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They’re free. We’ve all got them. And we all so very much want need them from time to time.
“For one moment our lives met, our souls touched.” ~ Oscar Wilde
They make us feel safe, and sometimes help to ‘reconnect’ our body with our mind.
They bring us closer in this one small space of interconnectedness—and, make our hearts smile, big.
They have the power to completely transform our sense of being, within just one single moment.
And no words, or often very few, are ever exchanged in order to confirm that one simple point—that in this space, you are loved.
And, look! Look at how much joy they bring!
So why not take one moment today, to reach out and really touch someone?
In doing so, you might just find that two arms, outstretched, is the shortest distance between two souls.
So, go ahead—go hug someone today.
Bonus: Super amazing hug video! | <urn:uuid:c6b2567b-1d3c-4464-9cc4-947e6d38d6ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://taralemieux.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-healing-power-of-hugs-elephant.html | 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 | 0.948527 | 216 | 1.53125 | 2 |
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department today filed a lawsuit against the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK), the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska and employees of UNK for violating the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against students with disabilities.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Nebraska, charges that UNK and its employees engaged in a pattern or practice of violating the Fair Housing Act or denied rights protected by the act by denying reasonable accommodation requests by students with psychological or emotional disabilities seeking to live with emotional assistance animals in university housing. The suit also charges that UNK requires students with psychological disabilities to disclose sensitive medical and other information that is unnecessary to evaluate their accommodation requests. This lawsuit arose as a result of a complaint filed with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by a student enrolled at UNK who sought to live with an emotional assistance dog that had been prescribed.
“The Fair Housing Act requires housing providers to give reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities so that all have equal housing opportunities. The Fair Housing Act also ensures that when people seek an accommodation, they are not required to disclose medical information that is overly intrusive and invasive in order to receive an accommodation,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department will continue its vigorous enforcement of fair housing laws that protect the rights of people with psychological or emotional disabilities so that they will have full opportunity to find housing as the law requires.”
The lawsuit seeks a court order prohibiting future discrimination by the defendants, monetary damages for those harmed by the defendants’ actions, and a civil penalty. Any individuals who have information relevant to this case are urged to contact the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division at 1-800-896-7743, ext. 92.
The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin and disability. More information about the Civil Rights Division and the laws it enforces is available at www.usdoj.gov/crt . Individuals who believe that they have been victims of housing discrimination can call the Housing Discrimination Tip Line at 1-800-896-7743, e-mail the Justice Department at [email protected] , or contact HUD at 1-800-669-9777.
The complaint is an allegation of unlawful conduct. The allegations must still be proven in federal court. | <urn:uuid:c703e35a-9391-44dd-89c8-827b817e157f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/November/11-crt-1532.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952151 | 506 | 1.6875 | 2 |
WINES WITH SANGIOVESE
Until recently Sangiovese, Italy's most widely planted vine variety, was a grape in the wilderness. And whenever the name Sangiovese did appear on a label it was far from a guarantee of greatness. Rather the reverse. The most common wines that carried the name Sangiovese on the label were Sangiovese di Romagna, cheap Italian reds which were typically extremely light, pale, tart confections with little of interest to offer the wine lover.
Perhaps the most exciting development in the recent dramatic upgrading of the reputation of Chianti, however, has had the side effect of suggesting that it was slack winemaking rather than any inherent shortcomings in the Sangiovese grown in Romagna north-east of Tuscany that was at fault.
Sangiovese is and has always been THE dominant grape of Central Italian red wines, and Chianti in particular. Because in the mid-20th century Chianti was frequently lightened with the addition of tart, pale-skinned Trebbiano grapes and stretched by the addition of fuller reds imported in bulk from the south of Italy and the islands, it was far from easy to determine what Sangiovese's innate qualities and characteristics were. It has been only in the last couple of decades, thanks to a systematic research programme by producers in the Chianti Classico heartland of the greater Chianti region, that the myriad clones of Sangiovese grown all over Central Italy have been studied and assessed.
After years of research it has emerged that two of the finest clones, R24 and T19, are in fact from Romagna. I enjoyed a fascinating tasting of some of the most promising vine selections in 1996 with Paolo De Marchi of Isola e Olena in the heart of Chianti Classico country. From a range of almost a dozen different Sangioveses, the R24 had the most sumptuous mulberry flavours whereas one selected by the University of Florence (SS-F9-A 5-48 was its romantic name) was much tarter and simpler, one from Montalcino was almost too soft and another from Corsica (where Sangiovese is known as Nielluccio, or more often in local dialect Niellucciu) was sweet and almost inherently oaky.
Sangiovese's dominant viticultural characteristics are that it can vary as much as Pinot Noir in its sensitivity to place and that it ripens relatively late. This means that if it is planted too high in Tuscany it can all too easily produce wine that is tart and unripe. The Chianti Classico research programme has concentrated on trying to match suitable clones to the varied local conditions of this quite extensive region whose upper reaches can be at the limit of successful grape-ripening territory. Many of the best producers deliberately try to have a range of different selections in their vineyards and therefore wines.
In the bad old days, Sangiovese tended to be overproduced which accentuated its tendency to exhibit high acid and unripe tannins. Thanks to its thinnish skins and frequent blending with white grapes, this all too often meant that the wines turned brown after only a few years in bottle.
Today, fine Sangiovese is an altogether nobler wine. It will be the product of much lower yields so that there is real concentration of colour and flavour. As for the elusive flavour of pure Sangiovese, it ranges in a spectrum somewhere between mulberries, prunes, spice, tobacco, sometimes leather and chestnuts (there seems to be some common thread of colour here!) It tends to be savoury rather than sweet, and if not fully ripe can smell distinctly farmyard-like.
Chianti is still often a blended wine, but the tendency nowadays is to make it with an increasingly high proportion of Sangiovese - sometimes 100 per cent. There was a vogue in the late 1970s and 1980s to minimize Sangiovese's role and blend in very obvious proportions of Cabernet and Merlot. Marchese Piero Antinori set in train a huge fashion for blending in these Bordeaux grapes with the local Sangiovese when he released the then mould- breaking Tignanello in the early 1970s (mimicking the recipe for Carmignano on the other side of Florence). He also demonstrated that Sangiovese could cope with an entirely different ageing regime from the traditional practice of keeping it in large, old botte, upright casks of usually Slavonian oak and leaching the colour and guts out of it. Nowadays, many producers supplement or substitute for botte with much smaller barrels, typically made from French oak - just like the ones used in Bordeaux. This, just as much as anything else, has helped to make Chianti Classico a much more concentrated wine - although there are still too many that taste too obviously or oak and/or Cabernet Sauvignon.
And now that the right clones have been identified and are increasingly planted, Sangiovese is allowed to shine in all its glory without depending on make-up imported from Bordeaux. The much-amended regulations now allow producers to add up to 25 (this may be reduced to 20) per cent of other varieties, but many of the finest wines are made entirely from Sangiovese. And if other grapes are added, they are today just as likely to be the traditional and local scented Mammolo, rather ordinary Canaiolo and/or the deep-coloured Colorino as Cabernet and Merlot - and no self-respecting producer depends on bulking out the blend with the Trebbiano that used to dilute and bleach Chianti in the bad old days.
Perhaps the most famous selection of Sangiovese was first promulgated by Biondi Santi of the hilltop town of Montalcino in southern Tuscany in the late 19th century. This particularly deep-coloured, tannic selection is known as Brunello and thus Brunello di Montalcino, one of Italy's most noble and long-lived wines made entirely of this local vine speciality, was born. Brunello tends to need many more years in bottle to develop than even the sternest Chianti Classico but the DOC Rosso di Montalcino identifies the earlier-maturing reds of the region.
Just to the east of Montalcino, around the town of Montepulciano, there is a similar system for the local wines, known as Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, whose local strain of Sangiovese is called Prugnolo Gentile. Quality here has been improving steadily of late, with Rosso di Montepulciano playing a similar role to its counterpart from Montalcino.
On the southern Tuscan coast, Sangiovese goes under the alias Morellino and makes particularly toothsome wine in unusually acid soils around Scansano.
Sangiovese is still the standard red grape of the Romagna region, and it is still easy to find vapid, pale, stretched examples but producers such as Zerbina have shown that top-quality Sangiovese is also bottled in this region.
In Umbria to the south Sangiovese is the standard red vine and can make some delicious Montefalco Rosso, while as Nielluccio, the Sangiovese vine is the most widely planted vine on the French island of Corsica.
Vine growers are becoming increasingly curious and Sangiovese is now being planted from Chile to Argentina, but the place with the greatest recent interest in Sangiovese outside Italy is California. Here a vogue for all things gastronomic and Italian in the 1990s led to unparalleled experimentation with growing Sangiovese under warm west coast skies. The results have been decidedly mixed but Shafer with their Firebreak blend, predominantly Sangiovese, has managed admirable consistency.
Argentina with its considerable Italian immigrant population also has quite a bit of Sangiovese (and Nebbiolo and, in huge quantity, the northern Italian variety Bonarda) planted, but it is still to perform even half as well as the dominant Argentine vine Malbec.
And in Australia Coriole and Pizzini have shown that Sangiovese can thrive in such different wine regions as McLaren Vale and the Victorian Highlands.-Jancis Robinson | <urn:uuid:e82baac5-a178-4846-b389-d609fe7570a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voliovino.com/list/wines_by_varietal/30?region_id=51 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96111 | 1,751 | 1.625 | 2 |
I came across this incredible documentary today about the civil strife in the Congo. It's called Rape of a Nation.
My question is why are places such as Darfur getting more media attention and response? Is it because it has been called a civil war as opposed to genocide?
What is it that makes us take action against suffering? | <urn:uuid:e7c0fdfc-1cef-406e-8dc1-7ff0b266d335> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.design21sdn.com/people/14449/posts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986353 | 68 | 1.65625 | 2 |
A Baltimore landlord with a long history of violating lead-paint poisoning laws was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in prison by a federal judge, who called the now-bankrupt businessman a "scofflaw."
Cephus Murrell, 69, of Catonsville sat impassively in U.S. District Court as Judge Benson E. Legg imposed the sentence, which included six months' home detention after release from prison.
Murrell owned and managed 175 rental units in Baltimore, officials said, all built before lead paint was banned. A landlord since 1974, Murrell and his company have been issued more than 20 lead-paint violation notices or compliance orders over the years by city health or state environmental agencies, authorities said.
Federal and state officials and children's advocates welcomed the prison sentence in only the second federal criminal prosecution in Maryland for lead-paint violations.
"Cephus Murrell placed Baltimore children at risk of permanent injuries by violating federal law and ignoring repeated orders to comply with lead-paint regulations," Rod J. Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, said in a statement.
Ingesting even tiny amounts of lead-paint flakes or dust can cause lasting damage to children' learning and behavior. The city and state have struggled for decades to curb childhood lead poisoning, and though cases have declined greatly over the past 20 years, there were still more than 500 statewide in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available.
"We have to have accountability and responsibility to make progress," said Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning. She said the prosecution sends a message to landlords who are skirting the law.
A city Health Department inspector testified at Wednesday's sentencing that children had tested positive for lead poisoning in at least 11 of Murrell's properties during the past three decades. The landlord was jailed for a few days in 2010 by a Baltimore Circuit Court judge, who found him in contempt for failing after years of government pressure to fix lead-paint hazards in his rental units.
Murrell pleaded guilty in federal court in July to three misdemeanor violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act. He had been charged with failing to notify his tenants of lead-paint hazards in their units, for conducting an abatement in one unit while children were present, potentially exposing them to lead dust, and for falsely certifying that abatement work was being done with proper supervision.
Paul Mark Sandler, Murrell's lawyer, asked the judge not to imprison his client, saying Murrell was well-intentioned but a sloppy businessman who got in over his head. The lawyer presented three character witnesses who described Murrell as generous and always willing to help out people, including inner-city children, the homeless and his low-income tenants.
Murrell, in a brief statement, said he was "brought up to help people," but apologized for his handling of lead-paint issues, saying, "I really should have exercised more supervision."
Sandler told the judge that Murrell was getting out of the landlord business, having turned over his properties to a trustee after filing for bankruptcy in March.
But state officials said it is not clear that Murrell is no longer involved with rental housing and that he has brought all of his units into compliance with lead-paint laws as promised.
Samantha Kappalman, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said Murrell was required under his federal plea last year to get certificates showing that he had reduced lead-paint risks at about 60 properties he owned. To date, he's submitted only 11 certificates, she said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney P. Michael Cunningham urged Legg to give Murrell an 18-month prison sentence, arguing that whatever kindnesses Murrell has performed did not negate the harm he had done by exposing his tenants to lead-poisoning risks. He said Murrell had repeatedly neglected his responsibilities over the years.
"Mr. Murrell has a history of playing the shell game," the prosecutor said. "That hasn't changed."
The judge said he trimmed Murrell's prison sentence in recognition of his age and the testimonials about his good deeds. But Legg said prison time was warranted in light of the seriousness of lead poisoning and as a deterrent to other noncompliant landlords. The judge also ordered Murrell to get out of the rental housing business "in an orderly fashion." | <urn:uuid:8c8d8df5-7900-4390-8b38-772b2e912e4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sun-sentinel.com/health/bs-gr-lead-paint-landlord-sentencing-20120606,0,432432.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98387 | 923 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Aug. 13 hearing to look at Barnegat Bay, plastic bags
Barnegat Bay and plastic bags will be the subject of a joint legislative hearing to be held in Lavallette on Aug. 13.
The topics are expected to draw a wide range of business representatives, who plan to highlight efforts to increase recycling and reuse of shopping bags. The meeting will include the Senate Environment and Energy Committee and the Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee.
Senate Committee Chairman Bob Smith (D-Piscataway) is organizing the joint hearing, as he has each summer in recent years.
Smith said he plans to revisit new versions of bills intended to improve the water quality of Barnegat Bay, including bills previously vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie.
"The governor's got to understand that what they're doing right now is a lot of lip service" as the bay continues to worsen, Smith said. He said the state should revisit the issue of total maximum daily loads of runoff allowed into the bay. As to the chances of Christie revisiting his position on the bay, "hope springs eternal," Smith said.
The business community has largely been united in opposition to government regulation of plastic bags. It has instead focused on voluntary programs to increase reusable bags and recycling.
Smith has sponsored one of several bills that would regulate bags. "They last forever and there is a question as to whether we should be providing a legal framework to either eliminate their use or to regulate their use," he said.
Smith said he wants to examine how the bags affect sea life and the environment. Smith added it has been three years since business representatives said they would increase recycling, and he is interested in how the effort is proceeding.
"I have an open mind on all issues related to the issue of plastic bags, and I think we need to hear from the public and from the experts as to what we should be doing or not," Smith said.
Businesses have improved recycling as part of their focus on sustainability, according to Sara Bluhm, vice president of environment, energy and federal affairs for the New Jersey Business & Industry Association.
"I think that the business community has done a great job of recycling and encouraging recycling," she said.
New Jersey Retail Merchants Association President John Holub also said retailers have been active.
"We definitely welcome the opportunity to describe all of the excellent initiatives and programs that have been put in place without any government intervention," Holub said.
Holub said his association is concerned with all of the different bills that have been introduced affecting plastic bags, such as requiring customers to pay fees for bags or mandating what bags retailers must offer.
Holub said businesses are responding to market demand for increased recycling.
"Retailers are responding to the consumers and the consumers have become a lot more attuned to these issues," he said.
The meeting will be on Aug. 13 at 10 a.m. at the Lavallette First Aid Squad at Bay Boulevard and Washington Avenue, in Lavallette. | <urn:uuid:96244380-6596-49c0-be75-b6b9f2395e52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.njbiz.com/article/20120802/NJBIZ01/120809962/0/healthcareHeroRegistration/&template=printart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975311 | 618 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The federal government, which regulates most US universities, has redefined ‘sexual harassment’ to encompass virtually everything.
My University of Colorado professor regularly bashes conservatives and conservatism.
On today’s college campuses, students are punished for expressing the ‘wrong’ opinions on controversial topics.
The schools rank at the very bottom based on performance in eight categories
You could buy a lot of expensive stuff instead of tuition at these overpriced schools
Censorship is teaching students all the wrong lessons about free speech and meaningful discourse.
The 1980 film Caddyshack is an accidental time capsule that proves the absurdity of college costs today
Albany, MIT, Drexel and others are waaay on the homely side — the buildings, that is
There is little tolerance for free speech on our nation’s college campuses.
In the wake of the Libya violence, expect more US universities to try to rein in free speech.
UCF senior Tim Arnold created a website that helped his fellow students find available classes.
The Obama administration is preparing to impose Title IX on colleges’ science and math departments. | <urn:uuid:6d89ab0b-0d89-43a3-a3e0-f63d7f4c191e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailycaller.com/buzz/higher-education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934414 | 234 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Nicolas Mahut of France reacts after losing on the of his 11-hour, 5-minute first round match against John Isner. (Glyn Kirk-Pool, Getty Images)
Well, it sure took long enough. Yesterday, and the sports world, that is.
By now, you may have heard about that marathon of a tennis match. You know, the one that spanned 10 hours, and still needed another hour this morning to finish up.
At 11 hours and five minutes, it set a new record for the longest match in tennis history. By more than four hours. Its fifth set alone, at eight hours and 11 minutes, bested the previous record for the longest match by an hour and 38 minutes. | <urn:uuid:221cd8ee-c058-4635-b623-0e8e83a60e38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.denverpost.com/sports/tag/game/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954401 | 150 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Enviers Of The World, Unite!
Sometimes an unsigned, in-house editorial in The Oklahoman serves as such a glaring example of sophomoric, nonsensical argumentation that it’s difficult to believe it actually appeared in a daily, metropolitan newspaper.
It raises questions like these: Does someone really get paid for writing this nonsense? Does the writer really believe in the “argument” or is it a case of just following orders? Does The Oklahoman really think its readers are that stupid?
On Friday, an editorial appeared on the newspaper’s NewsOK.com site that, without one shred of evidence, reached this unremarkable and completely untrue conclusion: Those people who want wealthy people to pay more in taxes base their desire on envy. Oh, that’s the main problem with the universe these days, isn’t it? Envy. One of the deadly sins.
Titled appropriately enough, “One constant in push to raise taxes on the wealthy: envy,” the editorial is a meandering, senseless exercise in defending regressive, unfair taxation and widening wealth disparity in this country, nothing new for The Oklahoman. But what it absolutely doesn’t do is provide one iota of evidence that those who want to roll back the Bush-era tax cuts on millionaires do so because they’re sick with envy.
The editorial makes the argument that the rich pay the most in taxes, arguing, “. . . if more people were in the 1 percent class despised by the class-envy crowd, more money would be flowing to Washington to fund government programs desired by that crowd.”
Note the clichéd, GOP slogan “class-envy crowd” and the word “despise.” In what universe does the writer of this hackneyed, mediocre mush live? Who makes up this class-envy crowd? Who exactly do they despise? And, of course, the rich pay more in taxes. They have all the money.
After citing some statistics about how much rich folks pay in taxes, glossing over their reduced rate from earlier time periods and completely ignoring growing wealth disparity, the editorial reaches its foregone conclusion: “So what's left in the tax-hike justification arsenal? Nothing but this: Envy of the very small group of people paying a very large share of the taxes.”
Oh yeah, that terrible envy, envy, envy. Run for your lives. Take cover.
What sheer nonsense.
The main problem here is not just the way The Oklahoman lovingly depicts the Benevolent American Aristocracy, which it has always argued should be worshipped for being so generous and kind with its vast treasures, it’s also that, again, the editorial doesn’t provide any empirical reasoning for the envy argument.
Is there really a group that defines itself as the class-envy crowd? Are there books and articles that discuss the current class-envy levels as a problematic or critical issue in terms of taxation? Are there statistical data and studies on the issue? Has envy been studied in a neurological sense and can those studies be applied to class issues? How does envy manifest itself in childhood development and how does that later become part of class-oriented awareness and lead to taxation beliefs?
In other words, where’s the evidence? The editorial doesn’t provide any at all.
How does one go about defining envy, anyway? Is it envy if a single mother trying to feed and clothe her children sees a wealthy person and wishes she were rich, too, and didn’t have financial worries? Is it envy if an unemployed 50-year-old man drives past a large, expensive home and wishes he could own one just like it? Is it envy if a young couple wishes they could afford to take a long vacation just like the wealthy often do?
The editorial, of course, doesn’t even try to define it.
What the editorial also doesn’t do is cite the empirical evidence that shows how much rich people have increased their wealth in recent decades even as their tax rates have gone down. One study shows that from 1992 to 2007, the country’s richest 400 households experienced an income growth of 392 percent and saw their tax liability fall by 37 percent. That’s just one study.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the wealthiest among us currently have skyrocketing incomes and pay less in taxes on a percentage basis than everyone else. How in the world does preparing such studies that show wealthy disparity or speaking about the issue in terms of taxation translate into envy? There are sound, credible arguments for a fair and progressive taxation system, and there are sound and credible arguments for creating wealth. What does envy have to do with it? Nothing.
Here’s the deal: The Oklahoman, now owned by Colorado billionaire Philip Anshutz, has no real argument for providing cover for the 1-percent crowd, and a video clip of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has shown that it’s the 1 percent who are doing all the despising, not anyone else. There’s the real class warfare as rational people knew all along.
All this GOP hackneyed and archaic “class envy” reductionist argumentation has been completely exposed again this election season as fraudulent remnants of a dead, trickle-down fiscal ideology. Unfortunately, there are Oklahomans who will be manipulated by senseless and unproven claims about class envy and even repeat those claims as their incomes remain stagnant or even drop. I’m not envious of those people either. | <urn:uuid:083ac61b-d889-420e-a1f6-6d2e76d86dd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://okiefunk.com/node/1142 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958478 | 1,169 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Bennett Calls College Drug Policy Too Lax
Harvard Cited as Example of Trend
Secretary of Education William J. Bennett yesterday renewed his call for a crackdown on drug abuse on college campuses, singling out Harvard as the "flagship" university that should lead the movement.
He cited as illustrations of the problem a two-part Harvard Crimson series on student drug use and a chapter in the 1986 Reed College Student Handbook in which students said their colleges did not strictly enforce drug regulations.
"It's a violation, an offense to everything that higher education stands for," Bennett said.
College administrators still pay "insufficient attention to the problem," Bennett told about 175 people at a lunch for the department's Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, which in the coming year will award about $8 million in grants for campuses to establish or improve anti-drug programs.
In his speech, the secretary quoted sections of "Crack in the Ivy," a two-part series that ran in The Crimson November 19-20, as evidence that the University treats the drug issue casually, said John Walters, special assistant to Bennett.
Speaking Wednesday at a Rotary Club luncheon in Dallas, Bennett said, "It's important to talk about places like Harvard, because Harvard represents educational excellence in this country," the Dallas Morning News reported yesterday.
Bennett termed "unconscionable" what he called Harvard's lack of activity to counteract drug use and sales on campus, the Morning News said. "What Harvard fails to do, others will fail to do," said the secretary.
Harvard Vice President for Government and Public Affairs John Shattuck yesterday downplayed the significance of drug problems on campus.
"I think Mr. Bennett is once again engaged in an effort to grab the headlines on a complicated issue, and he's using the Harvard name to do it," Shattuck said.
The University takes "drug-selling, in particular, very seriously...We're not going to exaggerate the problem like Secretary Bennett," he added. But Shattuck said he did not anticipate any additional pressure on Harvard to stiffen drug-use policies and enforcement.
"We've gotten the impression they [college adminstrators] don't consider drugs on campus a problem," said Thomas Lyon, a Department of Education public affairs officer. He added that the articles suggested "the students seem to be looking at a very different campus than the adminstrators are."
Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III said yesterday, "Secretary Bennett's remarks do not address the basis of the problem since the regulation inand of itself may only serve to drive thesituation further underground.
"Instead," the dean added, "the fundamentalissue is an educational one of trying to teachpeople how to be responsible for themselves andothers."
Since the series was run, College officialshave had some discussions about what steps theywill take to curb drug use at Harvard, Epps said."The attenae are certainly attuned to thesituation," he added.
Bennett's repeated call for a halt to drug useon campus "is a major step he's taken to makepublic what some people have thought privately forsome time," Walters said.
The three Crimson articles interviewed studentswho use and deal drugs as well as administrators.Students generally said that they were not afraidof being caught.
While The Crimson found that students here usea wide variety of illegal drugs--including "crack"cocaine--most students said they believed theproblem was more widespread at other schools.
Bennett said it is not necessary to bringpolice or special investigators onto campuses tocontrol drug use. He said colleges anduniversities can start by "eliminating any traceof public or institutional tolerance of drug use."
"What is intolerable is public tolerance,public condoning, of the use of illegal drugs,"Bennett said.
By clearly condemning drug use, the secretarysaid, the problem will be cut down and drivenunderground, and users and dealers will berelegated to a lower status.
"It's not something we feel the governmentneeds to step in and make people do," Walterssaid. "It's simply calling on them [theuniversities] to do what is in their besttraditions and live up to their best ideals."
Bennett has attacked Harvard on a plethora offronts since he took office last year. As part ofthe student-oriented celebration of theUniversity's 350th anniversary earlier this fall,he condemned the Core Curriculum as a "core lite,"unworthy of its status as the College'seducational centerpiece.
Drug dealers quoted in the Crimson series saidthat they were more afraid of getting caught sincethe attention paid to drug use, especially ofhigh-potency crack cocaine, has increased.
One dealer of the designer drug Ecstasy and onewho sells large amounts of marijuana, when askedif they thought Harvard might get make theirbusiness more difficult in the future, said thatit depended on administrative reaction to theCrimson articles.
The Ecstasy dealer said yesterday he wasn'talarmed by the new high-placed attention todealing here, adding that "By this point, Harvardadministrators probably don't take Bennett veryseriously. | <urn:uuid:fd5a5a19-aeb8-4410-8882-0c630ba0e8dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1986/12/5/bennett-calls-college-drug-policy-too/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96295 | 1,084 | 1.523438 | 2 |
|A year from the exact day of the March 11th 2011 disaster in Japan we lit candles and placed them to spell out the characters for Japan as we said our prayers for the people and nation.|
I was blessed to have the opportunity to hold an event in memory of March 11th 2011. There is no way I could capture in words the shock, terror, and sheer awe of the images the world saw on that day in Japan, yet we shared our story of that day with the people present. We gathered with the purpose to remember together and pray together for those who are still hurting, still struggling, still suffering greatly from the aftermath of that tragic day.
The most powerful earthquake in Japan's recorded history has turned many to seek a new hope and to come together as a people. Our prayers for the Japanese were not silent wishes going up to some ambiguous Deity but were cries from the heart to bring hope and peace for them appealing to a loving and righteous God. It is a difficult thing to reflect on, but if all life belongs to God there is no other we can appeal to, no other we can turn to for something so grand, so profound.
There is hope for Japan despite all that has happened and that will happen. If Japan were to be humbled, let them rise ever stronger under a new banner of hope in a true God.
It truly was a night I will remember, a night that we, people with a burden for the Japanese, could share together. There is hope only when we look deep within and find our need to extend beyond ourselves. We must see God's glorious story and purpose for humanity. That story began with our creation and was redeemed through Christ's sacrifice and continues with us into the future. | <urn:uuid:8ba3dd8d-0dbf-4b63-899e-c398362f2e0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.holyfirejapan.com/2012/03/remembering-japan-night-of-prayer-and.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97925 | 354 | 1.796875 | 2 |
On Mondays during the NHL lockout, Sporting News will present radical—and, in most cases improbable—proposals designed to get the league back on track and ensure its long-term health. The seventh in that series: using existing teams to form the backbone of a "rebel league."
One idea that has floated around in many a hockey fan’s mind during the NHL lockout has been that, with so many players heading to Europe for alternative employment, it sure would be great if some of them could stick around North America and form a new league.
Derek Zona of Copper and Blue used the WHA as inspiration, while at Backhand Shelf, Ellen Etchingham went further into the wayback machine to point to the PCHA as an object lesson. The idea is that the game of hockey does not need the National Hockey League in order to thrive in North America.
The pitfalls of a “rebel league” are obvious, starting with the difficulty of finding places to play in the major markets necessary for success, continuing with finding enough well-heeled owners to afford the talent to make it a worthwhile endeavor, and going right on through to dealing with antitrust laws.
Any proposal with any kind of thought behind it acknowledges not only these challenges, but the overwhelming odds of failure. It’s a bad investment, and the people with enough money and sense to make such an endeavor anything short of a joke know that, which is why it didn’t happen in 2004, and won’t happen now. The very existence of the NHL, even in a lockout, is too big of a hurdle to clear.
Instead of dreaming of a league that starts from scratch, even though it would be fun to see all the new hockey teams—Boston Blades! Montreal Olympiques! British Columbia Explorers!—why not move forward with a new league of existing teams?
There are 30 teams in the NHL, some successful, some not. Eight years ago, all of them went out of business for a full season, then came back confident that the league’s problems were solved. Now, here we are again, with a very real possibility of another lost season, and no guarantee that once the current dispute is settled, the same thing won’t happen again.
It’s an oversimplification to say that the common denominator of the three NHL lockouts, in 1994, 2004, and now, is Gary Bettman. The problem is not the commissioner himself; it’s the very nature of his job, trying to represent the common interests of his 30 bosses. Those common interests—paying current players as little as they possibly can; staging a draft to “ensure competitive balance” and pay new players less than they'd make on an open market; making as much money as possible from national television and sponsorship deals—all feature the same word: money.
This should come as no surprise. It’s always about the money. What the owners have to ask themselves is this: Is the existence of the NHL good or bad for the ultimate goal of maximizing profits?
Let’s say you’re the Toronto Maple Leafs. Despite the longest playoff drought of any member team, you are the cash kings of the NHL, with Forbes reporting that you not only made $81.8 million for the 2010-11 season, but raked in more than $400 million over a six-year span. Again, that’s without selling a single playoff ticket.
As good as things are financially for the Maple Leafs, they could be much better. The club had to pay $20 million in revenue sharing last season to prop up weaker franchises, and now can’t even get on the ice. Since the fall of 2004, the NHL has canceled 14 percent of the Leafs’ games (and everyone else’s). If this season never gets off the ground, that figure will be 22 percent. For a veritable mint of a hockey team in Toronto, the prospect of losing nearly a quarter of its opportunities to open the arena doors—and the PR damage control that accompanies labor strife—should be unacceptable.
Now, let’s say you’re the Nashville Predators. You’ve had some success on the ice, and you’ve worked hard to build a devoted fan base in a non-traditional market, but you have a tough time making ends meet. During the six-year span in which the Maple Leafs made more than $400 million, you lost $30.5 million. While the Predators have worked hard to make their business a winner, and revenue-sharing payments help somewhat, it kind of defeats the purpose when the Philadelphia Flyers come along and sign your franchise player to an offer sheet that’s loaded up front with signing bonus money that still has to be paid during a lockout engineered by the owner of the Philadelphia Flyers.
For those who would argue that if things were so bad, the Predators should have just let Shea Weber walk as a free agent, there are two important counterpoints. First, losing Weber after already having lost Ryan Suter to the Minnesota Wild (and that team’s equally hawkish owner) would have meant the end of the Predators as a relevant NHL franchise. Good luck running a successful business that way.
Second, even if Weber had left, the Predators still would have had to claw their way to the salary floor. If they were going to overpay somebody, it might as well be the best defenseman in hockey. Ideally, though, the Predators would be able to construct their team with a salary structure that would allow them to be simultaneously competitive and profitable. It would be a challenge, sure, but not one that general manager David Poile would be incapable of meeting.
What’s good for the Maple Leafs is generally not good for the Predators, and vice versa. What they have in common from a business standpoint is being put in a worse financial position because of the lockout. By shutting down, the NHL is actively blocking clubs at opposite ends of the economic spectrum from achieving their chief (and just about only) shared objective.
If the problem with the NHL is the NHL, why not get rid of the NHL? Team owners did not get the money to become team owners by having their business practices dictated to them by their competitors, and it does not have to be that way in the hockey industry. In the rest of the world, in fact, it isn’t that way.
“The biggest structural difference between the way (European) leagues are run compared to the NHL is that the clubs—especially the big and wealthy ones—are the ones with the power,” Szymon Szemberg of the International Ice Hockey Federation told Sporting News. “The ‘league’ more or less is the office which is administrating things like refs, central sponsorships, schedule, etc. The league has no ideological say, this ‘power’ is with the clubs. In the NHL it seems to be the other way around, the clubs are franchises of the league and the league, and its commissioner, are very powerful and they speak on behalf of the clubs and the league.”
While small-market teams of the NHL would be unhappy about ceding power to the “big and wealthy” clubs, the truth is that the league already is run by a select few teams. Because it takes a three-quarters vote of owners to ratify a CBA, a group of eight hardliners is capable of shutting down the league to further their own interests. Because the monolithic NHL does not allow its employees to make public comments about the labor situation, we do not know and cannot know how many of the 30 owners beyond the necessary eight are in favor of continuing the lockout.
But you can also bet that if 22 teams decided to basically secede from the NHL and operate as independent businesses, and poached a couple of folks from NHL headquarters to handle officiating, scheduling, national sponsorships, and the like, the remaining eight would not want to be left watching as their players and fans defected.
Szemberg called it “theoretically possible” for USA Hockey and Hockey Canada to step in and run a league, but doing so would be a monumental challenge and would likely cause problems of its own with clashes between those two organizations. Instead, it would make sense for the NHL itself to continue on as a streamlined entity, using the smart and well-qualified officials already in place to carry out the tasks of running and marketing a hockey league. Modifying the existing NHL is a much easier proposition than blowing it up and starting from scratch, or forming entirely new teams for a new league, but if you want to see a “rebel league” shake up the hockey world, the best way to do it would be for the rebels to come from within. | <urn:uuid:401dc77e-aaf2-41f4-8c41-8bfdb4948930> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sportingnews.com/nhl/story/2012-10-29/nhl-lockout-news-2012-whl-stats-maple-leafs-worth-usa-hockey-canada-shea-weber?modid=recommended_2_3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97325 | 1,839 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Skip to comments.Unemployment sinks to 5-year low (11/3/06)
Posted on 03/07/2010 5:22:15 PM PST by originalbuckeye
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in more than five years in October, the government reported Friday, a sign of unexpected strength in the job market. The jobless rate sank to 4.4 percent from 4.6 percent in September, the Labor Department said. It was the lowest since May 2001. Economists had forecast the rate would hold steady. The department also said that employers added 92,000 jobs in October, down from a revised 148,000 in September, and short of Wall Street forecasts for a gain of 125,000. But the September reading was revised up from the originally reported 51,000, and the increase, together with a revision to the August reading as well, had employment up 139,000 above earlier estimates heading into October. Those revisions and the modest October gain mean that 1.5 million jobs have been added so far this year, which is above forecast by most private economists, and blunts the effect of the modest October gain. The Bush administration hailed the report, but one political analyst said it wasn't likely to help Republicans facing tough elections battles on Tuesday. Polls indicate the economy isn't the top issue in the midterm elections. State-by-state unemployment rates The tighter job market is apparently helping to lift wages, according to the Labor Department report, which showed that average wages rose 6 cents to $16.91 an hour last month, a shade above what economists had forecast. Average wages are now up 3.9 percent over the last 12 months while the Consumer Price Index, the government's main inflation gauge, is up 2.1 percent for the 12 months ending in September, partly due to the recent sharp decline in oil prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
So what did your BIL have to say for himself when presented with facts? :-)
The economy went downhill right after Nancy the Pelosi became Speaker.
glad you pulled this up.
There is also the factor that some economist consider 4% as zero unemployment as that is close to the amount of people that won’t look for a job because they would rather collect unemployment as long as they can.
That is one cool graph! What is the source, and have you verified it’s validity?
Bush’s Fault LOL!!!!
no validity is noted.
but, no validity is not noted.
W’s economy was a house of cards based on government growth, a commodities bubble, and a housing bubble.
I always figured thaty somehow or other Unemployment was tied to Global Warming!
Yeah. Funny how it is all Bush's fault. These types of graphs just keep popping up.
In the 2006 midterm elections, democrats took back control of congress. Lets see how they’ve done:
Dow Jones Average
Jan 07: 12,398
Jan 07: 4.6
Jan 07: $162 billion
Current: 1.5 trillion
Jan 07: 8.7 trillion
Current: 12.3 trillion
(Additions and corrections welcome)
but, no validity is not noted.
LOL! Is that akin to "no controlling legal authority"?
but now the line is grey as a whore by any other color would still be a whore.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron BUBBLE.
Cool it with a baboons blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Always with the "unexpected"; although being a Republican admin at the time, the MSM was naturally "expecting" bad news.
Oh, Okay... I think I've got the Lame Stream Media's running narrative now:
Republican in Office = Expected weak job market.
DemonRat in Office = Expected strong job market.
Yup, that would explain why they (the LSM) are always surprised when the real numbers start rolling in.
Kind of a variant on the Self-fulfilling Prophecy syndrome. lol.
Yeah, I was going to ask what year this was beamed out of!
I’m going to send this to my dumbass brother & even more stupid sister-in-law, both of whom voted for 0bozo the commie pig, because 0bozo (according to my dumbass brother) was going to “fix” the economy. We have not really been on speaking terms since Oct 2008. I guess he must not have liked it, when I referred to he & his wife as dumbass morons. I don’t understand it? LOL
Glad someone is showing this stuff...thanks.
Can you think of a better basis for GOP political advertisements?
Another great chart!
Another great chart!
That Federal Deficit literaly gives me a chill up my spine. Those S.O.B.s
I sure miss ‘The Salad Days’ of 2006! *SMIRK*
U-6 figures are nearing 20% That’s counting everyone currently laid off, people who are marginally employed (they’d work MORE hours if more hours were AVAILABLE to them) and those that have just flat-out given up on finding a job anymore.
