
Freeman, a former Laguna council member, contends the committee has no power other than persuasion and no budget for buying property. “The City Council and only the City Council has access to the funds under Measure CC,” he said. “The City Council and only the City Council makes decisions concerning the expenditures of funds under Measure CC. The committee has no power under Measure CC except the right to review proposed expenditures. They get to say, ‘Hey, we object’ before and not after the fact and the council has to respond. The council can do what they legally want.”
Gosselin says the committee’s presence assures him that unbuildable property will be purchased for open space “in perpetuity” and not to enrich the value of adjacent developed property.
“I’m very comfortable with the fact that there’s an oversight committee written into the measure and then the City Council has to vote on whether or not to do it,” he said. “With those two backstops, I think it’s a good idea to continue the legacy of preserving open space.”
The argument against the tax may be influencing opinion, but only because it’s representing false information, Freeman said. “I’ve had a lot of people ask me questions like, ‘Why would we want to be taxed to buy some teeny little parcel?” like the one they pictured on their negative mailer.”
Hills admitted the photographs aren’t of proposed or available lots. “Those are lots that we determined in our best judgment to be in the category of lots that could be subject to purchase,” he said.
“That kind of parcel in no way, shape or form could possibly be eligible for acquisition under this measure and they know that,” refuted Freeman. “There’s no parcel on our map that’s less than two acres, the average is 20 acres, the largest is 80 acres,” he said of land identified as potential purchases.
Freeman concedes next week’s vote lacks the drama of circumstances 20 years ago, when development in Laguna Canyon was imminent. Even so, a poll showed that the sentiment that spawned a protest and approval of a 20-year bond measure in 1990 still exists. “It’s whether you buy into the notion that open space is valuable,” Freeman said.
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Though it has been enjoyed for more than fifteen hundred years, New Orleans set the standard for coffee and coffee stands over a century ago with the establishment of Cafe du Monde.
The lore of American coffee is in a way that of the port of Orleans's parish itself. The farmers of farmer's market traded heavily in it, coffee the way it was meant to be. The pleasant bitterness of chicory, scalded milk, more sugar than you'd ever admit and a plate loaded with a sweet powdered sugar pastry affectionately known as beignets. But there is another side of the French Quarter coffee experience, and it too lies on Decatur Street.
Three clocks from Cafe du Monde, towards the lower quarter, is the heart and mind of "Nawlin's Coffee House Society", a gallery of a place called simply; Kaldi's.
Now Kaldi, you might remember, was a herdsman living in a hill region of ancient Ethiopia. As the legend goes he noticed that his goats were munching a shrub's berries and then abandoning themselves to the most extravagant prancing. He too ate the berries and excitedly began dancing with the goats. A monk happened upon the scene, and soon the world 'discovered' coffee.
From Kaldi's green beans to roasting and steeping, to espresso machines and cappuccino, about 350 million cups are brewed each day in America. But in a world of Cremora and Folger's Crystals, finding the right type of coffee house can be a real soul searching venture. That's what makes a place like Kaldi's such an experience to enjoy.
With enough style to be a museum (it is), the forty-foot plus ceilings provide a perfect setting for the soft light which pours through the massive windows. On the back wall behind the battle station of a counter is a massive 3-D wall sculpture portraying the joint's namesake in the thralls of his discovery.
Conveniently located on a busy corner, the riverside window seats provide a perfect perch by which you can watch the occasional hapless tourist trip on the uplifted sidewalk. The scent of coffee roasting, the inky notepads of the intelligentsia and a sound system that's nearly subsonic makes Kaldi's the coolest place to chill in New Orleans.
There is absolutely no better feeling than resting on the cool interior and sipping down a sweet Venetian Crème. Even though the recipe is a secret, this signature coffee's flavor is by no means indescribable. Sweeter than sugar, thick like chocolate milk and made from cold drip coffee, the Venetian Crème could easily be confused with paradise on Earth.
The building itself just reeks history, and I can almost feel its spirit come alive. Originally the old Canal savings and Loans, it also shares its past with an adult bookstore, a nightclub "The Bank" and a dentist office (upstairs), and officially became a coffeehouse museum in October of 1989.
Opening early (before the bars never close) and open 'til at least midnight, Kaldi's is the place to experience coffee in New Orleans.All the coffee is roasted on site and they sell the finest quality coffees from the world's markets. You can choose your favorite by the pound, or experiment with the Daily Brew.
You can drink refill after refill and if you're there in the evening still, you can usually catch the local talent playing for tips and the sheer pleasure of groovin' high with kindred coffee house spirits. There are many moods to the place, from late night hushed laughs, raucous foot stomping blues jams, philosophical meanderings and flirtatious cafe love affairs, and your purpose in life is complete if you can experience them all.
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Best of EMT 2010: Julie Dibens waits for 5 minutes before crossing finish line at 70.3 Boulder
Posted Dec 29 2010 1:51pm
Editor's Note:In the last few days of 2010 we're pleased to feature some of the most interesting and noteworthy stories of the year. Today we continue with a great moment in 70.3 racing as Julie Dibens demonstrates the meaning of true sportsmanship.
It's called the eight percent rule, and for the second Ironman race now professional female Ironman triathletes have waited at the finish line before crossing to take the win.
Today at the Ironman 70.3 Boulder, Julie Dibens waited for about 5 minutes before crossing the finish line to win the race.
A new 2010 Ironman rule stipulates that professional Ironman triathletes must be within 8 percent of the eventual winner's time to collect their prize money.
Not surprisingly in a close knit professional triathlete community like that of Boulder, Colorado this rule will have some strange and unintended consequences...like the spectacle of the winner hanging out in front of the finish (see photo of Julie Dibens above) before crossing the line.
Take a look at the video below as Julie Dibens easily wins Ironman 70.3 Boulder to see what happens when female professional triathletes look out for each other.
BTW: The 8 percent is now history as the WTC phased it out earlier this year.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
How to Write: Reading by derek beaulieu
On August 21st derek beaulieu gave a reading from his new work of conceptual fiction How to Write at Monastiraki in Montreal. I apologize in advance for the wobbly video... I have a lot of things going for me, but a steady hand is apparently not one of them. If you can get past the trembling screen, though, you'll get to enjoy beaulieu's reading of the first piece from How to Write entitled "Nothing Odd Can Last," a collection of plundered questions about the famous novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. I'll also be interviewing beaulieu about his book, so if you have any questions for beaulieu about this piece or about any other section of How to Write, let me know.
Helen Hajnoczky's first book, Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising, is forthcoming this fall from Snare Books. She is now living in Montreal, and wants you to tell her about all the awesome poetry things she needs to check out!
at 2:40 PM
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A 'sold' sign sits in front of a home in Riverview, Fla. A measure of U.S. home prices jumped 5 percent in September compared with a year ago.
- Filed Under
A measure of U.S. home prices jumped 5 percent in September compared with a year ago, the largest year-over-year increase since July 2006. The gain reported by CoreLogic offered more evidence of a sustainable housing recovery.
The real estate data provider also said Tuesday that prices declined 0.3 percent in September from August, the first drop after six straight increases. The monthly figures are not seasonally adjusted. CoreLogic says the monthly decline reflects the end of the summer home-buying season and not a softening in the housing recovery.
Steady price increases should give ...
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Those looking for low credit card rates are wary of the too-good-to-be-true offers that end up costing more money than they promise to save. After all, most of us just want a straightforward card with simple rules.
But then along comes a card offering a 0% introductory APR for the first two years. A balance transfer to this card could save hundreds of dollars in interest and help you pay off debt — so what is the credit card company hiding? What happens after the two-year introductory period?
These are questions that ensure you don’t make a counterproductive move when looking to low-interest rate credit cards to pay off debt. Consolidating debt is a good idea, but don’t get caught paying ridiculous fees, wasting the 0% interest period or missing the opportunity for better low fixed interest credit cards.
Balance Transfer Fees and Annual Fees
Just because a card offers a long 0% introductory APR period doesn’t mean the other features of the card are desirable. Many of these cards have annual fees to offset the benefit of saved interest.
A second consideration is a balance transfer fee. This is typically 3 percent of the balance being transferred, so watch out when transferring a large balance. Slate from Chase offers a 0% introductory APR for 15 months with no balance transfer fee in the first 30 days and no annual fee. Take advantage of this and other deals with no balance transfer fees when consolidating debt.
Big Purchase or Consolidating Debt
Perhaps you don’t usually carry a balance, but you see the opportunity to make a big purchase using low interest rate credit cards. A 0% introductory APR offer can essentially serve as an interest-free loan for six months to two years. The problem is that whether you’re using the balance transfer card for making a big purchase or consolidating debt, the introductory period may not be long enough for you to knock out the entire balance in time. That’s why it’s never a good idea to sign up for a 0% introductory APR credit card without having a plan.
The 0% introductory APR period can provide relief from high interest rates and a chance to pay it off, but these good intentions can quickly turn into a further motivation to spend during this period. Card companies count that temptation to increase your balance during this period to beyond what you can fully pay. When making a payment plan, it is easy to forget that any excess spending each month is added to the balance.
Additionally, variable APRs after the introductory term can easily be higher than those on traditional cards. You don’t want to transfer a $10,000 balance from a 14.99% card onto a 0% APR card for six months, pay it down to a $9,000 balance, and then have the card jump to a 21.99% APR. The key to a successful balance transfer is the resolve to pay it off quickly. The resolve to pay it off quickly takes a concrete payment plan.
Low Fixed Interest Credit Cards vs 0% Introductory APR
Those who are tired of dealing with fees and changing rates will like the sound of low fixed interest credit cards for paying off a balance. Although these cards make up only 30 percent of the credit card market, they may come with an average APR of 9.9%. Are these cards better for paying off a large amount of debt?
|Balance||Time Frame||Card||Monthly Payment||Total Interest Paid|
|$5,000||18 months||0% APR 18 month 16.5% regular APR||$278||$0|
|$5,000||18 months||10% fixed APR||$300||$405|
|$5,000||36 months||0% APR 18 month 16.5% regular APR||$150||$305|
|$5,000||36 months||10% fixed APR||$165||$793|
|$5,000||40 months||10% fixed APR||$150||$889|
The chart shows that paying off a reasonable amount of debt is better done with a 0% introductory offer, usually even if the introductory period must be passed to finish the payments. The total amount of interest paid only evens out with each card if debt is chipped away at during a long period, but this strategy results in a high amount of total interest paid for any card.
In the case of consolidating debt, use a balance transfer card with 0% introductory APR and pay off the debt quickly — continuing to transfer balances to new cards with new 0% introductory offers will hurt your credit score.
Paying off a balance quickly will require concentrated effort, but the 0% introductory APR will make that effort worthwhile. These cards still have fees which need attention and credit score requirements, but they can be used effectively to eliminate a large amount of debt.
When to Use Each Type of Card
Low fixed interest credit cards are not worthless. They are more efficiently used in making regular purchases with the goal of paying off the balance each month. If one month is not paid off completely, the low interest rates will ensure an easier recovery than a variable APR card with a higher interest rate. Technically, even a fixed APR can change by 30 days advanced notice in a billing statement from the credit card company, so no rate is untouchable.
The cards with 0% introductory rates may also be used to make regular purchases. The introductory period may effectively act as a forgiveness period. These cards will have higher interest rates later though that will be unforgiving of the bad habits accommodated during the introductory period.
Knowing what situation calls for each type of card will help a credit card shopper make the best decision for his particular goals. The specific goal of beating debt can be greatly helped by a balance transfer credit card with introductory low rates and a determination to use that time with the most effort.
Mac Hildebrand is a writer and credit card expert from CreditCardChaser.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MacHildebrand.
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Everything You've Been Told About Personal Finance Is Dead Wrong -- Here's the Truth
Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.
According to Helaine Olen, the lion's share of financial advice served up by so-called experts is useless -- or worse. In her must-read new book, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, she reveals that to think about money soley in a personal sense causes us to miss the problem. I caught up with Olen to discuss her take on what we're missing, and how to think better and smarter about our financial lives.
Lynn Parramore: Why does America need a book on the personal finance industry? We're messed up about money, right? Don't we need help?
Helaine Olen: We need help, but not the way we think. In a society where salaries have stagnated and fallen, net worth has plunged, even as the costs of things like healthcare, housing and education have gone up at rates well beyond that of inflation, it’s not surprising most of us have financial problems. But most of us still don’t see that we have a societal problem. Instead, we listen to people and organizations that insist our problem is an individual one. As a result, we gobble up books and television programs that offer us the promise of the magical tip that will allow us to fix all our financial woes. Of course, that’s not really possible. So … enter Pound Foolish. You can think of it as the anti-personal finance advice personal finance advice book.
LP: What are the biggest factors that have contributed to our current retirement crisis?
HO: There are so many factors contributing to the retirement crisis it is hard to succinctly list them all. But once upon a time, a majority of us at least had the possibility of receiving a pension when we retired. That’s no longer the case. We’re now expected to do this on our own. And, frankly, most of us aren’t capable of this task, and we have 30 years of evidence – that is, the lifespan of the 401(k) – to prove this fact. We do everything wrong we possibly can. We are unable to save enough money and we don’t invest it well. At the same time, we lack the crucial ability to see the future. We don’t really know when we will retire and why that will occur. We don’t know if our investments will pan out. We don’t know how the greater economic environment will either play out or interact with our lives.
I was reporting on this stuff 15 years ago and I can tell you just about no one said anything like “oh, by the way, you’ll need more than $200,000 just for medical expenses in retirement.” It’s just unfair to expect people – who are not financial experts – to be able to pull this off. The fact is Social Security and other such schemes were created for a reason. There was no imagined past where people saved up for their old age. As the family farm gave way to urbanization and industrialization, old people had this distressing tendency to end up in workhouses – which were as Dickensian as they sound – if they couldn’t convince a relative to take them in. And many couldn’t. Yes, the rates of intergenerational living were higher than they are now, but it wasn’t all The Walton’s.
LP:How does the industry prey on our fears about our inability to save and plan for the future?
HO: We can’t articulate that for all too many of us our problem is not an inability to manage and invest money effectively; it’s that we’re expected to do more and more with less and less. So we think we are individually messing up, that we lack the financial skills and smarts to get ahead. The financial services industry presents itself as our savior. But by doing that, it has to confirm our cultural bias that we are alone responsible for our financial fates.
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Physical challenges don't slow down Weatherly teen
Morgan Mengle is just like any other 14-year-old high school freshman.
She plays on the high school girls' basketball team.
She likes nachos and mac and cheese.
The only hint that she was born with several physical challenges is that one arm is missing a bone, making it shorter than the other.
You'd never know it by what she does or how she does it.
Parents Billy and Traci Mengle knew Morgan was special the day she was born, when they found out she had a heart condition.
"She was born at Lehigh Valley, where she stayed for a month, and then went to Children's Hospital, Philadelphia, for two months, where she had the first of four open-heart surgeries," Traci said. "She has also had seven cardiac catheterizations, and surgeries on her arm, ear and eye. And her immune system is not as strong (as normal). She's had physical, speech and occupational therapy, and was the ambassador for Carbon County Easter Seals in 2000 and 2001."
Morgan, a Weatherly Area student, will undergo that fourth open-heart surgery in a matter of weeks.
But Morgan leads a relatively normal life because, Traci said, she is a fighter by nature.
"Even the doctors commented how hard she fought," Traci said.
Despite the challenges, Traci knew that she and Billy had to treat Morgan the same way as their son, Kevin, who is now 19.
"From the moment she walked onto that T-ball field at 5 years old, I can remember people looking at her hand and her arm," Traci remembered. "After the first game, it was 'Hi, Morgan.' We told her she could do anything she wants to do; don't let anything hold you back."
She's been playing basketball since second grade and also played softball.
Paul John Hadzick, Morgan's basketball coach, said Morgan is an inspiration to him and the team.
"She never is down or looks for sympathy," Hadzick said. "She never says 'no' and is always trying to improve her skills and achieve. I think the other players look at her and say to themselves, 'Why am I not giving 100 percent when she is giving 110 percent?' Sometimes, I'm down and the other players are down, but when she comes to practice, she gives us hope. She is like our candle."
Sarah Peterlin, who has been Morgan's English teacher since August, believes she was destined to meet Morgan.
"Just to see what Morgan has gone through and has done it in such an incredible way is an inspiration to me, because I have a 3-year-old who has a heart condition, and a baby-to-be (due Nov. 23) who has a heart condition," Peterlin said. "For someone who has physical limitations, you would never know it. She never uses that as any excuse. She never has a bad day, bad attitude or a bad moment."
Traci said Morgan's pet project is to bring awareness to congenital heart disease. She produced a video posted to YouTube titled "My Life," which she set to music and in which uses flash cards to tell her story.
"She talks about how every day is a gift, not a given right," Traci said. "I think that's pretty special for a 14-year-old to say that. Sometimes, you feel alone because there's not somebody that you can talk to about things that have happened to and that you go through."
Morgan likes English and history, but doesn't know what she wants to study in college yet, although her mom said she is "leaning towards medical" fields.
"Morgan doesn't see challenges as challenges," Traci said. "I never remember a time when she asked me, 'How to do this?' She just went and did it. 'Can't' is not really in her vocabulary. Never was."
[email protected] Q. What successful parenting strategy can you share with other parents?
A. You have to challenge (children), reward them for their success, and at times let them fail, but be right there for them.
Q. At what moment did you realize your child was special?
A. We knew the day she was born, because she fought so hard.
Q. What is the greatest challenge you've encountered in raising your child?
A. I can go back to the days when she was very little. Before the physical therapist came to our house, she kept her right arm behind her back. She hated it. She would do anything not to use that right arm. Eventually, the therapist got Morgan to bring the arm out from behind her back and use it.
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The Fellowship of Life
In 1998 a letter was sent to the Bishops of Hereford; Gloucester, Bath and Wells, Norwich, St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich, and Carlisle. An acknowledgement was received from the Chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich and two episcopal replies were received:
Dear Bishop __________
Because of your concern in regard to the fox hunting issue, and what I pray is your interest in animal welfare, I am writing to ask for your views on our treatment of animals generally.
Over two million healthy, intelligent, beautiful animals are slaughtered every day in the U.K. to satisfy our greedy appetites, when there is so much nourishing alternative food available to us. As well as these poor creatures, there are countless being tortured to death in medical research laboratories, and others cruelly exploited by us in so many ways.
Do you think we err in showing so little mercy to another species to whom God has given life?
A SAE is enclosed for the favour of a reply.
(Mrs) Peggy Murray
This site is hosted and maintained by The Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman Family Foundation
Thank you for wisiting all-creatures.org
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Re: “Rainier killing unlikely to prompt changes in law” (TNT, 1-8).
It is truly sad how the anti-gun lobby uses any firearm tragedy to stigmatize private firearm ownership.
The common thread between shootings at Mount Rainier and in Tucson, Ariz., should be the suspect’s mental health, not firearms. If the former soldier and the college student had gotten treatment for their problems, we may not be discussing firearms now. In both cases there were more than enough red flags to warrant intervention and treatment.
Our government’s quest to fund unsustainable budget projections has let our most vulnerable citizens slip through the cracks. These two stories are perfect examples of what is wrong with our health care system. Slashing medical care for the mentally ill and reducing police budgets will only make this problem worse.
Recently a widowed 18-year-old in Oklahoma successfully defended herself and her 3-month-old baby against two armed intruders. This is exactly what the National Rifle Association stands for: the ability to defend your family from harm.
To associate the NRA with the events of Mount Rainier and Arizona is nothing but pure anti-gun propaganda and a slap in the face to all law-abiding firearm owners.
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Who is right and who is wrong?
Some people equate the issue to morals, but that's not quite what I'm talking about. Sure, there's a relation, but those who chose to bring the morals of a God into this question for persuasion are, in my opinion, wrong. By all means, use your beliefs to pick your side choose your morals - but don't let yourself be manipulated by those hashing quotes from and references to religious scripture in order to spread their influence. All too often their MO is nothing but twisting truths and they, as such, should not be fed things like the Bible, the Qur'an or the Torah to chew up and spit out, leaving them torn, broken and disheveled on the floor.
That's just sick.
So. Back to the question.
I'm talking about politics, but rest assured that I'm not going into specific issues. They are important, but not necessarily so for this matter.
There are many ways to design a nation's government, and I feel safe to say that we become quickly accustomed to the one we're born into. Then, as we age, we learn the ways of the world through the eyes of our parents and family. Sometimes we form our own opinions and sometimes we adopt the ones of those who teach us, then we apply the concepts to our surroundings. Our own experiences, influences and morals define where we fall in the political spectrum.
This is how we asses things politically, and is also a perfect example of nurture and nature creating rifts.
When I hear people speak of politics, the words "stupid," "idiotic" and "dumb" are more heavily present than I think fair. Maybe I'm just trying to play the mediator, but I truly believe that even if the beliefs of those with opposing viewpoints astound you, you shouldn't put them down over it. Honestly, I have pretty well defined beliefs and I am, occasionally, shocked by the things people want for our government, but you know what? We're all entitled to our opinions, we're meant to have disagreements and we're all just trying to do what we think is best.
So really, when it comes down to it, the question that really sets my head spinning isn't the one I shared before. The real one is more challenging, but only a little different. It has been posed many times before, but that certainly doesn't stop me from asking.
Is there a right or a wrong?
Sriracha Chicken adapted from Bon Appetit, July 2010
I like spicy food, so this was right up my alley. The original recipe called for Piri-piri sauce, which I did not have, so I made a few substitutions. Make the glaze while the chicken cooks and serve over seasoned rice, if desired.
5 chicken breasts
1/4 c chopped cilantro, fresh
1 shallot, peeled and quartered
3 garlic cloves, peeled
3 Tbls Sriracha, more or less to taste
2-3 tsps Tobasco, more or less to taste
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c lemon juice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
Place the chicken in a bowl or plastic bag. Set aside.
Process the cilantro, shallot and garlic in a food processor. Add remaining ingredients and process to blend. Pour the marinade over the chicken and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight, turning occasionally.
Preheat the oven to 350F. When it comes to temp, cook the chicken, uncovered, for 20-30 minutes until cooked through.
3 Tbls butter
3 Tbls cilantro, chopped fresh
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp Sriracha, more or less to taste
1 Tbls lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add cilantro and garlic, cooking until garlic begins to brown. Add remaining ingredients, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 2 minutes. Pour over cooked chicken.
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Arfa Karim Randhawa, the computer programming prodigy who became the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional at 9 years old, has passed away at the age of 16, according to reports out of her native Pakistan this weekend.
She had been in the hospital for nearly a month after reportedly suffering an epileptic seizure and cardiac arrest. Two weeks ago her outlook appeared to improve. In recent weeks, Microsoft had stepped in to help provide expert medical care.
