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The Roy W. Cheesman elevation drawings for the proposed remodeling of the First Baptist Church, Santa Barbara, California
consist of one presentation board on which are two elevation drawings of the proposed renovation Victoria Street and Chapala
Street elevation perspectives.
Roy Walling Cheesman was born August 20, 1892 in Rochester, N.Y. He received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Cornell
University in 1917. He went on to receive a master’s degree in architecture from Cornell University, which he completed in
1919. From 1921 to 1926, Cheesman worked as a designer for the firm of Schenck and Williams in Dayton, Ohio. In 1926, Cheesman
established his own firm, which he operated until 1937, when he went into partnership with architect Lockard. The firm Lockard
and Cheesman dissolved in 1942, and Cheesman reestablished his independent practice. Roy W. Cheesman died in 1957. | <urn:uuid:85db707a-57b3-4c26-97cf-f323d142a6f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8bc404q/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976179 | 201 | 1.765625 | 2 |
The NYT reports that…
Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.
John Liming wonders why it is that Americans shed the blood, but China reaps the benefits.
I remember the signs that war protesters carried – signs that read things like, “No Blood For Oil.”
So America went looking for the WMDs that weren’t there and we lost a lot of brave American Lives in the process and American Taxpayers are still paying for the cost of the war – America did the fighting and paid the cost and now it is reported that someone else is reaping the benefits from Iraq’s huge oil reserves – not the United States – somebody else – China to be specific according to the reports I have read.
So my question is this: ”Did America go to war in Iraq and lose more than 4,000 brave fighting men and women in the seemingly endless conflict just so that someone else could have a ready supply of energy and fuel? Is that what it was all about and is that what really happened and is there anything that can be done about it – or is it too late – and what is the significance of it all?
It is reported that Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official who worked on Iraqi Oil Policy for The Bush Administration has said of the development over who gets the oil:
“We lost out. The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.”
My question? ”What is “We lost out” supposed to mean?
Why have we “Lost Out” and how have we “Lost Out” and is America going to accept the fact that we “Lost Out?”
Is this going to be the end of this story? Is there more? Is there a happy ending for The United States in all this after all the sacrifices that were made by our brave Military Personnel in that dreadful conflict?
I think the questions are worth asking, don’t you?
Does this kind of news irritate anyone else except me?
In the words of the scrappy old geezer somewhere in his private jet high above the metropolitan areas of the East Coast – “Screw that!”
John Liming publishes American Liberal Times | <urn:uuid:37267c4f-bdf1-413c-ae75-6a8a0204225c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mariopiperni.com/tag/liming | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973281 | 513 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Tamim Ansary is the author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes and West of Kabul, East of New York, among other books. For ten years he wrote a monthly column for Encarta.com, and has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, TomPaine.com, Edutopia, Parade, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Born in Afghanistan in 1948, he moved to the U.S. in 1964. He is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop. We invite you to join us in celebrating his major new work.
Games without Rules is an enlightening, accessible history of modern Afghanistan from the Afghan point of view, showing how Great Power conflicts have interrupted its ongoing, internal struggle to take form as a nation.
Most Westerners still see the war in Afghanistan as a contest between democracy and Islamist fanaticism. That war is real; but it sits atop an older struggle, between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan: a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.
Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out, and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every 40 to 60 years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told as story, and focusing on key events and personalities, Games without Rules provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.
"In "Games Without Rules", Tamim Ansary has written the most engaging, accessible and insightful history of Afghanistan. With gifted prose and revealing details, Ansary gives us the oft-neglected Afghan perspective of the wars, foreign meddling and palace intrigue that has defined the past few centuries between the Indus and Oxus. This brilliant book should be required reading for anyone involved in the current war there -- and anyone who wants to understand why Afghanistan will not be at peace anytime soon." -- Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan
Added to the calendar on Thursday Nov 8th, 2012 11:45 AM | <urn:uuid:3eec4897-bb50-4efd-994a-88648c99c59c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/08/18725314.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939917 | 486 | 1.5 | 2 |
It was great to get reacquainted with Portland. Apart from a quick overnight trip about 15 years ago, I had not visited since the 1970s and 80s with most of my time then spent around the harbour and foreshore. The town really has not changed, but now, compared to when I was a pre-teen on Sunday afternoon outings, I have greater appreciation of Portland’s history.
It did turn out that some of those Sunday afternoon outings were to witness events which are now engrained in the history of Portland. At one time, around 1979, we drove from Hamilton to Portland just to see a live sheep export ship! Sounds boring, and it probably was for an 11 year old, but a storm was brewing . The following months, into 1980 saw protests, black banned transport companies and disgruntled meat process workers from the local Borthwicks abattoir. The issue was the talk of the Western District and beyond, at a time when the Western District “rode on the sheep’s back”.
Another visit was to see the ongoing construction of the Alcoa plant, now a familiar fixture on Portland’s landscape. Construction began in 1981 and smelting began in 1986. The arrival of Alcoa was a milestone in Portland’s history, offering employment and growth.
Over a series of posts I will share some of what we saw on our recent visit, including the early architecture of Portland, the Cape Nelson Lighthouse, Bridgewater and the Old Portland cemetery.
It will be a busy month. As well as school holidays and extra “real” work for me, there will be a January Passing of the Pioneers and I will be joining my fellow geneabloggers for the Australia Day 2012 blog: Wealth for Toil . I also will be posting my family’s stories, which is really why I’m here. I just get a bit sidetracked. I will share the stories of Sarah and Walter Harman, two more of the children of Joseph and Sarah Harman. I am already looking forward to February when school returns, so I can have a rest!
Just to give you a taste of what is to come, this a photo I took of the Cape Nelson Lighthouse Keeper’s cottage. | <urn:uuid:454036c7-0ab3-433b-8d48-714b829362aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mywdfamilies.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/home-from-portland/?like=1&_wpnonce=2fbededf31 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973575 | 471 | 1.5 | 2 |
- General medical and nursing care is provided for acute and minor medical.
- Medical screening and referral is provided for major acute problems.
- Health Service is now able to evaluate and treat gynecological problems. We also offer family planning services by appointments only. There is a non-cancellation fee of $10.
- Health Services diagnoses and treats most athletic injuries. Fractures are diagnosed and referred.
- Well-patient physical examinations are provided.
- Procedures performed by Health Services include suturing of minor superficial lacerations, ear irrigations and staining of the eye with fluorescein dye for scratches.
- We provide Tuberculin skin testing, Hepatitis B, Meningitis, and Tetanus/Diptheria vaccinations, which must be paid for by the student. Costs for these immunizations vary.
Immunization Requirement for admissions
- Allergy Injections: Allergy Shots are given as ordered by the patient’s physician/allergist, ONLY when a physician or nurse practitioner is present. The physician/allergist may specify which medical professional is needed for the allergy injection. Students must have received their initial does prior to coming to Health Services for injections. See Allergy Shot- Information for specific instructions.
- Medications: Medications commonly used by our physicians are purchased from a wholesale drug company. They are prepackaged in quantities used by our physicians and dispensed at a lower cost to the students, as compared to retail pharmacies. Patients who need less frequently used medications are given prescriptions to be filled at retail pharmacies.
- Laboratory and Phlebotomy: We collect specimens (blood, urine, etc.) for numerous tests that are sent to contract laboratories or the state laboratory for analyzing. Due to Department of Health and Human Services’ federal regulations, only a few laboratory tests are performed on site at Student Health Services. Although most laboratory testing is ordered by Health Services personnel, students may bring orders from their private health care provider and results will be faxed to a primary car physician with student permission.
In-house procedures include Rapid Strep and Mono testing, urinalysis, urine pregnancy testing, fingerstick blood sugar, and microscopic evaluation (when indicated).
- Inpatient care is limited only to an observation stay of a few hours’ duration.
- Health Education: Both the medical and nursing staffs consider education about the patient’s medical problem(s) a prime responsibility and try to make each patient’s visit an educational experience as time permits. | <urn:uuid:84625039-3e7e-4cad-86c1-49007419f2fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tntech.edu/healthservices/services/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945467 | 527 | 1.78125 | 2 |
- Why Colby?
- Request Information
- College Profile
- Student Perspectives
- Alumni Success
- For Counselors
- Contact Admissions
ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
Colby 360 is grounded in the philosophy that teaching is a central component of student affairs. As such, its organizational structure and personnel and resource management strategies must be constructed in a way that supports this approach. Key elements of the planning process were to assess the organizational chart and deployment of staffing resources, review facilities, and evaluate the allocation of financial resources. Out of that process, four overarching management objectives have been adopted to guide organizational decision making for the Division of Student Affairs:
These objectives provide the foundation for a number of changes to the organizational structure and management strategy in student affairs.
Objective: Emphasize direct, personal interaction with students throughout all student affairs programs.
Rationale: Student learning is best supported by close interaction between students and instructors. Similarly, close interaction between students and members of the student affairs staff has a positive impact on student learning in residential and co-curricular settings.
Example 1: In the fall 2007 term the Office of the Dean of Students introduced the Advising Dean Program, which supports and enhances Colby’s commitment to first-rate, individual advising of students. The College has a well-established program of academic advising wherein all members of the Colby faculty serve as advisors to both first-year students and students majoring in a particular discipline. Recognizing that the types of issues with which students require assistance do not always fit neatly into the academic realm, the Office of the Dean of Students established the advising dean system to ensure that all students have a point of contact for personal and administrative advising throughout their tenure at the College. A detailed description of the Advising Dean Program can be found in Appendix I.
Example 2: The newly created Office of Campus Life (described in detail below) is adopting a staffing model designed to maximize interaction with students. Specifically, during the 2007-2008 academic year two full-time staff members who are recent Colby graduates will work primarily with students to support student government, social programming options, and residential education. The guiding philosophy is that this staffing model will lead to more, and more meaningful, opportunities for student affairs staff to mentor and “coach” students in residential and co-curricular educational settings.
Objective: Develop a staffing and organizational framework that supports the pedagogy of Colby 360.
Rationale: Colby 360 represents an approach to residential and co-curricular education that is centered on teaching and instruction. As such, the organizational framework is designed to support desired learning outcomes.
Example 1: The Office of Campus Life was created in July 2007 through the merging of all staff, administrative functions, and programs previously overseen by the offices of residential life and housing, student activities, and outdoor safety and education. The Office of Campus Life provides a platform for meaningful collaboration among the programming arm of the Division of Student Affairs, student organizations (including student government), and other areas of the College. This in turn will enable the staff to be more deliberate in working to enhance intellectual life on campus and the learning outcomes and strategic objectives of Colby 360.
Key initiatives that have already been introduced include:
· A First-Year Student Orientation program emphasizing intellectual life and the academic program at Colby. A partnership of Colby faculty, Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Institute for Global Ethics, introduced the day-long Meaningful Work and Life at Colby program as the centerpiece of orientation.
· An overhauled and reconceived approach to residence hall programming called CL 6, which is focused on six learning outcomes and aims to promote them through active participation in existing programs and lectures being sponsored at the College rather than requiring hall staff members to develop and implement programs on their own.
· A restructured approach to new student arrival day and orientation for new student parents/families.
· Plans to review and restructure housing selection in ways that advance the learning outcomes identified in Colby 360 (e.g., advancing student engagement with diversity through student housing, introducing merit-based procedures for some parts of housing selection that would require students to produce written proposals and/or give short oral presentations as part of the process, etc.).
· Work with the Student Government Association to restructure the student treasury to increase transparency, introduce checks and balances and greater accountability, and ensure fiscal responsibility to an organization that has a history of budget deficits over the past 10 to15 years.
Example 2: The staff of the Garrison Foster Health Center is developing strategies to use student health services as a platform for students to develop a greater understanding of issues of personal health and wellness as well as matters of public health.
Example 3: In the fall of 2006 the Building Colby Community through Art and Culture (BCCAC) was introduced as a way of increasing opportunities for Colby students to experience the arts on campus and in the region. By contracting services of an external consultant with expertise in community-based art promotion and production, we have been able to give Colby students more opportunities to develop planning and organizational skills, enhance their understanding of the arts, and work collaboratively with a diverse collection of students, faculty, and staff. Due to the success of BCCAC in 2006-2007, we have extended our relationship with this particular consultant to include work with the Pugh Community Board (PCB). This will facilitate the cross-cultivation of interests among the culturally based groups that make up the PCB with the arts communities on campus.
Example 4: In the fall of 2007, oversight of all student disciplinary functions was centralized under one associate dean. This move was made to increase consistency, enhance transparency, and improve efficiency in the student conduct and disciplinary system. A committee has been formed to conduct a comprehensive review of and recommend structural changes to the policies and procedures governing the student disciplinary process. The student disciplinary process plays a vital role in shaping student life on campus and can provide important opportunities for students to learn about and practice self-governance, community oversight, and ethical decision making. The reorganization of staffing and review of student disciplinary procedures is intended to better facilitate student learning while, also ensuring that students facing disciplinary action have access to a fair process.
Example 5: During the 2007-2008 academic year, a comprehensive review is being conducted of the chaplaincy and support for student religious/spiritual life on campus. Understanding the importance of spirituality in students’ lives, the Division of Student Affairs seeks to review and assess the current organization of the chaplaincy at the College to enhance institutional support for student spiritual life.
Objective: Commit to a culture of planning in the Division of Student Affairs.
Rationale: Deliberate, goal-based planning is essential to advance the educational objectives of 360° learning. Given the plethora of administrative functions for which the Division of Student Affairs is responsible, absent a deliberate, planning-based approach to management, staff and departments tend to get be mired in a reactive stance – putting out “brush fires” rather than focusing on educational opportunities. Introducing a strategic approach to residential and co-curricular education will enable us to advance the program and contribute to student learning outcomes in a more fulsome way.
Example 1: Beginning in the fall of 2006, all staff members, offices, and programs were required to develop a set of annual goals approved by the vice president for student affairs/dean of students that serves as the basis for annual program and staff performance evaluations.
Example 2: Through the 2007 spring and summer, each student affair department/program was also required to develop and adopt a vision/mission statement to serve as the basis for future goal setting and decision making.
Example 3: The Division of Student Affairs has committed to adopting three to five annual strategic objectives focused on addressing key issues in student life in a timely, agile, and action-oriented manner. For the 2007-2008 academic year the annual strategic objectives are:
To advance these objectives four interdepartmental working groups have been formed and charged with identifying two to three action items under each objective, developing an implementation plan, and carrying out implementation. The philosophy behind the annual strategic objective initiative and the working groups is to commit to taking tangible steps to address large-scale, vexing issues in student life. While permanent solutions for issues like alcohol abuse do not likely exist, by adopting a focused, strategic approach we can effect change and improve conditions on campus. Moreover, by giving the working groups a short timeframe in which to do their work and begin implementation we can infuse vitality and agility to the program, which is critical to staying current and relevant to college student life.
Objective: Maximize financial responsibility and efficiency throughout the Division of Student Affairs.
Rationale: Effective financial oversight is an essential component of any well-functioning organization. By focusing more energy on budget planning, financial management of allocated resources, and exploring possible external funding opportunities we can improve the overall quality of the organization and improve outcomes for students.
Example 1: Explore the possibility of working with human resources and the budget office to provide a budget management workshop for student affairs staff. Most mid-and upper-level student affairs managers have little or no training in financial management. A basic workshop on preparing and managing a budget, as well as basic information about the College’s annual operating budget and fund accounting, would help them to be better budget managers and College citizens.
Example 2: Work with the college relations staff to identify areas of the student affairs program that may be appropriate targets for external funding. Particularly as we explore programs around enhancing understanding of diversity and human difference, civic engagement, and alcohol/substance abuse prevention, there may be grant writing opportunities worth exploring. Similarly, other aspects of the Colby 360 initiative may prove to be appealing opportunities for potential donors. | <urn:uuid:db8848bc-acba-4261-8403-426564d78451> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colby.edu/administration_cs/student-affairs/colby360/organization-and-management.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947415 | 2,027 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Two wrongs don't make a right, AOPA tells Venice officials
Shortening runways to move safety zones onto airport property does not make an airport safer or more efficient. AOPA is making that point to Venice, Fla., officials who are considering shortening two runways at Venice Municipal Airport. The FAA won't go for the city's proposal either. The agency invested $4 million in the airport last year to rehabilitate Runway 13/31. AOPA President Phil Boyer helped celebrate the reopening and was the first to take off from the new runway. AOPA supports other proposals to the update that would bring the airport into better compliance with FAA standards. AOPA Airport Support Network volunteer John Yurosko has been involved in that process to represent general aviation's needs.
August 17, 2007 | <urn:uuid:db259075-01b7-49f6-986b-3d7359c77f13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/region/2007/070817fl.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952692 | 165 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Editor's note: Nearly three years after President Obama declared the Guantanamo prison for terrorist suspects would be closed, the camp in Cuba remains open. Of the more than 750 inmates that were once held there, fewer than 200 remain now. CNN contributor Jenifer Fenton interviewed some of the former inmates, and one of the guards.
(CNN) -- "We were told that they were all guilty ... that these were the worst of the worst," Brandon Neely said about the detainees who were arriving at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"We were told that these guys, all of them, had either helped plan 9/11 or were caught red handed on the battlefield, weapon in hand, fighting American soldiers ... These are the people that would kill you in a heartbeat if you turn your back on them."
In June 2000, Specialist Neely, now 31, enlisted for five years as a military police officer. He left later that summer for Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for training and was assigned to Fort Hood, Texas upon graduating. In early January 2002, Neely boarded a plane to Guantanamo Bay, where he would be stationed for the next six months. He had volunteered for the deployment not knowing what it was or where it would take him.
"I was asleep in my barracks one morning. They knocked on my door and ... told me there were two deployments that were going to happen in the deployment area."
Neely agreed to go on one and then went out with his friends later that night. The next day, he was informed that he would be stationed at Guantanamo. "I was kind of mad that I was going to go to Guantanamo instead of the front lines of the war," Neely recalled.
His superiors told him he would be stationed a detention facility, Neely said. "They had decided from the start that it was different from an enemy prison of war camp ... We were told in the first couple of minutes at Gitmo that this was a detention facility and the Geneva Conventions would not be in effect ... There was no army manual on this, no standard operation procedure."
Neely did not receive any special or additional training for working at Guantanamo, he said. He, and the rest of the company (about 110 people), arrived just a few days before the first detainees did. Contractors "were still welding the cells at the time," he said.
As a military policeman, Neely was not involved in interrogations. The company's assignments included escorting duties -- taking detainees to the showers or a medical examination and filling the water buckets in the cells.
"At Camp X-Ray you would have to take a water hose and put water in their buckets ... They had two buckets, one for water and one to use as the restroom," Neely said. Personnel could also be assigned to check identifications or to the Internal Reaction Force team. The jobs rotated on a daily basis for the most part.
On January 11, the prisoners began to arrive. "We were told those [detainees] were the top guys. This is the group that they had to get out of Afghanistan because they were literally the worst of the worst," Neely said. He was not sure what to expect.
"I didn't really understand what a terrorist was going to look like. I know that sounds funny and really naive. I was kind of shocked that a lot of them were very little and malnourished." Neely remembered commenting at the time: "If these are the world's most dangerous men, we don't have very much to worry about."
The detainees were wearing blacked out goggles, leg shackles, three-piece suits and ear muffs. Some had gloves on, Neely said.
There was an incident on the first day that he was involved in. He said after the detainees were processed, their pictures and fingerprints were taken and they were given a quick check over. Then they were to be escorted to their cells.
Neely said he and his escorting partner were taking one detainee assigned to Alpha Block. They started to walk but the detainee was shaking and would not walk. "So we started yelling and screaming at him to walk faster ... We were actually walking so fast and he wouldn't walk so we had to pick him up off the ground and we were carrying him."
The detainee was put in his cell with Neely taking control of his upper body. His leg shackles and right handcuff were taken off. Neely said when he went to take off the left handcuff the detainee jerked toward him.
"We started yelling at him and screaming at him not to move," Neely said. Neely said the detainee continued to jerk when he and his partner tried again to remove the cuff.
"Next thing I know I slammed him on the ground and I was on top of him. He was trying to get up. I kept pushing his head down to the... concrete floor." Neely said he could hear people on the radio calling "code red Alpha Block." His escorting partner had backed out of the cell and closed the cell door.
"It was just me and the detainee in there." The IRF team "opened the cell door, grabbed me by the back of my uniform and pulled me outside and they just went in there hogtied him and left him there for I don't know how long."
A few weeks later, Neely said he was told by one of the English-speaking detainees why the man kept moving. "The reason he had moved was not to fight... He still had the blacked out goggles on so he could not see. He thought he was going to be executed," Neely said. "A lot of those guys thought they were going to be executed when we put them on their knees and started talking their cuffs off."
Neely said he felt ashamed. He said he witnessed abuse by the guards and others during his six months at the camp.
He said in one incident that occurred in the first few weeks at the camp, a detainee refused to drink a can of the protein drink Ensure, which many detainees were given because they were malnourished. The IRF was called to restrain the detainee so a medic could give him the drink. Upon entering the detainee's cell, one of the IRF team hit the detainee with a shield, Neely said.
The entire team was soon on top of the detainee so it was difficult to see what has happening, according to Neely. The IRF team then stood the detainee up and handcuffed him to the cage fencing and the medic entered the cage, grabbed the detainee by the neck and emptied the can of Ensure into his mouth, but he detainee did not swallow it, Neely said.
The medic then punched the detainee and walked out of the cage like nothing had happened, he added. The detainee was un-cuffed from the cage, hogtied and left that way for several hours, according to Neely, who said he later learned that the detainee thought he was being poisoned.
In another incident, when the camp had been operational for about two months, a detainee allegedly made a comment about one of the female guards and the IRF team was called to Bravo Block.
"They went up to the cell door and they told [the detainee] to turn around and put his hands on his head. He didn't listen," Neely said. The IRF team unlocked the cell door, at which point the detainee turned around put his hands on his head and went on his knees.
The IRF team opened the cell door and the one team member carrying a riot shield threw it off to the side. "And whatever little speed he could gather from that short distance he jumped up in the air and came down with his knee right in the middle of the back of [the detainee] and landed right on top of him."
The other four men started punching the detainee. "Then someone on the inside called the female MP... in there to hit him. And she did," Neely said.
When it was all over the detainee was in a pool of blood unconscious, according to Neely. The detainee was taken by ambulance to the main hospital in Guantanamo. The detainee was later released from Guantanamo Bay without charge, Neely said.
Asked about the allegations, a U.S. military spokeswoman told CNN via email that the Department of Defense does not tolerate the abuse of detainees and takes such allegations seriously. She however denied there was a pattern of systematic mistreatment.
"All credible allegations of abuse are thoroughly investigated, and appropriate disciplinary action is taken when those allegations are substantiated," Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde said.
But she added: "Although there have been substantiated cases of abuse in the past, for which U.S. service members have been held accountable, our enemies also have employed a deliberate campaign of exaggerations and fabrications. The suggestion that DoD personnel, the overwhelming majority of whom serve honorably, are or ever were engaged in systematic mistreatment of detainees is false and does not withstand scrutiny."
As for Neely, he still recalls his conversations with the detainees who spoke English.
"I was always kind of worried about them because of all the stuff I had heard," Neely said. "We were told they were all guilty." The two prisoners he spoke to the most were former British detainees Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul. At Guantanamo, they would talk about music and normal subjects. "Eminem and Dr. Dre... at the time [they] were real big," Neely said.
Ahmed "would tell us he was from London. It was kind of weird, because here this guy was in Guantanamo behind this cell door and here I was on the outside ... He was actually doing a lot of the same stuff that I was doing in the United States ... We had a little bit in common."
Ahmed and Rasul were released from Guantanamo and transferred to Britain in 2004. They sued for damages against Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. secretary of state, and other senior military officers over alleged inhumane treatment at Guantanamo. The case was dismissed because the alleged abuse occurred before the U.S Supreme Court said that the constitution covered detainees in Guantanamo.
Neely returned to Fort Hood after his six-month deployment at Guantanamo was up. When he left, he signed a non-disclosure statement -- which he said was routine -- stating that he would not talk to the press, write a book or make a movie. He was told he could be prosecuted if he did, but has gone public about his concerns because he disagrees with U.S. policies in places like Guantanamo and Iraq. He has also testified to the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas at the University of California, Davis.
"I have no problem fighting and dying for this country, but I am not going to kill or be killed for something I don't believe in," he said.
Neely deployed to Iraq in 2003, returned to the U.S. the following year and left the military in 2005, when his contract was up. In 2007, Neely did not respond to a recall for active duty and he was honorably discharged. He now works as a police officer in Texas, where he is raising three children.
He thinks the detention center should be closed. "I think someone would be naive to say that everybody that ever stepped foot in Guantanamo was innocent," Neely said. We know they are not, but "the fact is there is a better way to do it ... you can't just throw the principles and the values of the country and the law of the land out the window because it benefits you." Detaining innocent people and depriving them of their due process is "a significant black eye on the Unites States," Neely added.
There will be a time and a place when Neely will tell his children -- the oldest is now 10 -- about Guantanamo. I will "give them all the information and let them make their own opinion ... I'll just tell them the truth ... I will tell them that I have been part of it."
Neely initially contacted Rasul via Facebook and then met with Ahmed and Rasul, the two former British detainees, in London almost two years ago.
Neely wanted to get in touch with them to say that he was sorry for the part he played in their detention at Guantanamo. "I was very nervous to meet them," Neely said. He did not know what might happen. "I wasn't sure if they would hate me, yell at me," he added. "I can honestly say though when I left London I left with two more friends then I arrived with." | <urn:uuid:79132b91-5c5b-4606-a4bd-32b982b9922f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/28/world/meast/guantanamo-guard/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.994486 | 2,613 | 1.78125 | 2 |
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are feeling better about the economy again, but will it last this time?
A widely watched barometer of consumer confidence surged in February to its highest level in a year as Americans took note of improving job prospects among friends and family and falling unemployment, which is now at a three-year low.
The brighter assessment released Tuesday by a private research group reflected a more upbeat attitude for the nation generally as the economy picks up. That is a boon for President Obama as he seeks re-election. Polls, including a recent Associated Press-GfK survey, show the Democratic incumbent is beginning to benefit politically from improved views of the economy.
"The economy is getting momentum. Clearly, shoppers are more optimistic about their job prospects," said Amna Asaf, economist at Capital Economics.
The rising confidence among consumers gave confidence to Wall Street, too, helping it to reclaim the last of the ground it held before plunging into the depths of the Great Recession. The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 13,000 on Tuesday for the first time since May 19, 2008, four months before the fall of Lehman Brothers investment bank and the worst of the financial crisis.
Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank, called it "a momentous day for investor confidence."
Tuesday's gain puts the Dow 1,160 points below its all-time high, set Oct. 9, 2007. The Great Recession began two months later.
The milestone could draw some fence-sitting investors back into the market and add to the gains, said Brian Gendreau, market strategist at Cetera Financial Group.
But consumer confidence is still below the level of a healthy economy, and trouble could lie ahead. Rising gas prices could sully shoppers' mood and derail the economic recovery. There are also fears about a nuclear showdown with Iran and the festering European debt crisis. Those worries could hurt demand for U.S. imports and make American companies pull back in hiring.
The confidence index is closely watched because consumer spending constitutes 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.
The big question mark is the price of gasoline, which Asaf said has climbed 20 cents per gallon since the confidence survey concluded two weeks ago.
The price of gas is a big issue because it has an immediate effect on shoppers' pocketbooks, particularly low- to middle-income households that are already squeezed by higher costs for basics such as food.
The average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline was $3.69, according to the Lundberg Survey of fuel prices released Sunday.
The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index now stands at 70.8, significantly higher than the expected 63. A reading of 90 or above indicates a healthy economy. But the index has not reached that level since December 2007, when the recession began.
Still, Tuesday's numbers were closer to levels that indicate a stable economy than to the danger zone that would suggest trouble.
A year ago, the index rose to 72 as the economic outlook was improving. The February 2011 reading was the highest since before the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. After that, the outlook soured again over the spring and summer.
Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research, hopes the upward trend will have staying power this time.
"Consumers are really feeling like the worst is behind them," she said. "We are finally seeing some traction, and hopefully over the next few months, that will prove sustainable."
The index dropped to an all-time low of 25.3 in February 2009. Over the past 12 months, it has been going back and forth from the high 60s to the low 40s on continued worries about the economy.
In fact, confidence fell last October to 40.9, the lowest since March 2009, during the thick of the recession.
The Conference Board survey of consumers, conducted from Feb. 1 through Feb. 15, showed shoppers are feeling better about the job market.
Those anticipating more jobs in the months ahead increased to 18.7 percent from 16.4 percent, while those anticipating fewer jobs declined to 16.9 percent from 19.1 percent.
Shoppers have good reason to feel a little better. The government reported that 243,000 jobs were added in January, pushing down the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years. Unemployment has fallen five months in a row for the first time since 1994.
Meanwhile, the four-week average of people seeking unemployment aid fell to the lowest point in four years.
Even the housing market, though still weak, is showing signs of recovery. Home values remain depressed, according to the latest snapshot from a widely followed Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index. But more people signed contracts to buy homes in January than in nearly two years, according to seasonally adjusted figures from the National Association of Realtors.
In a separate report, the Commerce Department said U.S. businesses slashed spending on machinery and equipment in January after a tax break expired. That pushed orders for long-lasting manufacturing goods down 4 percent, the biggest monthly decline in three years.
But economists suggested the drop was largely because most companies made big purchases at the end of last year to qualify for the tax credit, which expired at the end of December. They noted that demand for so-called core capital goods, a good measure of business investment plans, fell sharply in January after surging in December to an all-time high.
Durable goods are products such as appliances and cars expected to last at least three years. Orders tend to fluctuate sharply from one month to the next. But the overall trend in orders has increased steadily since the recession ended nearly three years ago.
"We see no evidence of underlying slowing in the industrial economy," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. "So we look for a rebound in February and the re-emergence of the upward trend over the next couple of months."
AP Economics Writers Martin Crutsinger and Derek Kravitz and AP Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:62bf07bb-adee-4a91-8a2c-7be82ae01b6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2012/02/28/consumer-confidence-up-in-february_print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967114 | 1,311 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Richest Americans Get $1.4 Million Tax Cut in Pawlenty Plan
Pawlenty’s $11.6 trillion tax-cut plan, which reduces rates on income, capital gains, interest, estates and dividends, is almost three times larger than the proposals endorsed by House Republicans.
Compared with current tax policy, 63.6 percent of U.S. households would receive a tax cut, with most of the remainder experiencing no change. Almost half of the benefits would flow to taxpayers in the top 1 percent of income distribution, or those earning more than $593,011 in 2013.
“It’s heavily weighted toward benefits for the wealthy, giving big tax cuts for the wealthy, and it makes the tax system much less progressive,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington, which conducted the analysis and released it today. The center is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.
In a June 7 speech, Pawlenty called for cutting the top individual tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent and reducing the top corporate rate to 15 percent from 25 percent. He proposed eliminating taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and estates and allowing “small businesses” that currently pay taxes at individual rates to pay at the corporate rate.
Cuts for ‘Everybody’
“We reduce taxes for everybody,” Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant said in an interview today in response to the distributional analysis. “The goal here is to create jobs and grow the economy, and to do that, we needed to reduce taxes on people who were entrepreneurs, small business owners.”
Pawlenty’s plan would eliminate corporate tax breaks and retain all individual tax breaks. Pawlenty would expand the 10 percent income tax bracket to cover the first $50,000 of income for individuals and the first $100,000 for married couples.
Compared with fully extending all the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, Pawlenty’s plan would cost the government $7.6 trillion in revenue over the next decade, according to the study. Compared with current law, under which the tax cuts will expire at the end of 2012, Pawlenty’s plan would cost the Treasury $11.6 trillion in foregone revenue, the study found. The campaign estimates the revenue loss at $2 trillion amid the 5 percent annual economic growth Pawlenty is seeking.
The proposed tax cuts in Pawlenty’s plan are much larger than those proposed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp of Michigan, both Republicans. They both want to keep federal revenue at the same level it would reach if Congress extended the expiring tax cuts indefinitely. Ryan and Camp have supported top corporate and individual rates of 25 percent, paired with cuts in tax breaks.
The study is imprecise because the researchers made some assumptions that might not match Pawlenty’s proposal. For example, the analysis assumes that Pawlenty’s plan would eliminate the alternative minimum tax. Conant said he would reduce AMT rates and index the exemption, causing fewer taxpayers to be affected by it than under current law.
Pawlenty, the 50-year-old former governor of Minnesota, said 5 percent annual average economic growth would help make up the revenue gap. Conant said such growth would be driven by the tax plan as well as by spending cuts, regulatory overhaul and monetary policy changes that Pawlenty is proposing.
‘No Silver Bullet’
“Some of our critics are looking at just one segment of it in isolation, and that’s sort of missing the point,” Conant said. “There’s no silver bullet to our economy. You need a comprehensive plan. That’s what we’re offering.”
Hitting the 5 percent growth target won’t be easy. The U.S. economy hasn’t expanded by 5 percent in a single year since 1984.
“If that 5 percent becomes 4, 3, 2 or 1 percent, we’re in deep doo-doo,” Pawlenty said during a question-and-answer session after the June 7 speech. “So this isn’t about whether some people are going to get wealthier or not. It’s about what are those things that we need to do to make it more likely, not less likely, that businesses are going to start, grow, add employees, buy capital equipment, build buildings, conduct research and do all the things it takes to keep a private economy going.”
Conant declined to identify the economists who are advising Pawlenty. The campaign plans to introduce its policy team in the coming weeks, he said.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at [email protected]
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions. | <urn:uuid:0c870aa9-ce28-4ae6-9ddc-cc3a92f6aaf8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-10/pawlenty-to-give-richest-a-1-4-million-tax-cut.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951312 | 1,079 | 1.734375 | 2 |
(cf Crimes Act 1900, s 352AA)(1) A police officer may, with or without a warrant, arrest a person if the police officer suspects on reasonable grounds that the person is a person who is unlawfully at large.(2) A police officer who arrests a person under this section must, as soon as is reasonably practicable, take the person, and any property found on the person, before an authorised officer to be dealt with according to law.(3) The authorised officer may, by warrant, commit the person to a correctional centre, to be kept in custody under the same authority, and subject to the same conditions and with the benefit of the same privileges and entitlements, as would have applied to the person if the person had not been unlawfully at large.(4) In this section, a reference to a person unlawfully at large is a reference to a person who is at large (otherwise than because of escaping from lawful custody) at a time when the person is required by law to be in custody in a correctional centre.Note. Inmates of correctional centres who are unlawfully at large may also be arrested under section 39 of the Crimes (Administration of Sentences) Act 1999. | <urn:uuid:a815733f-35d3-44a6-b6e2-5f91a0822872> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/fragview/inforce/act+103+2002+pt.8-sec.102+0+N?nohits=y&tocnav=y&xref=Type%3Dact%20AND%20Year%3D2002%20AND%20no%3D103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972307 | 240 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Innovation and the University-Industry Interface
Editor’s note: This article was published last July 2, during our first week in existence. Given the attention to last week’s post by Chris Gabrieli questioning Harvard’s legacy of tech transfer, we wanted to share Sahin’s thoughtful observations with a wider audience.