You are right to feel that way. This is economic warfare and we are we are up the creek.
Tell me again why certain ‘movement’ types insisted the republicans needed to be punished.
This asshole should be pushing this information out to the public.
Does anyone who what he does, other than promoting his stupid book?
Because they do not reverse big government grabs, the loss of freedoms and socialist policies in general that lead to huge deficits, creeping taxation and the destruction of the constitutional republic.
The charts reflect Americans ability to bounce back when they have hope of a turn around. If the government and their lobbyist friends (including big government Republicans) takeover health care...you can forget about ever seeing that chart go up again.
Can you give me the link for this? I want to post it on a Dem biased website.
Try this. Sorry it is so long.
I hear you about the “salad days.” Thankfully (knock wood) my husband is still gainfully employed. I thought I’d get a part-time job to supplement our income. There is NOTHING out there. I divided a bus load of plants from our garden and sold them at a garage sale last year. Looks like I’ll be digging a few more...
Cute chart. Thank you!
For later read
OOh we should make that one into a 3”x4” sticker and put it on every gas pump we pull up to.
Part of this graph especially for 2007-2008 is the result of Democrats also raising the minimum wage quite a bit and it was a contributing job-killing factor to rising unemployment even prior to the October 2008 stock market tumble.
And in response the one of every two persons you see on a daily basis put a San Francisco Marxist named pelosi two heartbeats from the presidency.
Of course the incompetent fossils that pass for GOP “leaders”
wouldn’t dare mention that everything went to hell after the socialists took power in 2006, but that only because their Alzheimers is kicking in and they forgot .
God save us from the imbeciles that surround us and give us the strength to neutralize them
Facts? Facts don’t matter to Leftists. They consider facts to be something manufactured to interrupt their reverie of possible Utopia.
My story is kind of the reverse, a kid born to a far left liberal couple. I have three siblings, two of which are still moonbats, I was the first to turn to the dark side and fortunately brought one with me.
Kudos. Perhaps your sibling is more intelligent than all of mine!
He’s a Phd, and his first job was in DC for the feds the last year of the Carter administration. When I told him I voted for Reagan (my first ever vote), he was shocked. Two years later he had turned into a raving conservative. He hated working for the feds, couldn’t believe how little federal workers actually did. It didn’t take a lot of intelligence to figure that one out.
My husband works for himself (computer consulting/repair/networking/security, etc.) and things have been a bit slower for him this year.
Luckily my workload picks up this time of year and I get lots of hours and all the overtime I can handle from now until July, so it evens out our budget.
Garage sale? You betcha! A good friend and I have one each year and last year I really stripped the house (sold lots of stashed fabric and yarn) and made $300.00.
When I’m back working from home (in a few years) I plan to hold a huge “Trash or Treasure” sale each season or a plant sale or invite locals to come to our farm for the day to sell what they grow; a Farmer’s Market, but on a real farm, LOL! I think the concept will sell itself. ;)
There are plenty-o-ways to make a buck even in a horrible 0bamaconomy. :)
Ping, from November, 2006. | <urn:uuid:2b4c6b45-4547-45ac-885b-dda5a4776ad5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2466158/posts?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956728 | 1,991 | 1.734375 | 2 |
WHAT IS BURBANK C.R.O.P.S. AND WHAT is c.r.o.p.s. TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?
C.R.O.P.S. stands for "Citizens for Rescue-Only Pet Stores."
We are a dedicated group of Burbank residents, volunteering our time in an effort to add our city of Burbank to an ever-growing list of cities in the Greater-L.A.-area who are banning the retail sale of pets.
C.R.O.P.S. works with local animal welfare organizations, adoption centers and rescue groups to facilitate and promote adoption/rescue pets through events, word of mouth and social media. We help set up events at retail establishments within our community as to provide additional venues for homeless pets to be showcased, so that our community has an easy alternative to adopt rather than purchasing online, from a pet store (puppy mill supplier) or irresponsible breeder.
A "paradigm shift" is occurring, replacing the former way of thinking and doing business. People generally want to be part of a solution and businesses such as pet stores are embracing the opportunity to help animal shelters and rescue groups by hosting adoption events, or adopting out homeless animals from shelters rather than obtaining them from commercial breeders (a.k.a. puppy mills).
WHY DOES C.R.O.P.S. EXIST?
To educate the public about puppy mills and therefore end the demand for mass-manufactured, commercially bred puppy mill dogs.
To end the unfathomable suffering of puppy mill dogs. The PARENTS of the puppy mill puppy live their entire lives in cramped, stacked cages, walking on wire, bred every heat cycle to a point where their bones break and teeth fall out.
To help end the overpopulation epidemic. Our society euthanizes nearly 5 million healthy animals each year while puppy mills “mass-produce” an additional 4 million each year.
DOES C.R.O.P.S WANT TO SHUT DOWN BUSINESSES?
No. Quite the contrary! We are simply encouraging these pet stores to take on a humane model. This may mean that they have to revise their business model a bit, or focus their attention on ancillary products and/or services like pet products, grooming, and/or boarding. Most business owners would agree that any business is subject to changing with the times and see it as an opportunity to embrace this and move forward, meeting customer's needs and new trends in the marketplace.
DID YOU KNOW?
Up to 30% of dogs in shelters are purebred. Yet, over 6,000 U.S.D.A. licensed commercial breeders (i.e. puppy mills) continue to produce more puppies – only adding to our pet overpopulation problem.
Sadly, in 2011, 19,000 (nineteen thousand) pets were euthanized (right here in our own backyard) at the six L.A. City Shelters. L.A. County euthanasia numbers were even more devastating -- 46,600 (forty-six thousand six hundred) cats & dogs were killed at the 7 county shelters.
WHY NOT JUST ASK THE STORES THAT SELL MILL DOGS & CATS TO STOP?
While we’d prefer this, we have personally asked the two remaining pet stores in Burbank to stop selling commercially bred pets and to work with rescue groups/shelters instead.
One of the C.R.O.P.S. founders personally drove the owner of Peggy Woods Pet Emporium to Best Friends Animal Society L.A. Pet Adoption Center where he got a personal tour of the beautiful No Kill facility in Mission Hills. Still, he had no interest in changing his ways. Although originally resisting, C.R.O.P.S volunteers visited Millennium Pet Store in October where they were told by the owners that they "would no longer be selling commercially bred pups." When asked why they said that "This is what the community wants." We asked them where their commercially-bred pups usually come from & we were told that they typically work with Hunte Corp (the largest distributor/broker of puppy mill-bred dogs in the country).
what is your ultimate goal?
While working directly with the pet store owners & management is our preferred choice, they are not always amenable. As a result, we ask that pet stores in the city of Burbank be prohibited from selling dogs & cats that come from commercial breeders (i.e. puppy/kitten mills).
We encourage these pet stores to be part of the solution; and work with local shelters & rescue groups instead! | <urn:uuid:04424e69-915d-4502-9ef5-b26a6b6f7394> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.burbankcrops.com/about.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9459 | 983 | 1.539063 | 2 |
A Defiant Iran Details Plan for 10 Enrichment Plants
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 29, 2009 -- The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Iran angrily refused Sunday to comply with a United Nations demand to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and escalated the confrontation by declaring it would construct 10 more such plants.
The response to the demand, made in a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear regulatory arm of the United Nations, came as Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his cabinet would also order a study of what it would take for Iran to further enrich its existing stockpile of nuclear fuel for use in a medical reactor — rather than rely on Russia or another nation, as agreed to in an earlier tentative deal.
While it is unclear whether Iran has the fuel technology, the declaration appeared intended to convince the West that Iran was prepared to move closer to bomb-grade quality, while stopping short of crossing that threshold.
Even if Iran proceeded with an ambitious plan to build 10 enrichment plants, it is doubtful Iran could execute that plan for years, maybe decades. But the announcement itself was enough to draw immediate condemnation from the White House, which clearly hoped that Iran’s defiant tone would help convince Russia and China that imposing harsh sanctions was justified.
Both countries, historically opposed to sanctions, had voted in favor of the atomic energy agency’s resolution. By refusing to accept that resolution, one senior administration official said, “Ahmadinejad may be doing more to assemble a sanctions coalition than we could do in months of work.”
The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said of Iran’s declaration: “If true, this would be yet another serious violation of Iran’s clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself.”
According to Iranian state television, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s cabinet voted to begin construction at five new sites designated for uranium enrichment plants — it did not specify where — and to determine locations for another five in the next few months.
In Europe, diplomats called the Iranian plan for a giant expansion of enrichment closer to a national aspiration than an imminent threat. Iran’s main enrichment facility, at Natanz, began early this decade and today the country has installed fewer than a tenth of the 50,000 centrifuges it is designed to handle. A second, once-secret plant — revealed two months ago — has been under construction for more than three years, and it is still at least a year from completion.
“It’s preposterous,” a diplomat in Vienna who collaborates with the International Atomic Energy Agency said of the plan for the 10 plants. The diplomat, who closely monitors the Iranian nuclear program, added: “It would be way, way more than they need no matter what their nuclear aspirations.” He noted that the United States had just one enrichment plant, in Paducah, Ky.
But the threat did appear to represent Iran’s decision to find a way to strike back politically at the West for the Security Council’s three resolutions demanding that Iran stop all enrichment activity. The international atomic agency’s board built on those Security Council resolutions on Friday, when it demanded that Iran halt work on construction of its second, once-secret enrichment plant. It was the first time the atomic agency had told Iran to halt construction of a plant.
What American and atomic agency officials fear is that the steady drumbeat of defiant declarations from Iran could lead to the one act that would truly touch off a crisis: Iran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That would terminate the already limited presence of the West’s atomic inspectors in Iran. North Korea took that step in early 2003, and soon produced the fuel for eight or more nuclear weapons; it has since tested two.
More than 200 members of the Iranian Parliament signed a letter on Sunday, according to Iranian press accounts, urging that the atomic agency’s presence in Iran be further restricted, and individual political leaders have called for withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty.
But Iran may be hesitant to follow North Korea’s lead. Such a declaration would signal to the world that Iran was heading for “nuclear breakout,” a rush to produce a bomb. Such a declaration would almost certainly build pressure for sanctions, and could lead to pre-emptive military action against Iran by Israel. “You have to think,” one of President Obama’s top national security advisers said recently, “that they would think twice before denouncing their treaty obligations.”
Instead, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, who once led Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, warned Sunday that Iran’s cooperation with the agency could “seriously decrease” in the near future.
Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful, and to date has enriched uranium to less than 5 percent, which is consistent with making fuel for a civilian nuclear power plant. But so far, there are no civilian nuclear plants under construction to receive that fuel; the two plants Iran is getting ready to open, at Bushehr, receive fuel from Russia. The absence of civilian reactors is one reason Western analysts suspect that Iran’s real intentions are to make atom bombs.
Iran has long talked of building as many as 19 more nuclear plants in addition to the complex at Bushehr. In the past, the plan for a total of 20 power plants resulted in a large gap between Iran’s declared ambitions and its envisioned needs for enrichment, and Sunday’s announcement sought to end that contradiction, at least in theory.
Western nuclear experts said that taking the declaration of the 10-plant goal at face value was akin to believing in the tooth fairy. “They’re hyping it,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation. “They couldn’t build that number of centrifuges. They don’t have the infrastructure.”
Mr. Albright added that Iran’s supplies of uranium were dwindling, casting more doubt on the vastly expanded commercial fuel goal. The result, he said, is that the new push for enrichment will probably end up producing “one small plant somewhere that they’re not going to tell us about” and be military in nature.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and William J. Broad from New York. Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto. | <urn:uuid:1c15fd21-7a2a-4398-9183-7416c0f5fd38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://conservativesarecommunistss.blogspot.com/2009/11/iran-is-rapidly-becoming-worlds-number.html?showComment=1259784754597 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959487 | 1,391 | 1.765625 | 2 |
We speak in color because color is the language of design. Color is more than aesthetics. Color is power. When combined with great design, color can help change the world. Or at least the world of a space. Color speaks to people. Color can motivate. Color can make people safe. Ultimately, color can make people more productive.
We think our color story will speak to you because it's been designed around you. We've surrounded you with every capability you need to speak loudly and clearly, to design with confidence. This book outlines these unique capabilities. We call them our four Cs:
Color Foundations, ColorMatch, Coordination and Customization. | <urn:uuid:b26609d2-60c6-4845-8b67-8ace84b1cc40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://johnsonite.com/ColorResourcesTools/ColorDesign/tabid/872/Default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967795 | 135 | 1.78125 | 2 |
J. Cooke, P. Dwyer and L. Waite
Journal of Social Policy, vol. 41, 2012, p. 329-347
The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 extended rights to live and work in other member states to nationals of the Accession 8 (A8) countries. Consequently, over one million Central and East European migrants entered the UK to take up paid work. This paper initially considers competing evidence about the impact of A8 migration on employment opportunities and housing provision in the inner city communities that host many new migrant groups. Although some research argues that A8 migration has brought many positive gains, using new data from a study in a northern city alongside wider available literature, this article presents evidence that many members of the established communities that live alongside A8 migrants believe that their opportunities have been adversely affected by the arrival of these groups. It is then argued that the reactions of established communities are best understood in terms of defensive and proactive citizenship engagement. As A8 migrants positively engage with their newly acquired citizenship right to live and work in the UK, they engender a form of defensive citizenship among established communities who often perceive the newly arrived A8 migrants as being in direct competition for local jobs and welfare resources.
The Guardian, Apr. 4th 2012, p. 5
David Cameron attempted to breathe fresh life into his flagging 'big society' initiative when he launched a £600m fund to support grassroots social projects. The prime minister announced that £400m from dormant bank accounts would be used to help finance the scheme, dubbed Big Society Capital. A further £200m would come from Britain's four largest high street banks - Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC and RBS. The fund would help local groups take control of their post office and provide capital for charities and voluntary groups bidding for government contracts. There would be a strong focus on helping the long-term unemployed back into work.
D. Jarvis, N. Berkeley and K. Broughton
Community Development Journal, vol. 47, 2012, p. 232-247
The importance of involving local people in regenerating their communities was at the heart of New Labour government policy. However, in reality delivering community-led regeneration has proved complex and its benefits difficult to measure. Using the sustainable communities framework developed by Egan (2004), this study examines the importance of community engagement in addressing the drivers of neighbourhood deprivation in the context of Canley, Coventry. The research highlights that a key factor behind Canley's persistent deprivation was the historic absence of community engagement. A lack of social capital, a lack of trust between residents and between residents and public agencies, high levels of transience and weak attachment to place are shown to have underpinned this. The level of mistrust between the residents and the local authority was shown to make the successful implementation of regeneration programmes difficult to achieve. Notwithstanding the absence of national programme funding, the process of rebuilding trust has begun, informed by a statistical evidence base, underpinned by private and public sector involvement and driven by a commitment from communities to transform their neighbourhood.
D. McGuiness and others
Local Economy, vol. 27, 2012, p. 251-264
South Bank in Teesside could be characterised as a place locked into a downward spiral of multiple deprivation, housing market failure, declining population and a bad reputation. These problems are deeply entrenched and have proved resistant to successive regeneration attempts. However, the area does have a strong sense of community, with residents displaying a strong commitment to the area. In the context of spending cuts under the Coalition government, public funding for regeneration has largely dried up. This article considers an alternative approach: the potential of private sector retail-led regeneration. | <urn:uuid:8dfc8be8-8eec-4fd4-a9e8-597d51c4b6f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bl.uk/welfarereform/issue154/commregn.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950446 | 750 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Markets & Services | Projects
Innovative solutions cut millions in project costs and speed completion
Client: Parsons Overseas Company of Canada
Project: Kicking Horse Canyon Bridge
Location: British Columbia, Canada
The Trans-Canada Highway reaches its highest altitude at the Kicking Horse Pass, the point that marks the Continental Divide. When originally constructed in 1956, the highway followed the Canadian Pacific Railway route through this pass alongside the Kicking Horse River, which is a narrow, winding two-lane highway with steep rock faces on one side and a drop-off to the river on the other.
The British Columbia government was anxious to see a major upgrade to this critical gateway to the province. Phase 2 of the Kicking Horse Canyon Project called for a new high-level bridge with a 405 meter span at a height of 95 meters above the river and upgrade to a modern four-lane standard with a design speed of 100 km/hour. This would create a safer alignment, reducing the dangerous curves and steep grades of the original roadway.
Delcan was engaged through a partnership with Parsons Overseas Company of Canada, a member of the Trans-Park Highway Group, to provide the overall drainage and bridge design check. Delcan’s involvement ultimately included innovative hydraulic designs, conceptual bridge and wall design, detailed retaining wall designs and independent design of all bridge elements. The innovative engineering solutions brought to this project helped save millions of dollars and shorten the originally proposed timeline by nearly two years.
The spectacular new Kicking Horse Canyon Bridge is the first curved incrementally-launched bridge in North America. The successful completion of this major project adds significant value to the Trans-Canada Highway, eliminating several kilometers of notoriously dangerous road and bridgework and providing a safe, competitive corridor for the movement of goods to ports, as well as the enjoyment of some of the most breathtaking scenery in Canada.
Public-Private Partnership: The Kicking Horse Canyon Project is a prime example of public-private partnership (P3). Through a competitive process conducted by Partnerships BC, TransPark Highway Group was selected to deliver the improvements to Phase 2 of the Kicking Horse Project. Delcan formed part of the winning team of engineers who implemented the design and construction of the new highway and high-level bridge. Despite significant construction, maintenance and operational challenges, the new Park Bridge and associated highway approaches were opened to traffic 21 months ahead of schedule.
Numerous Awards: Delcan and the Kicking Horse Canyon Bridge project received numerous awards for engineering excellence and innovation, as well as for successful completion almost two years ahead of schedule.
- Association of Canadian Engineering Companies, Award of Excellence for Transportation
- Consulting Engineers of British Columbia, Award of Merit for Transportation
- Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (Quebec), Award of Excellence
- Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC), Engineering Award of Excellence
- Premier’s Award for Innovation and Excellence, Innovation category
- Transportation Association of Canada, Environmental Achievement Award
“The opening of this new bridge marks another milestone in the development of British Columbia’s key trade corridors,” said The Honorable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. “In addition to improving safety and easing traffic congestion, the resulting economic benefits and environmental improvements will have a positive impact on local communities and on the entire region.” | <urn:uuid:a0b65d4c-7cb2-445e-b8bd-312b4aea5262> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://delcan.com/articles/kicking-horse-park-bridge | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930792 | 683 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Home Asia Pacific South Asia India
Buddhist monk files suit for cutting of Bodhi tree
IANS, June 25, 2007
Patna, India -- A Buddhist monk has filed a criminal complaint against top officials of the Bodh Gaya temple in Bihar for allegedly cutting a branch of a Bodhi tree there, considered sacred to millions the world over as it is believed Lord Buddha attained enlightenment under it about 2,550 years ago.
<< BODHI TREE CHOPPED OFF: The Bodh Gaya Temple management finds itself in the midst of a fresh controversy, with a criminal complaint filed in the court against the cutting off a branch of the famous 'Mahabodhi' tree. Image from Times Now TV.
Arup Brahmachari, a monk in his 30s, has filed a criminal complaint case against officials of the Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee in the court of the chief judicial magistrate in Gaya.
"I have filed a criminal case against officials of the temple with evidence, including eight photographs, that a branch of the Bodhi tree was cut off," Arup Brahmachari told IANS Sunday over telephone from Bodh Gaya, 110 km from here.
Around a year ago it was widely reported that some miscreants had cut off a branch of the Bodhi tree. The Nitish Kumar-led government was quick in issuing a denial.
However, after a hue and cry over the incident worldwide, the state government got samples collected from the cut area on the tree and sent it to a Pune based forest laboratory to ascertain the truth.
Ironically, nearly 11 months after, the laboratory report is yet to be made public. The Gaya district administration said the report was awaited. Some Buddhist monks suspect that the government is trying to hide truth.
"My complaint was supported by an affidavit filed by Deepak Malakar, a gardener of the temple, who used to look after the Bodhi tree," Brahmachari said.
In his affidavit, Malakar claimed that he cut off a branch of the tree on July 10, 2006, allegedly on the order of Bahadant Bodhipal, the temple chief priest, and carried it to his residence.
Brahmachari has accused top temple officials, including the ex-officio chairman, secretary Kalicharan Yadav, chief priest Bahadant Bodhipal and the Gaya district magistrate, of trying to temper with Malakar's affidavit. "These powerful people are doing everything to frighten Malakar to change his mind over the issue and police have even raided his house," Brahmachari claimed.
Brahamchari, who has been spearheading a campaign against the mushrooming of fake NGOs in Bodh Gaya, said that last week when he went to the police station to file the criminal case the police refused to register it.
The Bodhi tree behind the Mahabodhi temple, which has grown from the original banyan tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment, saw new leaves after four years last year.
Last month IANS reported that the tree was threatened by an unknown disease. Hundreds of fresh leaves of the holy tree are falling off daily.
Brahamchari blamed the temple officials of negligence of the Bodhi tree.
Sources in Bodh Gaya said plant scientist A.K. Singh had suggested some corrective measures after examining the tree.
Thousands of Buddhist pilgrims from across the world carry back leaves from the tree.
An official of the Mahabodhi temple, which the Unesco has declared a World Heritage Site, said the Bodhi tree is the sixth regeneration of the original banyan tree. | <urn:uuid:7c814608-2527-45c1-aedb-1be00fd3521a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=42,4377,0,0,1,0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970017 | 761 | 1.625 | 2 |
The holidays can become a dull time for seniors in nursing or assisted living homes who often don't get visitors or enough time to spend with family and friends. Volunteers of Snail Mail for Seniors create cards to make their days brighter.
Young and old alike gathered Thursday at the Canton Public Library for a Valentine's Day card-making session. The tables were littered with pink hearts and red card-stock.
Snail Mail for Seniors provided the supplies and the volunteers went to work.
Kay Micallef, of Canton, said this was at least her fourth or fifth time volunteering. She said she heard about Snail Mail for Seniors at the Liberty Fest a couple of years ago.
"I usually end up making them by myself," said Maria Jagalla, of Plymouth.
She has been making cards for many years, she said, and decided this time to attend the session.
"You've got to get into a rhythm," she said about making the cards.
Volunteers try to make as many cards as they can, which are not addressed to specific senior citizens. Nursing and retirement homes are concerned with security so they do not release the names of seniors who get cards. There are also no in-person visits.
Cards are sent to 35 senior homes and 20 personal homes, and there are about 800 seniors who get cards each month, said Cathy Donaldson, founder of Snail Mail for Seniors.
"I think it's a win-win," Donaldson said.
She said volunteers can do something heart-warming and inexpensive, and seniors feel that someone remembers them. | <urn:uuid:7125a190-2e35-4ba2-b2f5-b79dd1b840c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://plymouth-mi.patch.com/articles/volunteers-make-valentines-for-seniors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984096 | 332 | 1.742188 | 2 |
“When a manager or operator measures their plant’s performance by cost per pound, what factors—labor, purchasing, utilities, maintenance, rewash/ragout, or others—must they include in their calculations to arrive at the most accurate figure?”
Chemicals Supply — Matt Koloseike, Procter & Gamble Professional, Cincinnati
There are several cost drivers in commercial laundry. Examples include labor, which constitutes almost half (46%) of the costs, and linen replacement, which accounts for 22%, according to the Uniform and Textile Service Association’s 2006 On-Premise Laundry Processing Costs Study*. I would like to discuss one of the most overlooked areas in commercial laundry—the rewash rate.
The average rewash rate for commercial laundry should be approximately 3-5%; laundry managers often do not track or measure appropriate rewash levels in their program. Unfortunately, this rate has important cost implications to the overall laundry operation.
If left unmonitored, it could significantly increase overall expenditures in a commercial laundry program. Laundry managers can be required to dose more chemicals and run machines for longer durations when rewash percentages exceed industry standards.
[NP][/NP]The additional costs associated with this unanticipated work are not typically calculated in cost-per-pound or cost-per-load calculations. Therefore, it is important for laundry managers to work directly with their chemical suppliers to understand their rewash rates. During this consultation, chemical suppliers can help managers achieve rewash rates within an acceptable range.
Most laundry chemical suppliers can work directly with laundry managers to build proper wash programs, and usually have standard procedures for rewash and the treatment of common laundry stains.
Since staining is a key factor in high rewash levels, it is always important to check for stains prior to the soiled linens entering the washing machines. It is also important to treat stains while they are fresh.
Allow appropriate time for all stain-removal treatments to work prior to actually entering the wash cycle. Five minutes is the standard for such stain-removal treatments to work, but please consult with your chemical supplier about your individual operation.
On colored fabrics, always check stain-removal treatments for colorfastness on an inside seam to help prevent any unintended consequences.
Of course, some linens require special attention beyond stain-removal treatments. Instead of immediately running them through the normal wash cycle again, the best approach is to separate them and save them for a specially designed rewash program. This program should be designated and determined by your laundry chemical supplier. This level of collaboration will also give the laundry manager an opportunity to account for and track the actual rewash rates.
By treating stains, closely monitoring rewash levels, and ensuring appropriate machine programming, every laundry manager can maximize overall performance while controlling costs.
*Cost data was derived from OEM and Bureau of Labor Statistics data and UTSA estimates. Indirect costs include depreciation, maintenance, and equipment amortization over the equipment life. Linen replacement includes normal replacement, damage, abnormal wear and upgrades. Total cost does not include overhead expenses determined through specific allocation methodologies.
Healthcare Laundry — Dianna Aracich, Wheeling Hospital, Wheeling, W.Va.
When measuring your plant’s performance by cost per pound, there are many variables to consider so that you obtain the most accurate figure.
[NP][/NP]I would like to tell you it’s as simple as taking your actual operating budget and dividing it by pounds processed, but that would be too easy, as well as inaccurate. There are numerous variables involved that are not line items in your operating budget.
Labor costs are wages and fringe benefits. Fringe benefits can include everything from healthcare to union dues, and equal 30% or more of an employee’s wages. It’s imperative that you include all benefits when calculating salaries, because labor is the largest portion of your expenses.
Direct labor costs include in-house soiled-linen pickup, washing, drying, sorting, ironing, folding, and preparing linen for delivery. Linen room labor costs are for in-house delivery personnel and a seamstress. Since everyone in my plant works production as needed (including me), this is all included in direct labor cost in my budget.
Administrative costs are related to management, secretarial and any other nonproduction personnel, as well as any linen management program you may pay for if not included in your vendor’s linen contract.
Maintenance/repair costs include labor and materials for routine maintenance of your building and equipment. Be sure to include depreciation for all.
There are costs for general supplies such as ironer padding, transport-cart liners, sewing supplies, copies, and so on. Chemical supply costs include laundry chemicals and water treatment. Plus, don’t forget the utilities: electricity, water, gas, steam, sewer and trash removal.
There is textile replacement cost for replenishing your linen supply due to wear or loss.
If you manage an OPL that also has off-site customers, you must include costs related to distribution and return, drivers, fuel, fees, vehicle maintenance/repair, and any lease agreements.
Cost varies depending on type of operation—healthcare or hospitality, OPL or commercial. There are a number of different variables to consider, and none is less important than the others.
If you are going to measure your operation’s performance by pounds processed, make sure to take every expense into consideration. Do your homework and make sure the amounts and percentages you use are accurate for your location.
A manager must carefully calculate all costs associated with his or her operation, whether it appears in the laundry’s budget or someone else’s, in order to get the true cost.
Linen Supply/Commercial Laundry — Tamica Goree, Ph.D., STG Linen Services, Glendale, Ariz.
Every cost should be assigned to every unit produced, or at least given to each to be carried in the inventory, to be matched with the revenue it earns when sold. However, the expense of computing such costs on such a precise basis outweighs the benefits for this extra accuracy.
[NP][/NP]Since the ultimate objective is overall net income, at least some of the operating expenses have to be captured for performance. The gross profit is usually given the most attention because it is the area that is subject to considerable management control.
For this reason, it is management’s decision on what to monitor beyond the gross-profit line so that deviations are analyzed and the operation achieves greater control over costs. If one were to break down all cost elements that go into assessing profitability, the factors would be price per load.
This is a more accurate measurement for assessing your business impact. If you examine your total cost of washing per load, including electricity, water, natural gas, chemicals and labor, you will generate a good gross-profit number to work from. The key then is to lower your cost per load as much as possible, working with vendors and using appropriate wash/cycle times.
Check back tomorrow for Part 3 of this story!
Click here for Part 1 of this story. | <urn:uuid:d3af669b-6b75-4ab0-b6f1-0ed3be5f0cfb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanlaundrynews.com/article/measuring-cost-pound-include-all-expenses-part-2-3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948206 | 1,494 | 1.695313 | 2 |
By Keith L. Scott*
The Rev. Steve Hansen of Wesley and Grace United Methodist Churches in Mason City started a “soap ministry,” teaching members of the congregation and interested others how to make laundry soap as a way to be of service to others as well as to help themselves. He began making soap to be taken to an area school to be given to needy families, to the Senior Center, Community Food Bank, Community Kitchen, and to members of our congregations.
In the spring of 2012 Anne Bacon, Director of Bidwell-Riverside Community Center of Des Moines, spoke at the Wesley UMW Guest Day. She made a plea for churches to become more involved in the ministry of Bidwell-Riverside. Rev. Hansen asked if providing soap would be an appropriate ministry. She said that it would be most welcome, particularly because soap could not be purchased with food stamps. Rev. Hansen offered to have Wesley UMC provide 100 gallons of soap to Bidwell-Riverside.
The challenge was presented to the congregation. Men and women gathered at Wesley on Saturday, May 12, 2012. The women prepared the ingredients to make the soap; men filled the buckets and did the final stirring of the ingredients. They spent the morning mixing over 100 gallons of soap. The soap was then left to “cure” overnight and then put into detergent bottles to be distributed through Bidwell-Riverside.
If your church is interested in joining in a soap ministry, please contact Rev. Steve Hansen at Wesley UMC, Mason City. He’ll send you the recipe and other information on how to get started.
*Rev. Keith L. Scott is Visitation Pastor for Wesley and Grace United Methodist Churches, Mason City | <urn:uuid:9e33b11e-0ef6-4f4d-9856-cc63427786f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iaumc.org/news/detail/1121 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967851 | 361 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Salman Taseer - Governor Punjab, businessman, media mogul, PPP leader – was gunned down outside a restaurant in Kohsar Market, Islamabad, by one of his own guards. The guard – reportedly, a Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri – was part of the security Elite Force depute assigned to keep Salman Taseer safe gunned down the Punjab Governor with as many as 27 bullets. Later the guard handed himself to the police and said that he had killed Salman Taseer because of his vocal opposition to the Blasphemy Law.
Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri may have pulled the trigger but let us all hang our head in shame today because Salman Taseer was killed by the intolerance, the hatred, the extremism, the vigilantism, the violence and the jahalat that now defines our society. He was killed by the unchecked abundance of false sanctimony where custodians of morality have been breathing fire and instigating violence. Each one of us, including his own party, should be ashamed today for having tolerated the pall of intolerance that has eventually gunned down this man. Today’s Pakistan is defined by Mumtaz Hussain Qadris. They exist all around us. And it is all of us who tolerate them and their intolerance. It is this tolerance of intolerance that kills.
Today, it claimed yet one more victim.
Just as one example of many that we should have been paying heed to already, it was less than a month ago that a dispicable man in Peshawar was publicly offering money to anyone who would murder in the name of the blasphemy law. The news flashed on the media. Was highlighted in disgust by those like us. Yet, no action was taken; indeed, not even note was taken by those in power. It was ignored as mere ‘josh i khitaabat’ and emotionalism. It was obviously more. The tragedy is that there are too many like this man. Are people like him not responsible for spreading hatred and the results of that hatred? People instigating violence. People celebrating violence. People supporting violence. All of these people are responsible for Salman Taseer’s death. As are all of those who have stood silent and let these merchants of violence sell their wares. (Full story here).
At one level the details of what exactly happened in Islamabad today are less important than what we have allowed to happen in our societies for all the years that have led to this day, but for those who may not have seen the (still developing) details, here is an update from Dawn:
Gunmen killed the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province, a senior member of the ruling party, in Islamabad on Tuesday, his spokesman said. “Yes, he has died,” said the spokesman for Salman Taseer. Police official Mohammad Iftikhar said Taseer was gunned down by one of his elite security force protectors. Five other people were wounded as other security personnel responded to the attack. Police said earlier Taseer had been shot nine times and wounded near his Islamabad home in the F6 sector and close to Kohsar market, a popular shopping and cafe spot frequented by wealthy Pakistanis and expatriates.
Another police official, Hasan Iqbal, said a pair of witnesses told the police that as the governor was leaving his vehicle, a man from his security squad fired at him. Taseer then fell, while other police officials fired on the attacker. In recent days, as the People’s Party has faced the loss of its coalition partners, the 56-year-old Taseer has insisted that the government will survive. But it was his stance against the blasphemy laws that apparently led to his killing.
Interior Minister Rahman Malik told reporters that the suspect in the case had surrendered to police and told them he killed Taseer because “the governor described the blasphemy laws as a black law.” Taseer was believed to be meeting someone for a meal, Malik said. Other members of his security detail were being questioned, Malik said. The security for Taseer was provided by the Punjab government. “We will see whether it was an individual act or someone had asked him” to do it, Malik said of the attacker. | <urn:uuid:43b67e30-afe2-43bb-968c-b17ef517c0f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pakistaniat.com/2011/01/04/salman-taseer-killed/?cp=31 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987869 | 883 | 1.585938 | 2 |
I have worked for three years as a software developer, i have realized that i don’t enjoy this coding anymore and now want to move out of coding.
I have found the position of business analyst to be the most interesting and suitable option, where in i can use my software developer experience as well as use my excellent communication skills for this BA position.
Am i right in assuming so.
Answer Is changing careers from software developer to business analyst, right for me?
Business Analysts who work with Information Technology (IT) or software development projects are referred to as IT Business Analysts.
As a software developer, you are in a good position to become an IT Business Analyst because you have programming experience and you also have Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) experience, which makes you an IT team insider.
IT business analysts need a strong understanding of the SDLC process, and they have to be comfortable working with computer programmers.
In addition, they also need to have excellent communication skills.
IT Business Analysts Need Excellent Communication and Interpersonal Skills
When you think of great communicators you have known, or read about, what comes to mind? Being a good communicator involves far more than preparing notes for a speech and delivering them, or reading off of a teleprompter well.
A business analyst uses these soft skills like a software developer uses technical skills.
Verbal Communication skills are key IT Business Analyst skills.
You will be required to make presentations to large or small groups from various departments.
The fastest way to develop good verbal communication skills is by joining Toastmasters, which is a supportive organization where group members grow together while practicing presentation skills.
IT Business Analysts Need Listening Skills
An an IT Business Analyst, you ask qualifying questions to make sure that you heard what the person is really saying.
Before ending a conversation, make sure you listened and understood what was said, and didn’t just hear the sound of words being spoken.
IT Business Analysts Need Leadership Skills
The IT Business Analyst needs to assert himself in a likeable manner to gain control of the problem-solving process.
IT Business Analysts Need Conflict-resolution skills
When dealing with two or more people, conflict is inevitable but how you handle it can make or break a project.
Using basic customer relation skills is helpful. The basic skill of common courtesy and tact can put out a flame of anger and end many arguments.
IT Business Analysts Need Facilitation Skills
Before you can begin to problem solve, you first need to understand the problem and the possible solutions.
Remember that facilitating is not taking over as the boss. Rather, facilitating is pulling out information from those hesitant to talk and quieting down those who jeopardize the conversation by taking over conversations.
Facilitating meetings is an important part of gathering, or eliciting, requirements. As a facilitator, you will want to open up communication lines between every stakeholder.
IT Business Analysts Need Negotiation Skills
To negotiate well, you must first understand the key factors of an issue as to what is most important and what can be cut loose. So, you must know what / when to give and when to take.
As an IT Business Analyst, you have very little control over the actual final decision making that comes from the company’s management, but you do have the power to influence it. Do this through using good negotiating skills.
IT Business Analysts Need Written Communication Skills
Documentation is an important part of being a Business Analyst. Being able to write clearly and concisely is a valuable skill in communicating what has been accomplished and what still needs to be done.
One of the easiest ways to improve written communication skills is to start a blog. Learning how to write is a skill that can be developed through reading well-written information, it’s also a good idea to read as much Business Analyst-related technical publications you can get your hands on.
Software Developer Experience Is Helpful for IT Business Analysts
Even though you came from IT and understand IT, you still may need to re-gain the trust of the IT department, once you move over to business analysis.
This is because, once you take on the title of Business Analyst, you may be seen as the enemy on the side of the business and management as opposed to being part of the team.
It’s similar to when a child who grew up in poverty is suddenly discovered and turned into a star athlete on a professional team.
Yes, he has made it to the big time, but his friends from the under-privileged neighborhood may feel left behind.
Since you already understand the inner workings of IT and come from the philosophy that technology has answers to business problems, you should be able to emphatize / understand the viewpoint of developers.
The most effective and efficient way to get things done is to have an understanding of both sides to an issue.
As an IT Business Analyst, you will have to work directly with members of the IT team and since you already know the terminology and the inner workings of this department, you are primed for success. | <urn:uuid:cb154982-86f8-42e5-b7d0-598011a19712> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessanalystbootcamp.com/is-changing-careers-from-software-developer-to-business-analyst-right-for-me/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955882 | 1,052 | 1.84375 | 2 |
I am just coming back to Desktop programming and have decided to take a look at WPF C# rather than the standard Windows Forms.
I'm working through the tutorials and getting to grips with the XAML and really liking it.