As explained in this earlier post, I met Arfa and wrote a story about her in 2005 as a newspaper reporter covering her visit to the Microsoft campus in Redmond, when she was 10 years old. After seeing the reports this weekend, I went back and found some of the audio clips from my interview with her, including her talking about meeting Bill Gates, learning to program and what she planned to do when she grew up.
I’ve pieced together the highlights in this audio file, to provide a better sense for what she was like. One of the most remarkable parts, apart from her recounting the conversation with Gates, is hearing her talk with such authority about developing Windows applications.
As you’ll hear at the end, Arfa at 10 years old had also settled on her philosophy of life, and committed it to memory. She told me about it after our interview, when she was having her picture taken outside, so I turned my recorder back on and asked her to repeat it for me on tape.
“If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind,” she said. “If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind.”
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Met Eireann forecasts 36 hours of continuous rain
It just wouldn't be an Irish "summer" without commuters walking around to and fro while resembling a bunch of drowned rats. Now Met Eireann has said that 36-hour rainfall is here.
While we're all unsure as to whether Spain can dampen our Euro 2012 hopes later this evening, the continuous rainfall is sure to dampen the streets of Ireland from tonight, particularly Greystones - which can look forward to 40mm of rain.
“It’s going to be wet and windy and we’re going to have heavy rain moving up from the south during the day," said Met Éireann’s John Eagleton this afternoon.
"The thing is, it’s going to persist, because the area of low-pressure which is its centre is going to cross along the south coast, so the fronts are never really going to clear cleanly through, and the rain will persist through a 24 to 36 hour period of rain.”
Indeed a flood alert has been issued in Greystones, and drivers are advised to take extra care on the roads, while Derek Ryan of AA Roadwatch has offered his advice to motorists.
"Reduce your speed and keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front of you, and also allow oncoming traffic to pass first," says Derek.
“Test your brakes as soon as you can after leaving the water. You shouldn’t drive through water if you don’t know how deep it is as well, that’s a key issue.
"Also, if you have to drive through standing water, drive through the centre of the road as that’s the highest point of the road, and the water won’t be as deep there”.
Let's hope that at least Trap and the lads in Poland can give us something to be cheerful about tonight while we all get absolutely soaked until Friday.
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Most Active Stories
- New York's "local" beef, often not as local as you think
- Remington Arms' owner breaks silence on state's gun laws
- The WRVO MemberCard Thank You! Tour
- Seven years of spinning turbines have brought windfall to Lewis County communities
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Local Coffee Roasting Makes Great Strides in a Shaky Economy
In a struggling economy, one business is on the rise and making an impact in the area: coffee roasting.
John Kupperman, owner of Smith Housewares and Restaurant Supply, says Syracuse is the highest coffee consuming city per capita in the country. People in the area have roasting businesses accessible to them, and many prefer the taste of freshly roasted coffee as opposed to store-bought. Kupperman says the coffee roasting business is a good one.
"The demand for it has been very consistent and has not hugely increased over the time, but very steadily increased, but it continues to be very, very popular," Kupperman said.
Kupperman’s grandfather started the business, and his father took over for him twenty four years ago when roasting coffee beans was just an emerging trend.
"He was way ahead of the curve as far as coffee roasting," he said. "Nobody locally was doing it, and it was really just beginning to be a west coast phenomenon. So at that point, we were the only small independent coffee roaster."
The coffee roasting process starts with small, hard green coffee beans that have a virtually endless shelf life. They are poured into a large metal roaster where they stay for about fifteen minutes. While in there, the machine heats to three hundred ninety degrees and the beans emit a popping noise. The noise is called first crack and the beans turn a light cinnamon color. The roaster continues to heat, nearing four hundred and thirty degrees and the beans pop once more. After the second crack, the beans are dark brown and ready to be freed from the roaster to cool. During the process, a strong, sweet aroma encompasses the roasting room, surpassing the strength of a coffee shop fragrance.
Emmet Simpson, owner of Shamballa Café in Baldwinsville, relates his decision to roast coffee beans to his most memorable cup of coffee, one he tasted in Germany. He says once a person tastes a cup of first-rate coffee, he won’t want to return to store-bought days.
"What I think is going to be a new trend is that people start roasting coffee at home on their own," Simpson said. "So being a small roaster and having the green beans available, more and more customers are actually just buying the green beans from me and roasting at home themselves."
Simpson opened his café three years ago and has learned a thing or two about running a business. He moved from a larger shop with staff to a smaller store, which is connected to a bookstore. He is now a one man show, doing all the roasting, brewing, packaging, delivering, dishes, cleaning, and accounting.
“If you have good volume of customers it can be a good business, but it can be a financial struggle if you don’t have a lot of business, or if your overhead is really high," he said. "So for me, becoming smaller and more streamlined helped me to be able to stay in business and do this.”
To make her business a fruitful one, Anne Backer, owner of Taste the World in Oswego, learned coffee roasting from a friend.
“It was more food-oriented at first, but I knew I needed a product that people consumed on a more daily basis, so roasting the coffee is what led to the actual opening," Backer said. "It’s kind of how it all came together.”
She says people appreciate roasted coffee because of its freshness and taste. Backer roasts the beans in her shop several times a week, which keeps her business a successful one.
Matt Godard, owner of Café Kubal, runs three cafés in the Syracuse area. Although he was an English major in college, he had a greater interest in coffee. He started roasting from his home several years before he opened shop.
"I always wanted cafes," Godard said. "I don’t know if it’s bigger than I ever thought; it’s still a somewhat small operation. We only have 15 employees right now, but we’re doing well and we’re growing in a tough time."
Godard has been running the cafés for five years now and says he roasts a few hundred pounds of coffee beans on an average day, shipping orders as far as California. To provide the freshest coffee possible, he never serves beans that have been roasted more than ten days before.
Roasted coffee beans should be consumed within two weeks before they lose their flavor and aroma. It is wise to only buy as much roasted coffee that will last a week, to ensure freshness.
All four coffee connoisseurs agree that after tasting coffee from fresh roasted beans, customers will never want to return to the store-bought days.
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View Full Version : How many styles of Jo?
05-28-2002, 12:44 AM
I've just acquired two tapes on SuioRyu, and one of the things that surprised me was its jojutsu.
It is very diferent in its approach to the use of jo.
How many styles of jojutsu exist?
The weapons size and shape is uniform to all styles?
05-28-2002, 08:10 AM
Meik Skoss wrote an interesting article describing various styles of jojutsu and bojutsu. The article can be read at
05-29-2002, 01:43 PM
Originally posted byMeik Skoss
Toda-ha Buko-ryu bo and Tendo-ryu jo techniques are based on the idea that one's naginata has broken in the midst of combat on the battlefield, so one must make do with the piece of haft that is left.
A friend of my told once that naginata and yari staffs are not exactly round, but more like oval-shaped.
If that is so, do jo from these schools, that work on the premise that their weapon is a broken yari/naginata, are oval in shape?
05-30-2002, 08:50 PM
Originally posted by Usagi
>> A friend of my told once that naginata and yari staffs are not exactly round, but more like oval-shaped. <<
hmmm ... i've only briefly seen or held naginata and yari before, but it don't think that the haft is always oval. in fact, IIRC the naginata used in Suio-ryu and for atarashii naginata (the bamboo-bladed ones) have round hafts, as do the yari for Hozoin-ryu sojutsu. if you got the attention of Meik Skoss, he'd surely be able to fill you in on the naginata situation at least, and probably yari as well.
05-31-2002, 11:01 AM
The hafts of naginata are oval in shape. The exact shape will vary from ryu to ryu. (atarashii naginata are required to have an oval shape as well.)
In Tendo ryu, the jo techniques are based upon the concept of a broken naginata, but the "standard" jo is round. I believe a couple of teachers have experimented with cut down naginata. I may have to do the same if can't save one of mine after I broke the tip.
Yari hafts are round, though, in my experience. Try to find some info on Owari-kan ryu and the reasons will become more apparent.
05-31-2002, 06:05 PM
Originally posted by Eric Montes
>> The hafts of naginata are oval in shape. The exact shape will vary from ryu to ryu. (atarashii naginata are required to have an oval shape as well.) <<
thanks for the info, Eric. my incorrect impression was based on the fact that i couldn't consistently sense the direction of the blade based on the feel of the haft in my hands, especially in hassou. i guessed that, assuming the haft were oval, i'd be able to tell which way the weapon was turned, but obviously my very limited experience betrayed me.
vBulletin® v3.6.8, Copyright ©2000-2013, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
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Re "Sides Agree on Canal Upgrade, but Not on How," Jan. 21:
The mind-set behind the city's planned restoration of the Venice Grand Canal is the same psychology that brought us AstroTurf and aluminum Christmas trees. God bless Marcia Hanscom's Wetlands Action Network and the Sierra Club for holding the city to the standard of ecologically sensitive habitat restoration instead.
Hopefully, the city will have the smarts to sit down with the biologists who have pointed out the severe deficiencies in its plan and craft a settlement, rather than dig in for the protracted, pointless legal wrangle that Councilwoman Ruth Galanter claims the city doesn't want and that would require the refunding of assessment fees to local residents.
Your story really didn't give us both sides of the argument. On our walks along the broken concrete path, my wife and I also agree: It is a "woeful site." However, we also know that a long-term view of this treasured part of our county's coastline demands more than short-term (albeit aesthetic) remedies. Important, ecologically compelling facts including endangered species, daily tidal flow and natural (not imported) habitat are a few of the considerations that precipitated a Superior Court judge's decision to bring the city's project to a halt.
John E. Armer
The land under question is public property, and the city of L.A. should listen to and work with all interested citizens who have concerns that this dredging project will unnecessarily destroy marine life. We don't need another mess like the Ballona Lagoon "restoration," in which thousands of clams and other marine life were dredged up to die in the sun, while they "fixed" the lagoon.
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In the wake of the media blackout imposed last week by Angela Corey, the newly appointed special prosecutor investigating February's fatal shooting of black Florida teen Trayvon Martin, the media have had no choice but to cover the story surrounding the story. This would include the widespread public demonstrations, the evolution of the "hoodie" as a symbolic rallying point, and the emergence of protest T-shirts adorned with phrases like "I Am Trayvon" and "Justice for Trayvon," both of which Martin's mother is trying to have trademarked.
The short bursts of indignation haven't been limited to writing on shirts. Social media sites have been burbling with support for Martin, who was unarmed when he was killed by George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer who apparently saw him as a threat. On Facebook, where a "Justice for Trayvon Martin" page currently has more than 200,000 "likes," users have shown solidarity by posting photos of themselves in hoodies.
Meanwhile, some celebrity tweeters got in trouble when they used their 140 characters to broadcast Zimmerman's home address. As it turned out, film director Spike Lee got the address wrong, driving the parents of one (unrelated) William George Zimmerman out of their home. Roseanne Barr retweeted the correct address and phone number, later deleting it but adding that if Zimmerman wasn't arrested, she'd retweet again and "maybe even go 2 his house myself." This tidbit first appeared on the Smoking Gun and then spread across the Internet until it landed on enough news sites to pass for important information.
So this is what a media blackout looks like: gossip reframed as news, T-shirt slogans as portents of revolution, Twitter as public records database. In other words, a lot of wheels spinning.
But now that the Florida state attorney's office has finally stopped spinning its wheels and started investigating the case, it might be a good idea to give the tweeting and the T-shirts and the hoodie meme a rest.
Some of the reasons are too obvious to ignore. Protesting a vigilante act by making vigilante-like threats on Twitter is about as hypocritical as it gets. Other reasons are obvious but will inevitably be ignored anyway: Whenever there's a massive groundswell around a cause, particularly if it's been inflamed by the Internet and even more particularly if it touches on a sensitive issue like race, the shouting and sloganeering tend to drown out the facts (some of which are still murky in this case and some of which suggest that Zimmerman, while perhaps a reactionary, is not necessarily the racist many have made him out to be).
But perhaps the best reason for turning Trayvon-related animus down a notch or two — at least for the time being — is the prevention of the latest media-generated scourge: indignation fatigue.
We've been employing so much indignation lately, how can we be anything but exhausted? We're indignant at our political leaders, our justice system, our radio talk show hosts. Last month, a viral video about Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony made us indignant about human rights abuses in Africa until some of us changed our minds and became indignant about the motives of the Americans who made the video, one of whom apparently got so stressed that he was caught on video suffering a breakdown and running around naked in public. The indignation turned to shock and then amusement, and then everyone forgot about it.
In the days before current events were rebranded as "trending topics," public indignation arrived slower and stayed longer. It took the form of picketing and passing out fliers. It sometimes involved police barricades. It almost always involved showing up. Today, with dissent just a click away, indignation has a shelf life that's all but over when the next object of outrage comes along.
Those who are making the most noise — virtual and otherwise — about the tragedy of Martin's death are doing so because they fear, understandably, that a shoddy investigation and the ramifications of "stand your ground" laws threaten to compound that tragedy. But they have more to fear than that: the potential for all that noise to dull the senses and shorten the memory.
After all, "I am Trayvon" may get trademarked. But "I don't care anymore" is in the public domain.
Los Angeles Times
Meghan Daum is an essayist and novelist in Los Angeles.
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Preaching: Act of Spirituality or Arrogance?
- Tuesday, June 08, 2010
The act of preaching is either a spiritual act or an arrogant act. There is nothing in between for anyone who stands in the pulpit.
The act of preaching can be a spiritual act empowered by the Holy Spirit, done through a man taught by the Spirit who has pondered God's word until it has gripped him in such a way that he must speak for God's glory because the living Truth has become a raging fire in his bones.
Or the act of preaching can be an arrogant act empowered by the flesh, done by a man who has pandered God's word until his cleverness has gripped him in such a way that he speaks for his own glory because there are only the charred ashes of death in his bones.
Which is preaching for you? A spiritual act or an arrogant act? You must face this question and make this decision. Consider this definition of preaching and you will immediately know that preaching must be a spiritual act:
Preaching: The proclamation of God's inspired word for God's intended purpose through God's uniquely empowered herald to God's listening (or is it listless?) people.
The preacher stands as a herald for God, a spokesman with a message that men and women must have to know Him. His word is not a word of human wisdom, neither a collection of good ideas to be considered nor nice thoughts to be pondered, but God's truth to be obeyed. His proclamation is a word from God that brings its hearers into a relationship with Him and guides them into a deeper walk with Him. With all of this, his listeners know the preacher is a mortal, but they hope--and even trust--the preacher has been in God's presence in ways they may not have been. They hope--and trust--that the preacher is on some sort of speaking terms with God, that he has an intimate relationship with God, and he has pursued God with an energy they may not be able to muster. This means he has gotten a word from God for them. They hope, but rarely find, that their preacher is an intimate with God.
For us to preach out of anything less than intimacy with God is for us to be deceivers, charlatans, living liars proclaiming truth we aren't practicing, thus demonstrating ourselves to possess an incomprehensible arrogance. No man can stand in the pulpit in his own right or speak out of his own interests. Unless a man is thoroughly overwhelmed and humbled by the task of preaching, he has no right to preach.
However, there is much about preaching that lifts a man up and exalts him rather than God. Preaching is exciting and exhilarating. There's something electric about standing in front of a congregation waiting to hear the preacher, ready to hang on to every word he says. Unless we see preaching as supremely spiritual it will degenerate into a play for recognition and fame, an effort at self-promotion and self-exaltation. We cannot allow this to happen.
We must also turn from the banal (that which is common or stale, powerless, of no value; that which replaces the power of the cross with the flashiness of the flesh or the futility of the safe), from the shallowness of nice stories and the slickness of "that'll preach" catch phrases. Eugene Peterson is right when he warns us that we can exchange a call from God for an idol, "...an offer by the devil for work that can be measured and manipulated at the convenience of the worker" (Eugene H. Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant. Grand Rapids, MI: William D. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992, p. 5). To paraphrase Peterson; preaching must be blazing with the glory of God's convicting presence in and through the preacher. If we sacrifice preaching on the altar of programs and success, we will sacrifice the power of God for the idolatry of the banal. When we preach apart from intimacy with God we assume that God isn't serious about the very word we are proclaiming, that He won't hold us accountable for our hypocrisy. Yet no sin is more severely judged in Scripture than hypocrisy, as we see through Achan and Ananias and Sapphira. God is not casual about hypocrisy, and we can't be either.
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At issue is whether MTA should reopen the old South Ferry Station first, decommissioned in 2009 when it was replaced by a newer version, or concentrate on the new station, which would take longer and cost more. A third option is to work on both stations, though the cost of doing so would be much higher, and at present is not being seriously considered.
MTA Acting Executive Director Thomas Prendergast acknowledges that the agency's customers, particularly those traveling to and from Manhattan via the Staten Island Ferry, are still inconvenienced by the station's shutdown, due to severe flooding damage. "We can't have the impacts that people are experiencing today take many months," Prendergast said Tuesday.
The old South Ferry Station, terminus for the No. 1 line, provided a limited length, curved platform which allowed passenger entry and exit from only five cars, generating safety and crowd flow issues. The old station also did not link to the R line as the new station did, facilitating transfers.Both stations were inundated by flood waters overhwelming large portions of downtown Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy.
No time line has been given for either approach, Prendergast said.
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By Zheng Jinran
The level of happiness and life satisfaction for migrant workers, especially young migrants, are not directly correlated with the economic strength of the cities where they work, a new survey showed.
The four Chinese cities with the highest GDP - Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen - are among the bottom eight in a ranking of 20 cities in the country based on how migrant workers feel about their lives.
Migrant workers in Shenzhen were the least happy, according to the survey, released on Tuesday.
In contrast, Quanzhou, a port city in Fujian province, was first on the list despite ranking 25th in GDP among Chinese cities last year.
More than 2,473 migrant workers from 20 cities were polled by phone for the survey, which was jointly conducted by the Department of Psychology at Renmin University of China and gzhong.cn, a job portal for migrant workers.
About 30 percent of the migrant workers interviewed said that they feel isolated and rejected by the cities, but 46.2 percent indicated they will continue to work at their present location, while 23.3 percent responded that they would like to leave for another city.
In addition, more than 68 percent of the second generation of migrant workers, or those who are younger than 25 years old, felt they belong to the underclass in the cities, the survey said.Migrant workers in megacities always face greater competition, higher demands from their jobs and higher living costs, said Li Jiuxin, CEO of gzhong.cn.
Wang Zhitang, a 38-year-old migrant worker from Shanxi province, has been working as a gatekeeper at a university in Beijing since 1995.
But he plans to return to his hometown with his wife and son this year or the next.
"Compared with the high cost of living in Beijing, the 2,000 yuan ($317) I make each month is insufficient, but there's nothing I can do," he said.
Wang said he considered looking for a job in a factory in Beijing, but "the factories favor young workers who can learn faster".
"There is discrimination against migrant workers, even though they play an important role in cities," said Feng Tongqing, a labor professor at the China Institute of Industrial Relations.
For example, the difficulty in obtaining permanent residence permits in the cities denies migrant workers the same social benefits, such as education, as local residents.
Wu Daozhen, went to Quanzhou from Anhui province in 2006. He now works at a clothing factory in Nan'an, a city under Quanzhou's administration.
He said he generally feels happy about his work and life in the city, including the salary and housing provided by his employer.
Wu's biggest concern is about his son's education.
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A Wisconsin judge on Friday ruled as unconstitutional major portions of the controversial state law that restricted the collective bargaining rights of many public employees.
Dane County Circuit Judge Juan B. Colas found several aspects of the law contrary to both the state and U.S. constitutions.
A challenge to the law was brought against Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission by two labor unions representing education and municipal employees.
Passed and signed in March 2011, the law restricts the rights of public employee unions to bargain collectively.
It also closed a $137 million hole the state budget and required many public workers -- except police and firefighters -- to pay more for their retirement and health benefits.
The suit claims the law restricts employees' free speech, due process and association rights, and violates certain labor regulations. It also argued the Legislature did not have the authority to consider this law during the special legislative session in which it was passed.
Colas found that the law was not passed in violation of restrictions placed on special legislative sessions and did not violate the constitutional due process protection.
But it did violate the employees' association and speech rights, Colas ruled.
The law serves to "single out and encumber the rights of those employees who choose union membership and representation solely because of that association and therefore infringe upon the rights of free speech and association guaranteed by both the Wisconsin and United States Constitutions," Colas wrote.
He also found a portion of the law relating to retirement contributions exceeded the legislature's authority and was a "local affair." The Wisconsin Constitution grants broad authority over non-statewide issues to local governments.
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Mitt Romney tried to thread the needle in a speech on Friday to the Republican Hispanic National Assembly. On one hand, he wants to appeal to Hispanic voters, who are an increasingly critical part of the electorate. On the other hand, he wants to exploit his chief opponent’s record on illegal immigration, which is a sore point with the conservative base. So how did he do?
In reaching out to Hispanic voters, Romney made clear that he is a proponent of legal immigration, a point rarely made by GOP contenders in 2008:
I am a great proponent of legal immigration. Many of you are living proof of the unique strength of America that is constantly renewed by new Americans. The promise of America has brought some of the world’s best and brightest to our shores. It’s what brought Mel Martinez, the first Cuban American U.S. senator here. And it brought to America the parents of Marco Rubio, who is one of America’s great leaders today.
And while Romney’s own family doesn’t have an immigrant story to tell, he did stress the theme of upward mobility, which echoes the experience of those who come to America seeking better opportunities for themselves and their families:
I believe in that America. I know you believe in that America. It is an America of freedom and opportunity. A nation where innovation and hard work propel the most powerful economy in the world. A land that is secured by the greatest military the world has ever seen. . . .
My father never graduated from college. He apprenticed, as a lath and plaster carpenter, and he was darn good at it. He learned how to put a handful of nails in his mouth and spit them out, point forward. On their honeymoon, he and Mom drove across the country. Dad sold aluminum paint along the way, to pay for gas and hotels.
There were a lot reasons my father could have given up or set his sights lower. But Dad always believed in America; and in that America, a lath and plaster man could work his way up to running a little car company called American Motors and end up governor of a state where he had once sold aluminum paint.
For my Dad, America was the land of opportunity, where the circumstances of birth are no barrier to achieving one’s dreams. Small business and entrepreneurs were encouraged, and respected, and a good worker could almost always find a good job.
And for good measure he made an economic appeal.(“Hispanics have been hit terribly hard, with an unemployment rate that is higher than the national one”) and took a swipe at the Western Hemisphere’s dictators. (“We can’t lead the world by hoping our enemies — like the rogue regimes in Havana and Caracas — will hate us less.”)
But then, without mentioning Perry, Romney laid out the differences in their records:
I also believe that we must address illegal immigration in a way that is civil but resolute.
Our country must do a better job of securing its borders and as president, I will. That means completing construction of a high-tech fence and investing in adequate manpower and resources.
We must also get tough on employers who hire illegal immigrants. That means putting in place an employment verification system that is both reliable and secure.