The buzzword of the 1980s and ’90s was “entrepreneurship.” This decade, the obsession is with “innovation” as the presumed path to riches for people and nations. Since the key generators of innovation are research universities and the key implementers of innovation are companies, there is an ever-increasing focus on making the university and industry interface more effective. But will the twain meet? It could be very difficult.
The question is critical, and there is no better place to ask than here in Kendall Square, at the confluence of great universities, multinational companies in both the life sciences and information technology, and scores of start-ups.
Though hugely complementary, academic and industrial entities hold different values and are motivated by different incentives. One key to surmounting the many obstacles to successful collaboration is to better understand the two worlds, identifying those differences that are truly reconcilable, temporarily reconcilable, and totally irreconcilable. There’s no point in dealing with irreconcilable areas.
Universities are akin to malls: they have a common roof and share services. The mall manager, like the university president, cannot dictate to the stores or close them at will. But a company is more like a department store. The president can reorganize the store whenever he or she wants. So, even as they share the same title, the two presidents hold vastly different powers. Think of the former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, who was forced out last year under pressure from his “store managers,” and the current president of the UMass system, Jack Wilson, whose “store managers” in June passed a no-confidence measure against him.
University faculty are excellent at starting novel things and very poor at completing them in industrial terms. The rewards for starting a novelty are reporting it in publications. But for industry, starting is secondary to finishing in terms of bringing successful products and services to the market. Realizable market value far outweighs novelty.
Universities have a peculiar secondary workforce: students. A lot of work in academia is accomplished by students who actually pay to work. Not only that, but after they are “fired” (i.e., graduate) they continue to pay. What company has employees who pay to work and continue to pay? This “paying,” “transient” workforce gives academia unique characteristics and strengths not found in industry. Further, this workforce never ages. Students in any era tend to span the same age bracket.
Partly because of the transitory nature of the workforce and partly because the faculty focuses on novel “starts,” true production prototypes from which commercial products will be created do not get built. Most universities do not have, and cannot have, pilot plants. As a result, most university-generated innovations do not make it past the early stages.
Academic institutions have huge reputations and visibility, but a very small or dedicated core staff. For instance, MIT is huge in reach, breadth, impact, and reputation. Yet its core faculty has hovered around 900 since 1950. Contrast this with IBM at some 350,000 employees.
Then there are the differences in perception. A lot of academics view themselves as selfless workers at the service of humankind, while viewing business/industry as the contaminated world. Industry holds similar negative views of academia, believing it to be populated by people who are disconnected from reality and hold irrelevant—or even dangerous—ideas. While the distrust between academe and industry is less pronounced today than in the past, it certainly still exists.
Faculty members think they work very hard. Business executives think academics hardly work. Academics tend to think business people are vastly overpaid.
Businesses think academic institutions have very poor business models: they shun growth and charge prices (tuition) well below cost. Yet, on the average, companies survive barely a few decades. Universities mark time in centuries. So one wonders who has the better “business model.”
The challenge is to connect a long-lived entity that is loosely organized and that distrusts or at least is suspicious of the outside world with one that is results oriented and ruled by an iron-fisted and truly empowered “unitary executive” president, but has a much shorter business life.
It’s critical to make this connection stronger and more enduring if we want to receive the full benefits of the university innovation machine. The first step is to understand and respect the differences. What a loss it would be if universities become like businesses (likely) and businesses like universities (unlikely). The second step is to live with the irreconcilable differences (the university president cannot order change; universities have a “transient” workforce, etc.) and build the interfaces accordingly.
I don’t have definitive answers, and I’d love to hear some great ideas from readers. In a future column I will offer what I have come up with and to an extent experimented with as someone who is squarely between the two worlds, and part of both. | <urn:uuid:69892c9f-8a10-4ffb-a734-cdf1f2d2845d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/02/19/innovation-and-the-university-industry-interface/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963902 | 1,128 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Check out Phillip, who blogs about beekeeping (among other things) from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada—he's finding success as a Backwards Beekeeper in a place with a very short summer indeed.
The foundationless frames are working. YES! This is what it’s all about it. This was the big moment of truth — and they did it. The bees had no problem building comb from foundationless frames...
Next summer when we can hopefully harvest some honey, we’ll go with foundationless frames for the honey supers too.
That way when the honey is capped and good to go, we’ll just cut the comb right out of the frames and extract it by following the crush-and-strain method.
I’m feeling encouraged by what we’ve seen today. I’d love to be the first successful Backwards Beekeeper in Newfoundland.
Natural Foundationless Comb (Phillip on Mud Songs) | <urn:uuid:274a7f62-a454-4e15-aa36-c85deed1687e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.backwardsbeekeepers.com/2010/08/foundationless-success-in-canada.html?showComment=1283032791105 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941053 | 200 | 1.75 | 2 |
Democratic Convention Speech:
Cong. James Clyburn
CHARLOTTE, Sept. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a transcript of a speech, as prepared for delivery, by The Honorable James Clyburn, Assistant Democratic Leader and Member of the US House of Representatives, South Carolina, at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, September 4, 2012
At the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, John F. Kennedy accepted our party's nomination saying, "We are not here to curse the darkness; we are here to light a candle."
More than half a century later, the same can be said here in Charlotte, North Carolina. This is a precept I was taught as a child and is the fundamental difference between the party of President Barack Obama and the party of Governor Mitt Romney.
As a member of the Democratic House leadership, I have witnessed President Obama light candle after candle, trying to bring our country out of the darkness of a great recession, only to see Republicans douse the flickering flames and amuse themselves cursing the darkness.
Time and time again, the Romney-Ryan Republicans have walked away from bipartisan efforts to find responsible approaches to moving this country forward. They have made it very clear that their top priority is to make Barack Obama a one-term president.
The architect of the Republicans' blueprint is none other than their vice-presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan. The Romney-Ryan ticket has embraced Ryan's plan to cut taxes for the wealthiest one percent, end the Medicare guarantee and seek to balance the budget on the backs of hard-working Americans.
We know Romney thinks the wealthy should continue paying lower tax rates than middle-class families. In 2010, he paid a tax rate of only 13.9 percent, lower than most middle-class Americans. Did he take unusual steps to avoid paying his fair share? Who knows? He refuses to release enough of his tax returns to give a clear picture of his finances.
Every independent study I have seen has concluded that the Romney-Ryan plan will benefit the wealthiest among us at the expense of the middle classówidening the wealth gap.
When too many of our senior citizens were living their golden years in the darkness of economic insecurity, Franklin Roosevelt and Democrats created Social Security, lighting a candle while Republicans cursed the darkness.
When too many of our elderly found their lives darkened by unaffordable and inaccessible health care and assistance, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress lit the twin candles of Medicare and Medicaid while Republicans stood on the sidelines and cursed the darkness.
When the economy of our country languished in the darkness of uncertainty, William Jefferson Clinton and a Democratic Congress lit the candles that illuminated the pathway to prosperity by creating over 20 million jobs, and we did so without a single Republican vote.
When President Obama was sworn into office, a dark cloud of uncertainty hovered over our great country. 9/11 was fresh in our memories, and domestic terrorism was a constant threat. Our economy was losing over 700,000 jobs per month, and affordable, quality care for all Americans was an unfulfilled, century-old pursuit.
President Obama did not stand on the sidelines and curse the darkness. He rolled up his sleeves and went to work lighting candles.
He promised to bring Osama bin Laden to justice: Done!
He promised to end the war in Iraq: Done!
President Obama promised to make membership in al-Qaida a high-risk occupation and wind down the war in Afghanistan: Done!
President Obama's actions saved our beloved automobile industry. Ford and Chrysler are making record profits again. General Motors is back to number one, and our economy is experiencing 29 consecutive months of private-sector job growth.
But the greatest threat to the sustainability of economic growth and family security is the lack of affordable, accessible, quality health care. We should not run from the term Obamacare. In fact, I embrace the term and am glad Obama cares.
Because Obama cares, children born with diabetes can no longer be denied coverage on their parents' insurance policy. Because Obama cares, people with catastrophic illnesses can no longer be dropped from coverage when they get sick. Because Obama cares, families will no longer have their benefits capped. We should all be thankful that Obama cares.
Reflecting on President Kennedy's 1960 admonition to light a candle and refrain from cursing the darkness, tonight this preacher's kid is reminded of Romans 13, verse 12: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light."
Let us go from this place, lighting candles all across this great country and re-elect President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden so they can continue moving our country forward into the light. | <urn:uuid:64bdcfac-1992-4c8e-9508-9a4231d9f34b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blackinformationhighway.com/Demo%20James%20Clyburn.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947104 | 981 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Oracle is currently suing Google for patent and copyright infringement in Android -- which isn't a hard case to prove when you've got 37 Android source files marked "PROPRIETARY / CONFIDENTIAL" and "DO NOT DISTRIBUTE" by Oracle / Sun and at least six more files in Froyo and Gingerbread that appear to have been decompiled from Java 2 Standard Edition and redistributed under the Apache open source license without permission. In simple terms? Google copied Oracle's Java code, pasted in a new license, and shipped it.
Now, we've long thought Google's odd response to Oracle's lawsuit seemingly acknowledged some infringement, so we doubt this is a surprise in Mountain View, but we're guessing handset vendors aren't going to be so thrilled -- especially since using Android has already caused companies like HTC and Motorola to be hit with major patent lawsuits of their own. We'll see what happens, but in the meantime you should definitely hit up Florian's site for the full dirt -- it's some 47 pages worth of material, and it's dense, but if you're into this sort of thing it's incredibly interesting.
Update: It appears things aren't this simple, but they're still not great. Check here for the latest. | <urn:uuid:86ff2821-6f72-4160-a0ac-efbcfb7a17dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/21/oops-android-contains-directly-copied-java-code-strengthening/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955562 | 256 | 1.507813 | 2 |
updated 02:55 pm EDT, Tue April 3, 2007
Nokia 6110 at FCC
The Nokia 6110 Navigator is likely to reach a US carrier, an FCC filing shows. The device shown at 3GSM has recently been been greenlit by the government body and is likely to be one of the most advanced phones in the country upon its future launch: the slider holds both an HSDPA modem for 3G Internet access and its namesake assistive GPS unit for maps and routes out of the box. A 2-megapixel rear camera, VGA front camera, and a microSD slot carry through from the European launch.
Nokia's FCC approval doesn't indicate a release date for the phone in the territory, but should follow soon within the next few months at a carrier such as AT&T or T-Mobile. European pricing was set at €450 ($600) for a launch this spring and points to similar costs before a service discount. [via MobileWhack] | <urn:uuid:643a46c2-fb04-4791-8490-bad8a074f721> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/04/03/nokia.6110.at.fcc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955353 | 202 | 1.617188 | 2 |
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If you are interested in this course, then these occupations may also be of interest. Note that these suggestions are not intended to indicate that this course leads directly to these occupations, only that they are related in some way and may be worth exploring.
Marketing covers everything from company culture and philisophy through to market research, new business or product development, advertising and promotion, PR (public/press relations), and arguably all of the sales functions as well. It is the process by which a company decides what it will sell, to whom, when and how, and then does it.
This course provides a general understanding of the core areas within which businesses operate. High levels of skills are developed in the specialised area of marketing.
Careers or Further Progression...
Typical careers positions include marketing executive, marketing advisor, brand manager, sales and marketing executive and graduate trainee/intern.
The following course suggestions share some interests in common with this course. and are from colleges in the same region. These might be worth exploring further. You can sort the list by Title or College by clicking on the column headings. You can Tag any of these courses from within the individual course pages. | <urn:uuid:55e878d9-1751-4471-9ce8-07f1ad5f0fc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.careersportal.ie/courses/coursedetail.php?userid=&token=&job_id=496&course_id=236 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955223 | 261 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Locals know it's 'chello'
After reading Marlene Condon's letter [September 2: "Do locals always rule?"], I must admit I am offended. Having grown up and lived in this area most of my life, I know the pronunciation of Monticello has been mont-i-chel-lo.
So to blame the "transplanted intelligentsia" for the proper pronunciation rather than those from the area is insulting. Usually, the other pronunciation comes from those trying to speak faster than they should or wishing to add a false local flavor. A prime example would be in Norfolk where the locals have some difficulty with the four-syllable Avenue called Monticello and try to get it down to two.
Should Marlene Condon have any questions, she should think about this: a violoncello is pronounced 'violon chello' or simply 'chello.' | <urn:uuid:54a46d32-79f6-4f78-b54c-56350110e5a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.readthehook.com/95687/letter-locals-know-its-chello?quicktabs_1=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949709 | 186 | 1.679688 | 2 |
After putting up and paying for a handicapped accessible ramp, the City of Rockton told a local business owner the ramp has to go. A new ramp was supposed to be in place Wednesday, but Thursday the business owner had to figure out how people would get in the door.
Outside Sara's Professional Hair Designers is a makeshift ramp out of built up dirt and rugs. But this is only after Sara called and complained to the city about the hole that they left along with barricades blocking the entrance. Sara's not the only one whose been fighting. R.A.M.P who works to break barriers for people with disabilities started addressing the city about two years ago for accessible sidewalks and entrances. At first the city told a member of RAMP “They didn’t want their sidewalks to look like a skateboard park."
About a year ago Sara and her landlord put in a ramp to accommodate her customers. The city said that the ramp was twice as steep as ADA requirements and tore it down. RAMP says that shouldn’t have happened. Under the ADA guidelines, “no alteration shall be undertaken which decreases or has the effect of decreasing accessibility or usability of a building.”
The city says that this is a situation that has gotten way out of hand and that they are not in anyway acting irresponsible. They say that construction is hard to co-ordinate. Next Wednesday, a day that Sara's business is closed, the city is putting in the ramp. Rockton is taking care of bringing a concrete contractor, but Sara's landlord is picking up the cost to add another new ramp. | <urn:uuid:2046e78f-3991-42c7-b69d-f44aa0338f46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wifr.com/home/headlines/145202.html?site=full | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977 | 330 | 1.726563 | 2 |
You have to be careful writing about Gary Snyder, because he's such a Zen guy you get the feeling anything you write will be vastly inferior to silence. People tend to be impressed by Gary Snyder: Jack Kerouac was so knocked out by his mountain-climber courage and Buddhist calmness that he wrote one of his best books, The Dharma Bums, about him. Snyder's poems, charged with the consciousness of Buddha-nature, made him a Beat celebrity as a young man, and he remains a widely respected symbol of a certain peaceful and contemplative literary state of mind.
So I probably already deserve a sharp blow on the back with a stick for this inane blathering, and I'll just briefly summarize the pertinent facts of Snyder's life and then send you along to one of his poems, which I'll type in as an exercise in right mindfulness.
He was born on May 8, 1930 in San Francisco, California but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He attended Reed College along with his friends Philip Whalen and Lew Welch, and then went to Berkeley to study Asian Languages. He had a particular interest in Chinese and Japanese culture and poetry, an interest shared by Kenneth Rexroth. Through Rexroth he fell in with the Beat crowd, read his great mythical poem 'A Berry Feast' at the famous 1955 poetry reading at the Six Gallery, and inspired the Zen Buddhist craze that swept the Beats, as well as some notable mountain climbing expeditions that certainly tested the physical endurance of a few writers more accustomed to scaling the inner heights of their minds.
Snyder participated in many left-wing activities, along with Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, during the Sixties. He was onstage during the original San Francisco Be-In in January 1967. He has since continued to fight for peace, environmental awareness and freedom from nuclear weaponry, and has never wavered in his devotion to these noble causes.
He is currently teaching at the University of California at Davis. He continues to publish poetry in volumes such as "No Nature," and won the Pulitzer Prize in the mid-seventies. In 1996 he published a long poem, "Mountains and Rivers Without End" and conducted readings at various cities including New York, where I got a chance to see him for my first time. Of all the original beats I have encountered in person, no other one smiles so peacefully, or seems as good-humoredly contented with his place in the world. (Gregory Corso smiles a lot too, but then I've never seen him sober.)
Here's a memoir of a fondly-remembered 1964 poetry reading at San Francisco's Longshoreman's Hall.
And here is one of Snyder's most well-known poems, 'Riprap.' | <urn:uuid:0702cde7-bf1d-41db-9d04-faf81614c19f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.litkicks.com/GarySnyder | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983038 | 569 | 1.664063 | 2 |
When husband-and-wife designers Emma and Brandon Peat learned they were having their first child, they decided to create an alphabetical series of prints based entirely on characters from Star Wars. This should really be part of some form of mandatory curriculum. Write the Peats:
Selecting each letter was a lengthy process. The characters who made the cut are primarily from the Original Trilogy (no Prequel characters here!), with a few from the Expanded Universe of books, comics, and video games. We also tried to keep the illustrations as non-violent as possible (in the words of Wuher, "No blasters!") for maximum kid-friendliness.
The attention to detail on these prints really shines through. The use of the Aurebesh script to spell out each character's name, for example, even lays the groundwork for teaching children Galactic Basic; and let's face it — if you're going to learn a second language, it might as well be the most widely spoken tongue in the galaxy. | <urn:uuid:d2ace481-7e6a-438d-a699-779c62c18297> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://io9.com/5915838/teach-kids-the-alphabet-with-these-adorable-star-wars-prints?tag=This-is-awesome | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969453 | 206 | 1.539063 | 2 |
All over the country, in hip, high-priced cities such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York, thousands and thousands of 20- and 30-something ex-St. Louisans are, living, working and building careers. Call them our diaspora.And they are a huge resource.Because they know St. Louis. These people know how we pronounce Gravois. They've eaten toasted ravioli. To them, St. Louis isn't just another piece of "flyover country," indistinct from Indianapolis or Milwaukee. It's home. And if more of them could be lured back for good, they could give a big shot of new blood to our work force.
I recommended to Tim that he investigate what is going on in Louisville (KY). Louisville is a best-practice example and is similar enough to St. Louis to be an instructive example. Tim pressed me for metrics measuring success, but I'm not aware of any. What qualifies as a successful talent boomerang campaign?
Brain circulation is a relatively new concept in the arena of international economic development. Concerning domestic migration, you could say that I'm one of the pioneers exploring the potential of diaspora geography. This is a policy frontier at any scale.
Part of the problem is that most workforce development programs are retarded, stuck in the industrial era. Hence the local orientation that dominates Logan's narrative. Retention gets top billing and that is a mistake.
International economic development has moved boldly beyond designing better brain drain plugs, finally recognizing a futile exercise. At the vanguard of this paradigm shift is China, with its policy of intentional talent exports. On the whole, brain drain has been very good for China. I suspect the same could be said for India.
Domestically, I think we are on the cusp of a major paradigm shift in workforce development. Educational attainment is a mainstream concept and migration data are ever finer. But I'll end with a comment from Aaron Renn which serves as a postscript for a recent post about urban talent policy:
BTW: I continue to be astonished at how many cities completely don't get it on talent. They talk a good game but are completely unserious. | <urn:uuid:7b346680-3298-45a7-9be7-5fbc5bd32aee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://burghdiaspora.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html?m=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951206 | 451 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Temuka War Memorial
HOLLOWED FOR EVER THE MEMORY
Aitken J. Aldred E. Annals F.J. Archer E. Aspinall W.D. Ashwell S.H. Barker T.E. Barrett F. Benbow P.J. Bird T.H. Booker G.E. Booker T.E. Brosnaham T.J. Brown J. Cain A. Campbell D. Carr E.M. Carr J.J. Carr J. Carr O.P. Charteris M. Clarke J. Clarke P. Connell J.W. Crannitch J. Davey S.E. Davey W.J. Donehue A.T. Elder J. Divan G. Fitzgerald T. Fothergill J.S. Frew A. Gason W.H. Gibson S. Gillespie E.B. Gould E.J. Greelish J. Guilford W. Haar C.J. Hamilton J. Hamilton M. Harrison I. Harte W.G. Hearn J.T. Hiddlestone A.H. Hill L.W. Histen T.J. Horgan T. Horseman G. Horseman H. Hoskins W.W. Hullen H.C. Huxford W.T. Johnson C. Joseph J.H. Kay A.I.W.
Kennedy T.R. Lane T. Levens G.W. Lee A. Lee L. Lloyd W.J. Manihera W. Martin E. Maurice F.D. Middlemiss D. Miles E.G. Mills A. Mills D.C. Monahan H. Mulvaney T. Moore G. Moore J.R. Morgan A. Morgan W.S. McIver C. McCallum J. McClelland S. McClelland W.T. McClintock A.S. O'Connor J.J. O'Connell J. Oldfield F.W. O'Neill J.B. O'Shea C. O'Shea D. Overend W.A. Parker A. Perry A. Polascher W. Phillips R. Pohio S. Prattley H.J. Rainey W.J. Sanders T.A. Smith G.J. Spring M. Storey H. Sullivan P. Talbot A.E. Talbot B.H. Talke A. Tate J. Thomas G.F.D. Twomey F.D. Tooley D.D. Wade J. Wallace S.P. Webb W.W. Whitau P. Woodhead G. (M.M.) Wright E. Yates F.G.
|Ackroyd V.J. Baxter J. Boyle J. Boyle R. Brown M.C. Burke J.J. Coffey S.J. Davis B.W. Eathorne J. Edge H.J. Fowler R. Gillies B. Gale W.K. Healy M.J. Hislop D. Hayhurst A.J. Johnson V.T. Jones R.O. Kennedy S.G. Leathem S. Low G.A. Mallet H.||
Morrison F.W. McClintock A.J. McDowell A.J. O'Connell J.G. O'Connell J.J. O'Neill A.E. Opie A.A. Paipete J. Paiki J. Preddy S.S. Reihana T. Robins G.F. Spillane F.E. Solomom T.H.A. Thompson J.E. Taylor G.H. Waaka T. Waters G. Watts J.R. Whaitiri H. Williams L.L.
Temuka War Memorial, Temuka Domain.
Another old photo with at least 22 wreaths.
King St. RSA Rooms - offsite.
Temuka War Memorial bears 114 names of those killed in WWI. The town lost a further 43 men in WWII.
TEMUKA BOER WAR MEMORIAL
On the pillars at the entranceway to the domain in Temuka are the names of four local men who paid the supreme sacrifice during the South African War 1899-1902. Also located at the domain is the Old Identities statue with the names of early settlers and year coming to the county etched in stone and the Temuka War Memorial.
Lance Corp W. RODDICK
Killed Bothasberg S.A.
24 Feb 1902
Trooper D. CLARKE
Killed Klerksdorp S.A.
14 Jan 1902
Trooper J. COUNIHAN
Killed Bothasberg S.A.
24 Feb 1902
Trooper W.G. MONAHAN
Killed Bothasberg S.A.
24 Feb 1902
LOCATION - These Memorial plaques are set into gate posts at the western entrance to the Temuka Domain, Domain Avenue, Temuka. Information courtesy of the South Canterbury Branch NZSG.
Memorial Gates, Temuka, NZ
Winchester War Memorial
Our Glorious Dead
from Winchester 1939 -1945
Sgt. B.W. Kain
L/Cpl. G.A.E. Smith
Dvr. A. Paterson
Sgt. Pilot G. Knight
Gnr. G. Scott
Our Glorious Dead
Also from Winchester 1914 - 1918
Srgt J. H. Joseph
L-Srgt. T. Hodgson
Priv. J. Aitken
R flm. J.S. Fothergill
Priv. W. Guilford
Priv. C.E. Scott
Our Glorious Dead
Ex-Pupils Winchester School 1914 -1918Tpr G.E. Booker " F.G. Hide " T.R. Kennedy " A.H. Maddren Gnr J.R. D. Andrews Dvr D.J. McDonald Lieut F.D. Maurice " J.T. Steven Srgt J.W.H. Bryant " S. McClelland " W.T. McClelland " B.A. Smith Corp F. Barrett " W.W. Hoskons Priv T.E. Booker " S.T. Dunnage " W.A.G. Harte " G.F.D. Thomas " S.P. Wallace Rflm S.E. Davey " C.J. Haar
Captain Charles Upham, V.C. and Bar, served in Crete and in North Africa, attended the Waihi boarding school at Winchester. Twenty-five old boys gave their lives in W.W.II. The Winchester Memorial is located at an intersection State Highway One at Winchester on the left as you head south. A total of 633 Victoria Crosses were awarded during World War I. A total of 182 Victoria Crosses were awarded during World War II.
In Christchurch April 24 2002 a headstone, a large natural stone from the North Canterbury back country, unveiled was on his grave in the churchyard of St Paul's Anglican Church, Papanui. The land and timber for the original St Paul's Church and graveyard were given by Mr Upham's great-grandfather, the settler William Guise Brittan. Upham was taken prisoner in 1942. He was scathing about the behaviour of the Italians who later took over responsibility for him. "We were over-run by the German 21st Panzer division, who behaved correctly, were then handed over two days later to Italians who robbed, abused, starved and behaved very badly in North Africa." wrote Charles Upham. Upham consistently stated that the credit for his VCs was not simply his, but shared with the men whom he led. At the end of the war he turned down a gift of �10,000 offered by the Canterbury province, which would have helped him buy a farm. In a letter to the Mayor of Christchurch, he said: 'The military honours bestowed upon me are the property of the men of my unit as well as myself, and were obtained at considerable cost of the blood of this country. Under no circumstances could I consent to any material gain for myself for my services.' A bronze metal cannon captured from the Russian army during the Crimean War is the only piece of metal from which the Victoria Cross can be hewn.
The Times, Thursday, Jun 27, 1935; pg. 11; col D
The Order Of St. John List Of Promotions And Appointment - Serving Brother
Charles Hazlitt Upham, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
The Times, Saturday, May 12, 1945
Buckingham Palace, May 11
The King held an Investiture this morning, at which His Majesty decorated the following with the Victoria Cross:-
Captain Charles Upham, New Zealand
During the operations in Crete in 1941, he performed a series of remarkable exploits. In the attack on Maleme he displayed fearless leadership in desperate hand-to-hand fighting, and after carrying the wounded to safety he and a corporal went 600 yards through enemy territory, killing Germans on the way and brought in a Company which had become isolated. At Galatos, under severe mortar and machine-gun fire, he showed great tactical skill in the leadership of his platoon, forcing the enemy back. When fired on by two Germans, he fell and shammed death, then, crawling into position, with the use of only one arm and resting his rifle in the fork of a tree he killed both of them. During the whole period he was wounded several times, he was ill and could hardly eat, yet he showed superb coolness and complete disregard of danger and his conduct was an inspiration to the battalion.
The Times, Thursday, Sep 27, 1945; pg. 4
Bar To V.C. For N.Z. Officer Third Award In 89 Years
The first bar to the Victoria cross to be won in the late war and the third since the decoration was instituted in 1856 has been awarded to :
Captain Charles Hazlitt Upham, V.C., New Zealand Military Forces.
The citation in a special issue of the London gazette last night stated:_
Captain C.H. Upham, V.C., was commanding a company of New Zealand troops in the Western Desert during the operations which culminated in the attack on El Ruweisat Ridge on the night of July 14-15, 1942. In spite of being wounded once when crossing open ground swept by enemy fire to inspect his forward sections guarding our minefields and again when he completely destroyed an entire truckload of German soldiers with hand grenades, Captain Upham insisted on remaining with his men to take part in the final assault.
During the opening stages of the attack on the ridge Captain Upham's company formed part of the reserve battalion, but, when communications with the forward troops broke down and he was instructed to send up an officer to report on the progress of the attack, he went out himself armed with a Spandau gun and, after several sharp encounters with the enemy machine-gun posts, succeeded in bringing back the required information.
Just before dawn the reserve battalion was ordered forward, but, when it had almost reached its objective, very heavy fire was encountered from a strongly defended enemy locality, consisting of four machine-gun posts and a number of tanks. Captain Upham, without hesitation, at once led his company in a determined attack on the two nearest strongpoint on the left flank of the sector. His voice could be heard above the din of battle cheering on his men and, in spite of heavy casualties on both sides, the objective was captured.
Captain Upham, during the engagement, himself destroyed a German tank and several guns and vehicles with grenades and although he was shot through the elbow by a machine-gun bullet and had his arm broken, he went on again to a forward position and brought back some of his men who had become isolated. He continued to dominate the situation until his men had beaten off a violent enemy counter-attack and consolidated the vital position which they had won under his inspiring leadership.
Exhausted from pain from his wound and weak from loss of blood Captain Upham was then removed to the Regimental Aid Post, but immediately his wound had been dresses he returned to his men, remaining with them all day long under heavy enemy artillery and mortar fire until he was again severely wounded and, being now unable to move, fell into the hands of the enemy when, his gallant company having been reduced to only six survivors, his position was finally over-run, by superior enemy forces, in spite of the outstanding gallantry and magnificent leadership shown by Captain Upham.
The Victoria cross was conferred on Captain Upham for conspicuous bravery during the operations in Crete in May, 1941, and the award was announced in the London Gazette of October 14, 1941.
Captain Upham was liberated from a German prisoner-of-war camp [he was a prisoner at Colditz] in April of this year by the American forces. He was re-united with his fianc�e, Miss Eileen McTamney, a New Zealand nurse, who had been serving with the Red Cross on the continent, and they were married in this country on June 20. This is the sixth Victoria Cross to be awarded to the New Zealand Military Forces, and the 164th of the late war.
Tough land tamed
05 August 2006 by Mike Crean.
Claverley was tough country once, but today it is a special piece of coastal Mainland. When war hero Charles Upham took up land at Conway Flat, he had to carve his farm out of scrub. "It was like being a pioneer. The land was in its infancy," he said, looking back in 1994. World War 2 had shown he was tough. Farming was to reinforce the image. What a difference 60 years makes. The hills and gullies where Upham toiled are a picture of productive grazing land. The piece of country he called home is studded with homesteads in park-like settings, hemmed on one side by the Pacific Ocean and, on the other, by rugged hills. Upham's farm was subdivided from Hawkswood Station. It was hard country, but, with the help of aerial topdressing, he was able to tame it. Now a pile of its soil resides for ever in the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, in Wellington. Conway Flat was regarded as remote when Upham arrived. Now it is less than two hours from Christchurch, up State Highway 1 then along a 5km sealed road. A fork off the road to Conway Flat leads to Claverley. Here, on a small hill, lie the remains of a Maori pa from the 1600s. The building of the railway in the 1930s and '40s obliterated part of the pa site. In pioneering times, coastal vessels anchored close to the beach. Boats were lowered to deliver supplies and load wool bales from the great sheep stations. Now that was isolation.
Nominal Roll: 1939 - 31 Mar 1940
Charles Hazlitt Upham
Army Number: 8077
Sgt. 20 Canto.
Place of enlistment: Christchurch
Occupation; Government Land valuer
Last Residence: Lincoln College, Lincoln, New Zealand
Relative Name: Mr J H Upham, 32 Gloucester St, Christchurch C.1
Press, 19 March 1919, Page 3
A pleasant little gathering took place at the Coronation tea rooms, Temuka, when Mr and Mrs H. Ford welcomed home Private H. Toomey, Mrs Ford's brother, who has just returned from the front. It was intended to entertain all the men who returned on Sunday, but unfortunately this could not be done. Mr T. Gunnion was in the chair, and proposed the toast of Private Toomey.
These two brothers were KIA on the same day.
Press, 12 April 1918, Page 2
Sergeant J. J. Carr (killed in action in Palestine on March 30th) was the second son of Mr and Mrs E. Carr, Waihao Forks. He was 24 years of age, and was born in Temuka and educated at St. Joseph's School. Serjeant Carr left with the 8th South Canterbury Mounted Rifles, Main Body, being one of the first volunteers in the district. He served for some time as a farrier in Egypt, and was then transferred to Palestine for active service. Trooper Owen Carr (reported missing) is the third son of Mr and Mrs Carr. He was 22 years of ago, and was also born and educated at Temuka. He left with the 18th Reinforcements, and was serving in Palestine.
A time to remember. By 6am the section of Timaru's Queen St around the city's cenotaph was crammed with people, standing in the road, on footpaths, waiting for a service that is short, and simple, yet deeply moving. In numerous other locations around South Canterbury and New Zealand that scene was being repeated. Within a couple of hours, the same thing would be happening across the ditch. Numbers differed, as did weather conditions, but the reason for gathering was exactly the same. To remember. Wrote Grant Shimmin - Timaru
This page may be freely linked to but not duplicated in any fashion except for private study. | <urn:uuid:2a1f24a6-7104-40f6-ac91-5a73550ca09a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nzlscant/temuka.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961775 | 3,678 | 1.570313 | 2 |
News and Events
Coaching Boys into Men - a Proven Strategy to Prevent Violence
Futures Without Violence (formerly known as Family Violence Prevention Fund) shared a feature story on their website (www.futureswithoutviolence.org/content/features/detail/2487 ) that a study published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that their programme Coaching Boys into Men (CBIM) is proven effective to reduce abusive behaviors among male athletes who have participated in the programme.
Link to the attached Study: http://www.ajpmonline.org/webfiles/images/journals/amepre/AMEPRE_3795-stamped-043013.pdf
The Randomized Controlled Trial of Coaching Boys into Men conducted from 2009-2011 had a 12-month follow-up to examine the longer-term effectiveness of the programme meant to prevent dating violence targeting high school male...[read more] | <urn:uuid:9fd13c9f-f1f5-4cf5-9051-53a9bb1493b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.engagingmen.net/news-and-events?page=11&mini=event%2F2012-04-19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94002 | 196 | 1.75 | 2 |
Because that's what democrats do. They sat out 2010 and the House of Representatives was taken over by Republicans.
IT'S TURNOUT THAT MATTERS.
The Senate is almost republican rule. If democrats decide they can sit at home, we're looking at a republican trifecta -- The White House, the Senate and the House, which will guarantee conservative judges on the Supreme Court. It almost certainly guarantees more war. Romney will owe Sheldon Adelson.
Perhaps that is what this country really needs, a serious wakeup call, as if the recession wasn't enough.
Republicans aren't like the democrats -- blue dogs vs liberals. No, there won't be any of that. They'll take their trifecta and run with it in lock step.
Seventy-four percent of Republicans said they’re thinking about the election “quite a lot,” compared to 61 percent of Democrats, the USA Today/Gallup survey found.
“In most prior election campaigns, Republicans have typically paid a higher level of attention to the election than Democrats. However, the current 13-point Republican advantage is larger than Gallup has measured in recent presidential election years,” Gallup wrote. “That may be because Republicans had a competitive nomination contest this year, while on the Democratic side, President Obama was not challenged for the nomination. In the early part of 2008, when Democrats had a prolonged and competitive nomination contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton, Democrats led Republicans in thought given to the election.” Read more at Politico | <urn:uuid:6b7b1b97-5e43-4349-92d0-d34858fccf66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ochairball.blogspot.com/2012/08/democrats-may-sit-out-2012.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968864 | 322 | 1.796875 | 2 |
© Donald A. Dibbern, Jr.