What my application requires though is a 2 pane layout, a left column with expander menus (done) and a right column where the content changes for each selection. The right hand content will vary and will come from various SQL Queries and Calculations so may include Data Grids and Charts.
What I am hoping to find are some pointers on how to go about this in WPF. I have an example which uses XML data to populate the right pane based on left pane selection but i'm not sure that is the best approach for my application?
What are the options please? Does it sound like WPF will be a good choice for the project?
As an aside I was looking back through the first few pages and notice not a lot of activity in the WPF forum, are a lot of people developing with this? My first impressions of it are great, but we'll see if it's going to work for me | <urn:uuid:a0f3b508-05ce-48f3-ac27-be700f18f3be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.codeguru.com/showthread.php?506843-How-to-completely-reset-MediaElement&goto=nextoldest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958681 | 238 | 1.601563 | 2 |
(NAPSI)Kristi Mardis was diagnosed with severe heart failure in her early 20s. For years, she had no quality of life, no energy. Simple everyday tasks were challenging.
I couldnt go out or do things with family and friends. I could barely make myself dinner. Sometimes, I could barely breathe, she said. I was simply existing. I wasnt living.
In April 2009, Kristis frustrating decade-long battle with heart failure reached a critical point. After years of strain, doctors informed her that her heart had deteriorated to the point of no return. She was told she had days to live.
Help for Failing Hearts
Kristis cardiologist recommended an option that could improve her condition: a medical device that has helped more than 13,000 patients and their families get back the life they thought was lost.
This technology is called the HeartMate II Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), or heart pump.
When the heart is too weak to pump blood on its own, the HeartMate II LVAD is attached to the heart to help circulate blood. The pump is implanted inside. Other equipment is worn outside the body to monitor, control and power the pump.
HeartMate II can provide relief from the symptoms of heart failure and enable an active lifestyle, as patients are able to return home and resume normal activity after receiving the device. HeartMate II is the most widely used and studied LVAD in the world.
After she received her HeartMate II, Kristi noticed a difference immediately. She quickly regained her strength and nowmore than three years laterenjoys boundless energy. Today, she is working at a local hospital, and loves taking care of her plants and flowers, and being outside. She also dedicates a significant amount of time helping others, educating them about the benefits of the LVAD.
Most people that I talk to cant believe I was ever sick. Its important to let everyone know how this can change their lives, she said. Before HeartMate II, I existed. And now I live.
Are You Suffering From Heart Failure?
Below are symptoms that may signal something is wrong.
Shortness of breath
Swollen feet, ankles and legs
Trouble sleeping when lying flat
Feeling weak and tired
Know Your Options
Only your doctor knows what is right for you and your condition. If you or someone you love is struggling with heart failure, talk to your doctor about LVAD therapy and HeartMate II. Visit www.hearthope.com to learn more.
On the Net:North American Precis Syndicate, Inc.(NAPSI) | <urn:uuid:034824d0-86fd-4dac-921a-cc6647327455> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://explorernews.com/online_features/health_and_wellness/article_5a981520-a647-560c-a913-a4afb14e7ebb.html?mode=story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970999 | 550 | 1.804688 | 2 |
A recent report from the National Association of Realtors noted that residential home prices continued to decline across the country during the third quarter, but this has not stopped an increase in home sales.
In total, 111 metropolitan statistical areas witnessed declines during the third quarter, while 39 MSAs had home price gains, the NAR said. This is slightly lower when compared to the second quarter, during which 41 out of a total 150 MSAs witnessed improvements. Total home sales stayed near stagnant when compared to the second quarter - dropping only 0.1 percent - but had a significant gain of 17 percent year-over-year. This puts the seasonally adjusted annual rate at 4.880 million for the third quarter.
"Home sales need to recover first - only then can prices stabilize," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for NAR. "Existing-home sales are little changed from the second quarter but are notably higher than a year ago. The good news is inventory levels have been trending gradually down."
The increase of home sales may be due to the continuance of low mortgage rates, as well as low home prices across the country. This situation may also signal a jump in consumer confidence compared to 2010. | <urn:uuid:71e0ea2b-9f95-4921-bd1b-307fe5c7537a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tsiappraisal.com/news/item/Sales-increase-nationwide-despite-home-price-drop-800640034 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975403 | 244 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Consistently in the printed word from our state daily newspapers and the spoken word from television newscasters are diatribes come from the extreme radical environmentalists. Giving their distorted facts about pollutants coming from coal fired steam generating power plants is typical.
Before you accept their word as gospel truths pick up your telephone and call any homeowner living in Helper or Price. Ask them if they are at present or have suffered from any pollutants coming from the Carbon Plant just two miles north of Helper and 13 miles north of Price.
In addition the Huntington power plant has two large units and the Hunter power plant has three located not far away either.
Do not be side tracked by these tall tales being belched from the mouths of the environmental community.
Learn the truth and it shall set you free. | <urn:uuid:7a91ea91-db3b-4f30-8b4b-b61073d2b12c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunadvocate.com/print.php?tier=1&article_id=12340&poll=266&vote=results | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961176 | 161 | 1.765625 | 2 |
"To my knowledge, we have no new leak points as a result of this operation," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Wednesday.
Suttles also said BP captured 22,000 barrels of oil with its insertion tube before the tube was removed as part of the early stages of the top kill process.
If BP's "top kill" effort is unsuccessful, the company will attempt to put a smaller cap on the well. That process would likely take place early next week, Suttles said Wednesday.
The company also continues to drill a relief well, a longer-term effort that would permanently shut down the well, he said.
"It's too early to know if it's going to be successful. Over the next 24 hours we'll know if it will be successful, but it's too early to know now," Suttles said of the company's "top kill" effort to stem the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
If the top kill doesn't work, BP will pursue a range of other opportunities, including placing another blowout preventer on top of the existing blowout preventer, Suttles said.
He said the next step in the top kill operation will be to monitor the well and ultimately finish the job by pumping in cement. Those steps could be complete as soon as in the next 24 hours, he said.
U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said she is "very encouraged by some aspects" of the top kill procedure BP has been implementing in an effort to shut down the spewing Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
"We can't rush this," Landry said.
"What we need to see is that the well can't flow to the surface. That will be the way we know it's successful," Suttles said.
The junk shot is still an option that could employed in combination with the top kill effort.
"It's still available to us if we need it as part of the job," Suttles said | <urn:uuid:e32b00ed-9cf3-48d4-9676-b57502f37fae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/doug_suttles_no_new_leak_point.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980891 | 412 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Common abrahamic excuses that hold little water
"God gaves us free will, ergo it's pur own fault": Except that the Bible nor the Qu'ran put emphasis on free will. Hell, this excuse is so very recent, that, until a few centuries ago, the idea that God had absolute control over our lives was very popular.
"Its our fault; Adam and Eve's sin created evil, not God!": If you have read Genesis, you'll know this is bullshit (Hell, even Yahweh admits he created evil!). Likewise, at no point is the first sin ever considered a "Pandora's Box" situation.
"God is goodness incarnate! Evil is against his nature!":...have you even read the Bible? Yahweh is also considered to not be goodness incarnate un | <urn:uuid:52249c0e-fe17-44a9-a079-55e8a5c1bb25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/289003490/digitalart | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961269 | 170 | 1.53125 | 2 |
From the Rocky Mountains to the Eastern Plains, Colorado has been named the 'Manliest State' and Englewood, Littleton and Denver are the top three 'Manliest Cities' according to Movoto. The list was created by reviewing barber shops, boxing gyms, car part stroes, hardware stores and others.
While the entire state is pretty much a Mecca of manliness, we thought we'd look a little closer and use our experience in ranking cities on a national level to determine which metros can claim to be the manliest.
Based on our research—which may or may not have involved some breaks to cut wood and wrestle bears—we found that the following Colorado cities are tops when it comes to manly stuff:
A 15-year-old lion at the Denver Zoo is undergoing cancer treatment that is the first of it's kind.
Rian, a 15-year-old South African lion, underwent surgery and is receiving chemotherapy for an aggressive cancer originating in his spleen. Veterinarians hope the treatment will extend and improve his quality of life while providing valuable information about how chemotherapy could help other zoo lions and large cats.
"We are very thankful for all the help and expertise CSU doctors continue to provide. Moving forward, this will be a very valuable relationship," said Denver Zoo Staff Veterinarian Dr. Betsy Stringer.
In mid-March, zookeepers noticed Rian acting significantly lethargic, prompting zoo veterinarians to perform a full physical examination, during which tests revealed a large mass in the lion's abdomen.
After exploratory surgery, further testing determined that Rian's spleen grew to that size because it was infiltrated with a type of cancer known as high-grade splenic lymphoma.
There is new hope in a place where it's really needed the most right now! A brand new baby white buffalo was born on Saturday at Royal Gorge Bridge & Park!
Royal Gorge Bridge & Park, Photographer: Tracy Bandera
In the midst of catastrophic fires and destruction at the Royal Gorge Bridge & Park, Canon City, Colo., which began Tuesday afternoon, by early Saturday morning, the gift of life was literally given as a white buffalo calf was born, and was christened "Smokey." He's a pretty white bull calf, sired by the park's nine year old white buffalo bull, Chief Silver Bullet. Pictured with Smokey is his mother Brownie, All of the herd carry the white recessive gene, and 25% are born white.
The park's wildlife park has a small herd of buffalo, elk, and bighorn sheep, all miracleously survived the fire that swept through the park and across the Royal Gorge. They are all in very good shape, and are continued to be fed and watered until they can be safely moved.
There is another brand new baby at the Denver Zoo today! A baby zebra. Zoo visitors can see mom and daughter with the entire herd in the yard now.
There's a new set of stripes in Denver Zoo's zebra yard today. Thursday nigh, June 13, Denver Zoo welcomed the birth of an endangered, female Grevy's (Greh-veez) zebra. At less than a day old, the unnamed foal, is already comfortably exploring her new home with her mother, Topaz, never too far away. Guests can see mom and daughter with the entire herd in the yard now.
This is the third foal for Topaz and she is still proving to be an excellent mother, carefully shepherding the young foal around their yard. Topaz and the foal's father, Punda, were paired under recommendation of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Species Survival Plan (SSP) which ensures healthy populations and genetic diversity among zoo animals. Fortunately, the couple has proved to be an excellent match.
Father's Day weekend is coming up and every dad loves to grill so I sat down with Executive Chef Jason Morse from the Colorado Beef Council and 5280 Culinary for some grilling tips. What kind of grill is best, gas or charcoal? Best way to season a steak? How hot should the grill be? Jason has all the answers for grilling up the perfect steak on Father's Day or any day this summer!
You can listen to our conversation and get all the answers to these questions to grill up the perfect steak.
It's hot in Denver, but there is a new baby at the Denver Zoo that probably enjoys winter a lot more! A brand new baby Snow Leopard was born recently!
The female cub, named Misha (Mee-sha), was born on May 13. Guests aren't able to see Misha yet as she is still bonding behind-the-scenes with her mother, Natasha. The two will remain in their den until Mom determines it is time for Misha to explore the outdoor world.
This species is native to rocky, mountainous areas above the tree line in central Asia and in the Himalayan regions of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. They are well adapted for their harsh lifestyle with well-developed chest muscles and powerful, short limbs that help them climb and leap in the rocky terrain, while their long tails help them balance on small, mountain ridges. To protect them from the cold, they have long, thick hair that covers a dense woolly under-fur and their bushy tails are also long enough to wrap around their bodies and heads. Even their large paws are fully furred to provide warmth and good traction on snow.
Thinking about a new addition to the family? The four-legged furry kind? This is your week! Thanks to the Metro Denver Shelter Alliance members, they are waiving fees on cats and dogs 1 year and older this week at the Denver Dumb Friends League and other select pet shelters! Spring into summer with a new pet. This is a first-of-its-kind collaborative adoption special, which highlights just how collaborative all the shelters are in helping place homeless pets.
Summer is a great time to adopt a pet—long, lazy days for playing, training and getting to know your new family member! That's why participating Metro Denver Shelter Alliance (MDSA) shelters and rescues are offering a five-day "Spring into Summer" metro-wide adoption special. From June 10 to 14, participating shelters and rescue groups are waiving fees for all cats and dogs 1 year and older—a first-of-its-kind collaborative adoption special.
Formed in 2000, the Metro Denver Shelter Alliance is a coalition of more than 25 public and private shelters, rescue and animal service providers committed to saving pets and fostering responsible pet ownership to increase the number of animals adopted and reunited at shelters throughout the community.
"Denver Zoo is proud to take a leadership role in the management of multiple male elephants to support the long-term vitality of Asian elephants in zoo settings. This encourages breeding programs at all zoos while providing an excellent home for elephants," Denver Zoo Vice President for Animal Care Brian Aucone said in a statement.
Born in Dublin in Feb. 17, 2008, Budhi will take the name Billy at Denver Zoo in honor of the memory of William Chenoweth, a long-time zoo supporter.
There is a new baby at the Denver Zoo! The first of its species at the zoo in more than 20 years!
Denver Zoo is celebrating the birth of an endangered Przewalski's (sheh-VAL-skee’s) horse foal, born this morning, May 31. The unnamed foal, whose gender is still not known, is not only the first birth for mother, Yisun, and father, Bataar, but also the first birth of its species at Denver Zoo since 1991. The foal is quietly exploring its yard under the watchful eye of its mother, but guests can see them both from the zoo’s main pathway now.
The Przewalski’s horse is considered the only remaining, truly “wild” horse in the world and may be the closest living wild relative of the domesticated horse. There are a number of other wild equine species, including three species of zebra, and various subspecies of the African wild ass, onager and kiang.
Looking for something to do this weekend? Make sure you check out the 42nd Annual Capitol Hill People's Fair Art and Music Festival this weekend in Denver! KOSI 101.1 will be in the Kid's Zone with fun art projects at our booth for the kids. Music, arts and crafts, live local music, wine pavillion and so much more, there is something for everyone and admission is FREE!
Flickr Creative Commons
The CHUN Capitol Hill People's Fair exists as a celebration of the diverse Denver urban community and its residents. As Colorado's Premier Arts and Crafts Festival, the uniqueness and magic of CHUN's Capitol Hill People's Fair is created by the careful blending of great family fun, carefully selected handmade arts & crafts, delicious culinary delights, fabulous entertainment and the commitment to raise funds for and promote the missions of non-profit organizations.
Colorado is known for being fit with all the outdoor activities we can do throughout Denver and the mountains! Denver was ranked fifth on the American College of Sport Medicine’s, American Fitness Index™. This index measures the health and community fitness status of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States.
Flickr, Creative Commons
Similar to an annual physical or wellness exam, the sixth annual report evaluates the preventive health behaviors, levels of chronic disease conditions, health care access and community resources and policies that encourage healthy and fit lifestyles. Included in the report’s latest edition are benchmarks for each data indicator to highlight areas that need improvement.
The metropolitan statistical area (MSA) of Denver-Aurora-Broomfield scored 68.1 (out of 100 possible points) in the 2013 report, up four spots from last year. In 2012, the metro area ranked ninth with a score of 65.6. Minneapolis-St. Paul achieved a high score of 76.4 to capture the top ranking for the third consecutive year.
Denver ranked fourth on personal health indicators related to health behaviors, chronic health conditions and health care access. The area ranked 14th on community/environmental indicators associated to the built environment, recreational facilities, park-related expenditures, physical education requirements and primary health care providers.
As we remembered those that have served over the Memorial Day Weekend, a very special dedication was made in Colorado! 13 years in-the-making, the Colorado Freedom Memorial located near Springhill Golf Course on a four-acre parcel near Buckley Air Force Base in Springhill Community Park at 756 Telluride Street in Aurora, Colorado, was officially dedicated to honor those that have served.
The Colorado Freedom Memorial is made of glass and stands 12 feet tall and 95 feet long. It's base is tiled in granite.
The panels of glass that make up the memorial lean forward and back, representative of men falling in action. A trough of water runs in front of the memorial, representative of the oceans that separate Colorado from the fields of battle.
Nearly 6000 names appear on the wall. They are grouped by war, but names will not be alphabetically listed. This will allow for additions as they are discovered.
How about some free Colorado Proud samples? I will be at Walmart in Centennial Friday from 11a to 1p over the lunch hour with free Colorado Samples and other KOSI goodies. Stop by and shop Colorado Proud prodcuts that are made right here in our backyard at everyday low prices!
We will have samples from Boulder Chips, Rocky Mountain Popcorn and more, plus, Chester Cheetah from Frito Lay will be there! Plus, you can register to win an overnight stay and dinner at the Isle Casino Black Hawk at the KOSI tent!
Where to find KOSI: Walmart Supercenter, 10900 E Briarwood Ave, Centennial, CO 80112 (near Arapahoe & Havana)
It's become a Denver tradition! Denver Day of Rock is this Saturday May 25, 2013 and we hope to see you there! It's your chance to enjoy great music on five stages in Downtown Denver and help Concerts For Kid's, a non-profit that helps children's charities in the Denver area!
Denver Day of Rock is a one-of-a-kind music event presented by Concerts For Kids to raise awareness of the children in our community. This free event will feature five stages of live music throughout downtown Denver on Saturday, May 25, 2013.
The amazing line-up includes Wendy Woo Band,Fishbone, Jessica Gabrielle and The J Walkers, Mary Louise Lee Band, Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers and so many more! See the full line-up here. It all happens this Saturday on the 16th Street Mall from 2:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Wow, what would you do with $600 million? I can't even imagine that much money. Powerball officials say the estimated jackpot has grown to $600 million for Saturday's drawing and that is a LOT of money! If your buing a ticket, or ten, I found a Powerball Simulator website, it simulates your chances of winning. It's worth a try.
Flickr Creative Commons
About Powerball Simulator.
Accurately emulates the American Powerball lottery game. Simulates up to 6,000 games per minute. Runs inside your browser.
There is a new addition at the Denver Zoo! The zoo has welcomed a two-year-old North American river otter named Ahanu (Ah-hah-new) to be a companion for long-time resident male Otto.
Ahanu was born at California’s Oakland Zoo in February 2011 and arrived at Denver Zoo in March 2013. His arrival has brought a youthful energy to the exhibit and he has been a playful pal for 15-year-old Otto. Otto’s long-time yard mate, Ariel, died of age-related symptoms in October 2012 at almost 19-years-old. North American river otters live an average of 20 years of age in zoos.
Otters play more than most wild animals. They have been observed wrestling, chasing other otters, diving for rocks and clamshells, swimming with pebbles or other small objects balanced on their noses, toying with live prey and sliding down mud banks or snow banks. “Play” activities actually serve a purpose – they are used to strengthen social bonds, practice hunting techniques and scent mark territories. | <urn:uuid:ab825d8a-993d-4849-a938-212e1f73a9fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kosi101.com/KOSI-101-1-Spends-The-Day-Working-With-Habitat-For-Humanity-of-Metro-Denver/13910574 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950966 | 3,028 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Is your credit card or debit card starting to feel the burn from all your shopping over the weekend? Are you still going strong today on Cyber Monday? Do you even know which card it makes the most sense to use? Guest author Micah Moon has a few tips to help you figure out how to maximize the results you can get while fueling the economy today!
The Great Holiday Shopping Debate: Credit vs. Debit Cards
Whether you plan to get a head start on your holiday shopping or end up waiting until the last minute, consider establishing a budget ahead of time. Even if you are one of the many who start your shopping before Thanksgiving, it may be wise to consider how you are planning to pay for the many items on your gift-giving list. As you consider how to budget for your gifts, it is also important to understand the advantages of using either a credit card or a debit card. To decide which one is the right one for you, assess your holiday needs and goals by asking yourself one important question, “Do I have the necessary cash on-hand to buy this year’s gifts?” If the answer is no, then using a credit card may be your only choice. However, if you do have the money available to make your immediate holiday purchases, then use the following tips to help you decide whether to use your debit card or credit card when doing your holiday shopping.
Credit vs. Debit Cards – Which is right for you? There are a few key differences to consider when deciding between using your debit card and your credit card for the bulk of your holiday spending.
Rewards – Credit cards, like many debit cards, offer an array of rewards from which to choose. While some companies offer points and frequent flyer miles for the purchases you make using your credit card, others like Nationwide Bank, feature attractive cash back rewards. Rewards can be a great incentive to use your credit card to do holiday shopping. Whether you have cash available for all of your seasonal purchases or not, in order to make the smartest choice for your situation, you should consider all of your payment options before you start this year’s shopping.
Interest – Debit cards don’t charge you interest each month, since the money is immediately withdrawn from your available funds. However, you may be able to avoid accruing additional interest and finance charges on your credit card if you pay off the balance in full each month. If you are concerned that you may be unable to pay off your balance, you may want to reconsider using your credit card when doing your holiday shopping.
Payments – If you don’t want the hassle of regular payments, then a debit card may be the right payment alternative for you. However, if you are confident that you can make timely payments each month, a credit card may be the right choice for your individual situation. Once you find the solution that works for your budget and your lifestyle, you’ll be on your way to enjoying financial flexibility all year long.
Consumer Protection – Debit cards offer consumer protection to a point. Banks often ask that you fill out paperwork when you think the safety of your checking account has been breached. Sometimes restoring missing funds can take weeks in order for the bank to research the fraudulent activity, often leaving you low on cash until everything is settled. Most credit card companies, however, offer fraud protection and immediate refunds. If you find suspicious or fraudulent charges on your account, simply contact the credit card company and they will likely reverse the charge immediately. This way, you always have available funds when doing your holiday shopping.
There are many reasons you may be debating between credit vs. debit cards for all of your holiday shopping needs. Although debit cards may seem like a hassle-free choice, you may want to consider using your credit card to do most of your gift buying. Benefits such as cash-back rewards make using credit cards an attractive decision. Also, if you do decide to use a credit card this holiday season, consider a Nationwide Bank credit card. This convenient Visa cash back card offers a 0% introductory APR for six billing cycles, no annual fee, 1% cash-back rebates and more. Complete your online credit card application in as little as 15 minutes, and get ready to enjoy this holiday season of gift-giving and generosity.
Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. | <urn:uuid:2ada7f84-c2e7-4146-b59b-35bfafa3b2a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stuffparentsneed.com/holiday-spending-using-credit-vs-debit-cards-for-holiday-shopping/ | 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 | 0.953987 | 889 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Posted On: January 25, 2008
Quite The Day For Younger Brother
Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom’s more sober brother instead, police said.
“The groom was drunk and had reportedly misbehaved with guests when the bride’s family and local villagers chased him away,” Madho Singh, a senior police officer, told Reuters.
The younger brother readily agreed to take the groom’s place beside the teenage bride at her family’s invitation, witnesses said.
“The groom apologized for his behavior, but has been crying that word will spread and he will never get a bride again,” Singh said by phone. | <urn:uuid:cea9b993-439b-42f7-8248-45bd5f9cac96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.legaljuice.com/2008/01/take_my_brother_please.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97267 | 158 | 1.53125 | 2 |
My husband an I own a few rental properties along with our own home, so I have learned a lot about painting - what works and what doesn't. Today, I'm excited to share a few tips on how to paint like a pro. Though, I'll warn you, once you learn how to paint properly, you will begin to notice shoddy painting and want to talk about it with husbands and friends....who usually aren't that interested in the subject. Unless they're freaks like me. Here's all that you'll need in order to paint like a pro:
- Lightweight Spackle
- Wood Filler
- Fine Sand Paper
- Paint (can opener, stir stick)
- Painter's 2" Blue Tape
- Masking Tape Plastic
- Drop Cloth
- Brilliant White Acrylic Latex Painter's Caulk-no Silicone and Caulk Gun (I recommend buying one with a tension release lever)
- Roller, Roller Cage, Roller Pan & Plastic Liner
- 2.5-3" Paintbrush-I recommend Purdy brand because they don't fall apart or leave bristles in the paint
First things first. Lay out the plastic dropcloth and use the masking tape to tape seams together.
1. Fill nail holes and low spots on the wall using your finger to spread lightweight spackling into the hole.
2. Let the spackling bubble over the surface of the wall a centimeter or two. Once dry, lightly sand the spackling by hand with the sandpaper.
3. Brush a thin coat of primer on all the spackled spots. Let dry.
Next, use the blue painter's tape to help create a perfect line between the trim and the wall color.
1. Apply the blue painter's tape onto the trim leaving a 1/16 to 1/8" gap between the trim and the wall.
2 (& 4). Using a box knife, cut a slanted tip on the end of the caulk tube. Insert the tube into the caulk gun and begin squeezing out a line of caulk along the edge of the blue tape. Do this process in 6' increments to avoid letting the caulk dry out.
3. With each 6' increment, use the index finger to run along the line of caulk, removing excess caulk. The goal is to create a seal between the wall color and the trim (that the blue painter's tape is protecting). You don't need a huge line of caulk, just enough that the blue tape shows through the caulk and a seal is formed. Have a wet rag handy to wipe your fingers on. It's going to get messy.
4. Continue this process until all windows, doors, crown moulding and floor trim are taped off and caulked.
Once the caulk is dry, it's time to load your brushes and rollers in preparation to paint.
1. Label the can of paint before you start with a permanent marker. (This will save future headaches of not knowing which paint goes to which room-Lowe's also offers the option to keep track of your paint colors online.) Slowly open the can using a paint key (given to you free at the paint counter) by going around the entire rim of the lid. Lift the lid straight up to avoid drips.
2. Use a stir stick to mix up the paint (even if it's already been mixed in the store). The pigment will settle at the bottom. Pull up from the bottom with the stir stick and then stir in a circular fashion one or two times. Repeat this process until the paint is thoroughly mixed.
3. Properly load a paint brush by dipping into the paint about 1/4" and scraping the brush against both sides on the paint can.
4. Properly load a roller by pouring paint into the paint tray (with liner), using a paint brush to catch drips from the can. Begin by lightly dipping one side of the roller into the paint and dragging the roller back towards you in the pan. Do this several times until the roller is fully loaded all the way around.
Now that we have our walls prepped, the floor protected and the trim ready to receive paint, it's time to slap on the color!
1. First, you "cut in" the trim before rolling the walls. With your loaded paintbrush, give the brush a slight angle as you "cut in" along the trim. The "cutting in" should be one motion, pulling the paint from left to right (if you are right handed). You shouldn't be brushing back and forth-this will create thick spots and lines in the paint.
2. Some of the paint will be seen on the blue tape-this is exactly why we have the tape and caulk protecting the trim.
3. Next, roll the walls with a loaded roller. Use a "W" pattern as you roll in the walls. This will help avoid lines being formed in the paint.
4. Once the first coat is dry, apply a second coat if need be. Also, scan the walls for "holidays" which are formed by air bubbles in the paint finally popping and leaving behind tiny see-through spots. Touch up where it is necessary.
Until I am 100% certain that there will be no further touch up, I bag up my brushes and my rollers.
1. Pour all excess paint back into the can, using the brush to make sure you have removed as much as you can from the paint tray liner.
2. Wipe the rim of the paint can so that it can be sealed properly.
3. Tap the lid on with a hammer, going around the entire rim.
4. Bag up the liner, the roller and the brush with plastic bags, sealing them off as much as you can from outside air. This will keep the paint wet in case you missed a spot.
If you are certain that there will be no further touch up, it's time to clean the brush and roller. 1. Use lukewarm water and a mild soap to clean the brush. If there is stubborn stuck on paint, use a wire brush pulling lightly from the handle towards the edge of the brush.
2. Squeeze the excess water out of the brush or roller.
3. Lay flat to dry (either outside or on a paper towel to protect the surface it's laying on-there often is excess paint that dribbles out over time). Now, the reveal!
1. Once the paint is dry, it's time to pull the blue painter's tape from the trim. Do not wait more than 2 days to pull the painter's tape from the trim. Grab one end of the tape and pull towards you with a 27 degree angle (in between a 45 and a 90 degree). Pull slowly allowing the caulk to tear it.
2. If the caulk was applied too thick, it may begin to pull the paint from the wall along with it. If you notice this starting to happen, use a box knife to help create a clean line. If the caulk was applied properly, you will have a beautiful clean line between your wall color and your trim.
Now that the brushes are clean, the tape has been pulled and everything has been put away, stand back and enjoy the brand new color on your walls. And the fact that you just painted like a pro.
Thanks again for having me here today. Feel free to stop by my site, Potholes and Pantyhose, for more recipes, crafts and remodeling projects. I would love to hear from you! Love-Rebekah.
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The real estate market continues to flatline throughout most of the country. But in Washington, D.C., housing prices are up a smidgen (0.3%) from the previous month. More importantly, year-over-year prices have risen by 1.3%, a continuation of a happy trend in which prices increased by 2.6% from the year before that. When comparing housing markets in America’s big cities, D.C. appears to be having the strongest and steadiest recovery. But why? What’s making D.C.’s housing market work while others flail? Here are four explanations.
- Tight inventory. The Washington D.C. metropolitan area, which as a real estate market includes nearby counties in Virginia and Maryland, never experienced the overbuilding that cities like Miami or Las Vegas did. As a result, when the bust hit in 2006, there wasn’t that much excess inventory in D.C. to soak up. In overbuilt cities, it’s clearly been a buyer’s market for quite some time. But that isn’t the case in D.C. According to a report by the analytics firm Metrostudy, resale inventory in the D.C. area has tightened from 11 months of existing supply in 2008 to just 4.7 months of existing supply this past September. Six months of supply is generally considered a “balanced” market. Anything lower than that is said to give our power to homesellers — which is exactly the situation in D.C. today.
- Gentrification. With little new land to build on, D.C. developers are taking over existing multifamily properties — industry jargon for “apartment buildings” — and gussying them up for wealthier renters. This is a strategy that works only when tenants are able and willing to pay rising rents. According to a recent article in City Paper, one developer has been buying up buildings in the neighborhoods of Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights. The story notes that Urban Investment Partners has about $100 million to spend in the D.C. market, which means that at current prices it could buy another couple dozen buildings in addition to the portfolio it already owns.
- Lack of foreclosures. In many metro markets, a wave of foreclosures hitting the market has caused downward pressure on housing prices. In contrast, a D.C. foreclosure prevention act — passed in 2010 and updated this summer — has slowed the timeline in favor of distressed homeowners. Whether the intervention has bought a troubled market segment valuable time to recover, or whether it has simply delayed the inevitable, remains to be seen.
- Jobs. While Washington, D.C., proper has a higher unemployment rate than the national average, that rate fell as more jobs were added in November, according to The Wall Street Journal. What’s more, many of D.C.’s suburbs in Virginia and Maryland have among the nation’s lowest unemployment rates, and a lot of the jobs in the D.C. area are good ones. By one estimate, one out of every eight D.C. workers is tied to the federal government — and even though their cost-of-living raises were canceled this year, wage growth of 1.3% kept pace with the private sector, reports USA Today. More importantly, those jobs are highly paid (an average of $75,296) and with good benefits — just the kind of financials that mortgage lenders like.
Sadly, the four factors that make D.C. so special aren’t necessarily easy to replicate. For instance, it will take time for excess empty housing inventory to be filled with residents in overbuilt cities such as Las Vegas. On the other hand, when metro areas such as Atlanta (which has undergone a 12% drop in housing prices year-over-year) wonder what recovery looks like, they at least have a beacon: a shining city on a hill, with not that many new homes for sale. | <urn:uuid:d82fd3ef-c808-4004-9dd0-93f09adf67fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://business.time.com/2012/01/05/the-real-estate-market-that-defies-the-trends/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965244 | 828 | 1.726563 | 2 |
For as long as I can remember, Memorial Day has meant going to the cemetery.
On the first warm, sunny Saturday each May, my mother would load geraniums and watering cans in the trunk, put all of her children in the car and drive to St. Bridget's cemetery in DeGraff. It didn't matter if you thought you had better things to do, when Mom said it was time to go take care of the graves you were wise to jump in the car.
In addition to planting red geraniums on relative's graves, we clipped grass, pulled weeds and cleaned headstones. The whole process took about an hour, depending on who was in charge of the clippers.
Our reward was a picnic lunch, eaten in the corner of the
cemetery near the evergreen trees. Our entertainment was a succession of stories about the hardships of the Depression, life during World War II and the courtship of our parents.
Until I was 12 or so, Memorial Day itself was spent in Kerkhoven, attending the annual service at Hillside Cemetery. It was there that I first heard and witnessed a 21-gun salute. When the names of the deceased veterans were read, I learned that my grandfather was a soldier in World War I. And looking out over the graves that covered that hillside,
I was impressed by the site of the flags, the flowers and the sun shining on
the marble markers.<
When I was in high school, Memorial Day meant putting on a hot, itchy wool band uniform and playing all of the verses to The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Funny how now I can only remember the first verse. I also watched each year as flowers were given to the Gold Star mothers and wives, and wondered what would we do when these ladies died and there were no more Gold Star mothers.
Memorial Day was originally dedicated to the soldiers who died in the Civil War. It was called Decoration Day because people went to cemeteries and put flowers on graves.
Memorial Day will be observed in Morris with flags waving, patriotic songs, trumpets and speeches. It will be different this year, with a new Gold Star family and many other families holding their breath, waiting for their soldiers to come home safely.
Whether you choose to participate in these public commemorations or not, the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance asks all Americans to observe the National Moment of Remembrance. On Memorial Day, Monday, May 30 at 3 p.m., you're asked to stop what you're doing and observe a moment of silence. The moment does not replace traditional Memorial Day observances. Rather, it is intended to serve as a simple, yet powerful reminder of the real reason we observe Memorial Day -- to
honor those who died in service to our nation. | <urn:uuid:3ffbb2e6-2f1e-49a5-9d04-8efe065b1585> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.morrissuntribune.com/content/sues-views-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98233 | 582 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Behind me, I could hear the train departing. About four and a half hours earlier, I had set out from bustling Tokyo Station. Now, I was virtually the only person at the ticket gate. This was fortunate as I struggled to coax my suitcase through the turnstile; the burgeoning bag bouncing off the barriers like a bowling ball down a bumper-clad lane.
My stubborn suitcase finally freed, I stepped out of the station into the sun-drenched courtyard and took a deep breath of fresh mountain air. A large tourist information center sat there in front of me, welcoming visitors in a multitude of languages to the one of Japan's most enchanting locations - Hida Takayama. Home of the famed thatched roofs of Shirakawa-go, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this secluded region provides a glimpse into the pristine past, a snapshot of Japanese tradition with cultural artifacts wholly unique to the area.
This open secret has been drawing greater numbers of foreign tourists to this sleepy city with each passing year.
"I wasn't too impressed with Tokyo," said Sherri Bethelmy. She was standing outside the station, as well, waiting for her brother to return from the information center.
"I'm from New York. A big city is a big city. Big deal," she said, adding that she wished she had set aside more time for Takayama. She would only be staying for a couple of days.
Her brother, Bruce Nachbar, after returning from the information center, echoed her enthusiasm.
"I saw something on Shirakawa-go on television and thought, 'What can I combine this with?'" he said. He decided that while he was in the area, he would also visit Nagoya for some skiing before heading back to Tokyo.
I thanked them for their time and went to collect some informational materials of my own. As I looked over maps in seven different languages and the variety of resources present, I realized that travelers like Sherri and Bruce were far from the exception: they were becoming the rule. My very presence in Takayama was proof that more and more tourists are heading off the beaten path and opting for more rural and remote locales.
No one was more keenly aware of this than Naoko Wani and Yuki Asakura, the encyclopedic members of the Takayama Municipal Office Tourism Division. I met them at the reception for tour participants held at the Hida Hotel Plaza that afternoon. Ms. Wani and Mr. Asakura were charged with showing a bus-full of various members of the travel industry around their beautiful city. And so, once luggage had been deposited in rooms and pleasantries exchanged, we were whisked off to our first destination.
After a mere 15 minutes on the bus, our entourage found itself at Chanoyu no Mori. Literally, "Tea Water Forest," it is a name that seems apt when viewing the light brown exterior of the complex.
Once inside, an air of tranquility enraptures the patron. Pristine and warmly lit, the glowing earth tones of the museum's interior only serve to emphasize the iridescent cups and kettles that shine like the eyes of some antediluvian insect from within their meticulously cleaned glass cages, fitting since this tamamushi style translates to "jewel beetle." Here recent works by living national treasures--a cup crafted by Toyozo Arakawa in 1955--mingle aside the ancient--Obeshimi, a Red Raku tea bowl made by Raku Chojirou the First over 400 years ago. In total, the museum is home to approximately 1,600 various cups, dishes, scrolls, screens and figures.
Entrance into the museum only is 1,000 yen for adults and 600 yen for children. For additional 800 yen, guests can enjoy Japanese tea ceremony at the adjacent Tea Room Zuiunan with tea ware made by prominent artisans. For an additional 1,300 yen, guests can use tea ware crafted by living national treasures. To participate in tea ceremony, the cost is 1,000 yen and 1,500 yen, respectively. A combination ticket for the art museum and the neighboring festival museum costs 1,800 yen. Group rates are available. Reservations are necessary only for those guests wishing to partake in Japanese tea ceremony. A room can also be rented in the tea room. Prices range from 10,000 yen for a half-day to 35,000 yen for a full-day, with price also varying depending on the room chosen. Reservations must be placed at least one week in advance. A trip to the tea room pulls guests past the velvet ropes and liberates patient pottery from its pristine prison. After a bowl of tea and a couple of sweets, we were back on the bus and on our way to one of the world's most unique towns.
Chanoyu no Mori - Chanoyu Art Museum / 茶の湯の森 - 茶の湯美術館
506-0032 Gifu, Takayama, Chidori 1070 / 506-0032岐阜県高山市千鳥町1070
Hours: Normal operating hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The facility is closed on Wednesdays. The museum may close for a time during the winter holiday.
Access: Take the Matsuri no Mori-bound bus from Takayama Station. Parking is available for 50 average-sized cars, with additional parking possible at the neighboring Matsuri no Mori parking area (880 car limit).