Finally, we must stop providing the incentives that promote illegal immigration. As governor, I vetoed legislation that would have provided in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants, and I strengthened the authority our state troopers had to enforce existing immigration laws.
It’s not clear that immigration is still the lightning-rod issue for Republicans that is was in 2008 or that this will be sufficient to pry a significant chunk of the base away from Perry. Those for whom illegal immigration is a vital issue, I would suggest, are likely skeptical about Romney’s conservative bona fides on other issues.
That said, if the name of the game is to throw as many darts as possible at Perry and split up the core conservative base, this strategy may pay off in the primary. (Romney would be happy to see some staunch immigration opponents abandon Perry for Bachmann, thereby carving up votes of staunch conservative.)
But what about in the general election? There, it would seem that Perry’s approach is far more likely to appeal to Hispanic voters and help put together a winning coalition. John McCormack reported on Friday:
“There are places along the border that strategic fencing worked, particularly in the metropolitan areas,” Perry said. “The idea that we’re going to build a wall from El Paso to Brownsville doesn’t make sense ’cause the fact of the matter is you know, number one, you’d never get it built, and it’d cost billions of dollars . . . by the time you go from Tijuana to Brownsville.” Perry said that he does support putting “boots on the ground” and using “aviation assets” (i.e. aerial drones) to secure the border.
When asked about Texas’s law allowing in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants, Perry said: “I don’t believe these individuals should be punished for a decision their parents made through no fault of their own.” Perry explained that in-state tuition is allowed to any resident who has lived in Texas for three years, graduated from a Texas high school and is on a path to citizenship.
Asked if he’d support a similar law at the federal level known as the Dream Act, Perry said “absolutely not . . . it ought to be a state by state issue.”
Perry also has logic on his side regarding the Dream Act: Do we really think immigrants come across the border because if they have kids and those kids grow up in Texas they’ll get a break on college tuition? (The idea about leaving it to the states also gives conservatives the prospect that they can block these measures on a state-by-state basis.)
Perhaps Perry’s stance is a bridge too far for the base of the Republican Party. It may be that not only Romney, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) who can capitalize on this issue. But should Perry secure the nomination, there will be a significant opportunity for Republicans to reset their stance on illegal immigration. It took Richard Nixon to go to China; maybe it will take Rick Perry to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
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PM Manmohan Singh appoints nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar as national solar mission head
Kakodkar, former head of India's nuclear programme and currently a member of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), has been named chairman of the newly set up Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). The appointment figured in the speech of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Indian Science Congress in Bhubaneswar.
The new government company has been positioned as the executing arm of one of the largest renewable programmes in the world - the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. It will have authorised and initial paid up capital totalling Rs 2,600 crore, while implementation of the mission will involve several thousand crores of rupees over the next few years.
Renewable sources of energy are considered the main competitors to nuclear energy, and Kakodkar has always justified development of nuclear energy on the ground that renewables have only a marginal role to play in India's energy mix. In this sense, his appointment to head the solar mission is a clear case of "conflict of interest". Even after his retirement he continues to be a member of the highest policy making body of nuclear energy - the AEC.
Despite huge investments during the past half a century, nuclear power contributes just a fraction of India's energy needs. The total installed capacity of nuclear power in the country is 4,780 MW, while the total installed capacity of renewable sources of energy is 20,162 MW, according to data collected by the Central Electricity Authority.Ignoring this contribution of renewable sources of energy, Kakodkar has constantly projected nuclear energy as the "inevitable and indispensable option" that addresses both sustainability as well as climate change issues. His appointment as head of the solar mission is bound to upset anti-nuclear activists in the country who want the government to actively promote alternatives such as solar and wind while giving up investments in nuclear energy.
The new company, registered under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956, as a not-for-profit company, will work under the administrative control of the ministry of new and renewable energy. The ministry is now looking for a managing director-cum-CEO and other directors for the company.
Interestingly, one of the key qualifications for the post of MD is doctorate in a "renewable energy related subject" and some experience in renewable sources of energy. However, ministry officials feel that since the top man of the new corporation comes from a non-renewable energy background, it will set the precedence for other top appointments.
Kakodkar did not respond to emails regarding his appointment.
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Today is Friday, Feb. 15, the 46th day of 2013. There are 319 days left in the year.|
1863 — 150 years ago: Propositions for a convention of states to make an effort to restore peace and the union are before the legislatures of New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois.
1888 — 125 years ago: A leap-year dance and reception dedicated to Dan Cupid was held last night at the Harper House, Rock Island.
1913 — 100 years ago: The Commercial bowling league of Rock Island is being disbanded owing to the withdrawal of the Independent team. No other team can be formed.
1938 — 75 years ago: Three Canadian mothers are competing for the $500,000 left by an eccentric lawyer to the mother of the most children in a 10-year period.
1963 — 50 years ago: With Asian influenza epidemics reported throughout the country, Illinois residents who have not had flu immunization shots within the past six months were advised to obtain a booster injection.
1988 — 25 years ago: Manufacturer sales of farm equipment — including tractors and self-propelled combines — to retail dealers are continuing to improve according to the Farm and Industrial Equipment Institute.
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Bengal’s university bill draws flakDecember 24th, 2011 - 8:27 pm ICT by IANS
Kolkata, Dec 24 (IANS) West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress-led government has passed a university bill in its bid to free higher education from alleged political interference, but the legislation has raised apprehensions in some political circles about its real purpose.
The West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2011, was passed in the assembly Friday, with state Education Minister Bratya Basu advocating that it would bring more transparency in the appointments of vice chancellors and pro-vice chancellors of the state varsities and would provide a free hand to the academics in taking decisions.
But the opposition is unimpressed.
“It is an immature allegation that we had politicised education and this bill will free it from politics. It is nothing but a farce,” said Sudarshan Roy Choudhury, former state higher education minister and CPI-M leader.
“If they are ruling out students from bodies like courts and councils of the universities, then they should also ban students from entering universities. How will they stop political associations of principals and teachers?”
According to the bill, the vice chancellors (VC) would be appointed by a three-member search committee. The bill has empowered the chancellor or governor to remove the VC but has provided the vice chancellors the final say in teacher recruitment.
“The bill has been drawn up in haste just like other decisions taken by this government. There should have been more intense discussions on the bill. It has curbed the democratic rights of the students,” said Kshiti Goswami, state secretary of Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP).
The students, both at graduate and post-graduate levels, will be accommodated in the lower bodies like academic council but there will be no representation of students in the higher decision making bodies.
“Though theoretically the bill is good, technically there are lot of questions. It is a known fact that whoever becomes a VC or pro-VC gets close to the ruling party. Then how can you depoliticise education?” asked Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhuri, a political scientist.
- Kerala varsity not to contest Lokayukta ruling on jobs - Jan 09, 2012
- Age limit for vice chancellors in Haryana raised to 68 - Sep 07, 2010
- Six held for killing Kolkata varsity official - Jul 29, 2011
- Bengal students ragged on Facebook - Aug 03, 2011
- Government hopeful of passing important education bills - Apr 22, 2012
- Vacancies to be filled at Kolkata's Presidency University - May 26, 2011
- To protest or not to protest - Panjab University debates - May 04, 2011
- Indefinite shutdown of ICFAI University in Tripura - Jan 31, 2012
- Mamata's bid to de-politicise education (West Bengal Newsletter) - Nov 05, 2011
- Delay in Jammu varsity chief's appointment rocks assembly - Mar 11, 2011
- IGNOU signs pact with Chinese varsity - Oct 05, 2011
- Deoband chief offers to quit over Modi remarks row - Jan 26, 2011
- Two Bengal professors asked to explain 'anti-government comments' - Jun 08, 2012
- Oz to review strict student visa program following drastic drop in Indian enrolments - Dec 17, 2010
- Delhi University gets new Vice Chancellor - Oct 29, 2010
Tags: academic council, amendment bill, apprehensions, democratic rights, education minister, graduate levels, intense discussions, member search committee, political associations, political circles, political interference, revolutionary socialist party, ruli, state higher education, state secretary, sudarshan, teacher recruitment, trinamool congress, vice chancellors, west bengal
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Today's guest blogger, Meghan Biro, Founder of TalentCulture, calls me the most patient person on Twitter. One day earlier in 2009 when back home with my parents, I saw Meghan tweeting with someone in my network, checked out her intriguing profile, and had a short Twitter conversation with her. Not sure if it was then or later, but I asked (maybe begged) her to do a guest post for Brainzooming.
She said she would, and I began my patient waiting. I'd reach out about once a month to see if she was still considering it, and each time she said she was. That was good enough for me!
In the meantime, we've talked by phone, paving the way for another great business relationship initiated on Twitter. So without further delay, here's Meghan's take on creativity + innovation in business (it's well worth the wait!):
We are a generation raised to believe we are creative. Some of us actually are lucky enough to be employed as creatives; the rest of us, who received colored markers and sketchbooks in kindergarten, must look for ways to draw out the sparks of creativity we secretly nurture while working as accountants, engineers, administrators or in other career paths not known for rewarding creativity.
The dirty little secret many people live with is that creativity is not usually rewarded in the workaday world. So how can we nurture creativity in our work? What are the warning signs that someone we work with is trying to sabotage our creativity, and what can we do to counter resistance?
First, let’s look at some quick creativity-boosters.
- Take time for someone else. The conventional wisdom is to take time for yourself, but turn that around, reach out of yourself and set aside 15 minutes a day to think about someone else, and how they are creative. Contemplate the different point of view this person presents; talk to them and ask questions about what they like, not what they do.
- Try something really new. Listen to music you think you don’t like. Commit to buying a CD or checking out live music– don’t just download a song - and listen to the whole thing. Sample new sounds and accept the challenge of something you wouldn’t normally choose.
- Ask a question. Then commit to listening to the answer and allowing what the other person says to influence your thoughts. Too often we have the answer we want to hear formulated before we ask a question.
- Learn something new every day. Commit to learning – and using – a new word every day. Or read history instead of a novel. Teach yourself to dance. Try something new and expand your perceptions, physical coordination and mental agility.
All of these things can be done easily, and all can make you a more creative person.
But what if you work with someone who seems to suck the creativity out of every situation? You know the signs: this person interrupts others or pushes away from a conference table with crossed arms when they hear something they don't agree with. This person can kill creativity by walking into a room – if you let it happen.Here are a few ways to work with that person creatively and collaboratively:
- Look outside your context. Your experience of a person may be that he or she is not creative. Try to look at that person from his or her context – manager, colleague or employee – and open yourself to his or her experience of your comments.
- Use active listening. Listen to the person speak, restate what they said as a query, and add a comment of your own that brings in a new idea. Open up a closed mind by reassuring the person that you heard them - before you add your comments or ideas.
- Engage the person by taking the time to learn what he likes, and acknowledging that bit of humanity. Maybe this person reads a lot, or has a beloved dog, or loves to ski. These are cues to that person’s creativity, and acknowledging them gives you an emotional bargaining chip in your next attempt to infuse the workplace with creativity.
- Work incrementally. Someone who is uncomfortable with creative ideas may respond better to small changes than big, bold ideas. Keep your creative goal in mind but break it down into components and advance your position slowly. It’s worth the effort to see creativity bloom.
Dare to take every action with a spark of creativity and you’ll feed your soul and lift the mood of your workplace. What are your creativity-builders? - Meghan M. Biro
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Obscure federal agencies triggered a firestorm of conspiracy theories this week after they put out orders for thousands of rounds of deadly hollow-point bullets.
But the agencies, most recently the Social Security Administration, are trying to put a damper on the speculation -- noting the ammunition is "standard issue" and simply used for mandatory federal training sessions.
"Our special agents need to be armed and trained appropriately," said a message on the official blog for Social Security's inspector general office explaining the purchases.
The bullet purchases drew widespread attention as the website Infowars.com published several stories on them that were linked off the widely read Drudge Report and other sites. Infowars.com catalogued a string of recent purchases -- first by the Department of Homeland Security, then by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and then the Social Security Administration.
The Social Security Administration solicitation, posted Aug. 7, called for 174,000 rounds of ".357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow point pistol ammunition."
Infowars.com speculated that the purchases were being made in preparation for "civil unrest," imagining a scenario of economic collapse where seniors could cause "disorder" if denied their Social Security benefits.
But the Social Security Administration statement, posted Thursday, noted that their agents need firearms and ammo in the course of training, investigations and responding to threats against offices and employees.
"As we said in a recent post, our office has criminal investigators, or special agents, who are responsible for investigating violations of the laws that govern SSA's programs," the office said.
The agency said it has 295 special agents across 66 offices in the country. "These investigators have full law enforcement authority, including executing search warrants and making arrests," the statement said.
As for concern about the type of bullets -- hollow points, which expand upon impact -- the statement said the type is "standard issue" and is used during "mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, found itself scrambling to respond to a similar report this week about an order for 46,000 rounds of ammo. Though the agency initially indicated it was for the National Weather Service -- leading to questions about why the National Weather Service could possibly need so many bullets -- a spokesman clarified the bullets are actually meant for the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement. A "clerical error" resulted in the order saying the ammo was for the weather service.
Spokesman Scott Smullen said the error's been fixed in the bidding system. He, too, said the ammo is "standard issue" and will be used by 63 enforcement personnel at NOAA during qualifications and training sessions.
"NOAA officers and agents enforce the nation's ocean and fishing laws to ensure a level playing field for fishermen and to protect marine species like whales, dolphins and turtles," he said.
According to NOAA, the specialized agents are supposed to have 200 rounds in their "duty bag," and qualification and training requires another 500-600 rounds per agent.
I don't read infowars but apparently they were correct about these agencies purchasing this ammo, as to their accuracy concerning it's intended use I put nothing past our current government.
That said I still cannot stand reading Alex Jones material or listening to him.
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NPR talked to a couple of military men
on the effects of the surge and got varying opinions on the effectiveness.
Former Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and retired Col. Douglas Macgregor.
Though McCaffrey can be seen as a "believer" in the surge, he can also be seen to have said that --
... that a surge of 30,000 additional troops into a country of 30 million could never have enough of an impact alone to turn things around.
NPR also mentions the cease-fire and the CLC's. Of McCaffrey and the CLC's:
McCaffrey just got back from a five-day trip to Iraq where, he says, he "went to a couple of these CLCs, you know, five awkward-looking guys with their own AKs standing at a road junction with two magazines of ammunition — and they're there as early warning to protect their families in that village. I think that that's good."
We seem to be dispensing CLC money at a clip of $10 a day for some 70,000 former insurgents -- a quarter billion a year.
McCaffrey thinks the CLC's are gamble worth taking. MacGregor takes a different side.
It's a controversial strategy, and Macgregor warns that it's creating a parallel military force in Iraq that is made up almost entirely of Sunni Muslims.
"We need to understand that buying off your enemy is a good short-term solution to gain a respite from violence," he says, "but it's not a long-term solution to creating a legitimate political order inside a country that, quite frankly, is recovering from the worst sort of civil war."
That civil war has subsided, for now. It's diminished because of massive, internal migration, a movement of populations that has created de-facto ethnic cantons.
"Segregation works is effectively what the U.S. military is telling you," Macgregor says. "We have facilitated, whether on purpose or inadvertently, the division of the country. We are capitalizing on that now, and we are creating new militias out of Sunni insurgents. We're calling them concerned citizens and guardians. These people are not our friends, they do not like us, they do not want us in the country. Their goal is unchanged."
Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran and a former administration adviser, articulates a view that is privately shared by several former and current officers. It's not that they believe the plan isn't working. It's that they see it as a dangerous one with potentially destructive consequences.
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Sestanovich takes exception to how those uppity Russians view the size of their economy by claiming that "Russian economy has overtaken that of Italy, and will overtake France in 2009" and "Russia will become the world's fifth largest economy by 2020". He correctly points out that these estimates are based on the ruble to dollar conversion using PPP (purchasing power parity) method, rather than the market exchange rate. At least he's not denying the apparent correctness of the estimates. No, Sestanovich is more sophisticated -- he's denying the validity of the PPP method for making comparisons between national economies. In particular, he writes:
PPP inflates the size of poor economies in which food and the other basics of life are cheap. In the Russian case, black bread, vodka and run-down apartments pump up GDP.
Apparently, Sestanovich hasn't bothered to actually look up what goods might make up a basket of goods and services normally used to derive comparative price levels if he thinks that it would include something as specific as "black bread" or something that isn't used in GDP calculations at all, i.e. "run-down aparments". Only new housing is calculated in the GDP under investment (when expenditure method is used). Something tells me Sestanovich slept through his macroeconomics class, if he ever took one.
But even if he were right, he still managed to demonstrate his incompetence in another area. By relying on tried and true propagandistic cliches from the 1990s (which weren't necessarily true even then), he forgot to mention that "run-down aparments" in Moscow might look like this. Or that if we compare the prices of a well-known Russian vodka brand, such as Stolichnaya, with a well-known American vodka brand, such as Gordon's, we will inevitably conclude that PPP comparison paints a picture of the American economy that is far too rosy -- the US GDP is inflated by cheap vodka. And as for "black bread", doesn't Sestanovich realize that this ain't the 19th century anymore? The whiter the bread, the cheaper it is. Russians' favorite bread (as implied by Sestanovich, not by me) is actually quite expensive. Doesn't Sestanovich read the news anymore, did he miss the fact that Moscow is the most expensive city in the world, while St. Petersburg is quite a bargain in comparison, "only" in 12th place in the world? What other conclusion can we draw if not the fact that the PPP method deflates Russia's GDP due to overly expensive black bread, vodka, and aparments that are not so run-down? Ridiculous, you might say? There are many other variables that need to be taken into account, you might say? Don't blame me, I do this analysis within the framework that our new economic guru has set up. Blame the framework. Blame the guru.
The sad reality of the matter is that no reliable methodology exists for comparisons of the relative sizes of world's economies. Sestanovich even managed to make some good points about the problems of PPP -- such as the assumption of the same price on products that might be substantially different (e.g. due to quality issues). One might also point out the limited scope of the basket used, or the effect from welfare policies that might subsidize certain goods and services, or non-tradeable goods and services for which no global equilibrium price can exist. All of these can distort the comparison, sometimes significantly. But Sestanovich's logical fallacy stems from the fact that by demonstrating the problems with PPP calculations, he smoothly transitions to a claim that the market exchange rate calculations are what needs to be used, ignoring the tiny fact that whatever problems there may be with PPP calculations, they pale in comparison with the can worms that market exchange rate calculations open.
True, Sestanovich does mention that "which system of measurement is 'right' depends on what you want to know", as well as makes a couple of other disclaimers. But these disclaimers are hardly credible due the simple fact that he started out by claiming that "PPP inflates the size of poor economies". The terminology used makes it abundantly clear which method Sestanovich considers to be "the one true method", and which one merely "inflates" (i.e. distorts) the alleged "real" picture.
So what is the problem with exchange rate methodology? The basic problem is that it calculates anything but GDP. GDP's purpose is to measure the amount of goods and services produced in the economy. By necessity, due to extreme variety of goods and services normally produced, this is expressed in terms of currency. In the market, exchange rates have nothing to do with the amount of goods and services produced, but everything to do with numerous other factors such as supply and demand of a certain currency, relative openness of the economy (stimulates demand), manipulation by central banks (affects supply), perceived political risks, etc. If the currency of country A tanks because hot money investors from country B rush for the exits due to their domestic liquidity problems, does it mean that country A now produces less VCRs or rice? No, its economy keeps chugging along, and even the quality and the price of its domestic products is unaffected. Yet, by exchange rate calculations in terms of the currency of country B, it would appear that the GDP has shrunk. The obvious conclusion is: Do not ever use the currency of country B to describe the GDP of country A. Or if you do, at least convert using the purchasing power parity between country A and country B, in order to eliminate unrelated factors such as a spike in supply of country A's currency while it is being dumped by country B's fearful investors.
The problems posed by central banks are even more significant. This, incidentally, relates to the paranoia toward PPP exhibited by so many Americans as exemplified by Sestanovich. If one looks at the GDP by PPP country ranking, one will soon find an unpleasant (for the Americans) reality: that reality is called China. If current trends persist, the world's #1 economy within the next five years or so will be China. The US will be #2. And since so many Americans suffer from the "we're #1" complex, this simple fact scares them. Hence this wide following that Sestanovich's article generated, which was completely unforeseen by me. Fear can be a powerful driver for the chattering masses, capable of mobilizing them into all sorts of unseemly statistical manipulations. Specifically with China, its Central Bank, and Sestanovich's claims, we run into a fundamental contradiction. According to Sestanovich and his followers, China's GDP is significantly "inflated" by PPP conversion. But at the same time the US government insists that China deliberately manipulates the exchange rate in order to keep the RMB weak compared to the USD, and thus its enterprises are able to outcompete US manufacturers on cost. In effect, while the sufferers from the "we're #1" complex keep trying to convince themselves that China is tiny, the US government is trying to convince China that it is much bigger than it pretends to be (since its GDP will "magically" expand as soon as its currency is revalued). Well, you can't have it both ways: either PPP rate is where the exchange rate should be, in which case you can keep pressing China to allow its currency to revalue, or market exchange rate is "the one true measure", in which case stop pestering China about the alleged "unfairness" of the exchange rate.
Russia's Central Bank manipulates RUR exchange rate to a significant extent as well, as is apparent from the growth in foreign currency reserves and the corresponding expansion of the money supply (i.e. CBR buys up dollars that enter the country to prevent revaluation of the ruble). For that reason, there is a significant (but shrinking due to market pressure) difference between the market and PPP value of RUR. How does this affect the size of Russia's economy, the amount of goods and services produced, expressed in fixed rubles or PPP dollars? That's right, it doesn't, at least not directly. Russia's GDP growth helps illustrate it. If calculated in current dollars, it turns out that between 1999 and 2006 Russia's GDP grew from USD 195.9 bln to USD 984.9 bln, or almost 26% annual growth rate. If calculated in PPP dollars, it increased from USD 923.7 bln to USD 1,739.0 bln for the same period, or 9.5% annual growth rate. Which of these numbers is more credible? And which one more closely matches the real GDP growth rates reported by Russia's own statistical service, once USD inflation is factored out? Obviously, it is PPP.
Even more ridiculous is Sestanovich's assertion that
Measured in conventional terms, Russia, far from overtaking France in two years, is actually less than half its size -- $1.22 trillion vs. $2.52 trillion. At current growth rates, their GDPs will not be equal for 17 years.
That's some bizarre math, but let's try to work through it anyway. Sestanovich's data for current GDP comes from IMF estimates for 2007 (estimates, not real data). IMF estimates real GDP growth for Russia to be 7.0% and France -- 1.9%. So if we take IMF estimates at face value and project them into the future, we will find out that Russia will surpass France in 2022, 15 years from now, rather than Sestanovich's 17.