It's time for a change of pace following my articles on wine service and appreciation: Let's take a broader look at the big picture of wine and food appreciation.
For much of the history of the world, and indeed still in many parts of the world today, eating focused primarily on local staples prepared to maximize palatability and nutrition. Ingredients from distant lands were unavailable or prohibitively costly. Essential spices for curing, preserving, or flavoring local dishes, often had to be procured with great difficulty and exorbitant expense. A single poor crop could lead to widespread hunger and famine.
Fast forward to today, and we now see the modern developed world's embarrassment of riches, resulting from globalization and advances in transportation, farming science, and technology for industrial food production. A single corporate farm may now produce more food today than entire regions did in the past, with a distribution system in place to deliver those products almost anywhere in the world without significant loss or spoilage. In addition to staple foods, it is now easy to find exotic ingredients from Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, to just about any city including my home town, Portland, Oregon, a relatively modest city of about a half-million residents.
When I was a child in Nebraska, apart from some deli meats and cheeses imported from Europe and perhaps some produce from Central or South America, almost everything I saw in grocery stores was local, at least in the sense of largely sourced from within America. Then it would have then seemed nearly unthinkable to find fish sauce from Thailand or spices from the Yucatan locally. Now it is no longer surprising at all. Yet in the midst of this cornucopia, our society eats more bland and standardized fast food than ever. As documented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture http://www.ers.usda.gov Americans spent nearly $185 billion in 2005 in what USDA calls "limited-service restaurants."
Rather than frenetically rushing down our checklist of things to be done each day, it is possible to consciously choose instead to take the time to enjoy and savor the activities of daily life.
Prominent among these activities is the need to eat and drink. When we focus on procuring and consuming our meals as quickly and efficiently as possible, we save a bit of time perhaps, but what do we really lose? How many of us can remember exactly what we ate last week, or even last night? Our society now has the economic and technological luxury to be able to replace at least part of our diet with fresh regional ingredients, combined with artisanal food products and spices from around the world, providing us a healthier and more flavorful diet.
Mirroring a growing trend in the U.S. today, Portland has a culture of "localvores" with a tradition of supporting small local farms and ranches. There are several popular farmer's markets and numerous restaurants here that emphasize foods of the Pacific Northwest.
As examples of this philosophy, one prominent local restaurateur told me recently that she plans to honor the growers, farmers, bakers, and such who supply the ingredients for their fine cuisine by decorating the walls with photographs of their purveyors. Another restaurant proudly proclaims on the front page of its website that "everything in our kitchen comes directly from local farmers." Seasonal eating is another sensible and popular corollary: Cooking with root vegetables in the winter, and with fruits and berries in the summer, allows one to maximize the freshness of locally available produce.
Proponents of local sourcing talk of "food miles," the reduced transportation of food over long distances, which helps to conserve fossil fuels, favors small businesses and family farms over corporate conglomerates, and supports independent restaurant entrepreneurs instead of large chain franchises, among other effects.
We'll steer clear of a discussion of the political implications. Instead, for the gastronome, local food eaten in season simply tastes better and fresher. Tasting a sweet garden-picked tomato at the peak of ripeness, and its commercial "equivalent" picked hard and green, flown or trucked many miles, then gassed to "ripen," makes this point most eloquently. Further, many heirloom varieties of produce are of non-standard size, shape, or color, or have other features (often found in the best and sweetest fruits, such as fragility, or a narrow window of time from ripe to rotten) that make them more difficult to transport and market. Interest in organic and biodynamic agriculture, with food production that is environmentally friendly and eschews the use of synthetic chemicals, has also moved into the mainstream with the rapid growth and spread of markets for these products.
This has been the setting for the slow food movement, and the founding of Slow Food http://www.slowfood.com a non-profit organization created to support what the organization calls "eco-gastronomy." It began in Bra, Italy in 1986, and Slow Food International was created in Paris three years later, with a U.S. branch following in 2000.
Consistent with its celebration of local involvement among and between producers and consumers of food and wine, Slow Food has established what it calls "convivia" of regional members. The Portland convivium is notable as the first in America (established in 1991), and it remains one of the largest.
Slow Food's mission is essentially to promote sustainable agriculture, specifically maintaining and preserving the availability of flavorful foodstuffs (especially the biodiversity of heirloom varieties of produce and livestock and other heritage foods), produced in ways not harmful to the environment, and in an economically supportable fashion for both producers and consumers - what they call "good, clean, and fair" food. Readers may also be familiar with Fair Trade Certified coffee, which has similar goals of supporting organic production, improved wages and conditions for workers, and fair profits for small producers.
Turning our attention from food to wine, it is perhaps not surprising that similar issues arise. Interest has been growing in organic and biodynamic vineyards and wine producers. The critically acclaimed film Mondovino presents concerns about expanding globalization, excessive standardization of wines for an international palate, and increasing corporate consolidation in the wine industry.
For example, a single corporation now owns more than 200 wine brands and accounts for nearly one of every five bottles of wine purchased in the United States. This contrasts sharply with the old romantic notion of family vignerons and vintners passing down artisanal traditions of grape-growing and wine-making from parents to children over the generations; artisans tending each vine and barrel with loving hand-crafted care, mirroring the cherished American ideals of the "family farm."
Wine lovers may be familiar with the Gambero Rosso Vini d'Italia wine guide, produced in association with Slow Food, that recognizes the best Italian wine with awards ranging up to their top rating of tre bicchieri ("three glasses"). This organization celebrates wines from the many traditional wine-producing regions of Italy, with particular attention to those from heritage grape varieties such as Arneis, Fiano, Ribolla, Lagrein, Pignolo, Aglianico and Sagrantino, to name just a few.
Looking at the positive aspects of globalization, these awards can attract the attention of the world's wine consumers to less widely known wines. Increased marketability and demand can help prevent their removal in favor of more popular "international varieties" such as Chardonnay or Merlot.
When I think back to the most memorable meals in my experience, I recall many of them as remarkable precisely because of the distinctive or idiosyncratic nature of a particular ingredient or style of preparation.
To cite just a few personal examples from Oregon eateries: the mound of white Oregon truffles, each the size of a small marble, draped over a fresh brioche at the Joel Palmer House; hand-made raviolis filled with spinach and meyer lemon, enveloped in an incredible rosato sauce, at 3 Doors Down Cafe; periwinkles so tiny they had to be eaten with a pin, and a dish of tagliolini made with guanciale, at Basilico Ristorante; my first taste of huitlacoche at DF; pizza nirvana at Apizza Scholls; tender pork cheeks in truffled Madeira pan sauce at Bluehour; and the perfect simplicity and intensity of flavors in an exquisitely prepared snow crab fettuccine at Paley's Place.
This applies equally well to wines, as I delight to recall drinking Dave Corey's Core Wine Mister Moreved and his White Blend 613, Sam Tannahill's Francis Tannahill Dragonfly Gewurztraminer, and John Eliassen's La Bete Aligote. These are all delicious wines of pronounced character; they are not grown and vinified to suit the mass market.
It doesn't take a marketing consultant to discern that it might be challenging to sell a wine made of obscure Rhone varieties, or a white wine from an Alsatian grape grown in Washington and made in a medium-sweet style, or a wine made from Burgundy's "other white grape." These are also not especially costly wines, yet they are made with the same attention and care as far more pricey and profitable wines. There is something innately pleasurable, even joyful, in appreciating things still being created just for the love of it.
Finally, it should be said that these issues are not necessarily all-or-nothing propositions. The world has derived much advantage from advances in technology and transportation, which have contributed to impressive improvements in both global food supply and overall food safety. Certainly, better winemaking equipment and techniques - much of it the result of increased capital investment and the business of wine - have dramatically benefited those who enjoy fine wines.
Most all of us sometimes eat fast food and sometimes drink corporate wine. Although the famous French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin may have overstated matters with his oft-quoted and slightly pompous maxim, "Tell me what kind of food you eat and I will tell you what kind of man you are," he also said, "The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star" (The Physiology of Taste, 1825).
I do believe that an important part of real appreciation of food and wine is to at least occasionally spend some time thinking about the choices that we make, their broader implications and effects on the world and ourselves. To do so is to become a connoisseur, a term derived from French for "to know," in the truest sense of the word.
© copyright 2007 by Donald A. Dibbern, Jr., all rights reserved
To contact Donald A. Dibbern Jr., write him at [email protected] | <urn:uuid:1eababd5-fdd4-406a-8b1f-b27a0069e5f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wineloverspage.com/dibbern/slowfood07.phtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95344 | 2,257 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Arne Duncan explains to Science magazine why school choice is so important (if you are wealthy and white and can move into the suburbs with good public schools). If you are poor, Black, and live in D.C. you should wait until we get around to improving the public schools. It should be any day now.
Anthony Williams and Kevin Chavous explain in the Washington Post why “We want freedom by any means necessary.” Man, the Washington Post has been solid in support of D.C. vouchers.
Mary Katharine Ham has a piece on the Weekly Standard web site that explains why ”it’s clear that, when given a choice, Democrats are more petrified of unions than they are interested in doing something that works for some of the most underserved kids in the District.”
And my colleague Bob Maranto has a piece in Front Page Magazine that explains: “By voting to kill the DC OSP, the Democrats in Congress have placed themselves in opposition to the educational needs of low-income, minority, inner-city children. If they ignore, deny, or minimize the importance of this rigorous evaluation of the program’s effectiveness, they also would be pitting themselves against President Obama, who has repeatedly called for respecting the role of science and data rather than money and lobbyists in making public policy, including education policy.” | <urn:uuid:f8f5a1a2-b5ca-4a5d-8a47-3284e59f3e5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jaypgreene.com/tag/bob-maranto/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953963 | 283 | 1.804688 | 2 |
I know more than one person who’s new year’s resolution is to start cycling. As a regular reader of this blog you’ve probably already made the jump to cyclist but maybe some of your friends haven’t. Send them the link to this post on their Facebook or email because it will help them out with a simple framework they can follow.
I’ve helped a few of my friends start cycling in the past 12 months and I’ve been able to witness the sort of questions they’ve had. Sometimes it’s not so easy to follow up with the promise to yourself to start cycling to work so hopefully this guide will help out.
As always I hugely appreciate any Facebook “likes” which you can do with one click at the end of this post..
Buying a bike
How much do you have to spend? £500+ will get you a fairly good bike plus accessories. If you don’t have such a budget then you can start with something a little cheaper or buy second hand. Make sure you look further down this page for some money saving tips.
Good starter bikes around the £500 mark:
- Start cycling with a hybrid bike: I highly recommend the Marin range of bikes as they use good quality components that minimise time wasted on maintenance. I’ve always found them very speedy too! Cycle Surgery tend to stock them.
- Start cycling with a single speed: Charge do a well-regarded range of single speed bikes. If your route involves hills then be prepared for a steep boost to your fitness levels.
- Start cycling with a folding bike: The Brompton M3L for around £629 is a fantastic folding bikes that will give you many years of good service. It’s definitely on the higher end of a budget but putting that extra bit of cash in is worth it for such a reliable and fast folding bike.
What kind of cycling will you be doing?
The next question to ask yourself is what will I use the bike for? Here’s some quick benefits of each bike type:
- Hybrid – My bike of choice. A hybrid bike is a “best of both world’s” cross between a mountain bike and a road bike. It’s speedy but it can also take on potholes and win. I’ve done some pretty extreme mountain biking and road biking with my Hybrid and it has faired well with both. It also typically features all the bolts needed for adding attachments such as panniers.
- Dutch – These stylish bikes are designed for city use and are a good choice for when you start cycling. The bicycle chain is often enclosed in a case to prevent getting your trousers or skirt stuck. They sometimes have a step over frame to allow for quick hoping on and off the bike without swinging your leg round like you are practising a kung fu kick. They are also often hub geared lowering the maintenance cost. The frames tend to be a little on the heavy side making them difficult to haul up and down stairs and a little slower to ride.
- Road – Featuring a thin frame, narrow wheels and drop handlebars. They are built for speed and for longer rides thanks to their dynamic and comfortable design. They are good for racing and can be used for commuting. Although the thin wheels can be a disadvantage if you ever need to do any off-road riding and encounter potholes.
- Single speed/fixed –a similar design to road bikes with a distinguishing feature of only having one speed. They are favoured for their minimalist design and low maintenance. The single gear can pose some problems if cycling up a lot of hills.
- Mountain – if you start cycling with a mountain bike, like many people do, you may be put off by the slow speeds. A mountain bike has thick wheels and a sturdy frame. Fantastic for off-road terrain but not that great for riding on roads. Touring – similar to road bikes but with slightly thicker wheels and space to fit multiple pannier racks. These are built for very long rides lasting weeks or months where you need to carry your supplies with you.
- Folding – whilst wrongly occasionally scoffed at by other commuters folding bikes have some major advantages. Without compromising too much on speed they can fit anywhere. It’s perfect if your commute involves sections in trains and if you are tight on space at home or have a fear of leaving your bike outside. With a little bit of practise a folding bike can be unfolded in a matter of seconds.
- Electric – Whilst often more expensive electric bikes are a great way to start cycling especially if you are put off by the amount of pedalling required.
What frame size?
When thinking about how to start cycling you’ll inevitably want to think about what size bike you’ll need. This is where a test ride comes in useful to see how the bike feels. Evans Cycles have a good page on bike sizing.
At a basic level your bike should be setup so that when your leg is fully stretched out the knee is only very slightly bent.
A note on buying online
You should check when buying online how much work you’ll have to do to assemble the bike when it arrives.
Saving money when you first start cycling
When thinking about how to start cycling you should definitely consider a few of these money saving tips. The first is taking advantage of the cycle to work scheme. Check if your company supports the scheme and if they don’t bug them until they do!
The second is to remember that companies, such as Evans Cycles, will price match. Therefore check bicycle prices online and in other stores and they’ll match it.
The third is to look for the bike in last years model. Often this will save £100+.
Finally, don’t forget to do a bit of negotiating. Most bike shops can’t drop the price of a bike by much but they can throw in a few of the accessories.
How to start cycling on busy roads
One of the main fears people have when they start cycling is how they’ll cope in busy traffic. The single best thing you can do to combat this fear is to undertake cycle training.
Now, the words cycle training may bring up images in your mind of the sort of big group training you had at school. That’s far from the truth. Cycle training is a one on one course that is often subsidised by local councils. You learn how to take the correct position on the road to prevent cars from closely overtaking you. You also hugely boost your confidence by learning techniques such as creating eye contact between you and the driver.
To get started speak to your local cycling campaign or local council about sessions available.
What cycling gear do I need to start cycling
You only need the basics to get started. A good bike lock (Kryptonite New York 3000) and a secondary lock are fairly essential. If you are cycling in the dark then a pair of bike lights is a necessary purchase.
As your cycling progresses a cycling jacket and various gear to help you with the maintenance can come in handy.
See also: Cycling gear
How to start cycling to work for the first time
It’s a good idea to do a test run of the ride into work. That will help you estimate how long it will take and prevent you getting horribly lost. A great website I recommend is Cycle Streets. They have a tool which will plot your route using cycling friendly roads.
How to safety check your bike
A quick check involves: tyres are fully inflated (shouldn’t be able to press them in), brakes should stop the bike quickly and there’s no loose parts or unfastened quick release levers.
One important thing I nearly missed..
Bicycle insurance – a boring thing to consider when you are getting excited about how to start cycling but non the less a good idea if you are buying an expensive bike that will be left unattended often.
See also: Bicycle insurance
Any questions about getting started with cycling?
Ask in the comments below
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As seen on The Guardian, BBC and The Independent. | <urn:uuid:aa42e36b-9441-4d53-be46-071c93a1e914> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/how-to-start-cycling/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94913 | 1,771 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The UFC and MMA is a world wide sport. While it may not be the top sport in the world it does give people from all countries the opportunity to compete. It’s not a sport like football or basketball where most fighters come from America it is a true global sport. There are fighters like Michael Bisping who represent England and Anderson Silva is the most well known Brazilian besides Royce Gracie. Who can represent America.
First, MMA while a sport started in Brazil, most UFC fighters are from America or Brazil and thanks to Michael Bisping is finally starting to reach Europe. There are a ton of American fighters that fans know, but who can truly stand out to be the American fighter.
The obvious choice would be someone like Brian Stann because he is a war hero, but doesn’t have the credentials to represent the country. Chael Sonnen, while many like him, is too outspoken to be the representative and would not be popular. America’s best choice would be a fighter such as Frankie Edgar.
The lightweights represent the best of both worlds. It gives fans knockouts, submissions, stamina and everything you want in a fight. Frankie Edgar has boxing ability that boxing fans can love, a wrestling background that wrestlers enjoy and the absolute heart of a champion. He’s the small guy that everyone can appreciate and fights to the end. Edgar discredits the idea that the bigger fighter has the advantage and showed that against Gray Maynard. He is a fighter that could truly represent our country and be the American fighter us Americans appreciate and make our favorite. | <urn:uuid:837ccda3-d9cf-49ae-91df-3552bd7a277f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cagepages.com/2012/04/01/what-american-fighter-can-represent-the-ufc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954931 | 326 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Dorsey was often frustrated by how strangers reacted to her appearance. "I remember the first time I wore a turban and walked into a bakery--I scared the hell out of this woman. She looked at me with an expression that said 'cancer has just walked in.' I understood, though, because I used to be terrified of cancer too. Even in hospitals, if a friend and I walked down the hall wearing turbans, people would give us funny looks."
Nicholas shares a tip he learned from a client, "Wearing a scarf over a bald head looks unnatural because the scarf is too close to the scalp. Creating layers such as wearing two scarves or a scarf under a hat simulates the bulk of hair."
Dorsey felt pressured to wear her wig in certain settings, such as in front of strangers and children. "When you wear a wig, you're pretty much invisible. But wigs can get hot and uncomfortable." She and Libby Levinson, a woman in her support group, eventually tired of worrying about people's reactions and opted to wear scarves under baseball hats with various logos, dubbing it 'Chemo Chic.'
Hair is a protective shield for the scalp from sun, extreme temperatures, and other harsh elements. Both Gallagher and Nicholas recommend gentle hydrating scalp care--using a mild facial cleanser instead of shampoo, a daily moisturizer with an SPF of 15 or higher, and drinking adequate fluids (6-8 glasses of non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated beverages daily).
The American Cancer Society sponsors a community-based, free national program for women with cancer called "Look Good... Feel Better." These workshops are offered in cancer centers, hospitals, and other community settings across the country. Teams of trained beauty professionals teach skin care, makeup, hair and nails, and the use of wigs, hats, turbans and scarves. For more information, visit the American Cancer Society web site or call 1-800-395-LOOK to find programs in your area.
Now that Debbie Dorsey's hair has completely grown back, she sports a short, stylish cut. Reflecting on the experience she says, "I never really accepted or felt comfortable with the hair loss. But I learned that being bald didn't rob my femininity."
Gallagher says that she doesn't know if her patients overcome their feelings through the hair loss experience, but they eventually feel that they are managing it. "That's what I'm aiming for. If a person says "Oh everything's fine, I'll be fine,' I get nervous. That overly bright persona tends to be more fragile than someone who has natural ups and downs."
Dorsey's message to readers is for people to learn and talk about cancer and cancer prevention. "Until they can find a cure for cancer, we need to stop fearing it and take a proactive role by getting yearly screenings." Dorsey was featured in a recent PBS documentary titled "No Hair Day," which follows the making of a photography exhibit and the experiences of Dorsey and two other women undergoing chemotherapy. | <urn:uuid:d263f3e9-056b-4328-98c2-762b070f610d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ksat.com/lifestyle/healthandwellnessexperts/womens-health/How-one-woman-coped-with-hair-loss/-/4741704/17308224/-/item/1/-/hu6jd2z/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966059 | 633 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Web edition: October 12, 2012
A 14-year-old car enthusiast earned the top award at the second annual Broadcom MASTERS competition (MASTERS is an abbreviation for Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars). The eighth-grader — Raymond Gilmartin from South Pasadena, Calif. — received an educational award of $25,000 after cruising through days of engineering enigmas, science stumpers and math mysteries.
Being named the top winner left Gilmartin "excited and overwhelmed," he said. Participating in the competition has been "the greatest thing that's happened to me. I made a lot of friends and learned a lot." | <urn:uuid:05883fc9-e285-4e2e-848c-6fe3101a9a88> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/345744/description/FOR_KIDS_Car-crazy_kid_wins_Broadcom_competition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957759 | 141 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Members of the Thompson family were among the earliest lumber manufacturers in Texas, having begun operations with a small sawmill in Rusk County built by Benjamin P. Thompson and his sons. Eventually, the family moved their operations to Willard in Trinity County, where they built a large mill. The family expanded their business to cover a large area of southeast Texas. Headquarters for the complex of companies in which the family was involved were finally established in Houston.
This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is available for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the East Texas Research Center at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:46a894d7-43b4-447e-b14f-6870a0715cc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digital.sfasu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/EastTexRC/id/6376/rec/18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980779 | 142 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Last WWI Navy vet dies in Md. at age 105
Sun Apr 1, 5:22 PM ET
Lloyd Brown, the last known surviving World War I Navy veteran, has died. He was 105.
Brown died Thursday at the Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in St. Mary's County, according to family and the U.S. Naval District in Washington.
His death comes days after the death of the last known surviving American female World War I veteran, Charlotte L. Winters, 109.
The deaths leave three known survivors who served in the Army, and a fourth who lives in Washington state but served in the Canadian army, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Brown was born Oct. 7, 1901, in Lutie, Mo., a small farming town in the Ozarks. His family later moved to Chadwick, Mo. In 1918, 16-year-old Brown lied about his age to join the Navy and was soon on the gun crew on the battleship USS New Hampshire.
"All the young men were going in the service. They were making the headlines, the boys that enlisted," Brown told The (Baltimore) Sun in a 2005 interview. "And all the girls liked someone in uniform."
Brown finished his tour of duty in 1919, took a break for a couple of years, then re-enlisted. He learned to play the cello at a musicians school in Norfolk, Va., and was assigned to an admiral's 10-piece chamber orchestra aboard the USS Seattle.
When Brown ended his military career in 1925, he joined the Washington Fire Department's Engine Company 16, which served the White House and embassies. He had married twice, and had a son and daughter from one marriage and two daughters from the other.
Even after reaching 100, Brown remained independent, living alone in his Charlotte Hall bungalow and driving a golf cart around his neighborhood.
SUCH GREAT HEROES..... | <urn:uuid:b1ca03b6-9616-470c-8261-2de5c25be705> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/17045-The-Last-Wwi-Vets-Are-Passing?mode=hybrid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984956 | 397 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Topeka An overhaul of Kansas' laws against drunken driving is stalled in the state Senate, where some members have misgivings about requiring ignition interlock devices for first-time offenders and others don't want to increase liquor taxes to cover potential additional costs.
The senator trying to shepherd the bill through the Legislature isn't sure anything will pass this year, even though the measure has been two years in the works. A key House member says lawmakers may have to settle for a less sweeping bill and then tinker with drunken-driving laws again.
The Senate had been scheduled to debate the drunken-driving legislation Wednesday. The measure increases penalties for refusing to take an alcohol test after a traffic stop and for being under the influence of alcohol or other drugs while working as a commercial driver. It creates a central state database of DUI influence cases to make it easier to track offenders' histories.
But Senate leaders abruptly canceled the debate after a caucus of Republican senators, and Majority Leader Jay Emler, a Lindsborg Republican, said the measure doesn't have enough support to pass. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Tim Owens, an Overland Park Republican who's pushed for a comprehensive bill, said legislators aren't willing to acknowledge that reforms create costs — or to look for the money.
"Without them willing to pay for it, now it's not going to happen," Owens said. "It's all about money."
The latest round of work on strengthening the state's DUI laws began in 2008, amid public concern about repeat offenders. Legislators formed a commission in 2009 to do a comprehensive review of DUI laws, and its recommendations were ready for legislators this year. Last year, federal statistics showed that alcohol-related traffic fatalities jumped 12 percent in Kansas in 2009, to 154, when they declined by 7 percent nationwide.
Some legislators worry changes in penalties will crowd local jails and increase the state's prison population, and there's heartburn as well about the cost of creating the state DUI case database, estimated at up to $3 million.
One estimate put the cost of the DUI commission's recommendations at more than $9 million. Owens said his committee's revisions cut the potential costs by more than half.
The Senate's legislation would have raised liquor taxes by about $6 million a year — a hard sell.
"It was the elephant in the middle of the room that nobody was talking about," said Sen. Terry Bruce, a Hutchinson Republican. "Everybody knew it was there."
The House overwhelmingly approved a less sweeping bill last week with tougher penalties for both refusing to take a DUI test and following a DUI conviction. Its version includes a requirement that all first-time offenders have their driver's licenses suspended for a month, followed by 11 months with an ignition interlock device on their vehicles. State law now allows a judge to require such a device, which prevents someone from starting a car without first doing a breath-alcohol test, but it's not mandated.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is pushing for an ignition interlock law, arguing that it will reduce repeat DUI offenses, traffic accidents and fatalities. Nine states require such devices for all first-time DUI offenders, while an additional seven require them for some, based on the offender's age or blood-alcohol level, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"We feel very strongly that even people with suspended licenses continue to drive and are a danger," said Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican who is chairman of the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee. "Next year, we can make it an even more sophisticated bill, but get what we can get this year. It'd be a shame after all this work to just let it go."
The Senate bill doesn't require ignition interlock devices for first-time offenders, but Owens supports the idea and told fellow GOP senators Wednesday that he would offer an amendment to add a provision to the Senate's legislation.
Other senators are wary. Sen. David Haley, a Kansas City Democrat, said some of his colleagues don't want to take away judges' discretion, and there's concern that installing the devices will result in up to $1,000 in additional fees for offenders.
"There's tremendous opposition," he said.
The Senate could consider the House's legislation, but Owens prefers what he sees as a comprehensive approach.
"It doesn't do hardly anything, except maybe put the interlocks on people," Owens said of the House plan. "We could have done that three years ago." | <urn:uuid:8bb8b139-3e88-4f2d-944d-7cd90a418f6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/mar/31/effort-rewrite-state-dui-law-stalled-kansas-senate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969718 | 918 | 1.5 | 2 |
Ted Simons: Another significant chapter in the history of our state happened in 1981. That's when President Reagan nominated Sandra day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. The senate confirmation meetings were broadcast by channel eight that year. It was kind of a test run for the Horizon program that was getting ready to launch. I recently spoke with O'Connor as "Horizon" reached another milestone in a new set. In a new building. Here is a portion of that interview. What a special pleasure having you here on this night.
Sandra day O'Connor: Thank you, Ted. I'm glad to be here.
Ted Simons: Thank you so much. We just saw some tape back in the day, early days of "Horizon," and your confirmation Hearings. Your first kind of foray into That Washington --
Sandra day O'Connor: I have not forgotten those Days.
Ted Simons: What was it like?
Sandra day O'Connor: Very intense. And the hearings are conducted in a very large conference room In the capitol building in the Senate. One of the senate buildings. And there was space, maybe 30 feet of space between where I sat at a table like this, and the place where all of the Senators of the judiciary Committee were seated. And every bit of the space in Between was occupied by reporters and people with cameras who were trying to cover The event. They were all over the floor. There were more reporters there than had attended the Watergate Hearings. It was the most who had ever come to the capitol. They wanted to see something about this woman nominated for The Supreme Court. It was just jammed.
Ted Simons: Were you nervous?
Sandra day O'Connor: Well, of course I was very concerned. I had a microphone pinned on and there were lights, and what happens today is much like what happened then. The senate judiciary committee Has a number of members, and Each of them are given two and Sometimes three opportunities to Have a certain amount of time to Ask questions of the nominee. And they like to use all their Time, because it's free Television air time, and given Gavel-to-gavel coverage for these members of the senate, and They love that. They don't have to pay for it. It's free. And they ask tough questions and so it's an endless process and seems -- it seems to the Nominee.
Ted Simons: But you got through the Process.
Sandra day O'Connor: Somehow.
Ted Simons: And you started such a stellar career, but I'm curious early on, what was the reaction by the other justices?
Sandra day O'Connor: Oh, well, there were only eight of them remaining, and they were often divided 4-4, and they needed another member of the court, male or female. Arizona or not. They needed a living, breathing justice to join them to make nine.
Ted Simons: But when you did join them and just not even -- away from the bench, I mean, were there looks? Did you have to prove yourself?
Sandra day O'Connor: No, no, I don't think so. I didn't. They were all welcoming and they all said let me know how I can be helpful. Of course they're too busy to be helpful is the fact of the matter. Everyone has so much to do nobody has time for idle chitchat. But they were very happy to get a ninth member of the court, and they were all cordial.
Ted Simons: When you look back on your time on the court, and some of the decisions you made, I don't know how reflective a person you are.
Sandra day O'Connor: No very.
Ted Simons: Not very?
Sandra day O'Connor: I don't look back a lot.
Ted Simons: If you were to look back, or the chance opportunities you have to do so, were there decisions that you kind of look back and go hmm. Maybe I should have done X and Y instead of Z.
Sandra day O'Connor: I don't do that. And I decided early on when I first became a trial court judge here in Maricopa County, Arizona; it wasn't a good idea to look back. That I ought to try to do the best I could with each case I had, do the best I could, and then don't look back. Make a decision and go on. And I followed that practice at The Supreme Court, and I'm glad I did. Because I think the effort ought to go into the front end when you're reviewing the case, and researching it, and deciding for yourself what the answer is. Put all of the effort you can into it. Make a decision and don't look back. You're not going to be a happy person if you're always looking over your shoulder and I don't do that.
Ted Simons: Not so much even over your shoulder, but let's talk at the time of the decision, one side was very upset with you regarding Bush V. Gore.
Sandra day O'Connor: Oh, yes, I know.
Ted Simons: Another side was also very upset with you regarding abortion decisions.
Sandra day O'Connor: Oh, yes.
Ted Simons: Abortion rights and these sorts of things. Do you hear those criticisms?
Sandra day O'Connor: Well, of course you do. I mean, nobody is deaf, dumb and blind on the court. You can read a newspaper, you can see a television talk show or something. And so we are -- we're all aware of strong feelings. And even members of the court can express themselves very strongly, both at the oral conferences and in writing of opinions. Some of the language in written opinions is very strong. When the person -- the Justice who's writing feels really strongly about something they may say things that as you read it, you say "oh, my goodness, that's a little strong." But that's the way it is. And you just have to try to respond even handedly and respond with the best arguments you can make to support your own view.
Ted Simons: There have been some critics and some critics still regarding your tenure, saying that you did not -- you mentioned case-by-case basis, and that's how you looked at things. I think most folks would suggest -- but they suggested that there was no overriding judicial philosophy, so justices in the future may not be able to glean much from what you decide.
Sandra day O'Connor: Oh, I think they will. Because every case requires the resolution of some principle of Federal law. The case presents some issue of federal law. Or we wouldn't take it. And so each decision we make is setting out some principle of law. You can write it very broadly so that you're going to pick up all kinds of things in the future. Or you can be more careful. And not try to decide every future case with this one. And I'm probably in the latter category.
Ted Simons: Do you think that the other Justices were a little too much. Involved with judicial philosophy?
Sandra day O'Connor: Oh, goodness, I'm not going to characterize them as a bunch. Different justices have different approaches. And I guess some justices over time and in history have tended to write more broadly than they had to on a given principle. I tended not to do that because I didn't want to foreclose other arguments in the future that might persuade the court differently.
Ted Simons: The importance of diversity on the court, talk to us about that. And I seem to have -- remember reading that you were not entirely pleased when you first announced you were going to retire from the bench that the initial look was toward a man as opposed to a woman. First of all, is that correct?
Sandra day O'Connor: Well, I did hope that when I stepped down from the Supreme Court that I would be replaced by a woman. It took 191 years to get one woman on that court. That's a long time. And I didn't want us to wait 191 years to get the second. I thought that was unfortunate. And so I had hoped that I would be succeeded by another woman. We did have a second woman, Justice Ginsburg was appointed when I was there. So there were two of us. 100% increase, I like that. But I thought we could use more. Our nearest neighbor is Canada. Canada has a Supreme Court of nine members, just as we do. And it has four women on the Court and the chief justice is a woman. So very close to us we've seen examples of courts that function very well with more women, and I hope over time we will see more women on the U.S. Supreme Court as well.
Ted Simons: And I ask the question as well because there was a recent regarding Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her wise Latina comment, which got a lot of play in the media, and got a lot of folks on both sides going after each other, as they tend to do. What did you make of that comment?
Sandra day O'Connor: Well, she probably had second thoughts about it after it created a furor, because you'd just as soon not go into the hearings and have them upset about something you said and having to try to clarify it. It's not much fun. It's been my view as a member of the court and when I was nominated that at the end of the day, a wise old woman and a wise old man are going to reach the same conclusion. That's probably true of Latinos as well as Anglos.
Ted Simons: And I mentioned the idea of people fussing and fighting as they tend to do. I know the O'Connor house project is kind of targeted toward the concept of civility and the concept of just getting along, especially lawmakers. Talk to us about the O'Connor House project.
Sandra day O'Connor: I don't know that people are going to understand what that is. But my husband John and I built an adobe house in what became Paradise Valley, Arizona, out on a desert sort of a lot. And we had the adobes made out Of the salt riverbed in Tempe and they're just mud with some clay and some straw, and then they're dried in the sun. Now, they're fragile in the sense that if you get them rained on, they're going to turn to mud again and wash away. So they have to be protected. I love the sun-dried Adobe walls. I don't know if you've been in a building with them, but they're fabulous. That's what we wanted to achieve. And we did. And I use the house and my husband used it very often. He was Chairman of several boards of local county hospital Boards and others while he was here, crippled children and so on. I was active in the legislature I was in the senate, and eventually became senate majority leader. And on a number of occasions I would invite all of the senators, or if necessary, a smaller group, both democrats and Republicans, make some Mexican food, serve some beer and make friends. And we did that at the house sitting around the fire pit outside, enjoying Arizona's beautiful evenings. And when you get to know people and make friends, it's easier to work with them when you have to go to work. And so part of the idea of the O'Connor House is to remind people in public life that you can sometimes achieve civic action by civil talk around a fire pit, over a little Mexican food. I mean, that helps when you make friends. I think it makes it easier to resolve problems and issues.
Ted Simons: What happened to that though? Things have been divisive especially in Washington, but here in Arizona as well everyone seems to be on everyone else with language that no one seemed to be comfortable using in the past.
Sandra day O'Connor: I know. Very distressing. I have -- I'll tell you what I think we need to do in Congress. I think we need to adopt rules that say that the members of Congress cannot travel home every weekend; that they have to stay in Washington to be available for their work in the House and the senate, three weeks a month. Take the day off Sunday, but otherwise, be available for Committee meetings, floor action, committee meetings whatever it is. And not let them leave. At present, the members of Congress tend to leave on Thursday afternoon and go home if it's all the way to California, they go all the way to California. They come back on Tuesday, they arrive maybe in the morning and then spend part of Tuesday, all of Wednesday, and part of Thursday before they leave again. There is never time for them to become friends, to even know each other. They don't even meet people in their own party, much less in the other party. So if I could wave a magic wand I would adopt rules that would require them to be there over a longer stretch of time, then give them the fourth week off go home for the whole week. But most of the time be there so that you get to know the other members with whom you're working. It's easier to accomplish something if you do that.