Tea Room Zuiunan / 茶室 瑞雲庵
Normal operating hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The facility is closed on Wednesdays. The tea room may close for a time during the winter holiday.
It was another hour or so before we found ourselves at UNESCO World Heritage Site Shirakawa-go. First, we walked to a precipice overlooking the quaint town. Countless photographs, many of which grace the souvenirs and postcards being sold nearby, have been taken from this vantage point. Nonetheless, the stunning view of the valley below compels even the jaded tourist to reach for their iPhone and snap a shot or two.
Hiroshi Maruyama is one purveyor of the aforementioned postcards. He said he too has noticed an increase in tourists, citing the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, running from Toyama to Matsumoto, as a major reason for the increase in visitors. After looking over a few more items for sale, I headed down to the town itself.
As you walk down the sloping pathway into Shirakawa-go, the views of the valley unfold like a lotus blossom. Perfect moments seem to hold their breath while you gaze on a thatch-roofed house framed between two trees or a stone pathway leading through the grass. Each new glimpse is a masterpiece, like a Kabuki performance where any given second should resonate with a singular beauty. It was easy to see why this locale has garnered such praise, though its road to fame was also rather rocky.
Shirakawago Ogimachi Gassho-style Hamlet was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. Its de facto symbol is the iconic Wada House, an Important National Cultural Property with clay walls and a garden. Constructed in the Edo era, the three-story building housed bedrooms, guestrooms, a Buddhist altar and a main hall. It also housed the village leader. Despite all of this, it almost didn't achieve its venerable status. There was this little issue of authenticity. The actual building had been repaired and the much-touted roof had been replaced numerous times. UNESCO had originally felt that that called the authenticity of the structure into question, making it more replica than relic. However, proponents were able to point out that even though the elements of the building were not "authentic," the style of creating them was an "authentic" time-honored tradition worthy of recognition. The judges were convinced.
The building now serves as a modest museum, displaying roof-thatching tools, snowshoes, lacquer ware and other items traditionally used in the area. And though there is no longer any village elder to be found at Wada House, it is also home to another, unexpected inhabitant - worms.
Silk worms, to be specific. Another time-honored tradition is the practice of sericulture in the upper floors of the homes. Even now, silk worm larvae are incubated in order to produce silk, a sight that thrilled the children who had been lugged along by their parents for a cultural excursion.
Not that they could escape from the education for long. The area is overflowing with fascinating facts, many of which the longtime area resident and current tour guide, Eiji Nishimura, regaled me with. For example, how do they make those intricate roofs?
"Everyone gets together every three years to make the roofs. In this way, the children can learn the practice, the village can come together and the buildings can stay in top shape," Nishimura said. "It is good for this place and the surrounding lifestyle."
The roofs, which are designed to withstand the extraordinary snowfall that blankets the valley, are indeed a communal effort.
"With 150 people, 300 including all the helpers holding the ladders, and so on, a roof can be finished in a single day, assuming the gathering of materials and other preparations have been completed beforehand."
Nishimura grew up in the more mountainous region just removed from Shirakawa-go, but his home was gassho-zukuri.
"There is nothing like it," he said, adding that the fresh air was the best part. "But winter was cold," he said with a grin.
Speaking of cold, while we had been talking, we had made our way outside of the Wada House, and stopped right in front of Yukinko, an ice cream and snack shop.
It was time for a treat.
As she handed me my ice cream, Sato Chitose, who ran the stand along with her husband, commented that she too had noticed an increase in visitors, especially from Europe.
Breathing in the fresh air, listening to the serene silence, looking over the peaceful surroundings, I could not help be a bit torn. I was reminded of my trip two-years ago to Yangshou, China. Near Guilin, it also achieved a level of notoriety for its Dr. Seuss-inspired karst hill landscape. With that notoriety came tourists. A lot of tourists. The town was virtually overrun with them, along with the accompanying bars, guesthouses and tour guides, many less than reputable. Yangshuo's boon proved a double-edged sword: On one edge, an influx of money and publicity. On the other, a mob of tourists that threatened to destroy the very source of that boon, the pristine state of its natural and cultural landscape. Would Takayama meet the same fate?
I put the question to Naoka Wani from the tourism division while we finished our respective ice creams. She seemed keenly aware of the risk-reward factor of marketing a town like Takayama. She mentioned, for example, that from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. no large buses are allowed through the village, a measure taken to help prevent the small community from being plowed under by tourists and transportation.
As we got back on one of those meddlesome buses, I felt privileged to have been a visitor in this living, functioning museum. I also felt confident that Takayama would succeed where other towns had failed, successfully sheathing the double-edged katana of tourism.
Takayama Municipal Tourism Board / 高山市役所商工観光部観光課
501-5627 Gifu, Takayama, Ono County, Shirakawa Village, Hagicho / 501-5627岐阜県高山市大野郡白川村萩町2945-3
Phone: 0576-96-1013 Fax: 0576-96-1716
Shirakawago / 白川郷
997 Ogi-machi, Shirakawa Village, Ohno-District, Gifu Prefecture 501-5627 / 501-5627岐阜県大野郡白川村大字荻町997番地
Admission: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Closed on occasion.
Access: About 50 minutes from Takayama Station by express shuttle bus via a circuitous route of tunnels and mountainous paths.
The next day brought a hastily devoured breakfast before heading back on the road. This time we plowed through the town's morning market, where we greeted by bottles of apple juice, various delicious treats and the ubiquitous "sarubobo," the plush doll that serves as Takayama's souvenir ambassador and makeshift mascot. The subsequent stroll through the old district conjured up memories of Gion in Kyoto. However, there were markedly less people competing for photo ops and window shopping. Often I had an entire street to myself. Enveloped by quiet and weathered wooden facades, it was easy to forget that only yesterday I had boarded one of the world's fastest trains to get here. That seemed like science fiction amidst this time-slip setting.
Our group eventually wound our way to Hodosatsu Hojusan Kioji. This temple sits on meticulously maintained grounds, overlooking part of the city from its hilly perch. From there, Hidenari Nakai, a monk at Kioji has noticed some changes.
"English signs have increased in the old town," Nakai said. He also mentioned that he does come across the occasional sightseer now, but he said the people he has come across, including those that visit Kioji, have always been very respectful.
One attraction that draws people of all backgrounds to Kioji is "Zazen," a type of seated meditation. For 500 yen, you can practice Zazen for 40 to 60 minutes. Walk-ins are accepted but available space is not guaranteed. It is recommended that people considering visiting to call ahead at least two to three hours before arriving. Even though the facility can hold about 80 people, it can easily be filled up with people, ranging from international university students dabbling in meditation to junior high school students on a class trip away from their 3DSs and PSPs. Also funerals and other events are held in the temple complex, which can leave no one available to oversee visitors seeking a Zazen sampler.
Hodosatsu Hojusan Kioji / 豊洞察 宝樹山 喜応寺
560-0834 Gifu, Takayama, Soyujimachi / 560-0834岐阜県高山市宗猷寺町
Phone: 0577-32-4516 Fax: 0577-32-4560
English pamphlet on Zazen available: (Soto Zen: The Practice of Zazen)
Once I was able to feel my legs again, I hobbled back to the bus. After receiving some more information from Wani-san and Asakura-san, I found myself outside of another popular stop in Takayama, Hida Folk Village.
When you enter you first are struck by the beauty of Goami Pond waiting just inside the gate. Across the pond, visitors can spy The Wakayamas' House. It was built in 1751 in Shokawa Village and moved after the completion of Miboro Dam submerged the area. Its sharply slanted roof and room layout are representative of Shokawa architecture during that era. It also was a silkworm breeding ground, with the second and third floors dedicated to the industry. Another dot on the village map is The Tanakas' House, built in the early 1700s is a typical farmhouse, giving visitors today valuable insight into how a farming family would have lived centuries ago.
For those who prefer a more interactive vacation, one of the most exciting aspects of a trip to Hida Folk Village is the plethora of hands-on activities. There are currently ten different classes available, usually taking about an hour to complete. For 1,300 yen (everything included) visitors can try their hand at creating any one of a variety of unique items, from chopsticks and handkerchiefs to glass art and kaleidoscopes. Classes are subject to availability based on number of participants. Classes usually consist of 10 to 50 participants, though this varies based on the item being made. At least ten participants are required to hold a class.
Of course, the star of the show is the one-and-only sarubobo. What better way to commemorate your trip then to bring home your own lumpy, misshapen sarubobo? Much like a child, you will cherish you sarubobo all the more for his unique qualities. And if you don't you can buy another one at the gift shop.
Hida Folk Village / 飛騨の里
1-590 Kamiokamoto-machi, Takayma, Gifu Prefecture / 岐阜県高山市上岡本町１丁目５９０
Adults are 700 yen. Elementary and junior high school students are 200 yen. Group rates are available. The village has "light up" from 5:50 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. in the winter. A special 300 yen entrance fee is required (100 yen for children). 300 yen for parking. 1,000 yen for large buses.
As I headed back to the hotel, the thought of leaving Takayama filled me with an unexpected tinge of melancholy. I had only been here for a brief time, but it was so welcoming. The vendors. The monks. The artisans. The very town itself. As I looked down at my new friend, a bright red sarubobo, I sensed he too was sad to be leaving his ancestral home, but I assured him (and myself, as well) that we would surely come back to visit again.Plan Your Trip! | <urn:uuid:b127efbb-e4f8-477e-ba1d-94d34c8407cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://japan-articles.japanican.com/en/articles/takayama_hida_sarubobo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963054 | 3,919 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Nominate outstanding historic preservation projects for honor
January 6, 2011
NEW — 6 a.m. Jan. 6, 2011
The people responsible for preserving the past could receive some recognition in the near future.
The state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation seeks notable people, organizations and projects for the 21st Annual Awards for Outstanding Achievements in Historic Preservation.
The agency recognizes recipients during a ceremony in May — National Historic Preservation Month.
Participants can nominate people, organizations and projects in one of the following categories: historic preservation planning, historic property rehabilitation projects, career achievement, public education, stewardship, special achievement and media.
Nominations must be postmarked or submitted to the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation by 5 p.m. March 4.
The awards ceremony — sponsored by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation — is May 3. The event takes place at the Capitol. | <urn:uuid:5ba5c237-74b1-445e-9243-82421051fbbb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.issaquahpress.com/2011/01/06/nominate-outstanding-historic-preservation-projects-for-honor/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940993 | 185 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Melissa Wissmer has had it with this Musikfest crap.
The 20-year-old from Bethlehem was minding her own business -- and taking care of it, too -- when she was rudely interrupted at a Potty Platz.
"I will never use a porta-potty at Musikfest again. I'll find a bush and dig a hole instead."
Wissmer is not the only one with a frightening fest tale to tell.
More than 1 million people will attend the festival in downtown Bethlehem that started in 1984 as a small, grass-roots music celebration. Over the last 20 years, it has grown into the beast that is Musikfest, a 10-day festival that draws people from around the country and features more than 300 performers, and food and craft vendors.
Undoubtedly, Musikfest has numerous benefits for the Lehigh Valley. Many businesses thrive during its run. The Moravian Book Shop sells souvenirs and lower-priced goods, and bars like Bethlehem Brew Works and the Old Brewery Tavern enjoy late-night rushes.
Additionally, proceeds from the festival fund South Side's community arts center -- The Banana Factory -- and other local nonprofits. It draws some larger musical acts to the area and provides fairly free entertainment for 10 days.
But some residents and business owners see a dark underbelly to Musikfest that evokes more dread than pleasure.
"It's really unfortunate," says Frank Shipman, owner of Technicolor Grand Salon on Walnut Street. "The festival really hurts our business because Main Street is blocked off and there is really no access to it."
Shipman also faces the large task of cleaning up the litter that festgoers leave strewn in his parking lot and landscaping. He says he also faced the costs of having his outdoor sculpture fixed when it was vandalized several years ago.
While Technicolor provides a service that wouldn't be tapped by tourists visiting for a festival, he speculates that bars and restaurants will thrive because of the increased number of people looking to go out and have a good time.
This isn't so, according to Dyanne Holt, co-owner of Bethlehem's Apollo Bar & Grille on Broad Street.
"We have a lot of regulars who come in every week," she explains. "Most of them, if they aren't fest-goers, just stay away until the festival ends."
Barbara Garrison, owner of The Heavenly Hedgehog Ice Cream Co. on Main Street, says she also loses her regular customers during the fest.
Why do these residents shy away from local businesses? For many, it's a combination of vandalism, crowds and noise that create a trifecta of Musikfest hell.
"For whatever reason ... they stay away," says Garrison. "And when they come back, they tell me that Main Street smells like beer and urine."
Mary Serfass, owner of the Snow Goose Gallery says she's become overwhelmed by the influx of people to the area during the festivities.
"We don't do any business and the crowds have become much too unruly in recent years for us to handle," she says. Serfass adds that the gallery had to deal with significant breakage and that she was actually harassed by customers.
Holt places blame on parking. | <urn:uuid:ad483e9a-5486-42f7-9e8f-84bb71ce2050> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailypress.com/topic/me-musuckfest0803,0,5856654.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97231 | 684 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Christy's Sidewalks of New York
Christy has been a teacher at our school for nine years.
She has taught grammar classes and listening & speaking classes; she has taught beginners, the most advanced students, and all levels in between.
Perhaps her most interesting classes are the ones she has created for our electives program; her “Sidewalks of New York” is an advanced class in our American Culture category.
In this class, her students study about places in New York City and often meet her in various neighborhoods of Manhattan. Students learn about the unique features of such locales as the East Village, the West Village, Chelsea, Tribeca, Soho, and other places.
For their final exam, students are expected to give a tour of a neighborhood.
Seunghun has been a student at EC New York since January. His blog entry below is very well written. (Our corrections were few.)
When I tried to get Seunghun to reveal how he learned to write so well, he shrugged, smiled, and said, “I just learned to write for the TOEFL test.”
–EC NEW YORK BLOG
Students gathered downtown for class...
The Second Field Trip Downtown! by Seunghun
My class went downtown again to explore significant places there. I was supposed to go to the Wall Street Station on the 6 train, so I felt a similar feeling as if I were a returning salary-man. In the train, there were a lot of sophisticated guys in gorgeous suits. Some were reading newspapers, and some were trying to relax before work. I felt that some guys were hiding their own feelings under the strong smell of perfume.
No matter what happened in the newspaper, everything was usual: Today is the same as yesterday, and tomorrow is not going to change totally. People know the fact and acclimate themselves to this urban life.
Christy in action!
The train arrived at Wall Street Station, and like other people, I rushed out of the train. I called a friend to ask the location of the group and I joined it.
At that time, my class was going out from Trinity Church. Just next to the church, there was a red tree root called the Trinity Root. Since I was late, I googled the meaning of the tree root:
This tree is an artwork to memorialize Ground Zero. It was first installed at the American Museum of Natural History and then moved to this spot. I couldn’t understand the meaning beyond the description, but the artist tried to give solace to the millions of people who visit the site where the most infamous attacks had taken place.
Ground Zero is "under construction"
After we listened to Christy talk about the famous graves in the church cemetery, we moved to City Hall. On the way to City Hall, she explained some buildings on the street. She said that they were the oldest skyscrapers in New York. Unlike to other modern buildings, their decorations were somewhat antique. There were some statues on the wall, and the shapes were mysterious like the gods of Greek myth. She also introduced the building that was damaged on 9-11. Due to a lot of dangerous materials in the building (which may cause cancer), it has taken a lot of time to deconstruct it.
The park near City Hall
Inside the park, she explained about the politicians. I was surprised that many citizens were interested in the politicians. Christy was curious about a man who was entering the City Hall, and got his name. Well, politics concerns a nation’s everything. People interest in politics starts from “remembering” the names of their leaders. After remembering their names, people get to know what their leaders are going to do for them.
Looking around the court building...
At this moment, I felt something inside my mind how Americans maintain their way of life. Everyone knows about the most brutal attack at the World Trade Center spot, but the citizens in the country try to keep this tragedy in their minds. Never overlook, never forget, and step forward as usual. I felt that the true strength comes from this. Forgetting may be helpful, but by keeping the tragedy in mind, they hope this kind of thing would not be repeated.
We looked around the court buildings, visited the souvenir shop, and returned to the school. As for me, it was a great opportunity to look inside the minds of Americans.
Text and photos by Seunghun. | <urn:uuid:45a5d858-edec-4850-8c06-1580dc00179f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecenglish.com/blogs/New-York/?m=200904 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985904 | 930 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Concerns over future use of hall
Calls have been made for a rethink on the closure of a museum at an 18th century mansion.
Residents who live near Leicester's Belgrave Hall, which shut in October, are concerned about plans to re-launch the historic building as a venue for private functions and public events in the spring.
Bosses at Leicester City Council said the hall and its picturesque gardens were unsuited for use as a museum and are looking at ways they can generate more cash.
The issue was discussed at the latest Belgrave and Latimer Community meeting and a vote was held on whether the hall should be retained as a museum with free access to the general public.
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Rushey Mead city councillor Ross Willmott, who lives in Belgrave, said: "There is a strong feeling the city council has got it wrong on Belgrave Hall.
"There was a vote on whether the museum should remain. There were about 70 people and it was unanimous it should."
Coun Willmott said a number of his colleagues, including former council leader Veejay Patel, assistant mayor Manjula Sood and John Thomas voted to keep the museum at that meeting.
The council said the hall attracted the lowest number of visitors of any of its museums and that its plans will see about £140,000 of Arts Council cash spent in improving the venue.
The hall received 16,000 visitors in 2011-12.
Coun Willmott said: "What people liked about the hall was that it is was free to enjoy.
"Under the proposals, when it reopens the vast majority of visitors will have to pay in some form to use it.
"We are told there will £40,000 saving from closing the museum. That is not a lot of money."
He suggested setting up a tea room which could create income and make the hall viable as an attraction. Coun Willmott said: "It is not too late for the council to change its mind on this.
City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said: "It concerns me there may be some disinformation about what we are doing with Belgrave Hall.
"It is not being closed but we are changing the way we use it and we are investing in it.
"When it reopens it will a greatly improved visitor experience."
A council report on the hall said: "The plan changes the way the service is delivered so that Belgrave Hall is presented as a beautiful, high quality period house with fresh, attractive interiors and facilities suitable for a range of modern income generating functions."
Leicester Civic Society chairman Stuart Bailey said: "The council has done much to promote the city's heritage recently but closing a museum is a backward step however you dress it up.
"Again, people have shown they don't like what is being proposed." | <urn:uuid:0c043b00-c351-4c36-a7d4-e96ad2cf7546> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Concerns-future-use-hall/story-17546674-detail/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97648 | 623 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Belgium is a wonderland for foodies, but if you have a food allergy, it can be a nightmare. Today we look at how to survive living gluten-free and celiac in Belgium.
Gluten is a composite found in many grains and is what gives dough its elasticity and ability to rise. It’s found in high concentrations in wheat, but also occurs in rye, barley and spelt in varying doses.
About 1% of people are intolerant to gluten and have an abnormal immune reaction to it, called celiac disease. Another small fraction of the population suffers from an allergy to wheat, commonly misdiagnosed as celiac. These allergies and intolerances can range from mild discomfort to extreme sickness.
Over the past few years, several of my close friends have been diagnosed with gluten intolerances. In this land where a meal without bread is unthinkable, I’ve watched them struggle to find viable (and tasty) alternatives to wheat and gluten.
Both wheat and gluten appear in places we don’t always expect. Of course breads, cakes and pastas are typically made from wheat flower, but gluten is also present in imitation meats, soy sauce, ice cream, ketchup and even (gasp) beer.
While gluten-free living is becoming more common and accepted in North America and the UK, Europe has been slower to get on board. But living gluten and/or wheat free in Belgium is possible and more and more resources are becoming available.
This post is a bit different normal. We have not tested each and every place listed, as we normally do on CheeseWeb. Instead, I would like this post to be an ongoing resource for people living with celiac disease and gluten-free. For that, we need your help. If you know of a restaurant, shop or service catering to gluten-free diets, please leave a comment below or email it to us.
[Update Jan 29th] We’ve had loads of reader feedback so far, which we’ve included below, with the dates it was added, so check back often!
Gluten-free Shopping in Belgium
While I was home in Canada for the holidays, I noticed many more gluten and wheat free products on grocery store shelves. Similar offerings are still few and far between in Belgium, unless you know where to look.
DelHaize – As one of the primary grocery stores in Belgium, DelHaize is beginning to recognise the importance of catering to special diets. While offerings vary from store to store, the CaddyHome delivery service is offering some gluten-free products. You can also find a listing of gluten-free brands and products on their website.
Bio Shops – Bio, or organic, shops are popping up all over Belgium and most carry products catering to special diets as well. Again, the amount of gluten-free products varies depending on the size of the store, but as most are locally owned, there is a better possibility of building a relationship with your local bio shop owner. Sustainable website Tebiki (who we profiled here on CheeseWeb) has a great listing of Bio shops in Brussels, with an interactive google map.
Asian Grocery Stores – Your local Asian grocery may not spring to mind when you’re searching for gluten-free ingredients, but many Asian staples are naturally gluten-free. Things like rice noodles and rice flour are available from Chinese groceries and chickpea flour is a common ingredient in Indian cooking. For a wide variety of Asian products, check out the Kam-Yuen supermarket in central Brussels. For a great selection of Indian products, including chickpea flour and a great selection of lentils and spices, visit the Ideal Cash and Carry in Molenbeek. (Another bonus to Asian groceries – prices are normally lower than bio shops.)
Stonemanor – This well-loved British shop in Everberg has recently spotted the gap in the Belgian gluten-free market and is starting to fill it with a variety of products. On my last visit to Stonemanor, I spotted gluten-free pasta, cookies, sauces and cake mixes. The owners are also willing to special order specific products, so if it’s available in the UK, there’s a good chance they can bring it into Belgium for you.
Allegro shop – This is the largest selection of foods for special diets, in Belgium, I’ve come across so far. There is a physical shop in Auderghem and in addition, the entire product line is available to order online. The website allows you to filter your search by specific food allergies including: peanuts, wheat, gluten, lactose, yeast, corn, eggs, potatoes, soy and sugar. A quick check on gluten allergy brings up 407 products.
Reason2.be – Our organic produce delivery service, Reason2.be, has recently expanded their selection to include products catering to special diets. Although the gluten-free offerings are still sparse (other than naturally gluten-free items like organic fruit, vegetables, meat and seafood) they are always open to product suggestions.
Allervita – [Added Jan. 29th] On-line shopping for people with many different food-sensitivities. There are various pick-up points in Flanders and the website is only available in Dutch.
My Breakfast Enjoy – [Added Jan. 29th] Offers Gluten-free (and lactose free) breakfasts in convenient paper sacks for those of you on the go.
Amazon.co.uk – [Added Jan. 29th] The UK version of Amazon now has a HUGE selection of Gluten Free Grocery items. Not everything is deliverable to Belgium but if you scroll down the sidebar and select Amazon.co.uk under the seller heading, most items can be shipped to us here. I recently received a huge order of wheat free granola bars at a fraction of the cost I can buy them locally.
Gluten-free Restaurants in Belgium
Restaurant dining can be challenging for celiacs and the gluten intolerant, particularly in traditional Belgian restaurants. Bread and pasta are prevalent and sauces are often thickened with wheat flour. While choices of meat, salads and (thank goodness) Belgian frites are normally gluten-free, wheat can be hiding in unexpected places so it’s always a good idea to chat with your server.
Awareness of these special diets is still uncommon in Belgium but the following are restaurants we’ve discovered that cater to Gluten-free diets. We haven’t taste tested many of them so we’d love your feedback in the comments and your help in expanding this list (especially if you know of any restaurants in Wallonia!).
Soul – We’ve loved this restaurant for years now and it’s a great place to visit if you have one or more special dietary requirements among your party. The restaurant is macrobiotic, meaning everything is organic, locally sourced, where possible, and the chef is aware of the effects ingredients have on your body. Soul caters to a variety of special diets including gluten and lactose intolerance, food allergies and vegan and vegetarian diets. Just speak to your server before ordering.
Vegetarian restaurants – While vegetarian and vegan dishes aren’t necessarily gluten-free, there is often a better awareness of food intolerances in these restaurants. Special requests for gluten-free meals tend to be better received in vegetarian restaurants in Brussels, than elsewhere. Here are a few we enjoy:
You can also refer to the Happy Cow listing for more vegetarian friendly restaurants in Brussels.
Asian Restaurants – Keep in mind that many Thai, Japanese, Indian, and other Asian foods are naturally rice based and gluten-free. Just be sure to ask about any extra additives.
Il Veliero Italian Restaurant – Italian certainly isn’t the first cuisine that comes to mind when you’re looking for gluten-free options. However, this restaurant, just off of Place Jourdan, has a full gluten-free menu including pizza and pasta. They also offer lactose free pizza. I dined there recently with a friend and she was very happy with her gluten-free pizza. My regular old wheat-based pizza was great too.
Exki – For quick and easy lunch options, the Exki chain offers a variety of salads and dishes including quinoa and other gluten-free grains.
While researching I also found the flowing options, recommended by celiacs, but I have not tested them personally:
- Lombardia (Antwerp)
- Park Restaurant (Bruges)
- De Ruyffelaer (Ypres)
- Gruuthuse Hof (Bruges)
- Isola Sarda (Antwerp)
- Italia in Tavola (Brussels)
- Mare E Monti (Brussels)
- Toscana 21 (Brussels)
- Trop Bon (Brussels)
- Ricotta & Parmesan (Brussels)
- Lato Pasta (Brussels)
- Restaurant d’Artagnan (Leuven) [Added Jan. 29th]
- Spaans Dak (Oude Heverlee) [Added Jan. 29th]
It is always a good idea to call ahead to make sure the restaurant is still offering gluten-free options and has the proper ingredients in stock.
Gluten-free Belgian Beer
It seems many of Belgium’s favourite treats aren’t gluten-free; waffles, pastries, carbonnade and sometimes even chocolate can contain gluten. Of course, Belgian beer is also on the gluten-free chopping block – at least most of it. A few Belgian brewers are dabbling in gluten-free beer and it seems it’s not half bad.
I’m not a beer-drinker, so I can only base this on anecdotal experience, but it seems the most popular Gluten-free Belgian beer is from Brunehaut. They produce both a blond and an amber ale which are organic as well as gluten-free.
Glutaner is another gluten-free Belgian beer made from sorghum. It is brewed in Melle by Brouwerij Huyghe. Information about Glutaner is scarce so if you’ve tried this beer, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Brouwerij Huyghe also brews Mongozo Gluten Free beer. This beer has the gluten removed from it leaving the taste of a traditional lager. It won a gold medal at the World Beer Awards in 2012 for the best gluten-free pilsner, so it’s either pretty good or the competition is very bad.
Green’s Beers is a UK company which brews in Belgium under contract at de Proef Brewery. Green’s offers three ‘Belgian style’ gluten-free beers: Discovery Amber (6%), Endeavour Dubbel (7%), and Quest Tripel (8.5%). They are advertised as being free of most allergens including: gluten, barley, wheat, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, lactose, nuts, celery, mustard, sesame seeds, sulphur dioxide, and sulphites.
In researching this post I stumbled across this list of the 14 Best (and Worst) Gluten-free beers. Most of them are produced in the USA or UK but it is a good overview of what’s available globally.
Other Gluten-free resources for Belgium
Have a gluten-free friend coming for dinner and aren’t sure what foods are safe for them to eat? Wiki has a good article on gluten-free diets, listing foods that often contain hidden gluten sources. There is also a good article on Coeliac disease, which explains the differences between Celiac and wheat allergies.
The Celiac Society of Belgium has a good list of resources, although their English site is pretty limited. If you don’t speak French or Dutch, google translate is your friend. The site offers a forum where you can ask questions of others living with celiac disease as well as travel information for European countries.
Just because you’re living gluten-free, doesn’t mean you have to miss out on all the traditional Belgian goodies. Here’s a great recipe for Gluten-free Speculaas Cookies.
If you don’t speak Flemish but want to be sure you can explain your allergy to the chef at your next restaurant, CeliacTravel.com has created a series of printable restaurant cards in different languages including Flemish and French. Don’t forget to look up the language for your next trip abroad as well.
There is a new Facebook page called Gluten Free Brussels that has been actively building a list of restaurants and other resources in the city. The community is helpful and new items are added regularly.
[Added Jan. 29th] For blog lovers, check out Kouli Kouli, by a fellow expat in Brussels. There are gluten-free recipes, resources and travel guides.
We would love your help to expand this page to help make life easier for our gluten intolerant and celiac friends in Belgium. We’re also considering creating resource pages for other special diets (vegan, lactose-free, etc) so do let us know if these would be useful to you or someone you know in Belgium. | <urn:uuid:86896fef-5ad8-4b90-aa48-b97166288931> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cheeseweb.eu/2013/01/celiac-glutenfree-living-belgium/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944806 | 2,806 | 1.84375 | 2 |
(Day of arrival – various arrival times) Overnight Jerusalem.
We start our tour with a visit to the IsraelVision TV Studios in Mevasseret Zion. We will then visit Kissalon, the planned site for our new media studio in the Hills of Judea, hear about the geography and history of this region, and visit the "Scrolls of Fire" monument that commemorates the holocaust and the resurrection of the Jewish people. Towards noon we will drive to Kibbutz Tzuba, were we shall visit the Cave of John the Baptist^, with its water-system from the First Temple period, and the oldest inscription mentioning John the Baptist. In the afternoon we drive to the Canada Park to walk along the remnants of the Roman city Emmaus, where Jesus was first seen after his resurrection, and where the great battle of Joshua against the Canaanites at the Valley of Ayalon took place. Overnight Jerusalem.
We leave Jerusalem for a tour of the old city of Jaffa, one of the ancient gateways to the Holy Land: Through it's port the Cedar trees for Salomon's Temple were brought, the prophet Jonas tried to flee God, but most important: It was in Jaffa where Christianity began to be spread among the nations. Here St. Peter lived in the house of Simon the Tanner and had the "Vision of the Flesh", and here he made his first miracle by healing the little girl. Today Jaffa's renovated alley-ways attract many artists, who have their galleries there. We drive to Caesarea Maritima*, the magnificent port-city built by King Herod the Great. From here St. Peter went to Rome and started with his first miracles. In Caesarea's well-preserved theater an inscription of the procurator Pontius Pilate was found. We continue our drive along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea to the modern port-city Haifa, situated on the slopes of the evergreen Mt. Carmel. The view from this mountain is famous for its beauty. On Mt. Carmel we visit the Muhraka^ monastery, where Elijah had his glorious competition against the 400 Baal Prophets. The view of the Jezreel Valey, Mt. Tabor, and Samaria enables us to understand this and other biblical events. Overnight Tiberias.
Visit Zippori* (Sapphoris) in lower Galilee. It was here that the Jewish Mishna was sealed. In Zippori we can still see some well-preserved mosaics, a theatre, and a synagogue, all together in one place. Then we drive to Kefar Kedem^ in nearby Hoshaya, were we can experience life in Biblical times. Today we will also eat together a special Bible-style lunch^ at the site. In the afternoon we will drive to the Arbel-Cliff in order to enjoy the view over the Sea of Galilee, were we will also spend the rest of the day. Overnight in Tiberias.
Today we visit the places where Jesus acted around the Sea of Galilee: Capernaum^, with Peters House and the famous Synagogue, enjoy the view from Mt. of the Beatitudes^, where the "Sermon on the Mount" was given, and the reconstructed church at Tabgha, where tradition puts the miracle of the Bread and The Fish. We will also sail on the sea in a boat^ similar to the boat used by Jesus and his disciples. In the afternoon we drive to Hamat Gader^, the hot springs of ancient Gadara, were we spend the rest of the day. Overnight in Tiberias.
On our way towards the Jordan valley we visit the ancient synagogue of Beth Alpha*, famous for its mosaic-floor. We travel along the Jordan Valley, past Jericho, and pay a visit to Qumran, the place where the known "Dead Sea Scrolls" were found. Then we continue along the shores of the Dead Sea to the Oasis of Ein Gedi. We will drive up to the Field Study center from where we can enjoy the view of the flourishing valley where King David hid from Saul. Now it's time to float in the Dead Sea and enjoy the rest of the facilities our hotel has to offer…!!! Overnight in Ein Bokek.
After breakfast we drive to Arad, to the house of the Christian artist Rick Wineke. Rick has created the "Wall of Tears", which makes a connection between the Holocaust and the Crucifixion. Rick will talk with us about his life, his works, and his believes. Then we drive back to the Holy City – Jerusalem!
We will start with a visit of the Wailing Wall and the Temple Mount (if open to visits) and then widen our knowledge about this magnificent House of the Lord in the Davidson Center, were, in addition to the newly excavated stairs, purification baths and other sites by the Southern Wall of the Jerusalem Temple, we can experience the thrilling experience of the Pilgrimage to Jerusalem in an audio-visual presentation. Overnight in Jerusalem.
This day is dedicated to the New City of Jerusalem: We will start with a thorough visit of Yad Vashem^, Israel's official and central Memorial of the Holocaust. At the Israel Museum^ we visit the "Shrine of the Book", where the Dead Sea Scrolls are exhibited, and the 1:50 Model of Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period (the time of Jesus). We will also visit the "Menorah" (Candelabra) situated in front of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament. We will spend the rest of the afternoon in the colorful Mahane Yehuda Market. Friday afternoon everybody is busy with the last preparations for the Sabbath – an experience we don't want to miss!!! O/N in Jerusalem.
We start the tour with a panoramic view of the Old City of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. A leisurely walk takes us down to the Garden of Gethsemane, were we will visit the "Church of all Nations". We cross the Qidron valley, stop at the monument for the Israeli paratroopers who liberated Jerusalem, and enter the Old City, like them, through the "Lions Gate". We walk along the beginning of the traditional "Via Dolorosa" –Jesus' "Way of Suffering" and visit the "Lithostrotos"^ –a Roman pavement where you can see some engravings like the ones the Roman soldiers made when they played and gambled about Jesus. We will also see the Old City's "Suq" –Turkish bazaar, with its colors and odors of the Orient. The Jewish Quarter on the Sabbath is the real opposite to the "Suq". We will end the day singing and praying at the "Garden Tomb", also known as "Gordon's Golgotha". The quit garden that reminds us of the crucifixion is the perfect place for our last prayers on this year's tour.
(day of departure to the different destinations).
Ahalan Olympus Ltd Tel. +972-8-6347022
Shalom Plaza Hotel Eilat
POB 3011, zip 88000
Ahalan Olympus Ltd | <urn:uuid:8d3b1fe1-1084-4f37-9188-a93ff267d0ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ahalanolympus.co.il/en/Israel_Vision_TV_tour.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947673 | 1,498 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Canadian debt-to-disposable-income has just recently surpassed that of the United States according to Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a media barrage this past week. All three warned that too much debt is dangerous in this low interest rate environment, because rates may move upwards quickly putting many families in jeopardy. Of course they are the ones creating the low rates, but they are just playing with you, don't be fooled!
Why are the rates low? To encourage borrowing and spending of course, but don't you borrow because the aforementioned three money-micro-managers are concerned that there is too much borrowing going on, even though governments continue to borrow. Just do as we say, not as we do! Is that confusing or what?
Amidst all this Keynesian crap rides Maxine Bernier carrying the banner of the Austrian School in his most recent column in the Financial Post. Bernier gets right to the heart of the matter, puts the blame where it belongs, and leaves no doubt that he just does not belong in Stephen Harper's Conservative Party. | <urn:uuid:6b9e2ee6-63f8-45bf-9689-9862d0c9d967> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thebrightlibertarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/do-we-say-not-as-we-do.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964081 | 229 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Where Am I Registered To Vote
November 2, 2010 by USA Post
Where Am I Registered To Vote, Voting and polling stations by zip code on Election Day 2010 – The big day for the good of the long-awaited day mid-term elections to Congress of the United States has already come. A large number of voters who ask questions: “Where do I vote?” “Where am I registered to vote?” And “Where do I vote?” Because they want to know their voting rights and offices voting by postal code.
Fortunately, Google helped us find information of voters per polling station their “Where to Vote” link on their homepage. When you go to this link, you will be redirected here and you need to enter your mailing address Complete where you are registered to vote, including city, state and zip code for the location where you are registered to vote. After successfully entering this information, Google returns the result of your polling place, including a link to the location of your polling place and state of guidelines on how to get there. Besides Google
There is also information included in the election results as the website of your state, your voter registration status, and a voter hotline in your state. Google implements the project in conjunction with voting information on the project in which webmasters can embed the widget to vote on their sites to allow voters to election day 2010. Remember that voting hours are hours 30 06:30-19 so be sure to cast your votes in this period.
Whether your candidate is up to the Republican Party or Democrat, be sure to cast your votes on Election Day today and let your voice be heard.
Please feel free to send if you have any questions regarding this post , you can contact on
Disclaimer: The views expressed on this site are that of the authors and not necessarily that of U.S.S.POST. | <urn:uuid:ae095486-8539-46ef-b932-f0b7f4b5f56b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usspost.com/where-am-i-registered-to-vote-21308/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938024 | 384 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Cash in cans today
Mar 05, 2013 , 2:39 PM by Vicki Kerrigan
Coke has also said they will reduce the wholesale price of soft drinks by 12 cents a container from today. The company increased the price of drinks by 15 cents each after the cash for container scheme was introduced.
Yesterday, a Federal Court judge ruled the Territory's cash for containers scheme illegal under the Commonwealth Mutual Recognition Act.
So what is the Mutual recognition act and why can South Australia continue to run their cash for containers scheme? Take a listen to Coca Cola Amatil spokesperson, Alec Wagstaff explain why the company challenged the Territory scheme.