But Sestanovich's problem is even greater than his inability to multiply numbers correctly. Remember, the source data used are estimates, not real numbers. I don't know about France, but Russia's GDP growth for 2007 is expected to come significantly higher than 7.0% -- somewhere around 7.4% expected by the Economy Ministry, which habitually underestimates to be on the safe side (for example, they started 2007 expecting only 6.4% growth, and in the end revised it to 7.4% -- first real estimate from Rosstat will be available only somewhere in April 2008, and judging by the Economy Ministry's previous predictive record, it should be higher than 7.4%). Another factor is that the dollar collapsed even further against the ruble after the IMF made their estimate; thus, these two factors will likely bring Russia's exchange rate GDP to USD 1.34 trillion in 2007 (my rough estimate). If we plug in these new numbers, this further brings down the expected "catch-up time" to 12 years. For what possible reason Sestanovich would use 2007 estimates rather than real data from 2006 remains a mystery. Maybe he can't tell them apart?
But in the end none of these gross errors are important. Sestanovich's biggest misunderstanding of the numbers he operates with is the fact that he uses real growth rates which, as we have established, more closely correlate with PPP numbers, to project GDP that was calculated using market exchange rates. And, as we found out, Russia's "growth" in 1999-2006 came out to 26%, rather than 7.4%, if market exchange rates are used. If we plug that number in, we'll find out that Russia will catch up with France in 2010, which is 3 years from now. Of course, France's number will need to be recalculated as well, but such an exercise was pointless to begin with. The simple fact that got lost on Sestanovich is that real GDP growth figures cannot be used with market exchange rate GDP without assuming that USD to RUR exchange rate will remain constant. But we cannot make that assumption because RUR has been appreciating even in nominal terms (before factoring out inflation) against the USD for a number of years now, and will continue to appreciate for the foreseeable future. Its appreciation in real terms has been even greater, and outpaced that of the EUR.
Consequently, Sestanovich's own projection is not only based on mathematical errors and basic misunderstanding of the source data, but is also utterly incompetent methodologically.
But Sestanovich really begins to shine when it comes to manipulation of numbers, where numbers themselves are not in dispute. For starters, trying to demonstrate just how "unimportant" Russia is to Europe, he quoted another genius: "Russia's exports to the EU are, apart from energy, 'about the same as those of Morocco or Argentina'". That's all great, but why would you subtract energy from Russia's exports? Energy exports make up the bulk of Russia's exports precisely because Russia has a comparative advantage in energy production. If Russia did not have a comparative advantage in energy, then Russia's exports would be similar to those of any other East European country, except bigger. Otherwise, specialization occurs. This effect is described in any introductory macroecon text, which Sestanovich apparently hasn't gotten around to reading. Somebody get this man a textbook!
Moreover, do energy exports make Russia more important or less important? Imagine the situation where US exports, such as software or Hollywood movies, disappeared from the world market. What calamity would follow? Something tells me that the world would hardly blink. Now, imagine that Russian oil disappears from the market. What's going to be the consequent price of oil? $200/barrel? $400/barrel? I don't know, but I do now that with the current tight supply, it will shoot into the stratosphere. Next time you fill up your tank, you might want to consider the relative importance of Russia's trade with the rest of the world in between the sobs about your rapidly emptying pockets. Not to mention the effect oil prices will have on every other product on the market.
Sestanovich goes on to play with more numbers: "Just consider per-capita GDP growth in Russia, France and Italy. Under Mr. Putin, Russian per-capita income -- even in PPP terms -- has gone from somewhat less than a third of the level of France and Italy to somewhat more than a third." Translated from propagandese into normal human language, it means that Russia's GDP per capita increased from 26% of France's level at the time Putin took office, to 41% last year. If I were into propaganda, I'd say that it increased "from a quarter to almost half". Fortunately, I prefer real numbers. Does it mean that Russia remains "Europe's poor relation"? Sure, except it's Western Europe's. Russia, along with the whole of Eastern Europe, and most of the world too, is Western Europe's "poor relation". I wouldn't say it's a major discovery. But the level of 40% does not make for such a poor relation anymore. If you add the current dynamics to the mix, and project it into the future, as Sestanovich has so poorly attempted to do, the picture that emerges might be disconcerting for some.
This is precisely why Sestanovich and his followers now have a favorite new mantra: "Russia [China] is poor, Russia [China] is unimportant, let's pretend that Russia [China] will always remain this way." Well, they do sound convincing. Unfortunately, only to themselves.
P.S. On an unrelated note, it wouldn't hurt Sestanovich to brush up on his Soviet history as well. I know that the subject is considered optional in Kremlinological circles (as well as any other subject that might be described as a "science"), but still, claiming that there was some mysterious "Red Army" during the Cold War doesn't look good when coming from a supposed expert on Russian affairs. Hint: use Wikipedia to look up in what year the Red Army was renamed into the Soviet Army.
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It's funny. A few chapters ago i thought the pic of the hanging zetsus (especially the spiraling one) suggested that obito spent time in them as if the were like cacoons and grew the hashirama matter into him. Doesn't look so anymore. I still say it's 50/50 if zetsu matter was used to constitute obito's new body parts. Zetsu matter has an ingredient that makes it more than hashirama matter by itself. Whatever the case, his hashirama parts broke on impact. Perhaps it was incorrect to say obito had half hashirama body but really is half zetsu. It's confusing, can obito use zetsu's chakra mimic ability that hashirama was never mentioned to have used or does obito only have hashirama abilities and lack the zetsu ones. I like your explanations, zero, it's just not all adding up yet. Zetsu is a compound of things beyond just hashirama cellular base but obito displays overwhelming powerful use of mokuton at a young age, something zetsu seems incapable of doing.
I think i make things more confusing because i did not precisely ask the important question, what is different between zetsu physically and obito's hashirama body? I think there is a difference but i think most of you don't.
Here is a different question, if the gedou mazou was destroyed, would the zetsus die?
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Why the Sequester Is Your Friend
Lee is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
For those investors focused on the big picture I thought I would share a few thoughts on the current situation. I previously discussed some of the worrying structural trends in the US economy in an article linked here, and in this article I want to discuss why so many commentators are getting it completely wrong.
What Went Wrong With the Free Market?
The problem with free market thinking is that it is most visibly and vehemently promulgated by those who are the biggest absolute winners in it: the expensively suited Wall Street professional, the corporate ‘fat cat’ and the propertied wealthy who have done so much better than the rest of the US over the last 20-30 years. Of course such caricatures of America were tolerated and even admired by the rest of the country as long as the economy prospered and blue collar America could participate in the dream of having a better standard of living than its parents.
The rest listened to the wealthy and their exhortations over how the modern democratic capitalist state was a new meritocratic utopia where everyone had opportunity. And although they never fully believed the wealthy, they accepted it was better than living under communism and they were grateful for their chance.
I emphasize meritocracy because it has the wonderful byproduct of obviating the necessity for any form of collective responsibility: a convenient state of affairs for the uber wealthy and a large part of the reason why the wealthy genuinely don’t want to pay more taxes.
Of course the principle of meritocracy went completely out of the window in 2008 and along with it went the free market ideology so beloved by Wall St. The idiotic, reckless and in some cases corrupt bankers were rewarded with a collectivist scheme of redistribution. They were bailed out and saved by racking up public debts in the name of saving the system. If the meritocratic free market really had its way than the senior bankers would be senior burger flippers by now. As John N. Gray put it to me when discussing the issue ‘unfairness is the price you pay.’ Indeed.
What We Learnt and What We Should Learn
Of course what we learnt from all of this is that, as George Soros always said, there is nothing inherently stable or self rectifying about free markets. And if he is right then there is no pure meritocracy or free market in the real world. I suspect the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements share the same disaffection with how the recession was dealt with. I suspect they both want to get back to the American dream of opportunity through self effort.
Putting all these things together it is easy for a free market enthusiast to retreat into his shell. It is easy to give up. It is easy to forget that social mobility occurs better in freer economies. And it is also easy to forget, in my opinion, that the corporate sector has far more checks and balances in it than the public sector does. My argument is not to defend free markets just because it is a doctrine argued by the very same people who made a mockery of it with the bailouts, but rather to point out why and where it does work.
What Corporations Do and Government Don’t Seem Able To
Allow me to flesh out this point by comparing how the corporate sector functions (when it is not interfered with by bailouts) as opposed to the Government.
Let’s go back to 2001 and recall that the recession then was largely caused by over investment or rather misallocated capital. Corporations spent too much and generated over capacity, particularly in the technology sector. Now look at how the corporate sector has adjusted to this ever since.
From 2001 onwards they diligently built up assets over liabilities and they didn’t rack up debt in order to do it. Even now the net worth of corporations is surely at an all time high while the debt/net worth ratio was lower than in the 90’s for the last ten years save for recession-affected 2009.
The non-financial corporate sector is good at adjusting to market discipline. In fact the problem now may be that corporations are too reluctant to spend. All of which means that Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), ADP (NASDAQ: ADP), and Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) have a higher credit rating than the US Government. I suspect Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) would do too if it had the need to issue credit!
I’ve included GE and McDonald’s by way of comparison. Apple isn't included because it has no debt.
What the Government Can Learn From These Companies
While I appreciate that these companies are AAA rated partly because they have little debt in relation to assets, I also think there are some key lessons to be learned here. Starting with JNJ, it has had production issues over the last few years and has stagnated to GDP type growth in that period. No matter, because it has sound finances it is able to manage these disruptions without being forced to make sudden cutbacks and forced sales in the way that, say, Dell or HP will likely have to do. JNJ will not be undergoing a sequester!
Turning to Apple, this is an example of an innovative company that needs to take product risk on board. So being fiscally conservative isn't just about consolidating to mediocrity, on the contrary it lays the groundwork for risk and innovation--another thing for the politicians to consider. Sound finances lay the groundwork for growth and risk taking. Similarly it is fair to say that MSFT is in a mature industry which is somewhat challenged by new devices utilizing different operating systems (think Android etc), but it is in position to invest in new growth areas because it has a strong balance sheet.
The next two examples ADP and XOM are cyclical companies whose balance sheet provides them with insulation from tough times. XOM has substantive oil reserves whose evaluation will fluctuate with long term projections of the oil price. It is subject to uncertainty, and if oil prices fall it will need the flexibility to invest in finding more reserves. As for ADP its prospects are tied to the employment/payroll market. Now contrast these two companies with governments that have to expand spending in a recession. You simply cannot do this unless you have sound finances.
What Is the US Government Doing?
So while corporations are adjusting to realities, here is what the US Government (and it is not alone) is doing.
These are the hard numbers. This is the truth. And with every recession the situation is getting worse, and so is the debt.
It is not enough for Wall St to drone on about a meritocracy while they merrily save themselves from market forces and despise higher taxes and, it is not enough for Main St to carry on pretending that the fiscal trend is sustainable.
Something has to give here, and public spending as a share of GDP must be reduced in order that the US never gets itself in this situation again. Simply put, the Government is not good at managing finances because its members are not subject enough to an efficient form of accountability. And so, I repeat the same question. If a recession comes in the next few years--and I do not have a black swan warning system--then how will the US pay for it?
It strikes me that the Sequester is not the enemy of the US, it's part of the hope. Racking up debt for future generations is surely not an option anymore.
SaintGermain has a position in Johnson & Johnson. The Motley Fool recommends Apple, Automatic Data Processing, and Johnson & Johnson. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Is this post wrong? Click here. Think you can do better? Join us and write your own!
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Are Male Baby Boomers Doomed To Become Lonely Seniors?
Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.
It’s not just the young in the Occupy Movement who fear for their futures. Many older people, who are marching with them, dread retirement, even if they hate their jobs. They fear social isolation, the loss of friends they enjoyed at work and the freedom of too much unstructured time. The good news is that women are already preparing for what is often called the "third chapter” of their lives. What’s sad is that men of the same age, for a variety of reasons, are largely unprepared and less likely to participate in activities that offer stimulation and friendship.
So what is the first generation of women, who spent much of their lives working outside the home, doing that somehow eludes men?
They are re-creating opportunities to explore their lives and finding ways to resurrect the world of women’s groups that gave them the confidence to reinvent their lives decades ago.
Consider women’s book groups, which are hardly new. Even in the late-19th century, women’s book groups gave “ladies” a way to discuss social and political issues of the day. Oprah Winfrey popularized the current book club movement and they are proliferating with astonishing speed. Cafes host them; book stores sponsor them, friends create them; and the novels and nonfiction they read often conclude with a section of questions designed for groups, accompanied by an interview with the author. As Victoria Skurnick, a literary agent and former editor of the Book of the Month Club says, “There are some books that soar in popularity because so many book groups fall in love with them. Books have always sold well or badly on the presence or absence of word of mouth, and book groups take that fact and multiply it by six or eight or ten.”
Most members are women and no one knows how many women meet monthly to discuss books. Whatever they read—religious texts, fiction or nonfiction—the groups provide an opportunity to discuss how the themes relate to their lives or what they think about the world around them. Lubricated with some wine and food, it is both a social and intellectual event that fosters friendships.
It’s not that older men don’t read; they just tend to do it in isolation. The same is true about the tendency to avoid signing up for classes meant for educated adults. On many campuses, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute -- or something like it -- offers serious courses on everything from the Art of Bali to the New Arab Revolts. But the majority of the people who enroll are women. (It is the few men, however, who ask most of the questions and offer their comments.)
Some of these retired women have even resurrected a new kind of women’s movement for women over 50. In the late '90s, Charlotte Frank and Christine Millen began conversations about their future with 10 friends in a New York City living room. Eventually, this group created a new national movement for women called the Transition Network (TNN).
Today, TNN has chapters in 12 cities in the U.S. and attracts professional women who like its edgy rejection of themselves as “little old ladies." They sponsor small peer groups that meet in members’ homes, echoing the consciousness raising groups of the late 1960s and '70s. These are members who take feminism for granted. They’ve worked most of their lives, “and now, in the wake of widowhood, a lost job, or retirement, are seeking to reinvent their lives.” TNN also offers specialty groups for women who want to travel, see and discuss theater and films, socialize over exotic lunches, or become caregivers for other women in need.”
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Jorge Molano, who serves as the lawyer representing victims of massacres such as the 2005 Peace Community massacre, works tirelessly to end the impunity of human rights abuses by the Colombian army. He has had to take his children out of the country due to fears for their safety, and in recent days he and his partner have been the subject of vigilance by suspicious characters. FOR is concerned for the safety of Molano and his family, as well as for the implications that such threats have for the important work Molano does to end impunity in Colombia. Please take action by writing to Colombian officials urging them to protect Jorge and his family! Letter writing instructions here
ATTEMPT ON THE LIFE AND PERSONAL INTEGRITY OF YENIFER RUEDA CARDENAS IN COMUNA 13 OF MEDELLÍN
We wish to express our concern and indignation at the acts against the integrity and the life of our friend YENIFER RUEDA CARDENAS, which took place on May 3, 2009 in the district of El Salado in Comuna 13 in Medellín.
Tens of thousands of Colombians marched on March 6 in Bogota and many other cities to stand with the victims of right-wing paramilitary violence and to protest violence by all armed groups. Solidarity events occurred in New York, Washington, and San Francisco.
Now, in the wake of accusations by a presidential advisor that the activists in Colombia who helped organize these peaceful marches are guerrillas, they are being targeted with paramilitary threats, kidnappings, and even killings.
Lethal attacks on Colombian labor activists also continue. On March 4 in Washington, President Bush called on Congress to approve the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, although Colombia is the most dangerous nation in the world to be a trade unionist. As if in response, in the four days following his statement, four labor leaders in Colombia were murdered.
February 11, 2008
Dear Colombia Advocates:
Three young adults named Hortensia, Manuel and William were out one night celebrating Three King's day in the department of Cauca, in southwestern Colombia. After hanging out in a neighboring town, they were on their way home at 3am in the morning, traveling by motorcycle. For unknown reasons (whether on purpose or by accident) the military shot at them and killed Hortensia and Manuel, making the motorcycle crash and break William's leg. William managed to crawl back down to the community and let them know what had happened.
On January 29th, 2008 the Berkeley City Council passed a resolution calling for an end to military funding of the Colombian Army as part of the “drug war,†and re-direction of money to domestic drug treatment efforts.
The city government urged Congresswoman Barbara Lee to “step up her leadership to terminate all military assistance to the Colombian Army, and to re-direct these funds†to “substance abuse prevention, harm reduction, and treatment programs.â€
The city’s Peace & Justice Commission submitted the resolution, and supporters include the local treatment center Options Recovery, the peace group Fellowship of Reconciliation, and local Colombian activists.
Your Calls Needed
Call your representative today! Ask them to support House Resolution 618, which brings attention to the situation of Afro-Colombians and calls on the U.S. to actively consult with these communities.
Three out of every four Afro-Colombians live in extreme poverty. Only two percent are able to attend college. Their life expectancy is two decades shorter than non-blacks in Colombia. An estimated 1.5 million Afro-Colombians have been internally displaced by political violence. Meanwhile, aerial spraying is destroying many of the food crops traditionally grown by Afro-Colombians, leading to further displacement and insecurity.
Paramilitary gunmen killed Dairo Torres, a leader of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community, on Friday, July 13, shortly after 12 noon, according to the community. Torres was a passenger on one of the jeeps that serve as the only public transport between the city of Apartadó and San José, when it was intercepted by two paramilitaries - the same men who detained the jeep the previous day and made threats against the Peace Community. The community said that gunmen told Torres to get off the jeep, which he did; they told the driver to continue, and then they killed Torres on the spot.
The killing occurred only two minutes from a police checkpoint, where earlier in the day witnesses saw the gunmen sitting and conversing with police.
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Is your organization one of the thousands that miss the mark when writing fundraising materials?
A recent study by Frank C. Dickerson, Ph.D. found that the written materials of most nonprofit organizations focus more on transferring information than creating interpersonal involvement. His research found that the majority of online and printed materials written by nonprofit organizations are overly formal, cold, detached and abstract rather than conversational, warm, connected and concrete.
Based on research on more than 1.5 million words of online and printed fundraising texts from America’s largest charities and interviews with leading fundraising practitioners, Dickerson concluded that while we all think we can write well, the materials we produce for donors are usually not that good. Dickerson posits that one of the reasons for this is that many of us are conditioned by our education to write “for a professor who is no longer there” while what we need to be doing is writing for the audience that is there: donors.
If your writing tends to be more like an academic argument than a true-life story aimed at touching the heart, it’s time to break out of your old habits and put the heart and soul of your work back into every word you write.
In Messaging from the Right Side of the Brain: How to convey the heart and soul of your work and inspire a passionate following (view and listen to the presentation here), Katya Andresen and Mark Rovner walk through four exercises designed to break us out of the analytical mindset that strips the emotion out of our writing and help us infuse everything from web content to fundraising appeals with the passion and commitment we have for our work.
Katya explains the exercises on her blog this way:
- First, imagine you’re in an art museum gazing at a picture that captures the heart of your work. Mission statements and statistics don’t count! Those go on the placard next to the picture that tells you the boring details about the art. What we find is nonprofits don’t fill the frame with a picture that moves donors - they just focus on the placard. Fill your empty frame. What do you see? What faces, what scenes, what expressions? This is what you want to convey in your messaging.
- Second, fill that frame with a hero that demonstrates the best of your work. Who is that person? What are they doing?
- Third, try to distill that visual vocabulary into a phrase that is your brand mantra. Nonprofits offered some good ones on the call. My favorite:
Bringing hope home (for an organization helping fill the homes of people in great need with furniture - and bringing them training and opportunity).
- Last, in less than six words, tell the whole story of your organization. My favorites were:
- I woke up to puppy breath. You? (for an animal adoption agency)
- You were. They are. You can. (private boarding school)
Try these out! Share what they evoke. And then try to push your fundraising toward this kind of right-brain thinking!
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Field of Practice - Family and Juvenile Law
Students in the family and juvenile law practice section represent by court appointment, children, absent defendants, and interdicts in interdiction cases. The student practitioners also represent indigent persons in custody, divorce, child support, spousal support, paternity, adoption, Katrina related custody, and juvenile proceedings. In juvenile court, students are appointed to represent mothers and fathers in “Child In Need Of Care” (CINC) and children in voluntary transfer of custody cases. In civil court, students are appointed to represent children in custody and paternity cases. Students interview clients, conduct fact investigation, discovery, and legal research, prepare and file pleadings in court, develop a theory of their case, and prepare memorandums. The students make court appearances and participate in settlement conferences with opposing attorneys. Most students make several court appearances to argue their cases at hearings and trials in Orleans and Jefferson Parish Courts.
Recent cases include:
- A custody case involving a parent with Munchausen by proxy syndrome and an international kidnapping.
- A Post-Katrina relocation case where the father has not seen his son in three years.
- A Post-Katrina custody case where a 911 dispatcher regained custody of her baby who she did not see for over six months. Loyola Law Clinic students first interviewed the mother at the Greater Houston Disaster Relief Center while the Law School was exiled in Houston after Hurricane Katrina.
- Louisiana’s first contestation case where a mother established that her former husband and legal father is not the father of the child and that her present husband is the father.
- A child custody case with allegations of sexual abuse. Loyola Law Clinic students conducted interviews and home studies with the child, parents and other relatives, reviewed records, wrote legal memoranda, and represented the minor child at trial.
- A highly contested divorce case on the issue of reconciliation and payment of a Post Katrina Small Business Administration (SBA) loan.
- A paternity case where the father attempted to rescind his acknowledgments of his children after he married the mother.
- An inter-family adoption case where Loyola Law Clinic students successfully represented the mother and prevented the adoption by the step-mother.
- A grandparent visitation case where Loyola Law Clinic students successfully gained visitation with the grandchildren.
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FCC bids to curb 'bill shock and mystery fees'
'Wireless subs, we've got your back'
On Thursday, the US Federal Communications Commission will detail a set of proposed rules that will require wireless carriers to notify users when their monthly voice and data plans are nearing their limit.
"Consumers must know that the FCC's got their back," Commission chairman Julius Genachowski said in a Wednesday speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC.
In addition to the rules designed to prevent unanticipated overages — what Genachowski referred to as "bill shock" — the FCC also plans to tackle "mystery fees" such as those that Verizon recently agreed to refund to the tune of $30m to $90m, and to require "clear and simple disclosure" of early termination fees.
"Bill shock occurs when consumers see their bills jump unexpectedly by tens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars from one month to the next," Genachowski told his audience. "Common cases are when a subscriber is charged for unknowingly exceeding his or her allotments for voice, text or data, or gets hit with roaming charges that are unexpected."
The FCC chairman gave three examples of bill-shock cases that had been brought to his attention:
- One woman received a $30,000 bill when visiting her sister after the earthquake in Haiti, although her wireless provider had said that those affected by the disaster would receive a "courtesy plan."