Ted Simons: That's an interesting idea. That's the first I've heard of that, and it does make sense.
Sandra day O'Connor: Yes
Ted Simons: You're almost forced, sometimes like a big family, where not everyone gets along, but during Thanksgiving and Christmas you're forced to sit around the table and get along.
Sandra day O'Connor: That's right. And I think that's what we need to do more of. Because if you know people well it's going to be harder to be nasty and disagreeable. You might reach a compromise on a few things.
Ted Simons: You and others are talking about structural change for Arizona, looking out and seeing things that aren’t necessarily the way they should be. Talk to us about that. What would you like to see happen?
Sandra day O'Connor: I think there's a number of areas where the legislature and Arizona voters look at our constitutional scheme and see if we need to make a few adjustments. We probably do. There's no -- Very few states have the succession of governor if the governor leaves during office, go to the secretary of State. More states have a lieutenant Governor in position who can then fulfill the task if the Governor leaves. Arizona's had at least seven occasions in the last 25 years or so where the governor has left and didn't fulfill the term. And then in comes, in Arizona, the secretary of state. And when the voters voted for the secretary of state, they weren't thinking this is going to be my new governor. So it might be helpful if Arizona did what many states have done -- elect a lieutenant Governor at the time they elect a governor. I think we need to give some thought to how many elected state officials we want to have. Do we really think we want an elected superintendent of schools, or do we want to elect the school boards? Does Arizona need an elected state mine inspector? It's the only state in the union that has one. That's a little quirk for Arizona. I mean, there are lots of things to look at. Another thing to look at is the initiative process. Arizona, like many western states, has an opportunity for voters to go get enough signatures to put a proposed law on the ballot for voters to say I want this or I don't. Now, most states don't have that. But the western states do. And Arizona does. I think Arizona has run into a few problems with some of these initiative measures particularly when they're not well drafted, and when there are issues about them. Now, one thing we can do is give a little more time for the Secretary of state to review the petitions that are filed to make sure that the required number of voters' names are there. That it isn't some -- that it isn't signed by a lot of people who are not registered voters. That's the concern. And today we don't have enough time for that kind of a check to be made. We also don't have any provision where, for instance, the legislative council could review it to make sure that the title is correct and not misleading. We have some technical issues with initiative measures that need some attention.
Ted Simons: And everything you've talked about, almost everything we've talked about together on this program but most of it involves civic education. We only have a minute and a half or so left. I know that's very important to you. Because it doesn't seem like a lot of folks are aware of all these things.
Sandra day O'Connor: That's right, they're not. And only barely half of the 50 States in the United States still make civics and government a requirement for high school. Did you know that? It's just -- we're abandoning that. And we have a rather intricate system of government in this country, and every young person needs to learn about it if they're going to be involved, if they're going to be effective as citizens. We need to do that. | <urn:uuid:28cd54d5-54c6-429c-9fdc-fb61af7347b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.azpbs.org/arizonahorizon/detailvid.php?id=2255 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985441 | 3,613 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Exercise Science Outreach
Employee Fitness Program (EFP)
The UNH EFP originated in 1988. The UNH President’s Office designated start-up funds to the (then) Department of Physical Education’s Exercise Physiology Faculty to establish an exercise testing and training facility, which would be made available to interested benefits-eligible faculty and staff. Equipment for testing and training was purchased and a graduate student was hired to run the day-to-day operations of the program. The initial call for participants went out to all eligible faculty and staff. The response was overwhelming with over 250 respondents. A lottery was held to select 100 participants. Since 1988, 100 new participants have been tested annually. In 1995, the program was moved to the Field House Balcony where it currently resides. To date, over 1,600 UNH faculty and staff have been tested and have used the facility on a regular basis.
The UNH EFP provides a real world laboratory situation for graduate and undergraduate students in The Department of Kinesiology/Exercise Science. Students are actively involved in all aspects of fitness development and programming. Included are fitness testing, graded exercise testing, blood lipid assessment, pulmonary function testing, body composition testing, exercise prescription, personal training, program development, program marketing, data collection, and data tracking.
The exercise facility located in the Field House on the UNH-Durham campus is approximately 3,600 square feet in size. Exercise equipment includes StarTrac treadmills and elliptical trainers, LifeFitness Exercise cycles, Schwinn AirDyne cycles, StairMaster step machines, Concept II rowers, Nautilus strength stations, and free weights and equipment.
Our hours of operation during the Academic Year are:
M-F: 11:00 am – 1:30 pm & 4:00 – 6:30 pm
M-W-F: 6:00 – 8:00 am
Starting May 20, 2013 Our Summer hours are:
M-W-F: 11:30 – 1:00 pm
We are closed during all University Holidays
Questions? Contact the Program Director:
Timothy J. Quinn, Ph.D.
University of New Hampshire
Department of Kinesiology
New Hampshire Hall #119
124 Main Street
Durham, NH 03824
- Major Declaration
- Contact Us | <urn:uuid:fe0d61a2-c33a-4985-bbc7-4bc1e319f685> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chhs.unh.edu/kin_es/outreach_employfitness_es.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938549 | 488 | 1.6875 | 2 |
A recent consulting contract took me to Lake George, New York, to lead a group of educators in refining a graduate course on teachers as leaders. I've been wading around in teacher leadership -a concept that means decidedly different things to different people--for a couple of decades now, reviewing the literature, poking at theoretical models and trying to figure out how seminal ideas shape the field.
I have a large collection of favorite resources on teacher leadership--books, websites, articles, cartoons, blogs, even an iTunes playlist. This summer, I had to add a new artifact to view: the StudentsFirst.org website. An example of what hundreds of millions will buy you in media presence and influence, a place where compelling messages about teaching and learning go to be politically compromised, twisted to a kind of educational Newspeak.
The veteran teacher leaders who visited the website were shocked. "Saving good teachers" has a whole different meaning to them--probably because they've spent years mentoring promising-but-mistake-prone novice teachers, and appreciate the time it takes to build a truly effective practice.
They saw the splash screen asking newcomers to "join" StudentsFirst (collecting the all-important contact information) and were good at identifying and decoding the rhetorical obfuscation: "When the best get fired, students suffer most," for example. The "pledge," the "membership" button and the smiling face of "Ask Michelle"--plus the ubiquitous Donate button--are accompanied by anti-union blogs, diversity-on-parade videos and phrases like "bloated bureaucracies," and "efficiency should not be sacrificed on the altar of equity."
Of course, there's a whole lot of education-related whitewash and baloney out there, packaged as glossy, interactive web-based media. The StudentsFirst site has a lot of what blogger Kathleen Kosobud calls "kittens and puppies" appeal. If you didn't know better--if you weren't carefully following education policy or reforms--you would swear that StudentsFirst was a progressive venture, aligned with full teacher professionalism, empowering ignored parents and advocating for great public schools for all kids.
If it's true that Rupert Murdoch gave Michelle Rhee $50 million toward the billion she was seeking to impose her vision of school reform on a weary nation, perhaps he also gave her some valuable tips on clever use of distorting media to steer public opinion. While working on the Save Our Schools campaign, I got a call from an enraged supporter who signed a Save Our Schools-endorsed petition at Change.Org and was immediately taken to the StudentsFirst site. Please tell me, she said through clenched teeth, that Save Our Schools is not affiliated in any way with Michelle Rhee.
So I spoke with Change.Org. It turns out that you can have a free petition at Change.Org. Or you can pay Change.Org to help build your initiative's client base by letting them serve as connection point for "related" causes. I asked why Change.Org thought StudentsFirst was a progressive cause--the kind of initiative that pushed real democracy forward. There was a pause. Then the nice young man I was speaking to said, "Well, there was actually a lot of talk around the office about that." Discreet.
In the end, StudentsFirst becomes a revenue stream for Change.Org--$1.75 for every signature-cum-email they snag, according to Nice Young Man. So the 7000 SF "members" who live in Georgia and were willing to click on an e-mailed petition to the Georgia legislature back in April cost Michelle $12,250. Chump change out of Rupert's generous donation.
Kosobud (who is very savvy about education policy and technology) got conned, however--bamboozled into signing a StudentsFirst petition, much to her chagrin. It can happen to anybody. Beware.
The line on social-media political action is that free and earned media are more open and democratic. But if it's easy to buy "support" with a few handy phrases ("fighting to keep effective teachers in the classroom!"), soft-focus video clips and paying to lure well-meaning people to misinformation, we're all in trouble.
Media literacy has become a new skill for teacher leaders.
[Editorial note: Education Week Teacher is not affiliated with the Save Our Schools event; the views expressed in this opinion blog do not reflect the endorsement of Education Week or Editorial Projects in Education, which take no editorial positions] | <urn:uuid:18a97346-a492-48e1-918e-c0759c3c8669> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2011/08/money_cant_buy_me_love.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-FB | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963764 | 931 | 1.640625 | 2 |
I’ve been a Christian for almost half a century. I’ve sat through hundreds of sermons and delivered hundreds of my own. I’ve sung hymns and worship songs thousands of times. Throughout all of this, God’s glory is a frequent theme. We speak and sing of God’s glory. We promise to glorify God’s name. Glory, glory, glory!
But what is God’s glory? What are we preaching and singing about?
I have always made a connection between God’s glory and bright light. Indeed, glory and luminosity are frequently joined in Scripture. We see this, for example, in Ezekiel 43:2. When God draws near, “the earth was lit up with his glory.”
Yet this passage also describes God’s glory in an unexpected way: “Its sound was like the sound of a mighty flood.” So, God’s glory was overwhelming both in brightness and in volume. It was so impressive, so inspiring, and so fearsome that Ezekiel fell on his face (43:3).
I try to imagine what this must have been like. I can remember hearing thunderous sounds, literal thunder in Texas, for example. And I can think of dazzling light, such as sunsets over the Pacific Ocean. But my experience falls short when it comes to combining these.
Friends of mine have described something that may come close to Ezekiel’s experience of God’s glory. I’m thinking of how they talk about witnessing the launch of the space shuttle. They speak of brilliant light and ear-splitting sound. To my knowledge, they did not fall on their faces, however.
The vision of Ezekiel reminds us that God is not some safe, passive being. God’s glory is not like the glow of a lava lamp. Nor does it sit there to be admired safely. Rather, when God is present, the world is filled and transformed. The glory of God overwhelms us, dwarfs us, and propels us to our knees in humble worship.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER REFLECTION: What comes to your mind when you think of God’s glory? How might your life be different if you were to have an experience like that of Ezekiel? When have you sensed God’s glory most powerfully in your life?
PRAYER: O God, I can talk about your glory. I can read about it. I can imagine what it might be like. But, in truth, I have so little experience of your true glory. As I read Ezekiel 43, I yearn for a vision like that of Ezekiel. I would like to have my sense of your glory expanded, even exploded.
Help me, dear Lord, to be open to new experiences and deeper understanding of your glory. May I realize in new ways just how brilliant, powerful, and awe-inspiring you are. May my life be transformed as I encounter you in new ways. And may I live, indeed, for your glory. Amen. | <urn:uuid:450110f2-e0ea-475b-9cc4-60b70f676ea1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trinityspeaks.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/how-do-you-envision-the-glory-of-god-by-mark-d-roberts/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958945 | 642 | 1.640625 | 2 |
MSNBC released on Sunday that Chris Hayes sparked controversy and debate when he said that he felt “uncomfortable” calling to the soldiers killed in action “heroes” because the term can be used to justify potentially unjust wars. He apologized later for the statement.
Hayes spent a lot of time to of his Memorial Day-themed show on questions of war and of the people killed on all sides of military conflicts, from American solders to afghan civilians.
After talking with a former Marine whose duty was to notify the families of the death of solders, he comes to his panel and, clearly wrestling with what to say, raised the issue of language:
He expressed in his statement as following (via email):
“I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Why do I feel so [uncomfortable] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable — uncomfortable — about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”
Also the panelist of Hayes explain the same as discomfort. Columnist John McWhorter and Linguist said that he would “”almost rather not say ‘hero” and called the term “manipulative,” even if it was casually so.
Hayes expressed again as, on eth other side, it could be seen as “noble” to join the military. He said “This is voluntary, ” adding that, though a “liberal caricature” like himself would not understand “submitting so totally to what the electorate or people in power are going to decide about using your body,” he saw valor in it. | <urn:uuid:d9404ca1-f4ef-47ac-9a75-c3079f8647ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fashiontolet.com/chris-hayes-apologizes-for-memorial-day-remarks-about-the-word-heroes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978879 | 469 | 1.679688 | 2 |
It is reminiscent of a kid i knew who loved to proclaim that wearing a seatbelt in a car isnt safe because he knew someone who might have survived a crash if they had been thrown from the car. Mostly he just wanted attention and to demonstrate via his outlandish claim that he was therefore "an independent thinker". Others recoiling only seemed to support his sense of how wisely independent he was.
I hear that all the time too. He's not wrong, technically, sort-of. People have died due to injuries caused by a seatbelt (though, I'd venture to say that any impact so great it could cause your seatbelt to kill you, would have been more than enough to kill you without it). People have also run off of bridges, been trapped in the water, and because of panic, unable to get their seatbelt off and drowned. HOWEVER, a whole lot more people have avoided death by wearing it. We know from numerous studies, some basic logic and understanding of what happens in an accident, AND many many statistical understandings, that you are more likely to survive with a seatbelt ON. Again, if you don't wanna wear it that's none of my business, but don't tell me you are doing it for SAFETY. That's just an excuse people use because they want to justify it!
Statistics can be manipulated, but I don't think any of these statistics are an out-and-out lie. Unemployment is an oft manipulated statistic because of how it's recorded. For example, after two years of being out of work, you are no longer unemployed. A person being laid off of a $50,000 a year factory job who then finds work for $12,000 a year part time, is no longer unemployed. Sometimes we can get a false sense of what's going on thanks to those statistics. That's why it's important to look at EXACTLY what is going on. What EXACTLY is being recorded.
People always throw out anecdotal stuff to somehow debunk years of studies. I met a guy once who claimed NOT wearing a helmet saved his life. He wrecked, and he slid into a lawn mower deck in a guys yard face first and broke his jaw in several places and knocked out most of his teeth. He figured that his bones 'breaking' lessened the impact, whereas if he had a helmet on, it would have snapped his neck from the impact. What he evidently wasn't aware of, is A) There really aren't recorded cases of neck injuries caused by a helmet. and B) That's how a helmet works! If he had a full face on, then the chin bar would flex with the rest of the helmet to dull the impact, and the internal liners would crush. If he had a 3/4 or half helmet, then, it would have been the same outcome!
"8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Romans 5:8 (NIV)
2006 Vulcan 900 Classic LT "Couch-a-Saki/Mini-Bagger" Fire and Steel Highway Bars w/ pegs, Mustang seat, Harley-Davidson King TourPak, Mutazu MU Hard Bags, Rick's Stator, and more to come!
2011 Honda Shadow Aero 750 (Wife's) Memphis shades windshield, and one happy new rider!
Member of the Christian Motorcyclist Association
Patriot Guard Rider
In my younger days (80's thru 90's) I kayaked whitewater rivers. Strangely enough, I never questioned running a river without a PFD or helmet. There were no requirements that I had to wear either, but I did. Of the thousands of people I've seen in kayaks I never saw one without their gear on. Maybe because it was implied that you were at some point going to be upside down banging your head off of rocks and you might need to stay conscious for self rescue. Anyway - I do the same each time I or my wife and I take to the bike. FF helmets and textile wear head to toe. People have asked how can you stand wearing gear like that when it's hot (actually, I feel pretty comfortable) out? I tell them, the only time I need to wear it; is when I'm in a crash and leave it at that.
No matter how hot, law or no law, I will still wear a helmet. The last thing I heard when I was side-swipped by car was the CRUNCH of my helmet as I hit the road. Other body parts were not so lucky but eventually healed.
2011 Vulcan Voyager 1700
Kuryakyn black ISO grips
Vance & Hines Twin Slash slip-ons
GPS holder // Garmin C580
RAM cup holder // Trunk Rack
Scala Rider G9 ProSet
I wear a bell Revolver Modular. If I get hot, I ride with the visor up and the shades down. I open the front at intersections or low speed. What it boiled down to for me was 1st: I am ugly enough without a bunch of road rash or a caved in face. 2nd: When I was 14, I was hit by a car on my dirt bike when my brakes failed and I could not stop on the trail and went into the road. My Helmet saved my life because it first hit the car, then the pavement. All I ended up with was bruises and 6 stitches in my ankle. Never ever will I consider riding without a helmet. I also got real serious about the face shield after a 55mph bumble bee won the battle with my face. Bike got a windshield too!
To each his own...I bounced off enough trees and dumped enough blood & skin while growing up trailing so I NEVER even take a short jaunt to the store without ALL my gear ("HAT", glasses, leather coat and boots). But as said here "to each his own"...I have a full face, a 3/4 and a skull....for me it depends on what the weather is like as to what I wear that day...Grew up with the habit and when I started street riding it just came natural to gear up to go with a better chance of returning in the same shape as when I left....lots of my bud's ride bare and some even tease me about how I look...but I just give them that same old smile and they know what it means without saying a word...
In IL, there's no law. It's a perfect example of why we don't need laws on books: you chose to follow a suggestion or not. No guarantee anything bad will happen, but if it does you know that wearing a helmet is better than not. Any NFL fan knows what happens when you hit your head at much slower speeds with something far softer than a tree.
Any Twins fans here? Justin Morneau was out a year+ from bumping his head into another guys KNEE. Not tree, knee.
I like my brain and my face. I'm a pretty, pretty man. No need to let some mean old asphalt ruin what my mama worked so hard to create.
2007 Vulcan 900 Custom - black and debadged
Cobra dragster pipes
Kaw sissy bar | <urn:uuid:cb8943b1-6cee-41c7-a695-e6486c0b2b73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vulcanforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=271735 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978107 | 1,504 | 1.601563 | 2 |
[From H-Law, we have the following report of the announcement of the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Fellows at the recently concluded annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History.]
In 2009, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation made available a number of awards intended to support research and writing in American legal history. (The Foundation was established in 1930 to promote and encourage scholarship in legal history, particularly in the colonial and early national periods of the United States.) The number of awards to be made in any year, and their amounts, is at the discretion of the Foundation. In the past four years, the trustees of the Foundation have made three to five awards annually, in amounts up to $5,000. Preference will be given to scholars at the early stages of their careers.
The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation* makes available of a number of fellowship awards intended to support research and writing in American legal history. The number of awards to be made, and their amounts, is at the discretion of the Foundation. In the past four years, the trustees of the Foundation have made three to five awards, in amounts up to $5,000. Preference is given to scholars at the early stages of their careers. The Society's Committee for Research Fellowships and Awards reviews the applications and makes recommendations to the Foundation.
[The recipients for 2009 are:]
Kevin Arlyck, B.A. New College of Florida; M.A. The New School for Social Research; J.D. New York University School of Law; Ph.D. (candidate) New York University. Mr. Arlyck is completing a dissertation that analyzes the role of lawyers and federal courts in American foreign policy during the first decades after independence.
Mark Hanna, B.A. Yale University; Ph.D. Harvard University; Assistant Professor, The College of William & Mary. Mr. Hanna works on the law of piracy in colonial America.
Kelly Kennington, B.A. Tulane University; M.A. Duke University; Ph.D. Duke University; Post-Doctoral Fellow, School of Law, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Ms. Kennington is working on a study of slavery and freedom in antebellum America by examining lawsuits for freedom filed in the border city of St. Louis, the site of the Dred Scott case.
Felicity Turner, B.A., Monash University (Australia); M.A. LaTrobe University (Australia); Ph.D. (candidate), Duke University. Ms. Turner is in the midst of a dissertation on infanticide in the nineteenth-century United States as a way to probe the changing legal status of women and their relationship to the state.
Kyle Volk, B.A. Boston College; M.A. University of Chicago; Ph.D. University of Chicago; Assistant Professor, University of Montana, Missoula. Mr. Volk studies majority rule and minority rights in the decades before the American Civil War.
Hat tip: H-Law | <urn:uuid:b4b22927-bc0a-4127-9b03-65cca614963f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/cromwell-foundation-fellowship-awards.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934775 | 622 | 1.828125 | 2 |
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What to do with the Battin Building?
It's a concern that local governmental entities should be concerned about even if they don't submit any proposals for its use, emphasized Steve Arveschoug, Director of Big Sky Economic Development (EDA), as he advised his board members to "pass", on making any proposals to acquire the building. His recommendation was unanimously accepted by the board members of EDA and the Economic Development Corporation at their meeting last week, with several commenting that they would like to see the property returned to the private sector and go back onto the tax rolls.
Arveschoug advised that the city, county and EDA meet with the Congressional delegation "to explore options for federal support of the remediation of the federally-owned Battin building. This needs to be considered whether the building goes for a public use or private –sector use," said Arveschoug.
County Commissioner Bill Kennedy, too, worries about what the outcome will be, now that it seems no public entity will acquire the building. He worries that the community will be left with another Pierce Packing-kind of situation.
The Pierce Packing property became a property of the county, at one point, for unpaid taxes, after previous owners abandoned it, when it was determined that the cost of cleanup exceeded its value. The problem was eventually resolved when a private developer acquired the property and invested in its clean up, but it sat for years as a looming useless concrete hulk in mid-town Billings.
Laden as it is with an expensive asbestos abatement issue, the cost of mitigating the Battin Building may well exceed the value of the property, leaving even a private sector development questionable. Should the property be put out for bid to the private sector, as the federal government plans; and should a private developer fail in financing the abatement of the property, it could be abandoned and become the problem of local government, as is the case with a number of properties in the county, which are plagued with contamination issues.
A week prior to the action of Big Sky Economic Development, Yellowstone County Commissioners also voted, two to one, to "pass" on an invitation from the General Services Administration (GSA) to submit a letter of interest in the building, which will be vacated with the completion of a new federal courthouse and a new federal office building.
Kennedy, the dissenting vote, urged his fellow commissioners not to reject, out- of –hand, the offer without exploring all options, including a proposal to utilize the building as a complex for law enforcement and court services for both the City of Billings and Yellowstone County.
Commissioners Jim Reno and John Ostlund voiced concerns about the cost of abating asbestos, remodeling the building, and maintaining the building. The Battin Building is the current home of the Federal Courthouse and other federal offices, which will move, in about a year, to the new Federal Courthouse and another federal office building also under construction.
GSA sent letters, several weeks ago, to all local governmental entities informing them of the federal government's intent to divest themselves of the property, and asking for letters of interest by May 21. The letter explained that federal law requires that the property be offered first to public programs for homeless people, then to local governments, before being auctioned off to the private sector.
Commissioner Ostlund asked Director of Finance Scott Turner about costs of maintaining the building. Turner said that based upon annual maintenance costs of $700,000 for the courthouse, which is less than half the size of the federal building, he estimated that the annual maintenance costs of the federal building would be about $1.5 million. He went on to say that the multi-millions of dollars that it is expected to cost to mitigate the asbestos, does not include what could be another $10 million to remodel the building and to conform it to the needs of the courts and law enforcement. "Remodeling costs are typically higher than the cost of building new," he said.
There is also the problem of no parking space available to serve the building.
Kennedy's remarks dovetailed those of Billings Mayor Tom Hanel, who spoke to the commissioners before they voted, asking them to postpone making a decision until after the city council voted on the matter. Hanel said that council members indicated an interest in exploring options during discussion at a work session.
With both the county and BSED opting out, that leaves the city without any prospects for partnering with another agency. The city council is waiting for a recommendation from staff before deciding on the matter.
City council woman, Jani McCall, who also serves on the EDA board, said that the City Manager Tina Volek is going to ask the GSA for a year's extension on their deadline for letters of interest. The GSA asked for responses by May 21.
Kennedy and Hanel, both, thought there might be possible grants or other federal funding available to help mitigate the cost. If the fact finding efforts revealed the project is "far beyond our capability," said Hanel, there would still remain the option of bowing out. Kennedy urged meeting with the Congressional delegation to ask for federal assistance in dealing with the building and the asbestos problem.
Ostlund said that he didn't think that Yellowstone County needed to take on the project of cleaning up "220,000 square feet of contaminated waste that the federal government is moving out of." Or, to expect earmarks from a federal government that already has a sixteen trillion dollar deficit.
He went on to point out that while there has been talk of consolidating city and county law enforcement and courts, there is no plan. Ostlund said that he would rather build a new building to serve the local needs that had a plan "from the get go," rather than "revolve around something the federal government wants to get rid of."
Commissioner Reno said that the federal government told the Billings Gazette they were going to get rid of the building, "as is" and "where is." "We don't have the space need," he went on to say, pointing out that one-eighth of the county courthouse is still available for use.
"Even if the building was given to us in great condition," said Reno, "we couldn't afford it." As far as making available the extra space to the private sector through leases or condos, Reno said he is not interested in competing with the private sector.
Reno went on to ponder, how "the building is too contaminated for federal employees, but it is good enough for local government employees? Or, for the homeless?" " How callous," he said.
Arveschoug said that initially he envisioned forming some kind of public-private partnership that would include BSED, the city and county, and perhaps a private investor, to develop the building, but because of the uncertainty of how they would cover the cost of remediation and re-development, estimates for which have been placed as high as $30 million, he abandoned the idea. "It's a very expensive undertaking," said Arveschoug.
He told his board members, "We are willing to provide some assistance as needed, utilizing our traditional economic development tools," should either the city or a private developer put forward a plan.
Arveschoug reported that should the building be put up for auction they have already had calls of interest from private sector developers.
An EDA board member pointed out that the building is ideal for a data center. "There isn't a better location."
EDA board member, Carl Siroky, Mechanical Manager of Phillps 66 Refinery, pointed out that asbestos is safe as long as it is left undisturbed. "You can manage it," he said, suggesting that that could be the "best solution" for a private sector develop.
Another board member, however, Debbie Singer, of Northwestern Energy, said that much of the asbestos in the building is in the utility systems and any effort to update them to improve their energy efficiency would necessitate dealing with much of the asbestos issue. The situation is similar to that of the Northern Hotel, she said.
It was further noted that if the building became private its property taxes would help fund the tax increment finance district in which it is located, and that the revenues in the tax increment district could be used to help finance its development.
Another BSED board member, Scott Chesarek, said most emphatically, "The city needs to stay out of it."
The Big Sky Business Journal
P.O. Box 3262
Billings, MT 59103 | <urn:uuid:64f3af70-b466-4a4b-9b90-d9cd37173c2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bigskybusiness.com/index.php/politics/city-a-county/2565-what-will-happen-with-battin-building | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974211 | 1,846 | 1.515625 | 2 |
In Memoriam: Jim Sanford
James Sanford, the first chair of the Fermilab users' organization and the laboratory's former associate director for program planning, died on Feb. 23.
Sanford came to the National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab's former name) from Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he had served since 1962. Robert Wilson appointed Sanford as the head of the Experimental Facilities Section in 1969.
Sanford received his bachelor's degree at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1955. He received his master's degree and doctorate in physics from Yale University in 1957 and 1961, respectively. He held memberships in the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi and other learned societies.
When Sanford spoke at the 2007 annual Users' meeting at Fermilab, he applauded the role users have played in Fermilab's development. He said the users' support in the early years and their continued support today "is an important element to this laboratory and to this country."
The 2007 meeting was the last time that Ned Goldwasser, Fermilab's founding deputy director, saw Sanford.
"He was a wonderful, wonderful person; a very hard worker," Goldwasser said. "He was my right-hand man in developing a research program for the laboratory and my most dependable advisor."
Goldwasser, who celebrated his 90th birthday at Fermilab in September 2009, said that Sanford will be sorely missed.
"He was much too young," Goldwasser said.
-- Rhianna Wisniewski | <urn:uuid:e71a08d8-8a87-43f5-902c-9e11843f8fd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive/archive_2010/today10-03-15.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97311 | 330 | 1.757813 | 2 |
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United Nations carbon offsets for December and for 2013 fell to records after the European Union said it wouldn’t hold back supply of EU permits until it receives approval for its glut-fix plan.
UN carbon credits for December fell as much as 22 percent to 60 euro cents a ton on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange, the lowest since the contract began trading in 2008. UN offsets for 2013 dropped 15 percent to 91 cents a ton, also the lowest since the contract was introduced.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alessandro Vitelli in London at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at [email protected] | <urn:uuid:e1009ee9-513e-423b-86f0-9cb55a265af3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-14/united-nations-carbon-offsets-for-december-drop-to-record | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937452 | 167 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Women get a lot of lip service about being equal and fully valued members of society, although sometimes we have to wonder.
As we have advanced in the workplace, so have the fortunes of the men in our lives. Mad Men may be a popular TV drama, with its alluring evocation of the days when men were men and women were sexually available office underlings (or were at home wearing an apron). However, I doubt many married men would trade their wifes income for a chance to relive that era. They couldnt afford it.
Yet the Republican Party seems to live in a different reality. Here we are, smack in the middle of a presidential race, and the right is busy trying to undo everything the womens movement has accomplished in the last 50 years most notably reproductive rights, which were crucial in letting us pursue careers in the first place.
Mitt Romney, desperate to prove his conservative bona fides, has declared war on Planned Parenthood, vowing to strip the nations largest family planning service of federal funding. Opposition to abortion is the subtext of Romneys attack, but the organization plays an even greater role in American society by helping to prevent unwanted pregnancies and that bugs many conservatives, too. His vow to yank federal funding (which subsidizes Planned Parenhoods reproductive health services, not abortions) is Romneys way of showing the GOP base that he is hostile to everything Planned Parenthood stands for including sex without the dangers of disease and accidental procreation.
Romneys comments followed the ugly debate about a federal policy requiring employer health insurance plans to cover contraception without copays from employees. The proceedings in Congress were noteworthy for a certain, shall we say, gender imbalance, in which male politicians (and clerics) pontificated about womens reproduction as if it was their issue alone to decide. There was an air of Sit in the corner, honey, the men have things to discuss.
In this climate, even the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is stirring GOP pots. The bill passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee without a single Republican vote. It seems Republicans have a problem with new provisions having to do with Native American jurisdiction, and with the fact that the bill extends protection to immigrant women and same sex couples.
Heaven forbid that the law protect too many victims of domestic violence!
Sen. Dianne Feinstein nicely summed up the GOPs strange behavior to the New York Times: This is part of a larger effort, candidly, to cut back on rights and services to women. Weve seen it go from discussions on Roe v. Wade, to partial birth abortion, to contraception, to preventive services for women. This seems to be one more thing.
All of this is quite a shock for women of my generation, who were playing hopscotch during the struggles of the 1960s and 70s.
The feminists of those heady years didnt quite succeed in quashing male chauvinism. (I have had the pleasure of hearing an aging male editor say, Im not going to hire a woman.) But they fought the epic battles. They paved my way and Im deeply grateful. Now its up to new generations of women to defend our ground.
The rebuke of Rush Limbaugh is a start. His vile sexual taunting of a Georgetown law school student who dared to speak up to Congress was so excessive that advertisers abandoned his show in droves. It was remarkable, considering that vileness is his brand.
What truly enraged women about the episode were the craven excuses for Limbaughs comments offered by leading Republicans, including three of the four remaining presidential candidates. They couldnt muster the moral courage to stand up to Limbaugh because they desperately need his approval.
It would be convenient to write off these affronts to women as the last gasps of male privilege. The forces of patriarchy have lost, and all they have left is their resentment.
But we should remember that resentment is powerful fuel for political movements, and the fires of backlash are still burning on the American right. The challenge for women (and their male allies) is to hold up a mirror to the real America where the vast majority of women want and, at key points in their lives, use birth control and to expose the phoney arguments and bogus values of the party that would deny them that right. | <urn:uuid:cd64d450-39b9-4b59-8e2a-5ad599077d88> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/03/19/142407/commentary-this-insane-war-on.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974604 | 880 | 1.578125 | 2 |
It cannot even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime. ~ Albert Jay Nock
Last October, James Turner rented a car from Acme Rent-a-Car in New Haven, Connecticut. Acme installs a global positioning system (GPS) in its cars so it can find stolen cars and charge customers who drive dangerously. When a customer drives faster than the posted speed limit, that information is sent to Acme.
Turner signed a contract that has the following language in bold type at the top: "Vehicles driven in excess of posted speed limit will be charged a $150 fee per occurrence. All our vehicles are GPS equipped."
The contract also says that the driver will not be charged unless the satellite catches him speeding more than two minutes at a time. Turner allegedly drove faster than 77 mph three times, so Acme charged him $150 for each incident. Turner then filed a lawsuit against Acme.
A couple of weeks ago, the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection filed an administrative complaint against Acme in which it charged the company with violating state law when it fined its customers who exceeded the posted speed limit. The department's commissioner said, "There is no legal ability for them to charge a penalty when there has been no damage." Read that quote again. Is it just me, or does that reek of hypocrisy? And not just as it applies to speeding, but for all victimless crimes.
The department requested that Acme sign a cease-and-desist order banning it from charging customers for speeding and providing restitution to the twenty-six customers who have been charged. The company refused, so a hearing will be held in August.
Rental-car companies should be allowed to charge their customers for speeding or anything else as long as the charges are specified in the rental contract. Rental-car companies pay many thousands of dollars for each car and should be allowed to take measures to protect their investment. Also, being able to charge for speeding helps compensate a company for renting its cars to higher-risk drivers, who otherwise might not be able to rent a car.
(One time I came home from Germany on leave and couldn't rent a car because I was under 24 years of age. This despite the fact that the Army was about to entrust me with the command of a howitzer platoon. Perhaps I could have rented a car if rental car companies could have charged me for speeding.)
If charges are unreasonable, the company will develop a bad reputation, lose customers, and go out of business. If you don't want to rent a car from a company that charges for speeding, you don't have to. Although the state Department of Consumer Protection got involved in this case, the state could give a rat's ear about consumers, whom it burdens with crushing taxes and regulation. The state probably went after Acme because a private company was threatening its monopoly on laws and law enforcement.
The state should be happy that another entity is helping it enforce its laws, and is doing so for free. Instead, it says that entity is breaking the law by helping it enforce the law! The state saw a free-market legal system (where laws are determined by consumers and insurance companies instead of by voters and politicians) beginning to sprout and decided to "protect the consumer" by stamping out its competition.
The state likes the system just the way it is, with speed limits that are far too low and lax enforcement. That way, any time it needs a little revenue, it can have the police enforce speed limits for a day. This system is unjust because virtually everyone drives faster than the speed limit, but only a tiny fraction receive a ticket for doing so. Every time I pass a car that has been pulled over by the police, I think, "There but for the grace of God go I."