Alec Wagstaff also says the company hopes to help set up kerbside recycling in local council areas where it currently does not exist. | <urn:uuid:e75e2e6a-7b00-4aea-a985-2dadf4101dbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.abc.net.au/nt/2013/03/cash-in-cans-today.html?site=darwin&program=darwin_drive | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945577 | 161 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Snake Bight Pole and Troll Zone
UPDATE: February 21, 2012
UPCOMING: Snake Bight Pole and Troll Zone Public Workshops March 5 (Homestead) and March 8 (Key Largo); 5:30 - 8:00 p.m.
Just over one year ago the park implemented the largest pole and troll zone in Florida, the 9,400-acre Snake Bight Pole and Troll Zone (PTZ), just east of Flamingo in Florida Bay. I view this project as a true partnership between the public and the park in finding ways to enhance resource protection and visitor experiences in Everglades National Park. When the Snake Bight PTZ was being designed we committed to have ongoing discussions with public once the zone was in place to help determine if the project objectives were being met and how it might be improved over time.
While we've had informal discussions with many of you since the PTZ was established in January 2011, we thought that after a year it would be a good time for more formal and comprehensive discussions to present what's happened to date, what activities are planned in the future, and to get your feedback on the PTZ – its layout, how its signed, the education and outreach efforts, how you think it's working, and suggested adjustments we should consider.
Workshops (5:30 to 8:00 p.m.):
Monday, March 5, 2012 at the John Campbell Agricultural Center, 18710 SW 288th Street, Homestead, FL
Thursday March 8, 2012 Murray Nelson (Monroe County) Government Center at 102050 Overseas Highway, Key Largo, FL
• 5:30 - 6:30: informal discussion between staff and the public
• 6:30 - 7:00: brief presentations about the PTZ: updates on resource monitoring, visitor experience, education, and enforcement efforts; upcoming monitoring and management efforts
• 7:00 - 8:00: Q&A, discussion, public comments
The Snake Bight PTZ was created based on park studies completed several years ago that pointed to extensive damage in Snake Bight and other shallow areas in Florida Bay and documented that Snake Bight was one of the most visited areas in the bay. The Snake Bight PTZ was established in January 2011 with overwhelming public support in order to increase protection of its sensitive aquatic vegetation and wilderness resources, improve the quality of flats fishing, enhance paddling and wildlife viewing opportunities, and expand education on proper shallow-water boating techniques. Within the PTZ, internal combustion motors can only be used in Tin Can or Snake Bight channels (where on-plane transit is permitted), and in the Jimmy's Lake idle speed-no wake area. Within all other areas of the zone, boats may only be propelled by push poles, paddles, or electric trolling motors.
The park received financial support for the project from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Coastal Restoration grant program and donations from the Herman Lucerne Foundation, the Flamingo Friendly Tournament, and the South Florida National Parks Trust to support public understanding and assess the pole and troll zone's effectiveness in protecting seagrass, while enhancing fishing and other recreational experiences.
I view the upcoming workshops and comment period as a great way to check in with the many people that enjoy the bay and want increased protection for a resource with well-documented damage, hopefully showing a way towards reversing the prop scar damage found in the very shallow Snake Bight area.
To learn more about the Snake Bight Pole and Troll Zone and the upcoming workshops, view or download other information, and provide comments (through March 31) please see other documents on this site or go to the project link on the park's website: http://www.nps.gov/ever.
We look forward to seeing you at the upcoming workshops or hearing from you through on-line comment process. As always, thank you for your ongoing interest in Everglades National Park and taking the time to participate in our outreach efforts.
Dan B. Kimball, Superintendent
Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks
Fred Herling: [email protected] or 305-242-7704 | <urn:uuid:12d53288-eedf-497e-be35-23bfb090e998> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?parkID=374&projectId=28305 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936277 | 862 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Michael Bobelian, Contributor
I cover the Supreme Court, the law and its interplay with Wall Street
The first months of 2009 marked the lowest point in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s 79-year history.
As the nation’s leading financial watchdog, it failed to sound alarms about the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression. For some critics, its inability to uncover Bernard Madoff’s $17.3 billion Ponzi scheme despite several warnings and investigations was a far greater sin.
“What the heck went on? What went wrong?” Congressman Gary Ackerman yelled out at a hearing before the House Financial Services subcommittee in February, 2009. “One guy with a few friends and helpers found this fraud over a decade,” he added, referring to Harry Markopolos, an investor who had repeatedly warned the SEC about Madoff. “You guys couldn’t find your backside with two hands when the lights are on,” Ackerman continued. “You have totally failed in your mission.”
A New Regime Steps In
The SEC needed new leadership to rebuild and redirect the fallen institution. Other than Chairman Mary L. Schapiro, whom President Barack Obama appointed to the post in January, 2009, no one has played a bigger role in that rehabilitation than Robert S. Khuzami, who signed on as the SEC’s Director of Enforcement a month after Schapiro.
Khuzami, who is scheduled to depart from the SEC this month, brought to the job more than a decade of experience as a federal prosecutor as well as the management skills needed to revamp the agency’s highest-profile division through his work as general counsel of Deutsche Bank, where he oversaw an office of more than 100 attorneys.
By most numerical measures, Khuzami’s tenure was a resounding success. Under his watch, the SEC’s Enforcement Division filed its largest number of cases in fiscal years 2011 and 2012. It collected $2.68 billion in payments from more than 150 cases targeting individuals and corporations for actions stemming from the financial crisis and won most of the cases that went to trial.
Perhaps the agency’s biggest area of concentration since 2009 has been insider trading. Alongside the Department of Justice, which is responsible for criminal investigations and prosecutions, the SEC brought a record number of insider trading cases against high-profile corporate insiders and hedge fund managers like Raj Rajaratnam, the former head of Galleon Group.
Khuzami turned around the Enforcement Division by instituting its biggest reorganization in thirty years. He established the Office of Market Intelligence to serve as an all-encompassing unit responsible for aggregating, analyzing, and monitoring the agency’s innumerable tips, complaints, and referrals.
The enforcement chief also created five specialized units to oversee the following areas: asset management, large scale market abuses, complex derivatives and financial products, foreign bribery and corruption, and the municipal and public pension markets.
The purpose of the units, Khuzami announced in 2010, was to “utilize enhanced training, hiring of and consultation with individuals with industry experience or other specialized skills, targeted investigative approaches, and in some cases new technology, to conduct more efficient and comprehensive investigations.” The agency brought in experienced prosecutors and recruited from Wall Street’s ranks to bolster its expertise in these various areas, allowing it to better understand and keep up with an ever-changing financial sector.
To boost the agency’s investigative reach, Khuzami also updated the SEC’s policy towards cooperators by providing clear-cut guidance and incentives to potential informants whose willingness to divulge secret information often makes or breaks a case.
Overall, Khuzami boosted his department’s performance and helped repair the SEC’s tarnished image.
Some Setbacks Along the Way
There were some pitfalls along the way, however.
The agency boasted about its ability to extract large payouts from Wall Street. Bank of America forked over $150 million for failing to disclose losses at Merrill Lynch, which it had acquired at the height of the financial crisis. JPMorgan Chase paid $153 million for allegations related to the way it dealt with complex mortgage securities.
The biggest of these settlements came with Goldman Sachs. In 2010, it agreed to pay $550 million to settle charges associated with its handling of subprime mortgages, which were at the heart of the economic crisis. At the time, Khuzami called the settlement a “stark lesson to Wall Street firms that no product is too complex, and no investor too sophisticated, to avoid a heavy price if a firm violates the fundamental principles of honest treatment and fair dealing.” | <urn:uuid:7fd47fd4-ae42-4c6d-bd7e-d1841177dc4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbobelian/2013/01/22/will-the-sec-enforcement-chiefs-legacy-endure-after-his-departure/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96137 | 974 | 1.726563 | 2 |
No. Paul was advocating kicking him out of the Church, not killing him.
The fact that it means to kick the person out of the Church is clarified in verse 12: (Emphasis added.)
12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are
you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel
the wicked person from among you.”
The way I understand it is this: The idea is to not turn a blind eye to sin, but to confront it and deal with it, particularly within the body of the Church. To turn a blind eye to sin does nothing but encourage it. To confront it and make it clear that it is not to be tolerated within the Church is better, because it forces the sinner to either acknowledge the sin and repent, or leave the Church, where they will not pollute it further.
A person cannot repent if they are put to death, so this clearly cannot be stating that we are to put the sinner to death.
There is a nice version of this verse here that clarifies the meaning of the original Greek word that is translated as "the flesh". Due to language difference and cultural differences, the original meaning often gets lost in translation.
1 Corinthians 5:5 In contexts like this, the Greek word for flesh
(sarx) refers to the sinful state of human beings, often presented as
a power in opposition to the Spirit. | <urn:uuid:aa60397f-63af-468d-a950-c32859a2ea60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/3498/was-paul-advocating-killing-a-man-because-of-sexual-immorality/3500 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956444 | 302 | 1.742188 | 2 |
It's a reasonable point, but the examples he gave need a bit more qualification. When radio stations started playing records, they reached a deal whereby the record labels got a performance fee - sourced from the ad revenue that the radio stations gathered. That the record companies started seeing radio as a means of selling the records only sharpened the negotiation around that final fee.
Doctorow is focusing on one side of the argument at the expense of the other one here: Yes - the new technologies that make it easier to create, distribute and share content are adding value to humanity. I totally understand his argument about the absurdity of the Hollywood major studios vetoing the development of YouTube.
But there are winners from all of this. Twenty years ago, we bought one TV set a decade on average and maybe a VCR every five years (OK - there's no research behind that, but you know what I mean....).
Today, a huge amount of hardware sales are driven by the fact that it's possible to freely or cheaply appropriate content in ways that weren't foreseen when the original licence was drafted. My Humax PVR allows me to record a whole series, in HD and fast-forward though the adverts. I'm getting a great deal more utility out of TV programmes now - and avoiding some of the payment mechanisms (ad-dodging) because someone has marketed a new box. New formats allow us to watch old content in better ways and as a result, more TVs, PVRs, DVD, BlueRay, iPad, PCs and games consoles are bought.
Hardware manufacturers are making hundreds of $billions out of our ability to 'pirate' existing content.
Many consumers are also paying Virgin or BSkyB to deliver that content to them as well using their proprietary hardware. iPods and iPhones are sold with three-figure price-tags because we can use them to watch content - on terms not foreseen by the original licences.
And the response of cyber-evangelists? Renegotiate those contracts perhaps? No. Just break them unilaterally.
And here's where the last post here - about 'incumbents' comes in. The Hargreaves Report on copyright has made lots of the kind of points that regulars here will be familiar with - the distortion of public policy by powerful pressure groups. But the real incumbents in public policy around copyright aren't the rightsholders. It's the rightsholders who also have a large stake in the hardware markets.
Hardware levies are not discussable in the UK because BSkyB have a veto over what is discussed. There is no clearer illustration of Hargreaves' point about the way this issue is discussed, though you wouldn't believe it from the way that this point has been widely interpreted.
I've never been given the first inkling as to why people moaning about the rigidity of piracy legislation aren't jumping up and down about the need for a small hardware levy. It would set everything right between themselves and existing rightsholders - and it could easily be paid for in full from a fraction of the hardware profits that are being made at the moment. | <urn:uuid:0c1f9f85-4d6a-43a8-9ce1-b815e7dc8cf4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959746 | 645 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Needless to say, the US has a long-term debt problem. The problem is long-term both in the sense that it pertains to the next several decades rather than to this year. (Indeed, the deficit/GDP ratio has been falling since 2009, despite the weakness of the economy.) The problem is also long-term in the sense that we have known about it for a long time; it was clear in 1991 and should still have been clear in 2001.
It should be almost as needless-to-say that the approaching debt ceiling bomb is not helpful in solving our fiscal situation, any more so than were previous standoffs: the January 1, 2013, fiscal cliff; before that, the August 2011 debt ceiling standoff, which led Standard and Poor’s to downgrade the credit rating of US debt for the first time in history; and before that, the 1995 shutdown of the government, which largely discredited Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The current debt ceiling bomb is, of course, another attempt to hold the country hostage under threat of blowing us all up. The conflict is usually phrased as a question of ideological polarization, a battle between fiscal conservatives and their opponents. This familiar frame does not seem right to me. There is in fact no correlation or consistency between the practice of federal fiscal discipline and the political rhetoric, either across states or across time.
What are the demands of the hostage-takers? Even if there existed an explicit ransom letter detailing specific severe spending cuts, in exchange for which it credibly offered to raise the debt ceiling, President Obama’s refusal to negotiate under such conditions would be fully justified. But the situation is worse than that. There is no specific set of demands, and never has been. I truly believe there does not exist any set of spending cuts that the blackmailers would accept if they came from Obama.
Remember the occasions in the past when he has announced that he will accept the Republican position on some issue, only to have his opponents switch places, saying “if you are in favor of it, we are against it”? One example was the idea of Obamacare itself, which originally came from conservative think tanks and Mitt Romney. Another example was the proposal for an automatic version of what in February 2010 became the Simpson-Bowles Commission.
There are only so many dollars that can be cut out of PBS and foreign aid. If, hypothetically, Obama were to come out in support of severe cuts in agricultural supports, oil and gas subsidies, Medicare benefits and other programs, Republicans would attack him for proposing hurtful cuts. (Remember attacks on Obama’s health plan for non-existent “death panels” and fictional cuts to Medicare benefits?) Simultaneously, Republicans would say that the cuts were not big enough.
What would be enough? Some debt crazies have said they think it would be fine if we failed to raise the debt ceiling. Some are crazy enough to think it is not a problem if the US government were to default on its legal obligations. (They may not realize that defaulting on the bill for office supplies that you ordered from Staples is as bad as missing interest payments on your debt.) But some want to enforce a balanced budget immediately: the refusal to allow the government to borrow any more is not just a negotiating tactic, but is the outcome they want. This is crazy in light of the adverse economic and financial impact (which would be much worse than that of the fiscal cliff that we just dodged two weeks ago).
But the prize for ultimate insanity must go to those who want to eliminate the budget deficit rapidly and insist on doing it without raising taxes, cutting defense, or cutting programs for seniors. These people deserve the label “deranged” because what they are demanding is for a literally false proposition to be true. It is arithmetically impossible to eliminate the budget deficit if the cuts are to come primarily in non-defense discretionary spending.
To be very clear, I don’t think most Republicans believe all of this. Certainly my many economist friends who are Republicans do not. The truly “deranged” people are just a subset of the “crazy” people, who are in turn a subset of those who are unwise enough to favor the debt ceiling threat as a tactic, who are in turn a subset of the Republican Party. The problem is that it is this minority of a minority that is holding the whole country hostage. The size of the minority evidently shrunk after the August 2011 debt ceiling debacle, after the November 2012 election, and after the January 1 cliff. But it still has its finger on the grenade pin.
So that leads us to the question of tactics. A variety of stratagems have been proposed for the White House to use to defuse the bomb, if it comes to that. These are all designed as ways that the federal government can continue to meet its legal obligations beyond March, even if the Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling. While these unconventional proposals are beyond anything that would have been contemplated under normal conditions, they must be considered, in light of the correspondingly absurd situation in which the country would find itself. If the Congress refuses to act, the White House would have to choose between two contradictory laws: the one that Congress passed to authorize spending and taxes versus the debt ceiling law that apparently prohibits the government from borrowing to make up the difference between spending and taxes. Following the implication of the latter law would have disastrous impacts on the country and the world if obeyed.
- Given the contradiction between the two laws, President Obama could just ignore the debt ceiling and follow the direct implications of the spending and taxation laws. I am not qualified to judge the legality of this course of action. The courts would eventually have to sort it out. The hope is that by then the Congress would have come to its senses and raised the debt limit.
- In the meantime, the White House might try invoking the 14th Amendment, as Bill Clinton suggested at the time of the last debt ceiling standoff, in 2011. The Amendment includes the passage “The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.” Again the Supreme Court would eventually have to decide the issue.
- The Treasury could issue “IOUs” to the office supply stores, soldiers, Social Security recipients, etc. The IOUs would just be written acknowledgements of a legal fact: that the government owes these people money. Maybe the Federal Reserve could let it be known that it will honor these IOUs. (There must be something wrong with this, or somebody besides me would have proposed it already.)
- The government writes an option to buy all its property and buildings for $1, and then sells that very valuable option to the Federal Reserve for something like its true value. This proposal has been made by the Yale constitutional expert Jack Balkin last time around, from which I infer that it is not obviously contrary to the law.
- And finally, the most colorful of the proposals: the trillion dollar coin. The Treasury would exercise its legal authority to mint a commemorative coin made out of platinum, with a face value of $1 trillion. The Federal Reserve would then buy the coin for $ 1 trillion, allowing the Treasury to pay its obligations by drawing down its checking account at the Fed up to that amount. This proposal originated in the blogosphere and was one of those anointed by Balkin in July 2011. Paul Krugman greatly elevated its prominence by declaring his support earlier this month.
Contrary to some fears, none of these proposals need result in the money supply being any larger than it would otherwise be. The Federal Reserve determines the money supply. If it creates a new component of money by buying a platinum coin, a property option or IOUs, it can offset it by shrinking other components of the money supply by the same amount, leaving the total unchanged.
The Obama Administration so far is eschewing gimmicks, and is calling on the Congress to do its job in a responsible manner. This is the right approach.
But in the event that the minority does succeed in blocking a debt increase, it may be worth turning to some legal gimmick to avert the financial and economic catastrophe. Of the five proposals bulleted above, the platinum coin is the one that seems to have the most experts currently expressing belief in its legality. It is certainly clever. Unfortunately, it would probably be the worst from a political standpoint. The reason is - I am guessing here - there is a fairly high overlap between the debt crazies (defined above) and people who have paranoid conspiracy theories that relate to the Fed, money and precious metals (especially gold, but platinum is too close for comfort). For all I know, some of these people are the same who believe that Obama was born outside the U.S. (That would fall into the category of deranged propositions, also defined above; but there is no need for us to go there.) When you are dealing with a crazy person, it is best to avoid anything that would pour gasoline on the flames of his paranoia. We actually want to win back some of those people who are merely misguided but not really insane. After all, just getting past the current debt cliff wouldn’t solve the problem, with sequester and shutdown deadlines also looming. So I’d go for some other legal gimmick, one that would be less likely to feed the paranoia and more likely to continuing chipping away at popular support for the extremists. | <urn:uuid:7d22c350-ba5d-45f6-84c1-a438b882a62f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://content.ksg.harvard.edu/blog/jeff_frankels_weblog/tag/debt-ceiling/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973036 | 1,944 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Climate change a money maker: Chandler
NIGEL ADLAM | October 20th, 2011
Peter Chandler has hit out at scientists claiming they are playing the climate change game for financial gain.
THE CLP's Peter Chandler has told Parliament that scientists were "playing the climate change game" to make money.
The Opposition Spokesman for the environment has joined the ranks of climate change sceptics.
"They are the ones who are making a dollar out of governments and businesses around this world."
The former Palmerston City Council worker admitted that he was not a scientist.
But he said that the belief that manmade carbon dioxide was driving the world towards a natural disaster was a "load of crap".
Do you believe in man-made climate change?
The CLP's Dave Tollner, who worked in superannuation before going into politics, is also a climate change sceptic.
NT Environment Centre coordinator Stuart Blanch said the overwhelming majority of the world's leading scientists believed that manmade carbon emissions were causing the planet to heat up dangerously.
"The CLP is deluded when it accords equal measure to the small number of scientists who deny climate change is caused by people and the overwhelming number of the world's best climate scientists who publish peer-reviewed research in internationally respected journals and work for the CSIRO, Meteorology Bureau and NASA."
Read more on this story in tomorrow's NT News. | <urn:uuid:897ed2c5-8308-4f14-90d5-f82688122725> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2011/10/20/267591_ntnews.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969612 | 292 | 1.65625 | 2 |
ATLANTA -- The petitions kept pouring in, even as they were packed up and headed for the capitol.
Almost 6,000 people speaking out on the Autism Gap in Georgia, 99 percent of the petitions signed in 11Alive's online survey are in favor House Bill 309, which would require insurance companies to cover medical treatments for autism.
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We delivered the petitions to the bill's sponsor, Representative Ben Harbin. Harbin says, "It has a good impact as long as people follow back up. Call your local legislators. They see 6,000 petitions and they think they're all Atlanta. People still need to contact their legislators."
What 11Alive learned in this latest trip to the capitol is that measure could be just days away from being put in a mandate committee. It will spell the end.
Let your lawmaker know how you feel about House Bill 309. Find your representative and let them know if you support or oppose House Bill 309 here.
"If it goes back into the mandate it will delay it at least another year. My concern is that there are other powers that be that are trying to push this off and continue to delay it until we give up. but I don't plan to give up."
So while 6,000 is a great number , Harbin says if people want the bill to pass, they need to contact their state representatives.
"Let them know. They've got to hear the passion in the voices. I believe if people truly get behind this and everyone comes out in support of this, we can pass this, because it makes sense."
On Monday, supporters of the bill are inviting everyone to Capitol, to meet face to face with legislators. | <urn:uuid:6dba5963-bcab-4ba4-9937-4396739acc6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.11alive.com/news/article/278991/537/The-Austim-Gap-House-Bill-309-in-jeopardy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97212 | 376 | 1.59375 | 2 |
By George Perry
When President John Kennedy took office in 1960, he feared that in the impending recession, unemployment might exceed a horrible 6 percent (it actually peaked at 7.1 percent).
We currently have a seemingly intractable unemployment rate of over 8 percent. There is a growing concern that we may never get below 6 percent, and maybe 7 percent is the best we can hope for.
If you count all those who have given up looking for work or are grievously under employed, some say the rate is closer to twice the official 8.1 percent. The stock market is doing fine, suggesting that corporations are "making their numbers" with smaller staffs than heretofore. Millions of jobs have been "offshored" and more will follow.
Good news: jobs are coming back.
Bad news: they are coming back as robots.
We may regain our manufacturing pre-eminence. But with significantly fewer workers.
With this in mind, we should really worry about our children, grandchildren and beyond. Conventional wisdom says we should be concerned about the national debt crushing them. Not true. Normal inflation will cause the debt to atrophy over the years. Getting a decent education, getting and keeping a good paying job, preparing for a reasonable retirement, anticipating adequate health care in their dotage, finding a competent nursing home in their twilight; these are the things we should worry about for our progeny. Certainly we must curb the deficit, (balance the budget) in a reasonable number of years.
With this as backdrop, we should examine our social safety net for future generations. Eighty percent of our grandchildren will be incapable of adequately funding their education, health care, and retirement. Many of the "affluent" 20 percent (those families earning more than $100,000) will find it very difficult to achieve the same. We foresee an even further deterioration in government participation in the social safety net.
Considering all this, we must be particularly concerned with some politicians' obsession with "reforming" entitlements. The Republican plan for Medicaid calls for turning over block grants to states and let them manage their own Medicaid, but with 30 percent less money. Not an inspired reform. Probably our grandchildren won't be impecunious, but when "regular folks" outlive their assets, they end up on the dole, with Medicaid funding their final nursing home stay.
The Republican approach to Medicare is more complicated, and almost incomprehensible. Whatever it is, they say it is good for seniors, but will not take effect for 10 years. Putting aside the thought that after three national elections, whatever emerges in ten years will probably not resemble what is promised today, the approach is most confusing. After the "voucher" approach was widely decried, they changed their approach to giving seniors payments to offset the cost of policies bought "competitively" on the open market. It's still vouchers, but it might result in reduced insurance costs. Though not likely.
During the 1960s I worked in the insurance industry when the specter of Medicare reared its lovely head. We were aghast. It was clearly the worst case of rampant socialism since New York commandeered the subways.
No matter how much the industry gnashed its teeth, the unfortunate fact was that the insurance companies could not produce a seniors' health care policy that many seniors could afford. Can they now offer a product that competes favorably with Medicare? Unlikely, unless they're thinking of quadrupling the premium tax.
The bottom line is that the Republicans goal is to drive much of the Medicare cost off the federal budget. Where will it go? Onto the backs of the seniors.
The Democrats' approach is to increase premiums for rich seniors, and to suggest a series of reform experiments included in the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare). They aren't, however, very good at explaining these innovations.
Maybe the answer is to take a page from the Medicaid playbook. Dedicated Medicaid hospitals and community health centers seem able to deliver reasonable health care at lower cost than the private market. The VA has achieved considerable success in delivering health care to our veterans at a significantly lower cost than Medicare. A few years ago, Time magazine cited the VA as one of the best managed hospital chains in the nation. Their patient record system was far ahead of the private hospitals.
We might have some VA hospitals "clone" themselves, establishing and managing a new facility designed to serve the poorer segments of the Medicare membership. These hospitals would do no billing; there would be no co-pay or deductibles. We might initially give access only to those seniors currently on Medicaid, and, if successful, expand the invitation to all seniors, rewarding them with discounts on their Medicare beneficiary premiums as an inducement. This is significant, as these premiums take a chunk off the top of their Social Security checks, something those living on Social Security and little else can ill afford.
Reform can't be simply schemes to transfer federal expense to states and to individuals. True reform requires finding ways to make entitlements less costly and more effective.
Perry is a retired vice president of American Express Financial Advisors (now Ameriprise). Email him at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:c4071b04-e012-483c-a986-ac6a072b1882> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/oct/07/guest-column-reforming-the-social-safety-net-can/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960641 | 1,075 | 1.8125 | 2 |
A lot of people, journalist Ron Rosenbaum probably the most prominent, have questioned how someone like Adolf Hitler could rise to power in a country as culturally sophisticated and technologically advanced as Germany was in the 1930s–a country where there was almost no illiteracy. A country where there was political plurality and a free press. A country that, we should all remember, voted Hitler into power in a fair, democratic process.
I submit to you that maybe it was Hitler’s private collection of himself in beefcake poses.
Fast forward to the United States in 2010 and I give you Pamela Geller, a woman who has risen to fame almost entirely for hateful diatribes toward Muslims and her bikini photos. No matter how long you write, no matter how long you study, no matter how much thought you put into a subject, no matter how many credentials you collect or peer reviews you receive, it still seems as if the best way for you to get attention and to snag a bit of celebrity for yourself, even in a “good” society like America, is to do it just as you did in high school: find the person who is not like anybody else and then go to town on him. In high school, you gave wedgies or beat somebody up in the locker room. Today you get on a Web site and bash foreigners.
Geller even calls herself a bigot racist as a joke. It just makes her that much cuter, and we’re supposed to laugh her off. I suggest we create a new line of racist Barbie or Bratz dolls–”Give Us A Squeeze,” says the box.
Ann Coulter led the way when she learned that the more provocative you are, the more beloved you are by people with no self-esteem and no imagination. It’s led us directly to Geller, a person who might even chagrin Coulter (who has recently tried to rehabilitate herself a bit by cuddling up to gays). It’s always been pretty easy to call Coulter an attention whore. For Geller, it seems too nice a phrase.
Of course, the U.S. is not Nazi Germany, and I don’t mean to suggest that it is. I make the comparison to show how bigotry, which we were all taught to watch out for in school, is even today an aphrodisiac with a sexy hint of taboo. This woman uses a lot of meretricious rhetoric appealing to those with wounded pride. It could be she appeals to people who are too nationalistic. Those who are out of work and need someone to blame. Or more likely it’s those whose lack of intellectual confidence turns them into “joiners.” It sounds insipid to say out loud–that there’s a group of Americans who’d be swayed by a pastiche that is so transparent–and yet this woman mobilized thousands (millions?) against Park 51, an Islamic center in downtown Manhattan whose symbolism makes it somehow unacceptable, even in an area that already has mosques in it.
Geller called the center a “victory lap” for America’s enemies. You can’t argue with buzzwords like that. They’re so small, you can’t get an editorial in edgewise.
As a proud atheist, I dislike all religions, and would definitely challenge some of the points of Islam–the treatment of women in some corners (though not all) and the iconoclasm of certain sects that denies the bigger imperative of free speech (something I’m a bit of an absolutist about). I’m as angry as anybody that an American cartoonist, Molly Norris, was forced to go into hiding for her satiric idea that we should have an “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” (an idea that wasn’t even serious, but that grabbed the attention of extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and got the poor woman put on a hit list). If we can’t get past the ephemeral (and totally inconsistent) picture-drawing ban by Muslims, then how might we ever drill down into their even more troublesome ideas?
But criticizing Islam in its cultural confrontation with the West is a far cry from dehumanizing all Muslims. I interviewed several Muslims myself for a book a few years back, and what I discovered is that there are plenty of competing philosophies and reflections and ways of reconciling the sacred and profane within Islam as there are anywhere else. I was most impressed by a Sufi adherent who said that the religion he knew didn’t believe in mullahs or burkas but was only obsessed with the spirit and what nourishes it. He didn’t see Islamic teaching as incompatible with a Western upbringing. You might say he’s not representative, but then you might ask who is a representative Christian. A Crusader? Torquemada? Jerry Fallwell? Larry Flynt in his born again period? An atheist who just thinks it’s right to turn the other cheek? We say that we hate Muslim strictures on female clothing, but what about the rules of certain Christian faiths that girls must wear skirts and nobody can dance? This is usually where arch-conservatives write in that Christians don’t blow up buildings. I feel unable to defend myself against a person who can’t count the billion or so non-building-destroying Muslims out there. It’s like arguing with a pelican.
I’m a bit depressed that The New York Times had to give this lunatic coverage, even under the pretext of responsibly keeping tabs on her. I just hope it doesn’t give her some kind of legitimacy. | <urn:uuid:39d5fda3-4c54-4516-8eff-acedbca36818> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beautyisimperfection.com/2010/10/10/pamela-geller-hitler-in-heels/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966963 | 1,189 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Kasab is likely to be executed at the Yerawada Prison in Pune.
A person sentenced to death in Maharashtra [ Images ] is usually executed at the Yerawada prison or the Nagpur prison. But there is no hangman to carry out executions now. Jhadhav, the sole hangman in Maharashtra, retired in 1995.
Though the stipulated retirement age for a hangman is 58 years, the government has bent the rules due to the difficulty in finding candidates for such a job. In special cases, hangmen are recalled from retirement to carry out executions.
Prison authorities in Belgaum jail in Karnataka [ Images ] told rediff.com that the hangmen who have retired are extremely reluctant to take up the job again. "It is an extremely difficult job. Most of them are very remorseful and don't want to come back," they said.
Prabhat Mullick, the sole hangman available for the job, has not received an official approval by the authorities so far.
Prabhat is the son of Nata Mullick, the hangman who carried out the execution of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in 2004. Chatterjee, who raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl, was hanged in 2004. No convict has been executed in India [ Images ] since Chatterjee's hanging.
Mullick's family has been in this business since ages; his grandfather also worked as a hangman under the British regime.
But authorities at the Yerawada jail in Pune are not worried about the unavailability of hangmen. "We have faced difficulties in the execution of 11 convicts in the Yerawada jail due to the lack of a hangman. But the case will be different for Kasab. He is considered the biggest enemy of the nation and there will be many who would want to hang this deadly criminal," said prison officials.
It is a tough job, officials point out, as there can be no room for error. "Right from preparing the noose to pulling the lever, utmost care has to be taken. The noose cannot be too tight since the convict should not feel any pain. There is a specific manner in which the noose has to be knotted for this purpose. The manner in which the noose is knotted depends on the weight of the person. The lever cannot be pulled very hard as it may severe the head of the person from the body," explained the officials.
They added, "Great care is taken to prepare the noose. Ghee, soap and squashed banana is applied to the rope that is made out of cotton yarn in order to make it smooth. Apart from learning how to carry out an execution, other checks have to be in place before a person can be handed over the job. Only men are employed for this job and the candidate has to be above 5.4 inches tall."
Other than the morbid nature of the job, the meager salary also acts as a deterrent. The hangman only gets a paltry amount of Rs 150 to Rs 200 for each execution. He is not an employee of the state government and doesn't get any related benefits. Though recommendations have often been made to address this issue, none of them have been addressed or implemented.
Major jails across India face an acute shortage of trained hangmen. Karnataka jails have not employed a hangman since the past two decades. In Madhya Pradesh [ Images ], the hangman who was supposed to execute Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, died in 2009.
At the Tihar jail, hangman Mammu Singh was arrested in connection with a loan default case, and now he has sworn off the job. Mammu Singh had carried out the execution of Kehar Singh in 1989, who was awarded the death sentence for plotting the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi [ Images ]. | <urn:uuid:3f3cb29f-fb45-46df-b0ea-77c64c9feda9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/may/06/anniversary-26-11-who-will-hang-ajmal-kasab.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978253 | 801 | 1.765625 | 2 |
No high resolution image exists...
Mayor Kevin Johnson joined public utility officials and private business developers at Depot Park Tuesday for a ceremony to dedicate the largest private solar project in the Sacramento region.
The 3-megawatt project, located in the Depot Park business complex on Florin-Perkins Road, includes an array of 12,600 solar panels and is designed to meet nearly 40 percent of the annual power needs for the 3 million-square-foot facility, according to information released by the mayor’s office.
“I believe this area has the opportunity to be the greenest region in the country and a hub for investment in clean technology,” Johnson said in his prepared statement. “Today’s dedication demonstrates that good environmental policy can be good economic policy.”
(Image by: Courtesy: Depot Park) Johnson said the project – which is the result of collaboration by Depot Park, the city of Sacramento, East West Bank, SPG Solar and Chint Astronergy – has historic significance as a showcase for the reuse of a military base with a Brownfield site for renewable energy generation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines a Brownfield site as land where any redevelopment or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.
The new solar project is an example of finding creative solutions to challenging issues and using green energy to remedy a previously contaminated Brownfield site, said Dick Fischer, president of U.S. National Leasing, owner and manager of Depot Park.
“It demonstrates how the alignment of policy creates real deals,” Johnson said. “We have a state enterprise zone and an aggressive renewable portfolio by SMUD, and we have our city sustainable goals all coming together to leverage dollars.”
The solar panel array at Depot Park is the largest green sector project within the city limits and it provides an opportunity to satisfy a growing need to diversify the local economy, Johnson told those attending the dedication.
Johnson was also joined at the dedication ceremony by Renee Taylor, president of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) board.
“SMUD is very committed to these kinds of projects,” Taylor said. “It’s an example of how, if we all come together to see this vision of a more sustainable future for Sacramento, that working together really is the way to do it.”
In 2007, SMUD began implementing California Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which requires utilities to set 10-year installation and budget goals proportional to the utility’s share of statewide load, which in SMUD’s case amounts to 125 megawatts (MW) of new capacity by the end of 2016.
“This one 3-megawatt project at Depot Park puts us at about 20 megawatts,” Taylor said. “We still have quite a ways to go to reach (our) goal, and we are pursuing it aggressively.”
Joel Ayala, director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, also took part in Tuesday’s dedication ceremony. Ayala noted that solar projects of this kind in California provide an efficient and affordable source of energy as well as jobs for Californians.
“This is a win for California,” Ayala said. “The investment that Chint Astronergy has made in California is a great achievement, and the hope is that we can develop further opportunities both here and across the state.”
Julia Burrows, managing partner at Valley Vision, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization associated with the Depot Park solar project, said Chint Astronergy, the manufacturer of the new solar panels at Depot Park, is looking at potential plant locations and company headquarters in the United States.
“We want them here,” Burrows said.
Bringing such a manufacturing plant to this location would also bring 150 to 200 jobs, Burrows said, boosting the local economy and supporting the main objectives of the mayor’s Greenwise Initiative.
The initiative, launched by mayor Johnson last May, is an effort to make Sacramento the greenest region in the country and a hub for green technology through collaborative efforts with experts and community leaders in a variety of policy areas such as waste and recycling, urban design and green building, and green and clean technology.
Johnson concluded his dedication comments with a direct invitation to Cunhui Nan, chairman of Chint Astronergy, to bring his manufacturing plant to Sacramento and Depot Park.
“Sacramento is open for business,” Johnson said. “We have the space, we have the people and we’re ready to go.” | <urn:uuid:42fabaee-379a-47f6-901b-937380611cb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sacramentopress.com/headline/49012/Mayor_helps_dedicate_largest_private_solar_project_in_Sacramento | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945924 | 975 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Originally Posted by MadDetective
I don't know about anyone else but "good" military leaders don't tell men to march to their deaths and never retreat despite the odds.
I think if you look at history, you will see that most would consider you to be mistaken...
But that is really more of a moral question. Is it not 'good' to give your life to a greater idea? Is self sacrifice not a good thing, if it save others?
Don't get me wrong people have been marched to their deaths promoting some horrible ideals as well, but to broadly define 'good' like you have does not seem to fit common concepts of heroism.
Edit: Or maybe I just miss read your comment and you were trying to promote self sacrifice versus forced service... | <urn:uuid:2f95727d-a39c-4d8e-8cbb-aa110fa38204> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?s=&t=413985&page=3 | 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 | 0.984538 | 159 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Russian cement reborn
The Global Cement Report Ninth Edition listed Russia as the world’s seventh-largest cement consuming country. Plant modernisation and regeneration is back on the agenda for the nation’s cement industry. While cement demand has fallen in recent years, it is now increasing and, with a full order book of mega-sized construction projects, Russia’s cement market is climbing back up the consumption league ladder.
Russia’s economy has been performing well. McGraw-Hill analysts report that consumer lending, which reached a double-digit rate in 2011, is expected to underpin consumer demand in 1Q12. Standard & Poor’s (S&P) says Russia’s economy will enter 2012 with “strong momentum,” but believes it is likely to slow. Consumer spending will underpin growth in the 1H12, although S&P suggest that the Central Bank is predicted to curb credit growth in the 2H12, while fixed capital investment will also shrink as lending is tightened.