- A man who testified at the Center for American Progress event was hit by a $18,000 bill after his free data downloads expired without warning.
- A tech exec was socked with $2,000 in extra data charges while overseas, despite buying an "international plan" — an amount the exec said was more than 15 times what he expected to pay.
Genachowski also noted that an FCC survey had determined that 30 million US wireless customers had experienced some degree of bill shock. That's one in six mobile subscribers, according to the FCC boss.
The protections that the FCC will seek simply require service providers to send their customers text or voice alerts when they're approaching their plan limits, or when they're about to incur roaming charges.
"Most people don't know what a megabyte is," Genachowski said. "But they do understand when they get an alert telling them they're about to go over their limit and incur additional fees." These safeguards, he noted, are common in other countries.
Citing the well-known video of one unfortunate iPhone owner and her 300-page AT&T bill, Genachowski also spoke out against mystery fees. "In an era where 300-page bills are within the realm of possibility," he said, "it's hard to keep track of everything you're being charged and too easy to find yourself paying more than you had planned on.
"At the FCC, we've received a growing number of reports of 'mystery fees' popping up on bills that subscribers weren't aware of and that, in a number of cases, were unauthorized."
In Genachowski's opinion, consumers deserve "straight bills and straight answers when they question them." He announced that the FCC would hold a public forum on mystery fees, saying: "I look forward to hearing from consumers and consumer groups, industry representatives, and technology experts."
One of those industry representatives has already weighed in on the FCC's ideas — and, as you might assume, he's not happy about them. Christopher Guttman-McCabe, VP of the wireless trade group CTIA told the Associated Press that he was concerned about "prescriptive and costly rules that limit the creative offerings and competitive nature of the industry."
Guttman-McCabe just missed the trifecta. Although he mentioned two key buzzwords — "creative" and "competitive" — he forgot the most potent incantation of this US election season: "jobs".
Fear not: that magic word will undoubtedly be intoned ad nauseam by wireless reps at the FCC's upcoming hearings. ®
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With its release, LibreOffice 3.4.1 is now the recommended build for all users except large enterprises, thanks to the bug fixes and improved stability that provide the focus of the release.
LibreOffice is an off-shoot of the OpenOffice project, development of which has stalled since many developers switched across to LibreOffice when it was launched in September, 2010.
At the present time, there are two versions of LibreOffice available: an older 3.3.3 build for enterprise users, plus the recently released 3.4.1 build for all other users. Enterprise users are asked to hold off deploying a 3.4.x build until version 3.4.2 is released at the end of the month.
LibreOffice 3.4.1 is purely a maintenance release, with no new features. However, users who are switching to the 3.4.x build from version 3.3.x, will find a number of a new features that were introduced in version 3.4, which are detailed at the LibreOffice website. These include improved compatibility with Excel spreadsheets in Calc, renamed Data Pilot component (now called PivotTable) and improved HTML export options in Impress and Draw applications.
LibreOffice 3.4.1 is a free and open-source download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
This article originally appeared at softwarecrew.co.uk
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George Tobias14th Jul 1901 — 27th Feb 1980 (Aged: 78) · New York City, New York, U.S
George Tobias (July 14, 1901 – February 27, 1980) was an American character actor.
Born to a Jewish family in New York, he began his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. He then spent several years in theater groups before moving on to Broadway and, eventually, Hollywood. In 1939, Tobias signed with Warner Brothers, where he played in supporting roles, many times along with James Cagney, in such movies as Cagney's Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) as well as with Gary Cooper in Sergeant York (1941). Tobias later achieved fame in the 1960s by playing long-suffering neighbor Abner Kravitz on the TV sitcom Bewitc... Read more
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Dec 13 2012 By Alan ayes
SCHOOL pupils taking their key stage two tests this year stayed ahead of the national trend, but the gap has narrowed.
Figures released by the Department for Education and Skills today (Thursday) show that 80 per cent of borough youngsters achieved level four in both English and maths in their SATS tests this year, up from 77 per cent last year.
But the gap to the rest of the country has narrowed to just one per cent in Hillingdon's favour, as opposed to three per cent in 2011.
Hillingdon is still just above the national average point score for the exams, which assess the progress of pupils at age 11.
Two results which stood out were at Guru Nanak Sikh Primary School in Springfield Road, Hayes, and Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School in Herlwyn Avenue, Ruislip, which both got 100 per cent of pupils to achieve a level four in both English and maths.
* See the Gazette next week for more on the SATS.
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Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, therefore, Schwarzkopf's commander, said the general's leadership during the war inspired the nation.
" 'Stormin' Norman' led the coalition forces to victory, ejecting the Iraqi Army from Kuwait and restoring the rightful government," Powell said in a statement. "His leadership not only inspired his troops, but also inspired the nation. He was a good friend of mine, a close buddy. I will miss him."
Schwarzkopf, a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran, ushered in a new era for the U.S. military, whose exploits were broadcast live around the clock.
After the war, he was featured in his desert fatigues on the cover of nearly every major American magazine, and he joined thousands of troops for a welcome-home ticker tape parade in New York City.
England's Queen Elizabeth II made him an honorary knight, and he received a standing ovation from Congress upon his return to the United States.
Former President George H.W. Bush, who is hospitalized, said the general "epitomized the 'duty, service, country' creed that has defended our freedom and seen this great nation through our most trying international crises."
"More than that, he was a good and decent man -- and a dear friend," Bush said in a statement released by his office.
While Schwarzkopf's leadership was heralded, critics raised questions about the decision to quickly end the ground war in Iraq and leave Hussein in power.
Schwarzkopf was heavily criticized in the Thomas E. Ricks book "The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today" for allowing Iraq to use helicopters in no-fly zones established after the war. Iraq used the helicopters to put down a Shiite uprising that had been openly encouraged by the United States.
Schwarzkopf told CNN's Larry King in a September 1992 interview that the preferred plan with Iraq was to avoid ever having to invade.
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Layton • When theatergoers arrived for a production of "Titanic: The Musical" at Layton High School several years ago, they were handed boarding passes with the name of a passenger on the doomed voyage. At the end of the play, they found out if their traveler lived or died.
"It was really quite a somber moment and people left thinking about what happened there," theater teacher and artistic director Dennis Ferrin said. "That was gratifying to me."
Musical whodunitThis month, Layton High School is presenting “Curtains,” a mystery set in 1959 Boston at the Colonial Theater, where “Robbin’ Hood of the Old West” is being staged. The talent-free leading lady keels over dead, and the cast and crew are stuck at the theater while police try to solve the crime.
Performances will be held at 7 p.m. on March 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15 and 16 in the Layton High auditorium, 440 Wasatch Drive. Ticket prices are $8 for adults, $7 for senior and $6 for children and students.
For more information, call the box office at 801-402-4888.
For 36 years, Ferrin’s creativity and teaching skills have inspired thousands of young performers and helped make the Layton High School theater program a hit. Now, he’s ready for his next act.
Ferrin, who turns 66 this month and lives in Centerville with his wife, will retire from teaching at the end of the school year but his theater career will still be going strong. He will continue to direct and design sets for Utah theater groups, including the CenterPoint Legacy Theatre in Centerville and Ogden’s Terrace Plaza Playhouse and The Ziegfeld Theater.
Auditions for "Curtains," a main stage musical, were held last spring to select the nearly 100 students who will be a part of the production and three-times-a-week rehearsals began at the beginning of October.
His students say Ferrin knows how to bring out their individual talents. At a recent rehearsal of "Curtains," he complimented the young actors on their performances and made suggestions on how to do even better.
"I feel like he really connects with the students," said 16-year-old Nathan Kremin, who plays the composer of the show-within-the-show.
Bryce Richards, 16, who plays a police lieutenant and hopes to be on Broadway one day, said Ferrin is "awesome." Melanie Wright, 18, an aspiring opera singer, called him the greatest theater teacher she’s had.
"I’ve been in seven shows, and all of them have been this amazing experience," said Wright, whose character takes over the leading lady role.
Ferrin, a native of Salt Lake City, earned an undergraduate degree at Utah State University and a master of fine arts in musical theater direction from Brigham Young University. He acted in high school and college but realized his real love was directing and designing sets.
He worked at junior highs in the Granite andDavisschool districts for five years before landing in 1976 at Layton High, where he has taught speech, acting, set design, production, film history and other theater arts classes. He spent a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England, under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Layton High theater department puts on four main shows a year — the school play, a musical revue, a main stage musical and a spring musical. Except for a handful of times when a shortened version of the main stage musical was performed in a smaller production, Ferrin has not produced the same show twice.
Throughout the years, he’s put on a mix of old standards and newer shows including "Carousel," "State Fair," "Beauty and the Beast," "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and "Les Misérables."
"I try to give them different experiences," Ferrin said.
He works with Musical Theater International (MTI) to get the rights to plays, which generally cost $6,000, a price that’s based on the 1,685 seats in Layton High’s theater. About 1,200 people typically attend a main stage musical performance.
"We’re able to sell enough tickets to pay all the costs and have a nice cushion for next year," Ferrin said.
Regina Klitgaard, part of the 200-strong adult volunteer group that supports theater operations, said Ferrin enjoys a "highly influential" relationship with MTI.
"Consequently, he was always given the first opportunity to purchase the just-released licensing rights for shows such as ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Aida,’ ‘Drowsy Chaperone,’ ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ and many others," Klitgaard said. "As a result, Layton High’s musical theater was cutting-edge and the first Utah location at which these productions were ever seen outside of Broadway."
Some of his students have gone on to musical or theatrical careers. Ferrin said about 15 of them are living in New York City and making a living in the field, while a few are directors in Baltimore and one student has been accepted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Two of Ferrin’s five children are involved in theater: Son Shelby Ferrin directs plays at Utah theaters and daughter Emily Checketts — who was a psychology teacher at Layton High for five years until she left recently to be a stay-at-home mom — has done choreography for her father for years and is the stage manager for "Curtains."Checketts, who will be choreographing "Camelot" at the school, also will direct "Aida" at the Terrace Plaza Playhouse this summer, while Ferrin will do the sets for that show.
A current student also wants to follow in Ferrin’s footsteps. Makall Chatwin, 18, who plays the star’s understudy in "Curtains," said her dream is to perform on Broadway but she also has another goal in mind.Next Page >
Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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NEW DEHLI – It has its own factories and over-crowded dorms: 12,124 people live in this small town, a stone’s throw from New Delhi.
Behind a tall pink wall, century-old trees guard over plain looking prison buildings. Murderers, bandits, terrorists, rapists and traffickers have turned this place into a goldmine for anthropological criminology students.
Its name alone is enough to send shivers down the spine: Tihar Prison is the largest jail in Asia and holds twice as many prisoners as it was built for. But, for the past two years, prison authorities have launched unique initiatives: “Hate crimes not criminals” reads a sign painted on one of its walls. “The concept of prison has changed: we correct the inmates. We do not punish them,” says Girish Pandev, general intendant of prison block 2. “We believe that they can become good people.” In India, where torture is still commonly used in gloomy jails, it is a revolution.
"We are confined between walls / Our souls fly away / Our dreams are real," sing rock-band The Flying Souls in a brightly-lit room. The band is composed of Arnam, Chandra, Bhagirat, Sunni, Vikamjit, Sandeep and Amit, all inmates already sentenced or waiting for trial. “Before playing music, I was depressed and obsessed with my trial,” says guitarist Sunni. “I’m at peace now.” Their instruments come from donations. Tihar Jail has recently become fashionable and New Delhi’s most popular artists now flock to work with the inmates. Local rock band Menwhopause recently helped the band shape its new “fusion” identity, combining Panjabi rab and Bollywood melodies. “Our songs talk about culpability, pain and romance,” says young singer Sandeep Singh, convicted for kidnapping. “Being locked up makes realize how much you are loved.”
Meditation, cricket, movies
Tihar Jail was inaugurated in 1958 and is an over-crowded prison run under the outdated “Prison Act” of 1894. It holds double its capacity of 6250 as 73,5 percent of its inmates are waiting for their trial. Some end up spending years in the prison before being found innocent at trial. Out of India’s 370,000 inmates, the poorest ones end up here, the ones who can’t afford good lawyers, bribes and bail.
Tahir Jail started changing when Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman high-ranking police official, took over the prison’s administration in 1993. She looked for ways to ease tensions within the jail. She successfully introduced Vipassana meditation for guards and inmates. “Prison conditions started evolving,” explains Girish Pandey, including security issues, following a string of high-profile escapes.
Today, Tihar Jail has its own cricket teams, movie screenings and libraries. Women inmates can now live with their children who attend the prison’s daycare. Illiteracy has dropped thanks to education programs and inmates can receive computer and English trainings. The prison factory currently employs 1120 prisoners. “When fights break out, it is always in dorms. They never take place at the factory” says factory manager Pradeep Sharma. “TJ” is a prosperous brand with sales reaching four million euros. It makes clothing, school benches, shoes, recycled paper, spices, mustard oil, rugs and biscuits, which are mostly bought by the government. Entrepreneurs are invited to recruit within the prison’s doors.
Birdhouses and bonsai gardens
The inmates have turned Tihar Jail into a small museum of oddities. It features huge model boats, birdhouses in the trees. A former businessman even built his own bonsai tree garden. “I got the idea from my mother who loves to grow bonsai trees” he smiles. “I would like to do the same thing with orchids.” He prefers to remain unnamed yet it is difficult not to recognize the perpetuator of one of India’s most famous incidents. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of model Jessica Lal in 1999.
The prison used to be famous for its schemes, but “Tihar Jail now wants to set a good example," says spokesperson Sunil Gupta. It is very likely that dubious practices still exist in the jail, especially regarding influential inmates who enjoy special treatments. But times have changed and so have inmates. “Big corrupted inmates” are replacing the “big criminals.” They are nicknamed “VIP inmates” and include the likes of Andimuthu Raja, a former Minister accused of using his post to sell off valuable mobile telephone spectrum licenses or Suresh Kalmadi, jailed for corruption in the Commonwealth Games. They enjoy special treatment and stay in single cells. “For security issues” explains Sunil Gupta. They don’t interact much with the other inmates but they are free to work, paint, meditate, play music and do gardening as much as they want.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.worldcrunch.com/page-18/culture-society/wind-of-change-hits-asia-039-s-largest-jail/anditmuthu-raja-india-jail-le-temps-menwhopause-new-dehli-prison-suresh-kalmadi-the-flying-souls-tihar-jail/c3s9316/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.96787 | 1,099 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Obama's presidency is not a year old but whatever he does in the remainder of his presidency the passage of his healthcare bill** may be regarded as his biggest achievement. The absence of healthcare cover for many Americans is regularly cited by anti-Americans as a sign of an uncaring society. The great upside of Obama's bill is the fact that thirty-one million uninsured Americans will have access to healthcare. The great downside is the cost. Some estimates say that the plan will cost up to a trillion dollars.
The bill has the passionate support of most Democrats although hardliners are disappointed at the scrapping of, for example, 'the public option' (a state-run healthcare service component) in order for the bill to win the support of moderate Democrats. Most Americans oppose the healthcare bill, however. Partly because average family insurance policies will increase in cost from $13,100 to $15,200. The Republicans hope to make big gains in next November's Congressional elections on the back of the cost of Obama's legislative boldness.
** Technically the bill has only passed the Senate. Negotiations now begin with the House of Representatives to draft a bill that satisfies both halves of Congress. Agreement is widely expected as the House had already passed a more radical bill.
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<urn:uuid:2bcbf9dd-6cf5-44aa-a1d0-f530ffdb79b0>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://americaintheworld.typepad.com/home/american_society/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.969211 | 257 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The temptations of a Moitessier, the sailor who refused completion of "the course," who took the race for a finish and turned it into a celebration of process; who steered away from the pre-determined destination that would be crowded with an expectant public ready to devour, and measure, and mark his experience like their very own Lindbergh. Moitessier abandoned all that, and much more, and chose instead his own way through the "oblivion" of the ocean and globe. That was 1968. No wonder the tiny street-theater "revolutions" by the students in some cities, no wonder the race-raging violence in others, when the choices seemed so murderously and stupidly dull and deadly on the (one) land, so fantastic, so absurd, so ego-driven on those alternate waters. Few can set sail, become Ishmael still aloft atop the mast of the devoured ship.
A century before, a French worker named Claude Genoux crossed the Atlantic. He left Marseilles and found the world. Not the romantic dream of oblivion, but the hard lines of global trade; the earth's matrix of markets and possibilities. Genoux sees enough, sees poetically enough, to know that there is no escape from the markets and no dimming of the dream of flight. The wander is all, and all is equivalent within it. As Ranciere describes his odyssey in Short Voyages:
"What he found was the boredom, the suffering and joy, the labour without poetry and the pleasures without refinement that the happenstance and wanderings of proletarian existences always come back to and always seek to escape. At the end of these adventures marked by equivalences -- a law of poetry, tourism, and commodities -- he has recognized the foundation of the universal equivalence: enclosure within the circle of the brutal efforts and pleasures of voiceless labour. A proletarian's hell that he seeks to flee all the way to the end of the world, where he finds it again exemplified int he figure of the free sailor on the high seas and the adventurous whale hunter. . . .
If he writes, he does so to pass from one condition to another, from someone who loads the paper to someone who lays out the pages, even someone who writes them. And he will not stop writing. Just as he refused to die in a bed in the hospice for aged workmen. Forty years after his return from the South Seas, once again a bootblack by trade, he will take off for a walk in the forest of Fountainbleau. Which is where, a few days later, his body will be found."
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<urn:uuid:9e167eb7-9066-4f4d-806c-b18939ec9108>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://cloisters-postscript.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.959808 | 548 | 1.835938 | 2 |
In 1734 Handel and his manager Heidegger lost the lease on the King’s Theatre in London, ending that rich period in British opera known as the Royal Academy of Music. Handel’s rivals took over the theatre, and most of his star artists. When John Rich offered Handel the use of his new theatre at Covent Garden twice a week, the stakes were very high.
Handel answered his rivals with a magnificent season in 1735-6, including two revivals, a pastiche opera with hit arias from earlier successes, and two wonderful new operas: Ariodante and Alcina, as well as three oratorios. This achievement compares to peaks he had reached a decade earlier at the King’s Theatre, with Giulio Cesare, Rodelinda and Tamerlano; arguably these two seasons were the most remarkable ever created in Britain. Alcina was a particular success, sustaining 18 performances in that season.
Though inspired by a story from Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, Handel’s libretto (based on the text of an opera produced in Rome a few years earlier) is a very free adaptation. The sorceress Alcina, who shares centre stage with her mortal lover Ruggiero, is a deeply drawn character, taking the simple story in new directions. Her splendid arias, a reward to the faithful soprano Anna Strada del Po, surprise and enthral the listener just as she enslaves her lovers. Beside her, the ardent lover and errant husband Ruggiero, written for Carestini, a leading castrato (who also created the role of Ariodante), can at first seem passive; indeed, the singer famously sent back to Handel one deceptively simple aria, the nostalgic ‘Verdi prati’, but Handel ordered him to sing it as written. His role is full of elegant, subtle touches and psychological complexities, crowned by the brilliance of his Act 3 aria with horns, ‘Sta nell’Ircana.’
The other characters are not stinted wonderful music: even the bass Gustavus Waltz, who seems to have doubled as Handel’s cook, gets a spacious, stirring aria. Alcina’s sister Morgana (first played by Cecilia Young) has a terrific expression of joy at the end of Act 1, the celebrated show-stopper ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’, as well as a pair of heartfelt arias with violin and cello obbligato; her rejected suitor Oronte, originally sung by the young British tenor John Beard, has three light arias of great charm, utterly distinct in style. The fascinating part of the rejected wife Bradamante has distinctive music, too, low lying and solid but with brilliant coloratura display.
Like Teseo, Alcina has at its heart an enchantress who loves a mortal and who, rejected, exacts lonely, futile revenge. Alcina is one of Handel’s most wonderful creations: truly seductive, she invokes in every listener to pity and terror. Her love for Ruggiero is devouring, at least until his long-lost wife reappears. The battle for the heart and soul of Ruggiero is fought between sensuality and duty, between the taste of the present and the insistent sound of memory. No other opera is such an attractive – and clinical – examination of love and illusion.
These notes and the photo were kindly contributed by English Touring Opera for their 2009 production of Alcina.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.bachtrack.com/about/alcina-hwv-34
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.963235 | 768 | 1.695313 | 2 |
We found a swell 21 second video on YouTube but imbedding is disabled so click this link to watch it. It comes with our wishes for a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
This image reminded us just how much potential an ordinary paper bag has to be a creepy, potent impromptu Halloween costume. And it affords one of the primal pleasures of a good costume: wearing a mask to become…someone else…and view the world through a strange and anonymous lens…
Over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, we found a how-to for a swell group Halloween costume: a traveling exhibition of modern art… Here, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock are represented because…
“… the best choices are iconic artists whose distinctive styles may be recognizable even in third-rate attempts (like ours) to mimic their styles.”
The only tweak we’d make to the concept is to wear some sort of face mask, which is much of the pleasure of Halloween: being anonymous…or someone/something other than yourself.
They suggest other alternatives to making a copy of a painting on a piece of canvas. Our favorite: “Have everyone dress up with a blank canvas and carry colored ink squirt guns.”
COLORED INK SQUIRT GUNS?!!!
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has a trove of Halloween d-i-y costume, decor, and fun, including bat wings made from broken umbrellas…
The best part of Maria Popova’s Brainpickings blog is, for us, the glimpses she gives us into new books. With extensive pictures and well-selected quotes, she immediately and completely draws you in to the world of the book she’s featuring. This picture from the book Nomad by Jeroen Toirkens particularly spoke to us, as it reveals the life of people who must always be prepared to be on the move. A teepee with solar-panels and satellite dish in Mongolia somehow resonates with our obsession with portable rooms (both inside and out), and reminds us the many other ways of living that are going on right at this moment… read more…
(Video link here.)…yeah, people are AWESOME.
(Video link.) We’re excited for Steven Johnson’s new book, The Innovator’s Cookbook: Essentials for Inventing What Is Next. It looks like he has called upon an all-star cast of innovators and researchers to discuss what makes for successful innovation. In the video, he gives away some important parts of the recipe: We like being instructed to “lose our bearings” in order to be open to new ideas. But we really love his story about music producer Brian Eno forcing band members to switch instruments in the studio to keep their music fresh and encourage new sounds. …And the practice of starting brainstorming sessions with a “show-and-tell” of recently discovered ideas – even seemingly unrelated ones.
The tenets of innovation presented here sound very similar to Joshua Foer’s rules for becoming an expert. It seems that experience and research both show that forcing yourself out of your comfort zone and taking risks is integral to building new skills and finding success in new projects. So it’s not all just a hunch of ours!
Johnson is also the man behind Where Good Ideas Come From, which we find ourselves returning to often (perfect bathroom reading: you can open it anywhere.)