The system is really no different from highway robbery. Sometimes half a dozen or more police cars will be lined up on the side of the road ready to pull over drivers who are speeding. The sight of that much police power concentrated in one location for the sole purpose of harassing and fining peaceful people makes me wonder if I'm living in an authoritarian state. The police are supposed to "protect and serve," but about the only time I ever see a policeman is when he's looking at me from behind a radar gun. Every time that happens, I don't feel very protected.
It would be much more civilized if my insurance company and I could agree in advance what an acceptable speed limit would be. Some insurance companies might offer lower premiums in return for its customers accepting lower speed limits, while drivers who wanted to drive faster would probably have to pay higher premiums to do so without penalty.
Perhaps insurance companies would monitor traffic conditions and weather in different areas and beam the current speed limit for that stretch of road to their customers' cars. A free market is so creative that I can't predict what systems would emerge, but they would almost certainly be better than the current system, one based on monopoly and coercion. | <urn:uuid:cf213187-30f1-456f-b760-dbf2e31a0317> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mises.org/daily/734/Highway-Robbery | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972604 | 1,038 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The fireplace below is a self install with a Hanover Red back ground, The glass that was used is a Clear base with Starfire on top. The Red and Orange Toppers were applied. Jon and Liz Kleinman even labeled their pictures for us.
Then the Starfire and toppers were added.
On this page (as if you needed another page) We are going to show you how to build a basic fire pit for your deck/ back yard.
This was built by Glenn Harvey of British Columbia.
This first picture is the frame he had started with.
You can make one from metal studs, aluminum studs, etc. Anything non flammable.
Wrap it with wonder board or durock/ cement board.
Below you can also wrap it with wire for better adhesion to the backer board.
This fire pit was natural gas. We also manufacture the burners for propane. Well, we are the only ones who actually manufacture propane burners for your projects.
Below you can see the gas connection coming up from the deck. Glenn used a pan but he also could of used an aluminum/ stainless steel base plate as well.
The stacker stone is now being applied.
As you can see below the trimming valve is installed on the side. You would be surprised on how many plumbers don't think of this little detail, a valve to turn it on or off. I have seen the valves installed inside of the pit or not even at all. You also need to be careful as to not have a gas line installed that is too small for the application.
Now the stone and cap are done, great and simple job!
Below you an see the larger filler lava rock was installed. If a flat plate were to have been used you wouldn't need the larger filler lava rock base.
Below our crushed lava was used to cover the larger lava rock to insure the glass does not fall through. This makes an even base. What ever shape you make the lava is the shape the glass will take.
Below we installed Water White base glass (32 lbs) for a 1 1/2" cover!
The stone on the side of the fire pit used was to match the stone on the house as well. Looks awesome!
Below is just the Water White before the colors were added.
The colors that were added are as follows:
Azurlite and Azurlite reflective for the sky area.
Brilliant Yellow R20F4 Topper for the sun center
Scarlett G072F3 Topping for the suns rays
Orange R140F4 Topper for the ring around the suns center
Emerald Green 1417 Topping for the bottom trees/ grass?
Deep Blue 2507 Topper mixed in around the Azurlite in the sky area.
If you notice below the center of the sun, it changes when it get hot! This one of our chameleons that change when the glass gets hot. If you look real close at the Orange Topper (next to the suns center) as well, it turns a bright cinnamon red when it get hot also! All of our chameleons will be posted when we get a chance. This is just another one of our product lines that we have not had time to further promote.
Above is the fire burning and
below the fire was just turned off.
Glenn spent a few hours placing all of the glass to make this very cool scene. So don't just think you can just throw it on and it knows were to go. Very creative!
The fireplace below has
a StarfireStarfire base with:
Orange R140 Topper,
Ice Ice Ice,
Copper Blue and Steel Blue toppers.
The Orange R140 Topper is actually one of our chameleons, it turns to bright red when it gets hot and then changes back!
Our Copper Blue Topper is a chameleon as well. It turns to green and changes back to blue when cooled!
The fire pit below was designed and built by Tamara Lyons and her wonderful family! Junior help most. The glass that was used is:
Bronze Rust Copper base glass,
E.D. Diamonds, Red and Orange,
Orange R140 Topper, this particular color is one of our chameleons. It turns a bright cherry red when heated and cools back to orange when cooled!
The fire pit had three sets of burners. One in the center and one on each outer edge. This way you can control how large, how much and where you can have fire when you want it.
This is how it started
Pea gravel base
Measure once, cut twice.
Ohhh, what color?? There are sooo many. What to do????
So we sent a make up of what colors they liked. We can do this for you as well. Just tell us what colors you want and we will mix a batch and send you the pictures!
You should of seen the rest of the back yard! Who needs a house! I would live in the back.
The next fireplace was a self installation by Chris in Palm Springs California. He used about 3" of a sand base under the Starfire base glass. Then he added:
Here we go: | <urn:uuid:16669eb0-bcaa-4842-9c97-6b1f6972c100> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aquaticglassel.com/Orange-R140F4-Topper-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956399 | 1,104 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Not quite thirty miles south of us, Auburn is one of the old farming communities that used to feed Seattle. With its mostly intact small town core, it’s actually pretty cute, even if it’s known more for a mall with a spewing volcano for a sign, a horse track, and being part of the indistinct sprawl of Pugetopolis.
We were out to take a look at “DEAD: Unearthing the Shift in Funerary Practices from Home to Mortuary” at the White River Valley Museum that I’d read about in the Seattle Times. It caught my eye, as I’ve got a thing with gravestones and we’ve all got a date we won’t miss.
We rode out the Interurban as the much more pleasing Green River Trail is still destroyed with flood barriers. The Interurban is a straight shot down the center of the industrial warehouses and office parks of the Kent Valley. Low on scenery, but high on speed, it’s the fastest way I can think of for getting out of town on a bicycle.
The exhibit at the White River Valley Museum was small, and I’d not read the description close enough to understand that it was primarily on the rising trade of morticians. Still, they have several beautiful objects, like the removal baskets and an early embalming table from Moses Lake. The written content for the show was informative. The rest of the museum is set up with small historical replicas of downtown Auburn with store fronts, a caboose, and an cabin from the Valley’s early settlers. We were there over an hour and all found something new and compelling to chat about over beer. Of course, I should mention that the old ladies at the museum weren’t giving us beer… for that we turned to the “Spunky Monkey”, a sports bar within walking distance of the train station.
The White River Valley Museum
918 H Street Southeast
Auburn, WA 98002-6112 | <urn:uuid:7e32bb57-02fb-4134-956e-e1fcea2f4035> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.knoxgardner.com/2011/dead-a-ride-to-auburn/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953359 | 425 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Facebook on Tuesday took a stab at cracking a big, elusive problem of its own making: how to help its one billion users find what they’re looking for in the jumble of posts, pictures and blue thumbs-up “likes" they share every day.
At an event at company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, announced a tool the company had spent over a year honing. He called it “graph search," and said it would be available to a limited number of Facebook users on Tuesday — in the “thousands"— and gradually rolled out to the rest. It would enable Facebook users to search their social network for people, places, photos and things that interest them.
That might include, Zuckerberg offered, Mexican restaurants in Palo Alto that his friends have “liked" on Facebook or checked into — though not status updates as yet. The tool might be used to find a date, or a job, Facebook executives said. “Graph search is a completely new way to get information on Facebook," Zuckerberg said.
What he didn’t say, but which was clear, was how it would try to elbow out other companies that allow you to search for other things — LinkedIn for jobs, Yelp for restaurants, Amazon for gifts to buy for a friend and, of course, Facebook’s biggest rival on the Web, Google, which dominates Web search. Facebook is staking its bet on the sheer volume of data that it has access to; it is hoping that its users will find what they’re looking for on Facebook itself, without having to go to the rest of the Web.
And that is how Zuckerberg distinguished Facebook search from Google search, which sends you to other sites. The Facebook search tool is meant to keep you inside Facebook itself.
“Web search is designed to take any open-ended query," Zuckerberg said. “Graph search is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer, not links to other places where you get the answer." | <urn:uuid:5fba1175-4fcd-4167-b1d8-8880914a3df8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130116/NEWS0107/301160308/1161/1161&nav_category=1161 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972816 | 428 | 1.539063 | 2 |
We just couldn’t manage to tend to our garden plants due to my illness. Despite being almost neglected, our babies thrived well with nature taking care of them. Our tropical climate with heavy showers and abundant sunshine did the job for us, thank goodness!
The White Mussaenda tree…
that is botanically named Mussaenda philippica ‘Aurorae’, as seen, is the happiest of the lot. Truly our garden star for the month of April 2012. Spectacular and sparkling with its off-white crowning glory, it is a sight to behold and truly uplift our spirits!
This tree was given a bald crop last October when it was heavily infested with mealy bugs. We did think of removing the whole tree altogether then. Fortunately, we decided against it and it’s rewarding us wonderfully.
BEFORE: White Mussaenda tree on the extreme right that was heavily pruned down to half its height
AFTER: White Mussaenda is currently back to its glorious beauty, illuminating the whole frontyard
We’re giddy with delight at the resulting appearance! It has never been so beautiful and stunning before. This attractive blooming tree is really a hot traffic-stopper that illuminates our garden, and especially remarkable in the late evening… wow!!
Is this Begonia ‘Eureka Green Leaf Pink’?
How lovely to come across this volunteer plant (sprouted itself) in one of our pots, sharing space with the young Bougainvillea ‘Aiskrim’. A pretty-looking plant that grows rather fast, spotting bright green leaves and pink flowers.
I last saw this Begonia species umpteen years ago, during my teen years. Hence, this attractive volunteer is surely a most welcome treat! | <urn:uuid:88623865-1b01-4535-9133-070f57d794fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jaycjayc.com/april12-tropicalgarden/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947687 | 378 | 1.507813 | 2 |
You are herecontent / Greens Call President Obama's Resurrection Of Nuclear Power And Handout For Georgia Nuclear Reactors His "Worst Idea Yet"
Greens Call President Obama's Resurrection Of Nuclear Power And Handout For Georgia Nuclear Reactors His "Worst Idea Yet"
WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders and candidates are calling President Obama's resurrection of nuclear power with a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer-funded subsidy for a Georgia plant his "worst idea yet" and warned about serious public health threats posed by mining, waste transportation, and waste storage. The Green Party disputes the myths that nuclear power is 'green energy' or a solution to the advance of climate change.
"The twin nuclear reactors in Burke County, Georgia, would be financed with $5.4 billion in loans from the Federal Financing Bank with money of the US Treasury. According to the GAO, this investment has a 50/50 percent or worse chance of failing. President Obama wants taxpayers to assume 80% of the financial risk to turn the southeast Atlantic states into a big open-pit radioactive barbeque. This investment is a terrible idea -- President Obama's worst yet," said Lisa Green, Green candidate for California Assembly Candidate, 53rd Assembly District.
"If built, the plant will be a financial disaster because of high construction expenses and likely cost overruns, compared with other sources of electrical power. As the first of a new generation of nuclear power plants, it'll carry huge technical risks. Even more ominous is the problem of mining, waste storage, and waste transportation through populated areas, which carry huge public health dangers," added Ms. Green.
Greens noted that, in the US, more people have died from contamination from uranium mining, from causes such as water sources polluted by mine tailings, and from uranium transportation than from all the causes after materials reach the first processing plant (see here and here). Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently told a Senate committee that, for the foreseeable future, the plants will probably store spent fuel rods on site. No long-term plan exists anywhere for storing commercial radioactive waste.
"We are already seeing tritium in the wells in Girard Georgia, and the cooling ponds at Plant Hatch are filled to overflowing," said Patricia Crayton, co-chair of the Georgia Green Party. "The fuel cycle which feeds the power plants in Hazlehurst and Waynesboro is intricately linked to the one which feeds the bomb plant across the Savannah River near Aiken. $5 billion could better serve setting Georgia on a sustainable energy path worthy of our children."
"In addition to a cornucopia of biochemically and radiologically hazardous waste materials, the proposed powerplants will also manufacture plutonium-239, raising the question of whether the Obama administration's underlying intent is to provide electricity to Georgia citizens or to further escalate the nuclear weapons race," said Douglas Campbell, Green Party activist and a former nuclear engineer in Ferndale, Michigan.
"If Republicans and Democrats really believed in the free market, they would strenuously oppose nuclear power, which is enormously expensive and carries astronomically high liabilities. But they don't believe in the market. They believe in targeted, special interest handouts and guaranteed profits for favored corporations, despite flawed corporate agendas. That's why they want nuclear plants built with taxpayer dollars, with utility ratepayers in states like Georgia and Florida assuming the financial risk and local residents assuming the health risk," said Nicholas Ruiz III, Green Party candidate for Congress in Florida's District 24.
Greens are fighting dangerous nuclear projects across the US. In Florida, the Green Party praised a citizens' suit filed by members of the Citizens for Ratepayers Rights against nuclear cost recovery charges, and urged Floridians to sign a petition protesting unconstitutional rate hikes.
In Illinois, Greens strongly opposed a legislative move to repeal a moratorium on nuclear energy.
"Building a nuclear plant is no substitute for enforcement of the Clean Air Act in Georgia, where pollution from poor construction and dirty coal plants has caused asthma in children and other health emergencies -- or in Maine or in any other state," said Lynne Williams, Green candidate for Governor of Maine. "Nuclear power proponents are gambling that Americans have forgotten the Three Mile Island Meltdown in 1979. We haven't forgotten it. Nor are we ignorant about the risk of breast cancer and other ailments that uranium poses."
Greens insist that clean energy, not nuclear power, must replace fossil fuels in the effort to fight climate change. The Green Party supports socially equitable carbon taxes; incentives, legislation, and reforms to provide renewable energy technologies; rejection of environmentally destructive 'alternative' fuels produced from unsustainable or toxic feedstocks; rejection of 'clean coal'; comprehensive planning to protect and conserve water resources; and an absolute limit on CO2 emissions through a dramatic reduction of fossil fuel use.
"President Obama is calling for major investments in nuclear, coal, and natural gas, when we should drastically reduce the use of such energy," said Carl Romanelli, 2006 Pennsylvania Green candidate for the US Senate. "Here in Pennsylvania, we have cancer clusters in the eastern part of the state due to too many nuclear plants (see here and . Considering advancements in renewable technologies, it would make more sense for our energy resolve to be applied to these industries, not filthy and destructive forms of energy production so touted by the President. The president continues to act as if fossil and nuclear is the only manner in which energy is produced."
Green Party of the United States
"Energy Sec Unaware That Nuclear Loans Have 50 Percent Risk of Default"
By Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones, February 16, 2010
"Nuclear Loan Guarantees Aren't Just Guarantees: They Are Actual Taxpayer Loans"
Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), February 17, 2010
"Fed loan guarantees may boost nuclear power return"
Associated Press, February 16, 2010
"Obama's nuclear error: $54 billion in loan guarantees make little policy or political sense"
Climate Progress, February 1, 2010
"A quarter of US nuclear plants leaking"
AP: "27 of 104 plants leak radioactive tritium, a carcinogen, raising Concerns about nation's aging plants"
Climate Progress, February 8, 2010
Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States
Fall 2009 issue now online | <urn:uuid:5f02793a-5dbe-4c9f-8c47-766def3d00ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://warisacrime.org/node/50281 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935367 | 1,297 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Title: Something about us without us? Global trends in Legal Capacity Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Date: October 3, 2011
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Location: Stratford Heights
Application for CLE credit has been submitted. Admission is free, but seating is limited. Please RSVP to Cheryl DelVecchio at [email protected]/513.556.0063.
About the Symposium
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is the first human rights treaty of the twenty-first century, and the first legally binding international instrument to protect the globe’s six hundred and fifty million individuals with disabilities. Ratified by nearly one hundred countries, and in operation since May 2008, the CRPD is effectuating global change. People with disabilities have been transformed from the objects of charity to the subjects of rights, and are claiming their human rights in all corners of the world based on the theme of the CRPD negotiations: “Nothing about us without us.” At the same time, some countries are actively resisting the notion of legal capacity–the human right by which persons with disabilities make decisions about their own lives. Professor Stein, who was active in the CRPD negotiations and has worked on disability issues in dozens of countries, will discuss the CRPD generally. Stein also will discuss recent developments from around the world, including what the UN Disability Committee in Geneva is doing, and how the CRPD is being implemented and monitored in different countries where the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (www.hpod.org) has been active.
Michael Stein holds a juris doctor from Harvard Law School and a PhD from Cambridge University. Co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, as well as Cabell Professor at William & Mary Law School, he has taught at Harvard, New York University, and Stanford law schools. An internationally acclaimed expert on disability law and policy, Stein participated in the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, works with disabled persons organizations around the world, actively consults with international governments on their disability laws and policies, and advises a number of United Nations bodies.
Learn more about Professor Stein: http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=603
Learn more about the Harvard Law School Project on Disability: http://www.hpod.org/ | <urn:uuid:c73242ac-01ae-4b0b-9849-ead1f6d589ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.uc.edu/institutes-centers/weaver-institute/symposia/oct-2011 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944697 | 511 | 1.664063 | 2 |
If your condition does not improve within 7 days, or if it becomes worse, check with your doctor.
After spraying this medicine to the mouth or throat of your child, watch the child carefully to make sure that he or she does not get any of the medicine into his or her eyes or he or she does not inhale the spray.
Stop using this medicine and check with your doctor right away if you have difficulty with breathing; fever; skin rash; or worsening of pain, redness, swelling, or irritation in or around the mouth.
Call your doctor right away if you start to have a severe sore throat or sore throat that occurs with a high fever, headache, nausea, or vomiting. These maybe signs of an infection. | <urn:uuid:a4de286c-10e5-4a26-912c-5613c5fbf63c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/drug-information/DR602917/DSECTION=precautions- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953674 | 150 | 1.734375 | 2 |
CSIRO offers PhD scholarships to aspiring scientists.
Postgraduate scholarship program
Outlines scholarships available to graduates who have enrolled full-time as postgraduate students for research leading to the award of PhD.
6 October 2011 | Updated 21 December 2012
This program provides opportunities in science and engineering for outstanding graduates who enrol each year at Australian tertiary institutions as full-time postgraduate students for research leading to the award of a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
By doing your doctorate with CSIRO you will have access to world-class facilities and work alongside Australia’s leading research scientists.
PhD students at CSIRO are co-supervised by a university, allowing students to maintain and develop their university connections while being exposed to research in a working environment.
CSIRO offers full and top-up three year Postgraduate Scholarships to high quality students who are enrolled in a PhD at an Australian University.
Top up scholarships are available to those doctoral students who gain or expect to gain an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) or equivalent university award. In some circumstances full scholarships may also be available.
Experience world-class facilities and work alongside Australia’s leading research scientists.
Recipients of Postgraduate Scholarships are generally required to be Australian citizens or have permanent residency status.
However, in fields in which there is a national skill shortage, scholarships may be awarded to overseas candidates, provided they provided they meet Department of Immigration and Citizenship policy guidelines. Anternational students must be able to provide evidence of admission to an Australian university.
CSIRO's National Research Flagship Program also offers full and top-up scholarships.
How to apply
Scholarships are available throughout the year and are advertised nationally in major newspapers and on CSIRO's website under positions vacant. Scholarships are offered as follows:
CSIRO's corporate Honours and Postgraduate Scholarship Program offers Honours, Top-up and full PhD scholarships which are advertised in October/November each year.
CSIRO's National Research Flagship Program offers full and top up scholarships which are advertised in October/November each year.
CSIRO research divisions offer full and top up scholarships throughout the year.
Details of the application process and requirements for submitting your application will be included in each advertisement. These opportunities will be advertised on CSIRO's Positions Vacant [external link].
Learn more about CSIRO career options. | <urn:uuid:0121ee01-61ef-4fce-af19-b895f83f5e78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csiro.au/org/PostgraduateScholarshipsProgram | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952967 | 490 | 1.554688 | 2 |
MARQUETTE - For the first time in nearly a decade, the basin at Tourist Park has been filled and officials are hoping that will mean a spike in the interest in the north Marquette park.
In 2003, a flood washed away the nearby dam on the Dead River and drained the basin. The refilling - which took place over about two weeks earlier this month - marks the conclusion of a $4.8 million construction project that started in the spring of 2011 and was aimed at repairing the dam and resurrecting a community swimming beach and fishing spot adjacent to the park.
Cindy Noble, the city's parks and recreation coordinator, said she is glad to see the project wrap up.
The basin at Marquette’s Tourist Park was completely filled with water this month for the first time since a flood washed away the nearby dam on the Dead River in 2003. The fill marks the conclusion of a $4.8 million construction project that started in the spring of 2011 and was aimed at resurrecting a community fishing beach and swimming area adjacent to the park. (Journal photo by Matt Keiser)
"It means good things for us," she said. "The completion of the dam means a lot for the campground. There are a lot of families that used to enjoy coming and staying and going to the beach. We'll start to gain that population back."
Though the park is close to Lake Superior, the recently resurrected Tourist Park beach is still a draw, according to Noble.
"People go to hotels with pools for a reason," she said.
Erik Booth, project manager with the Marquette Board of Light and Power, said the basin was raised about 6 inches per day until it reached normal pool level.
Prior to the holidays, Booth estimated that the nearby BLP power station would be up and running at full capacity by Christmas.
Noble has been in her current position with the city for four years and didn't have any oversight of the Tourist Park when the dam was in place. After reviewing past data, though, she said the numbers are promising.
The expected increase from the refilling of the basin and the completion of the beach should be a bonus, Noble said. The number of total nights spent camping in the park has been climbing steadily in recent years and this year was higher than it was before the dam broke in 2003.
"The city of Marquette has something really good going there," she said. "They have a campground in the city and that's not always easy to find."
In addition to the swimming, canoeing and kayaking possibilities, park-goers will be able to fish the basin next year.
In May, thousands of smallmouth bass were placed in the nearby river system in an attempt to begin building a fishery through a six-year stocking program developed cooperatively with the BLP and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Yellow perch and bluegill will be stocked in subsequent years.
The city is also going through a public review process of a $1.73-million proposal that would renovate and repurpose the park and campgrounds with trails, new buildings and landscaping.
If everything comes together, Tourist Park could be a major draw in the future, Noble said.
"It's going to be a desirable place," she said.
Kyle Whitney can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. | <urn:uuid:ebb16120-5f24-44c5-978e-a715036abab6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/582914/Tourist-Park-basin-refilled--capping-2-year-project.html?nav=5006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977526 | 705 | 1.804688 | 2 |
MADISON, Wis. (WSAU) - Legislation sponsored by the president of the Wisconsin Senate would require the state Supreme Court to take up constitutional challenges to state laws directly.
The bill by Senator Michael Ellis would remove lower courts from the process. The Republican from Neenah says this legislation would produce faster final decision and eliminate confusion about whether a law is actually in effect while it is being appealed – a process which can last for years.
The high court would have to issue a decision within 120 days. That could be extended by another 30 days if the justices reach out to a lower court or referee for a determination of the facts of a case, or damages.Ellis is looking for co-sponsors for his bill. | <urn:uuid:83f9c23a-dfee-4475-8fd8-144ff644e7ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wnflam.com/news/articles/2013/feb/17/state-legislators-want-to-reduce-time-for-constitutional-law-challenges/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964421 | 150 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The Black-headed Gull youngster has been busy flexing its wing muscles today and showing nicely the developing flight feathers. The precise pattern of the primaries, secondaries, tertials, greater primary coverts and greater secondary coverts can all be seen in the pictures below. The young bird is becoming more adventurous and is already showing the inherent squabbling that it so characteristic of Black-headed Gulls within the breeding colony. See pictures below.
Exercising the wing muscles
Showing the primaries, secondaries and so on……….
Two strange adults stray close to the nest and are soon seen off | <urn:uuid:df0252cc-9cfb-4165-88ed-7cb7ae2426bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rxwildlife.org.uk/2012/06/01/flight-feathers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930534 | 124 | 1.8125 | 2 |
"I've always had an epic filmmaker within me clamoring to get out," explains the British director.
That much becomes clear in Hooper's new film, "Les Miserables." From the musical based on Victor Hugo's novel, the film is an enormous, star-studded affair overlaid on a French revolution canvas yet painted with a naturalistic brush.
The film, which has been nominated for four Golden Globes, has returned Hooper to the thick of the Oscar race two years after the Academy Awards' coronation of "The King's Speech." A few months after that film won best picture and best director for Hooper, he was onto "Les Miz," spending the "capital," he says, that he earned with "The King's Speech."
"I just thought: How can I follow this?" Hooper said in a recent interview. "In the end, I thought the best thing to do was just get back to work and to get back on the horse. I felt that the longer I left it, I might get kind of self-conscious or it might become this big thing in my head."
His approach to "Les Miserables," a sung-through musical without dialogue, was centered on filming all of the singing live, as opposed to lip-syncing it. While that's been done piecemeal in films, few movies
"Even the ones I most love like 'Fiddler,' 'West Side Story,' 'Sound of Music,' I noticed that I was having to re-forgive the film continuously for lip-syncing," says Hooper. "I didn't want people to watch 'Les Miserables' knowing in advance that I would be seeking for them to forgive me."
The live singing meant Hugh Jackman (the escaped criminal Jean Valjean) would be singing while standing in a river of mud; that long single takes would be necessary for some numbers to maintain tempo continuity; and that the actors would be performing with tiny earpieces piping in live piano accompaniment. But the choice also injected "Les Miz" with rawness and realism and gave its cast the ability to act in the moment.
"If the singer is thinking about singing, the audience is going to think about the singing," says Jackman. A Broadway vet, Jackson hopes Hooper has found a new way to "deliver the genre" of movie musicals, which have waned in popularity in recent years even as reality singing competitions have drawn big ratings on TV.
Hooper has already developed a reputation as an actor's director, having steered Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush ("The King's Speech") and Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney ("John Adams") to acting honors. The performances in "Les Miz"—given room for spontaneity and framed in close-up—have been widely hailed, including those of Russell Crowe (the police chief Javert), Eddie Redmayne (the revolutionary Marius) and particularly Anne Hathaway, who as the tragic Fantine sings the show-stopping "I Dreamed a Dream" in one take.
The film, Hathaway says, proves Hooper "isn't a one-off" after "The King's Speech."
Fittingly, it was a musical that started Hooper on the path to directing. As a 10- or 11-year-old boy, the London-born son of a businessman and an academic was introduced to theater by his school drama teacher, former Royal Shakespeare Company actor Roger Mortimer.
Hooper's first taste of performing came as a gang member in "The Beggar's Opera" and then a lovesick British officer in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Patience"—vivid childhood memories, he says. But seeing that he was unable to land lead roles in a school of a few hundred, he instead turned to directing: "I was weirdly strategic as a kid," he says.
Hooper made his first 16mm film by the age of 13 and before he was 20, he had sold a professionally financed short to British television. After studying at Oxford University, he went into TV work with the BBC.
As a fan of films by Francis Ford Coppola and Ingmar Bergman, Hooper seems surprised that he's turned out to be such a plucker of heart strings. Audiences responded passionately to the personal triumph tale of "The King's Speech," a global $414.2 million hit cheered by those with speech impediments and many others.
"I did want to stay in an emotional place in my filmmaking," he says. "What attracted me about 'Les Miserables' was to possibly work in an even more emotional way."
"I do think it's the greatest gift that cinema can bestow is when it can actually take something about the pain of being human and make you feel a little bit better about it."
Part of the strong effect of "Les Miserables" might be attributed to its timeliness. Hugo's story of populist uprising in 1832 Paris resounds in an era of the Arab Spring, the Occupy protests and general frustration over economic inequality.
"We're at a point where we regularly have images of revolution on our front page, on TV," says Hooper. "'Les Miserables' is the great anthem of dispossessed. The people's song is to 'hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men.' It's the great expression of collective anger against an unjust system."
Hooper finished working on the film only the night before it was first screened in late November. And while he felt the need to hurry on to the next thing after "The King's Speech," making "Les Miserables"—"an oil tanker of a picture," he says—has left him wanting only to curl up in a corner and sleep.
"It's like I've gotten the difficult second album out," says Hooper. "After the difficult second album, you can relax a little."
Follow Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake—coyle | <urn:uuid:53fd2750-cb01-4f33-a0ba-78b291f340cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_22238752/les-miz-new-kind-speech-hooper | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980296 | 1,253 | 1.5625 | 2 |
About the Author: Jerry Taylor serves as the Director of the Office of Strategic Affairs in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.
Over the course of the last two years, the United States and the Russian Federation negotiated, signed, and ratified the New START Treaty. The Treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011, and the implementation of that Treaty is now well underway.
The pace of activity has been impressive. We have already exchanged 1,000 notifications on our strategic nuclear facilities and forces. This information forms the foundation of the Treaty’s database, which is continuously updated by both countries through the notification process and will be exchanged every six months throughout the life of the Treaty. You can find the New START Treaty aggregate numbers of strategic offensive arms here, as of February 5, 2011, as drawn from the initial exchange of data by the Parties.
In March, the United… more » | <urn:uuid:958f9ecc-8445-437a-9550-c1d0d094982c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://statedept.tumblr.com/post/8132588471/new-start-treaty-implementation-off-and-running | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960415 | 184 | 1.570313 | 2 |
By Gustavo Arellano
By OC Weekly Staff
By R. Scott Moxley
By Michelle Woo
By Gustavo Arellano
By Gustavo Arellano
By Gabriel San Roman
By Gustavo Arellano
Most of us don't have to worry about sleeping with our husband's sister, talking our daughter out of becoming a child prostitute, or confessing to our lover that we secretly have sex with goats. But if you took your cue from godawful freak shows like Jerry Springer, you might think that's the norm, at least among trailer-trash society.
Enter the Journal of Mundane Behavior (www.mundanebehavior.org). Started last year by two sociology professors at Cal State Fullerton, the journal is devoted to examining such facets of mundane behavior as riding in elevators, checking out library books and shaving. Published exclusively as an online journal, the first issue came out in February. The second came out on June 25, and it includes scholarly examinations of minutiae like validating your merit in letters of application for employment and unpacking record collections. The articles, while unquestionably intellectual, are written in a non-jargony style that is deliberately accessible to members of the general public and ever so slightly tongue in cheek.
"When my grandmother died, the first thing my grandfather did was grow a beard," wrote contributor Michael John Pinfold in the first issue, introducing his analysis of the semiotic meaning behind the choice of whether or not to shave. "Now when he laughed, he was jolly, and when he was stern, he was God-like, the Christian God with claps of thunder and bolts of lightning, terrifying to behold. Had my intellectual references been up to it, I would also have seen in him Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and countless legions of patriarchs whose beliefs have come to be the orthodoxies of Western culture. His was the beard aligned with high Victorianism, of empire building and colonial exploitation, the rightness of his purpose caught in every single hair. His wife had been wrong to make him shave every day, and now he was proving that fact."
"We're realizing that with the vast amount of public interest the journal has attracted, we have an opportunity to bridge the gap between the Ivory Tower and Joe Everyday," said Scott Schaffer, the CSUF professor who edits the journal along with fellow sociologist Myron Orleans. "We've engaged in a lot of discussions with people who enjoy reading about themselves for once."
And the interest the journal has aroused is phenomenal, especially for an infant publication from a relatively low-profile university. The journal has been mentioned in Time, the New York Times, the Associated Press, National Public Radio and a batch of other places. Since the first issue came out four months ago, the site has had 85,000 hits. And Schaffer is finding himself just a little overwhelmed —if thrilled—by all the attention.OCWeekly:How did you first conceive of the idea of a journal to study mundaneness? Scott Schaffer:The original idea was in an article in Sociological Theory, one of the main theory journals, written by Wayne Brekhus, in which he called for a study of what goes unnoticed. He said something along the lines of how there are many journals devoted to the study of deviants but none to the study of normalcy. I looked at that and said, "Wow—what a great idea!" Why did you decide to publish on the Web instead of producing a hard-copy version?
There were a few reasons. One was we had no money, so we figured this was the most cost-effective way of ensuring an audience. We also figured that since our topic of study was everyday life, it was only fair to make that material accessible to the public—the people whose lives we were analyzing—and there's no way to do that with a traditional journal. We've talked about also going to a print format, but we would never leave the Web.What kind of response did you get to the first issue?
I would say about 95 percent of the response has been overwhelmingly positive—it ranged from comments like "This is the most amazing thing since sliced bread" to "It seems like this should have been around for a hundred years." About 5 percent were somewhat hostile —one of the charges was that we're really just interested in publicly mentally masturbating. We've taken it all with a grain of salt—we're horribly fascinated with the vast response we've gotten.The idea of studying mundane behavior seems to have really resonated with people, judging by the amount of press coverage you've received. Why do you think it appeals?
I think one of the reasons is that we now have an opportunity to take this collective sigh of relief. We made it through the bloodiest century in human history—World War II, the Cold War, and most recently the Y2K bug. Now we have a chance to take a moment, stop and smell the roses. I think that has allowed people to look at their everyday lives—how they get through each day—and think more reflectively about that.How about the scholarly reaction?
The scholarly reaction has been very nice—they've been overwhelmingly supportive of what we're doing. I don't know if they're really too sure what online journals are capable of—whether they can create the same kind of cultural capital as print journals. So there's still some cautious watching going on. But I've spoken with a number of fairly big-name academics who have been willing to contribute works. That generally wouldn't happen with a brand-new journal, especially one started by what gets perceived as a lower-tier university.On the site, you talk about the Jerry Springerization of society—why do you think that has happened?
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UK government looks for 500MHz spectrum
If the Americans can do it, then so can we
The Department for Business Innovation and Skills reckons there's 500MHz of spectrum that can be sold off to bring faster wireless to the masses, but finding it might prove tricky.
The promise comes as part of Britain's Superfast Broadband Future, which iterates a government target to find an additional 500MHz of spectrum, below 5GHz, which can be released as part of a multi-technology approach to connecting up the entire country.
But PolicyTracker's Michael Newlands has been hunting around and can't seem to find out where all this spectrum is going to come from.
He started with Ofcom, the UK regulator with responsibility for radio spectrum, who ducked the issue neatly, saying: "With it being a government issue, it’s for them to provide the detail". When the question was put to the department that produced the document, PolicyTracker was told that it was "under review", but that there would be little trouble as "the public sector has a lot of spectrum".
The document itself (pdf) provides little guidance, only suggesting that the Ministry of Defence has a a load of frequencies going spare – but the MoD's plans have been on hold while it deals with the various wars in which it is embroiled, and a rep told PolicyTracker that nothing would come to market until 2013.
The problem with MoD spectrum is that it's very rarely solely used by the MoD... Great swathes of frequency are marked as belonging to the MoD, which tolerates a multitude of other users on the condition that they suffer the consequences if the army decides to start broadcasting. Once the frequencies are in private hands, the new owners are unlikely to be so forgiving.
PolicyTracker points out that with the UK mega-auction – 250MHz of spectrum split between 800MHz (digital dividend) and 2.6Ghz – not happening until 2013 we're not going start deploying LTE (4G) wireless until 2014, which isn't going to get us the best broadband in Europe by 2015 despite the government plans – Germany starts rolling out LTE next week.
There's another 56Mhz of ex-analogue TV spectrum around 400MHz, which is also going to be up for grabs, but all those blocks are supposed to be in addition to the new 500MHz which is apparently going to come from the public sector users.