Meanwhile, the IMF predicts GDP growth to slow from 4.1 per cent in 2011 to 3.5 per cent in 2012, mainly because of significant risks emanating from a spill-over from the financial effects of the eurozone crisis.
The government has also postponed regulated tariff hikes on electricity and gas prices to July, keeping inflation around five per cent for the next two years. Morgan Stanley puts the annual rate at 5.4 and 5.3 per cent for 2012 and 2013, respectively.
While oil prices remain strong, Russia is similarly vulnerable to falls in prices as the sector makes up 10 per cent of GDP. According to the IMF, structural reforms are also required to advance the overall investment climate.
On the political front, the level of popular protests against the prime minister and his ruling United Russia did not prevent Vladimir Putin from gaining re-election for the third time to the president’s office on 4 March 2012. Although many Muscovites are adamant in their opposition, Mr Putin has brought stability to Russia’s economy.
Looking forward, some of Putin’s key decisions in the next presidency will concern energy with significant investment and construction opportunities ahead. Over US$200bn could be invested in power plants by 2020. The average age of the country’s power plants is 32 years and most of these are hydropower stations with the newer facilities tending to be nuclear-based. Russia is also keen to develop potentially significant oil and gas resources in the Arctic and Black Sea that should attract joint ventures and foreign investment. In addition, the government is due to review its offshore resource development programme through to 2030.
Some 3.6Mm2 of new office space will be constructed in Moscow with about half of this volume already underway. There is also a trend for green buildings, as firms look to conform to the 261-FZ Energy Efficiency law that offers tax incentives for buildings with energy savings and increased energy efficiency.
There is similarly-growing investment in infrastructure construction. Large projects such as the ATES I Summit 2012, the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup in 2018 are all boosting construction sector activity.
These big construction projects will be supplemented by developments in road building and housing. Russia’s road infrastructure is particularly underdeveloped. The government will spend RUB12.2trn (US$430bn) on Russia’s transport system between 2011-15.
A 2010 government study established that residential and social building projects make up 80 per cent of building material end-markets. Russia is behind most western countries for living and commercial space per capita. According to government statistics, Russia’s 1980-87 baby boom generation is now ready to seek better housing, which is a problem as the current housing stock is low. “Housing construction is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 6.8 per cent between 2011-15,” TKB Capital forecasts.
TKB Capital also estimates annual domestic housing construction to grow 6.8 per cent between 2011-15, while the Ministry for Regional Development has forecast an expansion of 9.3 per cent for the period.
Construction activity is particularly booming in Krasnoyarsk City with about 2000 building projects ongoing. Housing developments dominate the city’s construction sector. In spite of the financial crisis, Krasnoyarsk has remained a national leader in terms of new housing commissioned per capita for the last three years. In 2009, 469,000m2 of housing space was commissioned in the city. This construction boom is boosting the development of the building materials industry.
Over in the Ulyanovsk region in the west, capital investment from January to September 2011 rose by 125 per cent YoY with companies investing more than RUB33bn in the region’s economy.
There are currently 95 investment projects active in the Ulyanovsk region including the ongoing Ulyanovskshifer LLC’s cement plant modernisation (see Table 1).
After reaching a peak of 430kg in 2008, per capita cement consumption plunged to 311kg in a difficult 2009. Since then, the market has been recovering and in 2010 the figure rose to 355kg. According to the Federal State Statistics Service, the Volgograd and Krasnodar territories led this revival. Last year, per capita consumption increased 15.2 per cent to 409kg, or a total cement demand of 57.2Mt, and is well on its way to pre-crisis levels, analysts at Morgan Stanley predict. | <urn:uuid:fa5f9365-5411-4faa-a97e-9714194ae2d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cemnet.com/Articles/story/149359/russian-cement-reborn.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947893 | 1,140 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Rhodes Institute Begins Today
Publication Date: 6/11/2007
Nineteen students will participate in this year′s Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies, which begins today and runs through August 3. These Rhodes Institute Fellows start the program with a two-week crash course on Memphis and the Mid-South, led by the program′s seven faculty members. This portion of the program features faculty lectures, panels of community leaders and field trips. This year′s trips will take Institute fellows near and far, from the Hollywood-Springdale community just north of the college to the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, AR.
After the introduction to the region, the fellows will dive into their individual research projects, which range from an ecological assessment of green space within the Hollywood-Springdale community to examining the distinctiveness of Memphis rap music. In addition, two fellows will conduct research in the Clinton Library, three will analyze Civil Rights-era photographs in conjunction with the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and three will study archaeology at Ames Plantation in Fayette County, TN.
"This year′s program includes the most exciting and diverse range of topics that we have ever seen in the Rhodes Institute," says Tim Huebner, associate professor of history and the Institute′s director.
The Rhodes Institute, founded in 2003, is dedicated to furthering meaningful academic research about Memphis and the surrounding region. | <urn:uuid:3091421c-3df5-4987-9bea-c43d6c85aaa9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rhodes.edu/7694.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932841 | 289 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Yeah, 50 degrees is probably going to be too cold for that yeast. Lager yeast do well at that temp though, but even so you need a lot of yeast - perhaps 4-6 vials/packs or a couple packs of dry lager yeast.
I recommend warming the beer up to the mid to low 60s, but don't let it get too warm. Fermentation temps much over 70 degrees can generate some unwanted flavors. And remember that fermentation is exothermic so your fermentation temp could be 6-8 degrees over ambient.
As long as your sanitation was good the beer should be fine, especially at 50 degrees.
Also, you may way to pitch more yeast, especially if you used liquid yeast and only pitched one pack/vial. If you are new to brewing I would recommend starting out with dry yeast until you get the hang of making yeast starters or pitch multiple packs/vials.
Good luck on your beer! | <urn:uuid:4b6bf673-2568-4f29-812d-bcabd61abdea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=13947.msg176986 | 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 | 0.958361 | 195 | 1.5 | 2 |
It’s numbing. Sad. Tragic.
The death of John Anczarski of Ringtown as a result of injuries suffered when the bike he was riding was struck by a car in New Mexico on Monday has touched many people in our area and nationwide. The 19-year-old and three friends from Ashland — Ty Bereskie, 20, Nicholas Gober, 21, and Travis Brown, 20 — were biking across the country as “The Pink Pedal: Riding Hard to Fight Breast Cancer.”
One can only imagine the pain and suffering that his family is feeling, particularly his parents, who have lost a son. It has been said that nothing is worse for a parent than losing a child, regardless of that child’s age. And while John was already a young man, it hurts no less.
When something like this happens, it’s often a struggle to find the right words to say. The borough of Ringtown is rallying to help the Anczarski family. They are decorating the town pink, the color used to promote the fight against breast cancer, with ribbons, signs and even lightbulbs dipped in pink paint.
Perhaps the one comfort that the Anczarski family can take in this tragedy is that their son will help others live. The family made the decision to donate John’s organs for transplant.
The young man also died while doing something to help others, raising money for breast cancer research and awareness. He and his teammates have all been touched by the disease in one way or another. Take a look at their blog on http://thepinkpedal.wordpress.com and you can see that they made quite an impact on their journey that began May 23 in Ashland. People across the country cheered them on and embraced them and their cause as they arrived at different stops. The teammates, in turn, appreciated the support and were grateful for the hospitality they received.
With the quest to look for role models for young people in today’s complex society, John and his teammates are definitely positive ones to look to. They have shown that people can make a difference in this world, and if you can put your mind to something, you can achieve it.
God bless the Anczarski family and the Pink Pedal participants. Know that many thoughts and prayers are with you at this time.
For those looking to help the family at this time, visit The Pink Pedal blog and the group’s page on Facebook. Feel free to post messages to the family and group. | <urn:uuid:c49bc833-c0bd-4beb-b01b-6d6283752159> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.republicanherald.com/mommy/?m=201006 | 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 | 0.98046 | 531 | 1.5 | 2 |
Firefighters were dispatched to chimney fire at 3:48 this afternoon (2323 SE 137Th ave). By the time they arrived the fire had spread into the attic. Station 7 (Mill Park) quickly verified that all occupants were accounted for and sent crews inside to contain the fire. Truck 7 also went to the roof to help ventilate the home. Engine 29 (Gilbert),Engine 31 (Rockwood), and Engine 11 (Lents) also responded.
The fire was contained to the attic and was quickly extinguished by firefighters. No one was injured during this incident and a damage estimate is forthcoming.
Portland Fire & Rescue would like to remind all that your chimney should be cleaned at least once a year. It take only a small accumulation of creosote glazing to create the potential for a chimney fire. Different types of wood create different amounts of creosote when burned. Pine causes a rapid build-up of creosote and should be avoided as a regular source of wood. Creosote can also reduce the draw of the fireplace and reduce efficiency.
Photos courtesy of Dick Harris (PF&R) | <urn:uuid:10a945b1-e064-45df-ba09-22349a0e78bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.portlandoregon.gov/FIRE/article/429765 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968648 | 232 | 1.742188 | 2 |
A few weeks ago, my mother invited me to a movie screening for “Won’t Back Down” at Gallery Place. The evening was significant for us: we are a twosome that traversed a rocky educational landscape from kindergarten to college. The film celebrates two mothers who are dedicated to doing whatever it takes to provide the best education for their children. She could relate, and so could I.
The movie is set in Pittsburgh and stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as Jamie Fitzpatrick, the mother of a second grade girl who has dyslexia and Viola Davis, known as Nona Alberts in the film, as the mother of a young boy who is struggling to learn as fast as his classmates.
Davis is a teacher at the school Gyllenhaal’s daughter attends, an environment plagued with large classroom sizes, insufficient resources for students with learning disabilities and unmotivated teachers. The two women decide to take control of the failing school with the help of a new parent trigger law, which allows moms and dads to take over a school that is underperforming. Davis is also working hard to make sure her son, who’s at a different school, catches up to his peers.
In a packed theater, teachers, community leaders and many others in the field of education waited to see their life on the big screen. Before the movie started, Alton B. Pollard III, dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, which co-sponsored the event, had a special greeting for us: “When elephants fight, the grass suffers.” His message was clear; we’ve got to get a hold on education in America because the ones who suffer the most from its flaws are our children. The African proverb was the perfect opening for our night.
Before seeing this movie, I could tell you from first-hand experience exactly what it takes to give a child a good education. That’s clear from the person who invited me to the screening: my mother. My mother, who serves as the assistant dean for student affairs at Howard’s divinity school, has been in education for years. When I was a child, she always stressed that because I would be a product of the District of Columbia’s struggling public schools, the only way she could guarantee my success was to be heavily involved in my education.
She held my classroom teachers responsible for my daily education, my school administrators responsible for the strategy and oversight of my education, other parents responsible for remaining active in the Parent Teacher Association so that issues could be discussed and resolved, and yes, she held me accountable for doing my absolute best at all times. At one point in the movie, we joked that my mother was at my school probably more frequently than Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character. She seemed to be at her daughter’s school almost daily to talk with teachers and the school administrators; my mother was the same way.
I spent many nights at the kitchen table doing homework. Even after a long day of work, she came home and found the time to go through tough assignments with me. My mother, sometimes to my annoyance, always displayed an undying passion to make sure that I had access to the best schools and resources available.
As the parent of a D.C. public school student, this wasn’t easy. She fought hard to get me in to a Gifted and Talented program when I was in elementary school. She met with my teachers regularly to tell them they needed to continue to raise the bar for me. And when the shortcomings of DCPS failed to challenge me in math and science, she enrolled me in the Saturday Academy at the University of the District of Columbia. Later on, as I neared high school graduation, my mother made sure I took advantage of the Good Sports program that Kaplan Test Prep offered to high school athletes to assist with SAT preparation. (Kaplan is a subsidiary of The Washington Post corporation.) It seemed like my mother was everywhere.
As a child and adolescent, sometimes it was embarrassing that everyone knew my mother. Everyone from the principal to my everyday teachers seemed to know Jason Jackson’s mother. For a brief time, my mother even ran the DC College Access Program office at my high school. She recently reminded me of the time she paged her own son to come to the DC CAP office to research colleges and work on applications. Educating me was definitely a relentless effort on her part, the same relentless effort that Gyllenhaal and Davis exemplified throughout the movie as they faced obstacles but never wavered in their effort to take back control of their school and children’s futures.
After viewing the movie I realized something about all my mom did for me. It was never about her -- it was about my education. Sitting in that movie theater next to my mother I realized no matter how hard the task, she did everything in her power to help me get to where I am today. She selflessly put my education and my future first. It was something that she reminded me of frequently growing up when she would say, “This isn’t for me. This is for you.”
This movie isn’t about teachers, unions, school administrators, school systems, and to be honest, it isn’t about the parents either; it’s about educating our children. It’s going to take an all-hands on deck approach to prepare our children to be the best. While we look for ways to ensure their success, it’s important that we remember that the effort must be selfless. I would recommend that anyone, whether a product of the public school system, a teacher, an administrator, or a parent, sees this movie. It’s definitely a gem.
Not much has changed with my relationship with my mother or her passion and level of involvement in my life. As the movie ended, she identified several of the event’s organizers and her coworkers that she wanted me to meet. Of course, this was an effort by her to push me further in my career and professional development through networking. Even though it’s not education anymore, she’s still pushing me.
“Won’t Back Down” is scheduled for release in theaters Friday, Sept. 28.
Jason A. Jackson is a native Washingtonian and local blogger living in Montgomery County.
More from The Root DC | <urn:uuid:d21b9d3e-92f0-4dcd-ad91-0eaec14f5327> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/wont-back-down-my-life-on-film/2012/09/26/d5dc8f56-06a0-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979032 | 1,333 | 1.703125 | 2 |
A toll-free mental health helpline designed to assist New Jersey’s soldiers once they return home from the battlefield has been made a permanent fixture.
Gov. Chris Christie — during a ceremony Friday in Somerset — officially established the Vet2Vet peer support hotline as a service to be provided by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in collaboration with the state’s Department of Military and Veterans Affairs. The service has been in place since 2005 and has helped 6,000 callers.
Trying to obtain a “dedicated appropriation” has been years in the making, said Sen. Fred Madden, D-Washington Township, sponsor of the Senate version of the bill Christie signed into law.
The law makes available a check off box for taxpayers to contribute to the New Jersey National Guard State Family Readiness Council Fund through their income tax returns. Funds donated by the public will be collected through the state Division of Taxation and then distributed by the readiness council, one of three organizations recognized by Christie and First Lady Mary Pat Christie via a $141,000 donation from contributions generated through the Governor’s Inaugural.
Prior to Friday, the program had been funded on a year-to-year basis.
“It’s a guaranteed support network for them along the way,” Madden said of the Vet2Vet, modeled after a Cop2Cop program for police officers. Madden sponsored the 2006 law that expanded the Cop2Cop program.
The Vet2Vet helpline number is 866-838-7654.
“There are a lot of military families and military members themselves that have serious times of depression and challenged related to the things they have witnessed” during battle, said Madden.
For military veterans needing help, the service offers a “combat veteran or trained counselor at the other end of the line in a time of need,” the senator said.
“This program is a critical component of the healing process in the long-term mental health of our service members who return from Iraq and Afghanistan as well as veterans of previous conflicts,” Christie said. “I believe it is only fitting that we take every opportunity to recognize the sacrifice of these service members and their families and provide whatever assistance we can as a token of our gratitude and appreciation for their service to our state and our country,” added Christie. | <urn:uuid:9ec2818a-d9b6-4f0c-8467-826ff6dfa655> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/index.ssf/2011/08/vet2vet_program_given_permanen.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956576 | 496 | 1.523438 | 2 |
By Walter F. Roche Jr. / The Tennessean
One new Tennessee case of meningitis has been reported by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bringing the state total to
140 since the outbreak began.
The data released today shows that
nationwide the total number of cases jumped by eight to 664 since Dec.
28, the date of the last update.
The number of deaths from tainted
spinal steroids in Tennessee remains at 14, according to the report,
while nationwide 40 deaths have been reported. A Massachusetts drug
compounding firm has been blamed for the fungal meningitis outbreak,
which first surfaced in September.
Michigan is the only state to
report more cases than Tennessee of infections from the spinal steroid
with 234, up by two since late December. Michigan also accounted for the
only new death in the outbreak, with the total jumping by one to 11.
New England Compounding Center, the firm that shipped the tainted
methylprednisolone acetate, has filed for bankruptcy and reported last
week in a court filing that some 180 lawsuits have been filed against it
across the country. | <urn:uuid:0f728722-7ef9-445d-b165-dddb1b98d1ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbir.com/rss/article/248608/2/Meningitis-outbreak-1-new-case-in-TN | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958943 | 240 | 1.617188 | 2 |
There has been a slew of incredible, and disturbing, reporting by the UK Guardian recently on how police have rebranded activism as “domestic extremism” and “domestic terrorism.” Environmental activists, antiwar activists, animal rights activists and many more groups have been targeted. Specifically, police have gathered personal information on thousands of activists who simply attend protests or political meetings, and created massive national databases.
For instance, this “spotter card” was distributed to police officers in preparation for protests at Britain’s largest arms fair. According to the Guardian:
These so-called “spotter cards” are issued by police to identify individuals they consider to be potential troublemakers because they have appeared at a number of demonstrations.
One of the individuals featured at ‘H’ is Mark Thomas, a comedian and political activist. He has no criminal record. In a column, he noted how this scaremongering reflects truly misplaced priorities:
While being wanted outside the arms fair, I was legitimately inside researching a book on the subject, and uncovered four companies illegally promoting “banned” torture equipment.
Perhaps the most important bit of information, I think, is buried a bit in the story. According to this investigative piece by the Guardian:
Acpo’s national infrastructure for dealing with domestic extremism was set up with the backing of the Home Office in an attempt to combat animal rights activists who were committing serious crimes. Senior officers concede the criminal activity associated with these groups has receded, but the units dealing with domestic extremism have expanded their remit to incorporate campaign groups across the political spectrum, including anti-war and environmental groups that have only ever engaged in peaceful direct action.
If you’re familiar with this site and the Green Scare, you know that one of the key points I try to hit home, repeatedly, is that environmental and animal rights activists may be among the first targets in these political crackdowns, but they will not be the last. By the admission of some government officials in the UK, this has clearly been the case.
Whether or not that has been the official policy in the United States, the same dynamic is at play. If we do not stop the terrorism rhetoric, legislation, court cases and scare-mongering in its tracks, no activist and no social movement will remain untouched.
Of course, you could always just continue listening to the soundbites of police and government officials, like this one from Anton Setchell, who is in charges of the “domestic extremism” unit in the UK. People who find themselves on the databases, he says, “should not worry at all.” | <urn:uuid:5b320a61-e5f3-44d2-aaf0-4dcd78fdf604> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/uk-police-spying-started-with-animal-rights-activists/2354/ | 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 | 0.966208 | 550 | 1.578125 | 2 |
BOSTON -- Gov. Deval Patrick is filing gun-control legislation he says will close loopholes in Massachusetts' existing laws while strengthening mental health services.
Some of the measures in the bill Patrick unveiled on Wednesday have been filed by the governor in the past, including restricting gun owners to purchasing one firearm a month.
The bill would also tighten access to high-powered rounds of ammunition, create four new types of firearms-related crimes and mandate buyers to undergo background checks before purchasing weapons at gun shows.
It would also require Massachusetts courts to send all relevant mental- health records to the state's criminal justice information system so the federal government could include this information in a national gun license registry.
Patrick said that would bring Massachusetts into compliance with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
His bill also includes $5 million for Department of Mental Health programs, including training teachers to recognize symptoms of mental illness in students.
Patrick said the mental- health issue is critical to a comprehensive effort to reduce gun violence.
"Mental illness is a disease that can be treated, and our communities are safer when the appropriate services and supports are available for people in need," he said in statement. "I am encouraged by the palpable consensus in our Legislature that the time for action is now."
The push for
Among the ideas being weighed by lawmakers are proposals requiring gun owners to buy liability insurance and setting tighter standards for firearms licenses.
Gun rights advocates have faulted Patrick, saying some of his proposals would punish law-abiding gun owners. They argue there should be no limit on the number of guns that licensed owners can purchase.
Instead of writing ever-tougher licensing requirements, activists say, state and law enforcement officials should focus on keeping guns out of the hands of hard-core criminals and the mentally ill.
Patrick's bill would also:
* Require private gun sales to occur at the business of a licensed dealer so that the sale can be tracked electronically;
* Prevent the furnishing of a machine gun to any person under the age of 21;
* Establish tiered punishments for possessing different weapons on school property and give police the authority to arrest without a warrant in order to quickly diffuse a dangerous situation on school property;
* Create the crime of assault and battery by means of a firearm, assault by means of a firearm, being a felon in possession of a firearm and commission of a violent misdemeanor while in possession of a weapon;
* Increase the authorized minimum penalties for third and fourth offenses of illegal possession and carrying of firearms, shotguns, rifles and machine guns, and increases the maximum punishment for a second offense.
Included in Patrick's proposed $5 million for additional mental health services is $2 million for mobile crisis teams that travel to locations with individuals in crisis and provide specialized mental health service to prevent potential harm or violence by connecting those individuals with treatment.
Patrick's proposal also includes $900,000 for crisis intervention training for law enforcement and other first responders and $500,000 for the state's Child Psychiatric Access Program to help with the early diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. | <urn:uuid:f6e7c592-d2b9-4fac-82f6-2f8ed71eb294> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lowellsun.com/dracuthighsports/ci_22392268/gov-aims-close-gun-loopholes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954795 | 629 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Blame game gets intense at federal cuts draw near
By JACKIE CALMES
The New York Times | February 24,2013
AP File Photos
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, left, and President Barack Obama are the lightning rods for their respective parties as massive cuts in federal programs draw closer.
WASHINGTON — First the White House and Congress created a potential fiscal crisis, agreeing more than a year ago to once-unthinkable governmentwide spending cuts in 2013 unless the two parties agreed to alternative ways to reduce budget deficits.
Now that those cuts are imminent — because compromise is not — they have created one of Washington’s odder blame games over just whose bad idea this was.
The battle lines over cuts that are scheduled to begin Friday, known in budget parlance as sequestration, were evident Saturday in President Barack Obama’s weekly address and the Republican response, by Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota.
The idea for sequestration did come from the White House, as news accounts made clear at the time — Jacob J. Lew, then Obama’s budget director and now his nominee for Treasury secretary, was the main proponent.
Lew, who was a senior adviser to the House speaker in the 1980s, lifted language from a 1985 law he helped negotiate, the Gramm-Rudman law. It was conceived by two Republican senators to be “a sword of Damocles,” as they said at the time, one that hung over the two parties, poised to strike unless they compromised on deficit reduction.
The law was ruled unconstitutional, and afterward, the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Ronald Reagan enacted a modified version, which resulted in relatively minor cuts until 1990.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2011. Obama and congressional Republicans were able to agree to nearly $1 trillion in reductions over a decade in “discretionary” spending programs, which cover just about everything the government does except entitlement programs.
But they could not agree on the final $1.2 trillion. The president demanded that that amount come from higher taxes on the wealthy and some reductions in entitlement spending. Republicans insisted on entitlement cuts only.
So both parties started negotiating for a trigger, as they called it — an undesirable, automatic action that would slash deficits if Democrats and Republicans could not. Obama and Democrats wanted a trigger mandating automatic spending cuts and tax increases; Republicans insisted on spending cuts only.
Democrats conceded, and that is when Lew — along with Gene Sperling, director of Obama’s National Economic Council — proposed the Gramm-Rudman sequestration. Given that law’s Republican parentage, the Obama advisers figured this kind of trigger would appeal to Republicans, and it did.
House Speaker John A. Boehner and three-quarters of House Republicans voted for the agreement. | <urn:uuid:f08d710c-a5ac-4013-99aa-5ea1424481a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20130224/THISJUSTIN/702249935/0/BENNETT | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958388 | 584 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Feel depressed, gloomy, even? About the state of the world or the state of this country, I mean. You're not alone. In fact, a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll says those of us who fear the sky is falling are in the vast majority.
It doesn't matter if we're black, white, male, or female (although women and minorities have a history of feeling less sanguine about their situations than white men--probably because they're less well-off financially on average). Only 25 percent of us tell pollsters we believe "things in the U.S. are going in the right direction. ...That is about the lowest level of satisfaction detected since the survey started in December 2003."
What's the reason? The most prevalent, of course, is the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the daily media reports of a war that is producing no positive results, killing off thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and costing this nation untold billions. The next most popular reason is "poor leadership" (to wit, neither Republicans nor Democrats having the courage to find a way out of Iraq for us that doesn't put us in a worse situation than before we invaded). The AP reports, "Nine percent faulted the economy, 8 percent a loss of moral values, and 5 percent gasoline prices."
I'd like to add a few of my personal favorites. On the economic front, the recent rapid run-up in stock prices scares the dickens out of me. It seems irrational and cause for a coming crash. I also think government reports on inflation are woefully lacking in accurate data on the rising cost of living. Look what's happened to real estate, gas prices (which drive up the cost of everything else), food, etc. How can inflation possibly still be in the low single digits? It doesn't make sense.
Lastly, there's the lack of political or public will to address climate change and our doomed dependence on foreign oil, in any meaningful way. Left unaddressed, these problems could bring the end not just to American global dominance but to the entire globe. No wonder we're bummed! | <urn:uuid:d38df71d-c589-45e9-8f5f-b8a2b261145a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/erbe/2007/05/21/feeling-down-youre-not-alone_print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950559 | 441 | 1.578125 | 2 |
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Bit rate and power are two commonly used optimality criteria for MIMO transceiver design. In the literature, bit rate maximization and power minimization problems are viewed as different problems and solved independently. In this paper, we derive the duality between these two problems for both the cases with and without integer constraint on bit allocation. We will show that if a transceiver is optimal for the power-minimizing problem, it is also optimal for the rate maximizing problem, and the converse is true. Such a duality has not been stated and proved in the literature to the best of our knowledge. The derivation does not involve any existing optimal solution and we can establish duality result even for the rate maximization problem with integer bit constraint, which the optimal solution is not known. The duality also allows us to develop an algorithm for finding the rate-maximizing transceiver with integer bit allocation using the solution of power-minimizing system. We will also consider some possible generalizations of the problem, for example, when there is a constraint on the maximal constellation size and when the subchannel bit error rates (BERs) are constrained. For each of these cases, we will see that the duality between the two problems continued to hold. In the simulations, we will compute the optimal solutions for these two problems and demonstrate the duality between these two.
Date of Publication: Aug. 2011 | <urn:uuid:00c3c955-4a31-4d18-845c-9fe58f7d2649> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=5763786 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939349 | 292 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The Arlington County Human Rights Commission recently held a public hearing and subsequently investigated a Christian businessman on behalf of a gay-rights activist who claimed he wrongly “discriminated” based on “sexual orientation.” Tim Bono of Bono Film and Video in Arlington County refused to duplicate two Gay Pride films for political activist Lillian Vincenz. (Vincenz once told an interviewer that “gay people .. are, in general, so much more courageous, innovative, and open to new ideas than the average straight person.” . . . .
In refusing to duplicate the videos, Bono cited his desire to honor what he perceived as Biblical prohibitions against the sin of homosexual behavior. Bono Film & Video informs every potential customer that it does not duplicate material that it may deem obscene, or that may embarrass employees, tarnish its reputation, or that runs counter to the company’s Christian and ethical values. . . .
Vincenz contacted Arlington County officials to get them to force Bono’s private business to duplicate her materials, despite the fact that Bono objected on the basis of his religious convictions. The Arlington Human Rights Commission then ruled against Bono, ordering him to either duplicate Vincenz’s films himself or pay someone else to do it for him.
See also a local newspaper account here.
I see three main problems with this ruling. First, while a county ordinance prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring and in the provision of "general public services," it is hardly obvious that the film shop has so discriminated. The shop refused to print a message it disagrees with; it did not refuse to do business with a person because of the person's sexual orientation. If a heterosexual had come to the shop requesting duplication of the same materials, I assume the shop owner would have denied the request.
Second, if the county ordinance is understood to require the business to duplicate the materials at issue, it is constitutionally vulnerable. (Note: I'm not arguing that the ordinance, interpreted in this way, would be held unconstitutional by a federal court. That's a different question than I will address here.) It seems to me that, even in the context of a commercial setting like a film shop, antidiscrimination laws that require a business owner to help others propound a message to which they object come very close to content-based, compelled speech; alternatively, it could be seen as requiring the owner to carry the speech of another, which the Supreme Court has found unconstitutional in some contexts. It's not the same as requiring Bono to recite aloud his support for the "gay agenda," as one might require a school-child to recite the Pledge, but it's just a few steps away from that. There are counter-arguments — and it has to be emphasized that this is a commercial setting, where courts have been more forgiving of speech regulation in the service of antidiscrimination law — but there's a plausible argument that the Arlington County ordinance would be unconstitutional as applied in this way.
Third, beyond these purely constitutional considerations, applying antidiscrimination law in this way is peculiarly bad policy because it harms free-speech values while doing little to advance core antidiscrimination values. In other cases where business owners want to discriminate (e.g., in employment), at least the connection to important and core antidiscrimination values is apparent. Here, the antidiscrimination law is actually operating to require the person to contribute to messages she dislikes. In contrast to the employment context, where I believe the antidiscrimination value is at its height and the "speech" interest is relatively lower, here the speech interest in refusing to facilitate objectionable messages is high, while the antidiscrimination value is relatively lower (if implicated at all). The antidiscrimination law, applied in this way, is really a speech regulation in a way that seems much more obvious and intuitive than in the employment context.
Imagine a principled application of a county ordinance that forbids discrimination in "services" on the basis of, say, "race, religion, and sexual orientation." Yes, the Christian film shop owner will have to copy the gay-rights documentaries. A victory for gay rights and equality, we might think. But the gay film shop owner will have to copy "God Hates Fags" posters for the fundamentalist minister protesting at the next funeral for a servicemember or a hate-crimes victim.
What makes the case even more compelling as an abuse of antidiscrimination law is that it's being applied to a mom-and-pop shop run by a small proprietor. We're not talking Kinko's here. So even if we worried that there might be some harm to speech values (e.g., the dissemination of unpopular ideas) if large printing companies refused to copy material on the basis of "moral" objections to its content, that concern is not present in this case.
Hard cases arise when business owners deny other kinds of services to people on the basis of some moral objection, as when the pharmacist working for a large national chain refuses to fill a prescription for contraceptives. I won't try to resolve those cases now. But the Arlington County case does not, to me, seem like a very hard one.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Further Followup on "You Must Say That!":
- Investigating a Video Duplication Service for Not Duplicating Gay-Themed Films:
- You must say that! in Arlington County: | <urn:uuid:d7ea9cee-7809-4eff-802a-30286204b9c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.volokh.com/posts/chain_1146763166.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951606 | 1,126 | 1.75 | 2 |
The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
In conversation, humor is worth more than wit and easiness more than knowledge.
No man can teach another self-knowledge. He can only lead him or her up to self-discovery - the source of truth.
A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.
Young people at universities study to achieve knowledge and not to learn a trade. We must all learn how to support ourselves, but we must also learn how to live. We need a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of modern engineers.
No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.
Knowledge is going to make you stronger. Knowledge is going to let you control your life. Knowledge is going to give you the wisdom to teach their children. Knowledge is the thing that makes you smile in the face of disaster.
Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.
Only by knowledge of that which is not thyself, shall thyself be learned.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
I love thee for a heart that's kind. Not for the knowledge in thy mind.
The kind of intelligence a genius has is a different sort of intelligence. The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where.
Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.
Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.
Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
Our ability to achieve success depends on the strength of our wings gained through knowledge and experience. The greater our knowledge
and experience, the higher we can fly.
Share knowledge and ideas
Tell someone about a great book that you read so they can benefit from it too. Teach a new concept or idea that you've learned.
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts;
wisdom lies in their simplification.
The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.
The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.
Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs. | <urn:uuid:4c50b56f-550a-4be5-ac10-802f3cc96de3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.finestquotes.com/quotes/on/Knowledge/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952345 | 640 | 1.617188 | 2 |
What’s a minimum “test” of your product? And what are you testing?
A hypothesis-driven approach to product development dictates that you build as much as you need to test our your product, but not more and not less. But what are you “testing” your product for?
One possibility, as lean startups guru Eric Ries has stated, is to test your product for “viability.” He’s coined an important term, called Minimum Viable Product, and I’ll excerpt his excellent blog post below:
The idea of minimum viable product is useful because you can basically say: our vision is to build a product that solves this core problem for customers and we think that for the people who are early adopters for this kind of solution, they will be the most forgiving. And they will fill in their minds the features that aren’t quite there if we give them the core, tent-pole features that point the direction of where we’re trying to go.
So, the minimum viable product is that product which has just those features (and no more) that allows you to ship a product that resonates with early adopters; some of whom will pay you money or give you feedback.
He goes on to state that another example of this idea would be to set up a landing page and test for clickthrough rates and signup conversions, to see if there is any interest in the product. You could also stick a priced offer on the landing page to see how that affects peoples’ interest in registering for the site.
Viability is certainly one bar you can test for, but a related (and overlapping concept) is around testing product desirability. Let’s discuss this further.
Viable versus Desirable
In a previous post, I discussed an IDEO framework for how to think about desirability (user-focused) versus viability (business) and feasibility (engineering) – you can read that post here, called Does every startup need a Steve Jobs?
The idea here is that different companies often pursue products with different primary lenses – a business-driven company might try to assess viability upfront, thinking about metrics and revenue and market sizes. A feasibility (engineering) oriented organization might try to pick a super hard technology first (P2P! Mapreduce! Search!), then try to build a business around it. And a desirability-focused team might focus first and foremost on the target customer, their context and behavior, and build a product experience around that.
Thus, a Minimum Viable Product tends to center around the business perspective – what’s the minimum product I have to build in order to figure out whether or not I have a business? You might do that from testing signups on landing pages, try to sell products before they exist, etc. Putting up price points and collecting payment info is encouraged, because it helps assess the true viability of a product.
But what if you come from a human-centered perspective, and you want to build the Minimum Desirable Product? I think this is a subtle difference with big implications. A minimum desirable product (MDP) would focus primarily on whether or not you are providing an insanely great product experience and creating value for the end user.
Let’s define it as such:
Minimum Desirable Product is the simplest experience necessary to prove out a high-value, satisfying product experience for users
(independent of business viability)
To build an MDP, you will have to actually deliver the core of a product experience so that your customers can make a full assessment, rather than simply providing a landing page. Instead of measuring YOUR conversion rates and revenue generated, instead you might figure out the metrics of what benefits you are providing to the user. (I wrote about Benefit-Driven Metrics a while back) Similarly, you might make extensive use of qualitative research techniques such as the ones detailed by IDEO’s methodology card deck.
This also relates very much to Marc Andreessen’s definition of product/market fit, which he defines in purely market “pull” terms and not based on business ideas or viability. You could view the the Minimum Desirable Product as the simplest product that has a credible shot at providing that product/market fit.
Examples of MVP versus MDP
Let me make some quick distinctions about sites that might be Minimum Viable Products, but perhaps not Minimum Desirable Products, and vice versa.
- If you build a really viral social network that is profitable but has terrible user churn – you have built an MVP but not an MDP.
- If your profitable dating site gets lots of users to buy subscriptions at $20/month, but none of them find hot dates they were promised, you have built an MVP but not a MDP.
- If you build a magic box that spits out money whenever you hit a button, that is certainly desirable but not viable at all.
- If you create an amazing board game that your friends and family love and are addicted to, but you can’t get a game company to distribute it, you have created an MDP but not an MVP.
- If you have created a website with 20M+ uniques/month where people can tell each other what kind of sandwich they are eating, that has probably passed the desirability test but not the viability test.
(btw, I am writing this blog while drinking a soy latte at Cafe Epi in Palo Alto, but not eating a sandwich, for those who are curious)
Is desirability more important for consumer internet startups?
One of the key reasons why I began to think of this question is that it strikes me that consumer internet companies often don’t care much whether or not they have viable businesses in the short run. If you are building a large, viral, ad-support consumer internet property, you just want to go big! As soon as possible! This is particularly true for ad-supported sites where you need to break through a certain size to start talking to the brand ad agencies who can pay up on CPM. (More on that here) As a result of that, the goal becomes to hit product/market fit as soon as possible, and figure out the business model later.
Similarly, the key risk for consumer internet startups tends not to be technical risk or execution risk – it tends to be market risk. That risk may manifest itself as questions on whether or not there’s enough consumer value, or whether or not the market is big enough. These are things that may be proven purely based on desirability-oriented questions rather than getting into the business or technical side at all.
Minimum Feasible Product?
The last though I will leave you with is, perhaps there are markets where the engineering portion is the most important – and thus the most important concept of Minimum Feasible Product.
For example, for a drug company curing cancer, the focus wouldn’t be on minimum viable product because if you have a cure for cancer, you’ll be viable. Similarly, you may not focus on desirability, because your product would clearly have pull from the market. You don’t need to do landing pages or user-centered research to figure out that curing cancer is a big deal from a business and user point of view.
Instead, the focus would be on Minimum Feasible Product – what is the smallest amount of work necessary to field a credible candidate for an “in lab” solution to the product?
For consumer internet, perhaps there are similar examples of this.
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Get new updates via newsletter.. | <urn:uuid:dd3d9b73-3a34-4ce9-a8e6-ea544c9ae103> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://andrewchen.co/2009/12/07/minimum-desirable-product/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952804 | 1,588 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Zinfandel is native to Croatia and was later planted in Italy but California is where the variety became a hot shot. Zinfandel is able to produce large yields in hot climates and quickly became a darling of miners during the Gold Rush, thanks in part to the hard working Italian Americans that ran boarding houses. More than a century and a half later, the world still loves Zin. The number of California wineries producing serious Zinfandel has proliferated. Hillside vineyards are perfect because of the well drained soil. Warm viticultural areas, rather than hot climates, have been sought to avoid raisins and excess alcohol. Viticulturalists have started limiting yields to concentrate all the vines energy into fewer grape clusters and vintners have started to use French oak barrels. The results have been so successful that Zinfandel plantings now include Australia, South Africa and even Hermitage, in the northern Rhone. Navarro has long term contracts with five family-owned vineyards planted between 1930 and 1969 on well drained hillsides; the warm climate is moderated by the Russian River allowing the grapes to ripen without excess raisining.