Related posts: steven johnson on cultivating good ideas (daily)
‘where good ideas come from’
tool for improvising: defer judgment
making it up as you go along (seth godin + jackson pollock)
brian eno on ‘structuring ideas’ in improvising
(Video link here.) We’ve posted before about artist Theo Jansen’s remarkable Strandbeests, creatures made entirely from PVC pipe that move on their own using wind-power. Watching them scurry across the beach like enormous prehistoric insects never ceases to delight us.
Jansen, who has been working on his beasts for over 20 years, has often referred to their genetic code and ability to reproduce. His ultimate goal is enabling them to live on their own on the beaches of Holland. As he shows in this charmingly awkward Ted talk, his creatures are indeed evolving. The Strandbeests, made entirely of ordinary materials, now have what Jansen calls “a simple brain.” read more…
Apparently this dramatic bathtub was made out of a “giant pebble-shaped granite piece brought back from Bali and sculpted”…The pipes fixtures are cleverly hidden in the wooden chest that sits next to it and the Baroque chandelier doubles as a shower head.
Hmmmm…we’re serious fans of baths and wonderful bathtubs. Could this one possibly be a pleasure to hang out in? How does that rolled lip support your neck and head so you can lie around and lounge without getting a crick? Could you even sit and lean comfortably? We’re suspicious; our bad design radar is up. (Bad design for us is design that seems like a good idea or looks cool, but it’s reality is the opposite.)
What do you think?
via French by Design
As much as we love the vertical shipping pallet garden we wrote about in May, it’s flaw is that if you needed to move it off your balcony, you might be in some trouble. Enter the milk crate farm! When the bad economy stalled construction at New York City’s Alexandria Center for Life Science, Chef Sisha Ortuzar and business partner Jeffrey Zurofsky had a brilliant idea: use the stalled site as a farm. There they grow fresh veggies to use at Riverpark, the restaurant next door.
We’ve always loved the Butterfly Chair made by the great Johnny Swing. He welded 1,500 half dollar coins at 7,000 points. It makes us want to pick up a welding torch…(we actually googled “how to weld“…)
Check out more Swing brilliance (made out of all sorts of coins) here. His story is quite something, too. We found a great article about him at Art Works Magazine:
“… he puts these ordinary things together in more interesting ways. It’s repurposing at its best. He says he likes to ‘take a worthless thing and make it beautiful.’ In discarded baby food jars, he sees chairs or chandeliers. A wheelbarrow is easily fashioned into a table. Nickels compose a couch. Dollar bills become the fabric for a teddy bear or a pillow.”
He’s been at it since he was a kid…
Leo Babauta has gained a big following on his blog Zen Habits, where he posts daily about simplifying your life to what you REALLY want to be doing. We often find useful practices we truly can apply to our lives. The other day, we read all the way through his lengthy post How I Changed My Life, In Four Lines. The catchy headline got us as did the compelling first lines:
Changing your life can seem an incredibly tough and complicated thing, especially if you’ve failed a great number of times (like I did), found it too hard, and resigned yourself to not changing.
But I found a way to change.
It’s worth reading Babauta’s examples, which go from how he started running and eating healthier and getting out of debt, to how he gave up goals because he figured out that you can change your life with or without goals, IF you follow 4 principles: read more…
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<urn:uuid:cbe6b815-082d-4c52-8a8b-9e435832f144>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.improvisedlife.com/2011/10/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.948534 | 1,620 | 1.820313 | 2 |
James Joyce's Ulysses is notoriously difficult and lurks unread on many a bookshelf. But Radio 4 is about to take the effort out of wrestling with the modernist classic with plans to air what it claims is the novel's first full-length dramatisation in Britain.
The network is to air its five-and-a-half-hour adaptation of the novel in seven chunks over one day on 16 June, known by Joyce aficionados as Bloomsday after the protagonist and because it is the date on which the book is set.
Featuring a cast of 24, the dramatisation is part of a celebration marking 90 years since the novel was published in 1922.
Radio 4's commissioning editor of drama, Jeremy Howe, promises that the adaptation will "not be Ulysses lite" – though he admits that no drama could possibly cram in the book's 265,000 words. In 1982 the whole book was broadcast by the Irish radio station RTE, but this lasted 29 hours and 45 minutes. In the same year, an obscure musical version written by Anthony Burgess called Blooms of Dublin was broadcast by Radio 3.
Howe said the book represented a work of literature that many Radio 4 listeners would want to have read but probably had not found the time. "But they will want to hear it as it is written," he said.
The sexually explicit sections of the book, including Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy, will air in the late evening. "Fortunately the sex comes late in the book, so it will be broadcast late at night," said Howe.
Set on 16 June 1904, the day Joyce had his first date with his future, much loved wife, Nora Barnacle, it focuses on two men, Leopold Bloom, an advertising agent, and Stephen Dedalus, often seen as Joyce's alter ego, who will be played by Henry Goodman and Andrew Scott respectively. Stephen Rea will narrate, while Niamh Cusack voices Molly Bloom.
As part of the celebration, Goodman, in character, will also cook a "Bloom breakfast" of devilled kidneys live in the Today studio. Sections of the day will be anchored by journalist Mark Lawson, who will journey around the main Dublin landmarks from the book as well as hosting a late-night discussion with academics and writers.
Radio 4's controller, Gywneth Williams, said she "expected a large postbag" from listeners about the decision to hand over much of the day to Joyce but hoped that most of them would be positive. "Listeners are up for quite a lot on Radio 4 as long as they feel it's in the grain of what's right for Radio 4," she said. "They are more tolerant of changes than they are given credit for."
Describing Ulysses as a "life-enhancing, ebullient thing full of glory", Williams said it had a "tremendously contemporary resonance focusing on the private and the ordinary".
She added that the commission was part of a drive to bring Radio 4's dramas and cultural coverage to greater public attention. The network, which regularly attracts around 1m listeners with its afternoon drama slot, says that about as many people listen in to Radio 4's afternoon drama each day as pay for tickets to the National Theatre's three venues in a year.
One anxiety for all at Radio 4 is the unreliable Irish weather, as Lawson will be broadcasting live. "Ulysses is set on a sunny day, but I bet it rains," said Howe.
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<urn:uuid:d528eaf7-ef51-4f5b-ad09-813f39478808>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/31/radio-4-ulysses
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.981284 | 728 | 1.625 | 2 |
I have been reading and grading "reflective essay" papers from my Senior Project class. I was moved by this wonderful passage written by a student who just joined us this fall:
My art holds a very special place close and dear to my heart. Without it, I would not be the person I am. Without it, I would be as I was in the past, a lost mind roaming this distant world. A fiend snared in the corruption of my city, as many are. With it, I have a chance to make it, to break the cycle, to be one of the first young men to make it in my family, breaking the chains holding us back.
It's stuff like this that keeps us teachers going!
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<urn:uuid:2240bec3-8428-4272-b6d8-ad5638738025>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://rjart.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.982107 | 150 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Resistance to thyroid hormone: clinical, biochemical and genetic features of Mediterranean population
A. Amor1, J. Oriola1, C. Quirós1, R. Alfayate7, V. Borrás3, A. Escribano4, C. González6, A. Gutiérrez4, M. Mauri7, P. Pérez5, A. Picó7, I. Vourliotaki2 & I. Halperin1
Introduction: Resistance to thyroid hormones (RTH) is a genetic disorder caused in 85% of cases by mutations in thyroid hormone receptor beta gene (TRβ). The current information about it in Spanish population is scarce, limited to case reports or short series of patients. Thus, we aimed to describe the clinical, biochemical and genetic features of Mediterranean patients with RTH referred to our institution (one of the referral centres in Spain) for genetic testing during the last 15 years.
Material and methods: One hundred and sixty-six blood samples of Mediterranean patients (164 Spanish and 2 Greek patients) were received for RTH genetic testing between January 1997 and December 2011. Genetic testing was performed by PCR amplification followed by sequencing of exons 7, 8, 9 and 10. Clinical and biochemical features were obtained from available information sent by referring hospitals.
Results: In all, mutations were identified in 49 patients (28 probands and 21 relatives). 64.6% were women, and mean age at diagnosis among probands was 33.2±20.5 years. The following clinical features were recorded: goitre in 50%, hyperkinetic behaviour in 32%, and tachycardia in 29%. Up to 19% of the probands had suffered some type of ablative therapy (radioiodine or thyroidectomy) before diagnosis. As for biochemical features, mean TSH was 10.2±21.5 mUI/l (NV 0.44 mUI/l), and mean fT4 was 2.75±0.9 ng/dl (NV 0.82 ng/dl). We found seven new mutations not previously described: p.Ile276del, p.Arg320Ser, p.Phe451Leu, p.Pro452Arg, p.Leu456fsx9, p.Glu457Gly and p.Phe459Leu. The most frequent mutation in our population was p.Arg243Gln, present in three families. Surprisingly, none of our patients harboured the mutation p.Arg338Trp, which is the most common in the published series.
Conclusions: Clinical and biochemical features of our sample of Mediterranean population with RTH are similar to those previously described in the medical literature. However, genetic findings differ, with the identification of seven new mutations in TRβ gene.
Declaration of interest: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest that could be perceived as prejudicing the impartiality of the research project.
Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sector.
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<urn:uuid:03b779bc-ae77-4ca8-b3fa-ec2570cf4cf9>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.endocrine-abstracts.org/ea/0029/ea0029p1667.htm
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.939007 | 643 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Wolfowitz Says Iraqis Now Have Chance to Change History
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WURZBURG, Germany, Jan. 31, 2004 For at least 20 years, the Middle East has been "heading down the wrong road," and now the Iraqi people have the chance to change the course of history, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said here.
Wolfowitz, visiting the headquarters of the 1st Infantry Division, which is deploying to Iraq in February, said the Middle East is at an important turning point. He said the U.S. job is to aid the Iraqi people as they make the transition from 35 years of "sadists and torturers" under Saddam Hussein's rule to a representative government.
The threat still exists, he added. "Saddam didn't kill a million people all by himself," Wolfowitz said. "Some of those people are still around."
Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, 1st Infantry Division commander, said the division has a big job ahead of it. "On one hand, we will be killing and capturing terrorists and foreign fighters," he said. "Simultaneously, we've got our work cut out with respect to stability and support operations to set the condition for Iraqi civil-military self-reliance."
Wolfowitz also defended the intelligence community during a short interview with reporters traveling with him. "You have to make decisions based on the intelligence you have, not on the intelligence you can discover later," he said. He was discussing former Iraqi Survey Team leader David Kay's statement that he doubts the coalition will find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Kay also said Saddam's Iraq was in violation of a number of United Nations Security Council resolutions, Wolfowitz reminded reporters.
"It's very important to have the best intelligence you possibly can have," Wolfowitz said. "I think our intelligence community has done some extraordinary work," he added, citing work that led to Libya's decision to abandon its weapons-of-mass-destruction program and the discovery that North Korea was violating of the 1994 Framework Agreement as specific examples.
Wolfowitz said it is important to understand "where you got it right and where you got it wrong. But we could not possibly accomplish what we do in the world without the magnificent work of our intelligence community."
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<urn:uuid:0e7aabd6-e26c-4b35-afcd-b1ce10b66ac4>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=27406
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.975002 | 476 | 1.765625 | 2 |
What is the purpose of this service?
The Homeless Prevention Program provides rental assistance, utility assistance and supportive services directly related to the prevention of homelessness to eligible individuals and families who are in danger of eviction, foreclosure or homelessness or are currently homeless. The program is designed to stabilize individuals and families in their existing homes, shorten the amount of time that individuals and families stay in shelters and assist individuals and families with securing affordable housing.
Who can receive these services?
Persons who may be eligible include households that are in immediate danger of eviction, foreclosure or homelessness or are currently homeless. The household must document a temporary economic crisis beyond its control and must be able to demonstrate an ability to meet the prospective rental/utility obligations after the assistance has been granted based on current or anticipated income.
Over 14,000 households were served in FY2007, the majority of households were families.
What services are provided?
Homeless prevention services are provided through Illinois Homeless Services Continua of Care. This is a network of local governments, community organizations and non-profit agencies that are geographically linked together to cover the service needs of the entire state.
- Payment of rent arrears to prevent eviction (3 months maximum).
- Payment of a rent or security deposit (2 months maximum).
- Payment of utility bills and arrearage.
- Supportive services to prevent homelessness or repeated episodes of homelessness, include:
- Housing Location/Inspection
- Job Preparation/Employment Services
- Case Management
How can I get services?
Contact a Homeless Prevention Provider from the list.
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<urn:uuid:348ec226-335b-4363-b3b6-bdbd568a99a4>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?item=30360
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.94925 | 324 | 1.601563 | 2 |
By Jonathan Wilson
The Virginia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments this morning in a long running property dispute between the Episcopal Church and a local district of the Anglican Church of North America.
The case centers on a split in the Episcopal Church that happened after the first openly gay bishops were elected.
In 2006 -- nine conservative churches in Virginia severed their ties with the Episcopal church, but wanted to maintain control of their church buildings and property.
The Episcopal church and the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia sued to seize control of the properties.
In 2009, the Fairfax County Circuit Court ruled that the local churches had to right to disaffiliate and keep properties they had bought and maintained.
The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia says that church property is held in trust for future generations of Episcopalians.
Virginia's attorney general Ken Cuccinelli will face former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe in November to become Virginia's 72nd governor.
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<urn:uuid:a286af91-159d-4ca9-87bd-f685852484e7>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://wamu.org/news/10/04/13/va_supreme_court_to_hear_arguments_in_church_property_case
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
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en
| 0.965339 | 189 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Nah, "The Sun rises in the East" is purely a matter of definition. No proof really needed there. Just a reference point.
And as for things that actually do require proof: Some things look obvious that really aren't.
9/29/2007 6:20:57 PM
Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him (Jesus) up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
How is that possible unless the world is flat?
9/29/2007 6:31:18 PM
So we try not to make assumptions? How is this bad?
9/29/2007 7:00:29 PM
Well, it's OBVIOUS that there's a celestial sphere, isn't it? All the stars never move in relation to each other, so it must be a sphere with pinpricks of light circling around the earth. That's the obvious explanation for why the sky looks the way it does at night.
9/29/2007 7:28:02 PM
Who's denying the sun rises in the east?
9/29/2007 7:46:50 PM
... you are expected to prove every assertion, no matter how obvious, while they sit back watch.
Well, duh. Yeah. If you're telling the truth, backing it up with peer-reviewed science should only take a few extra minutes. It's only difficult if you're trying to sling BS and don't like getting caught at it. How come creationists don't document their work? Duane Gish claimed during a debate that a human protein sequence was closer to a bullfrog's than a chimp's. When he was repeatedly challenged over the years to provide a source for this claim, he has always hemmed and hawed. He still hasn't provided proof, and that was a couple of decades ago. Another creationist, Walter Brown said the rattlesnake's closest biochemical relative was the human. His source? His kid's school science project, which didn't include any other primates besides the human.
What's "obvious" is a matter of opinion. One of the favorite tricks of charlatans is to present some baloney, claim it's "obvious", then stifle criticism by implying that anyone who doesn't believe it must be too stupid to see how "obvious" it is. If it's "obvious", it should be easy to prove with documented evidence.
9/29/2007 8:09:20 PM
You poor oppressed creationists.
9/29/2007 8:50:47 PM
What's your proof of these assertions, flapjacks? ;-)
9/29/2007 9:11:37 PM
If you tell them the sun rises in the east, they ask for a specific scientific, peer-reviewed, published article, with a list of the writer's credentials.
Its called science. Try to keep up.
9/29/2007 9:28:09 PM
Someone got OWNED.
9/29/2007 9:32:31 PM
What is "obvious" to one person is news to another. And besides, I've heard a lot of theists make claims they say are "obvious", which turn out to be patently false.
9/29/2007 9:35:37 PM
No you just have to prove that it is science instead of religious dogma.
9/29/2007 9:43:45 PM
Then they make some sneering comment referring to your belief in a flat Earth
No, I will not break the truth to you . You obviously can't handle it.
9/29/2007 10:13:46 PM
If you still think the Earth is flat, then yeah, I can understand why anyone who argues against you wants you to back up any claim. Quite frankly, I question anything a person says if they can't even understand basic physics (like gravity).
9/29/2007 10:58:47 PM
Heh, flat-earther...I break wind in your general direction.
9/29/2007 11:53:25 PM
Aw, you have to support your assertions. Diddums.
Jesus, and Freepers actually call liberals whiny?!
9/30/2007 12:40:54 AM
And having to prove outlandish assertions before being taken seriously is bad... why?
By the way, something might seem obvious and could still be wrong. A few hundred years ago, you could say that heavy objects fall faster than light objects and you wouldn't need to prove it. But if scientists such as Galileo didn't challenge that and demand proof or data, or do experiments themselves, then our understanding of physics would be all messed up. See how this works?
9/30/2007 2:04:54 AM
If it needs to be proven, it's not obvious. If it's obvious, you're not looking at it hard enough.
9/30/2007 3:35:12 AM
Don't feel bad, I do it with everybody, because that's the way to check reality. If I didn't, I'd have to believe that Aliens abduct us, that snakes speak, that Atlantis was a real location and that it will rise again and conquer the world..........
9/30/2007 4:14:36 AM
Yes, thats right. The best definition of the modus operandi of science.
Oh, and I hope it was "...all evolution fanatics" and not "..just some evolution fanatics".
9/30/2007 4:48:57 AM
"...you are expect to prove every assertion, no matter how obvious....."
Congratulations, you get it!
9/30/2007 5:26:07 AM
It's not my fault you keep smearing your religion all over my science. And I'm tired of your sneering comments referring to my afterlife in Hell.
9/30/2007 5:45:16 AM
Scientists want proof?
9/30/2007 6:41:37 AM
You mean those mean old evil-utionists want you to prove your assertions? Wow, if that isn't anti-Christian persecution, nothing is.
9/30/2007 8:03:26 AM
More fundie whining about how unfair it is that they dont get to have their own way all the time.
9/30/2007 8:33:51 AM
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Carlos Flores and his wife Edith, both teacher’s aides in the West New York school system, began their walk down Tyler Place near Town Hall on Monday night. They brought their children Melissa, 12, and Carlos, 9. With district maps and lists of all of the town’s residents, they went door to door to try to change the town’s school board from appointed by the mayor to elected by the people.
Many residents weren’t home, and many refused to come to the door. Flores and his family spent around 10 minutes speaking with those who did come to the door in an attempt to explain why they felt that board members should be elected.
“Children’s education should be in the hands of the parents,” Edith Flores said to a woman in Spanish. “We know what’s best for our own community.”
She explained that a June redistricting decision had moved Carlos out of the elementary school he attended last year, which happened to be the same one she taught at, and into one further away from where the family lives. Redistricting decisions are made by the Board of Education.
“It’s the right of the people to choose who makes the decisions for their children.” – Carlos Flores
Of 12 districts in Hudson County, five have school boards that are appointed by the mayor. The rest hold board of education elections, either in April or November.
Hudson County is unusual in that 42 percent of its districts have appointed boards, whereas statewide, the number is only 8 percent. Out of 603 total districts, only 50 have school boards appointed by the mayor.
Flores feels strongly that the people who hire the teachers and make the decisions that affect children’s lives should be elected by the children’s community.
“We are tired,” Flores said. “The Board of Education has seven members, and five of them were chosen by the mayor, not elected by the people. Therefore, they have the control.”
The board has seen much political wrangling over the years, especially since some of the board members were allied with new Mayor Felix Roque when he took office last year, and others were allied with his opponent, former Mayor Sal Vega.
This is not the first time community members have petitioned to make this change. The attempt was made years ago when current Schools Superintendent John Fauta was a teacher, but the effort was unsuccessful, Fauta said.
While he declined to comment on his own preference, Fauta said, “We have a very good working relationship between the superintendents and the Board of Education and we keep the best interest of the children in mind.”
In order to change a district’s designation, residents must literally vote for the right to vote, which is why Flores has taken on the task to go door to door. If they can gather enough signatures on the petition, the measure will go to a public ballot.
Redistricting decisions like the one in West New York are made all of the time, and Edith Flores explained that she understands that, but she also feels that because the community had no part in choosing board members, the matter was too far out of her hands.
Both Carlos and Edith Flores feel that there may be alleged favoritism shown when the board hires new teachers, which is one of the reasons why they were out petitioning alone that evening.
“The others are afraid to speak out,” Carlos Flores said. “But I don’t care. This is not Cuba, and it’s my right to petition. And it’s the right of the people to choose who makes the decisions for their children.”
As for the alleged favoritism, “Everything is done by the book,” Fauta said.
Board with a past
Part of Flores’ misgivings with an appointed board stem from the recent controversy that began when Mayor Felix Roque was arrested in May by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for allegedly hacking into a political opponent’s website. Roque has not resigned.
The town has become divided politically, and police have been called to various heated meetings and confrontations between Roque’s allies and his opponents, one of whom has gone on record saying he wants to replace him as mayor.
Some residents and officials have felt that lobbying and campaigning has appeared to trump proper governance. But the drama with the board preceded that of the mayor.
When Roque took office in May 2011, he replaced two members of the board who had been appointed at the last minute by his predecessor, technically in violation of state law. He instead installed Adrienne Kole-Sires (the wife of Rep. Albio Sires) who became board president and Vilma Reyes who became vice president.
Roque also was able to replace Cosmo Cirillo, a close ally of former Mayor Sal Vega, because Cirillo had a municipal court job in West New York that conflicted with his membership on the board, according to state law.
In May 2012, Roque made the decision to expand the board from five to seven members by appointing Angela Duvall and Nasrin Alam.
There were 36 residents on Tyler Place, according to Flores’ town census. By 6 p.m. on Monday – an hour after he had begun – he and his family had collected only six signatures. Admittedly, he has a long way to go.
“This is good news for the politicians,” he said about the low number of signatures. “But I am used to working, and it’s worth it, because in my opinion, it’s time for change.”
Gennarose Pope may be reached at [email protected]
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Global Perspective on Moustaches and More
During the month of November, thousands of men around the world will grow mustaches as part of Movember, a movement to promote and raise funds for men’s health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer. We here at Zoosk.com recently conducted surveys among thousands of Zooskers around the globe to gather their thoughts on facial hair and how it plays out in their relationships. Here’s what we found:
Facial hair is gaining in popularity in the U.S.
• Only 50% of American men surveyed report that their father had facial hair.
• Today, 64% of American men say they have facial hair.
• Mustache may be a French word, however, only 40% of French men say they have facial hair.
The #1 reason men grow facial hair? It gives them more confidence.
• 40% of American men (and 44% of men worldwide) say when they have facial hair, they feel more confident.
• Other reasons why men grow facial hair? 36% of American men say they feel more attractive, 15% feel more sophisticated, and 9% feel more intelligent with facial hair.