So why the sudden decision to find another 500MHz of spectrum by 2020? Could it be in any way related to the FCC's plan to find exactly the same quantity of spectrum, over exactly the same time period?
We're used to blindly following an American lead in many things, but until recently the FCC has been following Ofcom's policies in many things. If we start following them, surely we'll all just end up going in circles. ® | <urn:uuid:fb912e51-7587-4c9e-bf0c-b2044286c35f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/10/spectrum_plan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968864 | 590 | 1.75 | 2 |
Last week I went to WebWise in LA, now a conference sponsored jointly by IMLS, the Getty and OCLC, where about 350 folks had gathered to explore the theme “Inspiring Discovery – Unlocking Collections.” Part of unlocking collections, as we all know, is describing them so others can find them, and the conference exposed some interesting takes on that theme. Dan Greenstein (CDL), for example, questioned “the value of hand-crafted metadata” and called for more automation in generating descriptive metadata. His plenary was followed by a panel on which Elisa Lanzi (Smith College Imaging Center) called for more and better metadata, only to hand the microphone to Bill Moen (U of North Texas SLIS), who presented a study which showed that of the existing 2000 MARC fields and subfields (up from a measly 278 in 1972), only 36 are used in 80% of the records he analyzed. As you can see, a clear case of mixed messages about the whole metadata thing (ramp up or demolish?), which the audience eagerly jumped on.
In retrospective, I think the confusion stemmed from the fact that everybody was talking about the same thing (metadata), yet as applied to different materials in different communities. Dan could comfortably call for more automation, because the materials on the forefront of his mind (books) lend themselves to that approach – a lot of the metadata going into a MARC record comes straight from a book’s cover so to speak, and if you digitize the cover and the rest of the book to boot, you have enough data for a record and a full-text search – voilà . Elisa, on the other hand, spoke about visual resources collections, which (so far) have not suffered from the overblown treatment a MARC record (according to Bill Moen’s data) could afford them – and, no surprises here, of course Murtha Baca (Getty) seconded her during the discussion, since museum records tend to suffer from a lack of standardized description rather than from an excess of it. Furthermore, it’s hard to see how you could do anything but handcraft when describing a painting or a sculpture – where else should the description come from?
I cherished this discussion not only because description and descriptive practices in different communities are a long-standing hobby-horse of mine (see the RLG Descriptive Metadata Guidelines I had the distinct pleasure of working on), but also because we recently announced our 2006 RLG Member Forum with the title “More, Better, Faster, Cheaper: The Economics of Descriptive Practice.” I think the real question isn’t “to hand-craft or not to hand-craft,” but rather how to best invest our scarce resources of people and time to create descriptions which truly serve our audience. Bill Moen wants to take his study one step further to look at which MARC tags genuinely support FRBR User Tasks (Find, Identify, Select, Obtain), and I think that’ll start adding a critical dimension to this debate which is all too often only present in our speculation about them, and that’s our users.Related posts: | <urn:uuid:8c198d9d-cdce-4f8e-885a-e9a2c93268d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hangingtogether.org/?p=95 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951846 | 687 | 1.632813 | 2 |
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Many times people just throw everything into their self storage unit. They do not try to plan how everything will fit in there correctly. The funny thing is that they pack their rental truck very neat and tight, but then get it to their self storage unit and it becomes chaos. There are some packing gurus out there, but the key is to take your time and make how you store your belongings make sense. Here are a few tips on storing large garage equipment.
Never store your garage equipment with home furnishings if you are able to prevent it. Most people try to get one large unit and try to fit everything inside of it. You can think about getting one space for your home furnishings and one for garage equipment. This way your home furnishings will not get damaged. Also this could help you when you come back looking for either something from inside the house or from the garage, you know which unit it will be in. Otherwise you will have to sort through everything to find what you are looking for.
Always stay organized, keeping smaller materials sealed. Some self storage facilities are very fickle about what is stored inside the storage unit. If you have paint or some other material that you are not sure about storing, ask the property manager. There is nothing like you beginning to put everything inside your unit and they tell you that you will not be able to store it. Of course if you do not ensure these materials are not sealed properly they could spill out on your other equipment. That would not be something pleasant to walk into one morning.
Large items should be stored in the back, while smaller things should go in the front. Typically you will be coming to your storage unit to use a small item. If you feel that you will use something larger more often, then reverse this idea. Put the smaller items toward the back you will not use, and put the things you will use near the front. This is pretty simple, but not everyone thinks about this before they put things into storage. How you load everything in the moving truck should be the reverse of how it will be stored in the storage unit. This way it will load property and fewer things, if any, will be damaged.
By following the advice above, you allow yourself extra room in case other things need to be stored later on. Most self storage units are about eight feet high so you can always store up as well. You have many combinations you can do inside the storage unit but do not just throw everything inside the storage unit. You can really damage something. When storing your garage equipment put it somewhere inside your storage unit that you can access it when needed and that it will not be in the way.
Tweet This Post | <urn:uuid:faf5bbbd-6d67-4dec-840e-ac0c437c40d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.selfstorageblog.ca/tag/storage-locations/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948651 | 587 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Constant and never ending improvement is a major priority in my life. To always keep learning. Long ago I made a commitment to lifelong learning, and I make sure that I spend at least 60 minutes a day devoted to this task. I believe that this is a vital way to allow anyone to transform their life from average to extraordinary.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. ~Henry Ford
No one is ever the finished product. We are all growing and changing. Our likes and dislikes, our goals and aspirations, our perspectives on things, even our values change over time. We don’t stand still, we are always progressing, and we certainly have the capability of growing and growing. Everyone should be excited about their potential for constant and never ending improvement.
As we progress, and continue our journey of lifelong learning, we are constantly seeking to improve the quality of our lives, even maybe our business? If we are not learning, changing, and expanding as we travel through our personal journeys then what do we hope to be in the future. My belief is that by carrying on my learning I am opening myself to expanded opportunities. I can frequently explore new ideas, try new things, continuously fuelling my passion for life.
I wrote an article some time last year titled Life Coach Principle: Cultivate Constant and Never Ending Improvement. You must choose to commit to Constant and Never-ending Improvement. Your life improves with gradual changes in each area of your life. Learning expands who you are and how you live.
We should be making small incremental changes and improvements on a daily basis, which accumulate to create momentum in our life. Growing mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically and financially in your personal and professional relationships? You are either growing or shrinking. And who the heck wants to shrink?
Make a commitment to keep getting better and better every day in every way. The more you improve, the better you feel! It doesn’t have to be that difficult either.
I love having people, other bloggers, or readers, emailing me with suggestions. I appreciate those that contact me when they think I’m not being as good, or motivational as they’ve come to expect. It keeps me on my toes, and inspires me to always do better. To know there are other people out there who I influence, that want me to maintain my standards is absolutely awesome. I want to improve what I do, for myself, but also for them.
From a business perspective I like nothing more than pushing myself, exploring unknown territory, overcoming my fears at times and learning something valuable, and then putting it all together. And when it works, there can be nothing better. To push perhaps my comfort zone, to learn and implement something new into my life.
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. ~Abraham Lincoln
So do yourself a huge favour and spend 60 minutes a day to transform your life, to become extraordinary and to achieve all your dreams and your goals. So pick up that book, listen to that audio tape, research on line, just do something constructive.
Do anything to improve your knowledge and skills in your both career and business, and in your personal development. You’d be amazed at how fast you can progress by focusing 60 minutes a day to lifelong learning. You’ll go a long way, quickly I assure you.
To keep yourself focused on constant and never-ending improvement, ask yourself every day, “How can I improve today? What can I do better than before? Where can I learn a new skill or develop a new competency?” If you do, you’ll embark on a lifelong journey of improvement that will ensure your success.
Thank you to all of you that help contribute to my daily constant and never ending improvement. Please keep me progressing, I really do appreciate it.
Thank you for joining me today.
This is Larry Lewis
Life Coaching with Larry
I hope this article has helped you in some way today. If you have ended up asking yourself more questions instead of getting questions answered then maybe I can help you. Take up my free 30 minute session to see if life coaching is for you.
Does this sound familiar?
- In midlife transition and lost the spark and direction?
- Looking for more clarity, meaning and joy?
- Feeling stuck or confused about your future?
- Want to do more, be more, achieve more?
If so, click on the button below to book your free session today! | <urn:uuid:cc5f2476-025d-4caa-b903-589b50b20479> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthylifestylesliving.com/liberate-the-mind/constant-never-ending-improvement/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957328 | 945 | 1.539063 | 2 |
James Kwak wants to make US financial institutions smaller:
There are a few main things that made companies like AIG and Citigroup systematically important. One was interconnectedness: they did business with lots of counterparties. One was complexity: when push came to shove, the regulators were not able to assess the potential damage a failure could cause, and therefore erred on the side of bailing them out. But the big one was size, and this is why we call it Too Big To Fail. The companies in question were so big, and had so many liabilities, that they could cause a lot of damage if they suddenly defaulted on those liabilities...
Size can definitely go away, simply by setting a cap on the volume of assets any institution is allowed to hold (and doing something about off-balance sheet entities).
To get specific, I think that maybe $300 billion in assets would be a reasonable cap on bank size -- there's very little evidence that banks get any economies of scale beyond that in any case. If they want to be part of a global or even a national network that would be fine -- I'm sure such networks would spring up quite naturally, much as they have in the airline industry. After all, the United States managed to go 200 years without any nationwide banks, it's unclear why it desperately needs them now.
At the same time, the cap on the balance sheet of broker-dealers should be smaller still: the more interconnected you are, the lower the cap, to the point at which companies like the CME, which are far too interconnected to fail no matter how small their balance sheet, should be barred from issuing any liabilities at all.
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By Will Potter
Leah Plante appeared before a federal grand jury for the third time yesterday, and for the third time she refused to talk about her politics and other anarchists. She was taken into custody on civil contempt, and is now imprisoned at SEA-TAC in Seattle, Washington.
Plante joins two other activists, Matt Duran and Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik, who have chosen to make the same principled stand.
The three were subpoenaed to this grand jury following FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force raids in multiple cities in the Northwest. The search warrants identified “anti-government or anarchist literature.” At the time, because of statements from police and because the warrants listed that the items were connected to “conspiracy to destroy government property” and “interstate travel with intent to riot,” it appeared that the raids and grand jury were connected to broken windows and other vandalism at a Seattle May Day protest.
Grand jury proceedings are secret, but Lauren Regan, an attorney with the Civil Liberties Defense Center, learned that the grand jury was empaneled March 2, 2012 — before the May Day protests even took place. It’s possible that prosecutors spent months anticipating and investigating May Day protests, but a more likely explanation is that this grand jury is not about broken windows. | <urn:uuid:9c2ab887-0271-4d6a-a78e-62c0dd6db1b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://libertycrier.com/government/3-people-now-in-jail-for-refusing-to-talk-about-other-anti-government-activists/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97079 | 276 | 1.601563 | 2 |
President Obama gave a heartfelt eulogy for Ted Kennedy at his funeral service on Saturday. Among other high praises, he called the senator “a champion for those who had none” and “the soul of the Democratic Party.”
Edward Kennedy, Jr.
Ted Kennedy, Jr., honored his father and “best friend” with a touching story of the way he inspired his son to keep fighting even after the then-12-year-old lost his leg to cancer.
Kennedy’s son Patrick recalled the sense of safety he felt when his father would comfort him through his childhood asthma attacks, saying, “Having asthma was like hitting the jackpot for a child who craved his father’s love and attention.”
John Kerry spoke of the positive impact Kennedy made during his “more than 17,000 days as a United States senator,” including his work to help abolish the military draft, end the war in Vietnam, and pass Medicare. He vowed to help pass health-care reform in his honor. Kerry closed by imagining Kennedy on his beloved schooner, reunited with his lost brothers, saying, “Sail on, my friend. Sail on.”
Vice President Joe Biden spoke of Kennedy’s dignity and selflessness, saying these traits made everyone who encountered the senator want to be a better person. He said Kennedy’s legacy can be found in the way people treat each other now.
Kennedy’s niece, Caroline, talked about the “history trips” her uncle would take the whole family on. Kennedy would occasionally sneak away from the trips when he craved a night at the Ritz instead of a night camping on the cold, hard ground. Caroline Kennedy also spoke of the importance of continuing his legacy, saying, “We are the ones who have to do all the things he would have done, for ourselves and for our country.”
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch playfully recounted the exasperation he felt negotiating with Kennedy over policies and bills, and said that despite their diverse backgrounds and polar opposite stances on, well, everything, he and Kennedy had forged a close friendship.
Sen. Chris Dodd remembered Sen. Ted Kennedy through some of his lighter moments, including a recent phone call in which Kennedy joked that between going through prostate surgery and doing town halls, Dodd made the right choice.
Joseph Kennedy, nephew of Ted, shared a story about a sailing race he participated in with his uncle. When Joe steered them into a buoy and all seemed lost, Kennedy inspired him to keep going and eventually win the race. The lesson Joe had learned from his uncle was, “Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever give up.”
“I think I’m gonna miss him more than I can say,“ Sen. John McCain said. “We disagreed on most issues, but I admired his passion for his convictions.” He said the late senator was “hard to ignore” and that Capitol Hill won’t be the same without him.
The Daily Beast Video curates the most essential and entertaining video, and brings you original and exclusive productions from our talented contributors. | <urn:uuid:baa3eadd-1c3e-457c-9cdb-073fdf216dc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/29/7-touching-kennedy-tributes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982035 | 666 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Here are the responses (Borrowed from the excellent Criminal Solicitor dot net)
A summary of the response submitted by Her Majesty's Circuit Judges is set out below:
1. The Sentencing Process is but one of a number of factors that contribute to the prison population.
2. The proper exercise of a judicial discretion is not a cause of prison overcrowding.
3. The preservation of judicial independence is fundamental to an independent judicial system.
4. We are opposed to the creation of a Sentencing Commission. We do not believe it to be feasible and any perceived advantages are outweighed by major disadvantages.
5. There is a process for the promulgation of sentencing Guidelines which works and results in a consistency of approach. Consistency of approach not uniformity in outcome is the proper aim.
6. There are numerous statistics already available that can be used to achieve an acceptable level of predictability in relation to the sentencing process in the Crown Courts
7. Devising a framework to impose on a system that is not codified and where there are many anomalies and interests to take into account is almost impossible.
8. Even if a framework of some sort could be devised and imposed it would be a blunt instrument resulting in unfairness and injustice.
9. If the Government were to adopt a proposal for the creation of a Sentencing Commission this would be seen by this Council as a thinly disguised attempt by the State, which is responsible for the institution of criminal proceedings, to ensure that the State achieves the result it desires avoiding the inconvenient intervention of justice.
10. The American dream would result in a nightmare in England and Wales.
The response from the Magistrates Association sets out the following points:
o The ideas contained within this consultation paper, in so far as they affect the rights of the judiciary to determine a suitable sentence, taking account of both the offence committed and the offender, are unacceptable to the Magistratesâ?T Association
o The opportunity for a wide debate on Lord Carter's recommendation to consider the options for improving the balance between the supply of and demand for prison places is welcomed
o A system that collects data on which decisions can be made in an objective manner must be of benefit
o We recognise there needs to be an understanding by the administration of supply and demand for prison places and that advance planning and budgeting is good, but as we are dealing with human behaviour this cannot be predicted with accuracy whilst maintaining the flexible approach to sentencing
o Magistrates consider that they currently operate an appropriate structured sentencing framework and that this framework will be even more effective once the new guidelines are issued. There is scant recognition of this in the paper.
o Sentencing is a discrete art that requires the careful application of judicial discretion and common sense in every case to address the seriousness of the particular offence and the circumstances of the individual offender. Restriction of sentencing discretion would be a retrograde step.
o People are individuals. We would regret any changes which moved us towards a formulaic or mechanistic approach to sentencing
o Offences cannot have a standardised seriousness rating. The context of the offence changes the seriousness.
o Consistency of approach to sentencing is needed, not uniformity of sentence.
o The current guidelines already promote consistency in approach to sentencing because the judiciary must have regard to them or give reasons otherwise.
o The judicial system in England and Wales incorporates the principles of rehabilitation and prevention of re-offending. How are these elements to be addressed in any new sentencing framework?
o There is concern that the relationship between a Sentencing Commission and Government could lead to political and financial interference into the independence of sentencers and that appropriate sentencing could be jeopardised.
o Much could be achieved without the introduction of prescriptive sentencing processes similar to those in operation in some US states. If the system is so effective why has it not been introduced more widely?
o The Working Group itself does not consider the wholesale adoption of the system appropriate for England and Wales
o It is not necessary to dismantle the existing structures to achieve more accurate information required for strategic planning. This could be achieved by managing existing data more effectively to generate the appropriate information required for decision making
o Parliament has been extremely poor in not predicting the impact of its own legislation or acting on any predictions of prison population it has made, and improvement is highly desirable.
Here is The Times' report. | <urn:uuid:6500ca2a-c637-484a-986b-612518a1e769> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.magistratesblog.blogspot.co.uk/2008_06_01_archive.html | 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 | 0.943125 | 894 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Careers advice will be available at the Fair but you don't have to wait to get help! Your university careers service is open all year - make the most of it!
A common, but mistaken, assumption is that the careers service is only for those with a clear career plan and is no use if you do not know what you want to do. The reality is quite different; the majority of students seen do not have a well-informed idea about what they want to do after university, and usually want help or information to get them started!
Are you a recent graduate?
Remember that your university careers service can still provide you with information and advice after you graduate (there may be a time limit on this, so check what your service can do and make the most of it).
- The University of Sheffield Careers Service
- Sheffield Hallam University Careers and Employment Service
Take a look at the short video below by Hilary Whorrall, Careers Adviser at The University of Sheffield and find out how we can help you prepare for the fair. | <urn:uuid:aaa6e647-e9a6-4531-ae4d-1fb72362dfad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sheffieldcareersfairs.ac.uk/recruitment-fairs/2011_es&i/visitors/careers-advice.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949159 | 217 | 1.625 | 2 |
“Your job security no longer lies in having a job; it lies in knowing how to work the job market”. – @susanireland
The attached file is Using social networking to find your next job and love it is meant to help people find their next job. This PDF is all about using Linkedin and other social networking sites to help you find your next job. The attached file is about 24 pages long and I would like to thank DR 1665, Ryan, and other people who helped me put together this report.
Finding the right job for the right person with the right needs and wants is always challenging, it is more challenging when the job market is expected to take at least a two years to recover to 2008 pre-recession levels. Some long-range projections of the job market expect the recovery to start in 2014 , well past the time that unemployment will run . For some this is a disaster, they do not have the skills, nor have they invested in updating their own skills to be viable in the job market. For others this opportunity can lead to improved work opportunities that are more in line with what they want and can be done on their own terms. For some of the intrepid a down economy and poor job market reinforces the idea to start their own company. Regardless of where someone is coming from emotionally or intellectually the any issue that delays the job search also makes the job search more challenging. This is true for people who need to work in, have the general security that a large company provides, and not take the risks that a startup or owning your own company entails .
The file is free to download and share as you see fit. It is very much so CC 2.0, share and share alike, if you would like to use this in a publication, or in any other way that makes money – contact me at rmorrill at gmail.com and we can discuss it.
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- AVG LinkedIn Starter Guide (slideshare.net)
(Cross-posted @ TechWag) | <urn:uuid:c7aa964e-c1bc-44c4-b237-eb9b9fcc6883> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cloudave.com/968/use-social-networking-to-find-you-next-job-and-love-it/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957352 | 522 | 1.65625 | 2 |
A Mark Rothko painting was defaced at London's Tate Modern on Sunday.
"Tate can confirm that at 15.25 this afternoon there was an incident at Tate Modern in which a visitor defaced one of Rothko's Seagram murals by applying a small area of black paint with a brush to the painting. The police are currently investigating the incident," a museum spokeswoman wrote to CNN in an e-mail statement.
Museum-goer Tim Wright witnessed the act of vandalism and posted an image on Twitter.
The 23-year-old Bristol resident told CNN he was at the Tate during a day trip to London with his girlfriend when the couple realized what was going on. He noticed a man walk into the exhibit, but he thought nothing of it until he heard a "smashing sound."
"It was very surreal. It wasn't something we expected to see. One minute he sat down, and the next minute he put his foot over the barrier," Wright said of the vandal.
Wright said they saw the man as he finished up the tag and then made his getaway. He said he and his girlfriend stayed at the exhibit while a group of nearby women went to find museum staff. An alarm soon went off, and the museum was evacuated. Wright said he and his girlfriend gave a description of the event to a museum employee.
Tate confirmed that the gallery was "briefly closed" due to the incident.
"It's just not the thing you expect to see in an art gallery," Wright said. "I've never seen anything like it. It's quite shocking, actually."
The defaced painting was a mural from Rothko's famed Seagram series. The Russian-American abstract expressionist was commissioned to do a series of paintings for the Four Seasons restaurant of the Seagram building in New York in 1958. Though he started the series of murals, he famously reneged, deciding the swanky New York restaurant wasn't an appropriate home for his art.
Rothko rejected the commission but completed paintings stemming from the project, many of which made their way into the halls of museums. The murals arrived in London as Rothko killed himself in 1970.
The murals have been on display at many of the Tate's locations as well as the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Rothko's children, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, said in a statement that they were thankful for the support of others after the incident.
"The Rothko family is greatly troubled by yesterday's occurrence but has full confidence that the Tate Gallery will do all in its power to remedy the situation," the family said. "Our father donated his legendary Seagram paintings to the museum in 1969 sensing the commitment of the institution to his work and impressed by the warm embrace it had received from the British public. We are heartened to have felt that embrace again in the outpouring of distress and support that we and our father have received both directly and in public forums."
Speculation about the culprit's identity is starting to swirl, but police have offered few specifics. A Met police spokesman said the vandal is "a white man aged in his late 20s who subsequently left the scene, and there have been no arrests at this time." | <urn:uuid:53ac608f-c754-4820-a03a-660dbfc0e486> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kxly.com/editorial-calendar-template/Rothko-painting-defaced-in-London/-/16020632/16891860/-/6ehve3/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989194 | 671 | 1.6875 | 2 |
NEW YORK - New Zealand has a good chance of winning a seat on the United Nations Security Council, Prime Minister John Key says.
Mr Key this evening (about 11am NZT) addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York for the first time and used the opportunity to launch New Zealand's bid for a position on the 15-member council.
The opening week of the General Assembly is intensely observed by countries and this year was the largest ever with more than 160 world leaders present.
Mr Key's 6pm slot (local time) on a Friday night saw less than half of the countries represented in the chamber but there was a rustling and picking up of speech notes when Mr Key made his announcement.
"Distinguished representatives, New Zealand takes very seriously its responsibilities for creating and maintaining peace and security in its region and in the world," Mr Key said.
"I am therefore pleased to confirm New Zealand's candidature for the United Nations Security Council for 2015-2016, in elections to be held in 2014."
New Zealand has served three times on the Security Council most recently in 93-94.
There are five permanent members; United Kingdom, France, China, Russia and United States and 10 temporary representatives elected by member nations.
Mr Key told reporters that at this stage there was no competition as only one other country, Spain, had put up its hand for one of the positions but, "anything can happen between now and 2014."
However: "I'd like to think we have a good chance of getting there."
Australia and Canada have bids for earlier years so if either missed they might try again.
Mr Key said a win would be positive for New Zealand.
"It certainly gives us profile, and it helps New Zealand, and advances our causes if you like but it's also part of playing our role here in the United Nations and hopefully playing our part in making sure we live in a world that's more secure," he said.
The last time New Zealand served on the council it was highly regarded and Mr Key said the timing was right, 20 years later, to try again.
Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully would work aggressively over coming years to get support, Mr Key said.
A hot issue for the council was nuclear non-proliferation and it passed a resolution yesterday to put more impetus into the issue.
The resolution came just before revelations Iran was building a second uranium enrichment facility.
"That will just heighten the world's concern about Iran and potentially North Korea and others building up a nuclear arsenal," Mr Key said.
New Zealand had long been nuclear free and it appeared now there was impetus from the US and others to address the weapon problem.
"I think when it comes to nuclear weapons there's a recognition now that they can do far more harm than they could ever do good. There's obviously reluctance from those who haven't necessarily reduced their holding of nuclear weapons."
Mr Key also sought to play down any conflict between the US position of retaining some restrictions on military interaction with New Zealand, in force since the country became nuclear free, and President Obama's rhetoric on non-proliferation.
"That issue is very much in the past we are seeing a warming of the relationship."
He said there had been no official talks on the issue but would not comment when asked if they had been at an informal level.
"We see progress being made in a more simplified environment, the presidential perogative that's there still remains and we are not pushing hard for that to be removed."
In his speech Mr Key urged the G20 meeting taking place in Pittsburgh to push for a successful Doha round of trade talks and urged countries to drop protectionist measures.
He also touched on the New Zealand initiative to set up an international alliance for research into reducing agricultural emissions.
- NZPABy Maggie Tait of NZPA | <urn:uuid:4ceb4e6d-1996-407f-90fc-6e2e3f50d9f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10599764&pnum=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978725 | 792 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Docklands Authority commissions exciting three part visual arts project.
bodycity, a new visual arts project explores the complex idea surrounding the human body in relation to the cities in which we live. The project is in three parts, the first of which, VIDEOAPARTMENT, runs throughout the month of November and presents video works by artists from Ireland and around the world.
The second phase of the project, bodytalkcity, a day of talks and performances to raise questions about the cities we are building today and their impact on our lives, takes place on 17th November.
Bodycity continues into 2008 and will culminate in June and July with PROJECTbodycity, exhibiting new works by ten international artists as temporary interventions around the Docklands area.
Commissioned by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, bodycity is curated by Nigel Rolfe, a prominent performance artist; Cliodhna Shaffrey, an independent curator; and Shelagh Morris as project administrator.
Starting on 1st November 2007, bodycity's VIDEOAPARTMENT features the works of video artists working with the moving image in four weekly programmes under the title ‘Body as City and City as Body'. VIDEOAPARTMENT will be open to the public each day through November (excluding Sundays and Mondays) from 12pm to 7pm at Apt 20, Block G, Hanover Wharf in Docklands.
Bodytalkcity takes place at St Michael's and John's Church, 15-19 Essex Street West, from 10am to 9pm on Saturday 17th November 2007. Speakers will include leading sociologist and philosopher, Zygmunt Bauman, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Universities of Leeds and Warsaw, who has developed a powerful analysis of the human condition, as well as pre-eminent architectural critic and historian Anthony Vidler, the chair of New York's Cooper Union Architecture Department, and noted sociologist and economist Saskia Sassen who is a leading authority on globalisation. The Photographer Paul Seawright will discuss his recent work in Africa "Invisible Cities".
The day will also feature a panel discussion on the theme ‘crisis what crisis', chaired by Ciaran Benson, the Professor of Psychology at UCD, with a range of panellists including Fintan O'Toole and Peter Sheridan. The evening will conclude with a presentation by Australian performance artist Stelarc who incorporates themes of cyborginization and other human-machine interfaces in his work.
Admission is free and 250 tickets will be available through the bodycity.org website (www.bodycity.org).
Nigel Rolfe said, "we need now to look at the relationship between consuming development and ourselves. We live first in our bodies. In bodycity we have asked artists to do just that, it is such a fast changing landscape here in the city, and not all for the good, and that needs all our consideration."
Mary McCarthy, Arts Manager at the Docklands Authority said, "bodycity is one of the most thought provoking and intriguing projects the Docklands Authority has presented to date. The programme of events is sure to initiate much discussion and debate on life in contemporary Dublin."
bodycity is one of many initiatives emanating from the focus on commissions by the Docklands Authority's relating to the issue of urban regeneration in Dublin's Docklands.
For further information, please contact:
Loretta Lambkin, Docklands Authority, Tel. 818 3300
Christine Lydon, WHPR, Tel 669 0030 or 087 283 7407
Attached - Biogs on three curators
Nigel Rolfe is an artist and educator who first came to wide recognition here in ROSC in 1980 by using his body in his own sculptures. He exhibits all over the world and has had numerous major museum retrospectives of his work, he has been a professor At Yale University and the Royal College of Art In London.
Cliodhna Shaffrey is an independent curator in Ireland having studied at Goldsmiths' College at the University of London. She works for the contemporary art subject curating exhibitions and projects throughout Ireland.
Shelagh Morris has a background in public relations and has worked in visual arts administration for many years. She has worked as an arts manager behind the scenes, and more directly with art and artists by installing large group exhibitions in many museums and galleries. | <urn:uuid:1fb7c9c9-20a0-4a1c-954c-a43dbb803a79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ddda.ie/text/index.jsp?p=94&n=381&a=472 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959472 | 906 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Timing can be so important. It mystifies me how a particular moment is simply the right moment for specific poem to come together. I've had a few encounters with this sort of thing. And as thought I almost lack gratitude from the ones that have occurred this way, I'd add too damn few.
Some of the best poems can be viewed in the same way as a snapshot. They capture a moment in time and frame it in words. A yardstick to measure the success of such work could well be if the reader can put him/herself into that frame and automatically be in the moment. I think William Carlos Williams' poem that begins... so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain is a classic example of what I mean. This poem came to him on the spot and indeed captures a moment in time like that of a photographer. Wickpedia notes "The pictorial style in which the poem is written owes much to the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and the precisionist style of Charles Sheeler."
I'm trying to think about the few times I have had such an experience with writing a poem and it seems clear to me that there was little if anything I did consciously to assure the success of the poem written. I cannot think of any. In fact, these instances were more like becoming aware that there was nothing to do but sit down and write the poems. The conditions and the creation of the poem in these instances had more control over me than I over them. Because of this it is not something I can say, "ah, do this, and a great poem is bound to happen." Randall Jarrell ruefully defined a poet as someone who, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, manages to get hit by lightning seven or eight times.[The Atlantic.com] Perhaps these are lightening experiences. | <urn:uuid:d3e69a8a-da0d-4205-ad41-439cf764f181> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stickpoetsuperhero.blogspot.jp/2008/07/timing-is-everything.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981696 | 379 | 1.796875 | 2 |
1--Suicide of a Superpower, Patrick J. Buchanan, American Conservative
Excerpt: October 3, 2011" American Conservative" -- This generation of Americans has been witness to one of the most stunning declines of a great power in the history of the world.
In 2000, the United States ran a surplus. In 2009, it ran a deficit of $1.4 trillion—10 percent of the economy. The 2010 deficit was almost equal, and the 2011 deficit is projected even higher. The national debt is surging to 100 percent of GDP, portending an eventual run on the dollar, a default, or Weimar inflation. The greatest creditor nation in history is now the world’s greatest debtor.
In the first decade of what was to be the Second American Century, a net of zero new jobs were created. Average households were earning less in real dollars at the end of the decade than at the beginning. The net worth of the American family, in stocks, bonds, savings, home values, receded 4 percent.
Fifty-thousand plants and factories shut down. As a source of jobs, manufacturing fell below healthcare and education in 2001, below retail sales in 2002, below local government in 2006, below leisure and hospitality, i.e., restaurants and bars, in 2008—all for the first time.
In April 2010, three of every four Americans, 74 percent, said the country is weaker than a decade ago, and 57 percent said life in America will be worse for the next generation than it is today....
2--Europe Must Fight Back Against US-UK Speculative Attacks, Global Research
Excerpt: No Recapitalization of Banks to Mask Derivatives Losses — No amount of recapitalization could ever hope to cancel out the derivatives which are hiding inside these banks......
No Leveraging of the EFSF — If the European economies have too much debt, say the Anglo-Americans, the answer is obviously to accumulate more debt by using the existing European Financial Stability Fund as collateral for wider borrowing. But this foolish suggestion would leave the EFSF wide-open to the attacks by credit rating agencies who act as thinly veiled proxies for Wall Street and the City of London...
No IMF — The meddling and bungling economists of the International Monetary Fund have left a trail of tears across the globe, and have never been able to point to a single story of successful economic development as a result of their prescriptions. The IMF is the bearer of the absurd and discredited Washington Consensus in economic policy based on deregulation, privatization, union busting, the destruction of the social safety net, the liquidation of the state sector, the systematic reduction of wages and benefits, and a generally barbaric race to the bottom. By 2008, there was a revolt against these draconian recipes, but they have now been imposed on Greece, Portugal, and Ireland. Europe must be the Europe of the peoples, and not the Europe of the banks and cartels. The failed neoliberal and monetarist policies of the IMF must have no place in European development....
What Europe Must Do
Liquidate Zombie Banks; End Too Big to Fail — About a dozen of the top European money center banks are clearly insolvent, and are being kept alive because of political considerations. These Euro-zombies are benefiting from the continental version of Too Big to Fail. These banks do not and cannot provide commercial lending for new plant and equipment that could create new productive jobs. Instead, they trade in toxic derivatives, increasing the size of the world derivatives bubble. They also add to the crushing burdens on the productive economy by speculating in commodities and energy futures, all of which makes the depression worse. They also gouge their own customers with outrageous fees. These banks serve no constructive social or economic purpose. They must be subjected to bankruptcy proceedings, and their derivatives wiped out....
The ECB must be taken permanently out of the control of secret cliques of unelected and unaccountable bankers and subjected to the democratic control of representative political institutions. The only conceivable way to provide democratic legitimacy for the ECB is to have the size of the European money supply, the interest rates that will be applied, and the approved categories of lending be determined via public laws debated and approved by the European Parliament in the full glare of public opinion....
€1 Trillion For Infrastructure – These €1 trillion tranches of ECB lending should be used for the systematic modernization and expansion of the European network of superhighways, fast rail and maglev rail, modern energy production and delivery, water systems and canals, housing, hospitals, schools and other educational institutions , libraries, public buildings, and other necessary public works. The goal is to accomplish a permanent increase in the European stock of capital goods, while quickly upgrading the productivity of European labor.
3--We Are The 99 Per Cent, Mark Ruffalo, "The Guardian"
Excerpt: I have spent the last two days at the Occupy Wall Street gathering. It was a beautiful display of peaceful action: so much kindness and gentleness in the camp, so much belief in our world and democracy. And so many different kinds of people all looking for a chance at the dream that America had promised them...
When people critique this movement and say spurious things about the protesters' clothes or their jobs or the general way they look, they are showing how shallow we have become as a nation. They forget that these people have taken time out of their lives to stand up for values that are purely American and in the interest of our democracy. They forget that these people are encamped in an urban park, where they are not allowed to have tents or other normal camping gear. They are living far outside their comfort zone to protect and celebrate liberty, equality and the rule of law.
It is a thing of beauty to see so many people in love with the ideal of democracy, so alive with its promise, so committed to its continuity in the face of crony capitalism and corporate rule. That should be celebrated. It should be respected and admired.
Their message is very clear and simple: get money out of the political process; strive for equality in taxation and equal rights for all regardless of race, gender, social status, sexual preference or age. We must stop poisoning our food, air and water for corporate greed. The people on Wall Street and in the banking industrial complex that destroyed our economy must be investigated and brought to justice under the law for what they have done by stealing people's homes and savings...