During Prohibition hillside Zinfandel vineyards were popular because they hid the clandestine crop. Today hillside Zin vineyards are popular because the soils are thin and the slopes drain well.
Jim makes sure that only the best lots of Navarro Zinfandel went into this wine and the rest was relegated to our house red, Navarrouge.
The wine was fermented in open top tanks, punched down by hand, and aged ten months in seasoned French oak barrels. "Exceptional. Bright, zesty aroma of raspberry jam, hints of spice and superb handling of tannins so the wine is succulent and still crisp, so it will work with rustic meat dishes. A bargain!" -VintageExperiences.com Gold Medal winner. Best of Class.
Don't wear party clothes to punch down Zin; it's dirty but heady work. | <urn:uuid:100e40d9-e89e-4af4-bef3-06f140a3bb16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.navarrowine.com/shop/productdetail.php?prodid=858 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964827 | 409 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Collaboration in Civil Cases
As a result of the partnership efforts listed below, ENRD has brought joint civil enforcement cases with nearly every state. We have found that these joint cases are particularly effective in achieving record-setting results for the environment as well as obtaining record-setting financial awards.
Collaboration in Criminal Cases
ENRD routinely cooperates with state and local law enforcement officials in prosecuting pollution and wildlife crimes cases. ENRD regularly provides faculty for state environmental criminal enforcement training, frequently working with the four regional environmental enforcement associations: the Northeast Environmental Project, the Southeast Environmental Enforcement Network, the Midwest Environmental Enforcement Association, and the Western States Project. Working with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and state and local law enforcement agencies, ENRD has promoted the formation of regional environmental crimes task forces. There are now more than 50 such task forces.
Collaboration with Tribes
ENRD’s Indian Resources Section represents the United States in its trust capacity for Indian tribes and their members, and routinely files and defends cases for the benefit of tribes. ENRD commonly collaborates with particular tribes as part of this work. | <urn:uuid:07265a22-4b67-4c4f-8844-7f9d9658f434> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justice.gov/enrd/About_ENRD.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943925 | 232 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Boko Haram: Regional force 'should help Nigeria'
Chad's leader has called for the urgent creation of a regional force to tackle Nigerian Boko Haram militants.
The Islamist group operates in northern Nigeria, but President Idriss Deby said it was posing a threat to its neighbours around Lake Chad.
"Our basin is exposed to insecurity because of the permanent threat posed by Boko Haram," he said.
Nigeria has been struggling to contain attacks by the militants who want to impose Islamic law in the country.
On Monday, a suicide attack on a police station in Taraba state, which borders Cameroon, killed at least 11 people. No-one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Boko Haram militants have carried out many similar attacks.
They have targeted government institutions, churches and bars as well as mosques belonging to rival Muslim groups across northern Nigeria over the last 20 months.
Last year, the group also attacked the UN headquarters in Nigeria's capital, Abuja.'Hideout' raided
"I am demanding the creation of a joint deterrence force. We have to make this decision here today," President Deby told a meeting of the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which includes Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria and the Central African Republic.
- 2002: Founded in Maiduguri
- July 2009: Hundreds of members killed when Maiduguri police stations stormed; police capture and kill sect leader Mohammed Yusuf
- Dec 2010: Bombed Jos, killing 80 people; blamed for New Year's Eve attack on Abuja barracks
- Jun-Aug 2011: Bomb attacks on Abuja police HQ and UN building
- Dec 2011: Multiple bomb attacks on Christmas Day kill dozens
- Jan 2012: Wave of violence across north-east Nigeria; Kano bombing kills at least 180
"If we don't eradicate them, we won't be capable of saving our Lake Chad," he said.
Some experts have warned that the group is building links with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb which has mainly been active in the Sahara - across Niger, Mali and Algeria.
In Nigeria on Tuesday morning, troops raided a suspected hideout of Boko Haram in the city of Kano.
The BBC's Yusuf Ibrahim Yakasai in Kano says a heavy gun battle started at about 04:00 GMT and continued for two hours, but security officials did not confirm whether the hideout belonged to Boko Haram.
Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi told Reuters news agency that explosives and weapons were discovered during the raid in the Sabuwar Gandu area of the city.
An 18-year-old woman arrested in the raid told AFP news agency that her husband was a Boko Haram member and had escaped during the fighting.
The group has killed more than 1,000 people since it first came to prominence in 2009 when hundreds of its followers were killed when they attacked police stations in Maiduguri.
Its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was arrested but died in police custody.
In 2010 the group, whose name means "Western education is forbidden", started to stage drive-by shootings on government targets in revenge for his killing.
Their attacks have killed hundreds of civilians, both Muslim and Christian. | <urn:uuid:2f1920a4-d418-4056-8ec7-ed8f67e80bfe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17906504 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971074 | 656 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Two successive administrations now have sought to appease Muslims by minimizing the threat from Islamists. Indeed, science has now been enlisted in that effort. Early stimulus came from the White House.
Hours after 9/11, a Republican president allowed a host of Saudi elites to flee the US by chartered aircraft before the blood was dry at the World Trade Center. Never mind that most of the Manhattan suicide martyrs were Saudis. The political cue then was meant for domestic and foreign consumption; to wit, America would not hold passive aggressors, sponsor nations, or Islamic propaganda, accountable for the atrocities of “extremists.”
From the beginning, the majority of Muslims were anointed “moderates,” on the authority of an asserted conclusion. Concurrently, fellaheen danced in the streets of Arabia. No matter; blame for the terror threat was still confined to specific non-government agents like al Qa’eda or the Taliban. By fiat, Islamic terrorism was fenced as isolated criminal phenomena with local motives; in short, militant jihad was represented as a perversion of, not a tenet of, Islamic theology or Muslim politics.
This politically correct illusion was reinforced by an Obama administration in a series of forays into the Ummah where the American president declared unequivocally that America, and NATO by extension, is not at war with Islam or Muslims. Never mind that NATO or American troops might be killing Muslims in four, or is it five, separate venues. “We are not at war!” was the party line. And never mind that Obama has yet to visit Israel as president.
Less well known is the “independent” science which now backfills or rationalizes the political Esperanto of the last decade. A RAND Corporation report, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qai’da, is an example. Notice the assumption embedded in the title; “counter” not defeat. The body of the report is devoted to asserting that terror (a military tactic) is best addressed by political, not military means. Separating war, an amalgam of tactics and strategy, from politics is not an assumption that Churchill or Eisenhower would have made. A politically correct world-view turns logic on its head; tactics are confused with strategy.
The RAND report ignores the larger strategic phenomena of jihad bis saif and protected Islamist hate mongering. But the bottom line of this “systematic” analysis is the most revealing: “Terrorists should be perceived as criminals, not holy warriors.” Such assertions are a kind of strategic masochism, not science; not even common sense.
How the West views Islam is more important then how Islamists act - or see themselves? By such logic, Arizona sheriffs might be deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan instead of the US Marines. And by such logic, where might the holy warriors, if caught, be tried; lower Manhattan? Treating terror as crime allows the lazy analyst with an agenda to dismiss the political implications of Islamism.
Another RAND paper on another recent South Asia massacre, entitled “Lessons of Mumbai,” is an even better example of cooked books; a case where analysis and credibility is undone by evidence ignored.
The Mumbai attack was unique in two respects; a small Jewish center was targeted, the occupants were slaughtered; and the hotel hostages were then screened for religious affiliation – again, seeking Jews. It’s a safe bet that none of the Mumbai killers were ever stopped at an Israeli checkpoint or lost a building lot in east Jerusalem. This attack was planned and executed with motives removed from the usual; the India/Pakistan rift or the Israel/Fattah impasse. Mumbai was clearly motivated, in part, by a strain of virulent, contagious, and global anti-Semitism. No mention of this appears in Lessons of Mumbai’s “key judgments.”
The recent terror attack, against a religious school in Toulouse, France, is a macabre echo of Mumbai. A rabbi and four young Jewish children were shot at point blank range by Mohamed Merah, a home grown Arab terrorist of Moroccan origin. Let’s assume for sake of argument that Israeli intransigence is the source of Muslim anger. How does blowing a little girl’s brains out advance the “two state solution?”
The global bloom of anti-Semitism since the turn of the 21st Century is no accident. Those who ignore it, especially scientists at places like RAND, make it possible. Ironically, many of RAND’s most eminent researchers are or have been Jewish.
(This Mumbai report also reinforces suspicions about non-profit excess. Lessons of Mumbai is a mere 25 pages long, yet lists ten (sic) authors; an average of two and a half pages per analyst. Makes you wonder how many scientists are required to screw in light bulbs in Santa Monica. Clearly, featherbedding is not just restricted to government operations.)
Some recent RAND national security analysis may actually qualify as apologetics. The 2010 paper entitled Would-be Warriors analyzes the incidence of terrorism in the US since 9/11. The paper actually ends with the assumptions, concluding:
“There is no evidence (sic) that America’s Muslim community is becoming more radical. America’s psychological vulnerability is on display…panic is the wrong message to send.”
“No evidence” - or none that RAND can detect from the sands of Santa Monica? If sixteen US intelligence agencies didn’t connect the dots before 9/11, while suicide bombers were training in America; RAND’s statistical assurances ring more than a little hollow. Islamic terror didn’t begin with the barbarisms in lower Manhattan in any case. And assertions about psychological vulnerability or “panic” are straw men or worse. Who panicked in the wake of the Twin Towers atrocity? Indifference or political apathy maybe; but surely not panic.
And on US Muslim radicalization, clearly RAND statisticians rarely audit student sentiment at any urban “occupy” rallies or any California campus when an Israeli speaker appears. Nor does the RAND analysis account for the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) or the fact that this home grown political movement was recently hijacked by radical Muslim American bigots. Anti-Semitism is ever the canary in the geo-strategic coal mine. The NBPP’s most recent outrage was to threaten to burn the city of Detroit at a city council meeting.
In the interests of fairness, we should point out that other non-profits, PEW Research Center for example, also fail to account for the sea change in the very visible American Black Panthers. PEW claims to be non-partisan, but apparently that doesn’t rule out political correctness. Indeed, with modern pollsters and sociologists, American Muslim groups like the Panthers and the Nation of Islam seem to enjoy a double immunity; race and religion. Somehow such groups are, at the same time, Islamic; but not Muslim.
The growth of radical Islam in African American communities is complimented by a surge in prisons nationwide. Congress and Public Television seem to have access to prison data, but non-profits like RAND and PEW apparently do not work in those neighborhoods.
The creation of veiled apologetics is not as worrisome as the pervasive misuse of such “scientific” analysis. Part of the problem may lay with endowments. Like more than a few major universities, RAND courts Arab or Muslim good will for the same reason that Willie Sutton frequented banks. That’s where the money is.
Attempts to curry Arab favor are underwritten by a priori beliefs about Muslim “moderation.” Assumptions about what Muslims believe may make terror possible, providing a permanent rationalization, a kind of laissez passer for militants.
Today, RAND has one of the richest nest eggs outside of Harvard yard. And clearly, the designation “non-profit” is an oxymoron. The more appropriate designation would be “untaxable” – for reasons yet to be justified. Successful think tanks may be a lot of things, but like wealthy universities, they are not “charities” by any stretch of logic.
Recent government sponsored national security research has reversed the poles in the “non-profit” equation. Think tanks are richer and government sponsors are going broke. If quality of analysis is the return on government sponsored research, national security research is nearing some kind of strategic default.
Financial success has allowed think tanks like RAND to diversify the study agenda and expand their physical plants. Yet, the ideas of geographic isolation, and keeping politics at a distance, have been jettisoned with a vengeance. Beyond the original site at Santa Monica; RAND now has offices in Virginia (near the Pentagon), Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Mexico, England, Belgium, Qatar, UAE, and Abu Dhabi.
For objective national security analysis, the last three locales are the most worrisome. Hard to believe that systems analysis or scientific candor will put petro-dollars or Islamic theocrats at risk. Politically correct “science” allows universities and think tanks to work both sides of the threat equation. Call it the Ellsberg legacy.
While the overall cast of RAND Corporation national security research is cautious and in many cases politically deferential; the occasional old hand still puts mustard on his fastball. Jim Quinlivan wrote an essay in the RAND Review (summer, 2003), based on statistical analysis, that suggested under-manned American excursions against insurgents or terrorists in dar al Islam, were bound to end badly – using strict military measures of effectiveness. Today, that report might be considered prophetic. Unfortunately, such voices are seldom endorsed or underlined with corporate authority.
The Quinlivan essay was written shortly after 9/11 when “kinetic” solutions were all the rage; his paper flew in the face of the prevailing political winds. More recent RAND reports, as discussed above, tack with the prevailing political winds. The difference is integrity.
The early rhetoric from President Bush categorized the Manhattan attacks as “acts of war.” But since then, the Bush and Obama administrations, and government sponsored research, take great pains to confuse the issue with criminality – and policies where victory over Islamism is never a goal or an option.
First, there was the Iraq distraction, a theater that had little to do with world-wide terror or Islamism; and then came a period of dithering over Afghanistan, the so-called “war of necessity.” Throughout, neither political party could decide whether to treat the soldiers of Islam as prisoners of war or criminals. While Americans remained confused; Islamists made steady gains. For the West, the drift into the muck of appeasement and the humiliation of a Soviet-like retreat now seems inevitable.
America and NATO are headed for the exits in the Levant and South Asia. Yet, the greater problems of a nuclear Iran and the growing Arab irredentism are still metastasizing. And all the early political Pollyanna about democracy and freedom in Arabia hasn’t altered the vector of religious politics. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and now Syria, are on the cusp of clerical control. Like Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan; the political prospects for Muslims today are largely theocratic.
All of this seems to be a kind of pandering with junk science. Indeed, the decline of a Euro-American vision that made creativity, art, science, and democracy possible has been underwritten by the worst possible political “science” that borrowed money can buy. Insh’allah!
The author is a former Senior USAF Intelligence Research Fellow at RAND Corporation, Santa Monica. This essay is an excerpt from a longer treatment of the think tank phenomenon, and political pandering, to appear In the New English Review later this year.
Posted on 05/30/2012 9:00 AM by G. Murphy Donovan | <urn:uuid:01870682-bf63-4a94-9b2b-97c7f43ef125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/42247 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945155 | 2,502 | 1.65625 | 2 |
So yesterday, I wrote this post saying that the new version of the Senate bill does more to “bend the curve” of health care costs. I based that in large measure on the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the how effective a new independent board to regulate Medicare would be.
Except CBO got it wrong, at least partly. The independent board would still act as a brake on health care costs–but not as strong a one as CBO initially estimated, not over the long run. Today, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf put out a new analysis:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has discovered an error in the cost estimate released on December 19, 2009, related to the longer-term effects on direct spending of the manager’s amendment to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Senate Amendment 2786 in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 3590 (as printed in the Congressional Record on November 19, 2009).
Correcting that error has no impact on the estimated effects of the legislation during the 2010–2019 period. However, the correction reduces the degree to which the legislation would lower federal deficits in the decade after 2019.
The confusion centers on what would trigger the independent board to act to bring down spending. It turns out that, after 2019, it isn’t as much of a hair trigger as CBO thought it was :
In its original estimate, CBO wrote that: “Such recommendations would be required if the Chief Actuary for the Medicare program projected that the program’s spending per beneficiary would grow more rapidly than a measure of inflation (the average of the growth rates of the consumer price index for medical services and the overall index for all urban consumers).” That statement is correct for fiscal years 2015 through 2019. After 2019, however, the threshold for Medicare spending growth that would trigger recommendations for spending reductions would be higher—specifically, the rate of increase in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita plus 1 percentage point.
Originally, CBO thought the legislation would produce savings of 15% a year in the Medicare program. Now, it says that the savings are likely to be somewhere between 10% and 15% a year. (Although it also noted that even this is “somewhat larger” than the savings projected under Reid’s initial version.)
CBO also cautioned, as it has in the past, that any projections a decade and more into the future have an “even greater degree of uncertainty that attends to them, compared with CBO’s 10-year budget estimates.”
No kidding. It does make you wonder what else they are going to find in the bill.
UPDATE: It’s probably worth reminding our readers that this is not the first time that CBO has found itself out of the loop regarding provisions of this bill. Interestingly enough, this earlier episode involved the same commission. Which raises a more worrisome question: If CBO can’t keep up with what is getting slipped into this bill, what hope is there for the rest of us? | <urn:uuid:2819d10f-5679-409f-83de-9b4e8801d62e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://swampland.time.com/2009/12/20/reform-in-health-reform-maybe-not-so-much/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968984 | 629 | 1.75 | 2 |
SOMALIA: Mammoth task ahead for new president
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud
MOGADISHU, 12 September 2012 (IRIN) - Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s election as president of Somalia has been heralded as the start of a new era for the troubled Horn of Africa state, which has been mired in conflict for over two decades. Residents of the capital, Mogadishu, say the new president has his work cut out for him.
The President got an early taste of the tough road ahead when he survived an attempted assassination on 12 September. Mohamud and other officials at the city’s Jazeera Hotel - including Kenyan Foreign Minister Samuel Ongeri - were unharmed by the suspected suicide attack, which witnesses say killed the bomber and at least one security guard. Militant Islamist group Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the blast.
"Now we have an educated speaker as well as an educated president, and I hope there will also be a qualified prime minister," Abdulahi Hassan Mohamed, a 42-year-old doctor, told IRIN. "The president [has done] many good services for the people as a normal citizen - he should build on that."
Somali MPs chose Mohamud - who represents the Peace and Development Party - over the incumbent, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, in a runoff on 10 September. An academic and long-term civil society activist, Mohamud has been described as a moderate who could unite Somalia's deeply divided, largely clan-based, political groups.
The election process was marred by allegations of vote-buying and was criticized for not being sufficiently democratic, but the results have been widely accepted. Neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the European Union and the United States, have congratulated the new president.
The African Union called on
Somali stakeholders to "further the peace and reconciliation process", while UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon urged
"Somali and international actors alike to pledge their continued support".
A spokesperson for the Al-Shabab, which still holds parts of south-central Somalia, said the group rejected
the election and vowed to continue its war against the government.
Charting a new path
Mohamud's election marks the end of the country's eight-year Transitional Federal Government. The transitional period has seen Al-Shabab retreat from Mogadishu and other parts of south-central Somalia; a push by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) aims to remove them from their last major stronghold, the port city of Kismayo
. Somalis will be hoping Mohamud can capitalize on the relative peace to start the process of rebuilding the country.
Analysts say the international community - which has guided much of the transitional process - must now step away from Somalia's governance and allow Mohamud to do his job. "For years, members of the international community have been micromanaging the politics of Somalia from afar... The Nairobi-based politicians should give him [Mohamud] space to chart his own path - and make mistakes along the way," Abdi Aynte, a Somali-American journalist, said in an article
on the Royal African Society's African Arguments online forum.
Suldan Warsame Aliyow, a traditional elder, thinks Somalia is closer to stability now than any time since 1991, but warned that the new government must steer clear of the sectarianism that has blighted previous governments and deepened the country's conflict. "The president has to disassociate himself from any group, either tribal or religious," he said.
Mohamed Abdi Mohamed, a university lecturer in Mogadishu, said restoring order to Somalia would be a major challenge. "He must restore rule of law and build a government of institutions rather than a government of individuals, which transitional presidents were famous for," he said.
The country's citizens hope the new government can end the years of insecurity and poverty. "We need a total break from the past," said Fatima Ali, a businesswoman in Mogadishu's Bakara suburb.
"Let them build a more professional army who will not rob civilians," said Mohamed Bilqe, a taxi driver. Somalia's poorly trained army has been accused of abuses, including rape, torture and robbery.
The soldiers are also hoping for a more structured army. "Now that the transition is over, the government can sign more formal international agreements and can ask for loans," said Farah Dhiblawe Hirabe, a mine expert in the army who has defused about 60 landmines in Mogadishu since 2007. "We hope to be paid better and more regularly."
More than two million refugees and internally displaced people will be hoping for the chance to go home and rebuild their lives.
"I am happy we have a government, but it should do something to improve our lives," said Ali Mohamed, who left his home in the Middle Shabelle region after losing his livestock to drought. He now lives in a camp in Mogadishu with his wife and three children.
Abdishakur Sheikh Hassan, a university professor, said one of Mohamud's toughest tasks will be implementing the country's provisional constitution. "Four years from now, people need to able to elect their leaders through polls, and that is not an easy job," he said. | <urn:uuid:d3ef89fb-a7c5-4cf0-a830-365a626bd40c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irinnews.org/report/96291/SOMALIA-Mammoth-task-ahead-for-new-president | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971037 | 1,117 | 1.5 | 2 |
Dry Creek is an unincorporated community in the east-central portion of Beauregard Parish, Louisiana, United States. It lies 20 miles southeast of Deridder on the corner of La. Hwy 113 and La. Hwy 394 @ 30°40′10″N 93°2′42″W. It is 104 feet above sea level. The geography of the area is slightly hilly, ranging from 80 to 135 feet above sea level, consisting of mostly sandy soils with many creeks (not all dry) and ponds. Children in the area attend East Beauregard Elementary School and East Beauregard High School, five miles north. Bundick Lake is located approximately five miles north/northwest of "downtown" Dry Creek. Dry Creek is at the beginning of the "piney woods" of central Louisiana. Logging is the major industry of the area. There are many extraordinary vegetable gardens, and the entire area is noted for Sugartown melons as well as a "family atmosphere". Dry Creek Baptist Camp is located at the corner of the two highways across from Foreman's grocery, with a Pentecostal Church on the north side and a Bible Church on the south side of its boundary. There are many churches in the area and all faiths utilize the Camp's facilities. Referred to as the "White House", the Dry Creek School is an imposing neo-Greco building that alters one's concept of the traditional country school. Built in 1912, the wings and columns of the building were added in 1919-1920. The school was the first to support public education through taxes. A victim of school consolidation, it closed in 1962. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. | <urn:uuid:b91e4516-acbf-4ed2-a1e7-796fa512c6eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://openjurist.org/law/dui-and-dwi-law/louisiana/dry-creek | 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 | 0.972238 | 355 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Water is something we so often take for granted...until it has to be shut off for one reason or another and we realize how often we just expect water to come out of our faucets. Imagine living life without access to this necessity, and when your only source of water is contaminated to the point that it can lead to fatality, it is that much more of an issue that needs to be solved.
Charity: Water is a non-profit organization that puts 100% of donations towards water projects around the world that provide clean, safe drinking water for people and communities in need. This year they are giving us quick and easy ways to become a part of the solution, through gift boxes and gift cards that donate directly towards a water project.
Get involved in the incredible work that Charity: Water is doing this holiday season!
Suz & Jenn | <urn:uuid:b941883b-abcd-4870-a606-46f216fda21f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amethystblog.com/2011/12/give-with-purpose-charity-water.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 | 0.969631 | 174 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The House Republicans' latest stopgap is now online at OpenCongress for you to read, mark up, and create custom, section-specific links to so you can have a more detailed discussions of it online:
H.R.1363 - Making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2011, and for other purposes.
The full legislative text is here. Mouse over any chunk of text to add an in-line comment or create a custom permalink to that section that you can use to point others to it. If this bill gets a vote, it will happen sometime before the end of the day Thursday. With the massive amount of program cuts in this bill it's important that the public works together now to review it and find out what it would do before it's rushed to a vote. If you find something that you think might be worth noting, leave a comment to mark it and it will be filtered up to the list of most-commented-on provisions for others to find and review. We'll be highlighting the most noted provisions on this blog as well.Read Full Article Comments (8)
With just four days of government spending authority left, House Republicans are working hard on prepping for a shutdown. It's not clear how hard they're working on preventing one.
Yesterday, the Republican leadership distributed pamphlets "outlining the procedures congressional offices should take during a government shutdown." And late last night they introduced another stopgap, this one designed for political, not legislative, success. The stopgap would last for one week and cut a whopping $12 billion from discretionary spending over that period. In order to protect it from cuts, the Defense budget would be extended for the full fiscal year and increased by $7.6 billion over last year's level.Read Full Article Comments (7)
In the midst of the conflict in Libya, the disaster in Japan, and the economic crisis at home that's still very much hitting the poor and middle class, a government shutdown could have dour consequences for the U.S. economy. Consumer confidence is already starting to dip and a shutdown could be just the thing to throw consumers and financial markets into a panic that could push us back into another recession. Yet, with just a handful of legislative days left for Congress to pass a budget and prevent a shutdown, Senate Democrats and the House GOP seem to be moving further apart from a deal. Instead of negotiating, they're preparing for the politics of the shutdown, each trying to pin the pain it would cause on the other party.Read Full Article Comments (2)
The Senate has followed up on the House's action yesterday and passed a two-week stopgap spending bill that cuts about $4 billion from the current funding level, mostly by eliminating some of last year's earmarks. The Senate approved the bill by a vote of 91-9, with 3 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1 Independent-Democrat voting against. President Obama will sign the bill, averting a government shutdown that would have taken place otherwise beginning this Friday. But don't be fooled -- this is a temporary agreement and the negotiations to fund the government beyond these two weeks are extremely contentious. A government shutdown is still the most likely scenario.Read Full Article Submit a Comment | <urn:uuid:63dcb8c0-a0cd-4766-91ca-ee41094d2a91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opencongress.org/blog/stopgap | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950329 | 664 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Alphabetical List of Courses
The School of Engineering offers 12 diploma courses and Engineering with Business Management (EBM) Programme:
Engineering with Business Management Programme (N71)
With so many courses to choose from, it is important that our students end up with the diploma course that best matches their interests and aspirations.
To give students the flexibility to make their choice only at the end of the first semester in Year 1, Ngee Ann’s School of Engineering offers an exclusive Engineering with Business Management (EBM) Programme.
There are nine courses affiliated with EBM:
All first-year students taking the above engineering courses, including those who opt for the EBM, will share a common curriculum in the first semester. However, EBM students have the added advantage of being able to choose the course that they prefer towards the end of their first semester. They will also have the opportunity to bond with their peers, regardless of their future area of study, and be able to attend a wide range of student development programmes such as Image Enhancement Workshops, Music and Arts Appreciation, and Adventure Camp. | <urn:uuid:170aaf9d-7a12-4c88-b34b-6df760ef9860> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.np.edu.sg/soe/courses/Pages/default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956042 | 228 | 1.632813 | 2 |
North Carolina governor signs law establishing inmate innocence commission Holly Manges Jones at 2:08 PM ET
[JURIST] North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley [official website] Thursday signed into law [press release] a bill establishing an innocence inquiry commission [H1323 summary] which will review appeals by inmates who claim they have been wrongly convicted. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is modeled after the system in the United Kingdom [CCRC website] and is the first of its kind in the US. Inmates who have new evidence to present which was not previously considered in court can bring their innocence claims to the eight-member panel beginning in November. If five or more commission members consider the evidence to be a potential consideration for innocence, the case will then go to a group of three North Carolina Superior Court [official website] judges. A unanimous decision by the three judges is necessary to overturn a conviction.
The innocence commission was prompted based on wrongful convictions in several high profile cases in North Carolina, including Darryl Hunt [advocacy website; Wikipedia profile], who was found innocent of murder based on DNA evidence after serving 18 years in jail, and Alan Gell, who was released from death row based on evidence that prosecutors purposefully withheld in his trial. AP has more.
Paper Chase is JURIST's real-time legal news service, powered by a team of 30 law student reporters and editors led by law professor Bernard Hibbitts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. As an educational service, Paper Chase is dedicated to presenting important legal news and materials rapidly, objectively and intelligibly in an accessible, ad-free format. | <urn:uuid:4b6b658d-ea5a-4cf4-9fc8-97d8525e4423> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jurist.org/paperchase/2006/08/north-carolina-governor-signs-law.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961225 | 336 | 1.617188 | 2 |
How Optimizing Nurses' Roles Leads to Better Patient-Centered Care
And they have; nurses have caught potentially dangerous situations early on through their constant contact. If a nurse learns through a contact call that a patient is having a reaction to a treatment, the nurse can ask the patient to come to the outpatient center right away. Moreover, by catching any problems in the early stages, Ali explains that his practice is able to give the patient fluids and other treatments on an outpatient basis and avoid a hospital admission. "We don't want them to go to the hospital, we want them to go home," he says.
The financial benefit of that isn't lost on Bengston's organization, either. "From a dollars standpoint … managing this as outpatient is cheaper to our system then managing it inpatient. And, certainly from the patients' standpoints, they are definitely happier," he said.
Though Ali has only been operating the practice for a year, the system has begun tracking positive results. He was projected to have 72 new patients in his first year and he currently has 132. Being able to take on that patient capacity so rapidly while still maintaining a very personal approach to care is exactly the goal Ali and Fauquier were striving for. And, patient satisfaction scores are beginning to reflect that — for outpatient special procedures, satisfaction climbed from 83.9% in 2009 and 2010 to 84.5% in the first six months of 2011.
"What makes our program work is we make sure no one falls through the cracks," says Ali. "The team approach to each patient and listening to each patient's needs and situation means we can get them through the treatment … and maintain their quality of life. I think that's what makes this practice unique."
- Primary Care Docs Average More Hospital Revenue Than Specialists
- 69% of Employers Plan to Offer Healthcare Coverage After 2014
- How Chargemaster Data May Affect Hospital Revenue
- Insurer's App Aims to Lower Healthcare Costs, Securely
- House Lawmakers Grill CMS Over Health Exchange Navigators
- ED Physicians Key to Half of Hospital Admissions
- Building a Better Healthcare Board
- Q&A: Catholic Health Initiatives' New Senior VP for Capital Finance
- Don't Let Nurses Sink Your Bottom Line
- Hospital Pricing Irks Nurses; More Jobs, Less Pay | <urn:uuid:425f3ebf-7a7f-4832-8888-66163c0bbf76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/page-4/FIN-268427/How-Optimizing-Nurses-Roles-Leads-to-Better-PatientCentered-Care | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966804 | 484 | 1.539063 | 2 |
After the sunshine of ecobuild two weeks ago we had the snow at Leeds for the openBIM conference at Leeds Met’s ThinkBIM conference.
First up was Nick Nisbet from AEC3. Nick was one of the key people that contributed to the UK Government Construction Strategy.
Nick argued that BIM is all about sharing structured information. From one input you can achieve many outputs. If the data is structured, you can use it and analyse it through the supply chain. The case study discussed here was the possibility of automated code checking. Singapore is the example of this in action, Singapore is ranked number 1 out of 212 in terms of places to do business. In terms of construction you can get building regulation approval in not 3 months, or 6 months, but in 30 minutes.
But the main part of Nick’s presentation was about the UK Government initiative. The hypothesis was that the government wants “improvements in cost, value and carbon performance through open sharable asset information”. Nick suggested that the reason the aim was for level-2 BIM was to keep the lawyers at bay. Nick clearly would like level-3 in the not-so-distant future. “Most of the industry will go beyond COBie”, were his thoughts.
Nick talked about the importance of not just the geometry but also of the specification – if you own a building and need to replace a pump – what is its specification?
The importance of the colour code of COBie was discussed – maybe a good topic for a blog post? – the spreadsheet is not colourful without a reason, what do these background colours mean in terms of requirements at the different stages?
Parveen Sharma then presented live on a web stream from India. Parveen has worked on over 240 projects world-wide. Parveen works for Intec Infocom and he explained that the move to BIM was happening in India just like we are seeing here in the UK.
The ability for all the design disciplines to work collaboratively through BIM was demonstrated, then for this data to flow through the project timeline to the construction team.
In terms of the software platforms used in India, it sounded like it’s the same worldwide, Autodesk, Bentley, Graphisoft all mentioned. Made me wonder whether the Indian market would be a good one for NBS, what percentage of jobs are specified to British Standards?
I then had the tough decision of which of four excellent sounding roundtables to join. The first one I picked was hosted by Rob Jackson who was demonstrating “Open BIM” – working to open data standards. One of Rob’s jobs at Bond Bryan was to sort out the best practice way of working with respect to BIM.
Round table #1
Round table #2
Round table #3
The roundtable had a low-level of BIM experience, but Rob was great answering all of the questions from experience of “having done it”. Rob honestly believes that the profitability of his practice has increased – he got some pretty tough questions, but some really good questions on return on investment and who benefits most.
Also, some good discussions on who owns the data that is (a) used to create the designs and (b) then passed on down the supply chain? The openBIM roundtable discussion had gone completely off script - but in a good way. Fascinating to observe a discussion on BIM following questions from someone looking at it from a completely hard-financial return on investment point of view.
One of the most honest benefits that Rob discussed was the ability to show a design early to a client so they can actually articulate why they don’t like it. It’s much cheaper to receive this news early on – especially if it’s easy to take feedback on-board and re-work.
The second session I watched was chaired by Adam Matthews who is leading the Education Work Stream for the UK Gov. What education and training is required to up-skill the industry to deliver the BIM aspects of the construction strategy. Like the previous session, this was broadcast live over the internet – excellent use of technology by the Leeds Met team.
Adam's sketch on the incorrect weighting currently in education
Round table #4
Where does education come from currently? From the vendors, private training providers (PTP), higher education, further education and the institutions themselves. Adam’s team has been leading consultation into this and has found that the balance is far too weighted currently to the software vendors. Equally the education is currently nearly all around technical training – this has to change, we need more education in the strategic and management elements. Adam argued that the balance of all of this has to change.
Looking at the different disciplines, there must be training angled at clients, designers, contractors and facility managers. What documentation is required and how will this flow from brief to design to as built to operation and maintenance? Also, there was a triangle with three notes (1) Demand, (2) Define and then (3) Deliver.
There was a tongue in cheek half way through the session after Adam brings up Leeds, Salford and Newcastle examples – “Is BIM just happening in the north?”. Adam (based in London) was quick to point out that this wasn’t actually the case.
Full credit to Adam for not mentioning “Autodesk” once in the full hour – not sure if I’ll manage the same in my 6min40 seconds Pecha Kucha later in the day (update: I didn’t :) – fail on slide 9).
Whoever invented Pecha Kucha was a genius – five really good ones in thirty minutes. No chance to waffle, no chance to get nervous – just race on through.
First was from Dave Jellings on the open BIM movement, he argued that interoperability was the backbone of BIM and through open data standards the software companies will be able to compete and produce a better experience for the end user. Next up was James Austin from BIM Technologies, James spoke about how BIM is still in its early phases and we have to let the processes naturally evolve – and what we must not do is let complexity get in the end users way – beautifully illustrated with Homer Simpson on his iPad. George from BIM Academy then was next, he demonstrated how IFC had been used as a central source format to produce BIM content in multiple CAD vendor formats. Martin Brown from Fairscape then did a whirlwind 20 slides from his iPad (interoperability!) – I wondered whether maybe 20 seconds is faster in Apple-land though as the slides really did disappear. Finally, I did 20 slides on interoperability focusing a little on our recent TSB research project looking at how IFC can be used as an exchange format to configure concept BIM objects based on technical guidance, financial and environmental cost data and then round trip back into the model.
Then a fast walk down to the train station so I could get off for an Easter break in the sunny Lake District. Unfortunately, the pasty shop was closed in Leeds station – I am sure I heard in the news the other week that you could get a good pasty there?
The now famous pasty shop #pastygate | <urn:uuid:5b847d25-0f8b-45a8-bcd2-51197c97de17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://constructioncode.blogspot.com/2012/04/thinkbim-openbim-conference.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965046 | 1,514 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Luke Beasey understands this Father’s Day may be the last he will spend with his 3-year-old son, Matthew.
At the same time, Luke and his wife, Carrie, are hopeful they will be able to treasure the months — or maybe years — they will have with their son who has Krabbe disease, a rare genetic neurological disorder that has robbed him of the ability to walk, sit up or feed himself.
The Beaseys know how grim the situation is for their son, who is under at-home hospice care. The young couple insists, however, they don’t want sympathy.
“No,” Luke says, shaking his head. “We want none of that crap.”
What Luke and Carrie do want is simple.
“I don’t want anybody to go through what we’ve been through,” Carrie explains. “We want people to be educated and to recognize the symptoms (of Krabbe’s) so they will be better prepared to deal with it.”
Although Matthew began suffering slight seizures — shaking and/or jerking his tiny body — nearly two years ago, he wasn’t diagnosed until Sept. 26, 2011. That was the date the Beaseys found out he had Krabbe’s, a type of leukodystrophy — a disorder characterized by dysfunction of the white matter of the brain — for which there is no cure.
The toddler’s brain is dying because his body does not produce enough of a substance that makes myelin, which surrounds and protects nerve fibers.
At this stage of Matthew’s illness, he cannot hold up his head. During the day, he is strapped to his wheelchair or lies in a miniature camouflaged recliner. His eyes — framed with beautiful long lashes — are often half shut. His tiny fists are clinched. Occasionally, when prompted by his mom or dad, he smiles or talks his “Matthew talk,” Carrie says.
Before Matthew was diagnosed with Krabbe’s, his condition was expected to improve. At least, that’s what the doctors told Luke and Carrie. Being hopeful and not seeing any progress was, perhaps, the toughest part for the young couple.
They often were told that Matthew’s condition was difficult to diagnose because his brain was still forming and it was hard to tell what was going on. The young couple wanted to believe their son would get better.
The Beaseys live at Hunter Army Airfield, where Luke is stationed with the 3rd Infantry Division. He is a Specialist E-4 who repairs and maintains helicopters, a veteran of the Iraqi war who is prepared to return or go to Afghanistan or wherever the Army wants to send him.