80% of American women are okay with, and even attracted to, men with facial hair.
• It must be an English-speaking thing — 80% of American women and 69% of women in the UK and Canada say that facial hair on their man is a-ok.
• However, the majority of women in Australia, France, Mexico and Denmark prefer clean-shaven men.
The goatee wins as the preferred form of facial hair among American women.
• 36% of American women say they prefer men sport a goatee (as opposed to a beard or mustache).
• Men take note! Women say the “soul patch” is the least-preferred form of facial hair.
Growing facial hair for a cause can lead to romance!
• 63% of American women say that they would be more open to romance with a man who grew facial hair for a worthy cause.
• French women feel the opposite way, with only 27% saying that they would feel more romantic with a man who grew facial hair for a cause.
Women around the world agree that Johnny Depp sports the best facial hair.
• More than 50% of the women surveyed around the world say Johnny Depp is the celebrity with the best facial hair.
U.S. men think Sean Connery has the best facial hair.
• 45% of American men say Sean Connery as the celeb with the best facial hair. Johnny Depp comes in 2nd place with 26% of the votes among men.
The Zoosk Facial Hair Survey was conducted online by Zoosk in October 2012 in the U.S, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Mexico, Sweden, and the U.K.
Zoosk on Facebook | Zoosk on Twitter | Zoosk on YouTube
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Ralph_Slate - 3:31 pm on Aug 21, 2012 (gmt 0)
@diberry, the problem is that when you are featured in Wikipedia, there are so many scraper sites that it becomes difficult to overcome.
Here's an example from my site for data from July 1. I analyzed the 1,842 links reported for my site on that day. I had links added from:
Scrapers (123people, etc.): 42
Organic backlinks: 400
For a normal site, having 400 organic links added in a single day is pretty good, isn't it? But 400 organic links doesn't compensate for 1,395 spammy wiki-scraper plus 42 other spammy links.
The ratio may be the key. If you have just a couple of Wikipedia links, it may not hurt you. I have 80,000 Wikipedia links according to WMT, and that results in a huge amount of these things being created every day.
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Numbers released by the Alabama Department of Labor today show Calhoun County added around 200 jobs last month. That’s an increase of more than 1,000 jobs from the total in November 2011. The unemployment rate decreased to 6.9 percent to 8.1 percent from October to November, while dropping a full percentage point from November 2011’s 7.9 percent rate.
Half of the new jobs in November came in the retail industry, meaning temporary seasonal employment is at least part of the reason for the jump, but a gain of 11,000 jobs statewide is still good news for the economy, said Keivan Deravi, an economist at Auburn University Montgomery.
“That’s a surprisingly high number,” Deravi said. “That’s a very large number relative to what we were getting last year, and up to September of this year.”
Deravi said those numbers aren’t unique to Alabama, either. The fourth quarter of 2012 showed significant improvements from 2011 throughout the country.
“I think the economy is certainly doing better in the fourth quarter of 2012 then it was in 2011,” said Robert Robicheaux, chairman of the department of marketing, industrial distribution and economics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Holiday retail sales are up, and there’s been a positive impact in home sales as well, which signifies Alabama is doing a little better.”
Robicheaux said any positive gain from the holiday season could quickly erode depending on what happens in Washington with regards to the so-called fiscal cliff, which could cause significant federal spending cuts and tax increases next year.
“There are so many things that might or might not happen in 2013,” Robicheaux said. “If we’re able to avoid the fiscal cliff, businesses will have some confidence in expanding and making investments.”
Deravi said that in a worst-case scenario, if leaders in Washington reach no compromise tax increases in February could have a slow-down effect over the first several months of 2013, but predicts that even a “recession-like environment” might correct itself over time.
“It won’t be falling off a cliff, it’ll be a bungee jump,” Deravi said. “Still, it’ll be a shock.”
Staff writer Brian Anderson: 256-235-3546. On Twitter @BAnderson_Star.
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According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in our lifetimes 80 percent of us will have some up-close experience with the suicide of someone we know. And more than 20 percent of us will have a family member die by suicide. Journalist Eric Marcus knows this better than most people. In 1970, his father took his life at the age of 44. In 2008, his 49-year-old sister-in-law took her life as well. In a completely revised and updated edition of the landmark original Why Suicide ?, Eric Marcus offers thoughtful answers to scores of questions about this complex, painful issue, from how to recognize the signs of someone who is suicidal to strategies for coping in the aftermath of a loved ones death. No matter what the circumstances, those of us who are affected by suicide are left with difficult and disturbing questions: * Why did they do it? * Was it my fault? * What should I tell people when they ask what happened? * Is someone who attempts suicide likely to try again? * What should I do if Im thinking of killing myself? Drawing from his own experience, as well as interviews with people who have been touched by suicide, Eric Marcus cuts through the veil of silence and misunderstanding to bring clarity, reassurance, and comfort to those who so desperately need it.
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See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. 9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 10 and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; 11 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.
Does Christian Baptism Parallel Old Testament Circumcision?
This is the second in a four-part series on Christian baptism. Let me tell you a bit about how I am choosing the texts to preach from. I discovered in my seminary and graduate school days that my old ways of defending believer's baptism were not compelling. I used to spend time pointing out that all the baptisms described in the New Testament are baptisms of believers and that all the commands to be baptized are given to believers. I used to point out that infant baptism is simply not mentioned in the Bible and that it is questionable to build a crucial church practice on a theological inference, without explicit Biblical teaching when all the examples go in the opposite direction.
But I discovered that those who baptize infants ("paedobaptists") were not swayed by these observations, because they pointed out that, of course, we only see believer's baptism in the New Testament since we are dealing in all these settings with first generation evangelism, not with second generation child-rearing. Everybody agrees that the only adults that should be baptized are believing adults. The issue is, what happens when these baptized Christian adults have children?
So they pointed out that all my statistics are irrelevant and the question boils down to one of theological inference. Specifically, does Christian baptism parallel Old Testament circumcision as the sign of those who join the covenant people of God, and if so, should not the children of Christians receive baptism the way the sons of Israel received circumcision?
For example, the Heidelberg Catechism was written in 1562 as an expression of the Reformed faith. It is said by some to have the intimacy of Martin Luther and the charity of Philip Melanchthon and the fire of John Calvin : three great Reformers in the 16th century. At the end of the section on baptism, question #74 asks, "Are infants also to be baptized?" The answer goes like this:
Yes; for since they, as well as their parents, belong to the covenant and people of God, and both redemption from sin and the Holy Ghost, who works faith, are through the blood of Christ promised to them no less than to their parents, they are also by Baptism, as a sign of the covenant, to be ingrafted into the Christian Church, and distinguished from the children of unbelievers, as was done in the Old testament by Circumcision, in place of which in the New Testament Baptism is appointed.
Now this has been the standard understanding of baptism among Presbyterians and Congregationalists and Methodists and many others for hundreds of years. Lutherans and Catholics defend the practice of infant baptism differently, putting more emphasis than these other churches have on the actual regenerating effect of the act.
Are New Truths Revealed in the New Covenant?
So one of the most crucial questions you must face as you ponder the New Testament command to be baptized is whether you think this parallel with circumcision settles the matter. That is, is it the will of God revealed in the New Testament that Baptism and circumcision correspond so closely that what circumcision signified, baptism signifies? Or are there new truths about the creation and nature of the people of God in the New Covenant that point toward a discontinuity as well as continuity between circumcision and baptism?
Well, in my struggles with this issue over the years, especially the years in graduate school when I was studying mainly with paedobaptists, three or four texts, more than any others, kept me from embracing the argument from circumcision. One is Colossians 2:11-12. Another is 1 Peter 3:21. Another is Romans 9:8. And another is Galatians 3:26-27. I will take the Colossians text today and build on the others in the weeks to come.
But first let's make sure we don't miss the forest for the trees. This text (Colossians 2:10-15) is a virtual rain forest of strong gospel timber. Get a bird's eye view of it with me. It's all about what God has done for us (in history, objectively through Christ), and what he has done in us so that we will indeed inherit what he purchased
What God Has Done For Us
Take first the objective, historical, external work of God in verses 14-15. In essence, what these two verses tell us is that our two greatest enemies were defeated in the death of Christ. Nothing more powerful than the death of Christ has ever happened.
The first enemy defeated was the "certificate of debt" that was filed against us in the courtroom of heaven. In other words, because of our sin and rebellion, the laws of God had become a deadly witness against us and we were in such deep debt to God that there was no way out. Verse 14 says that Christ canceled that whole debt by paying it all on the cross. "[He] canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." So the great enemy of our sin and guilt and debt, Christ defeated. That happened in history, objectively, outside us.
The second enemy defeated was the host of evil spiritual beings : the devil and his forces. Verse 15: "When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him." It's true that we must still "wrestle with principalities and powers" (Ephesians 6:12), but if we wrestle in the power of Christ and his shed blood, they are as good as defeated, because the blow he struck was lethal. Revelation 12:11 says that believers "overcame [the devil] because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death." We must fight. But the battle belongs to the Lord and the decisive blow has been struck at Calvary. Satan cannot destroy us.
What God Has Done in Us
Now besides these two great objective, external, historical triumphs over our worst enemies (the debt of sin before God and the devil's hosts on earth), this forest also describes what God does in us : not just for us and outside of us but in us so that we benefit from what was done outside of us.
He uses two pictures: one is circumcision and the other is resurrection. Verse 13 focuses mainly on our resurrection:
When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.
So you see what he does in us: we were spiritually dead, and he made us alive. This is the miracle of the new birth. You were saved because God spoke a life-giving, resurrecting word into your heart (2 Corinthians 4:6).
The other picture of what God does in us is the picture of circumcision. Verse 11:
In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.
Now this is harder to understand because the ideas are more foreign to us. Paul compares the saving work of God in us with the practice of circumcision. He says it's like that, only this is a circumcision made "without hands" : it's a spiritual thing he is talking about, not a physical one. And he says that what is being cut away is not the male foreskin, but the "body of the flesh." In Paul's language that's probably a reference to sin-dominated, ego-dominated use of the body. What is cut away in this spiritual circumcision "without hands" is the old unbelieving, blind, rebellious self and its use of the body for sin. And that way, Paul is saying, God makes a person his very own.
So we have seen two pictures of what God does for us, objectively, historically, outside ourselves to save us: he defeats the enemy of sin and the enemy of Satan. And we have seen two pictures of what God does in us to make us part of that salvation: he raises us from the dead spiritually and he circumcises our hearts and strips away the old rebellious self and makes us new.
Baptism and Circumcision
Now, in that forest of glorious good news, here's the question about the tree of baptism: is water baptism the Christian counterpart to Old Testament circumcision? Is the continuity such that, just as circumcision was given to the children of God's covenant people then, baptism should now be given to the children of God's covenant people?
The key verses are verses 11-12. Notice the linking of the two ideas of circumcision and baptism:
. . .in Him [Christ] you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
It's clear there's a link here between baptism and circumcision. But it isn't, I think, what many infant baptizers think it is. Notice what sort of circumcision is spoken of in verse 11: it is precisely a circumcision "without hands." That means Paul is talking about a spiritual counterpart of the Old Testament physical ritual. Then baptism is linked in verse 12 to that spiritual counterpart to the Old Testament circumcision. This is extremely important. Try to get it.
What is the New Testament counterpart or parallel to the Old Testament rite of circumcision? Answer: it is not the New Testament rite of baptism; it is the New Testament spiritual event of the circumcision of Christ cutting away "the [old sinful] body of the flesh." then, baptism is brought in as the external expression of that spiritual reality. That is precisely what the link between verses 11 and 12 says. Christ does a circumcision without hands : that is the New Testament, spiritual fulfillment of Old Testament circumcision. Then verse 12 draws the parallel between that spiritual fulfillment and the external rite of baptism.
Notice what verse 11 stresses about the new work of Christ in circumcising: it is a circumcision "without hands." But water baptism is emphatically a ritual done "with hands." If we simply say that this New Testament ordinance of baptism done with hands corresponds to the Old Testament ritual of circumcision done with hands, then we miss the most important truth: something new is happening in the creation of people of God called the church of Christ. They are being created by a "circumcision without hands" by God. They are being raised from the dead by God. And baptism is a sign of that, not a repetition of the Old Testament sign. There is a new sign of the covenant because the covenant people are being constituted in a new way : by spiritual birth, not physical birth.
And one of the clearest evidences for this is the little phrase "through faith" in verse 12. Watch this carefully. This is what held me back from paedobaptism through years of struggle, until I saw more and more reasons not to join up. Verse 12 links the New Testament spiritual circumcision "without hands" in verse 11 with baptism, and then links baptism with faith:
Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
If baptism were merely a parallel of the Old Testament rite of circumcision it would not have to happen "through faith" since infants did not take on circumcision "through faith." The reason the New Testament ordinance of baptism must be "through faith" is that it represents not the Old Testament external ritual, but the New Testament, internal, spiritual experience of circumcision "without hands."
Those two words : "through faith" : in verse 12 are the decisive, defining explanation of how we were buried with Christ in baptism and how we were raised with him in baptism: it was "through faith." And this is not something infants experience. Faith is a conscious experience of the heart yielding to the work of God. Infants are not capable of this, and therefore infants are not fit subjects of baptism, which is "through faith."
So I urge those of you who have not yet come to faith in Christ to consider the rainforest of good news in these verses: that Christ died and rose again to cancel our debt with God and to triumph over Satan; and that he raises spiritually dead people from the grave and circumcises sinful hearts : he does all this through faith. He brings us to trust him, by showing us how true and beautiful he is. Look to him and believe.
And then he bids us to express that faith in baptism. If you want to prepare for this step of obedience, you can come up after the service, or you can check it off on the worship folder leaf, or you can come to the baptismal preparation class starting next Sunday for two weeks.
May the Lord draw many of you to the enjoyment of this full obedience "through faith."
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“Lulu,” the unlikely collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, rapidly went from being one of the year’s most anticipated releases to being the most reviled album of 2011. USA Today called it “arty sludge” and gave it one star. Writing in Grantland, Chuck Klosterman lambasted it as “a successful simulation of how it feels to develop schizophrenia while suffering from a migraine, although slightly less melodic.” Gothamist reported that Reed had even received death threats from “betrayed” Metallica fans.
Apparently, Reed has gotten over the bad press. This summer, he is performing songs from “Lulu” across Europe. In late June, Reed brought the career-spanning tour “From VU to Lulu” to Berlin, the European city most closely associated with his music. Thousands braved the bitter wind and rain to see the founder of The Velvet Underground perform on the open-air stage of the medieval fortress in Spandau, one of the city’s 12 boroughs. Supported by an excellent band and by singer-songwriter Allison Weiss on back-up vocals, Reed put on a slick and tightly engineered show that, without intermission, clocked in at slightly less than two hours.
What wasn’t apparent to most reviewers of the album but is clear from performances is that despite the novelty of “Loutallica” — the inevitable moniker for the collaboration — the songs that Reed wrote for “Lulu” signal a return to his signature dark rock ’n’ roll idiom. In both a literal and an artistic sense, “Lulu” also marks the singer’s return to Berlin, a city that has influenced Reed for the past four decades.
In the early 1970s, Reed spent time in West Berlin hanging with other foreign transplants, like Iggy Pop and David Bowie. His solo album “Berlin,” released in 1973, was a depressing hymn to a city that has influenced musicians, from Kurt Weill to Nick Cave. The record follows a destructive relationship in the divided capital and includes themes of drugs, domestic violence and suicide. On the album’s most disturbing track, “The Kids,” Reed sings about a negligent mother who loses custody of her children after her daughter dies. The song is notable for the shrieking kids in the background. Direct on the heels of his hit 1972 record “Transformer,” Reed shocked critics and listeners alike with a collection of ballads wry and cynical enough to be a Weill/Brecht collaboration.
Though recognized today as one of Reed’s finest solo albums, “Berlin” was panned at the time of its release. Rolling Stone was unequivocal when it called Berlin a “disaster.” It didn’t help that Reed’s fans were expecting another glam smash after “Transformer” and not a heavily orchestrated rock opera with lots of nasty.
In Reed’s oeuvre, “Berlin” is the work that most anticipates “Lulu,” thematically if not musically. Reed wrote the songs featured on the new album for a Berlin production of fin-de-siècle German playwright Frank Wedekind’s two plays “Erdgeist” (“Earth Spirit,” 1895) and “Die Büchse der Pandora” (“Pandora’s Box,” 1904), known together as the “Lulu” plays. Directed by legendary avant-garde American playwright Robert Wilson, the production opened in spring 2011 at the Berliner Ensemble, where it is currently in repertory. Lulu, the plays’ heroine, is equal parts minx and naïf, femme fatale and victim. In the course of the plays, she kills three husbands before winding up in London as a prostitute trailed by a desperate lesbian lover. Her last client is Jack the Ripper. It’s wild stuff.
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On Wednesday, I was set to perform an after-school voluntary presentation at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Fla., after having been invited by a student-led high school group, The American Club. The group has been established for two years, has had many speakers and followed the usual line of protocol for having a presentation, being pre-approved by the school administration. They hung posters three weeks before the event, and it was advertised on morning announcements all week.
We no sooner stepped foot on campus, but the principal and an effeminate teacher approached us and attempted to cancel the event on their campus with no justifiable explanation. They claimed they did not “vet” me, although they had not done so with any previous speakers The American Club has brought in.
This was a clear violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
When we reminded them that their actions were unlawful, they told us that once we entered school property, we no longer had a First Amendment right.
A teacher then blurted out the real reason for attempting to shut down the voluntary, student-led presentation: religious discrimination.
Is this lawful activity?
Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969 concluded that “students do not leave their rights at the schoolhouse door.” Rights that God gave us, might I add.
The students were furious. In addition, the crowd began to swell. They began recording the showdown on their iPhones, and when we offered anyone who wanted to hear the presentation to follow us across the street, the students followed gladly.
Before we left, however, the effeminate teacher who had a part to play in the attempt to cancel the student-led presentation exercised his First Amendment right to tell the students, “I warn you, children, that everything this gentleman is going to tell you is complete misinformation.”
Furthermore, this teacher completely implicated himself. If they did not have a chance to “vet” me, how would he know what I was going to say?
Could it be that he read about me on Wikipedia or independent blog sites that have no credibility whatsoever and decided he was going to attempt to cancel the presentation based on disinformation?
Could it also be that he was a communistic teacher who didn’t want America’s students to receive a constitutional, moral message?
What didn’t this effeminate teacher want the students to hear?
That the NEA has not only an LGBT caucus for teachers, but a “drag queen” caucus as well? That Obama appointed Kevin Jennings as his “safe school” czar, a man who wrote the foreword to a book titled Queerifying Elementary Education? Or that Jennings’ icon is Harry Hay from the North American Man and Boy Love Association, whose motto is “sex before eight before it’s too late” when marching in gay pride parades?
Or was it that this effeminate teacher didn’t want the students to know about Larry Brinken, a homosexual icon who was recently arrested for possession of horrific child pornography?
Or was it that Dan Savage went to a high school journalism conference and bullied Christian teens, telling them “the Bible is bulls**t”? Savage also said he wanted to %#$& Rick Santorum, drag his political opponents behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope, and that he wishes all Republicans were dead.
Or was it that he didn’t want the students to know that the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled us as a “hate group” for simply exposing Elton John’s statement: “There is nothing wrong with going to bed with someone of your own sex. People should be very free with sex, they should draw the line at goats”?
Or was it that he didn’t want me to tell the kids sodomy was illegal in all 50 states until 1961, or that homosexuality was considered a mental illness until 1973?
What was this effeminate man afraid of? He almost had me convinced that I was the one doing something wrong.
If standing up against those who perpetuate crimes against our posterity is wrong, then I am guilty as charged.
America should pay careful attention to who is doing the discriminating and who is abiding by the laws of our republic. You can watch some of the confrontation in this short video:
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By Jeremy Rue
“It’s become a verb in our newsroom,” a New York Times graphics producer tells me. “People are now saying, ‘can we snowfall this story?’”
Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek has become a watershed in multimedia journalism. The story by John Branch recently won a Pulitzer prize in feature writing, and as noted by the Pulitzer website it was “a project enhanced by its deft integration of multimedia elements.”
As a journalism educator, I’m constantly collecting links to examples of stories that attempt innovate and redefine the narrative form online. For years, story structures online have mostly been a repurposing of legacy formats — TV, radio and print. While we are starting to see the journalism industry leverage digital media in very powerful ways, more often it’s a complementary component to a more traditional story structure. For example, you might see an interactive graphic or map or audio slideshow off to the side of a text story.
Then came Snow Fall.
It was posted on the front page of the NYTimes.com website in late 2012. The day it published, I received a dozen e-mails from faculty members, students and non-journalism colleagues with messages akin to ‘Hey, did you see this?’
A few of us at the Berkeley j-school who specialize in multimedia journalism — Richard Koci Hernandez, Paul Grabowicz and myself — have been poring over the project, trying to decipher what it brings to the table and how it might exemplify future story structures.
The integration of multimedia in Snow Fall was purposeful. As New York Times Graphics Director Steve Duenes explained in an interview with Poynter Online, they were looking to find ways to create a seamless experience, “…So it didn’t feel like you were taking a detour, but the multimedia was part of the one narrative flow.”
Beyond the multimedia integration, there were various technical and design components brought into play:
- There are silent videos that automatically play; some of them providing a graphical backdrop, others as informative graphics.
- There is a scrolling mechanism (called jquery.inview) which will trigger actions as the user scrolls. For example, it will play a video, graphic animation or change some CSS properties like fading the background.
- A “curtain” effect that reveals or covers images and videos as the user scrolls.
While some of these are simple design embellishments, their power lies in the emotional response they trigger as you venture through the story — and I use “venture” intentionally, because this is the feeling that it evokes. Effective design triggers an emotional response which can enhance the story structure.
From the opening video animation — which could have just been a static image — the viewer is taken to a barren and ominous place. Using silent videos instead of still images is a much more effective way of conveying this sense of place.
I am seeing more of this use of video animation in place of static images in projects done by our grad students. It’s a way of making static design come alive, similar to the way portraits stare at their gazers in the Harry Potter world, or how Cinemagraphs can elicit a captivating — albiet sometimes creepy — viewer response.
In Snow Fall, the opening animated images set the mood of the project in a similar fashion to background music setting the mood of a movie. It creates an atmosphere from the very moment the project opens. It’s important that these videos are silent and repetitive. They aren’t narratives — they aren’t meant to be watched or played in the same fashion as a stand-alone video. Also, auto-playing audio on websites is considered poor design practice and annoying to users.
I expect we will be seeing many more video animations as a design element in future online journalism packages.