It's time to check ourselves, to see if we still have that small part that believes in the values that America promises. Do we still have a shred of our decency intact in the face of debasement? If you do, then now is the time to give that forgotten part a voice. That is what this movement is ultimately about: giving voice to decency and fairness.
I invite anyone and all to participate in this people's movement to regain your dignity and what you have worked for in this capitalist society. Each of us is of great value to the whole. Do not forget your greatness. Even when the world around you is telling you you are nothing. You have a voice. You want a better life for your children and the people you love. You live in a democracy. You belong, and you deserve a world that is fair and equal. You have a right to take your place and be heard.
4--Special Report: A "great haircut" to kick-start growth, Reuters
Excerpt: More than three years after the financial crisis struck, the economy remains stuck in a consumer debt trap. It's a situation that could take years to correct itself. That's why some economists are calling for a radical step: massive debt relief.
Federal policy makers, they suggest, should broker what amounts to an out-of-court settlement between institutional bond investors, banks and consumer advocates - essentially, a "great haircut" to jumpstart the economy.
What some are envisioning is a negotiated process in which cash-strapped homeowners get real mortgage relief, even if it means forcing banks to incur severe write-downs and bond investors to absorb haircuts, or losses, in some of the securities sold by those institutions.
"We've put this off for too long," said L. Randall Wray, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. "We need debt relief and jobs and until we get these two things, I think recovery is impossible."
The bailout of the nation's banks, a nearly trillion dollar stimulus package and an array of programs by the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates near zero may have stopped the economy from falling into the abyss. But none of those measures have fixed the underlying problem of too much consumer debt....
But households are still carrying a staggering burden of debt.
As of June 30, roughly 1.6 million homeowners in the U.S. were either delinquent on mortgages or in some stage of the foreclosure process, according to CoreLogic. And the real estate data and analytics company reports that 10.9 million, or 22.5 percent, of homeowners are underwater on their mortgage -- meaning the value of their homes has fallen so much it is now below the value of their original loan. CoreLogic said the figure, which peaked at 11.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, has declined slightly not because home prices are appreciating but because a growing number of mortgages are entering foreclosure.
The nation's banks, meanwhile, still have more than $700 billion in home equity loans and other so-called second lien debt outstanding on those U.S. homes, according to SNL Financial.
Debts owed by American consumers account for almost half of the nearly $9 trillion in worldwide bonds backed by pools of mortgages, car loans, credit card debt and student loans, which were sold to hedge funds, insurers and pension funds and endowments.
And that doesn't include the $4.1 trillion in mortgage debt sold by government-sponsored finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
5--Declining Wages Hurt Consumer Spending, Economic Recovery, Wall Street cheat sheet
Excerpt: Incomes fell in August for the third time in five months, with personal income dropping for the first time in two years, according to a Commerce Department report last week. Meanwhile, household income fell to $49,445 last year, according to the Census Bureau, its lowest in over a decade, while the poverty rate climbed to 15.1%, a 17-year high.
In terms of wages and employment, the economic recovery is seemingly non-existent. Salary and benefit growth “has been going nowhere,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “One of the key reasons the recovery has stalled is that real incomes have fallen.” Inflation-adjusted weekly earnings have declined for six consecutive months, falling 1.8% in August from the year earlier....
If Congress fails to extend payroll-tax cuts and unemployment benefits set to expire at the end of the year, it will only further cut into Americans’ purchases. “It’s hard to see where consumers are going to get a lot of wherewithal to sustain strong spending,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “It’s certainly a concern that, rather than sluggish consumption growth, we see flat or declining consumption.”
The decline in incomes will cause “continued pressure on home prices and on the stock market,” said Malcolm Polley, who oversees $1 billion as chief investment officer at Stewart Capital in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Corporate sales may be hurt, people will begin withdrawing from retirement plans and using 401k loans
6--To Cure the Economy, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate
Excerpt: As the economic slump that began in 2007 persists, the question on everyone’s minds is obvious: Why? Unless we have a better understanding of the causes of the crisis, we can’t implement an effective recovery strategy. And, so far, we have neither.
We were told that this was a financial crisis, so governments on both sides of the Atlantic focused on the banks. Stimulus programs were sold as being a temporary palliative, needed to bridge the gap until the financial sector recovered and private lending resumed. But, while bank profitability and bonuses have returned, lending has not recovered, despite record-low long- and short-term interest rates.
The banks claim that lending remains constrained by a shortage of creditworthy borrowers, owing to the sick economy. And key data indicate that they are at least partly right. After all, large enterprises are sitting on a few trillion dollars in cash, so money is not what is holding them back from investing and hiring. Some, perhaps many, small businesses are, however, in a very different position; strapped for funds, they can’t grow, and many are being forced to contract....
But the economy was very sick before the crisis; the housing bubble merely papered over its weaknesses. Without bubble-supported consumption, there would have been a massive shortfall in aggregate demand. Instead, the personal saving rate plunged to 1%, and the bottom 80% of Americans were spending, every year, roughly 110% of their income. Even if the financial sector were fully repaired, and even if these profligate Americans hadn’t learned a lesson about the importance of saving, their consumption would be limited to 100% of their income. So anyone who talks about the consumer “coming back” – even after deleveraging – is living in a fantasy world.
Fixing the financial sector was necessary for economic recovery, but far from sufficient. To understand what needs to be done, we have to understand the economy’s problems before the crisis hit....
...while bankers have regained their bonuses, workers are seeing their wages eroded and their hours diminished, further widening the income gap. ....The prescription for what ails the global economy follows directly from the diagnosis: strong government expenditures, aimed at facilitating restructuring, promoting energy conservation, and reducing inequality, and a reform of the global financial system that creates an alternative to the buildup of reserves.
7--Wall Street hits 13-month low on Europe woes, Reuters
Excerpt: Stocks slumped in heavy volume to a 13-month low on Monday as investors dumped bank shares on fears that Greece's worsening financial crisis could cause a large European lender to fail.
Investors pegged losses to the sharp fall in Franco-Belgian financial group Dexia, which fell 10 percent after a Moody's warning about its liquidity due to concerns about exposure to Greece.
Markets have feared European officials will be unable to prevent Greece's fiscal crisis from turning into a global banking crisis. Greece said it will miss its deficit targets this year and next, which could limit the country's ability to receive more aid.
"Most investors fear that markets in Europe are going to run well ahead of politicians that are not going to be able to get any kind of reasonable solution," said Jack de Gan, chief investment officer at Harbor Advisory Corp in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
U.S. banks have become a target for speculators. Morgan Stanley closed at its lowest since December 2008, and the cost to insure its debt has jumped as other banks hedge counterparty exposures and traders bet on the situation worsening.
The recession that wiped 12 years of gains off the S&P 500 was caused in part by a credit crisis.
"We are going to have a disorderly default in Greece and there could be another banking crisis in Europe as they are undercapitalized and loaded with (sovereign) debt," De Gan said.
Morgan Stanley has been the most volatile bank in recent weeks, with the cost to insure its debt rising to November 2008 levels, according to Markit data.
Morgan Stanley shares fell 7.6 percent to $12.47 and the S&P financial sector was down 4.5 percent.
The market's focus on Morgan Stanley stems from a perception about their reliance on short-term funding, said Harbor Advisory's De Gan. "They rely on the credit markets and that was the downfall of Lehman and other institutions three years ago," he said.
The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 258.08 points, or 2.36 percent, to 10,655.30. The S&P 500 fell 32.19 points, or 2.85 percent, to 1,099.23. The Nasdaq Composite lost 79.57 points, or 3.29 percent, to 2,335.83. | <urn:uuid:ce487d03-1f09-49ab-b038-8685fc9f0bed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mikewhitneysgraspingatstraws.blogspot.com/2011/10/todays-links_04.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957158 | 3,409 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Every Father's Day you've indulged Dad's love of sports with a traditional game of catch.
Times change. You're tired of tossing a ball back and forth, and what sort of 'game' has no winner?
This year's competition is different. Instead of the usual, you've agreed to another traditional sporting event: A healthy game of Rock/Paper/Scissors.
The idea is simple. Choose between three options: Rock, Paper, or Scissors. At the same time, your Dad will make a similar choice.
In case you didn't already know, each object has its own strengths and weaknesses.
For every round you win, you'll get a point. Dad gets one for each of his victories. If you each select the same object, it's a draw and no points are awarded.
To relieve your real Dad from any undo stress this Father's Day, we'll have the computer make selections on his behalf.
The first to win 25 games is the champion. And remember -- you don't have to let Dad win just because it's Father's Day! | <urn:uuid:4471dc8e-9a7b-48f5-a0d4-593b6bca8bec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://googolplex.cuna.org/30256/5spot/games/covercutsmash/start.htm?doc_id=1639&title=Cover!%20Cut!%20Smash! | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973922 | 225 | 1.828125 | 2 |
BY HUGH ADAMI, OTTAWA CITIZEN Saturday, October 27, 2012 | OTTAWA — “As you are aware,” Ottawa police Staff Sgt. Mark Patterson told me the other day, “there’s more than one side to a story.”
Still, said Patterson, head of the force’s guns and gangs unit and its Direct Action Response Team (DART), “I don’t want to get into a debate” about the police’s role in the arrest and nine-day detention of Somali-American Mahad Abdulhamid Islam. The 32-year-old, a frequent visitor to Ottawa as he has family here, alleges that in custody, medication to treat his attention deficit disorder was denied and the water taps of the sink in his cell were turned off. His pleas for something to drink went unanswered, he says. He drank from the toilet, preserving the water in the bowl by defecating and urinating on his cell floor.
The Public Citizen wasn’t interested in a debate, either. This newspaper just wanted him or someone on the force to explain why on Oct. 10 DART officers stopped the car in which Islam was a passenger. Islam and his cousins had been going to visit family when their car was stopped on Bank Street, near Cahill Drive, in South Keys — an area known for gang activity, shootings and drug trafficking.
Farah Aw-Osman, a spokesman for Ottawa’s 20,000-strong Somali community, says he, too, would like to hear the police’s side. He says there have been many instances in which young, innocent Somali-Canadians have been stopped and harassed by police because of their ethnicity. Aw-Osman, executive director of Canadian Friends of Somalia, believes young men in his community are often victims of racial profiling. Sure, he says, there are some bad apples and he supports the force’s work to get them off the streets. But, for the most part, he says the young men are good, law-abiding people and should not have their rights violated.
One mother, who doesn’t want to be identified because she fears it would only mean more trouble for her son, says young Somali males are even harassed by police on their way to the mosque, and often asked to empty their pockets or backpacks.
Islam was released from the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre on Innes Road Oct. 19. In freeing him, an immigration judge said the man would have to return to the U.S. because of a misdemeanour conviction in Virginia. But the judge also said there had been no need for Canada Border Services Agency officers, who Ottawa police called to deal with Islam, to jail him. The judge said Islam was identified through his U.S. passport, did not pose a flight risk and was not a danger to the public.
In a Citizen story Thursday, Islam said there was no apparent reason why police stopped the blue Toyota he and two cousins were in, other than, he believes, their colour.
After spending the week after his release with relatives, Islam was planning to rent a car and motor to Virginia Friday. His U.S. passport was waiting for him at a CBSA office at the 1000 Islands border crossing. But he was still wondering what became of his iPhone, which he claims was seized by the CBSA agents when he was arrested. He thinks they realized he was using the phone to tape what they were saying to him. He says the CBSA told him the cellphone was sent to the jail with his other belongings. The jail, he says, told him the $600 phone was not among the possessions they received from the agency.
Patterson says DART’s prime mandate is “providing high visibility and an active police presence in these communities” where gangs are a problem. Dart officers are primarily on the lookout, says Patterson, for individuals who are on court-imposed conditions. If police suspect someone fails to abide by a court order — i.e. not associating with certain people, abstaining from drugs — they can stop the individual and ask questions. If any of the conditions are broken, the person is arrested.
Patterson, who says he reviewed the Oct. 10 incident and determined his officers acted properly, stresses that “race and religion” are never factors when they decide to question an individual. Rather, says Patterson, DART officers “are looking at (the) criminal behaviour and criminal activity” (of those being monitored).
Patterson says DART officers also keep an eye out for traffic violations and other offences.
So presumably, either one or both of Islam’s cousins were under court conditions when they were spotted. Police would have had to suspect they were up to no good to stop them. Perhaps Islam caught their attention, though it appears they only focused on him after dealing with the driver. Or was it all over a traffic offence?
Relatives say Islam’s two cousins are not lawbreakers, but add they had been stopped by police on previous occasions. Regardless, the cousins were sent on their way following Islam’s arrest, without even a traffic ticket. If either were under court-imposed conditions, they must have been obeying them.
Islam admits he refused to answer questions from police after presenting his U.S. passport. The DART unit then called in the CBSA, whose agents work with those officers two days a week. The CBSA agents asked their office for a background check, which determined that Islam was convicted of assault and battery in 2007. He was arrested because of the possibility that he was “criminally inadmissible” to Canada, says CBSA spokesman Chris Kealey.
Islam, who was not jailed for the conviction and for that reason would be admissible to Canada under a March 2012 policy, was first taken to a CBSA office before he was dropped off at the detention centre.
Rezaur Rahman, Islam’s lawyer, says police had no reason to alert the CBSA because Islam’s passport indicated he had entered Canada legally and had visitor’s status, granted by the CBSA at the airport. Rahman says CBSA agents also disregarded that information. He says they should have known better.
Is something bothering you? Please contact [email protected]
_______________________________________________________________Share on Facebook | <urn:uuid:6827a250-b0f0-4b19-bc06-cae7ba2d6f3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.qaranimo.com/2012/10/27/police-remain-mum-about-somali-american-visitors-detention/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988791 | 1,335 | 1.546875 | 2 |
, also known by her fan-nickname of Hikki, is an American-born Japanese pop musician.
She is currently one of the most popular and successful Japanese musicians today, having sold over 33 million albums worldwide to date. Because of her fluent bilingual skills in English and Japanese, Utada became an unprecedented icon in Japan after her debut, First Love, shattered records in 1999.
In 2003, HMV Japan announced Utada Hikaru to be the No.24 Japanese pop artist in its survey of "Top 100 Japanese pops Artists" all-time.
Utada Hikaru was born in New York City, New York to Japanese parents, who both had roots in the Japanese music industry: her father, Teruzane Utada, was a producer, while her mother, Junko Utada, was an enka singer (she performed under the stage name "Keiko Fuji"). "Hikaru" literally translated means "light" in English. She made her first professional recording at the age of twelve, and recorded her first album, Precious, in 1996 under the pseudonym Cubic U. The album led to her career overseas. In an MTV interview (MTV's You Hear It First, October 2004), Utada said: "... | <urn:uuid:42d0a53e-64ba-4179-b190-03ddf0d89d63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chordie.com/song.php/songartist/Utada+Hikaru/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981386 | 254 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Learn about current clinical trials for people with HIV/AIDS
The Duke University AIDS Research and Treatment (DART) Center provides outstanding HIV/AIDS patient care, fosters innovative but responsible clinical research, and trains medical practitioners in HIV/AIDS clinical care.
Based in the Duke Infectious Diseases Clinic, the DART Center is staffed by physicians, clinicians, social workers, pharmacists, and other patient care, research, and administrative personnel.
The DART Center also offers special services, such as free legal advice through the AIDS Legal Assistance Project and home pastoral services through Partners in Caring. Close interactions with the community are maintained through the Community Advisory Board.
More than 6,000 people with HIV/AIDS have been receiving treatment at the Duke University AIDS Research and Treatment (DART) Center since it was first established in 1985.
The clinic's mission is three-fold:
As a member of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group and the Centers for AIDS Research, DART pursues an aggressive research agenda in evaluating new drugs and vaccines. It has successfully completed many clinical trials of new drugs to treat HIV disease.
Although the progress demonstrated in clinical research is extremely promising, those patients unable to benefit from current treatment strategies can trust in support and care from the clinical staff. DART social workers strive to coordinate a variety of community resources including free legal advice and home pastoral services for patients needing supportive services as an essential part of their care.
Call 919-668-7630 during clinic hours (Monday - Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) to speak with a patient processor. In the case of an emergency, please visit the Emergency Room.
New patients: If you have insurance, please have that information available when you call for an appointment. Plan to arrive 30 minutes prior to your scheduled appointment time.
Returning patients: Please have your medical record number or Social Security number available when you call for an appointment. | <urn:uuid:8352714a-f48c-465f-91ff-dfeb617be7f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dukehealth.org/services/dart/about/index | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948716 | 399 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Living with the Condition
A number of the symptoms of Friedreichs Ataxia can be treated. It is usual for a Neurologist to help in making the initial diagnosis and, during periods of review, to arrange suitable treatments and therapies. These would include cardiac assessments, orthopedic treatments, physiotherapy, occupational and speech therapy, counseling and the advice of social workers. Ataxia Ireland may be contacted if you wish to avail of these services.
Ataxia Ireland can provide help and support to the ataxia families in Ireland and to the medical people who serve these families through the following:
- Providing information on all aspects of the condition
- A network – Ataxia Ireland provides a forum in which suffers and families can meet.
- Accommodation and Amenities – Ataxia Ireland helps some of its victims whose circumstances make it difficult for them to adapt to the restricted world of the disabled. Ataxia Ireland endeavours to provide them with the necessary facilities to overcome some of their physical problems, and make their lives more meaningful.
- Financial Advice/Support – Advice is given in relation to financial and other benefits to which families are entitled.
- Medical expertise - Apart from the help and information available from Ataxia Ireland, the family doctor may wish to call upon the services of a number of other experts to help manage the condition.
- Respite – Ataxia Ireland hosts an annual respite break for its Ataxia Members in Ireland and it also arranges individual Respite Breaks for its members and their carers.
- Social Activities – Ataxia Ireland arranges social outings and opportunities for social interactions for its members. | <urn:uuid:f23aa289-1f75-400f-937d-ddfcba687890> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ataxia.ie/livingwithataxia.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943429 | 344 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Graduations and Awards Ceremonies
If you're asked to participate in graduation programs or awards ceremonies, drive to the venue at least one hour early. Otherwise, you'll probably end up battling hundreds of cars for precious parking spaces, increasing the chance of being late for your assigned duty, whether it's ushering, speaking onstage, distributing awards, etc.
Be cheery and helpful at these events. The crowds of family members and friends will be confused about where to go, so carry maps, programs, etc., in order to answer questions intelligently. Remember that many attendees will be elderly, so escort them inside and let them be seated early, if your principal consents. Familiarize yourself with the facility so that when people ask about restrooms, seating, etc., you'll know the answer.
What should I do if I'm late for the ceremony and can't find parking?
Don't arrive late! Otherwise, remind yourself, “I only need one parking space, not two,” and patiently cruise around the entire parking lot, or the entire block, until you find a space. You can also call your principal on your cell phone to request assistance.
If your principal has asked you to announce students' names at the podium, study your name list carefully. If a name gives you trouble, find your colleagues and ask them for the correct pronunciation. Write it phonetically beside the name and memorize it. For instance, if you see, “Tadeusz Kosciuszko,” ask the student's teacher, who'll tell you, “Tah-DOOSH KOSH-choo-shko.” Jot down the pronunciation and practice it.
Once you're at the podium, project your voice: “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jane Doe, and I'm honored to announce the next fifteen students who will graduate from Washington Elementary!” Don't forget that this is a once-in-a lifetime event for the proud families involved. Make it as unforgettable as possible. | <urn:uuid:2c335c7c-ab57-462f-914e-6840a792403f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.netplaces.com/classroom-management/extra-curricular-duties/graduations-and-awards-ceremonies.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946996 | 421 | 1.625 | 2 |
"Sunland recently did a sealcoat of the streets in our community. We were very pleased with the outcome. The responses from the Sunland staff and the project Foreman were timely and helpful."
If left untreated, asphalt pavements will eventually be destroyed by elements of weather. Sun and oxidation dry the oils out of the asphalt mix and leave the pavement brittle. Loose aggregate begins to ravel and the surface becomes rough and faded. Rain and water from irrigation further erode the pavement's cohesive strength.
Sealcoating will protect an asphalt pavement by sealing in the vital oils of the asphalt mix and sealing out sun, oxidation and water. Sealcoating also improves the appearance of asphalt pavements by providing a uniform black color. Sealcoat materials are available in different grades designed for use depending on pavement condition, type of traffic and budget requirements. Typically sealcoating should be re-applied on a regular basis, and can extend a pavement's life for many years.
Sunland has an extensive line of sealcoating products to meet all of your pavement needs, including emulsions modified with polymers and fortified with recycled rubber additives. We can help you select the best product for your particular application. | <urn:uuid:b3bc821e-9373-432b-b6cd-54555304ded3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunlandasphalt.com/sealcoating.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950516 | 247 | 1.8125 | 2 |
It's been a banner year for stocks, with the S&P 500 index up a healthy 13 percent or so in 2010. Stocks recently hit a two-year high, putting them back near the levels of August 2008, right before the financial panic caused a nauseating plunge in the value of stock portfolios. Some analysts think the bull market will keep rolling right through 2011.
But like the overall economic recovery, the stock-market rally is an invitation-only party, and dozens of public companies continue to suffer the ravages of the recession that lasted from 2007 to 2009 and left 15 million Americans out of work. Analysis by Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's, shows that about 200 public U.S. companies with a market value above $1 billion endured falling stock prices in 2010, many of them double-digit declines. The weakest performers provide a glimpse into the most troubled parts of the economy, where many firms are still grappling with the aftermath of the recession and wrenching long-term changes. Here are the 10 worst stock performers* of 2010:
Weyerhaeuser (stock price down 57 percent since the beginning of 2010). The fortunes of this lumber, pulp, and paper company are closely linked to the housing market, which has been felled by an epic bust. With revenue down more than 50 percent since 2006, Weyerhaeuser has been slashing costs and offloading divisions, and it also plans to change its corporate structure to lower taxes. As part of that restructuring, the company paid a "special dividend" in 2010, to compensate shareholders for the repositioning of the stock.
Dean Foods (down 54 percent). Frugal consumers and rising commodity prices have pinched profits at Dean, which sells a variety of milk and other dairy products. Premium brands have been losing ground to cheaper store brands, while the cost of ingredients like butterfat has spiked. Dean, which owns brands like Land O' Lakes, Silk, and Garelick Farms, has laid off 1,000 workers and plans to shave $100 million over the next few years.
[See who will prosper in 2011.]
H&R Block (down 43 percent). Higher unemployment means fewer tax returns and more workers trying to save money by doing it themselves. That has crimped revenue at the nation's leading tax preparer, although a restructuring has helped sustain profits. The company's prospects are basically tied to an improving economy—quite uncertain at the moment—plus investors want to see stronger growth in sales of the company's do-it-yourself software.
Comstock Resources (down 40 percent). Energy prices are notoriously volatile, and plunging prices for natural gas have hurt this energy company, which operates mostly in Texas and Louisiana. Strong energy companies protect against price swings by diversifying into various types of energy, but 94 percent of Comstock's proven reserves are in natural gas, which has fallen in price by about 55 percent since 2005.
Apollo Group (down 36 percent.) This for-profit education company operates the University of Phoenix, which offers relatively cheap online degrees and enjoyed a surge of business during the recession. But Apollo's financial practices have recently caught the attention of federal regulators—about the last thing investors want to hear. The government is investigating the possibility of insider trading and other violations, and some investors have filed a class-action lawsuit alleging false statements by company execs. Apollo says it did nothing wrong and is fighting the suit, but bad publicity has led to falling enrollments, and the company recently laid off 700 workers.
[See who will struggle in 2011.]
Diamond Offshore Drilling (down 34 percent). This oil-drilling company wasn't involved in the disastrous BP oil spill, but it was sure affected by it. Diamond contracts its services to big energy companies, and the Gulf of Mexico is one of its prime areas of operation. So this year's drilling moratorium, plus the possibility of new drilling restrictions in the Gulf, have darkened the earnings picture. Plus, rates for the type of services Diamond provides were soft before the BP spill, contributing to weak earnings and two dividend cuts this year.
ITT Educational Services (down 33 percent). Business is good at this for-profit education provider, which operates about 125 technical institutions offering associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees. But for-profit schools are suddenly drawing more government scrutiny, since students often rack up loads of debt—thanks largely to government-subsidized financial aid—and struggle to repay it. New regulations are possible, and some investors are even pursuing a class-action lawsuit against ITT Educational Services.
BancorpSouth (down 31 percent). Profits at this Mississippi-based regional bank have plummeted thanks to real-estate loans that account for about 75 percent of its loan portfolio. The bank has tried to outrun the housing bust by diversifying into insurance and other types of financial services, yet its earnings have consistently fallen short of expectations.
SuperValu (down 27 percent). Sales are down at this big grocery chain, which operates under names such as Shaw's, Acme, Albertson's, Shop 'N Save, and Shopper's, thanks to cost-conscious consumers and brutal competition from big discounters like Wal-Mart. The company has been closing some stores and restructuring, but pressure in this low-margin business remains intense. Investors are also skittish about a labor force that's heavily unionized and puts SuperValu at a cost disadvantage.
PulteGroup (down 24 percent). Revenue for the year may finally improve from the dismal levels of 2009, but this home builder has continued to struggle as the housing bust drags on, with high unemployment and scarce lending severely depressing home sales. Pulte has made deep cuts to survive, and if it can stanch the losses in 2010, it will be the first annual profit since 2006. But with home values likely to keep falling in 2011, nobody's sure when the housing bust will truly end—or the future will brighten for home builders.
* Includes publicly traded U.S. companies with a market capitalization of $1 billion or more as of mid-December. Excludes companies whose stock price was affected by mergers, spinoffs, splits, or other such events. Based on stock prices through Dec. 22, 2010.
Updated on 12/23/10: This story was updated to include information about the special dividend paid to Weyerhaeuser shareholders. | <urn:uuid:b8b254b6-8d75-41a3-a241-e6888a5b4e71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2010/12/22/the-worst-performing-stocks-of-2010 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956889 | 1,323 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Bryant University (RI) and Pfeiffer University (NC) have taken on the mission of integrating tablets into their academic environments. Tablet devices on both iOS (Pfeiffer) and Android (Bryant) platform were introduced in the respective pilot projects testing new potentials for teaching and learning. The presenters will share the case of strategic approach to engage faculty and students for innovative teaching and learning experience. The session will include review and comparison of the competing hardware platforms and user interfaces and applications focused on use for teaching and learning on college campuses.
Enoch Park works as the Director of Distance Learning at Pfeiffer University, NC. Enoch oversees online courses offered at three campuses at Pfeiffer, leads quality assurance programs for online courses (QEP and Quality Matters), and serves campus strategic planning committee. His interest areas include: disruptive innovations in teaching and learning, social/ collaborative learning, digital scholarship, engaged learning. Enoch has taught teacher education and Liberal Arts courses and is pursuing his doctorate at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
David Gannon is the Associate Director of Academic Computing and Media Services at Bryant University in Smithfield, RI. In his current position, he oversees the student laptop program at Bryant and works with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Director of Faculty Development to maximize the utilization and effectiveness of technology in the classroom. Dave has been a member of the faculty at Bryant (both full and part time) for over eighteen years and has been involved in education for over twenty two. | <urn:uuid:436a8599-42ff-4e7b-919e-749af4501402> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.passhe.edu/inside/asa/DEConf/Lists/Virtual%20Conference%202012/Details.aspx?ID=44&ContentTypeId=0x01003DB6B0413188A84CA94E14363B72C474 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964223 | 313 | 1.828125 | 2 |
On this date 51 years ago perhaps the biggest prospect bust in Cardinals history, Jim Lindeman, was born in Evanston, Ill.
(My apologies to Anthony Reyes. He was a terrible player. But he didn't have nearly the hype surrounding him -- nor the pressure heaped upon him -- as Lindeman.)
Lindeman, who was hailed as the next great St. Louis slugger, made his debut with the Redbirds in 1986 and was expected to provide similar production to Andy Van Slyke who would be traded before the 1987 for Tony Pena.
Instead, Lindeman batted .203 with 11 home runs in 183 games over four years with St. Louis. In December of 1989, after a season in which he hit .111 for the Cardinals in 73 games in which he was used primarily as a defensive replacement, Not So Lucky Lindy was traded to the Tigers for a handful of low level prospects who never made it to the big leagues.
In Detroit Lindeman hit .219 in 12 games and he was shipped to the Phillies for the 1991 season. He also bounced to the Astros and Mets before finishing his career with a .244 average.
The highlight of Lindeman's career was the 1987 World Series in which he hit .333 with two RBIs in 15 at bats.
After the majors, Lindeman became a high school baseball coach. | <urn:uuid:84168fb2-7c18-4313-bfbf-ef31b1663889> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bnd.com/2013/01/10/2453357/on-this-date-in-cardinals-history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988197 | 277 | 1.640625 | 2 |
New answers tagged 2-kings
This story is very profound. It is interesting that manslaughter is typified through the dislocated ax head. That is, we read in the Law of Moses as follows. Deuteronomy 19:4-6 (NASB) 4 Now this is the case of the manslayer who may flee there and live: when he kills his friend unintentionally, not hating him previously— 5 as when a man goes into the ...
Top 50 recent answers are included | <urn:uuid:9a3110b1-e0c8-484d-97a2-87c83d76b695> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/tags/2-kings/new | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977878 | 99 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Written by Marshall Frank
The number of mosques in the United States has increased 74 percent in ten years according to a study released by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research. In 2000, theU.S.reported 1209 places of worship for Muslims. In 2010, that number has risen to 2106. In 1990, the number stood at approximately 700. This, in a period of time when the radical Jihad side of Islam has established unwavering goals, in writing, that the United States is in their crosshairs for being conquered …from within.
"The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." - Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan
This 74 percent growth has occurred in the years following the deadliest warring attack on American soil in history, perpetrated by radical Islamists. Might point out, that those “radical” Islamists spent many months prior to the 9/11 attack posing as “moderates” in order to assimilate and evade suspicion. Look up: Taqiyya.
True, many of these mosques are only places of worship for peaceful Muslims. But it has been proven often enough, that some mosques are used as hotbeds for anti-American rhetoric, terrorist havens, diversionary funding to terror organizations and espousing hatred toward non-Muslims. Many serve as the war rooms for strategy planning in the covert political and terror war against the United States.
Mosques seem benign enough to most people who liken them to churches and synagogues. That’s what journalist Laura Mansfield thought in 2005, when she visited a mosque in the southern part of the nation in response to an open invitation by the Imam to local women to come and see how beautiful Islam truly is as a religion.
Ms. Mansfield arrived about one hour early. It should have been an innocuous experience. She was told by a Muslim man to come back later, but when she asked to stay, she was granted the opportunity to wait in the hall until the other women arrived. During this time, she was able to overhear the Imam and other men speaking in Arabic, which she understood and spoke fluently. What she overheard was anti-American hate talk, discussing the pro-jihad movement and what to explain to the American women when they visited. When the ladies arrived, the rhetoric changed 180 degrees.
Now, covert visits to mosques are off-limits for everyone, including law enforcement agencies, because our government tells us we should not single out Muslims. Federal law enforcement agencies have been ordered to omit references to Islam in their terror training.
I seriously doubt that the Christian or Jewish places of worship have exploded with those kinds of increases in the last twenty years. If the pattern holds true, there will be more than 4000 mosques in the U.S.by the year 2020, and 8000 by 2030.
The trend will follow what has happened in Europe. In a 2008 speech by Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders said:
“There are now thousands of mosques throughoutEurope. With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.”
Islam is rapidly expanding throughout Europe. Population growth is expected to double in twenty years as Muslims procreate at a rate three to four times greater than indigenous Europeans. It’s simple math. As Mr. Wilders and other European dignitaries have said, the Muslims do not assimilate. They do not identify as Europeans, rather, as Muslims only, and their intent is to eventually dominate all of society.
France has over 750 no-go zones which are Muslim enclaves that French authorities dare not enter, thus leaving them all to self-government under Sharia, not French law. More from Mr. Wilders’ speech:
“Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam, Marseille and MalmoinSweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities. In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims. In once-tolerantAmsterdam, gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear “whore, whore.” In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin. The history of the Holocaust can in many cases no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity. In England Sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels, because he was drinking during the Ramadan. Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.”
The plan that is slowly coming to fruition was concocted and implemented by the notorious Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerful and dangerous Islamist organization in the world. They are now ready to assume power in all the mid-east nations that have undergone “Arab Spring.” They are rooted in over eighty counties in the world, have unlimited financial resources and have spawned scores of organizations, violent and non-violent — including Hamas and al Qaeda — to promote the global jihad. They also spawned more than thirty organizations in the United States with the expressed purpose of infiltrating our infrastructure. Included among those organizations are CAIR, the MSA, ISNA and the MAS.
The Muslim Brotherhood manifesto was discovered in 2004 during the Holy Land Foundation investigation by law enforcement authorities in a sub-basement of a home in Virginia, owned by a high level member of the Muslim Brotherhood. That manifesto is unambiguous in declaring that the intentions of the Brotherhood is to destroy the United States “from within,” specifically stating it will be accomplished by “their own hand.” The entire text of the document is linked below…in Arabic and English.
They’ve also authored other covert documents, since discovered, which outlines the strategies and tactics they intend on using to accomplish their mission within a 100-year span. That includes the use of mass deception, to portray themselves as “moderate,” to infiltrate the government, schools, media, prisons and to use our constitutional protections of religion and free speech as tools for their operational maneuvers.
Interesting to note, that there are three top White House advisors now employed in the White House, several in the Department of Homeland Security and more in the Justice Department. That, plus a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, who is closely aligned to the Muslim Sisterhood via her mother and the Brotherhood via her own brother.
Can’t get much higher than all that.
And, this is what we do know. One can only imagine what we don’t know.
We can see it all happening, yet we’re powerless to do anything other than exercise the right of free speech and use the power to vote. We certainly cannot rely on our government officials who only care about the short range; Get elected, get reelected. | <urn:uuid:50dfe146-69d9-41ce-8ec3-2b17852ef14b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rightsidenews.com/2012031725736/us/islam-in-america/rapid-rise-of-us-mosques-sign-of-whats-to-come.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965032 | 1,521 | 1.757813 | 2 |
ZIMBABWE has appealed to the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and other donors to help raise the US$250 million needed for a constitutional referendum and general elections later this year.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who along with Finance counterpart Tendai Biti were charged by the coalition administration to find the money, confirmed the appeal Thursday.
“I can confirm that we wrote a joint letter with the Finance Minister Tendai Biti to that effect,” Chinamasa told NewZimbabwe.com.
“What I can also say is that we have not factored in the money needed by the police for security provision, and authorities are interrogating the figures to come out with the exact figure required for the two processes.”
Biti, who recently revealed that the government was left with just over US$200 in its accounts after paying civil servants last month, says Zimbabwe does not the capacity to fund the referendum and the elections.
The top MDC-T official recently said it was "too much" for any government to fund a census, a referendum and elections within a short period of time. Zimbabwe held its population census late last year at a reported cost of $35million.