After talking with Luke only a few minutes, it’s apparent how much this tough, yet tender, soldier loves both his family and his Army life. He yearns to be deployed again but knows his first line of duty is with his wife and son.
“I want to go,” he admits. “That’s my job.”
He especially wants to support the men and women of his company who have held him up throughout the family’s ordeal. Talking to his fellow soldiers helps Luke cope with Matthew’s situation.
Right now, because of Matthew’s frail condition, Luke will not be deployed. He works on base during the day and comes home and talks to his son, kisses and caresses him and tries to make him laugh. The Beaseys do all they possibly can do to make Matthew as comfortable as possible.
Carrie isn’t as angry as she is frustrated by the blow life has dealt Matthew.
“I don’t understand how it’s 2012 and nobody can fix my baby,” she says, her eyes welling with tears.
The last two years have been an emotional roller coaster, especially early on. Until his second birthday, Matthew was developing as he should be, his parents say.
“He was a normal kid,” Luke says. “He didn’t just walk, he ran.”
Then his parents started to notice that Matthew would occasionally twitch and shake or even fall. Medical personnel in Virginia, where Luke was stationed, told the Beaseys Matthew had a form of epilepsy he probably would outgrow.
“He maxed out every medicine he was given,” Luke says. “He just wasn’t improving.”
At one point Matthew was having 60 seizures a day.
Still thinking his son’s condition was a form of epilepsy, Luke did his homework and asked to be transferred to Savannah in hopes Matthew would have the best neurological care possible. The family moved here in May 2011 and began seeing a local neurologist.
On Sept. 26, 2011, after a second MRI and results from blood samples sent to the Mayo Clinic, Matthew was diagnosed with Krabbe’s.
“That was the end of the line,” Luke says.
The Beaseys also found out they both are carriers of the defective gene.
“Yeah,” Luke says, “they said I’d have better luck winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning on the same day.”
Now, they’ve decided they will have no more children.
In the aftermath of Matthew’s diagnosis, the Beaseys couldn’t even bear to be around children. Carrie remembers being at the hospital and hearing a nurse talk about her son playing football. The young mom realized she would never experience that moment. It was a tough pill to swallow.
To cope with depression and sadness, Carrie is seeing a counselor and dealing with the inevitable one day at a time. Both she and Luke are grateful for the support they are receiving from the faculty and staff at White Bluff Elementary School, where Matthew is in the preschool intervention program.
Although the couple was hesitant about accepting assistance, they allowed friends to set up a bank fund in Matthew’s name. They are working with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which is trying to take Matthew to the Atlanta Aquarium. Also on the Beaseys’ wish list is a special swing so Matthew can be outside to watch his dogs play.
Meanwhile, Luke describes the family’s routine as a “waiting game.” The couple has decided not to go to extraordinary measures, such as a feeding tube, to keep their son alive.
“If (Matthew) is still fighting, we’ll fight because his good days are really, really good,” he said. “But if it becomes too much for him, we’ll let him go.”
Contact Polly at 912-352-8670 or [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:fbe02390-bccc-45b7-90c4-086accbb731c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://savannahnow.com/news/2012-06-17/young-savannah-army-couple-treasure-time-son-fatal-disorder | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985203 | 1,454 | 1.796875 | 2 |
CHAMPAIGN – Sorting through book returns on Friday, a Champaign Public Library employee came across two bedraggled books, with crumbling spines and pages aged to a dirty yellow.
It became evident that the books were old – very old – and long predated any automatic computer systems. As close as anyone can estimate, the books were returned to the library roughly 90 years after they were checked out.
An anonymous note accompanying the package indicated the returner had found the books in boxes that had been packed 60 years ago. The box was among the finder's mother's belongings.
Never in Library Director Marsha Grove's seven years at the Champaign library have books this old – and this long overdue – been returned.
"I don't know who has the record for the most overdue return," but the Champaign library might be close after Friday's discovery, Grove said.
The cover of "United States History and Constitution" sports a solid blue cover, with the beveled print barely distinguishable from the void areas. And "Benefits Forgot: A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love" displays a gold screen-printed bust of Abraham Lincoln while illustrations inside resemble wood block carvings pressed against the pages.
The two were checked out during the 1920s, as close as Grove can tell.
A ledger inside the cover of one of the books indicated the return date was Oct. 16, though the stamp did not identify a year.
If they had been 90 years overdue, the two books – each at two cents per day, the charge in 1920 – accumulated about $1,300 in overdue fines.
That might explain why the note was anonymous.
"I mean, you wouldn't want to turn your parents in," Grove said.
But under today's policy, the library never charges more than half the retail value of the overdue books. Handwritten notes penciled inside one of the book's cover indicated the Champaign library purchased the book for 75 cents on Jan. 15, 1918.
And had this happened in the past few years, it likely never would have gotten this far.
"We do now send people to the collection agency," Grove said.
And no, the decrepit books will not be available for checkout. On Friday, they sat on Grove's desk, barely fit to be handled. Books like these wouldn't survive the stacks.
"They're falling apart on my table here," Grove said.
The library will do some research to see if they have any value as rare books. If not, they might end up on eBay.
"Interesting to get them back, though," Grove said. | <urn:uuid:50bca212-7936-40ac-b6c1-24126ec5ca20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2010-01-09/two-overdue-books-are-returned-about-90-years-late.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974931 | 546 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Directors of Non Profit Organizations (NPOs) have many responsibilities, of which one of the most critical is setting the NPO's strategic direction in a way that serves the best interests of the multiple stakeholders (donors, volunteers, employees, clients/users) upon whom the organization depends for support. This is a considerable challenge that can be daunting for many boards of directors, but bestselling author and McMaster University professor Dr. Chris Bart has made it a simple and practical process.
In his new book, 20 Essential Questions Directors Of Non-Profit Organizations Should Ask About Strategy, Bart has created a straightforward monograph and workbook to help directors of NPO's better define, understand and execute their strategic responsibilities with management in easy-to-understand language. As testimony to the book's value and acceptance, it was named the #5 Best Selling Business Book in Canada for 2012.
One very noteworthy question that Bart poses is how an NPO actually defines the term "strategy". Bart writes that this frequently overlooked question is vital due to the existence of many different definitions of "strategy" used by members of the board and its management. These differences have an obvious and potentially negative impact on the organization's performance long term. He then goes on to provide a simple, yet effective strategy definition framework that can be applied to any organization at the outset to avoid future performance shortfalls.
Another important question concerns "implementation", or how the organization has selected, designed, and aligned its internal arrangements to support the strategy. Bart writes, "Given sufficient time, information and human intelligence, any organization is capable of designing an outstanding strategy. The tough part occurs when it comes to executing it-i.e., turning the strategy into a reality." Bart cites numerous tactics for implementation, including: the proper management of information systems to monitor the strategy's progress; recruitment of appropriate employees and volunteers who can execute their share of the strategy; and ensuring that every member of the organization, from the field to the boardroom, understands and shares the same strategic vision. | <urn:uuid:b6f86696-961f-4406-af32-a7c492a0a720> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://books.broadwayworld.com/article/New-Book-Helps-Not-For-Profit-Directors-With-Their-Strategic-Responsibilities-20130215 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943533 | 416 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Based on a novel by Suzanne Collins, “The Hunger Games” is the first of a planned trilogy of films revolving around a futuristic society that holds a televised annual celebration featuring children pitted against each other in a fight to the death.
Unfamiliar with the source material, and frankly, a little underwhelmed by the promotional campaigns (at least in proportion with the pre-release hype), I went in to “The Hunger Games” with little to no expectations.
I left highly enthused, though.
“The Hunger Games” is a gripping drama that builds a lavishly detailed setting, unfolds a clear and interesting narrative, gets you highly invested the protagonist, and then lets the games begin.
“The Hunger Games” is the story of young Katniss Everdeen. When her younger sister (still a small child) is selected as “tribute” from their district for the nation’s annual Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place, instead.
The Hunger Games are an annual competition where one boy and one girl are chosen from each district to fight to the death in a nationally televised event. The Games are held as a reminder that these districts attempted an unsuccessful rebellion nearly a century ago. Ever since, an annual “Reaping” is held where one boy and one girl are sent as “Tributes” – combatants in the mortal carnival. The games are celebrated and glamorized by the nation… a deadly American Idol, where each tribute is introduced, interviewed and idolized prior to being sent out to kill or be killed.
The central city that the games take place in is a futuristic metropolis populated by a priviledged aristocracy, enjoying an opulent daily existence. They’re all garishly costumed and comically chic – a day glo bourgeoisie that sits in stark contrast to the dirt poor residents of Katniss’s district, who hunt for squirrel meat in order to survive. Serving them up entertainment is Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley), the producer of the games, and Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), the host. The wealthy watchers of the show can choose to “sponsor” the participants and send them useful supplies such as matches and medicines if they’re attached enough to the children to wish to financially invest in them.
It’s here that “The Hunger Games” really grabs you. Not only is the game excellently explained and portrayed (I don’t care how far off this show is in the future, it’s easy to buy into because it’s not hard to imagine), it’s here that the movie’s themes about wealth, power and poverty come out to play. They’re not original, per se… in fact every element of “The Hunger Games” seems to have been explored previously. There were times when literature such as “The Time Machine” and “The Most Dangerous Game” came to mind, and films such as “The Running Man” and “Battle Royale” are going to be obvious comparisons for movie geeks. Yet like a pizza with a unique combination of toppings, I felt as though this was an interesting and novel exploration of the ideas, even though it may not have been in actuality.
There’s a brief period of training and mentoring prior to the contest. By the time the game begins, you will be well invested in the character of Katniss, and you’ll know the whys and hows (at least the pertinent whys and hows) of the world. As such, the events that unfold within the games will have weight and meaning. When kids start killing kids, you will care.
And the kids DO kill kids. Once the games begin, it’s “The Truman Show” meets “Lord of the Flies” as kids scramble for food, supplies and weapons, all while assassinating each other. Meanwhile, above the fray, the producers manipulate the environment, setting fires and sending constructs to guide the events as they see fit. They even change the rules as they go…
I had only a few minor gripes about the movie, the first being the shooting style of the fight scenes… it employs that quick cut jumble garbage where you can’t really tell whats going on. I’d like to personally slap every director that chooses to utilize that in their films. Choreograph a fight scene you lazy bastards! I find it impossible to believe that people actually prefer that style of action, it’s just that they’re not being provided alternatives… The second is that Josh Hutcherson left me a little underwhelmed as Lawrence’s district 12 co-tribute. I realize that there’s probably a love triangle down the road here in this series, and we’re more than likely supposed to be rooting for Liam Hemsworth in said triangle, so I’m sure it serves the purpose of the greater story to have this character be a little bland. He just didn’t seem to have the requisite charisma for me given it’s such a pivotal role in the film… And finally, I really wish that this film didn’t have to be PG13. While they don’t necessarily completely sanitize the violence, I felt at times as if they had really given the violence and the gore of the kills a little more power, it could have substantially reinforced the horrifying nature of the contest. I know they couldn’t, especially given the target audience, but if they had, it really would have helped, in my opinion.
Those things aside, “The Hunger Games” was an excellent, excellent movie. It had me sucked in from the first few minutes, and didn’t let me go until the credits rolled. There were first class performances throughout… Jennifer Lawrence is exceptional as Katniss Everdeen. Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks make an excellent pairing as the district handlers – he’s a boozy, world-weary ex-champ, and she’s an airy socialite who seemingly dances happily to the tune the world is currently playing without ever questioning it. Lenny Kravitz gives a surprising turn as a compassionate trainer, and Donald Sutherland lends gravitas and menace as the nation’s President. But stealing the show may be Stanley Tucci as the host of the hunger games show. Sickeningly polished and enthused for the event, he puts a face on the exploitative evil that the games represent.
But most of all, it’s a highly entertaining movie. It creates a credible fictional world, puts you solidly in the heroines corner, and then unleashes lets the action and endangerment. I do caution people not to go in thinking of this as an action movie, though… its a drama with lots of action.
I hesitate to call “The Hunger Games” a great movie for some reason, but I reserve the right to change that opinion going forward. I will say this. Even with a run time of well over two hours (142 minutes), if I had been introduced to this via a Blu Ray box set and had the other films in the trilogy available at my disposal to watch? There would have been less than a one minute interval before I began the next movie. Press stop on remote, get up, change disc, sit back down, press play on remote. I was that hooked here.
I eagerly await the next one, currently scheduled for November of next year. | <urn:uuid:5eb5780a-329f-48fb-a349-58851631bf42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fogsmoviereviews.com/2012/03/24/the-hunger-games/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955694 | 1,595 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Obamacare is not evil, and it is not the great solution.
Here is what Obamacare is and what it isn’t. Obamacare is not a breathtaking tax increase: In fact, in the recent history of taxation, it pales in comparison to other taxes. The Reagan tax hike of 1982 is almost twice what the Obamacare short term tax increase will be as a percentage of GDP on average. I say short term because in the longterm, the credits for the tax will diminish it, and it will become a credit.
According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, individuals making more than $200,000 a year will see their taxes go up less than 5 percent and couples making more than $250,000 a year will see a slightly higher increase. People making less than that but above the poverty line likely will not notice it at all, and people making poverty level incomes or below are exempt.
It is a tax, but it’s not a tax that will destroy business or families no matter how much fear-mongering anyone attempts to push, and we’ve had much, much worse.
Obamacare which should properly be called the Affordable Care Act or the ACA, doesn’t pay for or help supply abortions through Planned Parenthood, either. That’s because Planned Parenthood does not use federal tax dollars to pay for or fund abortion services, as that is against the law already due to the Hyde Amendment.
In a campaign speech, Romney stated that the ACA would add trillions to the deficit. Reality says no. If you look at cost alone, it will add $1.5 trillion to deficit the first 10 years, which will decrease, however, once a slight cut of about 7 percent in future Medicare expansion and increases in taxes on investment incomes for the wealthy the deficit will be reduced by $210 billion in those first 10 years and continue reduction. That’s the data put forth by the Congressional Budget Office which is non-partisian.
Over time, the deficit created by the ACA will be significantly decreased to the point where if all goes well, we’ll see it pay for itself or increase the deficit by a bit, and that’s if the deficit maintains its current form. Come a major war or other horrible disaster that ravages the country (climate change, I’m looking at you) and we’re looking at a major deficit.
Romney also claimed that 20 million Americans will lose their health insurance. This, however, was one of four scenarios and was listed as the worst possible scenario by the CBO in a 2012 report. The more accurate estimation says that 3-5 million will voluntarily give up their employer sponsored insurance and replace it with insurance provided via their own means. This means 3-5 million people will be buying their own private plans. This same report also features a best-case scenario by which the ACA will pay 82 billion towards the deficit over 10 years. Romney speaks of worst case scenarios as definite inevitability.
OK, enough picking on Romney. The ACA is not a wonderful world of free healthcare, and it has been misrepresented by the president.
Obama stated that 13 million people will receive rebates for paying too much for CEO salaries and administrative costs, however, the lion’s share of those rebates will go to the employer who provides the insurance. He also stated that 54 million Americans have already been assisted by the ACA with preventative screenings. That is false. Potentially, 54 million Americans could be assisted, and that’s reaching as most providers already pay for screenings.
Obama also exaggerated the number of students under age 26 who will be helped by ACA and be allowed to stay on their parents private plans. He stated 6.6 million students — that number is based on an estimate by The Commonwealth Fund — under the age of 26 would consider getting on their parents plan. The more accurate number is about 3 million, according to DHHS, which looked at actual data and not supposition. Obama speaks of potential benefits as if they are past tense.
All of this data I have presented is cited at FactCheck.org and sourced. I give both Obama and Romney bad marks for exaggeration.
America has always been a united and a divided nation. If you put millions of people together of varying cultures, creeds and belief systems they will disagree. Lately, the extreme rhetoric from both sides is like a black spot on the information age.
Liberals are not evil, godless socialists out to recreate the Soviet Union, and Conservatives are not inhuman, corporate slaves who hate poor people.
It’s OK to disagree but it’s not OK to dehumanize your opponent, to belittle them or to assume moral superiority over them.
That’s when you go from being a sensible, forward-thinking American into a rabid parrot of some pundit whose purpose in life is to spread manure in your face and make you love it.
Question your opponents and their statements with facts because facts are adamantine. Question your own beliefs and understanding, because you are a growing mind. Let no one make you their pawn, no matter what political stripe you wear. | <urn:uuid:efd41bcb-3ef0-4f50-98a9-d07297074cda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://columbiadailyherald.com/sections/opinion/letters-editor/political-debate-healthy-hyperbole-and-rancor-aren%e2%80%99t.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96656 | 1,061 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Hometown: Salt Lake City, Utah
Field: Biochemistry, molecular and
cell biology, genetics
Teacher preparation program:
Anticipated date of graduation:
The daughter of a geophysicist and a professor of education, Claire Fassio spent hours as a child surrounded by jars of flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda, mixing the ingredients and seeing how they reacted. She loved science because it was “messy and full of questions.” In high school, her passion for science subsided and she began to associate it with flash cards. When Claire took a required chemistry course in college, she was shocked. “Yes, we were asked to remember specific atomic properties, but we also waded into rivers to record dissolved oxygen levels.”
As she took more science courses, Claire realized that she “liked biology for its growing body of knowledge about how life functions, but loved biology for its ability to inspire critical thought.” She went on to earn a BS and an MA in biochemistry and molecular biology from Lewis and Clark College and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. Claire was a graduate student instructor for a genetics course and helped design and lead professional development workshops for 4th grade teachers to promote inquiry-based education. She has volunteered with the Great Salt Lake Institute, an organization that uses the lake as an outdoor classroom for K-12 education.
A Barry M. Goldwater Scholar and a recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Claire believes that “science is a very creative process that requires participants to be innovative and collaborative.” She loves spending time outdoors, especially hiking and snowshoeing. Claire hopes to return to her hometown of Salt Lake City to teach after completing her teaching credential program. | <urn:uuid:d1816956-0a3c-438c-a0b8-51441f6f8e10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kstf.org/programs/teaching/fellows/Bio2012/claire_fassio_bio.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970132 | 364 | 1.640625 | 2 |
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This is Christopher Budd. I wanted to take a moment and provide a brief update on the situation from our work over the weekend.
As of tonight, the situation remains unchanged. Our teams are continuing to work on developing and testing updates for this issue, and our ongoing monitoring of the situation shows that attacks are still not widespread.
We don’t have any new estimates on release timelines. I can say that our ongoing testing so far has not raised any issues that would make us believe we might be looking at a longer timeline. However, testing is ongoing.
While we called this out in our security advisory and our initial and subsequent postings, we have still have gotten some questions from customers about whether this vulnerability exists in any non-server Windows operating systems. The answer to that is no: this vulnerability only affects Windows server operating systems, specifically those with DNS installed.
We know this because as part of our Software Security Incident Response Process (SSIRP) after we identify a vulnerability one of the first things we do is to establish the scope of affected software. We do this looking at the source code for the affected component in all publicly supported versions of the product. We look to see if the code that contains the vulnerability is present in the source code. In the case of this vulnerability, the code with the vulnerability is in the DNS server component. That component isn’t present in Windows client operating systems. Because of this, we can say that client systems are not at risk from this vulnerability.
As always, we’ll keep you updated with new information about our work and the situation as we have it. | <urn:uuid:d835e20a-a5c0-4a81-a526-80549a6bdb75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2007/04/22/sunday-update-on-microsoft-security-advisory-935964.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936225 | 350 | 1.546875 | 2 |
by Huffington Post, May 18, 2011
On Tuesday, for the first time in 19 months, Pedro Guzman left Stewart Detention Center, a privately run facility where he was housed while fighting deportation. The Lumpkin, Ga., detention center is one of many run by Corrections Corporation of America, a prison giant that believes its next major market is immigrant detentions.
Georgia may be its next frontier. The state’s anti-illegal immigration bill, styled after Arizona’s SB 1070, was signed into law last week. The result could be more immigrants in detention — and more profits for CCA, which has been accused of mistreating detainees and cutting down on amenities to improve profits.
CCA, as reported by NPR last year, was in the room when SB 1070 author Russell Pearce, now Arizona state Senate president, unveiled his plans for the bill at a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Guzman said he saw firsthand how CCA makes its money by spending as little as possible on the men and women in detention centers.
“There’s so much money they make from us, but they’re not investing any money in detainees,” he said in an interview. “The treatment you get is like you’re an animal. I have two dogs, and I treat my dogs much better than the detainees are treated in there.”
Guzman, who turns 31 on Thursday, moved to the United States from Guatemala with his mother when he was 8 years old. He is married to an American, Emily Guzman, and is the father of a 4-year-old citizen named Logan.
For about a year an a half, the Guzman family was separated by the immigrant detention system. The difficulties of communication from the CCA-run facility made the separation worse.
Guzman was granted a green card on Monday, and will be allowed to stay in the United States under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, which allows some immigrants from Guatemala to stop deportation proceedings. But he said he is “still healing” from the 19-month detention, during which he said detainees were yelled at, crammed into close quarters and given little communication with the outside world.
He was not convicted of a crime, but Guzman said he was treated like a prisoner, despite an effort launched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in October 2009 to make detention centers less punitive.
Detainees in the Stewart Detention Center stay in “pods,” where 62 men sleep in bunk beds about two feet apart, Guzman said. In the center of the room are about six tables, where the men can eat food they buy from the commissary.
Guzman said he saw some physical abuse, mostly when guards were provoked by detainees who talked back. More common, though, was verbal abuse. Many of the guards yelled at detainees regularly, creating an atmosphere of near-constant screaming in the pods.
“It’s just made to break your soul and handicap you,” Guzman said.
He said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials discouraged detainees from pushing for an individual response to their case, because the high-level of deportations requires most to go through courts where a judge rules on several cases at a time.
“They’re not there to help you,” Guzman said. “Ninety percent of the officers will tell you you have no chance to fight, just go to court and we will remove you and take care of the rest.”
With new detainees entering every night, guards changed the rules and procedures often, creating confusion and tension for long-term detainees like Guzman. He said a major source of stress was a new phone system implemented midway through his detention that prevented him from calling his mother in Mexico.
Calls within the United States were expensive, and phone cards only allowed him to talk for about 11 minutes. When his family visited, they had to talk to Guzman through a glass barrier.
Now, Guzman has been reunited with his family. On Wednesday evening, they were driving home to North Carolina.
“I felt like I was never going to get out of there and like I was never going to be in the U.S. again,” he said. “Many times I felt like quitting, just giving up. But changes can happen.”
WATCH: Brave New Foundations’ Cuéntame gives more information about Corrections Corporation of America’s lobbying for anti-illegal immigration laws in this video. The group plans to feature Guzman in a video as part of its Immigrants For Sale campaign. | <urn:uuid:4683067e-f77f-4fdc-b296-e58f1396d71b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bravenewfoundation.org/2011/05/press/immigrant-freed-from-19-month-detention-i-treat-my-dogs-much-better-than-the-detainees-are-treated/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980296 | 965 | 1.75 | 2 |
Widebody From Ireland, joined Aug 2000, 1150 posts, RR: 9 Posted (12 years 6 months 2 weeks 6 hours ago) and read 1805 times:
Anybody got an idea why there is no medium-long haul high wing jet aircraft? In other words, no high wing aircraft where the routes entail large cruise segments. Take for example business jets, appart from the RJX 85 and 328, both modified pax jets, there is no high wing business jet, and no dedicated high wing business jet.....
Prebennorholm From Denmark, joined Mar 2000, 6019 posts, RR: 55 Reply 1, posted (12 years 6 months 2 weeks 1 hour ago) and read 1789 times:
Oh, Widebody, there are plenty of medium and long range planes with a high wing. IL-76, AN-124, C-130, C-141, C-5, C-17, just to name a few of the most prominent examples.
It's a question about where it is most practical to have the wing main spar(s) pass through the fuselage. Just talk to those people (myself included!) who have banged their head against the lowered cieling in a F-50 or BAe-146 where the spar passes through.
On a passenger jet plane you simply make the best use of the fuselage space available when having the wing spar just under the cabin floor. And make room for baggage in front of and behind the spar.
On a roomy freighter you have only one room for payload, so the floor is put much lower leaving no room for the spar under the floor. And a flat floor is a must. It has one big disadvantage, the landing gear cannot be connected to the wing and its track becomes very narrow.
So I don't think that you will ever see a high wing ordinary passenger airliner.
Best regards, Preben Norholm
Always keep your number of landings equal to your number of take-offs, Preben Norholm | <urn:uuid:7f67a847-1a08-4015-8d22-a5c3daa7ba98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/326067/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937455 | 418 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The windows are boarded on the house at Midland Avenue and Ballantyne Road in Syracuse. Wind-blown garbage piles up in the back yard. The roof above the front porch has a gaping hole.
Yet for a few days each spring, the blossoms of a magnolia tree in the side yard take eye-catching prominence at that city crossroads. Until the flowers fade, Yvonne Lannie will do her best to clean up broken sticks and trash around the tree. It's not her property, but she feels an obligation. To Yvonne, the blossoms are a lasting gift from Catherine Adamsick, who planted the magnolia and lived for decades in the house.
"This was her baby," said Yvonne, 72, as she admired the flowers. Since the early 1970s, Yvonne has lived next door to the old Adamsick place. She knew Catherine, who died about 30 years ago. The house then changed hands several times. It has been empty and neglected for about a decade, by Yvonne's reckoning.
In its heyday, she said, "it was beautiful, both inside and out." Most spectacular was the yardwork done by Catherine and her husband Andrew. People would pause on the sidewalk to admire the glory of the garden.
"It was sunk down, with rose bushes and benches and a sun dial," Yvonne said.
Everything is gone except the magnolia, now in full blossom.
Across Central New York, the warm weather has brought thousands of similar trees into bloom. Beth Edward of Jamesville, secretary for the Magnolia Society International, said the trees spend an achingly brief time in flower. While Edward is versed in all kinds of magnolias, she said the trees most familiar to this region - an imported variety known as soulangeana - are no longer as popular as they were in the years before and after World War II.
Even so, she lives for this time of year, and she knows the location of every flowering magnolia along her route to work. Edward guesses that many were long-ago birthday or Mother's Day gifts. Others were planted years ago by men and women who had just bought their homes. The trees stayed behind when the original owners died or moved away, and the flowers still blaze for a few days each year - often in struggling areas hungry for such a touch of light.
That is the certainly the case at Midland and Ballantyne. The Adamsicks "would roll over in their grave" if they could see the condition of their house, Yvonne said. A neighborhood where homeowners once stayed put into old age has become far more transient and fragile. Not long ago, Yvonne said, "we had to head for the basement and the attic" when two young men on the sidewalk abruptly began firing their handguns.
Yvonne doesn't leave, and she does her best to honor the memory of her old neighbors. Andrew Adamsick, she said, was a produce dealer who kept a cooler full of vegetables in a 3-car garage that was torn down long ago. His wife had a gift with flowers, especially roses. Old clippings from The Post-Standard and The Herald-Journal recall how Catherine was an officer in the Syracuse Rose Society. She traveled extensively to major rose shows, and she was often a winner in local competitions, including a big contest in 1956 at the Niagara Mohawk Building.
To Yvonne, a retired crossing guard, the Adamsicks touched on the highest qualities of city living. The two houses were so close together that Yvonne could sit on her porch and speak across the driveway to her neighbors without raising her voice. The Adamsicks loved their roses, Yvonne said, but their magnolia carried particular meaning. The couple planted it when they moved in, and the flowering each spring was like a gift from an old friend.
It still is. With the tree in bloom, no one is looking at the house.
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard | <urn:uuid:79f3c985-e3c7-4d74-8181-340ceb4bd025> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.syracuse.com/kirst/index.ssf/2010/04/post_42.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982434 | 831 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Baby Name No-Nos
Rule No. 1: Personal taste isn't so personal
Not long ago, I heard an expectant mother beside herself with outrage. She had just learned that another woman in her small town had "stolen" her baby name! No, she admitted, she had never met the woman. But for years now she had been planning to name a baby Keaton, a name she had personally invented, and now there was another little Keaton right across town. Someone must have told that other mother her own secret, special name. Thief!
Chances are this was not really a case of name larceny. That mom had just run into a startling fact of baby name life: our tastes, which feel so personal, are communal creations. Keaton? Well, it's a surname ending in n, a style parents are flocking to for fresh ideas that sound like classic names. K in particular is a hot first letter. And don't forget that almost every parent today grew up watching Alex Keaton on "Family Ties." So just like that outraged mom, thousands of parents across the country have independently "invented" the name for their kids.
We live in a shared culture with common experiences that shape our likes and dislikes. That means overlapping tastes -- and as a rule, the closer two people are, the greater the overlap. Many of us have had a long-cherished name "stolen" by friends who had long cherished it themselves. It's frankly unnerving to discover that the quirky name you've always just happened to like is now a chart topper. What ever happened to individual style?
Before you panic and name your son Aloysius, remember that communal taste is really a good thing. That shared perspective is exactly what gives names their style and nuance. It's also the context that lets you define your own style, meaningfully. Use the backdrop of your social group, your community and your generation to choose names that make the kind of statement you're looking for. And if you do meet another Keaton, take it as a positive sign that your son will be fashionable. Parents are the ones who worry about a name standing out; kids are happy to fit in.
Rule No.2: All last names are not created equal
I can see a runway model wearing a sheath dress that's so gorgeous I could just melt looking at it. But I know perfectly well that the same dress on my real-world figure would be a train wreck. Similarly, I know that the stylish Irish name Kennedy, paired with my last name Wattenberg, would sound like someone falling down stairs.
In names as in clothes, the key is to choose the styles that flatter you. Run down this basic checklist before you make your final choice. Length and rhythm: Sullivanand Flanagan match in style, but Sullivan Flanagan is a red-flag name. Watch out for sing-song rhythms and tongue twisters.
The "Justin Case" Syndrome: A perfectly reasonable first name can meet a perfectly reasonable last name and create something perfectly ridiculous. When you have a candidate picked out, say the full name out loud repeatedly to look for hidden landmines. Include nicknames, too -- BenjaminDover is one thing, Ben Dover quite another.
If your last name is a common first name, take special care to choose first names that won't make you sound inside-out. Nicholson Thomas, for instance, is asking for trouble. And if your last name just is trouble (Rump, Hogg, etc.), you can use the rhythm of a long, rolling first name to draw the emphasis away from it.
Rule No. 3: All naming is local
Popularity rankings are useful, but to understand your real-world name environment you should look around your own neighborhood. America is a big, diverse country, with many different name trends operating at once. Money, geography, ethnicity and education all swirl together to form "microclimates" of style, with local spikes in the use of particular names.
You can look up Oliver and say, "Ah, popularity rank No. 267, I won't meet many Olivers." But if your friends have kids named Julius, Lucy and Charlotte, you should expect to see Olivers on your block. Not to say that's a bad thing. In that kind of community Oliver won't risk teasing, whereas he might find it rough going in a sea of Kaydens and Madisyns.
Rule No. 4: Other people's opinions matter
As a parent, the choice of a baby name is entirely up to you. Why should you listen to what anybody else has to say, let alone your crazy friends and relatives?
Some food for thought: the choice may be yours, but you are making it for someone else. You are just a trustee in this matter, assigned to handle the affairs of another person who is unable to act because he or she has not yet been born. And those crazy friends and relatives? They are going to be your baby's friends and relatives before long. Don't let them bully you, but don't completely ignore them, either. As a group, they represent the society that's going to be hearing, and judging, your child's name for a lifetime.
You don't have to flag down every passing car to ask for opinions, but it's worth choosing a few level-headed confidantes to air out your ideas. They might just spot something you missed -- the new Muppet with the same name, or the obscene meaning of the name in French. You can always swear them to secrecy afterwards, and they'll be tickled to be in on the surprise.
Rule No. 5: Choose the name you would like to have yourself
This is the top piece of advice I give expectant parents. We all have many factors in mind when we choose a name. We may want to honor our relatives, or our ethnic heritage. We may see baby naming as an opportunity for personal expression. Use whatever criteria you like to narrow down your name choices, but before you fill in the birth certificate, stop and give the name this final test: if you were starting life today, knowing everything you know about the world, is this the name you would want to represent you? If so, you can feel confident that you're giving your child the best birthday present possible, one that will last a lifetime. | <urn:uuid:f6e2bbd4-9686-4b28-a85a-01e72e8b1f27> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pregnancyandbaby.com/baby-names/articles/943203/rules-of-thumb-for-choosing-a-baby-name | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961435 | 1,318 | 1.765625 | 2 |
strkjv@1Samuel:28:1 @ And it came to pass in those days, that the Philistines P@lishtiy# gathered # their armies together for warfare, to fight with Israel. And Achish said unto David, Know thou assuredly, that thou shalt go out with me to battle, thou and thy men.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:2 @ And David said to Achish, Surely thou shalt know what thy servant can do. And Achish said to David, Therefore will I make thee keeper of mine head for ever.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:3 @ Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards yidd@#oniy#, out of the land.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:4 @ And the Philistines P@lishtiy# gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered # all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:5 @ And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines P@lishtiy#, he was afraid, and his heart greatly m@#od# trembled.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:6 @ And when Saul enquired of the LORD Y@hovah#, the LORD Y@hovah# answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:7 @ Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor #Eyn-Do'r#.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:8 @ And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:9 @ And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards yidd@#oniy#, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die?
strkjv@1Samuel:28:10 @ And Saul sware to her by the LORD Y@hovah#, saying, As the LORD Y@hovah# liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:11 @ Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:12 @ And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:13 @ And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:14 @ And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle m@#iyl#. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:15 @ And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore m@#od# distressed; for the Philistines P@lishtiy# make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:16 @ Then said Samuel, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the LORD Y@hovah# is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?
strkjv@1Samuel:28:17 @ And the LORD Y@hovah# hath done to him, as he spake by me: for the LORD Y@hovah# hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even to David:
strkjv@1Samuel:28:18 @ Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the LORD Y@hovah#, nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the LORD Y@hovah# done this thing unto thee this day.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:19 @ Moreover the LORD Y@hovah# will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines P@lishtiy#: and to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me: the LORD Y@hovah# also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines P@lishtiy#.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:20 @ Then Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore m@#od# afraid, because of the words of Samuel: and there was no strength in him; for he had eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:21 @ And the woman came unto Saul, and saw that he was sore m@#od# troubled, and said unto him, Behold, thine handmaid hath obeyed thy voice, and I have put my life in my hand, and have hearkened unto thy words which thou spakest unto me.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:22 @ Now therefore, I pray thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee; and eat, that thou mayest have strength, when thou goest on thy way.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:23 @ But he refused, and said, I will not eat. But his servants, together with the woman, compelled him; and he hearkened unto their voice. So he arose from the earth, and sat upon the bed.
strkjv@1Samuel:28:24 @ And the woman had a fat calf in the house; and she hasted, and killed it, and took flour, and kneaded it, and did bake unleavened bread thereof:
strkjv@1Samuel:28:25 @ And she brought it before Saul, and before his servants; and they did eat. Then they rose up, and went away that night. | <urn:uuid:aea3ba41-b3ac-41f6-93e1-42c54a136438> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shepherdpuplinux.us/cgi-bin/pbiblx-basic.cgi?Mode=basicw&X=x&Css=1h&Version=strkjv&Version2=tsk&Book=VSEARCH&Chapter=1Samuel:28 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950573 | 1,510 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Missed some training sessions recently? Fear not, your fitness is only 40 press-ups away
Whether it's because you're waylaid by illness, a holiday to Spain or a bout of ennui, sometimes your tri kit ends up sitting in the rack rather than racking up the miles. But it's never too late to return to fitness.
"Sometimes it's actually the best thing that can happen, because nobody takes the rest periods that they're supposed to," says coach and personal trainer Michelle Grainger (www.athleticexcellence.net). If you've neglected training, do this for a fast comeback.
Check the time
Take three or four days off and you may come back stronger. But after a week you lose about two to four per cent of your fitness per week. If you know you're in for a layoff, do short but intense efforts to forestall losses - 30 minutes of exercise are all you need to maintain fitness and muscle memory.
Build your way back
If you haven't trained for a week or more, start where you left off and do an abbreviated buildup, shortening the schedule but including the essentials. "Speed and power are the first things lost, in that order," says Grainger. So intensity is what matters most for a quick comeback. Do the following bike drill on a hill with a gradient of four to five per cent to increase power fast. One day a week go for a three-hour ride that includes some lactate threshold (the point at which lactate begins to accumulate in the blood) efforts and a few 10- to 30-second effort sprints.
Cut to the core
Don't burn precious time in the gym. Just target your core muscles; they'll help you stay strong without becoming fatigued. Here are four moves Grainger recommends:
Lie face-down on the floor and use your forearms - elbows directly beneath your shoulders - and toes to prop up your body so it forms a straight line. Hold for 30 seconds. Relax, then repeat.
Stand with your arms out to the sides at shoulder height. Extend your right leg behind you and balance on your left leg. Hinge forward from the waist until your body is parallel to the floor and in a straight line from head to heel. Return to start. Do two sets of 10 on each leg.
Assume the plank position, hands on the floor and arms extended. Bend your elbows, lowering your torso until your shoulders are in line with your elbows. Push up. Do two sets of 10 to 20.
Lie on your back, with your heels on an exercise ball and your arms by your sides. Contract your glutes and raise your hips off the floor so your body forms a diagonal line. Bend your knees and roll the ball toward your bottom. Return to the start. Do two sets of 10 or 20. | <urn:uuid:60c20801-df81-4c9b-92b2-a685c85eda74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/triathlete/triathlon-staying-healthy/rebuild-your-fitness/4497.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941861 | 589 | 1.796875 | 2 |
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