Next, let’s look at the various scrolling mechanisms in play. I am a proponent of using scrolling as a narrative device, even when the primary medium is not text. It is a new trend I’ve noticed and very different from the traditional non-scrolling routes such as clicking on arrows or tabs.
One example of a scrollable narrative is a blog post by Cabel Sasser, co-founder of Panic software company (and not a professional journalist). He wrote a fascinating and suspenseful account of exploring the basement of the old Oregonian building. In this piece, which is simply a collection of photos and some small snippets of text, scrolling is the method used to advance the narrative. This creates suspense going from photo to photo, unveiling more and more of the narrative as the reader scrolls to explore this world.
In more traditional journalism environments, this might have been a slideshow, which I think would have completely ruined the experience.
We also see the trend toward scrolling in big online news packages. Global Post’s America The Gutted piece piece was built as a single long webpage rather than paginated into separate pages. In the past, this type of single-page design convention was discouraged because it added to the load-time of the page, and bandwidth was at a premium. But with the proliferation of broadband, some web producers are opting for fewer separate pages within a single story and more content on a single page.
Scrolling also allows people to get a glimpse of what to expect from the package by quickly going down the page and scanning the content. Web usability studies show that users like to skim content, especially when presented with a large quantity of it. We’ve noticed that our journalism students similarly tend to scan through a piece before pausing to read or watch it.
Another mechanism used in the Snow Fall piece was the curtain effect, which creates the sense of revealing or concealing panels of content as the user scrolls. This was most notably used in a ESPN piece on Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Doc Ellis.
The curtain effect serves a few different purposes. Initially, it’s what my colleague Richard Koci Hernandez refers to as “eye candy,” a design embellishment that wows the user, and draws them into the story. but this effect is ephemeral and will lose its impact as more and more people use it and it becomes more commonplace.
The curtain effect also makes the process of scrolling more playful and adds a sense of mystery as the story unfolds as the curtain rises.
One of our graduate students, Erik Reyna, used this technology, called Curtain.js, in a story about homelessness. The curtain effect revealed different graphics and photos from the project, and encouraged readers to scroll through the piece.
All of these components together create a more immersive experience for the viewer, like that found in traditional media like documentaries or long-form narratives. In a digital world, creating this experience needs to include design conventions and leveraging new technological innovations to engage readers. All of this is experimental, but my hope is journalists will analyze and build on projects like Snow Fall so we can more effectively deliver news and other content to the public.
by Danny Groner/ Shutterstock
“The sounds of silence.” It’s a vivid refrain we’re all familiar with, thanks to Simon and Garfunkel. Behind this apparent oxymoron lies something more, a certain sensibility that all digital producers work into their final projects. Skilled professionals use silence to help establish, build, and propel their stories forward. That goes beyond reaction shots from main characters, though; acting can only take a film so far. Adding carefully-selected and re-purposed B-roll shots can carry the emotional weight to pack a real emotional punch onscreen. To push a story along, filmmakers draw on a whole slew of effects, which can include audio-less clips that still speak for themselves. Here are five areas where filmmakers can incorporate stock clips to maximize emotional impact:
Man washing car clip
If a film doesn’t start from the beginning, chances are at some point along the way it’ll feature a flashback to another time. These devices help viewers get much-needed context in a constructive and crafty way. Otherwise, characters would have to express revelations through awkward dialogue, and, worse, viewers would lose out on making connections that increase the depth of a story. Beyond highlighting attributes or trauma of a lead character, flashbacks can offer a glimpse into a different era. Pick a clip that both demonstrates an event, an episode, a season, or a time period, and drives the point home with emotion and mood that reinforces it.
Suspense relies on prolonging a feeling of mystery for as long as possible without alienating the viewer. The best directors achieve it thanks to a combination of great acting, steady camerawork, and a slow-burn pacing. To set the mood, they’ll allow a shot to go on for just a bit longer than others typically would, giving a clip enough time to marinate and resonate with the viewer. For instance, think about how Alfred Hitchcock masterfully lingered on a window, or on a dark bird, to give it a sense of importance. Watching it, you don’t know when it’ll come up or matter again. But it plants the idea in your head, handing you information that even the characters don’t have.
Confusion. Disorganization. Mayhem. They’re difficult emotions to display without having someone knock over a stack of papers or fall into a wedding cake. But digital producers must find ways to make everything seem crazed without losing sight of the plot. Yes, there’s an order to the disorder that must come through. Your best bet is to showcase stress and disruption through external effects first, such as crowded streets and people banging into one another, and then afterward to turn the focus onto the characters. People will naturally attach the emotions they see in one place to the one that immediately follow. That way, it’s not a reflection of the characters as much as the circumstances surrounding them.
This is one area where you must be careful to avoid cliches as we all associate certain places or objects with the same calming sense. However, settings like beach getaways can get in the way of telling a truly original and provocative story. Instead, the best filmmakers call on other ways to deliver the mood. One idea would be to zoom in on a blade of grass in the morning, slowly swaying in the wind. A closeup shot on something innocent and ordinary can soothe the viewer. The pace of motion in the clip also goes a long way towards communicating calm — keep it slow and your audience will find themselves in the right headspace for the action that follows.
This is a FIRST for me. I’ve never made my iphoneography available for purchase. So for a LIMITED time, 7 days, you can buy this image. It’s an honor to be working with the great folks @canvaspop to offer this limited edition print of one of my favorite images.
As leaves fall annually, Western Kentucky University’s Mountain Workshops draw a team of dedicated teachers and determined learners to a small Kentucky town, where together they explore the richness of community, the beauty of landscape, and the possibilities and challenges of visual storytelling.
The 37th annual Workshops will take place Oct. 16-21, 2012 in the city of Henderson, Ky. Please visit our web site at http://www.mountainworkshops.
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TEST DRIVE: First drive 2012 Toyota Prius V
Every year, there are new words that make their way into our vocabulary.
One of the latest is hybridization and it may very well have been the Toyota Motor Corp. that coined the word.
Toyota started the hybrid revolution about a decade ago with the introduction of its Prius liftback, a hybrid gas-electric car that has gone on to sell more than three million units around the world, including 23,000 in Canada.
No longer just a standalone vehicle, the Prius has been turned into a family of cars with the introduction of the Prius V (pronounced vee for versatility, not five) for 2012 with more models to come in the future.
While some manufacturers look to diesel and others to fully electric vehicles, Toyota sees the hybrid as the way of the future and offers more hybrids than any other automaker with eight currently in the fleet.
In fact, by the 2020s, Toyota aims to have a hybrid in every segment of the market.
Thus, the hybridization of the brand is continuing full bore as Toyota strives to increase its penetration in the Canadian hybrid market to more than the 60 per cent it currently holds.
Although the third-generation Prius liftback will carry on unchanged for the time being, the Prius V is clearly aimed at the family buyer. Toyota says the Prius V offers 50 per cent more cargo space behind the rear seats than the liftback and has more cargo space than 80 per cent of the small SUVs in the market.
It is classified as a crossover but one could also think of it as a “mini” minivan as its tall roof and wagon-like rear hatch allow for lots of usable cargo and passenger space.
With the rear seat at its rearmost position, there is 971 litres (34.3 cu ft) of cargo room.
The 60/40 split rear seats also fold down to produce 1,905 litres (67.3 cu ft) and if you need even more room, the front passenger seat folds to handle really long items.
The Prius V has seating for five adults and the rear seats actually travel fore and aft by 180 mm to add to the versatility of the design. That allows for more rear passenger legroom when needed, or, more cargo capacity when the rear seats are in the most forward position.
I’ve been talking a lot here about interior capacity and versatility because that is what sets the Prius V apart from its liftback sibling.
In a demonstration, Toyota loaded both Prius models with banker’s boxes. The Prius V held 12 compared to only eight for the liftback.
Size is not all that sets the Prius V apart from the old Prius. Interior quality is much improved with soft-touch materials all round and this is a car that starts at $600 less ($27,200) than the original with $1,100 in additional features.
My driving partner and I managed 5.7 and 5.4L/100 km in our two combined city/highway driving routes. The system uses an electronic CVT (continuously variable transmission) that routes power to the front wheels. You can choose from four drive mode selections: normal, EV, ECO and Power.
Even with the Power mode selected, this is a sluggish car that definitely favours fuel economy over performance.
Competition for the Prius V comes from cars like the Mazda5, Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagon TDI, and crossovers like the Ford Escape and Honda CR-V.
Priced from $27,200 to $36,875, the Prius V is pricier than most competitors, but Toyota should have no trouble selling the 4,000 units it plans to bring into Canada.
The versatility, fuel economy and hybrid technology make this a vehicle appealing to buyers wanting to show off their “green” bent.
The Prius V will be on sale by the end of October.
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Rand Paul rallies behind Mitt Romney
TAMPA, Fla.—Rand Paul did not hoist the flag high for the libertarian cause Wednesday.
The Kentucky senator instead used his prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention to play footsie with the GOP establishment and offer support for “our nominee:” Mitt Romney.Continue Reading
Wearing a red tie with elephants, he parroted Romney’s criticism of President Barack Obama for telling business owners “you didn’t build that.”
Paul then focused on areas of agreement between conservatives and supporters of his father Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign: antipathy toward Obama, opposition to the federal health care law, support for the Keystone XL pipeline and alarm about the national debt.
“There’s only one option left,” he said. “We have to have a new president.”
During his speech, the younger Paul referred to the elder Paul only once — and not by name. It was part of a perfectl agreeable riff on how his great-grandfather immigrated to Pittsburgh to experience the American dream. By contrast, he name-checked Ronald Reagan three times. Unlike his dad, Sen. Paul has endorsed Romney.
“My grandfather would live to see his children become doctors, ministers, accountants, and professors,” Paul said. “He would even live to see one of his sons, a certain Congressman from Texas, run for President of the United States of America.”
Paul has his eye on a possible run for the Republican nomination in 2016, and the speech seemed designed to show party insiders he can play ball and the rank-and-file that he is not divisive.
The response to the speech from the floor was generally positive, as many Romney supporters cheered. But some Paul supporters appeared to quietly walk out of the hall.
Playing it safe, as Paul did, was a risky move as Paul’s dad controls three state delegations. A ruling by a Republican convention credentials committee invalidated the election of pro-Paul delegates from Maine, which has caused friction on the convention floor. Many Ron Paul backers are irate that Ron Paul himself was not invited to speak. They are also livid about a host of rule changes designed to make it harder for outsider candidates to compete in future elections. Not long after the speech, there were chants of “So goes the nation as Maine goes.”
The 17-minute speech made just passing allusions to two issues that animate the libertarian base: opposition to war and support for civil liberties.
“Republicans and Democrats alike must slay their sacred cows,” Paul said. “Republicans must acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well-spent, and Democrats must admit that domestic welfare and entitlements must be reformed. Republicans and Democrats must replace fear with confidence, confidence that no terrorist, and no country, will ever conquer us if we remain steadfast to the principles of our founding documents.”
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HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Unlike recent years when major programs were canceled or reached the end of their life cycles, Huntsville's NASA center is looking "pretty good" in President Obama's 2013 budget request to Congress, the center's director said Monday. (See NASA's video summary of the budget below)
That depends on your definition of "pretty good," according to members of Alabama's congressional delegation, who said the president still wants to cut NASA in favor of boosting unproven commercial space companies.
Marshall Space Flight Center Director Robert Lightfoot told reporters Monday his center is on solid footing after two years of uncertainty following the end of the space shuttle and Constellation programs. The shuttle reached the planned end of its life cycle, and Constellation was canceled. "The center has a clear mission and the resources to support it," Lightfoot said.
The White House is proposing $17.71 billion overall for NASA, which is down slightly from the $17.77 billion appropriated this year and nearly $800 million from the $18.5 billion appropriated in 2011. For perspective, NASA is 0.5 percent of the proposed 2013 budget of $3.8 trillion.
The proposal, which still must pass Congress, provides $1.3 billion for the heavy-lift rocket being developed by Marshall for NASA's new Space Launch System. That's down from $1.45 billion this year but about the same as 2011.
Two Alabama's lawmakers had immediate problems with the new budget's plan to cut the new launch vehicle while raising money for developing commercial space companies from $406 million to $830 million.
"The president's proposed budget for NASA underfunds the Space Launch System (SLS) next year and instead gives that money to speculative 'commercial' providers that continue to over-promise and under-deliver," U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, said in a statement.
"I expect that, once again, Congress will have to force the administration to invest in a real exploration program that adequately funds SLS and keeps America at the forefront in space," Shelby said.
"I am concerned about the decrease in SLS funding and will continue to monitor the program's progress," U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, said in his own reaction statement Monday afternoon. "My colleagues and I on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee will work to ensure America's space program is restored to its role as a world leader. Last year, we succeeded in keeping the pressure on to get SLS funding, and we will continue to do so as the year progresses."
A NASA spokeswoman said late Monday that there is a slight SLS decrease in the new budget, but it is mostly a bookkeeping change. The spokeswoman referred to Lightfoot's announcement of a separate $124 million for new construction at Marshall, most of it related to the new heavy-lift rocket.
The budget also funds continued operation of the International Space Station, including the Payload Operations Center, a 24-hour-a-day space science management center at Marshall.
"We get to continue our good science work with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Discovery-New Frontiers program and continue the great work of Servir, one of the best earth science application programs that we have here in the agency, in my opinion," Lightfoot said.
Servir - which means "to serve" in Spanish - takes satellite information about natural disasters such as hurricanes, forest fires and landslides and provides real-time information to disaster relief workers.
The bottom line, Lightfoot said, is that Marshall has funded roles in three key NASA missions: exploration, space technology and science. That diverse portfolio is good for the center.
Lightfoot said he does not expect any significant layoffs next year. "I can't speak to the contractor side yet, until we get through with all the contracts we're putting in place relating to the Space Launch System," Lightfoot said, "but I think we're pretty stable."
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.950115 | 829 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Does anyone know how to lock your car if your key fob wasn't working?
Chances are, you think you do. You, like most, think it's as easy as press the central locking button, get out the car and close the door behind you. Well you'd be wrong.
Just imagine how easy it would be to accidentally lock your keys in the car!
Go on then clever clogs
- Open the door.
- With the key at position 0, press the central locking button on the top of the dash.
- Turn the key to position 1.
- Turn the key to position 0.
- Remove the keys and put them in your pocket.
- Get out of the car and close the door.
The doors are now all locked.
If you did this every time you locked the car your key fob battery would last twice as long.
Obviously this is only really in place to secure the vehicle if your fob battery runs out but it's always good to know these things. Isn't it?
By printing this document I state I have read and understood this disclaimer
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<urn:uuid:19490d9a-b24f-4081-b595-4a27a62419d1>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.evilution.co.uk/pages/print.php?mod=384
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.957624 | 231 | 1.734375 | 2 |
- Story Ideas
- Send Corrections
In light of the recent killings at an elementary school in New England I think we may have to think long and hard about putting professional security personnel at all of our schools. Perhaps a retired policeman or former soldier. Someone that has the experience and training to deal with a crisis. It would be so easy to say “It can’t happen here.” But it would be foolhardy to think we were somehow immune to such tragedy. The conversation must begin on finding safeguards to prevent such terrible things from happening. Stricter gun control alone is not enough. It appears the fiend’s mother aided him along on his nefarious path. Though I think we should make sure rules against dangerous criminals and the unstable mentally ill not being able to legally buy arms are strengthened and enforced that still is not enough. Even now the villain that shot President Reagan and his Press Secretary Jim Brady walks the streets. Anyone who demonstrates such a propensity for violence should not be allowed to go so free and so little restricted. We must do more to help keep our kids safe!
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<urn:uuid:01142db7-66f7-483b-83a1-367595f60b52>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.timesherald.com/article/20121219/OPINION02/121219439/rememberingpa.us/timesherald
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.975037 | 224 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The Cello Suites
J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
by Eric Siblin
Atlantic Monthly, 336 pp., $24
The Cello Suites, as its expository title suggests, features a multibiographical exploration across the centuries, and is accessible to both the musicological sophisticate and the curious neophyte. Eric Siblin, a former pop music critic for a Montreal newspaper, happened to attend a live performance of Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello. Musically speaking, he was smitten, while intellectually pulled in by two pieces of information in the program notes: that Bach’s original manuscript for the six famed works had never been found, and that the great cellist Pablo Casals brought the works out of obscurity to the concert hall and recording studio, where they now reign supreme—as well as having migrated widely and variously into popular culture.
Intrigued, Siblin took on the daunting task of exploring the suites from the musical, historical, and biographical contexts of both Bach and Casals, while also incorporating an autobiographical component centered around the process of his own search. He organizes all this into chapter-like sections corresponding to the six Suites’ six movements; per Suite, he allocates the first few movement-chapters to Bach, the next several to Casals, and the last to his own journey of exploration.
Our narrator meets archivists, musicologists, musicians (including a frail and elderly cellist in Siblin’s Montreal neighborhood, a longtime Casals fan and follower), and others along the way. Siblin even attempts to connect to the Suites by learning to play them. That Siblin did his homework shows not only throughout this volume but in the extensive bibliography and notes. The good news is how well the structure supports all this information: Bach’s political context, his various appointments and sponsors, performance and publication history (a mere nine works in his lifetime, the plates for some of which were even melted down for other use), his family life, the scholarship and speculation around Bach himself, and the unknown fate of the manuscript, the 90-plus years of Casals’s life, spanning two world wars, the Korean war, the annexation of Catalonia, and General Franco’s rule in Spain.
Walking with his father through Barcelona, the 13-year-old Casals had discovered an edition of the suites in the stacks in a small music shop. He had no idea Bach had written such pieces. Within 15 years, as the most famous cellist in the world, he was their champion, bringing them to his wide public through live performances and acclaimed recordings, beginning the long chain of their supreme reign. Casals’s own long life included many years spent in various places of exile, exerting political influence whenever he could. He opposed those who recognized Franco’s regime; living in France, he refused Hitler’s invitation to play in Germany. At times, his depression over world events and the political situation in his homeland eclipsed his spirit and paralyzed him. More than once, it was creating a Bach festival, or performing or recording the Suites, that pushed him back to stage and studio, and to the world.
In short, Casals brought the Cello Suites back to life, and Bach returned the favor.
Siblin does not dwell on any given tragedy as he reveals it, ably addressing political twists and turns and their consequences. Equally adeptly, he navigates Bach’s life and the complex world in which he functioned: the appointments and emperors, patrons and friends, some of whom played instruments and for whom Bach was (or may have been) writing, and of course, the famous family of 20 children. Less successful is Siblin’s indulgence in rhapsodic musical description: What might have served as a much-needed break from the heavy lifting of tracking insurrections or coups the reader may find simply annoying. Siblin introduces the prelude movement of each suite with a passage of programmatic narrative imposed on hyper-description, as in this about the Third Suite (C Major) Prelude:
Love is proclaimed in the downward, swooning scale, an amorous rush, a falling into someone’s arms. The pitch is romantic. The smitten notes promise everything. Again and again the lover makes his case, rising from the deep notes of desire to heavenly rhetoric.
Then he segues into romance novel-style biography:
She was the youngest daughter of a court trumpeter from Weissenfels. An exquisite singing voice. A praiseworthy figure. Barely twenty years old.
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<urn:uuid:d5d3856b-6b1b-4b6d-af9c-bf9890c48745>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/Pablo-Casals
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.966242 | 987 | 1.835938 | 2 |
updated 03:30 pm EDT, Tue September 11, 2007
States: Keep watching MS
Several US states have petitioned a federal judge to expand oversight of Microsoft for another five years, according to the Associated Press. Oversight of the company originally began in 2002, as part of an antitrust settlement; Microsoft was accused of hampering its competitors' ability to develop for the Windows operating system. This oversight is still set to expire federally and in 17 states as of November 12th, but attorneys for California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia have all joined to ask for the extension.
California would also like to extend part of a decree covering server software from November 2009 to 2012.
The problem the states may face is that the federal government believes oversight is producing the intended effect. The judge in the case, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, notes that any extension will have to serve an "identifiable purpose," especially since Microsoft appears set for full compliance by the November 12th deadline.
Furthermore, filings by the Justice Department indicate that it feels enough competition has been created for Microsoft, mainly in terms of web browsers such as Safari and Firefox. A department lawyer has also told Kollar-Kotelly that Windows Vista has already been reviewed, and should not create future antitrust violations. The last ruling of the current oversight period is scheduled for November 6th.
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<urn:uuid:5dad5740-79b9-4bc7-b81f-3d8905f22a3c>
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/09/11/states.keep.watching.ms/
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s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.97178 | 283 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Global PBS™ presents a threshold business opportunity in the $multi-billion dollar global pest control industry with an initial product entry to detect bed bugs. The rapid resurgence of bed bugs has become a priority for the hospitality industry, their patrons and governments worldwide. In today’s litigious society the reputation of a hotel’s brand is exposed to a myriad of problems associated with bed bugs. PBS technology offers a level of comfort which is marketable to patrons; and hotel owners will realize a defensible position with PBS technology installed. Global PBS will offer continuous electronic monitoring for bed bugs in hotels, university and military communities, cruise ships and corporate owned executive apartments. These have been identified as strong initial target markets; other opportunities will be identified during business development. In addition to the benefits to hospitality, cable companies are evaluating inclusion of this type of technology in their upcoming “4th bundle” of home automation and security. We can offer pest control companies a new product line and pesticide companies can benefit from our automated communications to pest management professionals (PMP).
Product / Service
Global PBS has proprietary product design ideas ready to develop under the protection of US Patent 7,395,161. Initially, we intend to develop a bed bug sensor network, manufacture the required number of sensor nodes for initial deployment and launch continuous, automated detection services to the hospitality industry. We believe early warning pest detection is best offered as a ‘subscription service’ rather than a product. As a service the consumer sees the benefit without an investment in evolving technological equipment. Global PBS benefits from control of equipment upgrades and ownership of the asset. A subscription service model offers predictive financial advantages.
According to Michael F. Potter, Entomologist at the University of Kentucky college of Agriculture, bed bugs are efficient hitchhikers and are usually transported in or on luggage, clothing, beds, furniture, and other items. Because bed bugs latch on, travelers can also bring the infestation to their homes, churches, schools and recreation areas. Global PBS is excited about opportunity in the commercial lodging industry; including recent green lodging efforts which help builders and owners move toward LEED and Green Seal certifications. We suggest pesticide use be restricted until a harmful pest has been detected. That position has been well received by the Green Movement as well as the hospitality industry. Global PBS also seeks to help the less apparent beneficiaries such as executive suites, college dormitories, military barracks, or cruise ships and airlines where transit guests may leave undesirable pests behind.
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<urn:uuid:37980246-138d-4da2-9b1b-46325ad678e2>
|
CC-MAIN-2013-20
|
http://www.floridaventuresourcing.com/startup/global-pbs/
|
s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz
|
en
| 0.945887 | 506 | 1.695313 | 2 |
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