President Robert Mugabe and rival Morgan Tsvangirai agree fresh elections are needed to end their power-sharing government which they say is no longer workable due to policy differences between their respective parties.
A new constitution, part of a raft of reforms expected to lead to new elections, was this week endorsed by Parliament and is expected to be put to a national referendum at the end of next month.
New elections are expected before year end although Mugabe wants the polls held in June. | <urn:uuid:5a6ea21a-79a3-4a0c-976a-df782d73825d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-10218-Zim+makes+US$250m+poll+cash+appeal/news.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975639 | 352 | 1.617188 | 2 |
As the world becomes connected, unprecedented amounts of information is being created, shared and optimized. Analog devices are turning digital, and getting smarter along the way. Your house’s old electric meter is soon to be replaced with a small computer that will tell you in real-time exactly how much energy your home is consuming, as well as coordinate with small computers in your dishwasher and refrigerator to run them in the most cost and energy efficient way possible. Thus, saving you money and the world energy. Parking meters are being outfitted with sensors that can alert you when a space is available, as well as alert a traffic cop when a meter is overdue. This saves drivers from circling endlessly to find an open spot and allows police to dedicate man power to more high-value activities than aimlessly wandering the street looking for expired meters.
The successful companies of tomorrow will take advantage of new information and technology to do what they do today better, smarter. Over a series of posts, I’d like to highlight some media companies that are doing just that
Shout Out for Being Smarter, part 1: Live Nation
Live Nation is the 800 pound gorilla concert producer, artist management and ticketing firm of the music industry. Collectively it owns or operates over 120 venues, controls nearly every revenue stream of artists like Jay Z and Madonna, and has a near monopoly over concert and event tickets through Ticketmaster. Most people hate Live Nation. They blame the company for the skyrocketing price of concert and sports tickets. In many ways they are right, but as in all things, it’s a little more complicated than that. Many factors go into determining the price you pay for a concert ticket and while Live Nation has their fingers in just about all of them, they are not soley to blame for high prices. One major factor is the generally unsophisticated and outdated methods used to determine the face price of a ticket. The artist (or league or circus or whatever) gets together with the event promoter and determine a price. They base that price off of a few different factors such as how previous events for that artist were priced, how many sold, what other similar acts are currently charging, or how good the seats are. They set the price weeks or even months in advance, then ticketmaster slaps on a service charge and that’s what you pay. The problem is those few factors are generally a terrible predictor of real marketl demand and willingness-to-pay. As a result, they typically either price too low and scalpers swoop in, secure the best seats, and charge what the market is really willing to pay, or they price too high and no one (even scalpers) want the seats. There is no accounting for the way the value of a ticket changes as an event nears: is the show sold out or are there thousands of available seats? As of now it doesn’t really matter, the price is the price, and if the event is sold out then only the scalpers stand to gain (and the artist and fans stand to lose). The live events industry has been no where near as sophisticated in acurately pricing demand as, say, the airline industry. As a result there are huge inefficiencies.
Live Nation is all too aware of these inefficiencies. Luckily for them, its massive market share gives it access to tremendous amounts of data. Data on artists, on fans, on cities, on competitive events. They are combining that data with external sources like social media data and search engine queries to develop advanced algorythms that will more accurately model and predict exactly what the market is willing to pay for an event in real time. With that analysis they can constantly alter the price of a ticket and more accurately pair pricing with demand. The results is more in-demand seats will cost more for those that are willing to pay more, and less in-demand seats will cost less for those that are willing to pay less. This time and demand based price is known as dynamic pricing. The electric company and airlines have been using it for years.
Dynamic Pricing requires not only copious amounts of data, but incredibly smart PhD’s to write the algorithms that analyze the various data sources to accurately predict what someone is willing to pay. For this purpse, Live Nation teamed up with MarketShare Partners, a VC-backed analytics company, to spit out the analysis that will drive dynamic ticket pricing. MarketShare has been doing some extremely interesting things in marketing and advertising optimization so it’s great to see them exploring a new territory.
So whether you love or hate Live Nation, I respect that they see an opportunity to do something better, and are utilizing the tools and technology to do it smarter. | <urn:uuid:761d5b7a-b5c4-427d-956a-df46292b6b7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalpennies.com/2011/07/18/shout-out-for-being-smarter-part-1-live-nation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962145 | 969 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Rules Low |
The Joni is named in tribute to one of Canada's most inspiring songstresses. After decades of singing beautiful songs written about nature, political change, and the many wily ways of love, Joni's songs will reverberate and inspire many generations to come. John designed the Joni as a natural heeled lace-up sandal for the new generation of eco-minded songcrafters carrying the torch of truth. Thanks Joni for lighting the path -- we could drink a case of you. Love!
The Joni features vegetable-tanned rugged Atlas leathers in bright saturated summer colours, and are built on a 0.9" platform leather-wrapped recycled cork with a 2.75" leather wrapped heel. Modernizing this 1920's stylized lace-up slingback are flathead bolts and a rubber Truth soleplate, perfect for those fashion-forward, truth-seeking individuals. Natural Beauty Rules.
Denny & Monika from our San Francisco (Haight) store says:
The Rules Low Joni fits small. Women with wider feet can go down 1/2 to 1 size. They're very comfortable!
14 reviews so far... write yours!
Posted by Kallan from Victoria, Canada:
So happy that I took the plunge and bought these beauties. Soft leather and very comfy and walkable for my narrow size 5 small feet. I also received two extra colourful pairs of shoe laces with my sensable black Joni's and recieved my package in a remarkable one day. Thank-you for making such fantastic shoes!
Posted by Kara from Halifax, NS:
Comfortable and Cool
I nearly didn't try these shoes on as they don't have a lot of curb appeal on the shelf. The sales woman encouraged me to give them a chance and I'm so glad I did. They are very comfortable and they look great on. I went up a half size. I bought them from a retailer that doesn't carry a lot of stock so they only had black or beige. I bought the black which will be my go to shoe as soon as it's warm enough to shoe my toes, and now I'm tempted to order red or purple for variety.....
Posted by Carmen from USA:
Love Love these shoes. Great looking and comfortable. I usually wear a size 9 (40) in Fluevog and these fit true to size. Love the laces and will also swap out some other patterned laces that I have. Magic. Buying more in this style.
Posted by Justine Copley-Smith from Melbourne:
So just brought the black ones. Loving them sick!
Walked all day in them today no probs and got a few shoe comments. Most impressively my 21 year old fashionista daughter stated they are really great shoes! Unheard of complements. Wow John you've done it again.went up 1/2 size.
Posted by Amanda from Seattle:
The best sandals!
Don't be fooled - these are one of those styles that look a litlle |-) on the shelf. I hadn't even given them a 2nd glance until I saw them on Leah at the Seattle store during the sale. I was smitten - they look so different ON! So comfy, no break in period either. I had to size up 1/2 size to 10s. Do yourself a favor, pick up the teal laces to interchange - the teal really make the blue in the indigo color pop. STUNNING!!
P.S. It is true, the dye will rub off on your feet just a little during the first couple wearings, warning! :)
Posted by Andrea from Vancouver:
I Heart Joni!
Truly one of the most comfortable summer shoes John has EVER made. Plus they are deliciously colourful! I went up half a size and am happy with that decision.
Posted by wilmasaab from Baltimore:
Another quality purchase!
how many pairs do I have now - 12? 14? I can truly say that I love them all and yet, there are 3 or 4 pair that just put even more spring in my step than the rest every time I wear them. After two wearings I can tell that these will be another of those "extra-specials". Uber comfortable, spiffy, stylish, head-turning! One of my little toes blistered up after the first 8 hour wear but that's more a factor of my strangely shaped toe than the shoe (happens with every pair I own the first 1 or 2 wears). I had been drooling over these for a few weeks and finally snagged them at the Haight Street store while visiting San Fran and was glad to have the opportunity to try them on. I generally wear a 10.5 or 11 but ended up in a 10 and the fit is great.
Posted by Marisol
from San Francisco
Love these careful don't slip and fall!
I purchased the purple Joni's yesterday from the Union Square store. I absolutely adore them. They are adorable and comforatable right out of the box. They run a whole size smaller. I usually, take the size 10. I had to size up to 10 1/2 for these. Wow factor way up on these!
Having said all this. Caution!!! Buyer beware that the heel cap on these shoes can cause you to fall on slick polished floors. It happened when I tried them on at the store. I did not give it much thought. I stopped by Specialties this morning to pick up a pastry. I was being extra careful remembering this. I still slipped and fell!!! I hurt my Knee, hand, and maybe be my back. I'm not sure yet. Knee is bruised... OUCH! (:`(
Posted by Marika from Toronto:
Just bought a pair today, and spent the afternoon traipsing all over Toronto. These shoes are comfy right out of the box, and a real attention grabber. Thanks Fluevog!
Posted by Marcie from Ottawa, Ontario:
Bought on a whim. So very satisfied
I love these shoes already right out the box. These shoes are so perfect for this season of bold bold colour.
True to size: I have 1 foot a size 8, other 8.5 and the fit is perfect at an 8.5. Love the green laces and I will probably purchase different laces to mix it up. | <urn:uuid:18332a2b-47cf-421b-b6a8-afbf610e4de9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fluevog.com/code/?w=fresh&p=11&pp=1&colourID=3758&view=detail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959874 | 1,349 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The boldness of the Virago Theatre Company cannot be denied. Imagine staging one of the world’s best loved and most performed operas in a tiny venue more suited to dance recitals and art exhibits – and doing it all with panache and utmost brilliance. I can well imagine the creative team getting together and, bravely invoking their mission to produce provocative and passionate theatre, saying a collective “bring it on,” when deciding to stage Puccini’s tragic masterpiece Madama Butterfly. Normally performed in houses that seat over 1000 patrons, Virago brings 'Butterfly' to the Rhythmix Cultural Works Theatre (the Alameda venue seats 150), losing nothing of the rich lushness of Puccini’s giant work and actually adding to the beauty of the opera in the intimacy of the setting. Playing now through April 15,* Madama Butterfly is a wonderful and passionate offering.
Set Designer Hilma Kargoll makes great use of the small space, transporting the audience to a hillside home overlooking the harbor of Nagasaki, Japan in 1904 where American lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton has settled for the time being. The tri-level set is flanked by rice paper screens draped with two simple swaths of silk material. Elements of a Buddhist faith tradition are seen, along with a delicately potted bamboo plant and a Japanese calligraphy art piece. Pinkerton has purchased a young Japanese bride along with rental of his upscale house. It should not be lost on the audience that the 999-year-lease can be cancelled as he pleases and so too, his marriage of convenience.
Adding to the intimate ambience of the production was the chamber orchestra seated stage right and lead by conductor Jerry Kuderna who masterfully directed the outstanding musicians. Their sweeping and expressive articulation of Puccini’s moving score was certainly a highlight of the evening.
In the demanding role of the young bride, Cio-Cio San (Butterfly in English), was local favorite Eileen Meredith whose beautifully mature soprano never obscured the youthful innocence of the geisha girl betrayed by her deplorable American husband, Pinkerton, with whom she has fallen in love and has staked her whole existence on.
Tenor Raymond Chavez excels as the lieutenant who boasts to Goro the marriage broker (a wonderfully affable Alex Taite) that life isn’t worth living if he can’t win the hand of every beautiful woman the world over. In a revealing scene Butterfly sings of her love for him, over her family and her own religion, while her new husband slowly but resolutely leads her to the bedroom, only half listening to her heartfelt outpouring. Director Lundy-Paine does an excellent job of contrasting Pinkerton’s carnal desire with Butterfly’s longing to be loved.
Seeking to warn Pinkerton that his treatment of Butterfly must be more circumspect, is U.S. Consul Sharpless played to perfection by Martin Bell. Butterfly’s maid Suzuki (mezzo Sally Mouzon) isn’t fooled by the lusty American either and when he leaves she knows he isn’t coming back.
In Acts Two and Three, three years have gone by and, unbeknownst to Pinkerton, he has fathered a child with his Japanese bride. Born-to-the-stage Sophia Dant (who is five) plays the couple’s child and is simply charming in the part. When Pinkerton does return, with American wife Kate (Cass Panuska) in tow, it is only to settle his accounts and not to settle down with Butterfly. When he finally understands that Butterfly is in love with him, he is too much the coward to confront her himself and leaves the task to Sharpless, Kate and Suzuki.
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly tells the intimate tale of a woman’s faithful devotion to an indifferent man, as well as the overarching story of the way western imperialism dehumanized those considered “other.” Underneath the masterful score and soaring lyrics of Madama Butterfly lies a lesson to be learned.
By Giacomo Puccini
Directed by Robert Lundy-Paine
Virago Theatre Company
Sunday, April 15 at 2:00 pm with an afternoon of Sushi and Saki
*With additional performances at:
The Hillside Club (seats approx. 200), Berkeley 2286 Cedar Street Berkeley, CA
Friday, April 20th at 7:30 pm early time Sushi and Saki Special Presentation
Sunday, April 22nd at 2:00 pm afternoon Wine and Cheese Closing
Photo courtesy of Virago Theatre Company | <urn:uuid:54f563eb-7811-4c0c-a6d3-6af1eeea069f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sanfrancisco.broadwayworld.com/article/Virago-Theatrers-MADAMA-BUTTERFLY-a-Wonderful-and-Passionate-Offering-20120408 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947068 | 972 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Radio Propaganda and the Broadcasting of Hatred: Historical Development and Definitions is a new book by Keith Somerville, a regular writer for African Arguments.
It was late evening on Wednesday 6 April 1994 in studio S36 in Bush House, the home of the BBC World Service. My Newshour team were coming to the end of a long shift and there was about 15 minutes of programme time to go. The running order was full, timings were spot on and the programme was going well. And then came the moment when a newsflash set both my pulse racing and alarm bells in my ears.
A report came in on the BBC newsgathering system that the plane carrying Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi had crashed near Kigali - all on board were presumed dead.
It's not every day you get two presidents killed in the same crash, so that alone meant this would develop into a big story for the World Service audience. To compound this, Rwanda and Burundi were two of the most volatile states in Africa. Their presidents were returning from Arusha in Tanzania from a summit at which pressure was put on Habyarimana to proceed with implementing the Arusha peace Accords designed to end four years of war in Rwanda. His death would, at the every least, put the accords in doubt, and could potentially lead to full scale civil war or worse.
As I sought more information from BBC newsgathering, the Africa service at Bush, and checked incoming news wires, I was assessing how to cover the story before the programme came off air. I checked with my studio producer, Fred Dove, if we had room for Rwanda and he said he could make room. So I had to decide.
While not an expert on Rwanda particularly, I had reported stories from inside the country, followed the four year civil war and had a good background knowledge of the decades of conflict, massacres and repression of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda by the Hutu majority. I knew very well how unstable the ceasefire was between the government and the opposition Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and how an event like this, and any suggestion that the Tutsi-led RPF was responsible for Habyarimana's death, could lead not just to renewed fighting, but to targeted massacres of Tutsis. I did not want to risk having any role in starting rumours or broadcasting suggestions that could have catastrophic results. I opted for safety and caution.
As it did for most of Africa and much of the world, my focus now switched to South Africa. Within days I was in Johannesburg leading the World Service news programme team reporting the elections that were to bring the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela to power. However, even in the hectic run up to the start of voting on 27 April, the horrifying news from Rwanda was being discussed in South Africa. This now included the killing of the Prime Minister and several ministers in the coalition government and growing evidence of large-scale massacres of Tutsis.
Days before the official announcement of the South African election result on 6 May, it was clear the ANC had won and international leaders and diplomats were beginning to sound out the new government's leaders about a South African role in ending the Rwandan violence. The man soon to become South Africa's deputy defence minister and a key figure in the new military and intelligence set up, Ronnie Kasrils, told me off the record he was fending off suggestions of a South African-led African force to keep the peace in Rwanda.
Over the next couple of months the extent, intent and sheer scale of the attempted genocide became clear. What also became clear was the role of the media in Rwanda in inciting hatred of and violence against Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The phrase 'hate radio' became synonymous with Rwanda and Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the Hutu station which encouraged and aided the killings.
That radio should play such a role was an anathema to someone like me who had worked for years in the World Service. I was wedded to the motto on the BBC coat of arms that 'nation shall speak peace unto nation' - even though I knew well that, in its own way, the BBC World Service output was, like most other news, a form of propaganda, though a benign and well-intentioned form.
Before working as a radio producer, reporter and editor, I'd spent eight years at the BBC Monitoring Service directly monitoring Soviet, Czech, Israeli, Afghan, apartheid South African and, during the Falklands War, Argentinian, news and propaganda broadcasts. I had few illusions about the purity of the broadcast media.
The first half of the 1990s brought home with violent force the ways that broadcasting, primarily radio, could be used to encourage, justify, incite and support violence, particularly in regional or civil conflicts. Even before the ghastly example of RTLM, Serb and Croat radio and TV, especially local stations like the Serb one in Knin, had shown how radio and other media could be used for ends other than informing people of news and information. A decade later, my interest was strengthened by aspects of the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007-08 and the suggestions that radio had played a key role in inciting violence and hatred.
Kenya had always interested me - in 1992 I was arrested and deported by the Moi government to prevent me making a documentary on demands for an end to one-party rule. Research into the role of radio in the events in Kenya inevitably threw up comparisons, usually hugely exaggerated, with Rwanda. I thought it better related to what I knew of the break-up of Yugoslavia - which I had been involved in covering exhaustively as a programme editor at the World Service in the early nineties. As research tends to, it then led me back - back to Cold War propaganda, the role of radio in the Middle East and to the Second World War and Nazi Germany and then further back to the early uses of radio for the purpose of propagandizing.
I found more and more material, but struggled to put it into context, to find definitions, to delineate the different forms and motivations of propaganda, and to decide where, how and why propaganda developed into the open engendering of hatred and incitement to violence.
The main conclusions I have come to relate to how radio can directly incite but also set an agenda for hate and acceptance of or involvement in violence against "the other". In Rwanda, an agenda was set for the Hutu audience of RTLM emphasising that all Tutsis were a threat to all Hutus on a long-term basis; that the only way to protect the Hutu was to destroy the Tutsi; that as the threat was deemed by Hutu leaders to be immediate and local, you as a Hutu should join the collective effort in exterminating the Tutsi. It was a cascading series of actions deriving from the representation of the Tutsi as the enemy.
Ultimately, the incitement of hate works on all the levels described above and can be put as follows: to set an agenda of suspicion and ultimately hatred of a target group or groups; attribute malign motivations to those groups; utilize fear through the propagation of a discourse of atrocity relating to the malign motivations of the target group; relate the long-term threat and/or grievances against a group to current developments; prepare people to "defend" themselves and their community against this threat; place the blame for violence on the target group, thus justifying violence as a response to attack or threat and finally to incite action and justify action.
The ability to translate these points into actual policy is dependent on the propagandist's ability to marshal and use force, coercion and violence to accompany the propaganda. Politicians, movements or governments may propagate ideas and even develop discourses of hatred, but they become a deadly weapon when allied with the capacity to carry out violence.
Radio Propaganda and the Broadcasting of Hatred: Historical Development and Definitions by Keith Somerville is published on 12 October 2012 by Palgrave. A book launch will be held at the Brunei Suite, SOAS, London at 6.30pm on 23rd October.
Keith Somerville teaches at the University of Kent and runs the Africa – News and Analysis website. | <urn:uuid:d714eaaa-1f49-4450-b6a6-a96a19031707> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allafrica.com/stories/201210090808.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970503 | 1,721 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Snow fall to give way for big freeze
THE snow storms of the past two days are expected to give way to the big freeze in the run up to the weekend.
And motorists in Ryedale are being urged to take every precaution as road surface temperatures plummet to minus eight degrees tonight and will stay at around minus four and five on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Gritters with the county council’s highways department are working around the clock to ensure the district’s roads are fit for drivers with farming contractors also being deployed to add support.
The Met Office issued a Yellow Warning for severe weather yesterday.
A police spokesman said there had been no accidents reported to them by yesterday afternoon.
But they warned the cold snap is predicted to last well into next week and warned the public to be prepared and to respect the dangers that such conditions can bring.
Inspector Vicky Taylor, of North Yorkshire Police’s Roads Policing Group, said: “If your route is affected by snow or ice, the first thing you need to consider is whether or not your journey is actually necessary. If it isn’t essential and alternative work or personal arrangements can be made, then don’t go – simple as that.”
If there is no option but to travel, the police advise taking more time, extra care and to adjust to the conditions through lowering speed, increasing breaking distances and making sure lights are on even during the day.
“It is also vital to ensure your vehicle is well maintained and prepared for the conditions,” added Inspector Taylor. “This includes filling the tank with fuel and stocking up on de-icer, windscreen wash and scrapers to make sure you can see the road from all angles. It is advisable to carry a torch, warm clothes or a blanket, boots, first aid kit, shovel and a tow rope. Also make sure you take food and drink with you, especially on longer journeys.”
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Weather for Malton
Monday 27 May 2013
Temperature: 8 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 22 mph
Wind direction: South
Temperature: 8 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East | <urn:uuid:d87532eb-2898-42ca-8121-325e4752af4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.maltonmercury.co.uk/news/local/snow-fall-to-give-way-for-big-freeze-1-5318225 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947939 | 469 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Founded in 1847 when Dr. James Corbit, a young physician, willed a five percent Pennsylvania state stock certificate and two railroad certificates to the trustees of the district school in Cantwell’s Bridge, the library opened its doors the following year and became one of the first free lending libraries in the Middle Atlantic States. Since that time the library has continued to serve the people of Odessa and the surrounding area, albeit from different locations in town. After a fire in the original building, the library moved to the parlor of the David Wilson Mansion in 1924, and soon it outgrew the space. In 1937 Daniel Corbit had a second parlor wing added for the use of the library. The fireplace mantel and paneling were moved from that wing and now furnish the Delaware Room in the present library building, opened at 2nd & High Streets in 1968.
Today the Corbit-Calloway Memorial Library functions as an independent non-profit institution with a five-member governing Board of Trustees. It is a “contractual library” member of the New Castle County Library System, receiving a share of operating funds pursuant to an annually renewable contract. Additional operating revenue comes from the Division of Libraries in the form of an annual non-competitive grant requiring that the library meet specified performance standards. The library relies upon fundraising to supplement its book budget and to maintain and improve its building.
Board of Trustees Year 2012
President – Margaret Ryan
Vice-President – Roger Martin
Treasurer – Virginia Briccato
Secretary – Janet Butler
Trustee -at- Large – Ron Vascik
Throughout its history as an incorporated non-profit, the Library has been governed by a five-member Board of Trustees who serve four-year terms and may be re-elected by majority vote. Officers are elected at an annual meeting, serve one-year terms and may succeed themselves in office. In all matters of policy, employment, budget, planning and legal affairs, the Board acts as the Library’s ultimate governing body and may delegate such authority, as it deems necessary, to the Library Director who serves as chief administrative officer. | <urn:uuid:3a1b43a4-b0e0-4946-87a2-1a1845e70371> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://corbitlibrary.org/?page_id=72 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959005 | 442 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Ken was born in Bori, in the Niger Delta. He spent childhood in a polygamous household of Anglican faith and eventually proved himself an excellent student, netting him a scholarship to study English at Government College Umuahia. He would complete his studies at the University of Ibadan and briefly became a teaching assistant at the University of Lagos.
However, he soon took up a government post as the Civilian Administrator for the port city of Bonny in the Niger Delta and was a strong supporter of the federal cause against the Biafrans during the Nigerian Civil War. His best known novel, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English, tells the story of a naive village boy recruited to the army during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970 and intimates the corruption and patronage in Nigeria's military regime of the time. His war diaries, On a Darkling Plain, document Saro-Wiwa's experience during the war. Additionally, Saro-Wiwa was also a successful businessman and television producer. His satirical television series, Basi & Co., is purported to have been the most watched soap opera in Africa.
In the early 1970s Saro-Wiwa served as the Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State Cabinet, but was dismissed in 1973 because of his support for Ogoni autonomy. In the late 1970s, he established a number of successful business ventures in retail and real-estate, and during the 1980s concentrated primarily on his writing, journalism and television production. His intellectual production was interrupted in 1987 when he once again entered the political scene, this time as an appointee of newly-installed dictator Ibrahim Babangida, who enlisted Ken to aid the country's transition to democracy. However, Ken resigned shortly thereafter because he felt Babangida's supposed plans for a return to democracy were disingenuous. Ken's sentiments were proven correct in the coming years as Babangida failed to relinquish power. In 1993 he annulled Nigeria's general elections which would transfer power to a civilian government, sparking mass civil unrest and eventually forcing him to step-down, at least officially, in the same year.
In 1990 Saro-Wiwa began devoting most of his time to human rights and environmental causes, particularly in Ogoniland. He was one of the earliest members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which advocated for the rights of the Ogoni people. The Ogoni Bill of Rights, written by MOSOP, set out the movement's demands, including increased autonomy for the Ogoni people, a fair share of the proceeds of oil extraction, and remediation of environmental damage to Ogoni lands. In 1992, Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned for several months, without trial, by the Nigerian military government.
In January 1993 MOSOP organized peaceful marches of around 300,000 Ogoni people – more than half of the Ogoni population – through four Ogoni centers, drawing international attention to his people's plight. The same year, Shell ceased operations in the Ogoni region, while the Nigerian government occupied the region militarily.
Saro-Wiwa was arrested again and detained by Nigerian authorities in June 1993, but was released after a month. In May 1994, he was arrested and accused of incitement to murder following the deaths of four Ogoni elders. Saro-Wiwa denied the charges, but was imprisoned for over a year before being found guilty and sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal, during which nearly all of the defendants' lawyers resigned in protest to the trial's cynical rigging by the Abacha regime. The resignation of the legal teams left the defendants to their own means against the tribunal, which continued to bring witnesses to testify against Saro-Wiwa and his peers, only for many of these supposed witnesses to later admit they had been bribed by the Nigerian government to support the criminal allegations. The trial was widely criticised by human rights organisations and half a year later, Ken Saro-Wiwa received the Right Livelihood Award for his courage as well as the Goldman Environmental Prize
Very few observers were surprised when the tribunal declared a "guilty" verdict, but most were shocked that the penalty would be death by hanging for all nine defendants. However, many were skeptical that the executions would actually occur, as the Nigerian government would face international outrage and possible sanctions and other legal action should the penalties be carried out.
But on 10 November 1995, Saro-Wiwa and eight other MOSOP leaders (the "Ogoni Nine") were executed by hanging at the hands of military personnel. According to most accounts, Ken was the last person to be hanged and thus forced to watch the death of his colleagues. Information on the circumstances of Saro-Wiwa's own death are unclear, but it is generally agreed that multiple attempts were required before the hanging finally brought Saro-Wiwa to his end. Ken's death provoked international outrage and the immediate suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations, which was meeting in New Zealand at the time. The United States and other countries considered imposing economic sanctions on Nigeria because of such actions.
A memorial to Saro-Wiwa was unveiled in London on 10 November 2006. It consists of a sculpture in the form of a bus, and was created by Sokari Douglas Camp, also from Nigeria. It had toured the UK the following year. | <urn:uuid:bec3ff76-07b3-464f-8986-4c865dcc0445> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985599 | 1,117 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Daddy replies in the famous Duffers telegram:
BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WON'T DROWN
Susan says that he added the won't drown to comfort Mother.
John says that Daddy thinks we shall none of us get drowned, and that if any of us do get drowned it’s a good riddance. (SA1). He is particularly keen not to let Daddy down. Hugh Brogan comments: John’s father’s telegram is famous. John’s comment is enormously significant: ‘Daddy knows we aren’t duffers’. It was something that the boy Arthur could never have said to himself with any confidence; yet how much he wanted to! Now, in fiction, all could be arranged. (LAR p.313).
It has been suggested that Ernest Altounyan whose children were, in part, the models for the Walker family was noted for his pithily worded telegrams and this one is typical of his style (CFT). Roger Wardale comments in Nancy Blackett: Under Sail with Arthur Ransome that the telegram is in his style (NBUS p.66).
In the Japanese version, the telegram reads "Duffers (noroma:ノロマ) who would drown, if not duffers, will not drown."
Duffer: One who is clumsy or incompetent. | <urn:uuid:73da50b7-40fd-45ab-9471-79601cae49a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arthur-ransome.wikia.com/wiki/Better_drowned_than_duffers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96208 | 302 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Analysis: Can there be party funding consensus?
Back in the heady days of May 2010, when the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats united in government, they set out a detailed set of policy proposals called "the Coalition Agreement".
One paragraph read: "We will... pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove big money from politics."
After disagreement between the parties in the wake of the cash-for-honours scandal, this all sounded rather encouraging.
A few weeks later, the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life thought the issue worthy of investigation and began an inquiry.
The chairman, Sir Christopher Kelly, admitted that "significant difficulties remain" but he was encouraged to aver that "there is sufficient will to reform the system to give us some hope that it ought to be possible to find a solution".
The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats all agree that the only way forward is through consensus. Yet that, for now, is the only thing on which there is consensus.”
In the lingua franca of Whitehall, that is gutsy, optimistic stuff. Sir Christopher's cup was not just half full, it was positively brimming over with hope.
Now, after a delay of many months, we have learned the fruits of Sir Christopher's endeavour. He is proposing a £10,000 cap on individual donations to political parties.
He also proposed that union members should be required to decide individually whether or not they want to give money to the Labour Party. Currently they have to opt out if they do not want their cash to end up in Ed Miliband's coffers.
In return for these two measures that would substantially reduce the income of the three largest parties, Sir Christopher is recommending that the public should dig into their own pockets and contribute to the funding of political parties themselves.
The parties with MPs - or representation in the Scottish Parliament or Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies - would get something in the region of £3 for each vote cast in their favour.'Hard-pressed taxpayers'
At the last general election, about 30 million of us bothered to vote. So the plan would theoretically provide a cool £90m to be distributed among the parties over the course of a five-year parliament. That is quite a lot of cash. The public would also be able to give a large chunk of money to a party without paying tax.
The trouble is that no one appears to agree with this. The Conservative member of the committee, Oliver Heald, has written a dissenting view setting out his opposition to a £10,000 cap. The Tories would prefer £50,000. They would also like union members to have the chance to give part of their fee to parties other than Labour.
The coalition agreement promised that the government would pursue reform. But it did not promise to achieve it.”
The Labour member, Margaret Beckett, has set out her opposition to the union reforms. And the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg - whose party could use a little state funding - has ruled out any early move towards more taxpayer support for parties.
Only last week he told MPs: "It would not be right to ask our hard-pressed taxpayers to pay more to political parties at a time when they are having to deal with so many cuts and savings elsewhere."
And there are many others in government who do not disagree.
Sir Christopher Kelly argues that the public are concerned about party funding, they are suspicious of big donors, and notes that the three largest parties all made manifesto commitments to reform.
And the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats all agree that the only way forward is through consensus.
Yet that, for now, is the only thing on which there is consensus. The coalition agreement promised that the government would pursue reform. But it did not promise to achieve it. | <urn:uuid:b165723f-9617-449a-b92f-29b2bacbde94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15830934 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97128 | 782 | 1.53125 | 2 |
We call our humanistic Sunday services “platforms.” At the Brooklyn Society, the Sunday platform meets from 11:00am -12:30 pm September through June.
Our Sunday Platform is the weekly convening of our community. We include music, meditation, a presentation on a theme, and an open response period. Platform offers us the gifts of time, space and camaraderie to reflect on how we are living our lives. Through topical talks augmented by music, Platforms aim to inspire a sense of purpose and community.
We meet for the fundamental reasons that people attend any Sunday service:
- To inspire in us a sense of greater meaning and purpose;
- To raise our spirits and feel hope in the possibilities for a better future;
- To strengthen our faith that people are essentially good, competent, loving, and lovable;
- To experience a sense of community (for example, connection, mutual caring, and friendship);
- To gain the spiritual strength and skills to cultivate the best in life.
The speaker will center the platform on a human value, capacity, or principle of Ethical Culture that we can meaningfully apply to our everyday lives. Speakers vary from week to week, and include the Ethical Culture Leaders, various BSEC members, and invited guest speakers. The theme often raises a personal or political question.
A Sunday School for children takes place at the same time. Almost every Sunday, we have a vibrant post-platform potluck and coffee hour together. | <urn:uuid:96d03562-5731-40c6-93f0-bd6bfcd8a3fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bsec.org/about-us/platforms-about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930357 | 310 | 1.5 | 2 |
Luma Rahl was an alias assumed by Kira Nerys when she travelled back in time from 2374 to 2346, using the Orb of Time, to investigate Gul Dukat's claim that he and her mother, Kira Meru, were lovers during the Occupation of Bajor.
Kira arrived in the Singha refugee camp and met not only her mother and her father Kira Taban but her younger self. However, the three-year-old Nerys remained ignorant as to her identity. As Luma, Kira was taken to Terok Nor as a "comfort woman" for the Cardassians. She became friends with Meru, and learned that Dukat's claims seemed to be true.
"Luma" was taken to the ore processing center after failing to show the proper respect to the Cardassians. There, she made contact with members of the Bajoran Resistance and volunteered to use her friendship with Meru to try to assassinate Dukat. Kira planted a Bajoran earring made of ultritium resin in Dukat's quarters, but changed her mind after seeing Meru's reaction at a message from her husband Taban. Kira warned Dukat and Meru about the bomb, and vanished after the bomb exploded. (DS9 episode: "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night")
Shortly after Luma's disappearance, Meru reflected that she had attempted to make her friend understand that she did not hate Dukat and that she was doing what she thought necessary to ensure that her children would have a better life. (TLE - Terok Nor novel: Night of the Wolves) | <urn:uuid:f29721fb-6265-4631-955b-71d88de4e0c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Luma_Rahl | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984132 | 337 | 1.5625 | 2 |
From a reader:
I have been searching for the answer to this question but cannot find the rubrics for altar candles.
Is it still mandated that altar candles during mass be of wax, or is it permissible to use the plastic look alikes with the oil lamp in the upper third that I see on the altars at a local parish?
No wonder the portion of the Easter Vigil liturgy that references the work of the bees gets left out!
The Exsultet bees get a vacation day when English is used, but the Latin bees are still busily buzzing in the Latin Exsultet. They will fly back in the new translation now being prepared.
My recollection is that the oil inserts instead of candles are not permitted. That is to say imitation candles are not permitted. That goes for both electric imitations and oil inserts.
Candles for Mass must be of wax. I am not sure if the percentage of real wax is laid down by law.
I think the sanctuary lamp can be either an oil lamp or wax, but it cannot be electric.
I can’t put my hands on the exact document right now, but I am sure a reader can help.
I think most altar candles in use these days, at least in the USA, are 51% beeswax. You can get 100%, but in warm weather they can get a little sporty. | <urn:uuid:22e96f83-cbca-47b6-ab9b-b93f763f3e25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wdtprs.com/blog/2009/04/quaeritur-real-wax-candles-or-oil-inserts-in-fake-candles/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933433 | 286 | 1.679688 | 2 |
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